A Primer For Critics

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65-09229 701 B66p Boas A primer for critics

65-09229 701 B66p $2.00 Boas A primer for critics

KANSAS

1 A*.

J*

CITY,

MU.

A PRIMER FOR

CRITICS

LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

A PRIMER FOR CRITICS

BY

GEORGE BOAS

BALTIMORE THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS 1937

Copyright 1937,

THE JOHNS HOPKINS

First Printing,

PRESS

February, 1937

Second Printing, December, 1937 Third Printing, January, 1947

Photo-Lithoprint Reproduction

EDWARDS BROTHERS, Lithoprinters

INC.

ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN 1947

SORORI PRAECEPTRICI PUERIHAE SOCIAE JUVENTUTIS

AMOENITATI VITAE TOTIUS FRATER

HUNC LIBELLUM

SCRIPSIT

PREFACE. It is

with many misgivings that

of the main ideas of aesthetic

made not

I

publish this analysis

For

criticism.

it

was

in the interests of the general reader nor in

those of the technical student of philosophy. It is thus neither a book of what the French call vulgarisation nor yet a contribution to scholarship as that word is usually employed. It is addressed to that group of people who

enjoy the clarification of issues even when those issues do not touch upon their professional occupation, who

would prefer clarity to edification even in those fields where edification is customary, who do not object to talking sense even when talking sense robs their conversation of its air of profundity. Books on the fine arts are notoriously obscure, almost hermetic.

This

is

attributable

not only to the sanctity which artists have acquired in modern times but to the vocabulary in which people discuss their works. It was with a view to dispelling that obscurity that this study was undertaken some years ago. Unfortunately the accomplishment of the task has led to

an

insistence

upon

distinctions

which will prove trying

to all but the most good-natured readers. Let the others remember that the author is a school teacher now in his

middle years who, in

spite of his being a

the post-war generation,

still

member of

retains a faith in education.

That may make them patient. It would be ungracious to send this book to press without a word of thanks to those who have helped me vii

PREFACE

Vill

write it

Certain

members of

interested in the arts,

my

family, particularly

have put up with

my

tiresome

arguments with amazing good-will, but more than to them whom affection inspired I owe a debt to my students

whose

attention has always been gratifying

and

whose questions have invariably proved enlightening. But most of all I must express my gratitude to that fictitious

person, the Johns

provides

its

and

Hopkins University, which

faculty with ideal conditions for thinking

writing.

G. B.

CONTENTS, PAGE I.

II.

NECESSARY DISTINCTIONS

.

1

STANDARDS OF CRITICISM: INSTRUMENTAL VALUES

.

28

III.

STANDARDS OF CRITICISM: TERMINAL VALUES

IV.

SCHOOLS OF CRITICISM: INSTRUMENTAL VALUES

.

87

SCHOOLS OF CRITICISM: TERMINAL VALUES

.

126

V. VI.

THE AUTHORITY OF

CRITICISM

.

51

.

.

138

CONCLUSION

149

INDEX

151

I.

NECESSARY DISTINCTIONS. The purpose

of this essay

to provide a critical vo-

is

cabulary for people who talk about the various arts; it not to furnish them with a set of ready-made standards

is

which they can use

in place of their

own

taste.

In order to achieve this end, it is important that the various things which can be said about art be sharply distinguished from one another. In that way disagree-

ment which

arises

eliminated.

Such ambiguities are not of course the only

from verbal ambigaities

source of disagreement and there

still

when

will be partly

they are eliminated

remain differences in information and the more

fundamental differences of temperament to prolong argumen may use a word in the same way,

ment. Thus two but one

may know more than

the other about the sub-

matter under discussion. They may be arguing about the flatness of the earth, agreeing as to what they mean by "flatness"; but if one knows nothing about gravitaject

he will argue that an airplane starting forth from Germany to come to America ought to shoot out into

tion,

interstellar space,

whereas

agreement remains even

it

does not in

fact.

Such

dis-

when

verbal ambiguities are eliminated. Again, in certain fields, such as those of ethics and aesthetics though the same thing is true about

almost any subject

certain points of

view are bound

to be repugnant to some people because they simply do not like them. Thus the African chief, whom Bagehot

1

A PRIMER FOR

2

mentions in his Physics of

Politics, felt strongly against

man

to the

If the gorilla really is

mono-

monogamy on the ground that position o

the gorilla.

the chief

gamous But that the

CRITICS

it

reduced

was unquestionably

right in his facts.

facts were an argument against monogamy was a matter of temperament: the chief did not like to be on a level with gorillas. Temperamental differences

of this type are probably ineradicable once they are

formed; disagreement arising from differences in information might be eliminated by education. 1.

The

Ambiguity in the word

"art".

ambiguity which should be indicated is that in the word "art", which means at times "art as the first

at other process which terminates in the work of art", times "art as the product in which it terminates". There

of painting which terminates in pictures, an art of musical composition which terminates in pieces is

an

art

of music, an art of cooking which terminates in a meal. shall try to be consistent in using the word "artistry"

We

for art-as-the-process and "work of art" for art-as-the-product. gistic connotation

This distinction critics alike

is

with no eulo-

important because both

artists

and

are interested at times in one, at times in the

when they have proved one to be have also good, they proved the other to be good. But if the words and "bad" have any meaning, it is "good" clear that the fact that the artistry is good is not a sign other, but think that

that the

Thus

work of

it is

art is either good, bad, or indifferent.

at least possible that

a j*ood

story

may be

badly

NECESSARY DISTINCTIONS told or well told and that a

or well told. Again, the

3

may be badly told programs of most singers when bad

story

on tour contain dozens of poor songs which the artists often sing very well; that they contain a few good songs which they sing badly, needs no proof. The distinction between the artistry and the work of art is clear

enough

in painting, writing

and cooking; but

seems completely to disappear or to fuse with the work art. It would be very difficult for the

in other arts

it

of

average person looking at a dancer to distinguish between his artistry and his work of art. The dancing and the dance appear to be as one. But a person who knows something about the technique of dancing would probably not feel that way at all. He might come away from the performance with the impression that the dance as

a whole was well conceived but badly executed and his impression appears to be defensible. This would indicate that even in these cases

being applied, one for the

two

artistry,

sets of standards are

one for the work of

art.

In some of the arts the distinction

is easier

to

make

because the work of art appears when the artistry is over and done with. One can separate in time the artistry

of painting and the picture in which it eventuates. Moreover in such arts the artistry leaves its trace (brush and chisel strokes, for instance)

from which

less successfully reconstructed.

it

can be more or

Critics of painting,

and

sometimes of writing, often spend a good deal of time

upon

artistry as

or not "the

way

recorded in the work of

art,

the thing has been done".

admiring

A PRIMER FOR

4 Sometimes

artistry

CRITICS

reconstructed

is

from an

artist's

The

the manuscripts of Milton, note-books of Beethoven, the sketches of Ingres are a in how an artist works. help to the critic who is interested built up from these has been The psychology of artists

note-books and sketches.

can be very misleading. vestiges of his artistry, but they They are but moments in the long process terminating in

a poem,

picture,

illuminating

if

symphony and would often be more they told us as well what took place or

between the moments. Anyone

who

has seen the manu-

has had before him a script of Blake's "Tyger, tyger" mass of corrections which might lead him to conclude that Blake did not

know

what he was aiming less blindly

true,

but

it

at the outset of his

was

at but

composition more or

rather stumbling

towards a dimly perceived goal. That may be does not follow necessarily, for a man can-

not make corrections except in view of what he is striving for; if he had no idea of that, he would not know what to correct and

that a their

An

critic

own

what not

to correct.

may not be

sake,

This does not

mean

interested in the sketches for

not as simple records of something else. are oftentimes more interesting than

artist's studies

that for which they are studies. treated not as

2.

moments of

In that case they are

artistry,

but as works of

Limitation of our use of the

word

art.

"art?'.

Not all behavior is of interest to the critic, though much more is than is sometimes admitted. The kind of behavior to which

we

shall confine our discussions

must


5

be self-conscious, purposive, and controlled. These terms are all very vague, but we can define them more sharply. Its self-consciousness at

humming, automatic writing and

behavior, day-dreaming,

drawing, and much of singing of a bird

is

not

once excludes man's random

Similarly the

his conversation. artistry

nor

is its

song a work of

though both may be imitated by musicians. "We are which one is aware of what one

art,

interested in behavior in is

doing.

when

The awareness may, and

usually does, drop out

has mastered his technique, for it is characteristic of any habitual behavior that the individual

is

the

artist

unaware of how he

is

behaving.

When

learn to eat with a knife and fork, one

is

one begins to as acutely aware

of one's motor adjustments as when one learns to play the piano or write upon a typewriter. But in time, merely to

be confronted with one's instruments

them and use them with unconscious This sometimes gives tion.

The

when

artist,

is

to fall

upon

expertness.

the illusion of inspirainterviewed, voices a childlike rise to

astonishment that anyone should imagine him to have a technique. His artistry is unconscious; he has no idea

of

how and why;

his novel

wrote

itself; his

painting

was

work of some Genius residing in his poor body. So Delacroix wrote in his journal that in order to paint he must be brandished as a serpent in the hand of a Pythoness, little guessing that the Louvre would one day hold

the

a retrospective at which

would be exposed

The

all his careful studies

purposiveness of art

discussion to

and sketches

in pitiless reverence.

some end, and

is

is

included to confine the

therefore a species of self-

A PRIMER FOR

6

conscious behavior.

CRITICS

A species, because some self-conscious

not purposive, except in a metaphysical sense. Witness most of our perceptions. They may and some biological purpose, but we have probably do serve no way of feeling its directive force. Thus if one looks behavior

is

out of the window, one perceives whatever is visible outis in side; but one has no notion of what good that one's

woman grinder.

One had no

design of seeing just that fat with the Pekingese spaniel nor that scissors

life.

In the

however, one must be aware not doing but also of what one is trying

arts,

only of what one is One has a definite goal before one: to paint a a mother and child, to write a novel about picture of to do.

King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, to play the Toccata and Fugue in D-minor. The purpose frequently changes as the artist gets under way unless his mind is singularly

wooden,

it is

bound

to.

But each change in purand each change in

pose involves a change in artistry artistry involves

a change in the

final

work of

art.

This

does not disprove the purposiveness of the arts; it disproves, if anything, the permanence of human plans.

There

however, several types of purposive behavior which one can conceive of, and that which is are,

characteristic

of the arts

is

limited

less well-defined instrumentalities.

by

certain

more

or

The

painter or sculptor not only wishes to let us say, a Mother and depict, Child, but he wishes to depict them in paint or stone or

wood, on a flat surface, in high relief., to be seen from a distance or near at hand. All of these manners of doing his work are obvious

restrictions.

If his

work of

NECESSARY DISTINCTIONS art is to it

had

hang over an

altar in a

7

dimly lighted church, and if it is to be

better not be a small etching

worn round a woman's neck

as a locket, it

had best not

be made of marble. These would surely seem mentary truisms, but so many

artists

like ele-

to-day maintain that

they are completely free agents and so many of them, whether they can afford it or not, create works of art for which a place must be found after they are made, that they suffer from the delusion that limitations of artistry are

abnormal.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Even when a painter paints a picture of nothing for nowhere which is like

or created certain restrictions his

he has accepted for himself. He may make up

cooking a dinner for the garbage can

own rules,

as children

do

in the

games they invent,

but,

once they are made up, he tries to stick to them. One is following a rule even when one decides to write down everything that floats through one's subconscious, just as one is following a rule when one decides to observe strict logical or structural relevance.

In both cases certain limi-

and guide one's work. Again, an artist must choose a certain medium, words, verse, prose, literal statement, allegory; paint, an unlimited or a fixed palette,

tations confine

color,

black

and white;

stone,

wood, bronze.

Each

medium, as each instrument, has certain limitations and " whereas there may be no merit in the canon of truth of no escaping the fact that one cannot see what is picture, touch an odor, actually

material," yet there

walk around a

is

being verbally described, or this is

make a statue dance. But all medium and instrument

simply the limitations of

2

A PRIMER FOR

g

CRITICS

worth mentioning that some artists and observers the interplay derive a certain satisfaction from perceiving between freedom and restriction which is always apparent It is

not simply an would not automaton. Otherwise a sonnet, for instance, but a determined -rhyme scheme, only have fourteen lines, so on to the point that only one sonnet would subject, and be possible. When a housewife prepares a good dinner within certain budgetary limits, her satisfaction is not a dinner, but also of simply that of having prepared good restrictions. So in our games: having done this within set in artistry,

there

is

no

For

one

if

particular

or hard rubber pellets

one

is restricted,

is

value in moving inflated pigskins from one part of a field to another.

field at any anyone could go out on the rime by himself and carry these objects back and forth to his heart's content. good part not all of course

If there were,

A

of the satisfaction comes from the possibility of being That furnishes the exciteable to achieve one's plans.

ment in both feel

art

and games.

And

it is

why many

critics

cheated and bewildered when they do not see the

that purpose of the artist in his work of art. They say an exthey do not see "what he is trying to do/ It is 1

perience like watching a game of ignorant It "doesn't make sense/' to free verse

rance. at

For

and

whose

Much

abstract painting arose

critics,

like the rest

of

that artists

be

is

of the hostility

from such igno-

us, are

what they do not understand and

one

rules

always angry

invariably

demand

at least as ignorant as they. Artists,

it

must

be admitted, seem to believe in their turn that critics are mind-readers.

9


many things which are But when one comes to look

Behavior thus defined includes usually not classified as art. for what differentiates the

activities

ordinarily

called

from those included in our description, one more than a traditional name. No one would

"art" little

tate to call sculpture

few would

an

art; it

has a name.

finds hesi-

But how

"Organizing-an-anniversary-sale" an art or "Making-an-index"? There may therefore be some call

question about the exactness of our term. fied only

its

by

3.

It

can be

justi-

utility.

Instrumental

Since the activity which

and terminal

we have

value.

defined

is

purposive,

not only be good good for something not itself, namely, the end at which it is directed. In the language of the schools it may have both terminal it

in itself but also

may

and instrumental

value.

Things which are valued for

own

sake are said to have terminal value; things which are valued because they lead to the attainment of their

something having terminal value.

be to

The

simplest

way

call the terminally

value,

have instrumental

to phrase the distinction would valuable the "good" and instru-

mentally valuable the "useful", but the word "good" commonly used for both types of goodness.

is

must not be believed that the

fact that a thing is that it valuable does not also have terminally implies instrumental value. On the contrary the possession of It

one kind implies neither the presence nor absence of the other.

Thus

eating

body alive; but

it

is

certainly useful for keeping the

would be stupid

to assert that

it is

A PRIMER FOR

10

not also

about

good

its

religious

many people never

in fact

in itself

CRITICS

think

So with physical love and

instrumental value.

devotion and bodily exercise

and an almost

number of other human acts; they each serve some purpose beyond themselves, the continuation of the race, salvation, health, but that does not mean that

indefinite

they are not also

and are not valued

in themselves

good

many people regardless of any ulterior end. One cannot argue from the "natural status'* or "real purpose"

by

of value

of anything to the kind

it

has for

human

beings. are which not reasons for value things beings in their natural status or real purpose. This implicated may be a mistake on their part but it is an inevitable

Human

mistake.

There

is

consequently no

way of

advance

stating in

of investigation whether a thing has one or, the other kind of value. Pictures are often said to serve no pur-

pose beyond themselves ing to the authority fact,

pictures

all art is utterly useless,

of Oscar Wilde. But as a matter of

have been used to enhance one's social status,

to earn one's living, to

orate ugly walls,

propitiate gods

Wilde himself used

the only

saints, to dec-

would be

critic 1

'

an

foolish to

art as painting.

his art for his

own

ends; the

Reading Gaol, possibly De Profundis, is almost one of his writings which he did not use for

non-literary

purposes:

shocking the philistines,

ing his contemporaries, ethics.

A

of so "fine

overlook this side even

Ballad of

and

to illustrate morals, to refresh one's

memory of bygone scenes. Oscar

accord-

propagandizing

his

satiriz-

hedonistic

NECESSARY DISTINCTIONS Similar

remarks

are

true

11

about things customarily

A

tool is invented thought of as purely instrumental. presumably to serve some purpose not resident in itself.

Telephones are made

speak over long distances, screwdrivers to drive screws, vehicles to take one places. Yet to

one stops to consider some of the ornaments which stand about our living-rooms, one finds that they are

if

A

obsolete instruments.

pair of candlesticks stands use-

on a mantelpiece; an embroidered coat lies on piano; a rug hangs on the wall; sometimes one finds lessly

a a

spinning wheel in a corner. These objects are no longer valued for their utility but for something called their In one risk a fact, beauty. might generalization and say that when an instrument becomes obsolete, its instru-

mental value

is

replaced by terminal.

This generalization the

various

"fine"

is

arts.

illustrated

We

and have no way of pictures, statues, and dramas ent,

by

the

history

do not know

discovering,

at

of

pres-

whether the

mention only three types of works of art of primitive men had terminal value or not. But we can be almost sure that they had" the instruto

mental value of magical charms and religious however, frequently acquire these objects of

ritual.

art

We,

with no

thought whatsoever of their utility and sometimes praise them in terms which suggest that we are attributing to their makers the same attitude towards them which we

Communism and Neo-Qas-

adopt.

Before the spread of

sicism

the twentieth century variety, not that of the ,

practically no critic of our time thought of the fine arts as having anything other than terminal

eighteenth

A PRIMER POR

12

CRITICS

value and to have intimated that a picture or poem or statue might have any utility was to be looked upon as the worst type of ignoramus. Curiously enough, the fashion is in the other direction at the present moment and the critic who mentions the terminal value of the fine arts is

no longer one of the It is easy

enough

ness and use, the

elite.

to see the distinction between good-

more

difficult

problem

is

to discover

them. Instrumental value can be judged only by the actual empirical success of the thing which is supposed to have it.

it

A tool

is

was made

know done

a good tool

precisely

if it really

does the

This means of course

to do.

what

it

was made

work which

we must

that

do and when

to

it

has

In the case of a tool like a typewriter or a telethis does not difficulties. If the real present great

it.

phone

purpose of the telephone is to enable us to talk at long distances with other people, then if the telephone actually enables us to do

But the matter

this, it is

has a certain instrumental value.

not so simple as

that.

We. do not

merely want to know whether the telephone will enable us to talk over long distances, we want to know whether it

will

do

this "better"

than some other instrument.

superiority to other instruments of

not define here, but

we

communication

can mention such

Its

we need

criteria

of in-

strumental superiority as cheapness, speed, and the like. If we turn to artistry and works of art, it is to intricate ourselves in a tangle of theories to impossible to emerge.

from which

it is

next

For here even when there

an obvious utilization of works of

art,

is

the instrumental


13

by that very fact present is held by one group of theorists to be irrelevant and by their opponents to be all-important. In such a case the only thing to do value which

is

is

to postpone discussion for further analysis.

Criticism of instrumental values presents

no

logical

however involved may be its practice. For the success of an instrument is a purely empirical quesdifficulties,

tion.

If

x

is I

done, y will follow. If I take cyanide of Cyanide has the instrumental value

shall die.

potassium, of a lethal device. In other words

mitting suicide.

It

does not permit us to say that if x follow: if I do not take cyanide,

would be to y.

true only if

Thus

it

x

is

would be

Tempest it

perfect

good

for com-

known

it

is

this

not done, y will not not die. That

I shall

to be the unique

means

foolish for critics to argue that

because Shakespeare's technique is

it is

should be noted, however, that

probably

in, isn't,

for instance,

but

such for purposes of illustration it way of reaching Shakespeare's end.

is

we may

The call

the only pos-

sible

Two if

cautions

we may The

would seem

to

be necessary

judge from the writings of

first is

at this point,

critics.

that the value of the end, whether terminal

or instrumental,

is

of the means. That

irrelevant to the instrumental value is, it

would be

foolish to argue that

because telephones are used for gossip, arranging criminal rendezvous, advertising at inopportune moments, they are therefore not good intruments for talking at long distances. Again, the instrumental value of the perfect crime

not weakened by the foulness of the end. One may do a bad thing well, as when one cheats successfully at cards

is

A PRIMER FOR

14 or

is

hypocritical.

Similarly

CRITICS

one

may do

a good thing

badly, as

clumsily kind or awkwardly hos-

pitable.

possibilities

when one is The other two

The second instrument

is

caution

is

are obvious.

Ae

that the terminal value of

irrelevant to its instrumental value.

a

is

Kreuger exciting pleasure experienced by ment for the success of his financial schemes.

The

no arguSimilarly

the surge and thunder of Rodin's artistry or Victor Hugo's

which

am

I

satisfaction

assuming they enjoyed with demiurgic do not imply its success. One may have no

now what

were most of the time, and they may indeed have attained them. But the act that they found satisfaction in their work is no proof that

idea

their ends

they or anyone else believed their unless

its

work

to be successful,

end was precisely the fun they derived from it. But anyone who enjoys working

striving to attain

knows the let-down which follows seems incredible that so

thrilling,

its

so

termination.

It

soul-filling,

so

anything-else-that-means-terminally-valuable

an

exercise

should eventuate in so dead a piece of sculpture or poem or speech. But the fact remains that it does more frequently than not.

Terminal values similarly must be judged from the actual satisfaction of interest with

which they are identia person wants has value for him and the existence of the value is not annihilated that by

fied.

1

What

showing

*

The terminology

I

use

is, as readers of philosophical literature will recognize, that of Professors Perry and Prall, Neither of them, I

imag-

would approve of my handling of their subject. are not of course engaged here in developing a theory of value; any theory will have to meet the problems we raise. ine,

We


15

after he gets what he wanted, he no longer wants it. That merely proves that human beings are easily bored. It suggests, but does not prove, the romantic notion of the greater delight to be found in the seeking of satisfaction than in its Thus if Alma-Tadema's

possession.

Sappho actually satisfies someone's aesthetic interest more than one of C&anne's views of Mont Sainte-Victoire, it

An opponent may appre9 "Greater value for him} meaning that it hensively say, does not therefore have greater value regardless of persons. But a value which no one values is like a smell has greater terminal value.

which no one

smells. Values,

we assert dogmatically, must if no human being

be values for human beings, and

values a given thing, that thing simply has no value. That it may later acquire value is indubitable; but it is also beside the point.

Now it should not be forgotten that the terminal value of a work of

art is not rooted simply in the colored area or the organized sounds or what not that confront one. picture, for instance, very frequently is not only a visual pattern, but a representation or even an alle-

A

gory. It is the product of a human being of whose life one knows something, living in a given society about which one has certain information. More often than not

a picture which one has heard discussed as beautiful or ugly, as very costly, as having been discovered after a long period of neglect. It swims in a pool of romantic light and one finds it next to to lift it is

impossible

it

out Q^the light and see

it,

as

some aides

insist

one

should, in complete detachment from everything else!

A PRIMER FOR

16

CRITICS

That very detachment itself is the result of a great mass of preaching, and the feeling that one must be loyal to the preacher is bound to be in the minds of those who assume the most pretentiously "objective" attitude. One while looking is in effect saying, "I must be objective," at a picture, not because one is naturally objective or because the sight of pictures automatically elicits objeca certain great aide has told one to tivity, but because

be

so.

Works

of art are, like everything else, enjoyed under which few are ever aware.

We

certain circumstances of

frequently find our tastes improved

we

by that of our

friends,

We

by them. accept all this as our education and, when we have reached a certain age, readily admit that a large part of our just as

find our distastes strengthened

enthusiasms

whom we

is

the satisfaction of liking what someone The aged, the dull, the, people who

like likes.

are not "in the movement", simply cannot have good taste. And if we find that our taste agrees with theirs, we are a bit shocked. Such a state of affairs is often

denied with vigor and indeed anger, which is pretty good proof of its importance. The men of the Cro-Magnon period

may have had no

critical

one and are educated in

when we

avoid

it,

result of

have

from childhood, and, even

we have

the sour taste of revolt in

our mouths and that too

The

past; we, however,

it

what we

not objectivity. say is that standards of terminal is

value have their locus in the individual, whatever their psychological origin, and are relative to the circumstances lb which they occur. In other words, a thing which has

17

NECESSARY DISTINCTIONS terminal value has

Therefore

it

for an individual at a given time.

it

absurd to speak of "eternal beauty", what people value very highly

is

except in the sense that

they are always accustomed to call beautiful. For even when certain works of art have maintained a high reputation over a long period of time, they are found to have

been valued for

different

times

at different

things

witness the works of Virgil; or to have dropped out of sight or favor and then to have been restored witness

Chaucer and Shakespeare; or to have been kept

Greek

alive

by

witness the

professors or a small clique of students tragedies.

This individualism and relativism in theory are qualified in fact

beings.

in

human

among

others,

by the high degree of homogeneity

We

happen

to fall into groups:

economic, physiological, moral, intellectual, and religious.

Membership in these groups is partly due to historical and social accidents, as when a man inherits a large industry from his father,

is

born a

parents to a religious school, or

is

sent by his

German

rather than

cripple, is

But sometimes it may be due to voluntary choice guided by sincere reason or simply by the call of the values in question. In all these cases the values Chinese.

pervade the group and are inevitably accepted without question by satisfied.

its

How

members could

it

so long as their interests are be otherwise? Few of us ques-

tion the value of life or even of continuing that

form

human. Few Catholics question the value of repentance and confession. Few scholars question the value of truth regardless of what it is that is true. These of

it

which

is

A PRIMER FOR

18

CRITICS

values seem unquestionable because they are values and are preserved in the groups because they represent the

A

ideals of the groups. ideals dhists

man who

questioned

his

all

die then and there, as Bud(or desires) would do, not by suicide, which satisfies the desire for

death, but by absorption into the universe.

Were

there

any interests which were really universal, there would be some terminal values of indisputable status. This is seen in the fact that those desires which are most widely for selfspread seem most obviously justified: the desire But there seem to be none preservation, for instance.

which some individuals have not shared and none with

which some are not in

Within the

individual, as within society, there is often

a conflict of interests.

book and the

The

intellect,

make demonstration of tic

conflict.

flesh

and the

spirit,

the pocket-

are familiar enough examples to this unnecessary.

hope of some writers

It is

the optimis-

a hope too often expressed as

a reality

that such conflicts can easily be reconciled by pointing out that some interests are in themselves higher

than others.

The

intellectual or religious interests are,

for instance, supposed to be higher than the physiological

what "higher" means, one can not be presume it means concretely that if one had

or economic. Just sure; but I

to choose between being a scholar or an athlete,

would

inevitably choose the former.

contrary to

fact; the choice

is

one

This of course

is

faced by most under-

graduates with the opposite outcome.

were not contrary to fact, the conflict man coming to a fork in the road and

But even is

if

it

not that of a

having to go to

NECESSARY DISTINCTIONS the right or to the that if one

left.

rejected, the other

is

and physiological satisfied if

They

Many interests

we

interests

are so interrelated

too.

is

must be

19

Our economic

in part at

any rate

are going to satisfy any of the others.

are lower if one uses the metaphor of a building,

but higher,

The

if

by "higher" one means "more necessary".

terminal values therefore are closely interrelated

and the

be untangled to make one interest

interests they satisfy often cannot

What can be

done,

predominant and

if

one pleases,

is

try to subordinate the satisfaction of

all others to its satisfaction. This path has been followed with unusual persistency by some people, like Diogenes the Cynic, presumably some of the early Christian saints,

and many modern American businessmen. Such people, however, succeed in their program by lopping off a good part of their lives and escaping the problems it would raise were it not lopped off. Similar attempts appear to have been "made through education by whole social groups. Sparta denied the satisfaction of non-military interests,

attempted to

Communist Russia

deny the satisfaction that comes from own-

ing private property, Christian monasticism denied the terminal values of private property, self-dependence, and sex, in the chastity.

vows

Human

exacted of poverty, obedience, and nature would seem to be almost indefiit

and by proper handling can be bent in any direction. When bent, it accepts its shape as natural and nitely plastic

desirable freely

no reason why the unbent should not enthusiastically submit to the same operation.

and

and

sees

A PRIMER FOR

20 4.

The

Our

artist's

CRITICS

and the observers point of mew. between two

third necessary distinction is that

points of view from which artistry and works of art can

be judged, the point of view of the

artist

himself and

that of the observer.

The importance of the distinction arises from the soning of many critics that what they as observers and works of

in artistry

in the

artist's

art

in turn speak in

public their

one

find

must have been included

purpose; that the feelings a picture arouses

them must have been those of the

in

rea-

own

much

the

The

painter.

artists

same way, transferring to the

reactions towards their art.

Since every-

and thoughts and attitudes inevitable that both artists and critics

feels that his feelings

are standards,

it is

will find fault with each other to

no end until they understand that they are talking about different things. The artist's point of view is simply the entire attitude

of one

no

who

is

engaged in the

activity

spectator, while a spectator, ever is

activity

pace Croce

it is

We are

assuming that

artistry.

Since

engaged in that

doubtful whether a spectator

can ever fully appreciate just what thoughts, the entire mental set, of an its

of

an

the

feelings

and

artist is.

artist derives satisfaction

opposite from the very process of

creating, of

or

making

something, without regard for the work of art in which his creative processes terminate.

an

We

do not say that

does not enjoy his artistry in process the more if he thinks that a great work of art will result from it

artist

Artists probably share the illusions

and ambitions

21

NECESSARY DISTINCTIONS of other finished,

human

beings.

But

until the

he does not know whether

it

work of will

art is

be great or

small and

many amateur artists have a fakly definite suspicion that it will never be more than the result of a pleasant occupation. It is. in faa the behavior of amateurs and the stubborn persistence of professionals in the face of discouragement which sometimes amounts to persecution, which convinces

us of the satisfaction which

Such data are not absolute proof of

engaged in

it.

value, even

when

But they do ence.

him who

artistry gives

supported by one's

own

is

this

introspection.

at least increase the probability

Since painting a picture

is

of

its exist-

not the same as watch-

ing someone paint a picture, and since looking at a picture one has painted oneself is not the same as looking at a picture

someone

else has painted, it is clear that if

the experiences in question do have a value, the value of the one is not identical with the value of the other.

The

possibility

of the observer's taking the

artist's

point of view does not seem very great. One might from one's own ventures into artistry be expected to have

some sympathy

for artists, for

no one has ever

entirely devoid of technical activities.

sew, cook, guide conversations,

lived

Women

a

life

habitually

make matches between

men make speeches, plan business camwrite advertising copy; both play games and know paigns, the meaning of good athletic form. But the difficulty of their friends;

own

point of view to another's behavior is as great, one would surmise, as that of transferring habits, and sympathy of any kind, even in similar purtransferring one's

A PRIMER FOR

22

too rare to encourage optimism.

is

suits,

CRITICS

appear to live their

own

Most people

individual lives and very seldom

even of those in their closest intimacy* think of the misunderstanding between husbands and

seize the motives

and children.

wives, parents

It is

true that in such cases

an apparent conflict of interest which prevents exists in the relation besympathy; but the same conflict there

is

tween

Each

and observer.

artist

something of the other which he

and that demand

to grant

is

bound to demand

not always prepared sufficient to bar complete

is

is

understanding.

Even when an art,

not,

artist is

looking at his

own work

of

seeing something which other spectators do perhaps cannot, see. For though he is not completely

he

is

aware -of his intentions, he knows more about them than his fellows do. His work of art is in part the objectifica-

and he cannot avoid seeing them Thus a work of art may seem more or less adequate

tion of these intentions

in

it.

to him, regardless of

a child makes scratches

what

it

seems

So

like to others.

on a paper and

interprets

them

as

a panorama of dramatic incidents; to others, they mean work of art is seen in a context and part nothing.

A

of die context observer

is

the

contribution

can share

The

contributed by the observer.

man who made likely to

is

it,

who

When

the

can deny that his

be so personal that no one

else

it?

point of view of the observer gives us the enjoy-

ment (or artistry

is

its

work of art or of any maker or performer. We

opposite) of any

by someone not

its

shall leave it co others, trained in psychology, to describe


23

1

"the aesthetic experience* in psychological terms, contenting ourselves with noting its existence. What are its causes and

peculiarities does

its

not concern

us.

It is

enough for our purposes to insist that when one looks at Rembrandt's Mill or a Picasso abstraction, when one

Du

de chez Swann or the Wasteland, one be not asked to find in them what the artists say they have

reads

cdte

The

put in them.

values which the observer discovers

are his discovery, not necessarily the this

were not

so, it

artist's intention. If

would be even more

difficult

than

it

for us to enjoy foreign and ancient works of art. Each age believes that its interpretation of the classics is the is

correct

one and each

correct,

to a later generation, except

one seems almost

when

ridiculous

that later generation

programmatically old-fashioned. One may point to Keats' s admiration of Chapman's Homer in refutation.

is

anyone believe .that Chapman's notion of Greece was more than remotely like that of Keats? For

But does

one thing Chapman was no archaist; his English is that of his time; he gave a modern version of Homer. Keats

was an incurable

archaist

and was one of the inventors

of that absurdly romantic Greece which was one of the major fallacies of the nineteenth century. It is very likely that if

Keats had written

Chapman's Homer, when he first looked surprised than

down what he found

instead of telling into

Chapman

it,

what he

in

felt like

no one would have been more

himself.

The

object of the observer's point of view need not be the work of art; it may also be artistry. Nothing is

more

familiar than die crowds which gather to look at

3

A raiMBR FOR

24

CRITICS

steam shovels and other machines in operation, who annoy at woric in the open air, who crowd lecture halls painters

to

watch demonstrations of

various graphic

painting, sculpture,

Should

arts.

and the

the finished products in

these cases be substituted for the

artistry,

this

public

would immediately vanish. They would not stand stara picture. ing at an empty cellar or a marble bust or

They are not ing to

interested in the

know

briefly

focus of their attention

person stroys

Nor

who

works of

art

what they are going is

the process.

watches a spider spin her

It

beyond wantbe.

.to is

The

that of a

web and then

de-

it.

does die

artist's

observer's point of view religious ritual,

intention determine whether the

be taken or not. Perfumery, clothing, temperance dramas, all have to

is

instrumental value as their primary ends. them as works of art, frequently caring

But little

we

enjoy or noth-

A

male may not be captured by a ing for their utility. Premier whiff of Son Out, but may thoroughly tnjoy its odor and walk away

jeering. Many a person has attended church for the beauty of the service and forgotten entirely the end to which it is ancillary. Men and women

alike dress according to fashion, not according to utility, and even when clothes are not only useless but unhealthful, will continue to

wear them. Many an old-fashioned

melodrama was intended, as a serious comment on of them as

if

they wore

like life;

farces.

La dame attx Camillas, we attend performances

No

one thinks of Ten

Nights in a Bar-worn as other than funny; no one conComedy of the Merchant of Venice

trariwise thinks of the


25

Such things have become endowed with new values and the attitude of the observer

dose to

as other than

is

a

sufficient cause

tragic.

of the change.

Finally no one cares about the "natural" the objects which he enjoys contemplating. taste

of a meal

by men

is

It

is

at

least

highly

was singing for prevent the poet from hailing him scape, again, is largely what it is its

beauty

prove the existence of God, it

designed

We as

to prove

may

His

is

innocent of

doubtful

as if

whether

he were.

A land-

for geological reasons

used by philosophers to

it is

hardly likely that

God

existence.

then conclude that the observer's satisfaction

an observer comes not from the

art but exclusively

from looking

which terminates in them

artistry

men

Shelley; that did not

Shelley's skylark

and even when

Just as the

innocent of dietetics,

enjoyed so the song of a bird is enjoyed by ornithology.

intention of

creating of works of at

them and

as objects.

at the

If the

two

experiences are genetically different, the values of the one cannot be automatically transferred to the other.

5.

We

have

The

eightfold confusion.

now made

art as artistry

and

three pairs of distinctions: (a) work of art; (b) value as

art as a

instrumental and value as terminal; (c) the point of view of the artist and the point of view of the observer.

With tives

these distinctions, in mind, one can see that adjec-

of praise and blame in the

likely to

field

of criticism are

become involved in an eightfold confusion.

A

A PRIMER FOR

26 critical

poem,"

CRITICS

Lost is a great judgment, for instance, "Paradise may assert any one of the following eight propo-

sitions.

Milton thought he had succeeded in writing the poem he had planned, i.e., the artist found his artistry assertion of the inadequate for reaching his end. (An strumental value of the artistry from the artist's point 1)

of view.)

Milton succeeded in writing the poem which I believe him to have planned, i. e., the observer found 2)

the artistry adequate to

end

to be.

(An

what he imagined the

artist's

assertion of the instrumental value of

the artistry from the observer's point of view.)

3) Milton found Paradise Lost useful, for instance, morally edifying, i. e., the artist found his work of art useful.

the

(The instrumental value of the work of

artist's

art

from

point of view.)

4) I have found Paradise Lost useful, i. e., the observer found the artist's work of art useful. (The instrumental value of the work of art from the observer's point of view.)

5) Milton enjoyed

*

composing Paradise Lost, his

artist

work of

enjoyed producing value of the artistry from the

6)

Milton's

daughters

watching him compose 1

A

nobler

word can be

it;

or i.

artist's

art.

i.

e.,

(The terminal

point of view.)

someone e.,

the

else enjoyed the observer enjoyed

substituted for ''enjoyed*', if preferred.


27

watching the artist producing his work of art. (The terminal value o the artistry from the observer's point of view.)

7) Milton enjoyed listening to Paradise Lost after

it

was written; i. e., the artist enjoyed observing his finished work of art. (The terminal value of the work of art from the artist's point of view.) enjoyed reading Paradise Lost; i. e., the observer enjoyed observing the work of art. (The terminal value

8)

I

of the work of art from the observer's point of view.)

II.

STANDARDS OF CRITICISM: INSTRUMENTAL VALUES. 1,

The determination of instrumental

value.

To determine whether anything has instrumental value demands a knowledge of its end. If the end is unknown, such evaluation is impossible. Thus

the instrumental value of a piece of coal can be determined only if it is known that the coal is being

evaluated as an instrument for heating; of an alphabet only when it is known that it is a series of symbols for articulate sounds. For nothing obviously has instrumental value apart from some end for the attainment of which it is

useful,

several

and though a single instrument

purposes,

each purpose.

its

The

instrumental values

invented tools,

may

discovery of these ends

said, frequently difficult.

may

is,

serve

vary with

as

we have

But when we are evaluating

we have almost

infallible

knowledge.

we know what specific ends they were invented to attain and we know what competitors they had to outdo. For

But

a small part of the things which we have to evaluate instrumentally. We have processes and techniques whose primary purpose is instrumental, to be sure, but which have changed tools are only

purposes over the long period of their history. The have already been fnentioned as possible examples of this. But there are other examples. their

fine arts

28


Take

29

We know that all peoples

the case of education.

have had educational systems, that is, that they have believed that certain environmental changes would produce desirable psychological

Rome, we

If

results*

find that education

meant

we go

specifically

vium and the quadriviunL The seven

back to the

liberal arts

tri-

were

not selected out of the blue but partly, out of the cultural tradition that lay behind Rome; partly out of the actual

needs of the

Roman

freeman.

The famous eulogy which

Cicero delivered of them shows that for

him

at

he was speaking simply for effect duced a type of mind which was a human even

if

mind of duce a it

they prothe

ideal,

Wiseman, They did not proa businessman, a pioneer, and

the philosophical saint,

an

artist,

would no doubt have seemed absurd

Roman

any fate

that any system of education

such people, since they were

to any educated

was needed for

after all either

or adventurers or psychopaths*

Now

craftsmen

the philosophical

Wiseman, insofar as one can generalize about such matters, was believed to be a man who was utterly independent of things outside him. But when the ruling class came to decide that human beings could never be sdfdepeadent, the people engaged in the process of education naturally found the old process no longer satisfactory. What are the rules of Donatus to the Holy Ghost? asked

Pope Gregory, and the question was purely rhetorical as far as he was concerned. The new ends were humility before the Lord; the old ends were

now sin.

Consequently

though the process of preparing people for the new ends might still be called "education", it would be as foolish

A PRIMER FOR

30 to evaluate

it

CRITICS

in terms of the old process as

it

would be

a common value in the tongue of a human being and the tongue of a shoe. The word "education" nowa-

to find

days

is

the

name

for a score of processes

heard of in Cicero's time period the

and

name

is

it

which were un-

not to go back to an earlier to think that because

would be absurd

the

same the end must be the same. Yet

there are plenty of articles about the "true" purpose of education, as if the true purpose could be anything other

than an end in which a process may profitably eventuate. a monkey-wrench, is the best weapon one can find for braining an enemy, then that is as much its true purpose If

as screwing nuts, though not so frequently exemplified in past history.

enhancing

Similarly, if people use education for

their social position, then that is

one of the

purposes of education, regardless of the contempt of us may h^ve for it It

many

would therefore be a great help to clarity of disif people would drop such general .words as

course

"education", "government", "art", "science", "religion",

and invent new ones or always use specific names when they can. For each of them has come to mean such a

no agreement is possible upon a "true" meaning. Are the beliefs of both the Pope and the Unitarian Church Christianity? Is Voodooism a religion in the sense that Anglicanism is a religion? Are both history and physics science? Is the art of a survariety of things that

realist art in the sense that architecture is

an art?

It is

always possible for a clever person to find some common element in any two things called by the same name;


31

probable that when it is found it is too trivial of to be. any use. It is much wiser either to run the risk of barbarism by giving a single name to a single but

it is

thing or the risk of confusion by reserving old names for highly limited meanings.

For ourselves

we

shall pursue the latter course.

in the question which interests us now,

we

And

shall follow

the practice of calling the purposes of artistry and of works of art the purposes to which they are actually put in

It is

experience.

inevitable that

purpose which guides them

we

shall find

no one

all at all times.

(a) The instrumental value of artistry must first be discussed from the artist's, second from the observer's

point of view.

From artist

the

knows

believes

point of view, it is assumed that the his end and chooses the means which he

artist's

most adequate

he chooses

to its attainment.

These means

in relative freedom.

His freedom

only relative because of certain customary restrictions, restrictions which are largely conventional, but have the compelling force of habit or tradition.

is

Among them may

be mentioned those of

ele-

gance and economy to begin with. Many artists prefer to do things as efficiently as they can, but complete efficiency is an ideal which is very seldom attained in the Occident.

It

is

possible that

some

artists

have never

much over this kind of elegance and economy. often seem to have preferred exuberance and richThey ness, as in the style called the Baroque. It is possible worried

A FRIMER FOR

32 that

an

artist

CRITICS

"Let say to himself,

me

be as wasteful as

I shall throw paint and color about with possible; drunken abandon and enjoy a debauch of indiscipline/' Whether such a person would please any public may be

his artistry might be very successful questioned; but his own point of view.

There are other

restrictions

upon

artistry

from

that have

often been accepted by artists for traditional reasons. I refer to the various canons and formal rules, the dra-

matic unities, the various verse-forms

sonnets, rondeaux,

and the

like, musical forms, architectural styles, ''periodornament", ballet steps, happy endings, the "point of

view" in

fiction.

There are

restrictions

which are inherent in certain

One cannot

give in words so accurate a deas one colors, for instance scription of some things a events so tellof series can in paints. One cannot paint

materials.

ingly as one can

make a moving

picture of them.

Emo-

tions and perceptual qualities are not easily described in words, but the former may be perfectly rendered by acting, the latter

by

literal

production of them. Yet during

the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

many

artists for-

sook the traditional subject-matters of their arts and attempted those of other arts, musicians attempting to paint

and to tell stories in notes, poets attempting to write music in words, painters attempting to paint the

pictures

of time and all sides of an object at once. Their purposes therefore could not be inferred from the use to

flight

which only

their artistry

way

had usually been put

in the past.

to determine the instrumental value

The

of their

STANDARDS

OJF CRITICISM:

INSTRUMENTAL VALUIS

33

artistry from thek point of view was by cross-examining them themselves.

Within these and other

restrictions,

such as the accept-

ance of a commission, the criterion of the instrumental value of artistry from the artist's point of view is of course success. The question then becomes not whether the painter has painted a picture, or even such and such a picture, but whether he has painted that picture within the given restrictions. Yet since he alone knows what

some of

these restrictions

were and

in

many

cases has

forgotten, or is dead and has left no record of his purpose, the answer to this question sometimes cannot be

given. It also

should not be forgotten that an artist's purpose work of art grows. He sees new things

changes as his

emerging of which he had no suspicion at the outset Habit has worked his technique into his

of his labor.

system to the point that he is no longer aware of his Hence even if he were willing to co-operate processes. with a critic and had no yearning to be mysterious and wonderful, he would be as cisely

what

his

purpose had been,

the purpose of his (b)

much

When we

at a loss to

know

as a philosopher

is

pre-

ova:

life.

turn to the instrumental value of artistry

from the

observer's point of view the problem of findend the becomes complicated. ing

dead and gone and there of finding out what his end was. What is no possibility was Homer trying to do in the Odyssey or Aeschylus in 1) In

many

cases the artist

Prometheus Bound?

It

is

would seem reasonable

that in

A PRIMER FOR

34

CRITICS

we

should have to argue from analogy, saying that epic poets or tragic dramatists of to-day have such and such an end, and that therefore their predesuch cases

must have had the same end.

cessors

Yet there as

we have

is

no

said,

truth in this.

not merely the

The end of any artist is, making of a work of art

within the genres defined by the professors, e. g., tragedy, comedy, melodrama, etc, but to do this within certain re-

determined by the whole social complex in which he lives and cannot be understood or appreciated by one who is not of that social strictions.

These

restrictions are in part

complex.

A

Greek

in tragic writer, for instance,

differed almost completely

same

He

field.

one particular

from a modern writer in the

took plots which were traditional and members of his audience. His inven-

familiar to all the

tion lay in the field of poetry, in character delineation, in

making the

tragic

outcome

explicable.

Therefore the

element of surprise could not enter into his work, for like his characters, for that matter knew

his audience

in advance

how

the play

was going

to turn out.

religious ritual in that respect; the

like

It

was cere-

marriage of the Anglican Church, or the celebration of the Mass, can contain no element of surprise, yet their effect

mony

may be

electric

tators of

we

can never entirely

were. I

upon the

am

spectators.

We

know what

We may have theoretical

the tragedians' ends

knowledge of

hinting at in this paragraph, but

sting of

cannot, as spec-

Greek tragedy, share that point of view. Hence

it.

we

it,

such as

cannot feel the


35

A

second complication arises when the works of art have been inherited from the past and have taken 2)

on a new

which in

r61e in our lives

all

probability they

never had in that of their makers. I refer to such a

We

Venice.

work of

are not so

The Merchant of remote from the Elizabethan art as

we

cannot guess at Shakespeare's purpose in can say with a fair degree of cerwriting that play. tainty that it was a comedy, not a tragedy. Shylodc was

Age

that

We

a funny

character.

When

he

says, "I

am

a Jew.

Hath

not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions, fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the

same winter and summer, lock says

this,

as a Christian is?"

the probability

is

Shy-

that the blades of Shake-

"No, no!" and roared

speare's day shouted,

when

gustily.

In

any event the speech was not written to excite sympathy for Shylock, but to make clear and reasonable to himself his

thirst

for revenge.

But outside of Germany,

Shylock could no longer be played as a comic figure, have grown humanitarian and most people look upon

We

him

as close to tragic. Actors of the present day cut the

would give an anti-humanitarian the drama, steal the play from Antonio and give scenes which

Jew. Since a comedy comic,

we

is

not a success

if it

of Venice

server's point of view.

But

it

to the

does not seem

should have to conclude that the

The Merchant

slant to

artistry

of

is

unsuccessful from the ob-

is

our play Shakespeare's?

A PRIMER FOR

36

We

CRITICS

have the same situation in

all

the arts

which are

sometimes distinguished as interpretative. conductor of an orchestra has to interpret a symhas the composer's end to consider phony. His audience critics maintain that the two Some conductor's. the and

A

should merge and that the perfect rendition of a piece of music is the exact reproduction of the sounds which the composer intended and nothing more or less. If this theory were applied, the orchestra would

when

playing Mozart and his contempono arrangements of music for instruments other

reduced in size raries,

be

was written would be permitted, and the conductor would be a reproducing machine. This than those for which

is

it

indeed the ideal of some

critics

who

speak eulogisticof "submitting oneself entirely to one's score." As a precaution the advice is usually sound. The great

ally

composers are in general greater musicians than their interpreters,

free rein,

he

and when an interpretative is

as likely as not to

ter.

same time there

All the

arts

is

is

given in wild his go straggle

for self-expression, novelty, originality, at the

artist

and the

like.

But

another approach to the mat-

require interpretation.

Books have to

be read, pictures looked at, dinners eaten; not merely by unprejudiced eyes and palates, but by brains. These brains lost their neutrality at birth and carry with them alliances of the

up by

We

education.

most entangling sort, the alliances Such alliances cannot be shaken

set off.

read a book or hear a piece of music through our therefore change to some extent a work

whole past

We

of art each time

we

observe

it

and each of ttesc new

STANDARDS OF OOTiaSM: INSTRUMENTAL VALUES creations has to be judged

be

upon

sure, the printed edition

phony; we may call so, the real

music.

that, if

its

merits.

There

37

is,

to

of Beethoven's Fifth Sym-

we take

Beethoven. But as

it

any pleasure in doing lies on the shelf it is not

To turn it into music requires Stokowski or Mengd-

berg or Toscanini plus an orchestra plus the various ears that hear it Who is the artist? The composer, the conductor, the musicians in the orchestra, the audience?

We

can omit the audience, if we will, and then the work of becomes Stokowski's-playing-of-Beethoven^-Fiy/Myi?!-

art

5

phony, not simply Beethoven '^Fifth-Symphony. In that case the end is presumably Mr. Stokowskfs and the success

of the

artistry

has to be measured in relation to it

3) But there

a third

is

difficulty.

Many

of the arts are

used for a variety of purposes from the observer's point of viewi Thus the artistry of community singing and

amateur

theatricals is often oriented

ment of an

esprit

towards the develop-

de corps considered as

socially desir-

able; painting is used for developing a child's imagination or his powers of observation; reciting of poetry is

used to build up self-confidence. In such a system of relations the various artistries are to be judged instramentally by the success they have not in reproducing the various works of art in which they ostensibly terminate,

bit by the success they have in producing the various desirable, states of mind. The end is not that of the original artist but that of the person using his art.

ours.

work of

The success or failure of the artistry is not The artistry of the Star Spangled Banner

his but is

such

A PRIMER FOR

38 that

most people cannot sing

CRITICS

it;

has therefore a low

it

degree of instrumental value from the observer's point of view when it is used in community singing. But that

has the same degree when used by an operatic soprano as a solo. If we admit that each work of art has to be re-created does not imply that

it

by interpretation, it would seem to follow that the ends of the arts are not to be found in the works of art themselves and can be deduced neither from the materials It

nor the traditional subject-matters or instruments. better to say with exaggeration, "There is

would be

GO such thing as sculpture; there are only human ends be attained through sculpture," than to say, "Sculpture

to is

the art of carving figures in stone, wood, etc.," as the

The

dictionaries do.

indicating

who

dictionary definition

some of the

is

useful in

by a person no way to set

restrictions accepted

engages in sculpture, but serves in

a standard for judging good or bad sculpture. Thus is an art of carving figures in stone which defy the laws of falling bodies, another of carving figures there

which are harmonious with the general

lines

of the archi-

tecture serving as their background, another of representhuman flesh as ing accurately as possible so that the

stony surface face,

and

so

is lost,

on

another of retaining the stony sur-

indefinitely.

There

is,

again,

no Mer-

chant of Venice uberhaupt; there is the Merchant of Venice-as-a-comedy and the Merchant of Venke-as-asentimental-drama, and so on.

Throne; there

is

There

is

no Ludovisi

a variety of them: that which

archeologkal puzzle, that which

is

is

an

a simple visual pat-

STANDARDS OF CRITICISM: INSTRUMENTAL VALUES tern,

that

allegory.

39

a representation, that which is an Presumably the artist has some one predom-

which

is

inant end in mind.

So has each observer. But the ends

of the various observers can scarcely be said to be identiand each will judge the instrumental value of the

cal

artistry in relation to his

The

own

end. This

instrumental value of the

is

inevitable.

artistry, then,

from the

observer's point of view

is the artist's success in reaching the end which the observer finds to be the most interest-

ing to himself. (c)

The

instrumental value of artistry

is

determined

its success in reaching a given work of art. The instrumental value of the work of art itself cannot be

by

We

must assume that if works of phrased so simply. art are to have instrumental value, they must be put to

some

use.

The

is

difficulty

in determining

what they

are useful for.

enough that works of art have only the use which they are put. And they are used to support artists and dealers; they are used to communicate ideas, It is clear

to

to stir

up

patriotic feelings, to advertise goods, to propa-

gandize for good causes; they are used for such a host of things that no catalog would be complete unless it included all of men's desires. Some writers, like Upton Sinclair in his political

Mammonart,

insist that all artists express

propaganda, whether they are conscious of what

they are doing or not.

Others, like Freud, that all

artists

are sublimating their repressions. Others, like Cabell, that they are seeking an escape from reality.

4

A PRIMER FOR

40

CRITICS

we shall discuss only the most simplify matters, obvious utilities from the artist's point of view. They are To

the financial value of the

first,

work of

art,

second, the

the artist uses his propagandist value. In the first case, works of art to earn his living; in the second, to influence the behaviour of his fellow men in other ways or to

We

spread ideas.

are concerned here only with conscious

propaganda.

few

1) All artists, with selling their

works of

art.

or the highly eccentric

exceptions, are interested in

The exceptions who care more

are the wealthy for their

own

appreciation of their works of art than for that of others. The fact that artists are in the class of artisans is often

deplored, and

is

it

sometimes maintained that

did not have to earn their livings, their art purer, less commercial, It

and a number of other

does not follow necessarily that

produce, he makes

it

to sell.

have acquired wealth without ing public.

One

nowadays

they

would be fine things.

when one

sells his

in all fields,

Many

artists,

much

regard for the buy-

of the best ways, for instance, to

in the arts

money

if

is

to produce

so bizarre that the usual buying public

make

works of

art

is 'horrified

by have been a period of experimentation, and purchasers of works of art can seldom tell whether an experiment has succeeded or

The

their novelty.

failed. is

last fifty years

They have no measure of

the charm of novelty,

ial, is

bound

elty in itself

to

and so great that anything new, however trivsuccess,

have a certain commercial

might not be enough;

it

success.

Nov-

frequently needs

STANDARDS OF CRITICISM: INSTRUMENTAL VALUES the art of salesmanship to help

it

41

along. But let us sim-

plify matters.

The amateurs buying public.

of the novel are not of course the great

We shall

see later

on the authority which

possesses and which prevents anything strange from attaining extensive success. Thus the paint-

the

habitual

ings in Matisse's so-called jauve manner; the abstractions

of Bracque; the atonal music of Schoenberg; the architecture of Le Corbusier; most of the literature of Gertrude Stein, in general

still still

remain the pleasures of a few. People prefer the painting of Cabanel to that

of Courbet, hang carbon prints of the Pre-Raphaelites

and think themselves daring if they venture as far from the Ecole des Beaux Arts as Monet. in their front halls,

They still read Dickens and Galsworthy and Alfred Noyes and listen to Gounod and Tchaikowski with rap-

When they build

houses, they reproduce the charmof the Cotswolds or Normandy or Cape Cod ing cottages ture.

and when they build banks, road

libraries,

museums, or

rail-

stations, they turn to the Parthenon for a model.

Public taste, like public intelligence,

is stratified.

One

can find layers from the most primitive to the most advanced in any community. It is impossible to put one's finger on that stratum which is thickest, but the probability is that it contains

or so ago.

what was advanced a generation

All one can say

is

that

it is

not given to

innovation.

This factor determines to a large degree the character of many works of art. The artist who has to earn his Uving, if he wishes to play safe, will follow the styles.

A PRIMER FOR

42

CRITICS

rime dozens of magazines which inform writers of what the reading public wants. If

There

exist at the present

one follows

their advice, the chances are that one's

works

of art will have high commercial value. In the field of music, painting, and sculpture, the academies fulfill the

same end. Academies represent on the whole the standards of the past; their teaching staff must be conservative,

for their pupils

drum out

must succeed. Hence young pianists and the Liszt Lhbestraume^

the Chopin walzes

and young painters paint variations on a theme by Sargent, and young architects make renderings of Second Empire opera houses, and young sculptors model naked babies holding various amphibia.

absurd to deny this or to maintain that such works of art are not real or true works of art. They are It

is

as real

and

as true as

works of

art

which do not

sell,

they leave people of advanced taste cold. They are works of art whose purpose is commercial and should

even

if

one wish

to depreciate

their purpose.

Is

them, one should

earning one's living

first

consider

immoral?

The

use of works of art for propaganda is as familiar as the use of works of art for earning one's living. 2)

Pictorial

illustration,

caricature,

satire,

religious

ritual,

may be considered as arts of persuasion. eulogy, Giotto was a great propagandist for Franciscanism; few all

people have looked at his frescoes of the life of Saint Francis without feeling more kindly disposed to the morDaumier was a ality they depict. great propagandist; I

should venture to guess that

much of our contempt

for

STANDARDS OF CRITICISM: INSTRUMENTAL VALUES the Bourgeois It

would be

Monarchy

is

attributable to his caricatures.

foolish to deny the importance of the art of

influencing other people's thoughts and acts, and people Tolstoy, for instance would think that a

of art

43

which had no such purpose was merely

some

work

trivial

ma-

nipulation of materials. In justice to Tolstoy it may be observed that artists who have nothing to communicate

do often

to others

lose themselves in kindergarten

work

or pretty decoration. One finds such works of art in the elaborate conceits

and

obscurities of the Marinis

age.

One

finds

contrapuntists

them

who

and Lycophrons of every some of the

in the arabesques of

could write fugues to be played back-

wards and forwards and upside down. One in

the paintings of the

late

finds

them

Renaissance where per-

spective and foreshortening and intricacies of pattern became, one would judge, the end of the art. There is

be sure nothing inherently wrong in such exercises, but they do raise the question of whether an artist who,

to

as the popular phrase puts it, has nothing to say, is as worth while to society in general as one who has some-

thing in

That

.his

head besides a desire

artists

to fiddle

with a design.

should serve a useful social purpose is The deeper question is what the

almost self-evident.

is. That it is communistic propaganda, or Christianity, or the Eternal Values, or any other specific philosophy of life can only be answered if we know

socially useful

the value of these philosophies. In the coming communist revolution, the artists might be quite as useful ridiculing the doctrinaires who will rule us as in servilely first

A PRIMER FOR

44

The

echoing them. find their

works of

artists

arts

CRITICS

themselves, however,

most useful

if

would

they followed the

Thek

suffer in later reputations might that course, but they would generations if they followed know nothing of that

reigning ideas.

The

utility

of works of art from the

artist's

point of

view does not prejudice their future status. Daumier's caricatures are to-day valued less as satire than as drawings.

The

frescoes of Giotto likewise are usually regarded

and even the Bible

thought of as "literature". The maker of a work of art never knows as ends, not as means,

what is

spectators

will find in

it.

is

Rousseau the douaniet

said to have believed his canvases to be perfectly pho-

tographic.

He had, it would appear,

no intention of being

naive and primitive. Yet none of his admirers buys his paintings for their photographic realism. It is therefore very probable that future generations will see Soviet films

and posters as amusing or pathetic efforts at enlightenment as we read the works of Maria Edgeworth and forget their social purpose entirely.

works of

art

makes such things

The multivalence of

inevitable.

(d) The instrumental value of the work of art from the observer's point of view is the observer's success in be divided utilizing it for his own ends. These ends

may

as

we

divided the ends of

artists,

the use of works of

a living and their use for the purposes of divisions which are not propaganda, mutually exclusive. art to earn

1) The financial importance of works of art has grown in recent years and the influence of dealers upon taste

STANDARDS OF OUTiaSM: INSTRUMENTAL VALUES

45

has been as great as their influence upon artistry. The art of advertising has become so subtle and unobtrusive that

many

are unaware of

its

existence

when

it is

operat-

ing most effectively. One has only to recall the launching of Ralph Blakelock a few years ago or that of American "Folk-art".

Since the purchase of works of art, or

when

they cannot be purchased, is one 1 of the most impressive forms of conspicuous waste, the their protection

always half-persuaded before the advertising campaign has begun. This would be a small matter were the relation of

buying public

is

dealer and buying public not influential in determining the form and content of works of art. But it does help

determine them for the following reason. There is always a battle between dealer and customer as there is between

any tradesman and possible consumers, since the tradeswishes to sell what he has invested his money in and

man

the customer to buy only what he wants. The tradesman must therefore persuade the customer that his wants are to be most perfectly satisfied by precisely those goods which his

shop

offers for sale. Frequently

he

is

fantastically suc-

At the same time he must temper with some concession to what the public already wants or, more accurately, to what it does not want. But cessful in this battle.

his zeal

the stratification of public taste makes it possible for him to find his particular public in one or more of the various strata. It

upon

is

clear that

what works of

art sell

the cleverness of the dealer in burrowing

depends

down

to

*It is perhaps unnecessary to refer to Thorstein Veblen's Theory 0f the Leisure Class for an analysis of this concept

A PRIMER FOR

46

the right stratum trinsic qualities It is

CRITICS

much more than

of the works of

it

does upon any in-

art.

of course impossible for an artist in any field

to reach a public without dealers, except

by happening which

to please a jury in one of the large exhibitions

are held periodically, by winning a prize, or by meeting chance. Musicians are worse off than either a

patron by

painters

an orchestral

or sculptors, for the performance of

score or an opera

care for what

is

for pily situated,

is

expensive and

few musical audiences

Architects are almost as unhap-

novel.

one has to be in a

mood

of financial

exuberance to experiment with building. The dealer, then, who takes risks does serve a real purpose, but at the same time he

may be genuinely

maleficent.

It has sometimes been proposed to substitute governmental protection for the caprice of dealers. This might not be a bad idea if there were any general agreement over aesthetic standards, but one has only to look at the

Luxembourg

Gallery, the portraits of our Presidents, the

murals in the Library of Congress, the music played by the Marine Band, the architecture of Washington, to

imagine the treat in store for us were the taste of the government to take the place of the taste of the dealers. 2)

The

observer

may

also use

works of

art for

propahe will and their instrumental value ganda correctly judge from his own point of view by their success. The use to

which he puts works of art may not be that for which their makers intended them, as when a celebrated melody is

used for a national

hymn

or a

Dutch

still life

as evi-

STANDARDS OF CRITICISM: dence of

INSTRUMENTAL VALUES

47

in the seventeenth century in capitalistic taste

Holland, or a Chinese Buddhist

priest's

robe as a piano

scarf.

Here again we have a treated with contempt as

The

critics

who

portance. tain usually either the

which

situation trival or

treat it

is

frequently

with exaggerated imwith contempt main-

point of view exclusively or refuse to consider any but the terminal values of artist's

A

thing is not useless if it has been used and, aside from the fact that probably all our arts sprang from useful occupations, none of them even to-day are

works of

art.

left in entire uselessness.

That a

picture

may be

pur-

chased and enjoyed because it reminds one of one's mother or of some event with which one has agreeable associations, strikes such critics as beside the point.

yet if

And

such sentimental reasons are real causes in the

enjoyment of works of

art, it is

absurd to overlook them.

no reason why one should not be reminded of one's mother and no reason why one should not use

There

is

works of

art to

does not

insist that

keep the memory

poses of works of

just

We

long as one

such purposes are the only

fit

pur-

art.

Unfortunately the that.

clear, so

latest fashion in criticism is to

do

are not urged to be reminded of our

mothers but of something much more remote from our lives Great Social Issues. Only thus can we avoid the If we are actually we would becoming degenerate, certainly do well to regenerate ourselves and a man would be a fool to dis-

degeneracy of Art for Art's Sake.

courage the processes of social therapy. If society

is

in

A PRIMER FOR

48

as desperate a condition as

CRITICS

some people maintain and

if their remedy is the right one, why deny them the use of the arts to bring about the reforms they crave? For

was ever the worse for being propaganda witness the caricatures of Daumier cited above, the satires of Swift, the fables of La Fontaine. Furthermore,

no work of

art

who

lacking in a given social purpose provides content inspiration, so

just as religious ritual helps the priest

for artists

One is

who have no

ideas of their

is

own.

thing which has helped popularize such a theory human beings not only to be of

the normal desire of

service to their fellow

to them.

To

men

but to be of obvious service

find a cure for cancer, for instance,

would

seem more important

to many people than to have discovered the reproductive processes of the amoeba. Similarly to help destroy the capitalistic system would seem to its enemies more important than to have written

Madame

Bovary, Yet on the other hand one could have cancer without all the preliminary and apparently useless studies in cytogenesis and a lack

known nothing about

of precisely the kind of knowledge contained in such a serious novel as Madame Bovary is what makes so

many

programs of

reform seem like empty speculation. in this sense of the phrase is only one

social

Social utility

of the purposes which works of art have been put to observers. Thanks to the of by growth archeological in-

of the past have formed the habit of using as systems of a general state of mind exist-

terests, student^

works of

art.

what they call various "ages", such as the Perklean Age, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Age of Elking in


49

That there were such ages fashions and intellectual hob-

abeth, the Victorian Period.

with predominant aesthetic be doubted. But that the age

bies cannot different

from

its

manifestations

is

is

something superstition, by which

mean the substitution of a symbol for what it symbolizes. Works of art are not expressions of an age; they help make up the age. They are not what they are because I

of the age; the age

is

what

it is

because of them. Take

away the novels of Dickens, the poetry of Tennyson, PreRaphaelite and academic painting, the sculpture of Woolner and Thornycroft, continue the process until all the aesthetic produce of the time is annihilated, and what is

of the Victorian Age? Its philosophy, science, poliand economics. But even assuming that these were not influenced by the art of the period which is con-

left

tics,

trary to fact its

works of

would be unrecognizable without The same remarks hold good of any

the age art.

age. For an age is the intertwining of all the activities of human beings living during the period involved. Nor are some of these activities basic and causal and the

others superficial and without causal efficacy. When this point is grasped, historians will cease to read Victorianisni in Dickens, for instance, but see Dickens as something

which partly explains Victorianism. This point, for

when

it is

understood,

to admit the diversity of

human

it

is

not a minor

persuades an historian and their con-

interests

and general interplay without trying to fit everything which has been done within a certain chronological flict

a formula. Thus we shall no longer see the of growth biological science as the cause of Zola's novels, slice into

50

A PRIMER FOR

CRITICS

but appreciate the influence of these novels in keeping up the prestige o biological science. If it is important to

understand the history of the human mind, then such a utilization of works of art is hardly to be condemned; but when it makes critics deny other than instrumental values to them,

it is

absurd.

HI.

STANDARDS OF

CRITICISM:

TERMINAL VALUES.

A

terminal value by definition is that which justifies an instrumentality; it is the end rather than the means; that which is good-in-itself rather than good-for-something-else.

A. Value in general satisfaction of

any

as

is,

interest

we have

and the

instrumental and terminal values

is

distinction

between

made not while

interest is satisfied but after reflection

Thus when one is

maintained, the

upon

the

the satisfac-

one wants a glass of water. The question of whether the water is itself good or is tion.

thirsty,

simply good as a means of preserving life, or of restoring a feeling of comfort, is just as foreign to one's thoughts as the question of whether one's life is worth preserving or whether discomfort

ance

than comfort.

of

fulfilment and

its

is

not better

The it is

satisfied or in the face

desire

is

for instance, as penitself a justification

only after the desire has

been

of alternative satisfactions or the

anticipation of further ends that

its

fulfilment

is

ever

man

questioned. Thus a

will not question the thirsty value of slaking his thirst, but knowing or fearing that the water before him contains colon bacilli, he may prefer to wait

in

which case the drink of water is evaluated Or again, he may say, "If I

as a means, not as an end.

forego this drink,

I

shall acquire merit in the eyes

God,*' or, "I shall build

up my 51

self-control," in

of

which

A PRIMER FOR

52

he

case

CRITICS

preferring the satisfaction of another interest

is

to that of slaking his thirst. It is

a

commonplace of moral

casuistry that terminal

value cannot be justified by argument. Attempts at such arguments are always circular. Thus the slaking of thirst

seems to be ancillary to the preservation of life and the value. But preservation of life to be the "real*' terminal since life

may be

miserable,

tion of life's value

to distinguish

is itself

and frequently is, the quesThe custom then is

raised.

between the good

by such an adjective, which

is

life

and

called by

life

term, like "mere existence" or "vegetation". life

unqualified

some derogatory

The good

then becomes the life of reason, or of charity, or of

self-development, or of self-abnegation, or what not. But when the value of these types of life is questioned and

the reasoning pursued,

it

sooner or later becomes clear

that

one

say,

you cannot prove what should be from what

out for legitimate satisfaction to the neglect of the others. In the long run terminal value will have to be assumed since, as the text-books interest is singled

The passage from

existence to value

is.

may not be

logi-

but one can give a psychological account of it. The natural history of any terminal value can be given, just as one can explain why some people think some things cal,

more

valuable-in-themselves than others, and just as one

can generalize upon what all men ber consider of terminal value.

or the greater

We

gested that

many

as objets d'art,

have akeady sug-

instruments take on terminal value

they lose their utility, as

and in

when

num-

when

candlesticks are valued

certain fields habit has*

enough


53

compelling force to create the feeling of necessity which some standards possess. 1 But none of that could have any persuasive force in actual evaluation, for the simple rea-

son that though desire even justified by it, it

may be checked by is

not in

one ever feL in love with a

its

woman

reasoning and

origin rational.

No

for eugenic reasons

any more than he ever liked food for dietetic reasons. If one likes roquefort cheese, for instance, he may be dissuaded from eating

make him

sick

it

by the argument that

it

will

and he prefers the agreeableness of health But if the desire for

to that of the taste of the cheese.

the cheese

how

long

is I

strong enough, he still

have to live?

may say, "Who knows I may drop dead in an

hour.

Isn't it better to die

he has

justified his conduct, as

But

he thinks that he wants to eat the cheese

having experienced this pleasure than in dissatisfaction and regret for lost opportunities?" He may then eat the cheese, thinking that

if

indeed he has in a measure. in order

not to go to the grave with frustrated longings, he is thinking nonsense. For obviously he wants to eat the

going to die and be frustrated or and not be frustrated. Arguments of this kind have

cheese whether he live

is

nothing to do with likes and dislikes; they have everything to do with approbation and disapprobation. however, a kind of pseudo-argument by which and not its manifestation in conduct may desire itself

There

is,

be swayed and that

One may 1

through the art of representation. picture to oneself vividly a certain pleasure and

See below, pp. I4lf.

is

A PRIMER FOR

54 thus desire

CRITICS

heightening one's lust by the imagination. read of scenes of pleasure and thus desire

it,

Or one may them. Or again,

take the place of desire, if what one normally desires is presented in the proper fashion, as Saint Bernard presented a woman's body or

may

disgust

microscope presents the roquefort cheese. This is pseudo-argument, since a second object is substituted for

a

the desired object, the body-according-to-Saint-Bernard, a mass of mucous membranes and meat, for the body-according-to-the-senses ; theroquef ort-cheese-under-the-micro-

scope for the roquefort-cheese-under-the-naked-eye. Pseudo-argument though it be, it is often used to depreciate

works of

and

art

violin music

is

pointing out, for instance, that passing the hairs of a

artistry,

the noise

made by

horse's tail over the intestines of a cat or that the idea / -

of a given

poem

is trivial

or false, as

if

one were

ing to the cause of the music or cared very philosophy of the poem.

Terminal values

works of

art;

they

may may

much

reside in both artistry also reside in

means

listen-

for the

and in

as well as

in ends, in natural as well as in artificial objects.

The

original or intended status of the valued the 'kind of value which we find in it.

as a

thing

irrelevant to

As soon

a desire, the agreeableness of that satisthe terminal value and though the agreeabledisappear, or the satisfaction turn out to be

satisfies

faction

ness

is

is

may

utilized as

a means to a

has appeared satisfied

by

it

further" end, yet that the value

indisputable whether the person who. is ever repeats the experience and whether

is

anybody agrees with him or not.


55

argued that there is a kind of absolute terminal value, independent of human judgment and transcending space and time. That ought to mean that someIt

may be

thing can be inherently good whether anyone has ever found it to be so or not. If such a value existed, its existence

would be indemonstrable by

definition,

and

hence need not concern us here. 1) There are certain complications which immediately occur to a critical mind when terminal values are de-

we have

scribed as tions

described them, and these complica-

must be untangled.

(a) The agreeableness of a satisfaction may occur first on the relatively low level which we shall call "liking".

This

is

close to

what might be

called the unreflective and

direct reaction to any stimulus, the seeing of a color with-

out knowing its cause or name, the elation that comes from seeing a good play or having a good conversation.

Such pure

affection probably never exists in adults, for

human is

beings are reflective animals and their memory of such a nature that it provides the material for gen-

eralizing

knows

upon

one's likes

and

dislikes.

in advance something about

One

what one

therefore is

going

I like",

and when a person says, "I know what he means presumably that he has discovered the

general

traits

to find agreeable,

of what pleases him. Thus

if

he prefers

Bordeaux to Burgundy on this level, he means that in the past he has found the taste of the former preferable

He has given no account of the cause of his liking and in most cases would not have

to that of the latter.

5

A PRIMER FOR

56 sufficient

CRITICS

to be knowledge of physiology and psychology

able to account for

it.

Yet such

generalizations are very

of prediction and control. Could important for purposes race and to all they be extended to the whole human

of geography, they would epochs of history and regions furnish us the basis for constructing works of art which

would

at least

be pleasing to great masses of people.

Much

aesexperimentation in the field of psychological I refer to build up such generalizations. thetics attempts

to

work on the agreeableness of

certain colors

and shapes

and tonal combinations.

Were

such generalizations established on a scientific

an attempt would be made by psychologists to determine the causes of what people like. But these causes would no more be present to the consciousness of the basis,

subjects of the experiments

than the laws of moving

bodies are present to the consciousness of falling apples. should obey them without necessarily knowing their

We

nature, just as

we

digest food

and in breathing turn oxy-

we know any chemistry or not. In fact, a knowledge of the causes might disgust us with the objects of our liking, as a vivid picture of the processes of digestion might disgust us with the gen into carbon dioxide whether

pleasures of eating.

This

is

of the greatest importance

to criticism, for such psychological investigations

might

provide rules for the construction of pleasing works of art,

but that

is all.

(b) There is, however, above, the reflective level another object of interest which has terminal value. That

STANDARDS OF OOHCISM: TERMINAL VALUES

57

the perception of order in what one is experiencing, the recognition that the object before one obeys certain is

laws, exhibits a certain form,

is

made

in accordance with

This provides what has been called the aesthetic element in science and sport. There is in all purposive human behavior an interplay between the freedom of a rule.

subject-matter

and the

rules

which have been accepted

by the individual whose behavior

Why

is being observed. the we enjoy perceiving interplay, to take a single example, between the flow of thought in a poem and the meter,

we need able.

not discuss here, but that we do is unquestionis found in such apparently

For the same thing

non-aesthetic fields as social etiquette and morals, in the

elegance of mathematical demonstrations or of surgical operations.

There may be no agreement upon what these them in the things which they con-

rules are, but to see trol is certainly

a

satisfaction.

This does not mean that

they were taken out of the things which they control, they would continue to please us. The formula known if

as the binomial theorem

is

aesthetically irrelevant until

perceived in an operation; so, too, the sonata form as described in a text book of musical composition is simply

it is

a rule and has no aesthetic importance embodied in a sonata. In this field there

is

no lack of

until

perceived

"reasons",

and we

our attitude one of approbation rather may properly than one of liking. The distinction between the two is call

necessary inasmuch as one of the major problems of life is making the two agree. To see and approve the better

and to follow the worse

is surely

no unusual experience

58

A PRIMER FOR

.

for the

human

One

race.

CRITICS

follows the worse in the case

which the Latin quotation describes because one likes the worse in spite o one's disapprobation of it. For often one's desires are

The same

thing

more powerful than is

true of works of

and strong appeal to one's senses agreeableness, only

one's code of morals.

waking up

art.

They make a

we

enjoy their sensuous later to the f act that we

have not discovered any grounds for approbation. is evidence of terminal Approbation, as well as liking, value.

or

The

form or

rule

tained to be a

or not.

which ensues from the perception or law call it what one will is main-

clarification

good whether

Nor can one

observed and

have instrumental value

it

generalize

insist that in

them

from the forms he has

reside the terminal values

of works of art for all time. Professors of the arts have

sometimes imagined that by passing on the rules of the great artists of the past they could produce equally great works of art through their pupils. If we have learned anything useful for the instruction of potential artists from the history of art, it is precisely the futility of such

a practice. For what results is that obedience to the rule which was enrooted in, let us say, such and such a sonnet of Shakespeare, blinds the young poet to everything except the rule, and one of the things of which no one

approves except a professor is to see the bare bones of structure and formula protruding through the substance ^nd flesh.

A

gesture and word

is

man who

is

so polite that every

predictable in advance

erable prig; his conduct

is like

is

an

intol-

the swing of doggerel in

STANDARDS OF OUTICISM: TERMINAL VALUES

59

which the mechanical rhythm of the verse-form has completely paralysed the flow of words and thought.

Though we are not aware necessarily of the causes of our liking, we are always aware of the reasons for our approbation.

Approbation is the making explicit of the which we find implicit in the artistry or

rules or forms

works of

art.

We

shall then in this Primer admit that

no reasons can be given for

liking,

but that

its

causes

could be discovered by a psychologist; whereas reasons can be and must be given for approbation both by the

approver and by psychologists. The field of liking is a field which needs no discussion

by of

critics,

except those

artistry

view.

who

and works of

Criticism

is

more

discuss the instrumental value

from the

point of fruitfully employed in the field art

artist's

of approbation. (2) Unfortunately for the lover of clear distinctions, the human mind refuses to stay in compartments and one

no sooner

has to tear them down. field is

between

erects partitions

A

faculties

its

than one

second complication in the when one sees that there

of terminal values arises

a definite interaction between liking and approbation.

Completely disinterested approbation possible as pure liking,

part of all

men

to approve of

what they have reason

The former

and there

We

probably as ima tendency on the

is

what they

like

and

to like

to approve of.

situation

"rationalizaton".

is

is

what some

psychiatrists call

rationalize our desires

say that the reason, for instance,

why we

when we

like

orange

A PRIMER FOR

60 juice

not the reason

why we

CRITICS

drink

it

is

because

its

necessary for our health; the reason is the opportunity enjoy going to cheap movies the reason why we it gives us to study the mass-mind; like William Blake's poetry is its simple and childlike

vitamin-content

is

why we

It is

quality.

because of rationalization that

much

criti-

cism turns out to be inaccurate autobiography. It should, however, be noted that liking is often the best stimulus to accurate critical analysis.

For

if

one

like a

poem

or

a picture or a drama, one is more willing to linger over rule it exemplifies, than if it, to study it and see what

one

dislike

it.

For dislike

may

turn one away and blind

one. Since almost anything has some form, a man can usually find a reason for approving what he likes in

the field of aesthetics as well as in the field of ethics. But,

on the other hand, approbation may and,

imagine,

usually

does

I

should

stimulate

always produces clarification

liking. Approbation and therefore greater under-

and people who will go to the trouble of analyswhat they observe are apt to be the type who enjoy ing the 'exercise. The object of one's liking is not what it would have been before approbation; it is now the picstanding,

ture-as-understood-and-approved which is liked, not simply the picture at which one has been brutishly staring

before the processes leading to approbation have been set in motion. It is liking

of this type, an accidental by-product of

approbation, which can be acquired by study or by courses in "art-appreciation", or -through the reading of critical essays.

liking on what one might loosely call the instinc-

STANDARDS OF CRITICISM: TERMINAL VALUES rive level could

level

not be the result of teaching.

On

6l that

one can acquire liking by frequenting galleries and and trusting to luck that close association with

libraries

works of

art will

produce an affection for them. But

must not be inferred from what has been inevitable or ineradicable.

(3) values

It

said that the

and approbation

reciprocal interaction of liking

may

it

occur or

it

is either

may

not.

A good example of the natural history of terminal may be

seen in the history of the fine

arts.

If

our

hypothesis of the instrumental origin of all the arts is correct, any fine art was believed to be useful in its origin.

be

Thus a

statue of a

god or a

efficacious in curing malaria

tween the ness of

statue

and

saint

was found to

and the relationship be-

its effect

emerged into the conscious-

The

instrument then became an

its

worshippers. object of approbation and was regarded with the friendly feeling, called liking, which many of the objects of our

approbation stimulate. But since the emotional set of a person to an object is more resistant to change than his ideas about that object,

2

the liking

is

retained without

much thought

about reasons for approbation. The statue has the sanctity of the habitual; we have become too sophisticated to care to dwell on its miraculous powers; we uneasily say that we like it for itself alone. At that

We

point a second process of approbation is initiated. find non-utilitarian reasons for approving of it. speak

We

of

its

symbolism,

its

fidelity to nature,

its

movement,

harmony, rhythm, grace, balance, unity, and so on. 1

This may be called an assumption on

my

part.

By

A PRIMER FOR

62 then the statue

one of

fine art

but an

"artist".

The

CRITICS

no longer an object of useful art but and its sculptor no longer a craftsman

is

values of such a

are both instrumental and

work

view point of

but by fixing one's attention upon the terminal, one becomes convinced that the instrumental are not there and indeed were never

from the

terminal

artist's

intended to be there. There

is

of course no more

justi-

fication for such reasoning than there would be in the

methods of birth control argument that because modern our have made romantic love safe, reproductive processes were not intended by any

justification

God

for procreation. Nor is there of against the appreciation

for arguing

the terminal values because they were not foreseen by

the artist

Works of

shift their values

work of

art,

and

it is

as

we have

frequently stated, theoretically possible that no

art has precisely the

strumental or terminal

whether

same value

for any two people.

in-

Whistler's

Grey and by the artist Arrangement a patBlack, but it has seldom been looked at simply as canvas a tern of colors. It has varied from so "abstract"

Mother was

in

called

to a tool for selling flowers

on "Mother's Day" and a

into a sort of design for a U. S. stamp, having turned of art is normal. works of multivalence Such symbol.

Sticking to the terminal value alone,

one

man may

see

in the picture the representation of a natural object, another the expression of an introvert's libido, another

a

moment

in the history of the Volksgeist, another an

exemplification

may be right

of the laws of "eternal beauty"*, and

all

STANDARDS OF CRITICISM: TERMINAL VALUES (4)

be

The

63

question of terminal value in general cannot a faint light has been thrown on the

left until at least

problem of

its

measurement. This problem splits in two measure of the terminal value of

at the outset, (a) the

the objects of our approbation, (b) that of the objects of our liking. It is not our purpose in this book ever to

do more than

to state problems; their solution

is

left

to others.

(a) There are usually what reduce to two measures of the terminal value of the objects of approbation: first,

the importance of the interest they satisfy; second, their harmony with other values.

An

may be important in at least three ways. satisfaction may be prerequisite to other satisfactions,

Its

interest

in the first place. Thus our biological needs, if not satisfied, will prevent the satisfaction of any other interests,

A

dead man not only tells except possibly the religious. to listen he doesn't but tales, any either. Consequently

no it

may be

argued that to be alive

is

in itself prerequisite

for the attainment of any other satisfactions. It is probable that all of our values are derivative from the biological,

on the analogy of obsolete and

ments. But that this

book.

guised as

is

obsolescent instru-

merely the opinion of the writer of

In general biological needs, even

moral

ideals, are frowned

when

dis-

as too close

upon and very few writers would stoop to do more than mention them for the purpose of

to matter to be edifying

a complete inventory. are not alone in being fundaBiological satisfactions mental to other satisfactions. Economic needs, peace of

A PRIMER FOR

64

CRITICS

mind, being right with God each philosophy of life has a set of desires which must be satisfied if others are to

be

and

satisfied,

matters,

mental

it is

human

beings vary greatly in these just as well to admit the variety of fundasince

interests.

In the second place, an interest may be more important than another because the satisfactions it leads to are more

important

some sense of the word

in

competitors lead to.

Thus assuming

that

than those it is

its

better to

understand things than to eat a good meal, an appreciation of the delicate balance of dietetic values in a dinner

would be more important than its taste. (There is, hapWordsworth would have mainpily, no conflict here.) tained that Peter Bell ought to have seen something

more

than the yellow primrose in the flower growing by the river's brim, and what he should have seen was prerequisite to satisfactions greater

than the pleasure of seeing

a pretty flower. Emerson, curiously enough at least in his poem on the rhodora took just the opposite point of view.

an

Finally,

interest

may be more

important in

itself,

as some people flatly declare that certain interests are "higher" than others. Thus the pleasures of "the Mind" are sometimes held to be higher than those of

Flesh"; love to love.

is

said to be

worth any

There are a number of

sacrifice

interests

"the

give all

which have

if not as summa bona, at least as majota In the long run, some interest or some group of interests will have to be taken as standards, if any sys-

been proposed bona.

tematizing of

human goods

is

going to follow, for there

STANDARDS OF CRITICISM: TERMINAL VALUES is

no

self-evident

mark o

greater or less terminal value

the objects of approbation.

among

65

That

is

it is

why

always easy to demolish anybody's system of values asking, "But

why

final analysis as

X

is

The "why"

valuable?"

unanswerable as

is

by

in the

the question, "Why is the square of the distance rather than tie cube a component in the Law of Gravitation?"

A one

is

second measure of importance is the harmony of with others. There could be devised a

satisfaction

philosophy terests

was

in accordance with which the strife of inbetter than their reconciliation, but that is

not the usual point of view. Our problem is the integration of our lives, not their disintegration. For natural

And

erosion will take care of that.

gration faction

when

the problem of inte-

the interests whose

is

nearer solution

is

harmonious with that of others

If anything has been learned about

satis-

are. recognized.

human

nature,

it is

that the obstinate search for all possible satisfactions is bound to be futile. It is an old saw in ethics that the exclusive pursuit of pleasure

a self-defeating process and that nothing makes one more miserable than finding

new

is

We

have here, jaded sense-organs. then, an interest whose satisfaction has to be controlled; we know that it is not harmonious with the satisfaction titillations for

of other

interests.

Consequently the standard of harmony

can be applied to

know what

reject

to reject,

it.

On

we know

the whole,

when we

enough.

the usual measures of (b) In the field of liking,

A

ter-

satisfaction minal value are intensity and duration, which is more intense than another is held to be the

A PRIMER FOR

66

CRITICS

which lasts longer greater terminal value; a satisfaction than another is similarly appreciated. Precisely what the in physintensity of liking is cannot be phrased except iological language.

But the experience of a more intense

desire for something, a

more

driving hunger for

session, a fiercer thirst, is certainly is

not anaesthetic.

This

is

known

to

its

anyone

pos-

who

a basic experience, like the

perception of a color or any other sensory quality, and Indescribable experiences can be named thus we can name the various colors, red, yellow,

hence indescribable.

but a name has no explanatory value and

blue

a

is

simply

label.

The

duration of liking is of course similarly primitive, since duration is simply the length of time during which

an experience

lasts.

The

conditions of intensity

and dura-

and only a student of laboratory should venture to discuss them. cannot psychology tion are psychological

We

therefore do so here.

What

important for our purare measures of the terthough they poses minal values of liking, they are not necessarily the measis to

i?

see that

ures of the terminal values of approbation. For it is at least logically possible that one's liking for a picture or

or other work of art or artistry last for a longer or shorter period than one's approbation of it, as when a collector retains a certain fondness for his earliest ac-

poem

quisitions even

Similar remarks

B. ficial

who

when he no longer approves of them. may be made about intensity.

We

have so far been trying to clarify the supercharacteristics of terminal values. But the critic is

interested in

them should

also

know something

STANDARDS OP CRITICISM: TERMINAL VALUES of their locus in works of

and the

For

art.

pictures,

67

poems, plays,

are extremely complex structures and any of their parts, in isolation or in combination, be like,

may

objects of either approbation or liking.

may 1.

be

Some of

the loci

listed.

Sensuous material.

One may ture, taste,

of art

find a certain value in the color, sound, tex-

of the various materials out of which a work

is built.

or approbation.

may find a peculiar

to him, color,

particularly

find the

adults sense,

This value may be either that of liking Thus a person, for reasons unknown blue, red, green, or

delightful,

as

children

mere sound of words,

almost hypnotic.

When we

lines of poetry, the beauty is often

the beauty of sound.

ing always

any other and some

regardless of their

speak of beautiful I

La

am

far

fille

from

say-

de Minos

et

de Pasiphae, which in recent years has acquired the celebof the Italian lady's "lovely English word cellaris a case in point. So is Ernest Dowson's selec-

rity

door' ",

The viol, the violet, and the vine. But there be approbation of such sensuous material, as when

tion of Poe's

may one

sees in

the exemplification of a theory of beautiful sound the use of the letter or a symbolic or representative color the Virgin's blue, an red, a it

V;

"exciting"

"twilight" grey. 2.

Sensuous material in combination.

Here would be

classified

sounds, colors, and the like.

rhythm, balance, metre, of

Below the

reflective level

A PRIMER POR

68

CRITICS

one would experience a pleasurable feeling produced by, for instance, the alliteration of Poe s lines without know5

the reflective level ing anything about alliteration. Above there would be the perception of the alliteration in the

Much

technological criticism confines itself to a supposed explanation of such terminal values. experience.

3,

Subject-matter*

That

subject-matter,

when

it exists,

of liking and approbation

is

fied

needed

if

exemplification

made upon

is

obvious.

may be This

the object

is

exempli-

in certain strictures

supposed to be obscene in

subjects that are

themselves, regardless of their effects, as certain

words

and colors are supposed to be unworthy of artistic use. captivating charm of many works of art undoubtedly

The lies

in their subject matter, so

witness Mr.

Thomas Craven

much

so that

some

critics

consider all art without

subject matter trivial, childish, indeed perverse.

4.

Meaning.

The word "meaning" here we may consider it

is

to

notoriously ambiguous, but

be that idea which

is

either

literally or symbolically presented in a work of art. Certain ideas often called "spiritual" are supposed by some

people to be inherently valuable, both as objects of liking and of approbation. may hazard the guess that most

We

platitudes are of such JBL nature. Shakespeare's

"When

in

disgrace with fortune and men's eyes" contains an idea of this sort. It is roughly that "When I am in low spirits,

STANDARDS OF OUTIOSM: TERMINAL VALUES the thought of

my

beloved cures

Whether love can be whether,

if it can, it

ought

to,

Nor

my

depression."

and whether there

its effect

ask.

of

of an elation and

the initiator

reason to be interested in

no one ever stops to of no importance. In

me

6?

is

any

in Shakespeare's life,

should one. For that

fact, insofar as

one

is interested

is

in

the truth or importance of the ideas in works of art which are not expository or argumentative, one is focusing his attention on a by-product of the work of art

and not on

its

main purpose.

Approbation in the idea

is

does not at sees

this

connection usually enters

first

suspect

its

one

presence, but gradually one

appearing to one's delight in

it

when

presented symbolically, for in that case

what turns out to

be a symbol. The writer of this book has heard one of his colleagues become enthusiastic over Poe*s Annabel

Lee when he began to suspect that the kingdom by the sea was really heaven and that the woman in the poem

was the

This is probably a or not, it was an but whether it be misinterpretation, object of the deepest approbation for the critic in quesobject of the mystic vision.

tion.

The technique of symbolic interpretation is a useful device for turning any description of a scene or any lyric cry into the expression of an idea. And if one is a devotee of ideas, criticise

it

will almost invariably

music and the dance. Ideas

be used even to

may be

present in

a variety of ways in a work of art and there is no reason why a critic should not specialize in their detection. But at die

same time there

is

equally no reason

why

their

A PRIMER FOR

70

CRITICS

insisted upon to the point of fabricatpresence should be when they are absent. ing them out of possible symbols

5.

The work of

art or artistry in relation to the artist.

Every work of art and in

have their source

all artistry

some human being and if one approaches them with can see in them the expresartistry, one

a psychology of

sion, either conscious or unconscious,

of a social class

with which the

of a personality or

artist is identified.

as individual expression is a point of

Art

view which was

extremely popular a generation ago and survives in the writings of Croce. Nowadays it is rather art as groupexpression which is fashionable, for it has become stylish to think of the individual as

a blank whose substance

is

supplied by the economic class with which he is identified. Communistic criticism takes this attitude towards both

works of

art

and

artistry.

Anyone who has read the

essays

of Mr. Michael Gold, for instance, perceives at once that what he approves of and likes is works of art and artistry

which in

We later

his eyes crystallize the interests of the

Workers.

have to return to the theory underlying this on, but it should be noted now that such a critic

shall

believes certain personalities

and

social

groups to be inon what-

herently valuable and hence to confer value

ever exteriorizes their character.

When

Mr. Gold reads

Stein, he seems to perceive in her writing what he believes to be the incoherence and triviality of a leisure

Gertrude

which

the expense of the Workers. It is that which he depreciates, not the adequacy of either class

lives at

STANDARDS OF CRITICISM: TERMINAL VALUES Miss

Stein's

71

technique nor of her work of art as expres-

sions of such a character. 6.

The work

of art or artistry in relation to an historical cultural movement. or period

Here again the certain theory

and

critic

approaches his objects with a

sees in a Xlllth century cathedral the

summation of medieval order, of the

cult of the Virgin,

or what not Henry Adams discussed Gbartres from that point of view and Mr. Lewis Mumford discusses American

much the same way. That an historical or cultural movement is itself made up in part of period works of art and artistry, rather than making them, ought architecture in

apparently is not. Here again to see a "century" in a cathedral or the revolt of the masses in a play, is believed to be a more valuable experience

But

to be obvious.

it

than to see something else in them. 7.

The work

of art or artistry in relation to a set of

standards.

The

set

of standards

may be

standards of truth, good-

ness, beauty, competency, or utility;

it

makes very

little

difference to our present discussion what they are. The in the object the conformity to his spectator perceives

standards and

is

happy over

it.

Thus he

praises the real-

ism or the nobility or the beauty of what he sees, a of the pleasure of finding others in agreepathetic avowal ment with oneself. "That's what I've always said," is a kind of satisfaction. That frequent expression of this should enjoy seeing corroboration of their standards

men

6

A PRIMER FOR

72 not strange.

is

when

are right;

One

has to believe that one's

own

ideas

they guide one's behaviour, one cannot to be wrong; when they are a

on a program believed

act

rationalization of

it,

The work of art own needs.

8.

CRITICS

they are by that very fact right.

or artistry in relation to the spectators

Such needs may be emotional, moral, religious, economic, or any others. When one feels bewildered about.

human

us say, certain

let

fication in a novel,

Similarly if one

is

relieve the frustration

ance,

one

it.

and

sees their clari-

by attending a dramatic perform-

one's gratitude to like

relations

one naturally approves of the novel. emotionally frustrated and is able to the play

is

enough

to

make

This element in approbation and liking

is

by no means unimportant and probably accounts for much of what

is

known

as

taste.

The

recent

perhaps of the literature of places contemporary vogue is a case in the War of us many "futility* point. After

in

popular

some

1

found that reading the weariness of others was a good atonement for not being able to be weary ourselves. If the weary ones had really been as badly off as they said, they would not have had the strength to put pen to paper. But we never bothered about such fine points and

approved thoroughly, applauding vigorously the doctrine that nothing was worthy of our applause. lists only a few of the of and works of art which may be the artistry aspects loci of terminal value. It is evident that they do not exist in separation, are mutually interactive, and can

This section of our Primer

STANDARDS OF CRITICISM: TERMINAL VALUES none of them be pointed to important element of the

purpose was simply

as either the unique or

artistic

73

most

or aesthetic gestalt. Our

to indicate the complexity of art as

a subject matter of conversation.

C

Having sketched

briefly

an outline of what terminal

values are and their loci in the field of aesthetics,

it Is

now

possible to fit them into our discussion of the standards of criticism. may therefore begin with the ter-

We

minal value of

artistry

from the

artist's

point of view.

In the most general terms there is terminal value in artistry from the artist's point of view if the artist likes or approves of his processes of creation.

That there

1.

a satisfaction in creating

is

regardless

of the object created would seem to be true. If this were not so, it would be very difficult to explain the sacrifices which artists have made in the past to do things in their

own way

We

ridicule.

regardless of economic disaster

find even children manipulating various

materials, snow, sand,

they have

Nor

over.

and

made is it

wood, paper, and destroying what

as soon as the pleasure of

making

it is

necessary that the artist have a public in

which he may desire to communicate what he may be said to be "expressing" through his artistry. For occasionally we find writers whose journals are written

mind

to

*

for

no

eyes

but

their

own, and amateur musicians,

who engage in their various arts painters, cabinet makers, entirely as a diversion. It is possible, of course, to exclude such individuals from the

field of aesthetics

by arbitrary delimitation. but delimitation, only by arbitrary

A PRIMER FOR

74

When

the

CRITICS

artist's satisfaction in artistry

basis of a theory of criticism artistry's sake.

This

is

becomes the

expressed as artistry-forof logically related to the theory it is

Novalis, and some of the other German romanticists, that searching for something

is

better than finding

it,

a theory

affiliated with Lessing's famous epigram on the search 8 for truth. This point of view became so popular in the

Nineteenth Century that it found its way into so unphilwitness his essay, osophical a writer as R. L. Stevenson "El Dorado", in Virginibus Puerisque. At the present time artistry for artistry' s sake has become the butt of all

the anti-romantic schools of criticism and

it

easily

For when one reads slogans like for the Infinite", Sehnsucht nach dem Unend"Longing lichen, one is betrayed by his sense of humor into clumsy lends itself to satire.

miscomprehension. The slogan and its associates as a program are of course absurd. One travels a road to go somewhere; one writes a book to complete it; one develops a means to reach an end. Yet as a comment on the activity of

human

the romanticists of this type were singularly

beings,

realistic.

For the ends are frequently either non-existent or unattainable or utterly unsatisfactory

when

attained.

And

when

they are not utterly unsatisfactory, as Schopenhauer pointed out, their enjoyment gives us but a momentary

appeasement after which comes boredom and the begin*Royce*s account of the philosophy of the Modem Philosophy seems to

German Romantic School

me

to be still the best in For a good example of Romantic longing, see Fr Schlegel's Lucinde, especially the chapter called "Sehnsucht und Ruhe".

in his Spirit of

English.

STANDARDS OF OUTICISM: TERMINAL VALUES ning of a new quest

and in

It is

75

possible that in civilizations

whose populations have barely enough

social strata

time to accomplish the necessary tasks of living, there would be neither questioning about the purpose of living nor leisure to wonder about what we should do after accomplishing it, It is possible that a well-adjusted man would go. about the business of living instinctively and without question, for thinking itself may be a product of idlenessr-k may be called "leisure" if a more eulogistic

word

is

required.

In a society like that of the ants

and

bees, no thinking is needed since a highly developed social mechanism has produced a routine into which every

individual tain role

fits

as if destined

and no

other.

the ideal of most

saw

that, they

human

by nature to occupy a

cer-

Such a picture is probably not beings, and if the romanticists

saw something profoundly true. In our not attained and we continue to seek

civilization ends are

them, and the only

seem

to

be

its

own

justification for

our activity would

agreeableness.

Artistry for artistry's sake

may

take two forms.

Its extreme form occurs when the terminal value (a) of artistry is the value of liking. Here there is no con-

sciousness of rules

takes their place.

spontaneously

is

and

restrictions;

spontaneous creation

Probably the only thing we really do the simple bodily reflexes, but when a

learned process is thoroughly absorbed into our systems, we are no longer conscious of the rules and the elaborate

motor adjustments needed to obey them. Thus most adults eat with a knife and fork without consciousness of the

A PRIMER FOR

76

CRITICS

accommodation of eye and muscle required to get the food into the mouth rather than into the cheek. Yet

delicate

everyone knows that such behavior is not instinctive and in fact is something learned with difficulty. But the fact that

it is

learned and not instinctive makes

it

none the

most of perform when we are adults and us would be hard put to it to reconstruct the steps of learning the process. So in the arts, when a technique

less easy to

thoroughly learned, one suffers from the illusion of 4 automatic creation, even of inspiration. This experience is no doubt as delightful as any perfected and therefore

is

smoothly running performance. Unfortunately it conceals its history and consequently gives support to the unwarranted educational theory that teaching and learning are unnecessary in the arts, that all one has to do is to open one's mouth and sing, seize a chisel and mallet

and

carve, take

up a pen and

write.

(b) There is a modified form of artistry for artistry's sake in which the terminal values are those of approbation. The best literary appreciation of this is to be found

Ode

perhaps in Wordsworth's not".

Here the

and the

and

rules

to

Duty and "Nuns

restrictions are

kept in

fret

view

located in the perception of his conformity to them. That there is a certain pleasure artist's satisfaction is

in behaving in accordance with recognized prescription

undeniable.

One

feels oneself giving

exercising a self-control

by

I

religious ethicists.

*See Section

I, 2,

page

5,

form

is

to one's acts,

which resembles that preached

should imagine that

above.

much of

the

STANDARDS OF CRITICISM: TERMINAL VALUES artist's

pleasure in artistry

to

is

be explained in

this

77 way.

But why some human beings should enjoy self-control and others detest it, we must leave to the psychiatrists to answer. 2.

The

Anti-romanticist

Irving Babbitt) or

be he Humanist

Communist

(like

the late

insists that the artist is

a member of society and hence must make his behavior conform to the interests of society-as-a-whole. Such a philosopher will have no centrifugal individuals in his society;

validity

everyone must conform to some ideal whose is

unquestioned. make out an appealing case for this philosobut nowadays the trend seems to be towards acceptphy, ing it regardless of its merits. It is therefore worth while

One

can

pointing out some of

its

weaknesses.

(a) Are there any interests of society-as-a-whole? Is society, in so far as it is made up of individuals, homo-

geneous or a collection o conflicting interests? Homogeneity can be brought about by the logical device of calling one interest hunger, love, self-preservation

fundamental and

all

the others

its

disguises.

By the

dialec-

1

of "unconscious purpose* any conscious purpose may be presented as an unconscious purpose in disguise. Thus

tic

becomes egoism, piety to the Virgin becomes a frustrated Oedipus Complex, patriotism becomes economic

charity

fact would seem imperialism. But regardless of thedry, to be on the side of heterogeneity even in supposed primi-

tive societies.

(b) Is

it

desirable to unify the interests of all

human

A PRIMER FOR

78

CRITICS

be no problems and no disThe affirmative answer would seem to de-

beings, so that there will satisfactions?

pend

upon the emotional aura of such words as "order", "coherence", "discipline**. For when

largely

"unity",

one stops to think of what even well-adjusted and usually happy individuals want food, shelter, raiment, amusement, and so on

one begins to see that their wants are provided by other individuals who are not so well-adjusted. A well-adjusted man would presumably live and let live, bacilli.

be the objects of his tolerance other men or Why should a well-adjusted man worry over

malaria, yellow fever, syphilis? These are things, he feels, that happen like child-labor, anti-semitism, war. It is only the ill-adjusted who fight and wish to better our condition. There could be no improvement in a homo-

genecius society, unless

unadjusted to

it

were run by a group of men

it.

Such a group are by their very essence

artists.

For

artists, as Novalis, I believe, suggested, are sick souls.

They

are sick, if

we may

unintelligibility, evil,

use an old-fashioned analysis, over and ugliness. They want to under-

stand, to edify, to beautify. artistry

from

their poio* of

And

the terminal value of

view must in part reside in

their feeling of

moving towards truth, goodness, and as beauty, they understand these values. No one will deny the absurdity of many of their there pretensions. And yet

have been novels

have

like

Madame

Bovary again which than many a treatise

clarified social situations better

in psychology; pictures

from the Cross in the

like Pietro Lorenzetti's

Lower Church

in Assisi

Descent

which


79

seem

to have translated the emotional intensity of their into line and movement; music like Bach's subject-matter

Komm'

susser

Tod

which

is

a better preparation for

The problem

death than a sermon.

of the sodal-ethicist

might well be conceived not as making the artist conform to society, but of so arranging society that there is a place in

for

For though Shelley's unacknowledged legislators of the world might, if acknowledged, it

artists.

prove as stupid as the legislators we have, there is no reason to believe that our understanding and appreciation of things would be heightened, were they to be the servants of our rulers.

D.

Artistry has terminal value not

artist's

For

it

only from the of view but also from that of the observer. point

may become

right as the

case

its

terminus

is

make of

one

as

work of

interesting a spectacle in its

art in

which

it

terminates.

irrelevant to the critical

So

own

In this

comments

when a

may surgeon speaks of a beautiful operation, a mathematician of an elegant proof, a social arbiter of perfect behavior, nothing is said of the value

it.

whether terminal or instrumental

achieved.

The patient may

of the results

die in a beautiful operation, the

theorem elegantly proved may be trivial or false, the gesture perfectly made may be simple obedience to a trial ritual.

One

is

not interested in the end; one

is

entirely

concerned with the means.

Such appreciation

form is

is

analogous to the appreciation of knows that whether a golf ball

in sport. Everyone

propelled by foot or by a

dub

is

in itself merely a

A PRIMER FOR

80

matter of tradition.

If the

eighteen holes successively

means

portance, the best

drop the ball into the

sport

is

itself,

putting the ball into were the object of main im-

would be

hole by hand, pick it

drop

best evidence, if any

in artistry

end

to accomplish it

first

walking to the second,

CRITICS

is

regardless of

works of

out and,

it

But form in

in again.

needed, of

to

human

art.

interest

A silly game

may be well played, and so a painting whose subject matter, for instance, if repulsive, may be well painted. Some of the KonzefMucke of the Nineteenth Century

e.

g.,

were written primarily to operatic transcriptions show the pianist's technical skill trills on the third and Liszt's

fourth fingers, octave runs, velocity, and so

on

not for their sound, which was often horrible.

Many

and of

the painters of the Sixteenth Century in Italy delighted to

show how they could reproduce

dragged scene

it

into their canvases regardless of

demanded

it

difficulties

requked

of

artistry,

whether the

a thing which Virtuosity we know anything about the

or not.

most of us admire when

so that

is

no

discussion should

to prove the terminal value of artistry

the observer's point of view. In general, one may say that such terminal value

be determined

as it is in

tain special traits

and

perspective,

works of

art,

be

from

is

to

but there are cer-

which induce approbation of

artistry.

1) First is the gradual perception of the emerging product as one. watches the artistry. The process takes on a

dramatic

interest.

the material

is

One

begins to suspect the outcome as

manipulated and one enjoys the growing


81

confirmation of one's suspicions, one's hesitation as the artist seems to move away from the suspected goal, one's reassurance, one's surprise.

When one

2)

and knows over

acquainted with the technique involved problems, one enjoys the artist's victory

its

is

difficulties, his peculiar

its

manner of overcoming

them.

When

3)

volved

one

as in

is

not acquainted with the technique

much modern

fiction

joys the awareness of the rules

guiding the

artistry.

and

and poetry limitations

in-

one en-

which are

Thus much of the pleasure of

read-

ing Ulysses or the various writings of Miss Gertrude Stein comes from the discovery of what the authors are doing,

what

they are writing in their peculiar manner, special rules they have invented to replace tradi-

why

tional syntax and, indeed, vocabulary.

Here there are no

text-books to orient one; one must discover one's

own

clues.

In

many

of the arts

we

are in no position to observe

the artistry but substitute for it what is sometimes called the form of the work of art, sometimes its technique.

Form

is,

to

be

false record.

sure,

Artistry

a frozen record of artistry but a is

reconstructed from

it

and often

when

a person tries to read back into the processes of artistry the elements of surprise in a novel or

badly, as

the development of a theme in music.

of

aitistry lies in

and

sketches.

an

When

artist's

The

real record

notebooks and manuscripts it becomes clear

these are studied

that the processes of construction

do not

parallel the proc-

A PRIMER FOR

82

CRITICS

This point, which is important for an under-

of impressing a spectator.

esses

not to be sure very recondite, of standing of the psychology

The

Virginians,

is

artists.

for instance,

is

a perfect example of

a mechanically balanced plot. There are two brothers, two sisters. The elder brother and sister fall in love and

with the younger

in love marry; the younger sister falls brother who does not fall in love with her.

He

is

pun-

ished for his unappreciation of her by a foolish marshe is compensated for her unrequited love by noriage; bility

The

of character and devotion to her

girls'

mother

is

silly

sister's

children.

but cooperative; the boys'

intel-

The boys' mother dislikes her elder ligent but hostile. son, adores her younger. But in the cause which she holds with her, the younger against her. One could go on almost indefinitely pointing out the static system of checks and balances which makes of this

most dear, the elder

is

novel an elaborate piece of sculpture in which movement is reduced to a minimum, is reduced in fact to the point

where any element of surprise is eliminated by the author's anticipating in so many words practically every future event of importance. When we read this novel, structural technique until

we are not aware of its we have finished it. Conse-

quently the rough plan just given o it unfolds step by if it were a have, so step, as process, not a map. far as I know, no first outline of the book to show us

We

how

Thackeray's mind built the thing up, but it considering its length and the fact that it is a

Henry

Esmond, that he

had

at least

is

likely,

sequel to

a general idea of


83

what he was going to do before he began to write. That the general idea was of some such mechanical plot as have suggested is probable since, as we have said, he makes no serious attempt to build up suspense. It would, if our reasoning be correct, be absurd then to read the I

progress of the novel back into Thackeray's artistry as

he constructed the

plot.

For that

artistry,

we

surmise,

consisted largely in filling in the gaps. The telling of the story skips about in time and space, and no more

reproduces the artistry than the developing life of a man in a preconceived pattern. Lives always follow the same general plan, but the main outline of a life is not

fills

given us in a baby's first year, to be followed each year thereafter by the spotting in of a few details of varylustrum being devoted to picking a a wife, choosing school, having pneumonia at thirtyfive, the second to losing one's money in the Crash of

ing date: the

first

1929, falling in love at seventeen, and burying one's third child. E.

There remains the terminal value of the work of

art.

The

terminal value of the work of art from the

from

artist's interest in his

ferent

own

products

from that of any other

is

artist**

terminal value

point of view is differentiated from the observer's point of view only in its

its

bound

locus.

An

be

dif-

to

spectator of them, to like or to

and

will find something approve consequently he discover. to will be else one no which in them of likely To him after all they are the fulfilment of purposes

A PRIMER FOR

84 which he can to

articulate only

CRITICS

through them. His inability

communicate these purposes in speech and writing is is a literary artist and unless

normal enough, unless he

the purposes are literary as well as sculptural, musical or pictorial If one has the purpose of painting such and

such a picture, that purpose can be successfully exhibited to another person only by producing the picture. This is another reason why it is so unreasonable to expect

of

critics that

press

it

they discover the

in their

own

words.

artist's

purpose and ex-

For the adequate expres-

sion of the purpose of a work of art from the artist's point of view assuming that there could be one which

with the work of art in question could be only the creation of another work of art, namely a critical essay, to be substituted for the work of art being

was not

identical

criticised.

There

is

in every

work of

art, as in

every individual

if only that object, a certain ineffable trait, peculiar combination of things that individualizes it. Two Greek

archaic Apollos look

untrained eye

more or

less alike

at least to the

and may for purposes of argument be conform to

said to have been constructed in order to

type rather than to diverge from it. Yet they are not absolutely identical even to the observer and to the sculptors they

must have had each

their

own

significance:

as commissions to be filled, for instance, as offerings to

a god, as relief from an emotional strain, as any one or group of things which justify in an artist's mind his vocation.

This individuality

may be

obscured and for certain

STANDARDS OF CRmCISM: TERMINAL VALUES classification

purposes

But to an

primarily

85

must be neglected.

when he

even

is trying to exemplify a a given typical Shakespearean sonnet, a three voice fugue, an O. Henry short story, a Poitevin romanesque church a given work of art is inevitably

artist,

form

artistic

that particular object which satisfied (or not) that particular desire. spectator obviously can share either

No

that desire or

its satisfaction.

There

is

therefore

bound

be a divergence in the locus of terminal value in works of art from both points of view. to

If this is so, there

is

no reason for the

critic to

expect the artist to agree with his critical judgments of terminal value, nor for the artist to expect the critic to agree

with

his.

To

about different things, is

and purposes they are talking though what they are talking about

all intents

given ths same proper name: Etude in F-sharp minor,

Macbeth, The Empire State Building. No intelligible discussion of the tenninal values of

works of

art can

be made until the locus of those values

suppose, what Mr. Leo Stein means when he argues about the need of isolating the work of art or the object which is to be seen aesthe-

is

clearly demonstrated. This

tically.

Mr.

Stein

is

is,

I

writing mainly about pictures and have understood him, particu-

sculpture and, as far as I larly about their visual qualities.

or

better,

their

perceptual

That people usually do not perceive what

in a picture or

poem

is

notorious.

8

One

is

cannot deny that

there are terminal values of approbation in works of art 1

On

poetry see I. A. Richard's Practical Criticism, which contains mot* sense about aesthetic judgments than all the fine writing on Art.

common

A PRIMER FOR

86

CRITICS

perceived in relation to other things. This we have admitted already. But the terminal values resident in the

work of art itself out of relation to other things are what is lost when the process of isolation is neglected. these values which isolation permits to will be situated presumably in the internal

It is precisely

emerge. They

works of

structure of the to determine.

It

may

art,

but that

be that when

is

no terminal

eliminated, there could be

for a psychologist are

all associations

values, but that

again problem for the psychologist. The sole importance of our remarks here lies in a warning to critics that certain of their comments, however inherently inis

a

teresting, are

work of

art

of view.

I

art to the

not relevant to the terminal value of the

from

either the artist's or the observer's point as relate the work of

mean such comments artist's

logical standards,

discussing what

of course,

true.

as a literary artist

be inadequate.

"life",

and the

the social milieu, ethical or like.

That our vocabulary for

inadequate to its task is, But one of the problems of the critic

is

is

relevant

is

to perfect a vocabulary

which will not

IV.

SCHOOLS OF CRITICISM: INSTRUMENTAL VALUES. Schools of criticism

said to differ from one an-

may be

other according to the emphasis which they put upon the eight different meanings of "good", in the sense of aesthetically valuable.

Although they have

arisen without

a preliminary logical analysis of their problem and cerit will be convenient to classify tainly without ours

them

We

in accordance with our shall

own

principles of division.

run the risk of distorting the emphasis and

oversimplifying the philosophy of the real critics if we do this, of setting up men of straw, as the professors say, in order to knock

them down.

We

shall

assume the

charge of combatting creatures of our own imagination. One cannot discuss logically inconsistent theories and it is

not our fault

if writers

without much sense of

on

logic.

have written an account of

aesthetics are

We

critical

commonly

are not claiming to

theory which will be

historically true, but merely one which will have logical

truth.

A. Technical

The

first

criticism.

school of criticism to be discussed

which emphasizes the instrumental value of criticism

may be

some end of

is

that

artistry.

Such

it

assumes

and proper, and

criticises

called "technical", in that

artistry as right

die success of the technical process in reaching that end. V

87

A PRIMER FOR

88

The most famous member of Aristotle,

CRITICS

that school

whose fragment on poetry

tirely the proper never questioned.

should do as

its

way

to reach results

He knew

is,

whose value he

what poetry

at the outset

end; the problem

of course,

discusses almost en-

was how to reach

that

end.

We could not for obvious of technical criticism nor

reasons expound all theories

selves therefore to the four

From

ends which have been

all the

assumed to be the termini of

artistry.

most

We

restrict our-

influential theories.

point of view the proper end of artistry has been said to be (a) self-expression, (b) the ex* the

artist's

pression of an emotion, (c) the expression of an idea, (d) the expression of an impression. From the observer's

point of view there are four corresponding theories, according to which the end is (a) the revelation of a self,

(b) the stimulation of an emotion, (c) the communication of an idea, (d) the transfer of impressions. 1.

The end of

The sion

is

artistry as self-expression.

theory of artistry as an instrument of self-expresbased on the notion of the artist's possession of

a unique and therefore valuable self. No one probably ever denied the individuality and uniqueness of each perbut have not been unanimous in their sonality, people praise of the unique. Aristotle, for instance, called the unique the monstrous and have

would have

thought

more highly of the

typical.

Even

tain forms of romanticism, there is in

greater insistance

much

to-day, in spite of cer-

some matters a

upon conformity than upon aberration.

SCHOOLS OF CRITICISM: INSTRUMENTAL VALUES In social behavior the eccentric individual ered a failure, though

we may be

is

89

sail consid-

a bit more lenient to

classical ancestors were. And though there a definite stratum of taste which appreciates the unusual, even the pathological, it i$ paralleled by an equally

him than our

is

thick stratum in which uniformity cellence.

is

the standard of ex-

The movement known a few

years ago as

Hu-

manism, was in part a reaction against the cult of individuality, and its spokesmen emphasized that which they believed to be common to all men as the general standard of

human

excellence.

(a) But when one has maintained the value of the Self and urged its expression through artistry, one has

not yet stated a thesis which is unequivocal For granting the value of self-expression, its manner may be the subject of dispute. First,

one may hold that the Self should be expressed

within the limits imposed by tradition, these limits being the various formal rules and material restrictions. Wordsworth's famous sonnet on the sonnet, "Nuns fret not at their convent's

referred to,

is

narrow room/' which has already been a frank acknowledgment on the part of a

poet that the Self cipline:

selves

is

not crushed but liberated by

dis-

we doom

our-

"in truth the prison unto which

no prison

is/*

This,

we may

surmise,

is

the feel-

ing of the religious, whose problem is no longer how to live but how to achieve willing submission to the way in

which they know they ought to live. Were human beings all alike, one could lay down a general law and maintain

A PRIMER FOR

90 that everyone

would

CRITICS

find his Self in submission to author-

as is might be possible to re-educate people, done in Italy, Germany, and Russia, to the enthusiastic

ity.

Or

it

such a acceptance of that artists in times

In other words,

life.

when

formal

it is

restrictions

possible

have had

satisfaction in the compulsive authority, found as great restrictions as those within art of expressing themselves

they

now have

in escaping

like Pope, or Boileau,

from them. Of course some,

added the

justification

that the rules

were the expression of the sens commun, but even that identical with the theory believed man's real self to be life. general self and to be disguised in ordinary But people who have studied the history of artistry

know

that every so often

an

the accepted canons to his

artist

own

appears

ends.

who

modifies

Artists like

Rem-

brandt, Bach, Shakespeare, are certainly rooted in the

ground prepared by

new

their forebears,

Thus when one

but each of them

one planted can either emphasize that which they had in common with tradition or that which they invented. The sonatas seed.

of Beethoven can be arranged in a

writes history,

series

those most like Haydn's to those which

sudden

mutations,

were

their

running from

would seem

ancestry

not

like

known.

Beethoven, in fact, in his middle and late periods, recast the musical forms in which he was interested and is an

man who imposed his own limitations upon who made up new rules. But self-imposed rales

example of a himself,

if not socially, and if they the creation of a given work guide artistry throughout of art, are as determinative of the results as rules im-

are

still

rules,

artistically


91

posed by others. This second type of self-expressionfreedom within self-imposed restrictions loses little of the disciplinary value of the first type, and permits creation not only of matter but of form.

There might be, and perhaps is, a third type of in which there are no rules at all, but expression,

self-

simply the spontaneous outbursts of the Self, as in automatic

random

writing,

association of ideas, a kind of uncon-

trolled ejaculation of

to

works of

what Croce maintains

tical

with

it,

This is very close to be, but not idea* artistry art.

since Croce holds that the artist before

expressing his subject-matter has a unified intuition of

Simple random expression would not province of this book, but belongs

it.

fall

within the

properly to zoology

or psychology.

It

might, however, result in works of

Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls, would contain elements of aesthetic interest to a spectaart which,

tor.

like the

If the Surrealists are telling the truth about their

methods of in point.

great as

artistry, their

works of

art

would be

cases

The randomness of behavior can never be so to escape all law. Even at a maximum it would

reveal the laws

of psychological reactions. Hence a spectator could find objects of liking and approbation in it of which its author was not aware. It would, one

might (b)

on

say,

become

whose

artist

was Nature.

If these remarks clarify this theory,

to a criticism of 1.

artistry

The

first

we

can pass

it.

question which

is

bound

to arise- is,

"What

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CRITICS

the Self?" The term "self-expression" is so freely used that one seldom suspects its obscurity. But let one turn

is

to the books

on psychology and one

finds the following

diversity of opinion.

The is

Self, according to the late

an ever-present datum of

Miss Mary

all experience,

W.

Calkins,

recognized as

the permanent subject of perception. One not only is aware of a color, for instance, but also of oneself perceiv-

ing the color.

It is

therefore given to us directly;

has only to turn one's eyes inwards to see

The all,

into

Self, according to Josiah Royce,

it.

not a datum at

but an achievement, the harmonizing of our purposes a whole which may or may not be attained. Every

purpose mass of true

is

one

is

a

little

conflicting

and a man may therefore be a Selves or, if he has lived properly, a

Self

community of Selves which

is

The

Self.

The

Self, according to Freud, is largely submerged in the Unconscious and, though expressed in art, is ex-

pressed not overtly but symbolically. But since everyone's fundamental self, the libido, is like everyone else's, differentiations in

works of

and

art

artistry

must be due

of our desires and the possibilities we enjoy of procuring them, not to the Self itself. The Self, according to William James, is simply the to the different objects

sensation of breathing,

which

stream of consciousness but

is

always present to the certainly not the subject of is

any experience.

The soever.

Self, according to

Consciousness

David Hume,

is

nothing what-

a "bundle of perceptions" and needs no subject. This seems to be the view of the Beis

SCHOOLS OF CRITICISM: INSTRUMENTAL VALUES haviorists, except that they substitute muscular

93

and glan-

dular action for the impressions and ideas of Hume. 1 Besides these five conflicting theories from the classics, there are almost innumerable others which could be quoted from the writings of our contemporaries. But we have said enough to show that no one seems to know what

the antecedent of the personal pronouns really is. yet we must discover what the Self is if artistry

instrument of expressing

it.

Until that discovery

is

And is

an

made,

the theory had better be dropped.

Our second

2.

criticism of this theory

is

a question

not truer to say that an artist builds up a self in his artistry rather than that he expresses a self

of

fact.

Is it

which already exists? if it is pointless. But

If

the self

is

given, our question

an achievement, there is every reason to think that one of the main springs of artistry is

human

beings for self-realization. The frustrations in the rest of life are all too frequent; in art there is at least a good chance of overcoming them. the desire of

is

One

does not

struggle

may

know

oneself without a struggle and the

be with unformed matter

afc

well as with

of no importance. But in the opponent mastery of whatever opponent one chooses one sees what ideas; the

one

is

ing,

it is

is

good for. Introspection is probably on the side of Hume and if the word "self" is to have some mean-

1

and

A

colleague and friend to

whom

*The

perhaps best used for that integration of desires

it

'Self' is

whom

this

Primer in

MS

was submitted

exceedingly writes in the margin at this point, what one feels oneself to be. Self-expression is the release irritated

of whatever turmoil one happens to be in at the

moment"

A PRIMER FOR

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CRITICS

and behavior which alone can justify self-approbation. In artistry one discovers what one thinks, feels, hopes, for only in artistry can

exteriorize one's inner life

one

Every act which we bound to be the expression of some inner

and thus become conscious of is

perform

it.

be is recompulsion; but what that compulsion may vealed to the agent only in purposive and controlled behavior. If this theory of criticism

(c)

of the

critic

would seem

is

adopted, the task

This

to begin in portraiture.

would be true whether the

adopts the artist's or But from the former he

critic

the observer's point of view.

would be portraying the artist's own vision of himself. This is where "biographical" criticism would fit into our scheme.

Its

difficulties,

however, are not small, for

it

has to progress from the artistry and works of art which presumably require interpretation, to other known facts

about the

come out

artist's life.

in the

Shakespeare;

known

many

Much facts

of the

of an

artist's life

think of

known

does not

what we know of

facts are trivial

and can

be given some relevance only through the biographer's imagination. But were it possible to write accurate biography, a biographical critic could clarify the artist's and the instrumental value of

vision of himself,

from 2.

his point of

The end of If the

end of

own

artistry

view could be determined.

artistry as self-revelation. artistry is self-revelation, its success

naturally be determined

would

by the personal imprint, and such


95

terms as "originality", "novelty", and the like, would become terms of praise. For whatever else the self is, it is

individual and peculiar,

have a striking personality

and the man who is

one who

else, at least in those reactions

discussion. is

bound

is

not

said to

is

like

which are relevant

anyone to the

In this age of autobiography such a theory

have a certain

to

prestige, and, since the psy-

choanalysts have given even to popular discourse a technique for discovering the autobiographical and a vocabulary for symbolizing

it,

bound

it is

wide public

to find

approval, however unsound such approval may 1.

There

no doubt that

is

point of view

artistry

is self-revelation if

from the

be.

observer's

the terms be interpreted

broadly enough. they must be interpreted descriptively, not normatively. In other words, the critic must maintain not First,

that artists ought to reveal their "selves" in their artistry,

but that they do reveal them. For tion,

an

artist

would have

if this

were a

prescrip-

to possess a degree a self-

knowledge which might make his art unnecessary. It would be absurd to criticise a man for not knowing what might prove

destructive to his life-work.

expect him

It

would be

know what

to only highly equally absurd to trained psychologists can find out and that with the In the second place, what might be greatest difficulty. called "objective" artistry could not exist It is true, for

instance, that Flaubert reveals a great deal about himself to his psychoanalytic readers in such objective studies

as

Mme

Bovary and Salammbo; so does Pkto in his

A PRIMER FOR

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CRITICS

he never claims any opinion expressed dialogues, though in them as his own. The very choice of material about

which the author

is

objective

may

reveal something about

to say that these that Flauwritten works should have been egotistically, bert should have thought of himself as being affected by

him.

It

would be nonsense, however,

have taken sides in the drama, every scene in his novels, become indignant at what certain people would have and commendatory o what they would have All one has to do is to compare the diawith those of Berkeley to see what wotild logues of Plato Or the novels of Flaubert with those of resulted. have

called vice

called virtue.

Mme

de

The

Stael.

program of a philosophical

very

novel dialogue or an objective

is

repugnant to egotism.

Second, this theory must permit the artist to possess multiple selves, so that fundamental differences in his various works of art

have to go on

is

may be accounted

the evidence of artistry,

sense to say that the Shakespeare of

for. it

If all

we

would make

King Lear

is

different

from the Shakespeare of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Whatever the corporeal identity between the two men, psychically they would appear at opposite poles. It is soul of a possible that the it

man

was when he was twenty, but

that so static a personality

of it

would be

sixty

the rule.

Third, the theory must grant that an

one

self in

artist

another in what

may

reveal

is popularly naive to hopelessly expect a humor* to be humorous every moment of his sleeping and

called his ist

his artistry,

be that which

seems hardly likely

life.

It is


97

waking

life,

or a tragic writer to live like his tragic

heroes.

The

self

Mark Twain,

of

as

revealed ia his

philosophical meditations, was anything but comic and,

man

with a pessimistic tinge can spend fun of his fellow man, no one was ever making

though only a his life

depressed by Huckleberry Finn. Fourth, the theory must permit "unconscious" selfAs the French philosopher, Brunschvicg, once

revelation. said,

an observer can reconstruct a man's

way he buys a railroad buy

it

the

in that particular

way

in

which he

is

way

only

buying

it.

if

self

man

But the

ticket.

he

The

is

from the

himself can

unaware of

difference

that between the prig and the gentleman; they

is

may

like

both

say and do the same things, but the manner of doing them will reveal each to be what he is. If all this latitude is granted, there can

be

little

objec-

tion to the theory* 2.

Yet there

actual

critical

are certain difficulties in applying

(a) It

may be

as "style".

But

based?

based upon that subtle character

is

known

ambiguous, meaning at supposedly pervasive of all of

"style" again

times that style which

to

For upon what elements of

practice.

artistry is self-revelation

it

is

a given artist's artistry as when we speak of Voltaire's style without mentioning which of his writings is the focus of our attention; or that which

is

peculiar to the artistry

of a single work of art or those of a special period in a man's life. The distinction is important only because

A PRIMER FOR

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CRITICS

of our second restriction above. For

if style is

of self-revelation, a change of style change of self.

But

style,

whether

or the latter sense,

we

are thinking of

the evidence

evidence of a

is

it

in the former

in itself a combination of elements

is

only part of which can be studied objectively.

manner of presenting

begin with, the

artist's

of

also the effect

art,

but

it

is

One may make an

spectator.

of his

artistry

It

his

is,

upon the

objective study of Shake-

metaphors the fawning dog, for metres, and all that will be objectively and very useful. But no one will feel that

speare's rhymes,

instance

his

his

verifiable

Shakespeare's style has been completely studied until effect upon the reader has been presented.

When

to

work

its

been undertaken, one goes beyond of objective truth. For subjective effects of

that task has

the limits

objective facts are in part

a function of the individual.

have seen one musician streaming tears when hearing die second movement of Bach's Italian Concerto and I

another impatiently squirming in his seat and cursing Bach's "dryness". Surely the objective elements in the

two men's experience were no brought to the concert his it

used to be called.

The

different,

but each of them

own

"apperceptive mass**, as subjective contribution can be

eliminated in certain fields of experience we succeed admirably in eliminating it in science. But, were it eliminated in the appreciation of artistry and works of art, there could be no appreciation. It is irrelevant to scientific

not.

truth whether the observer enjoys his experience or

An

amoeba

splits

in two regardless of whether

SCHOOLS OF OOnCISM: INSTRUMENTAL VALUES anyone sees or not.

it

or not, regardless of whether anyone cares

Similarly Shakespeare's sonnet,

When I

plays

to the Sessions of sweet silent thought

summon up remembrance

on the

alliteration of

whether anyone hears it

and

been

99

is

affected

fulfilled.

it

by

Vs"

all

,

.

.

through the octave,

or not. But unless someone hears

it,

Yet the

of things past

its

purpose as

affection

it

has not

artistry

stimulates is

bound

to

vary from person to person. very probable that our judgments on style are largely determined by the subjective element. This is shown by the adjectives usually employed to describe It is

heavy, gay, nervous, brilliant, clear, rhapsodical, emotional. No one could reasonably maintain that a style

it:

could be clear or emotional to no one; that

its

darity or

emotivity exist in the material elements themselves, regardless of observers.

would be

Were

that true, changes in taste

inexplicable.

also be based upon the ideas (b) Self-revelation may or subject-matters with which the artistry is concerned. There are, of course, works of art which have ideas and

subject-matters only metaphorically, witness architecture

although writers like Mr. Lewis Mumford write as if sticks and stones were also words. Hence we shall confine ourselves to the arts of illustration, argumentation,

and

exposition,

none of which need be

Here the aide's assumption

is

literature.

that the choice of (or

interest in) certain ideas or subject matters tic

of certain kinds of selves. This

is

is

symptoma-

the tedbnique of the

A PRIMER FOR

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CRITICS

as well as of the moralizing critic psychoanalytic critic If one makes this assumption, one constructs a self from the ideas and subject-matter and attributes it to the artist.

The

writings of Dr. Joseph Collins

on

modem

authors,

of Frank Harris on Shakespeare, follow this technique. value of its results depend on the value of all bio-

The

and need not be discussed here.

graphical knowledge But the validity of the results depends eral

knowledge of psychic

upon some genimpulses and behavior such

as the Freudian school has attempted to formulate.

tunately for the

critic,

his conclusions.

there

When

tirely in his writings

is

literally

an author

and

is

For-

no way of checking dead his

in highly prejudiced

life is en-

memories

of him written by others. But the biographical critic not unique in his predilection for the unverifiable. 3,

The end of

artistry as the expression or stimulation

is

of

an emotion, I. is

It

goes without saying that

if

the end or artistry

the expression of an emotion, there must be

way

of telling whether an emotion

is

some

being expressed

in artistry or not.

Waiving the James-Lange theory, acwhich the very term "expression" is a mis-

cording to nomer, the normal manner of expressing emotions is by familiar bodily or verbal activity: shouting, laughing, leaping up and down, blushing, cursing, and the like the very antithesis of artistry.

Should one take a poem whicli would be a fair sample of lyric outpouring, like Keats's Ode to a Nightingale,

SCHOOLS OF CRITICISM: INSTRUMENTAL VALUES John Donne's Ectasy, Landor's Mother, wheel, and examine it, one would see were the

artist in reality as

1 cannot in

101

mind my

an instant that

he describes himself

in his

work of

art the person speaking may be substituted for the artist in Landor's poem he would be utterly inca-

pable of speech, to say nothing of writing

intricately elab-

orate verse. If Keats's heart were really aching, and what is more, if his sense were really numbed as though of

hemlock he had drunk or drugged by some

opiate to a

condition of complete forgetfulness, how could he possibly have been in any condition to write the ode which this bit

these

of self-description introduces?

poems

is

The

artistry

in

certainly beautifully adjusted to stimulate

emotions

in a reader, but that does not implv that the himself was feeling the relevant emotions when creating his work of art. On the contrary, Diderot's paraartist

dox of the comedian probably applies to all artists; they must be good students of emotional psychology, but keep a cool head themselves in order to produce their effects. If one say that the artist is expressing emotions "recollected in tranquillity", his psychic processes are then quite

from those of a man simply expressing his emoFor the recollection of an emotion is not the emo-

different tions.

tion recollected, even though the recollection be not emotionally neutral.

or strike at

its

Thus

to express one's anger

object, to

grow

is

red, to stammer.

to shout

But

to

is not to be angry; it witness Coventry Patmore's

recollect one's anger in tranquillity

may

be

to

be

ashamed

obvious recollection of his anger in "My little son who look'd from thoughtful eyes." What seems to be true

A PRIMER FOR

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CRITICS

of such poems is that definite scenes or incidents which to the poet have specific emotive power are recalled and But if the poet has the hope of compresented vividly. to his reader, he is municating the emotions in question his reader's associative processes. evidently at the mercy of One even to-day can by study put oneself back into, for

instance,

Donne's time and

platonistic literature

if

even feel

one has read enough the force of the meta-

fact that one has to go through phors in Ecstacy, but the a course of study in what after all has come to be a philo-

some of the metasophical oddity before understanding one's emotion simply cannot be idenphors, means that with that of the poet. None of this implies that artistry may not relieve artists of specific emotional strains. For to force oneself to tical

verbalize an experience is to purge oneself of cially if it

it,

espe-

One can be evaporated when one

be an unpleasant experience.

pretty sure that one's anger has

can give a dear account of the circumstances which produced it, though there is also the danger that a second anger will attach itself parasitically to the scene which then substituted for the real event. The psychological

is

value of such katharsis at the

same time

go on

their

is

not to be underestimated, but

real nature

is to be understood. It an is attempt to forget by giving a detached and independent life to one's emotions, a life in which they may

its

own way and

leave one in peace. Thus a reach may understanding through fiction, understanding purged of emotion. But the artistry which would novelist

lead to such an end

is

certainly not all artistry.

SCHOOLS OF CRITICISM: INSTRUMENTAL VALUES 2.

If the

tion, the

end of

critic

artistry Is the stimulation of

must

103

an emo-

know what emotion was

first

tended to be stimulated and second what emotion

in-

is ac-

before judging the artistry's instrumental value. tually In most cases the only emotion one knows anything about felt,

is

that felt, for the artists are

nowhere

to

be found and

questioned about their intentions. It is true that sometimes the title or the history of a work of art tell us something about the purpose of its artistry. Sometimes one has journals and other autobiographical records to orient one. But in general one has only one's own response to the artistry

and

if

the emotion felt

is

agreeable, one

concludes to the artist's success.

But there in vacuo.

is

of course no such thing as an emotion in a highly emotional state which

One may be

will color all one's reactions, but the specific emotions

something. One must be pleased or displeased, happy or unhappy, respective to certain specific events. Knight Dunlap has explained the

must attach themselves

to

matter very clearly in an article called "Are Emotions 2 The names which we give to Teleological Constructs?" the emotions, he points out, are the names of "situations in which we are emotional". They signify our judg-

ments of call

situations.

Thus

in a given situation

we may

our emotional state "fear" or "anger" or "resent"grief", depending upon our estimate of what

ment" or is

going to happen or is happening. But without such an The emotion stimuis no specific emotion.

estimate there *

American Journal of Psychology, 1932 (ao. 44) t pp. 572-576.

8

A PRIMER FOR

104

kted by a work of art mate we make of the called

u

is

CRITICS

upon the estipurpose. Hence the so-

thus dependent

artist's

bad drawing" of some of our contemporary

artists

arouses amusement, reverence, disgust, resentment, de-

pending upon whether design or

artistic

Rousseau was childlike

we

think

it

the result of deliberate

To

incompetence.

judge that Henri

being deliberately childlike or naturally

makes a world of difference to the emotion

we feel upon seeing his paintings. The theory, moreover, clarifies the problem of thetic emotion/*

It is self-evident

"aes-

that most adults do

not feel the same emotion at seeing things done on the stage or in a novel or picture as they would feel at seeing those things done in real

Thus we

life.

see

Lady Mac-

beth planning a murder, if not with equanimity, certainly without thoughts of interfering. As adults we esti-

mate the

situation as

sible real scene.

what

it

a

fictitious

Our emotion

would be

is

representation of a postherefore different from

in real life. Children

do not estimate the

situation correctly,

and stupid adults and hence shout

names and hurl vegetables.

The

theory also explains

why

it is

foolish to speak

of

purely "intellectual" artistry. All artistry requires thought at some time in the artist's career; it is the result of learning, not of instinct. intellectual is that

A

The

whose

artistry

which

rules are not

is

called purely to the critic

known

fugue by Bach would be a good example of what

called purely intellectual artistry.

is

But when one knows

something about counterpoint,, one's excitement at hearing it unfold is as deep as die excitement of a boy at

SCHOOLS OF CRITICISM: INSTRUMENTAL VALUES a baseball game.

105

But a baseball game, too, is a coldly one who knows nothing about

intellectual experience to

required for an adequate estimate of any situation and since every estimate is capable of generating some emotion, it is certain that there is no it.

Knowledge

such thing as

is

artistry

which

emotionally neutral to

is

all

observers. It

should be noted in

this

connection that the emotion

stimulated by a given process of artistry may change as one lives with the work of art in which it terminates.

Thus

there

is

no saying a

priori

of art inherently stimulates. dramas still move us, but they

what emotion any work

The move

old-fashioned melous to laughter rather

tears. Everyone goes through a stage at which even Massenet's Elegie profoundly stirs him and some emerge from it into a stage where it moves them to re-

than to

vulsion.

How

is

one to

tell

which

is

the proper emotion ?

Massenet undoubtedly wanted the music to be admired; but what have his desires to do with it? If one assumes that the right emotion to be stimulated

be liked or approved, then Massenet's

is

one which will

artistry

has been

unsuccessful.

In actual practice the critic who believes in and applies of criticism, maintains that the emotion stimu-

this type

him by a given process of artistry is that intended But this is of course unwarranted. Each artist. the by critic wilL estimate the artistic situation in his own way lated in

and the emotions he mate.

feels will

Consequently the

critic,

be colored by that estiinstead of writing some-

thing objectively verifiable, will indulge in autobiography

A PRIMER FOR

106

CRITICS

be more of a revelation of him-

and

his criticism will

self

than of either the

artist

or the

work of

art.

This

was frankly admitted by Anatole France, one of the most eminent critics of this type. 4.

The end tion

of artistry as the expression

or communica-

of ideas.

There are probably not many

critics

who would

that all artistry exists for the expression or tion of ideas, though intellectualists

assert

communica-

might maintain that

the "higher" forms of art have this as their end. Certain critics, however, of the communistic persuasion, to-

gether with others of a "humanistic" bent, spend their time pointing out the ideas which they believe to be expressed or implied in artistry, without committing themselves to the theory that the expression or communication of ideas is the sole purpose of the artist and their discovery the sole purpose of the spectator. 1. It must, of course, be granted that there is an art of dealing with ideas which, according to the books on

two forms, exposition and argumentation. of artistry expounding ideas and proving (or disproving) them is pretty well understood and its instrurhetoric, takes

The

mental value consists obviously in its clarity and crediBut surely no critic would maintain that every bility. building and dance and piece of music are expository

and argumentative in the

Though

it is

true that

literal

when a

sense of those words.

critic

denounces a paint-

an expression of the ideals of the bourgeoisie and a building as the expression of modern capitalism, it is ing as

SCHOOLS OF CRITICISM: INSTRUMENTAL VALUES hard to see what he means

if it is

not that.

107

Certainly

if ideas are something to be asserted or denied, all artistry is that

of exposition and argumentation.

If this intellectualistic theory

low

be

true, it

ought to

that the instrumental value of any artistry

we have ideas

which

bolically

and

as

success in clarifying an idea 01 con-

said, in its

vincing us of

fol-

lies,

its truth.

But we

find in

many of

the arts

can be said to be there only symThe cathedral of

at best

in the obscurest fashion,

Chartres contains a certain amount of symbolical sculpand indeed the gross outline of the building as

ture

had a kind of

originally planned

even

if

not so

much be

lectualistic theory it

as used to

would be much

true, it is

religious symbolism,

be believed.

If the intel-

a very bad building, for

clearer to say, for instance, in so

many

words that the teachings of the Synagogue were dying when the Church arose than to put scenes from the Old Testament where the setting sun would fall upon them and scenes from the New Testament towards the East.

That many be good symbolism but

A

is is

not dear exposi-

who

does not possess the key would person have no way of understanding it. Must we then conclude tion.

that to such a person the building we know that most people those dral included

is

without value? Yet

who admire

the cathe-

are relatively ignorant of the lesser as

well as the greater subtleties of Thirteenth Century iconography. 2.

arts

At

the same time

it

must be admitted that

certain

which are not inherently expository or argumentative An orator, by an

can be used to persuade or convince.

A PRIMER FOR

108

CRITICS

called "the emotions", can appeal to what is sometimes when he handle a crowd as will, reasoning might leave

same crowd

the

inert.

The

martial courage of soldiers

can be more effectively stimulated by a brass band than congregation by a clear exposition of "war-aims". stained finds organ, incense, glass, vestments, candles,

A

chants,

more persuasive than

theological discussion.

an idea artistry assumes the truth of tional

we might

and

is '

call its

Such

its falsity

upon its meaning, enhances the emobound to surround any idea, which

instead of dwelling

aura which

or

'significance".

The

significance of

an

independent of its truth and has no logical status whatsoever. But there are some ideas whose truth is so

idea

is

one needs no argument to suport them. "My country right or wrong," "Give all to love/' "Death rather than dishonor/* are ideas which are pretty firmly firmly held that

rooted in occidental soil and appear persistently in occidental poetry. Nobody feels the need of debating the question involved in them; everybody accepts them as part of his deepest beliefs. But everyone also feels the need of being assured once in a while that to believe in is comforting. And there are always plenty of and musicians to poets provide the proper emotional atmosphere. The same thing is true of the ideas of which

them

we

Our

our

argue no fine points; but by presenting ideas in a concrete manifestation and in the proper emotional haze, they keep alive disapprove.

caricatures,

satire,

our distrust of those ideas, to say nothing of our hatred who believe in them. Thus conviction can be readied through significance as well as through meaning for people

SCHOOLS OP otrnciSM: INSTRUMENTAL VALUES

109

arts whose native purpose is neither argumentative nor expository actually help us reach it, It is presumably in this way that most o the arts can

and

be shown to contain elements o

propaganda and by of art works not as symbols of artistry interpreting in which or of civilization the the they occur, patrons who ordered them, or of the social institution or class to which

one can find evidence of ideas

their patrons belonged,

in all

works of

artist's

mind

art.

By

the fallacy of putting into the

sometimes his so-called "unconscious mind"

motives which,

if

they existed, could reasonably be which have been thus dis-

expected to explain the ideas

covered, one can convict the artist himself of propaganda and his artistry of being its instrument.

From

the observer's point of view, the intellectualist theory demands not that the artist express ideas, but that the spectator find ideas expressed through the artis3.

try.

Keats's

Ode

each showing

to

a Grecian Urn

arrested

movement.

cludes that beauty in life

is

a series of pictures this one con-

From

is transitory,

that only in art

and made permanent. Keats

does not say this in the poem; his artistry leads one to say it for him. thought is thus evoked in us from our perception of the way in which the poem is constructed. It is in this

can

it

be fixed

A

way

that sentimental travellers find sermons in ruins

and

before the Coliseum in the moonlight and meditate upon the Fall of Empires or journey to are enabled to

sit

Egypt and see a moral lesson in the pyramids.

We might

call this the hieroglyphic theory of art. Pater's famous paragraph on the Mona Lisa and Raskin's description

A PRIMER FOR

110

CRITICS

of Hunt's Awakening Conscience are very much this sort of thing and there is no doubt that their popularity is attributable to the friendly glow which thoughts, even

when

irrelevant, stir

tern man.

This

is

Wesof Mr. Michael Gold

in the vaso-motor system of

up

the pleasure

idleness attributing Gertrude Stein's style to capitalistic

and of a philosophically minded reader of Proust seeing in his technique the

A

who

person

is

metaphysics of Bergson. at all sensitive to other values

bound

to

be

but

is

aevertheless legitimate.

it

sisted,

irritated

works of

found in them,

by

art are

this

way of handling For, as

mukivalent and

absurd to deny

it is

its

artistry,

we have

if this

is

in-

value

presence.

is

One

can, however, legitimately protest against the false psy-

chology which this theory.

of his

artistry

he can not

is

attributed to the artist as a result of

He

cannot be held responsible for the effect on other men's intellects, especially since

the course of social developments and the peculiar intellectual fashions which are bound to rise

and

foretell

fall

with them. There

ple to project into the

world

their

is

a -tendency for peo-

own

states

of mind

Bacon pointed out

and the invention of the popular metaphor, "the Unconscious", has been a great help to them. We shall examine the notion of unconscious moas

tivation

Wow;

we

simply enter a

artistry as the expression

of impressions.

for the time being

caveat 5.

The end of

The is

theory which

we

shall discuss

under

this

heading

that of Benedetto Croce, although Croce himself

makes

SCHOOLS OF CRIUQ&M: INSTRUMENTAL VALUES no

distinction

of works of 1)

between the values of

artistry

ill

and those

art.

Human

beings, according- to this philosopher, have

two kinds of knowledge: knowledge of individual things and that of general properties. The first would be knowledge

of

"this

table,"

"that landscape",

"my Grand-

Dame

mother/' "Notre

de Paris," which appear in the of Such form images. images need not be visual; they be may auditory, olfactory, presumably of any sensory type, so long as they are always concrete.

The

impres-

sions of these individuals are called "intuitions".

The second kind of knowledge "circularity," "justice", "goodness,"

is

that of "redness/

1

which are often to be

sure incorporated in individual things, but do not on that account lose their generality. Thus a wheel's circularity is

what

it

shares with all things which have a centre

a circumference the centre.

wheel,

points on which

are equidistant particular wheel, in so far as it

all

Any

is just like

any other circular object;

its

and

from is

a

circularity

from everything else in the universe as its position in space and time can, for any number of things can be circular, but only one

could never, for instance, differentiate

it

thing can be in this place at this moment. Such characteristics of things are not in the form of images; they are logical

and

a

we may

circle

intellectual,

and though when we think of

see a certain imaginary shape before our

eyes, yet no geometer would confuse that shape with the circle he talks about as a geometer. Ideas of this

sort are called

2)

All

by Croce "concepts".

men by

nature possess the powers of both

A PRIMER FOR

112

CRITICS

and conception. But a man who devotes himself to conceptual knowledge and has great skill in acquirwill be a logician and scientist. ing it and organizing it other the on An artist, hand, is given over to intuitive intuition

knowledge.

He

is

interested in the concrete

and

qualita-

and quantitative. But all for Croce and the only difference be-

tive rather than in the abstract

intuition

is artistry

tween an

artistic

having

genuis and a man not recognized as and complexity of ability is the number

artistic

the genius's intuitions. Thus an inartistic man will see a single flower or a bouquet as a qualitative unit; the

a whole landscape as an intuited organic inartistic man will intuit one moment of

artist will take in

structure.

An

a person's

life;

a Shakespeare will see the whole life

as one.

But to have such

The

story.

intuitive

other half

is its

only half the expression in artistry. Croce

knowledge

is

appears to believe that the intuition expresses itself, so that

it

would be impossible for a man having an adequate

intuition of anything to be frustrated in his expression of it. Similarly in the field of concepts, one cannot fail

to express ideas which are clear

and meaningful; it is the obscure and nonsensical thoughts which find no out-

Hence the critic can focus his attention on nothing but the work of art itself, the values of artistry being let.

excluded almost by definition. When the attention is on the work of art, the critic then has an intuition of it;

he

sees the unity of a

reach *

It

it

drama 01 a symphony; he does not

1 through analysis or reason.

may be

useful to give a schematic picture of Croce's philosophy,

SCHOOLS OF CRITICISM: INSTRUMENTAL VALUES 3)

of

it

Such a conception of the critic's function makes a kind of artistry, the aim of which is a unified

expression of the impression

of

such a task,

if

he wishes, but one might

mately to his thinking

engaging

icism

made upon him by

the

work

Surely no one could object to anyone's attempting

art.

when

113

in.

it

object legiti-

the only type of criticism worth

One becomes

less

disposed to accept

the question of the means of expressing one's is

raised.

After

all, critical

essays

it

crit

even Croce's

be written in words and will contain perforce a have certain number of common nouns, adjectives, and verbs. to

But such symbols are by their very nature conceptual and come necessarily from the domain of logic and sciBut logic and science are concerned, according to Croce, with the abstract and quantitative, not with the ence.

concrete and qualitative. showing the

To

the extent, then, that

relations of the various types of

what he

calls

critical

"spiritual

expression." Spiritual expression

Theoretical (knowledge)

Practical (action)

Understanding the world

Manipulating the world

I

!

Intuitive-

Conceptual

l.

I

For individual

For universal

ends

ends

Economics

Morality

A PRIMER FOR

114 essays

make

CRITICS

use of abstract and quantitative terms, they

works of

with inevitably fail to deal adequately since a string of proper

would not make

nouns and

sense,

possible, except possibly

art.

their equivalents

no adequate

criticism

But

simply

would be

a sigh of relief, tears of ecstasy,

would

hearty laughter, which, saying nothing logical, artistic express something Croce of course not only admits but insists

upon the

dumb

without conception, just as without intuition, to paraphrase a conception is empty famous apothegm of Kant's. Similarly knowledge is helpfact that intuition is

without action and action chaotic without knowledge. At the same time everything cannot be everything else;

less

some

distinctions are

of the two

fields

made

to last,

of knowledge

is

and

the confusion

if

taken seriously, then the

be worthless.

preliminary distinction has turned out to

And we

On

where we

are back

the other

hand

started from.

if artistry is

ing man's intuitions and nothing

be

the theory

if

of aiticism

But the tion,

is

which

else

be meaningful

express-

it

should

then the function artist's

impressions.

was supposed to perform that functo have no need of criticism. The

artistry itself

and therefore

would thus appear

sole value being the dignity

critics

medium of

the clarification of the

theory of Croce Its

to

is

a

it

to

be

by investing them with the rank of B.

self -refuting,

tends to confer

upon

artists.

Utilitarianism.

Utilitarian critics seek to discover not the instrumental

value of

artistry,

but that of the work of

art.

Their

SCHOOLS OF CEinCISM: INSTRUMENTAL VALUES

115

fundamental question is. What is the work of art for? If the answer is, For nothing, then the work of art is condemned. But since some works of art have been de-

made

liberately

"All art

to be

good

utterly useless"

is

for nothing

and

that to have instrumental value

since is

witness Wilde's,

many people

feel

worse than to have

terminal value, utilitarian critics like to point out that

even when an artist has no conscious purpose, he has an unconscious purpose, so that the notion of creating utterly useless works of art is an illusion. Just

what an unconscious purpose

is

cannot be

fied without a digression into psychoanalytic theory.

cannot be

fair

clari-

We

within the limits of this short book to

forms of psychoanalytics, but in general

we may

all

say that

all psychoanalysts believe that the contents of the unconscious are put there deliberately. It contains those ex-

periences which

we wish

to forget for

one reason or

hurt our pride, because they another, g., because they are socially reproved, because they are dirty, and so on. If e.

we had no

motives for forgetting things,

we

should theo-

remember everything which ever entered our experience. Nor would the attention which we first paid

retically

to the experience its

when

it

was

fresh have any effect

upon

retention in our consciousness, since presumably the attention we pay to things depends upon the which we have in them and things which do

amount of interest

not interest us

we

wilfully neglect.

But the complete repression of experiences is difficult and indeed impossible. They push against the forces which hold them down the Censor and escape in dis-

A PRIMER FOR

116 guise.

Thus a man

and

escapes as

CRITICS

represses his anal-erotic interests, but they escape as an interest in money, either as miserliness or as prodigality. Or a man represses his homosexuality it

The Censor

an

interest in football or in education.

apparently does not worry

escapes if the disguise it has to be convincing

much about

these

To whom

is

convincing enough.

is

a point frequently left obscure

by the psychoanalytic theorist. Must It be convincing to the individual's Censor or to the Censors of other people?

One

of the best disguises is art. Artistic symbolism whose real meaning one is permits one to do things of unaware and to avoid unpleasant comment from one's associates.

Thus Leonardo's incestuous love of

his

mother

could be symbolized by his Virgin of the Rocks and only Dr. Freud be any the wiser. What satisfaction an individual derives

from symbolically gratifying a know he feels, must be left

desire

which he does not

psychiatrist to explain.

But that the work of

art

symbolic gratification and the artistry leading to stitute for the activity

doubted, as far as I

The upon

to the is

it

such

a sub-

leading to literal gratification,

is

know, by no psychoanalyst.

interpretation of the

one's theory of

what

symbolism depends of course is

repressed, or to use the

words of one

analyst, of the "Ego-ideal", If one believes in the universality of the Oedipus-complex, one naturally

will interpret the

symbolism

in its terms.

If

one believes

in the universality of the Inferiority release will

But sion,

Complex, then its be seen to determine one's choice of symbols.

whatever one's peculiar theory of represthree cardinal points will be assumed: (1) the re-

in general,


117

tention of infantile impressions, (2) their causal efficacy in adult behaviour, (3) the recapitulation of the race's history in the psychic history of the individual

psychic

The

three facts for which these phrases are really an attempted explanation rather than description, are (l)

that under determinable conditions certain events, be-

lieved to have been forgotten, are remembered.

remembering seems

to

imply a retention of

its

Since

subject-

matter, the metaphor of the mind as a receptacle is invented and the forgotten things are said to be stored in

its

down

deepest portion, as if consciousness could not peer into its own lowest depths. The causal efficacy of

the retained infantile impressions corresponds to the fact (2) that certain adults act inappropriately as if they were children? to stimuli. If they were responding as children, their behaviour

would be

explicable; therefore

they are acting as children. But since the stimuli of their

childhood have disappeared, they "unconsciously" interpret the present stimuli as the symbols of their past. By

a comparative study of the works of art of primitive peoples, it has been said (3) that children use primitive symbols, whereas adults use those of their own civilization.

Thus the

child participates in (or reproduces) the

mind of the savage, whereas the adult retains the childishsavage mind below the level of consciousness. Out of this mixture of observed fact and metaphor arises the doctrine of sublimation which itself corresponds to a further fact: that people are

happy when not

satisfying

what some

school of psychology believes to be the unique source of

human

happiness

love,

self-glorification,

domination,

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118

CRITICS

This normally should have led to the conclusion that there Is no unique road to happiness. But because etc.

of the obsession with unity, diverse motives had to be made one and to do that required the mechanics of symbolism and of sublimation.

The upshot of

it is

that an

unconscious purpose turns out to be the purpose theoretattributed to an act which is interpreted as a sym-

ically

bolic representation (sublimation)

The

of repressed desires.

desires repressed are determined according to the

demands of the various psychological schools. If a work of art is the satisfaction of such unconscious will be known not by observation purposes, the purposes but by theory and the utility of the work of art will

be

its

success in substituting itself for the original

or

unaware by gratification. definition of his unconscious purposes, he can at most tell us whether he is happy or not and the critic will then announce that his happiness comes from his works of But

normal

art

and

will

since the artist

is

presumably declare than good. Good, howbad sense, for it would be better, I sup-

ever, only in a

pose, at least ethically, for the artist not to have any

which required repression, that is, to be cut on the pattern of other people. Yet if his desires are as Freud seems to believe and are best satisfied desires

bolically, then the justified

The

only symproduction of works of art may be

even ethically. very nature of an unconscious purpose

argument about

its

of the psychoanalytic

identity superfluous. critic is entirely

The

makes

function

an essay in

transla-

SCHOOLS OF CRITICISM: INSTRUMENTAL VALUES don. But

all

119

purposes are admittedly not unconscious and

utilitarians frequently are interested in those

above the threshold.

Unfortunately

the instrumental value of works of

when

which are

they discuss

they do not state that all works of art are useful art,

whether they mean all should be useful. Both points are sometimes made, the latter to condemn some works of art which have not the utility which the critic thinks that they ought to clearly

or that

have, the former to point out that some works of art have uses which their makers did not suspect. The utilities

of works of

art

which are most widely discussed

and

they alone need concern us here are those of intellectual propaganda, of moral edification, of making money. 1.

Intellectualistic utilitarianism.

From

point of view the intellectualistic utilitarian argues two theses at least (a) that works of art serve (or should serve) to clarify the artist's ideas; the

artist's

(b) that they are useful in convincing other people of the truth of his ideas. that

true or false,

is

we mean by an

idea something of then every work art would have If

known as a message, a message presumably from the artist either to himself or to others. That nothing is

what

is

more useful for the clarification of one's ideas than writing them out must be an elementary truth. The kind of interior conversation

which

is

thought certainly shows both

strength and its weakness when spread out on paper. One may become more persuaded of the truth of one's

its

own 8

ally

by trying to persuade others of it and occasionone is the right kind of person one may become

ideas if

9

A PRIMER FOR

120

more persuaded of of their

CRITICS

their banality, their triviality,

even

falsity.

second alleged by-product of the others. For of the of art persuasion purpose of works forensics have a reflexive nature; argument directed at

Such

utility

may be a

others rebounds

in his

own

lies,

upon oneself and, like a child believing the debater who makes the worse appear

the better reason soon .

is

ter reason is the worse. intellectualistic,

correct

is,

If all art

is

at least symbolically

the hieroglyphic method of

one and the

or a sonata

himself convinced that the bet-

first

What

criticism is

Ae

a picture question to ask of even

does this

mean?

But the only way in most cases of determining what a work of art means is to decide what it means to oneself is

and

the practice

on the ridge

of

meaning to the artist. And such of aides. Thus the scores of dissertations

attribute that

true

down

meaning of Hamlet. From Goethe and Coleto Mr. T. S. Eliot a series of interpretations

this tragedy

have been written, each different and

most in contradiction with the

others.

It is

obvious that

no one person could have consciously intended a set of inconsistent ideas. But what way have we of verifying any one

critic's

expounding that

interpretation as the true one,

meaning intended by the

i.

artist?

e.,

as

Here

die point of view of the spectator is merged with that of the artist and the most intellectualistic critic remains as enclosed within himself as an impressionist. There is of course an art of exposition and one of argumentation. And it is normal that a person who practices them does so to communicate some of* his ideas to

SCHOOLS OF CmiCISM: INSTRUMENTAL VALUES

121

other people. The instrumental values involved in such cases are unquestionably the ensuing clarification or conviction. But it is only the superstitious regard for unity

which makes

all

works of

art expository or argumenta-

tive.

From

the spectator's point of view any work of art

may

become useful for spreading his ideas. The use of familiar quotations often removed from their context a case in point. The quoter feels that the attribution of his own ideas to someone else will give them added is

When

a college president quotes Milton, one be sure that Milton could not have dreamed of such

weight.

may

a use of his words, but that

is

an

irrelevant consideration

in the eyes of the college president What he wants is a quotation to give augmented prestige to his words, nor

would

it

him

occur to

so aptly," he

puts it weakness.

is

that

acknowledging

Such a use of works of quire no extended

when he

says,

his

"As Milton

own

intellectual

art is familiar

But

discussion.

it

enough to rewould be absurd

to say that .the success a spectator has in utilizing other

men's pictures, poems, houses, is the sole measure of their value. Even if the Coliseum is a hieroglyph of the decay of

terrestrial greatness, the

Romans

neither built

it

to

turn into a ruin nor for Gibbon to ruminate upon, nor did any of them except possibly the Stoics think that

the Empire ever would decay. Yet its value to Gibbon was the value of a ruin and of a symbolic ruin, just as

the value of the

Mona

Female Mystery^-in both

Lisa

was

that of the

a stimulus to

fine writing.

.to

cases

Pater

A PRIMER FOR

122

CRITICS

Moralistic utilitarianism.

2.

"Utilitarianism"

hedonism as usually attributed to

is

having a good time have if calculating the happiness other people might are not using the word in that they were like you.

the British understand

that

it

is,

We

sense.

For us moralistic utilitarianism means the point of view of Plato in the Republic, of Ruskin in Modern Painters

and in

Tolstoi in

his lectures

What

is

on the

Pre-Raphaelites,

Art? Presumably

it is

of view of the Communists, Fascists, and Nazis. of art are bound believe; why not

have an ethical

to

and of

also the point

effect,

Works

such people

they have the best one? has some moral effect it would

insist that

That every work of be foolish to deny.

art

Few

pictures,

poems, novels, statues, move us to pleas-

leave us utterly indifferent and if they

ure or pain, they have to some degree, however slight,

changed our way of living. It is true that familiarity with a given work of art even if it be of a highly produces a kind of emotional neujust as drugs taken repeatedly in the same dose

aphrodisiac nature trality,

may

lose their effectiveness.

On

the other hand,

some

people never grow weary of the same piece of music or the same picture, and the pleasures of recognition seem to outweight the pains of

probability that

works of

boredom. If there art

do have an

only be called moral,

is

a great

effect that

can

why not agree with the moralistic utilitarians that their morality should be the kind of which

one can wholeheartedly approve?


123

world were agreed on the most desirable sysethics, there would be no disagreement upon the

If the

tem of

most desirable works of believe that if his

sufficient value, a spectator

an edifying

know

too

effect

little

be sure that an occur.

Will a

upon

tragic

might

might

it

has

have

insist that it also

we

Furthermore,

spectators.

psychology at present to

reasonably predicted will actually

effect

mother's husband or,

artist

art is uplifting to him,

human

about

man

But whereas an

art.

work of

seeing if

Hamlet

he have that

desire to kill his

desire, will

Hamlet's

Will a man reading impelled to bury some

end prevent the murder?

Mark

Antony's funeral oration feel know as a matter of fact that the Caesar?

We

effect

of some moral propaganda is disgust or hilarity rather than emulation. It is conceivable that we could find out

most successful technique for making people moral through works of art and practice it. But all we have the

discovered from moralistic utilitarianism

an

is

that there

moral propaganda of which the various

art of

may be made

species.

The

practice of a Tolstoi

is

say that only those works of art which stimulate

accept his ethics for the

is

arts

to

to

human brotherhood But does that mean more

moment

are "truly" great works of art.

than that he chooses to use the words "truly great" for those works of art of which he approves ? So Mr. Eliot at the present time seems to feel that

to

win people over

Church and

Dante and justified.

to

to retain

what he

them

in

God

believes to

its

historically artists

not able

be the Catholic

fold without the help of

he is perhaps have had other aims in

certain other poets. Historically

But

is

A PRIMER FOR

124

CRITICS

whose value they have believed as fervently as Mr. Eliot does in his. Mr. Eliot has a degree o respect for was unhappily ignorant o Sophocles and Sophocles Rome's schism from the Church of Henry VIII Must

we

give

up Sophocles

must we accept Mr.

if

we

keep Dante and, if so, why while declining to share

Eliot's fervor

Plato's?

In spite of all this there is no denying the necessity of the moral criticism of works of art. If the

contemplation by an artist of his own works and by a spectator of an artist's works lead to results of which disapproves, the dominant class will inevitably condemn the works of art in question as

dominant

the

class

"leftist deviation".

to put

its

is

is

dominant

condemnation into

effect,

has the power as it has in Russia

class

do so without argument. The first that qf choosing a moral code. The second

and Germany, question

If the

it

will

that of determining to

what extent works of

art

are not ostensibly of the art of moral suasion

genuine

effect

upon

morality.

The

third, as

we

which

have a

have sug-

might be that of constructing a society in which the desire to make and enjoy works of art would either not be felt or satisfied without congested earlier in this primer,

flict

3.

Economic

utilitarianism.

The most comprehensible form of which views the work of has to

sell

utilitarianism is that

a product which the artist and which the spectator buys either as an inart as

vestment or as a symbol of his wealth.

Work of art

have


125

always been a commodity and aides would do well to observe not only how artistry changes in response to economic demand but how works of art themselves change.

new building material, the invention of or automobile, the switch locomotive type

The

discovery of a

of a

new

from house

to apartment-dwelling, geographical exploraof the bourgeoisie, and so on, have not only rise the tion, influenced the subject-matter of many works of art, but

even their form. tion to see

how

It

takes

no unusually

creative imagina-

a book like Oliver Twist would have been

impossible in 15th century

of Rivera would

still

London

or

how

the frescoes

be impossible in 20th century Berlin.

The economic part of life is probably the one feature of human affairs which is constantly changing and changing not merely superficially but profoundly. In New York Qty one can still find people believing in the religion of the Congo, but none who earns his living as one does in the Congo. musicians,

The numbej of writers, actors, who can exercise

painters, architects, their artistry in

an

economic vacuum must be negligible. And even those who can without starving to death can only because the economic structure of society

Yet important

as it

is

is.

as the economic utility of works of art

not everything. There is an art of making one's living by making works of art, moral edification or of intellecjust as there is an art of

is

to both artist

and

tual propaganda,

spectator,

and the

it is

fact that a

strumental value in one of these

work of

art

fields neither

has

in-

entails

the presence nor the absence of instrumental value in any of the others. All the values may be harmonious and

V.

SCHOOLS OF CRITICISM: TERMINAL VALUES. Tenninal values, like instrumental, may reside in both either artistry and in works of art and they may be present

from the

The

or the spectator's point of view. terminal value of artistry from the artist's point

of view is

artist's

It is

it.

doing

artist's satisfaction in his

the

is

obviously not his satisfaction in the

product in which his in fact,

most

work

artistry is

But since much

eventuates.

unobserved,

it is

possible for a critic to verify anything

He may

work, while he

practically im-

he says about

it.

some psychological theory about the "joys of creation" and most critics who discuss the matter usually have one and therefore he can give a long theoretical discussion of what satisfaction the artist must have had in his artistry. But such theory is by its of course have

very nature highly speculative.

Where

artistry is observable, its

the

artist's

the

artist's

because he If

terminal value

from

point of view might be inferred either from behaviour as when one says a dog is happy is

wagging

his tail

or from verbal report. the former method

we really had a science of behaviour,

would prevent critics from attributing to artists the pleasure or the terminal value they experience themselves. For since part of the instance

is

to

make

some arts dancing, for the observer feel as if the artist

artistry in

126


127

were enjoying himself, one would need a real science not to make naive mistakes. One naturally

enjoys sing-

ing or piano playing or speech-making more if one thinks the artist is having a good time than if one thinks he is miserable,

and that

dancers distend their art is not

no doubt the reason why even toemouths in a wide grin, though their

is

one calculated to make the performer even

physically comfortable.

The

question of the terminal value of artistry from the artists point of view becomes serious when it is

emphasized to the point of being considered the focus of all aesthetics, as it tends to be in writers like Croce,

Only a saint could enjoy a picture for the sole reason that he believed the artist to have found terminal value in painting

it.

So hermetic a work of

art,

inevitably

unintelligible pediaps even to its creator would simply evidence that a certain individual had found be historical

great value in a certain performance.

Whether so highly

individualistic satisfactions should be. encouraged is per-

haps a problem for the social ethicist, not for the aesthetic critic. And yet if works of art exist solely for the

which creating them gives to the artist, somewhatever his technical name must answer the

satisfaction

one

question of why society should tolerate them. For if the work of art in which artistry terminates

not to be considered, then

artistry

is

becomes a non-social

and, one might even say, an anti-social activity. Artists for the last hundred years or so have in fact been encour-

aged to think of themselves as individuals owing nothing whatsoever to their fellows and being owed support and,

A PRIMER FOR

128

what this

CRITICS

more extravagant, admiration by them. Whether has made them any happier than they were when is

they took orders and behaved as artisans

is

at least

an

question, and many people will feel that it should in the negative. Such is the status of the answered be problem if works of art are left out of the discussion.

open

If,

however, one considers them, then

that artistry for less

its

own

artistry for

its

own

may One may

The

legitimately argue that

sake will inevitably result in tolerat-

ing every aberration of the elation.

very possible

be either socially value-

sake

or actually harmful.

it is

human mind

as a

unique rev-

1

terminal value of artistry from the observer's point

emphasized in that kimd of criticism which is purely formal. When a critic enjoys an artist's technique, regardless of subject-matter, he is enjoying the vestiges of view

of

is

artistry.

But since the values found do not

kind from those found in works of art as units

differ in

for in

it is through the work of art that the artistry not seen, through watching the artist at work we

most is

shall

cases

lump them together and

treat

them under the head-

ing of Formalism.

formalism.

The word "form" its

is

notoriously ambiguous, but since

ambiguities are relatively innocuous,

we

need not

list

*

; Personally, the writer of these lines thinks that such tolerance is better than the attitude of people who call everything unusual insane.

might be possible to have a society in which great personal differences could exist without serious conflict. But it would not, to be sure, be It

either

Mr. Cram's Xlllth century or

Hitler's

Germany.

SCHOOLS OF OtlTICISM: TERMINAL VALUES

them

here.

What we

require

which will be applicable to

a definition of "form"

is

all

give plausibility to criticism

129

the arts and which will

which

"form" a

finds in

terminal value.

A

terminal value must contain

it is

own

justification in

need not be discovered by everyone. Moreover,

It

itself.

its

possible

and,

I

should imagine, usual

for several

terminal values to be resident in the same thing, so that argument may arise over the "real" terminal value. The real terminal value will

by

its

be that which

is

liked or approved

discoverer.

modem

theoretical science

have been in the direction of finding a

simplicity of struc-

The

great achievements of

ture underlying the complexity of appearance. To take the best known example, the truth of Copemican astrono-

my is not so much its fidelity to observed fact as its Whether one

fidelity

a Copemican or a Ptolemaist, what one sees in the heavens is points of

to methodological rules.

is

in different positions from night Ptolemaic astronomy plotted the positions of the moving points in relation to the earth; Copemican

light

some of which are

to night.

in relation to the sun.

The former was

forced to con-

clude that planets, after going for a certain part of the year in one direction, then went backwards for a while, after latter

which they continued in their original direction. The met no such obligation, and since Copernicus as-

sumed

for he could not have observed this

that the

"natural" course of events was always simple, he accepted that formula which did not involve the retrogression of the planets.

Modern astronomy and much of

A PRIMER FOR

130

modern

CRITICS

of Copernicanism, physics are developments

and

there has been in these fields a constant simplification of structure which has been expressed as a constant extension

or generalization

No

of the same laws.

one would deny that the value of such studies

An

terminal.

Einstein

tidal calendars;

universe.

he

is

is

not interested in navigation or

is

interested in the structure of the

This structure cannot, however, be other than

the description of complex appearances as simple realities. The perception of the possibility of such a description the peculiarity of scientific genius and the enjoyment of its discovery is the terminal value of science. is

An

exact analogy exists in art. Artistry

posive behaviour.

When

of behaviour to some

is

directed pur-

one perceives the congruence no matter what one has

''rule"

|>erceived artistic form.

Thus

if

one hears in a piece of

music the movement from tonic to subdominant to dominant to tonic, one perceives a certain rule working itself out in the sounds. If one perceives the growing decay of

the Bishop on Nepenthe in South Wind, one perceives a certain rule working itself out in the development of the novel.

These are of course very simple

cases,

but

simplicity should not conceal the principle which they illustrate: that wherever there is perceptible relevance in artistry or works of art, there is the realization of form. their

That such discovery is valuable needs no proof. The history of science shows how keen is man's enjoyment of the knowledge of order and indeed we usually mean no more by "understanding" something than seeing the rule.

The

rule may, as

we

say,

by anything expressible in a


Thus when we enjoy

formula.

a novel,

we

1J1

the "brutal realism" of

are enjoying a relation which

we

are actually seeing between fiction and fact.

think

we

On

the

when we are puzzled by atonal music, we say sounds like mere noise. What we should say is

other hand, that

it

that

we have

failed to discover any plan or pattern or

purpose emerging out of the sounds. It is not enough to know that a rule out; one must actually perceive

it

working itself working. That is the is

between a book of theoretical physics and a book of poetry. In the former one has all the rules difference

but does not see them embodied in anything; in the latter one has form and matter united, and- one has no more learned the whole story if one has abstracted only the form, than one has if one has abstracted only the matter.

As

kinds of form are appreciated and supplant existing kinds. Thus the mechanor better, an O. Henry ical plots of a Maupassant taste

changes,

different

have given way to plots such as those of Tchekhov, in which the Movement is determined by psychological con-

The

nineteenth century popular writer was likely to construct his works on the pattern of a machine,

siderations.

with balance, contrast, coherence, his ideals.

The world of

unity,

literature

and the

like as

even when, as in

avowed purpose was realism had its own artisZola, tic rules. Thus nothing agreeable was realistic; a good rich man was not realistic; a decent motive for a kind its

As in much recent biography, realistic. realism became the explaining of all acts as the effects

deed was not

of discreditable causes.

We

have our rules of

fiction

A PRIMER IOR

132

CRITICS

with today which are no less absurd. Our preoccupation that us think of some only the psychoanalysis makes subconscious motive

is

the correct one for the novelist

to deal with; our preoccupation with social forces

makes

us interpret everything as if it were the deed of all men, rather than of one. In the world of life, as disare made up tinguished from that of literature, people of conflicting and irreconcilable trends and purposes; in If people would not be "convincing". matches and stamps, stingy when it comes to

literature such

Aunt Jane

is

she cannot be generous when it comes to missions. Just as the simple-minded prefer the doggerel of Edgar Guest to the subtle fluidity of Racine, so they prefer the out-and-

out consistency of character in Dickens to the intermittances du cceuf of Marcel Proust.

The recognition of form is colored by the pleasure or displeasure one takes in the materials used by the artist For causes which psychologists can best present, certain colors, sounds, textures, odors,

and so on, singly and in

combination are agreeable to certain people. As this material is in most cases what first strikes a person observing a work of

art,

it is

not strange that the work of

be judged in its entirety on the basis of the sensory pleasure one takes in it.

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