A spot of reading

F.R. Leavis, in Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture, argues that only a small minority of society are able to appreciate ‘culture’ (art and literature) and offer first-hand judgment, in any period. This minority are depended on to keep the traditions of culture going in the modern day:

“Upon them depend the implicit standards that order the finer living of an age, the sense that this is worth more than that, this rather than that is the direction in which we go...”

Leavis refers to ‘culture’ as language, something he believes the art of fine living depends upon. Culture today is at crisis, he believes. ‘The Machine’ has changed society and it is argued that this transformation will inevitably cause harm to the ‘traditional’ standards of living. The suggestion that we are becoming ‘Americanised’ is exemplified by the Press – mass-produced and standardised and film culture – ‘illusions of actual life’.

Turning to literature, Leavis argues that the benchmark for ‘cultured people’ is not as high as it used to be:

‘...the average cultivated person of a century ago was a very much more competent reader than his modern representative.’

The plight of culture is ultimately blurred. Distinctions and dividing lines (between classes/high and low culture) have merged and the boundaries are no longer set in stone. The prospect of culture, then, is ‘very dark’, as standardisation sweeps across the world. Leavis accepts that a ‘mass culture’ might be better than its predecessor but sees the ‘utterly new’ as a fruitless alternative. So, what are we to do? ‘Keep open our communications with the future’.