CHAPTER IIIThe Language of Criticism. . . . I too have seenMy vision of the rainbow Aureoled faceOf her whom men name Beauty: proud, austere:Divinely fugitive, that haunts the world. . . .The Dominion of Dreams.Whateverthe disadvantages of modern æsthetics as a basis for a theory of Criticism, the great advance made upon prescientific speculation into the nature of Beauty must also be recognised. That paralysing apparition Beauty, the ineffable, ultimate, unanalysable, simple Idea, has at least been dismissed and with her have departed or will soon depart a flock of equally bogus entities. Poetry and inspiration together, it is true, still dignify respectable quarters with their presence.“Poetry, like life, is one thing. . . . Essentially a continuous substance or energy, poetry is historically a connected movement, a series of successive integrated manifestations. Each poet, from Homer or the predecessors of Homer to our own day, has been, to some degree and at some point, the voice of the movement and energy of poetry; in him, poetry has for the moment become visible, audible, incarnate; and his extant poems are the record left of that partial and transitory incarnation. . . . The progress of poetry, with its vast power and exalted function, is immortal.”†A diligent search will still find many other Mystic Beings, for the most part of a less august nature, sheltering in verbal thickets. Construction, Design, Form, Rhythm, Expression . . . are more often than not merevacuain discourse, for which a theory of criticism should provide explainable substitutes.While current attitudes to language persist, this difficulty of the linguistic phantom must still continue. It has to be recognised that all our natural turns of speech are misleading, especially those we use in discussing works of art. We become so accustomed to them that even when we are aware that they are ellipses, it is easy to forget the fact. And it has been extremely difficult in many cases to discover that any ellipsis is present. We are accustomed to say that a picture is beautiful, instead of saying that it causes an experience in us which is valuable in certain ways.*The discovery that the remark, “This is beautiful”, must be turned round and expanded in this way before it is anything but a mere noise signalling the fact that we approve of the picture, was a great and difficult achievement. Even to-day, such is the insidious power of grammatical forms, the belief that there is such a quality or attribute, namely Beauty, which attaches to the things which we rightly call beautiful, is probably inevitable for all reflective persons at a certain stage of their mental development.Even among those who have escaped from this delusion and are well aware that we continually talk as though things possess qualities, when what we ought to say is that they cause effects in us of one kind or another, the fallacy of ‘projecting’ the effect and making it a quality of its cause tends to recur. When it does so it gives a peculiar obliquity to thought and although few competent persons are nowadays so deluded as actually to hold the mystical view that there is a quality Beauty which inheres or attaches to external objects, yet throughout all the discussion of works of art the drag exercised by language towards this view can be felt. It perceptibly increases the difficulty of innumerable problems and we shall have constantly to allow for it. Such terms as ‘construction’, ‘form’, ‘balance’, ‘composition’, ‘design’, ‘unity’, ‘expression’, for all the arts; as ‘depth’, ‘movement’, ‘texture’, ‘solidity’, in the criticism of painting; as ‘rhythm’, ‘stress’, ‘plot’, ‘character’, in literary criticism; as ‘harmony’, ‘atmosphere’, ‘development’, in music, are instances. All these terms are currently used as though they stood for qualities inherent in things outside the mind, as a painting, in the sense of an assemblage of pigments, is undoubtedly outside the mind. Even the difficulty of discovering, in the case of poetry, what thing other than print and paper is there for these alleged qualities to belong to, has not checked the tendency.But indeed language has succeeded until recently in hiding from us almost all the things we talk about. Whether we are discussing music, poetry, painting, sculpture or architecture, we are forced to speak as though certain physical objects—vibrations of strings and of columns of air, marks printed on paper, canvasses and pigments, masses of marble, fabrics of freestone, are what we are talking about. And yet the remarks we make as critics do not apply to such objects but to states of mind, to experiences.A certain strangeness about this view is often felt but diminishes with reflection. If anyone says that ‘The May Queen’ is sentimental, it is not difficult to agree that he is referring to a state of mind. But if he declares that the masses in a Giotto exactly balance one another, this is less apparent, and, if he goes on to discuss time in music, form in visual art, plot in drama, the fact that he is all the while talking about mental happenings becomes concealed. The verbal apparatus comes between us and the things with which we are really dealing. Words which are useful, indeed invaluable, as handy stop-gaps and makeshifts in conversation, but which need elaborate expansions before they can be used with precision, are treated as simply as people’s proper names. So it becomes natural to seek for the things these words appear to stand for, and thus arise innumerable subtle investigations, doomedab initioas regards their main intent to failure.We must be prepared then to translate, into phrases pedantic and uncouth, all the too simple utterances which the conversational decencies exact. We shall find later, in their peculiar emotive power the main reason why, in spite of all manner of confusions and inconveniences, these current ways of speaking are retained. For emotive purposes they are indispensable, but for clarity, for the examination of what is actually happening, translations are equally a necessity.Most critical remarks state in an abbreviated form that an object causes certain experiences, and as a rule the form of the statement is such as to suggest that the object has been said to possess certain qualities. But often the critic goes further and affirms that the effect in his mind is due to special particular features of the object. In this case he is pointing out something about the object in addition to its effect upon him, and this fuller kind of criticism is what we desire. Before his insight can greatly benefit, however, a very clear demarcation between the object, with its features, and his experience, which is the effect of contemplating it, is necessary. The bulk of critical literature is unfortunately made up of examples of their confusion.It will be convenient at this point to introduce two definitions. In a full critical statement which states not only that an experience is valuable in certain ways, but also that it is caused by certain features in a contemplated object, the part which describes the value of the experience we shall call thecriticalpart. That which describes the object we shall call thetechnicalpart. Thus to say that we feel differently towards wooden crosses and stone crosses is a technical remark. And to say that metre is more suited to the tender passion than is prose would be, as it stands, a technical remark, but here it is evident that a critical part might easily be also present. All remarks as to the ways and means by which experiences arise or are brought about are technical, but critical remarks are about the values of experiences and the reasons for regarding them as valuable, or not valuable. We shall endeavor in what follows to show that critical remarks are merely a branch of psychological remarks, and that no special ethical or metaphysical ideas need be introduced to explain value.The distinction between technical and critical remarks is of real importance. Confusion here is responsible for some most curious passages in the histories of the arts. A certain technique in certain cases produces admirable results; the obvious features of this technique come to be regarded at first as sure signs of excellence, and later as the excellence itself. For a while nothing, however admirable, which does not show these superficial marks, gets fair consideration. Thomas Rymer’s denigration of Shakespeare, Dr Johnson’s view of Milton’s pauses, the aftermath of the triumph of Pope, archaistic sculpture, the Greek poses in the compositions of David, the imitations of Cézanne, are famous instances; they could be multiplied indefinitely. The converse case is equally common. An obvious technical blemish in a special case is recognised. It may be too many S’s in a particular line, or the irregularity and rimelessness of a ‘Pindaric’ Ode; henceforth any line superficially similar,The lustre of the long convolvulusses,any unrhymed lyric, is regarded as defective. This trick of judging the whole by the detail, instead of the other way about, of mistaking the means for the end, the technique for the value, is in fact much the most successful of the snares which waylay the critic. Only the teacher knows (and sometimes he is guilty himself) how great is the number of readers who think, for example, that a defective rime—bough’s house, bush thrush, blood good—is sufficient ground for condemning a poem in the neglect of all other considerations. Such sticklers, like those with a scansion obsession (due as a rule to Exercises in Latin Verse), have little understanding of poetry. We pay attention to externals when we do not know what else to do with a poem.
. . . . I too have seenMy vision of the rainbow Aureoled faceOf her whom men name Beauty: proud, austere:Divinely fugitive, that haunts the world. . . .The Dominion of Dreams.
. . . . I too have seenMy vision of the rainbow Aureoled faceOf her whom men name Beauty: proud, austere:Divinely fugitive, that haunts the world. . . .The Dominion of Dreams.
. . . . I too have seen
My vision of the rainbow Aureoled faceOf her whom men name Beauty: proud, austere:Divinely fugitive, that haunts the world. . . .
The Dominion of Dreams.
Whateverthe disadvantages of modern æsthetics as a basis for a theory of Criticism, the great advance made upon prescientific speculation into the nature of Beauty must also be recognised. That paralysing apparition Beauty, the ineffable, ultimate, unanalysable, simple Idea, has at least been dismissed and with her have departed or will soon depart a flock of equally bogus entities. Poetry and inspiration together, it is true, still dignify respectable quarters with their presence.
“Poetry, like life, is one thing. . . . Essentially a continuous substance or energy, poetry is historically a connected movement, a series of successive integrated manifestations. Each poet, from Homer or the predecessors of Homer to our own day, has been, to some degree and at some point, the voice of the movement and energy of poetry; in him, poetry has for the moment become visible, audible, incarnate; and his extant poems are the record left of that partial and transitory incarnation. . . . The progress of poetry, with its vast power and exalted function, is immortal.”†
A diligent search will still find many other Mystic Beings, for the most part of a less august nature, sheltering in verbal thickets. Construction, Design, Form, Rhythm, Expression . . . are more often than not merevacuain discourse, for which a theory of criticism should provide explainable substitutes.
While current attitudes to language persist, this difficulty of the linguistic phantom must still continue. It has to be recognised that all our natural turns of speech are misleading, especially those we use in discussing works of art. We become so accustomed to them that even when we are aware that they are ellipses, it is easy to forget the fact. And it has been extremely difficult in many cases to discover that any ellipsis is present. We are accustomed to say that a picture is beautiful, instead of saying that it causes an experience in us which is valuable in certain ways.*The discovery that the remark, “This is beautiful”, must be turned round and expanded in this way before it is anything but a mere noise signalling the fact that we approve of the picture, was a great and difficult achievement. Even to-day, such is the insidious power of grammatical forms, the belief that there is such a quality or attribute, namely Beauty, which attaches to the things which we rightly call beautiful, is probably inevitable for all reflective persons at a certain stage of their mental development.
Even among those who have escaped from this delusion and are well aware that we continually talk as though things possess qualities, when what we ought to say is that they cause effects in us of one kind or another, the fallacy of ‘projecting’ the effect and making it a quality of its cause tends to recur. When it does so it gives a peculiar obliquity to thought and although few competent persons are nowadays so deluded as actually to hold the mystical view that there is a quality Beauty which inheres or attaches to external objects, yet throughout all the discussion of works of art the drag exercised by language towards this view can be felt. It perceptibly increases the difficulty of innumerable problems and we shall have constantly to allow for it. Such terms as ‘construction’, ‘form’, ‘balance’, ‘composition’, ‘design’, ‘unity’, ‘expression’, for all the arts; as ‘depth’, ‘movement’, ‘texture’, ‘solidity’, in the criticism of painting; as ‘rhythm’, ‘stress’, ‘plot’, ‘character’, in literary criticism; as ‘harmony’, ‘atmosphere’, ‘development’, in music, are instances. All these terms are currently used as though they stood for qualities inherent in things outside the mind, as a painting, in the sense of an assemblage of pigments, is undoubtedly outside the mind. Even the difficulty of discovering, in the case of poetry, what thing other than print and paper is there for these alleged qualities to belong to, has not checked the tendency.
But indeed language has succeeded until recently in hiding from us almost all the things we talk about. Whether we are discussing music, poetry, painting, sculpture or architecture, we are forced to speak as though certain physical objects—vibrations of strings and of columns of air, marks printed on paper, canvasses and pigments, masses of marble, fabrics of freestone, are what we are talking about. And yet the remarks we make as critics do not apply to such objects but to states of mind, to experiences.
A certain strangeness about this view is often felt but diminishes with reflection. If anyone says that ‘The May Queen’ is sentimental, it is not difficult to agree that he is referring to a state of mind. But if he declares that the masses in a Giotto exactly balance one another, this is less apparent, and, if he goes on to discuss time in music, form in visual art, plot in drama, the fact that he is all the while talking about mental happenings becomes concealed. The verbal apparatus comes between us and the things with which we are really dealing. Words which are useful, indeed invaluable, as handy stop-gaps and makeshifts in conversation, but which need elaborate expansions before they can be used with precision, are treated as simply as people’s proper names. So it becomes natural to seek for the things these words appear to stand for, and thus arise innumerable subtle investigations, doomedab initioas regards their main intent to failure.
We must be prepared then to translate, into phrases pedantic and uncouth, all the too simple utterances which the conversational decencies exact. We shall find later, in their peculiar emotive power the main reason why, in spite of all manner of confusions and inconveniences, these current ways of speaking are retained. For emotive purposes they are indispensable, but for clarity, for the examination of what is actually happening, translations are equally a necessity.
Most critical remarks state in an abbreviated form that an object causes certain experiences, and as a rule the form of the statement is such as to suggest that the object has been said to possess certain qualities. But often the critic goes further and affirms that the effect in his mind is due to special particular features of the object. In this case he is pointing out something about the object in addition to its effect upon him, and this fuller kind of criticism is what we desire. Before his insight can greatly benefit, however, a very clear demarcation between the object, with its features, and his experience, which is the effect of contemplating it, is necessary. The bulk of critical literature is unfortunately made up of examples of their confusion.
It will be convenient at this point to introduce two definitions. In a full critical statement which states not only that an experience is valuable in certain ways, but also that it is caused by certain features in a contemplated object, the part which describes the value of the experience we shall call thecriticalpart. That which describes the object we shall call thetechnicalpart. Thus to say that we feel differently towards wooden crosses and stone crosses is a technical remark. And to say that metre is more suited to the tender passion than is prose would be, as it stands, a technical remark, but here it is evident that a critical part might easily be also present. All remarks as to the ways and means by which experiences arise or are brought about are technical, but critical remarks are about the values of experiences and the reasons for regarding them as valuable, or not valuable. We shall endeavor in what follows to show that critical remarks are merely a branch of psychological remarks, and that no special ethical or metaphysical ideas need be introduced to explain value.
The distinction between technical and critical remarks is of real importance. Confusion here is responsible for some most curious passages in the histories of the arts. A certain technique in certain cases produces admirable results; the obvious features of this technique come to be regarded at first as sure signs of excellence, and later as the excellence itself. For a while nothing, however admirable, which does not show these superficial marks, gets fair consideration. Thomas Rymer’s denigration of Shakespeare, Dr Johnson’s view of Milton’s pauses, the aftermath of the triumph of Pope, archaistic sculpture, the Greek poses in the compositions of David, the imitations of Cézanne, are famous instances; they could be multiplied indefinitely. The converse case is equally common. An obvious technical blemish in a special case is recognised. It may be too many S’s in a particular line, or the irregularity and rimelessness of a ‘Pindaric’ Ode; henceforth any line superficially similar,
The lustre of the long convolvulusses,
The lustre of the long convolvulusses,
any unrhymed lyric, is regarded as defective. This trick of judging the whole by the detail, instead of the other way about, of mistaking the means for the end, the technique for the value, is in fact much the most successful of the snares which waylay the critic. Only the teacher knows (and sometimes he is guilty himself) how great is the number of readers who think, for example, that a defective rime—bough’s house, bush thrush, blood good—is sufficient ground for condemning a poem in the neglect of all other considerations. Such sticklers, like those with a scansion obsession (due as a rule to Exercises in Latin Verse), have little understanding of poetry. We pay attention to externals when we do not know what else to do with a poem.