| WE
are apt to think of criticism as something very unimportant,
and to offer it the merest tolerance as the pastime
of leisurely scholars and visionaries, with no bearing
on daily life. But the power of the press is very largely
a critical power, wielding a direct influence on all
our undertakings in art, in politics, in religion, in
affairs. And this consideration alone should convince
us that criticism comes within the range of what we
call practical concerns.
Criticism resembles original
creation in that it has both a scientific and artistic
side. It is scientific so far as it has to do with the
analysis of phenomena, the collecting and arrangement
of data, the discovery and elucidation [Page
146] of principles, and the exposition of the
natural laws of art. It is artistic, in that its purpose
is to offer its conclusion to the student with as much
convincing grace and polish as may be. It is not merely
the part of criticism to investigate the achievements
of art, and to record the result of those investigations
in a bare tabulation of fact; it is equally business,
surely, to win men to an allegiance to the beautiful,
to direct them courteously. It is not enough that we
should be brought face to face with all the best interpretations
of nature and humanity. It is needful that they by made
clear, convincing, luminous, intelligible.
This
is very nearly the service art renders us with respect
to life and nature. That famous saying of Arnold’s,
“Poetry is a criticism of life,” is a concise
statement of the same idea. It was never intended, I
take it, for a definition of poetry, yet it expresses
very aptly one aspect and function of all art. And this,
without in the least implying anything [Page
147] didacticism, or the dreary obligations
of a so-called moral purpose. Even the most faithful
reproductions of realism are hardly impersonal utterances.
They cannot but betray the critical standpoint of their
author, however dispassionate he may be. If they are
revolting and painful in their bleak veracity, they
speak, perhaps, for his pious indignation at some hideous
wrong, some social injustice, some piteous tragedy of
existence; and we may go our ways, the better for his
wholesome though disagreeable lesson. If they are engrossed,
even to the point of tediousness, with the familiar,
the common, or the dull, unrelieved by any spice of
romance, unheightened by any touch of extraneous beauty,
they are still, it may be, so many expressions of a
serene and humane personality, perceiving good everywhere
and implicitly declaring the worth of life. Let him
be as literal, as uncompromising, as he will, his temperament
and philosophy are still inevitably revealed on every
page. Not a word is traced [Page 148] on
paper, not a colour laid to canvas, but carries some
hint of the delineator’s hand. The artist’s
identity is patent in his work, his accent lurks in
every line, his features look from every phrase. And
at the last, whether he intend it or not, his collected
work will form a commentary, or at least a foot-note,
to the great book of nature.
There
it lies, this green volume of the earth, the dark sea
on one page, the dark forested hills on the other, and
the creamy margin of shore between, with a ribbon of
surf to mark the place. And there you may read to your
heart’s content; the story will never by finished,
nor the interest flag, till you drop the task for some
night for very weariness, and your candle goes out with
a puff of wind. But while the bright light lasts, and
your strength holds out, how enthralling a book it is.
What legendry and science, what song and story. The
obscure records of the mountains and the tides, the
shifting pictures of cloud and ruffling forests and
changing fields from year [Page 149] to
year; the multitudes of the living trees and grasses,
and last, most wonderful of all, the perishable talking
tribes of men. And then to think, before this volume
how many students have sat and mused, pondering the
meaning of its fair text — so fair, yet so obscure
as well. Here Shakespeare read and smiled; here Homer
and Horace looked and doubted; here Job and Plato, David
and Dante, Angelo and Darwin, Virgil and Voltaire, Spinoza
and Rubens and Cervantes, found lifelong solace mingled
with disquiet. Scholars and saints, painters and ploughmen,
lovers and skeptics, emperors and peasants, and poets
and kings; and what had they all to say about their
reading? No comment? Did they find the work amusing,
or was it squalid, or only dull? Think of the poetry
of Emerson and Wordsworth; what is it but a critical
interpretation of nature? Think of the work of Fielding
or Thackeray or Hawthorne; what was it but a running
commentary on humanity? [Page 150]
There
is one sense in which all the arts are one — in
that they are all but differing forms of expression,
differing methods in which the spirit of humanity finds
a voice and embodies its thought about the universe,
and in that sense, surely, all art is an appendix to
nature, a criticism on experience. Fiction and painting,
for example, seem clearly to have had their origin as
simple pastimes, yet how significant a body of commentary
they contain. I suppose the art of painting arose in
the idlest hour, from a very superfluity of leisure
and fancy, the chance discovery of some dreamy bygone
summer afternoon; yet every line or shade tells tales
of the vanished painter’s sentiment as he looked
out at the world about him. And modern fiction; there
is a fine art which would seem to have had its beginning
in nothing more serious than the telling of tales over
a winter fire. Yet now, in all its varied complexity,
so philosophical, so intentional, how evidently critical
it has become. [Page 151]
We
must not forget, either, to make ample allowance for
that conception of art which claims for it a province
quite apart from the actual world. According to this
view, it is the business of art to create for our enjoyment
a fictitious universe, within our own, yet dissevered
from it — an unreal, imaginary palace of pleasure,
having no bearing upon actual life. This was the dream
of the pre-Raphaelites. For them the fairy-tale was
the true model of fiction. They revelled in creations
that leave nature toiling far behind. You would certainly
never go to them for a criticism of life. And yet what
does the presence of such a fanciful creation mean —
springing up side by side with the actual, and resembling
so little? Is not its mere existence a most significant
comment on the world of fact it pretends to ignore?
Is it not an avowal of the insufficiency of nature,
the imperfection of our lot? It is easy to scoff at
such fantastic wistfulness in art, but for my [Page
152] part I think it more profitable than a
complacent abiding in “things as they are.”
If
you consider the attitude of the artist, the painter,
the poet, the man of letters, as an attentive observer
of things about him, as a portrayer of natural phenomena,
a reporter at large in all the splendid, bright avenues
of earth, bringing home to the attention of his fellows
many facts from many sources, adding some hint of his
own thoughts concerning them, elucidating them from
his fuller knowledge than ours, suggesting by his chosen
preference which seem to him most memorable and noteworthy,
you will be reminded of the attitude of the critic,
and see how closely they resemble each other. Admitting
this similarity of functions, what are those qualifications
of the creative artists which are requisite to the right
critical temper as well?
First
of all, I should place openness of mind. One would think
that a very obvious requirement, the least that could
be asked of [Page 153] a personality
bringing itself under the spell of new forms and fresh
influences of beauty. But how rare it is, that spiritual
candour which shows itself in the utterly unprejudiced
disposition of a great, patient humility. It is linked
on one side to the religious sense, the capacity for
wonder, and on the other to a profound curiosity that
is for ever questing, questing, questing — the
scholar’s gift. It involves a love of truth, too,
undauntable and unswerving, ready on the instant to
abandon the most cherished notion for the sake of one
more tenable in reason. With an exquisite susceptibility
to impressions, and with a depth of feeling rather than
conviction, the artist steeps himself in the atmosphere
of every scene he would reproduce, the critic surrenders
himself to the subtlest influences of the masterpiece
under his hand. In either case, it is a finely sensitized
mechanism, as delicate as a piece of litmus paper played
upon by the potent element of beauty in the chemistry
of the soul, and bearing unimpeachable evidence [Page
154] of the test. Such a being is in little
danger of coming to destruction through the self-confidence
of the prig. He is more likely to be the most unassuming
of mortals. There will characterize him a sweet eagerness
for knowledge, not incompatible with a gentle regard
for beliefs no longer possible and conceptions no longer
true. He, too, will be quite willing to pass with the
slow procession of created things from one illusion
to another, without dejection or regret. None will be
more passionately and keenly alive to events than he;
no one more detached in contemplating them. A sedulous,
kindly nature, earth-born and instinctive, will be his;
so that, while he is almost strenuous in following a
bent, he will completely realize the futility of insistence
and the folly of overstrain. Such a mind will not be
affluent nor impressive, but it will be infinitely exact
in its own way, infinitely careful of distinctions,
infinitely scrupulous in speech. To the sobriety of
science it would add the elation of art; [Page
155] and to the elation of art it would add
the smiling afterthought of indecision.
That
a painter, or a writer, or an artist of any sort must
be receptive, seems almost self-evident. It is his business
to be sensitive, to keep on the alert for all passing
phenomena of beauty, all the suggestive incidents of
life. Not a line or a gesture must escape him of the
manifold human drama daily enacted before his eyes;
not a shade or tone of colour must be lost on him of
all the wonderful fleeting loveliness of sky and sea,
mountain and cloud, sun and rain. The changing face
of the universe is his continual study, and his appreciation
will never fail to catch the gusts of passion and mood
that sweep across the tumultuous regions of the mind.
Whatever else he may be, he can never for one moment
be fixed or stable, save in the purpose to be always
free, always unprejudiced, always ready for the new
impulse, the new impression, the new inspiration. For
whether we think of inspiration as coming through experience
or through [Page 156] intuition, it
demands an equally receptive habit of thought. And one
who would be guided by it must have an equally sedulous
regard for the inward meaning and the outward apparition
of things. He must be endowed with senses of no ordinary
keenness, like that figure in Norse mythology who could
hear the grasses growing; and a very wizardry of instinctive
comprehension must be his. Culture for him will mean
not so much self-perfection as self-absorption in nature
and life for others, and at the instance of an uncontrollable
propensity. He is the unwearied listener at the Sphinx,
the eternal wanderer by all trodden and unfrequented
paths; he is a nomad in the blood, and an incredulous
believer from his birth. And this natural aptitude for
indecision and appreciation is emphasized by a daily
use, is encouraged and developed and grows by practice,
until your typical artistic temperament, as the phrase
runs, becomes proverbially impressionable and fastidious.
[Page 157]
And
all this, that he may convey some expression of his
new knowledge to the audience of his fellows. He is
eyes and ears for multitudes less fortunate than himself.
We rely on him for daily fresh reports from every corner
of the house of life, with all its wonderful galleries
and crannies, crowded with fact and haunted by illusion.
But what is our attitude toward him? Many of those traits
which are most useful to the artist are most useful
to the critic as well. Flexibility or openness of mind
is one of them, and the most important. If the artist
must exercise absolute freedom in his art, are we ready
to grant him that right? Do we look with tolerance on
the new and strange in art? If we were to approach a
new book or a new picture with anything of the same
receptiveness which the writer or the painter felt in
dealing with his subject, we should, first of all, be
attentive, curious, impressionable. We certainly should
not be carping and antagonistic. Our first effort would
be to understand. We [Page 158] should
apply thought to our subject, and not prejudice.
While
the creative spirit may be carried away by zeal in a
cause, the critical spirit must always remain impartial.
They are alike, however, in this, that to reach their
best they must always be unhampered and individual.
The critical spirit can espouse no party, adhere to
no preconceived notion of the truth. Its only principle
is a love of truth, of beauty, and of goodness, wherever
they may be revealed, and in whatever guise they may
appear. It must stand apart, without creed or predilection.
The academic point of view, so valuable for the conservation
of learning, is out of court in critical affairs; since
the gist of art is revelation, the accomplishment of
something unprecedented. The underlying science of art
is as fixed and stable as all other natural law; but
the manifestations of art are always surprising, often
in seeming contradiction to tradition. So that the purely
scholastic mode of appreciating [Page 159] them
is inadequate. To set up standards of bygone excellence
in art and then bring all new achievements into comparison
with them is unjust to both. You pin your faith to Dante
and Shakespeare and Milton and Wordsworth, let us say,
and then you bring a new book to be tested by their
standard. If it does not conform, you say it must be
poor. But, if it did conform, art would be a dead thing.
Art and poetry are not inventions, they are living and
vital forces, growing with civilization, and making
themselves felt in fresh ways every day. So that it
is impossible, as it seems to me, to confront them with
any preconceived notion of what they ought to be. It
is only possible to criticize them in a spirit of absolute
impartiality, with the unbiased loving patience of the
scientist. [Page 160]
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