SOURCE: "Of Literature," in Julien Benda, The University of Michigan Press, 1956, pp. 224-54.

Niess is an American writer and professor of French. In the following excerpt, he examines Benda's view of literature and literary artists.

"Avoir raison n'est pas litteraire."

That lapidary—and not completely unliterary—phrase from La France byzantine contains the essence of the long attack on the art of literature which Benda began in Dislogues h Byance and which he has enormously developed in the books of the late years of his career. Clearly this antiliterary campaign has been his true favorite, for none of the others is either as old in his work or as continuously developed. But unfortunately for his reputation, it has also been the one which has served most to alienate from him large segments of that "bonne compagnie" to which he has never ceased addressing himself, whatever his opinion of...