ABSTRACT
The images of art can convey specious, mythic, superstitious power; as Iris Murdoch says in The Fire and the Sun: ‘the bad side of human nature is secretly, precariously at work in art’. As Murdoch’s central manifesto, the last twenty-four pages of The Fire and the Sun, densely written as an explanation of her radical deviations from Plato’s fruitful and, for her, infinitely useful ideas, are an eloquent statement of the responsibility and possibilities of art for all involved in it. The case of George Stade’s criticisms of Murdoch’s style is quite other, in that they are prefaced by an irritable and arrogant attack on the very idea that Murdoch might be interested in allusion, ideas, or religion. The perfected style of the cocktail conversation in Murdoch’s novels is satiric and realistically convincing, and dramatic, very human, insulting or touching exchanges at crucial moments are perfect and beyond fiction.
