The Twilight of the Intellectuals: Culture and Politics in the Era of the Cold War.(Review)

The Twilight of the Intellectuals: Culture and Politics in the Era of the Cold War, by Hilton Kramer. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999, 363 pages, $27.50 hardbound.

Merriam-Webster defines an intellectual as one engaged in activities regarding the creative use of the intellect. The O.E.D. says he is given to pursuits that exercise the intellect. Both these definitions are clear, defining a person by what he does. Larousse goes along with the British and American definitions but adds a third: Personne qui a un gout predominant pour les choses de l'esprit. No one can argue with these definitions. They are succinctly written and easily comprehensible. But in the United States during the middle decades of the century the word, somewhat foreign to ordinary American speech, had certain partisan connotations. Thus, so-called intellectual became one word, used by the successors to the nineteenth-century know-nothings to show that we are all equally intelligent and equally ignorant. Left-wing intellectual was also one word for much the same reason: it meant he was not one of us, the majority.

In France, strangely, the third Larousse definition did not necessarily apply. If one had managed to gain a baccalaureate enabling one to teach, one was by definition an intellectual regardless of where one's taste lay. In the United States the reverse was true. School teachers were not intellectuals. Although they knew many good things, they were only school teachers. Professors of humanities in colleges were, however, clearly intellectuals.

Among the educated elite, contrary to popular usage, intellectual became a treasured word. It meant one was educated, cultured, and of profound moral worth. One felt deeply about the important things of life. In consequence, an intellectual lived more intensely and had a richer life than his less well-endowed neighbor. The word culture carried with it that Central European aura of mental and spiritual achievement which brings such pleasure to life. To be cultured was an essential part of being an intellectual. One could not be one without being the other.

Intellectuals were also liberal in their politics. They believed in progress (progress meant simply that life would continue to get better and more just), and since all new ideas seemed to come from the left, they looked to the left for direction. The phrase right-wing intellectual did not exist.

The intellectual, as could be expected, was revolted by the crudities of the American scene, the inanity of the movies, and the philistinism and general unsophistication of American life. In today's world some of the language then used sounds rather quaint. There was much criticism on Broadway of people "selling out" to Hollywood, of people lowering their aesthetic standards just to make more money than normal, more money than they really needed.

The American intellectuals of the mid century were a bit pompous perhaps, a bit too much taken with themselves, rather politically naive even if politically active, and since New York was the magnet that drew them all, a bit too insular, even parochial. But they were certainly energetic and creative, with an intense commitment to progressive causes whether cultural or political.