Movement,that problem of the visible arts,can be truly realised by Literature alone.It is Literature that shows us the body in its swiftness and the soul in its unrest.
ERNEST.Yes;I see now what you mean.But,surely,the higher you place the creative artist,the lower must the critic rank.
GILBERT.Why so?
ERNEST.Because the best that he can give us will be but an echo of rich music,a dim shadow of clear-outlined form.It may,indeed,be that life is chaos,as you tell me that it is;that its martyrdoms are mean and its heroisms ignoble;and that it is the function of Literature to create,from the rough material of actual existence,a new world that will be more marvellous,more enduring,and more true than the world that common eyes look upon,and through which common natures seek to realise their perfection.But surely,if this new world has been made by the spirit and touch of a great artist,it will be a thing so complete and perfect that there will be nothing left for the critic to do.I quite understand now,and indeed admit most readily,that it is far more difficult to talk about a thing than to do it.But it seems to me that this sound and sensible maxim,which is really extremely soothing to one's feelings,and should be adopted as its motto by every Academy of Literature all over the world,applies only to the relations that exist between Art and Life,and not to any relations that there may be between Art and Criticism.
GILBERT.But,surely,Criticism is itself an art.And just as artistic creation implies the working of the critical faculty,and,indeed,without it cannot be said to exist at all,so Criticism is really creative in the highest sense of the word.Criticism is,in fact,both creative and independent.
ERNEST.Independent?
GILBERT.Yes;independent.Criticism is no more to be judged by any low standard of imitation or resemblance than is the work of poet or sculptor.The critic occupies the same relation to the work of art that he criticises as the artist does to the visible world of form and colour,or the unseen world of passion and of thought.He does not even require for the perfection of his art the finest materials.Anything will serve his purpose.And just as out of the sordid and sentimental amours of the silly wife of a small country doctor in the squalid village of Yonville-l'Abbaye,near Rouen,Gustave Flaubert was able to create a classic,and make a masterpiece of style,so,from subjects of little or of no importance,such as the pictures in this year's Royal Academy,or in any year's Royal Academy for that matter,Mr.Lewis Morris's poems,M.Ohnet's novels,or the plays of Mr.Henry Arthur Jones,the true critic can,if it be his pleasure so to direct or waste his faculty of contemplation,produce work that will be flawless in beauty and instinct with intellectual subtlety.Why not?Dulness is always an irresistible temptation for brilliancy,and stupidity is the permanent BESTIA TRIONFANS that calls wisdom from its cave.
To an artist so creative as the critic,what does subject-matter signify?No more and no less than it does to the novelist and the painter.Like them,he can find his motives everywhere.Treatment is the test.There is nothing that has not in it suggestion or challenge.
ERNEST.But is Criticism really a creative art?
GILBERT.Why should it not be?It works with materials,and puts them into a form that is at once new and delightful.What more can one say of poetry?Indeed,I would call criticism a creation within a creation.For just as the great artists,from Homer and AEschylus,down to Shakespeare and Keats,did not go directly to life for their subject-matter,but sought for it in myth,and legend,and ancient tale,so the critic deals with materials that others have,as it were,purified for him,and to which imaginative form and colour have been already added.Nay,more,I would say that the highest Criticism,being the purest form of personal impression,is in its way more creative than creation,as it has least reference to any standard external to itself,and is,in fact,its own reason for existing,and,as the Greeks would put it,in itself,and to itself,an end.Certainly,it is never trammelled by any shackles of verisimilitude.No ignoble considerations of probability,that cowardly concession to the tedious repetitions of domestic or public life,affect it ever.
One may appeal from fiction unto fact.But from the soul there is no appeal.
ERNEST.From the soul?
GILBERT.Yes,from the soul.That is what the highest criticism really is,the record of one's own soul.It is more fascinating than history,as it is concerned simply with oneself.It is more delightful than philosophy,as its subject is concrete and not abstract,real and not vague.It is the only civilised form of autobiography,as it deals not with the events,but with the thoughts of one's life;not with life's physical accidents of deed or circumstance,but with the spiritual moods and imaginative passions of the mind.I am always amused by the silly vanity of those writers and artists of our day who seem to imagine that the primary function of the critic is to chatter about their second-rate work.The best that one can say of most modern creative art is that it is just a little less vulgar than reality,and so the critic,with his fine sense of distinction and sure instinct of delicate refinement,will prefer to look into the silver mirror or through the woven veil,and will turn his eyes away from the chaos and clamour of actual existence,though the mirror be tarnished and the veil be torn.His sole aim is to chronicle his own impressions.It is for him that pictures are painted,books written,and marble hewn into form.
ERNEST.I seem to have heard another theory of Criticism.
