Literary criticism seems to be in an odd cul-de-sac at present. Two recent works by widely-esteemed critics can serve as pointers to a persistent paradox. In reviewing together the latest offerings of Barbara Hardy and Raymond Williams I don’t intend to do ‘justice’ to each volume individually, but to suggest, by their juxtaposition, a curious state of affairs: the simultaneous importance and irrelevance of ‘literature’—its importance within an educational apparatus and as the focus of a political project, and yet a concomitant sense that neither critic, or approach, has much to say about why anyone might actually continue reading poems and novels anyway. As a link, or diversion, I also glance at an aspect of Walter Benjamin’s work still largely unappreciated—his criticism of Brecht’s poems.

Barbara Hardy entitles her book The Advantage of Lyric: Essays on Feeling in Poetry. Almost every word here invites comment, but the most provocative is “advantage”. The ‘advantage of lyric in itself is its concentrated and patterned expression of feeling. This advantage is negatively definable: the lyric does not provide an explanation, judgment or narrative; what it does provide is feeling, alone and without histories or characters.’ (p.1). The absence of history and explanation is frequently noted, and approved; an interesting example is the quoting (p.5) of Quiller-Couch’s cut-down version of Emily Bronte’s long poem Julian M. and A.G. Rochelle: in Q’s version ‘virtually all we are left with is the intense lyrical evocation of Hope’ and this turns a narrative of tyranny and physical imprisonment into a lyric of ‘spirit tormented by flesh’ (p.6). Specific response becomes transmuted into metaphysical universality.