April 14, 1978

F. R. Leavis, (July 14, 1895 to April 14, 1978) was a Cambridge English professor, whose vision of literary criticism included the position that " language is not a detachable instrument of thought and communication. It is the historical embodiment of its community’s assumptions and aspirations at levels which are so subliminal much of the time that language is their only index." Education and the University (1943).

He illustrated and, argued for, this vaunted function of his profession by championing Joyce, Eliot, T. F. Powys, Yeats, Pound.  And he pointed out some writers who did not embody the standards  as a T. S. Eliot did. 

Writers like the Sitwells. Now we consider the Sitwell siblings and their writings a cobwebby footnote to the 20th century. This contemporary status of the limp limbs of an old English family, two brothers and a sister, all "artists',  is not just because of Leavis's critique.  In addition to his books, Leavis founded a periodical named Scrutiny to publicize his views. In these pages, Leavis refers to Osbert Sitwell by quoting Sitwell's own words. Leavis says:

We are told...."he has conducted, in conjunction with his brother and sister, a series of skirmishes and hand-to-hand battles against the Philistine"...and that he instituted a "Joy Through Intelligence campaign...." 

Leavis mentions the "vivacities that stand against Sir Osbert's name in Who's Who..." Like the "Rememba Bomba League," [which was] "founded in 1924, reconstituted in 1927." Leavis found this "most fascinating." Leavis continues with the same sarcasm:

Osbert's tastes and activities have never been those of the typical Derbyshire squire — though, to be sure, one of his forbears did hunt a tiger in the woods about Renishaw.

Renishaw is the Sitwell ancestral home. I believe Leavis here refers to Osbert's grandfather; about Sir Sitwell Reresby Sitwell (1769-1811) we read elsewhere that:

..... Coming into his inheritance in 1793, he was an extravagant amateur of hunting, racing and building, characterized by ‘impulsiveness, high spirit, taste, audacity and temperament’. In 1798 he displayed great courage in killing the ‘royal Bengal tiger’ which escaped from a menagerie at Sheffield.

The lord of the manor, shooting a zoo animal. It's almost enough to put you off Downton Abbey.

A Selection from Scrutiny: -


F. R. Leavis - 1968 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions

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http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/sitwell-sitwell-1769-1811



























gblurb

F.R. Leavis (1895-1978), English literary critic, educationalist and thinker, possessed one of the most formidable, incisive and challenging minds of his age. His influence on the critical tradition has been enormous: in works such as New Bearings on English Poetry, Culture and Environment, The Great Tradition and The Common Pursuit, along with the quarterly journal Scrutiny, which he founded and edited, he fought against literary dilettantism and set new standards for criticism.

Leavis was no stranger to controversy: although he had no personal animus against those whose work he analysed, the forthrightness of his approach could not help but stir up debate, often heated, This occurred most famously in his criticism of C.P. Snow's 'Two Cultures', which sparked a controversy that had nationwide repercussions and even reached Europe and the USA.

For Leavis, literature was a criticism of life - the most effective way of training intelligence and sensibility - and he emphasised literature as a discipline of thought, as a vitalising force. Behind his authoritative critiques lie both a preoccupation with artistic values and a moral concern of the most profound and complex kind. His writings amount to a reinterpretation not only of English literature, but of the criteria and ethos implicit in the business of literary criticism itself.

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...Scrutiny, the critical quarterly that he edited until 1953, using it as a vehicle for the new Cambridge criticism, upholding rigorous intellectual standards and attacking the dilettante elitism he believed to characterise the Bloomsbury Group...