Description

D.J. Enright's essays - on Goethe, Mann, Nusil; on Hesse, Werfel, Svevo; on Heine, Brecht, Heym, Celan, Canetti, Grass; on Milosz, Cavafy, Stevie Smith and Japanese Women Diarists; on the Devil, Flaubert and Robertson Davies - are all humanist rather than theoretical. That is, they are all wonderfully readable, informative and engaged. They proceed from a deep and informed love of literature. Theory promises to fulfil a longing people have felt ever since English became an academic subject: to see their discipline established on an equally respectable footing with scientific investigation or philosophical enquiry. But literature tends to mean too much or too irresistibly to yield to the charms of meaninglessness. What other term than humanist can be applied to those who stand detached from any sovereign church?