The Problem of Modern Literary Criticism

BY Prof. S. L. KHOT

If art were only spontaneous self-expression, the artist would do well to produce his works as unconsciously as a healthy man breathes. Matters would then be left at that and there would be no field for criticism. But happily, art invariably presupposes communication. The artist is undeniably conscious of the self he wants to express, and it is his desire to convey that sense of consciousness to the world outside his own self. Criticism is, therefore, found to register this fact of communication which is an essential part of the artistic process.

Even as the artist composes, he has his own methods of arranging the manifold vistas that spread before his mental eyes. He selects and orders them in the most effective fashion. Even in the case of a few masterpieces, written almost in a trance, such as Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, there is a most readily recognizable fact of the poet’s conscious self-mastery, to organise the vision according to the rules of English syntax, with an intelligible vocabulary and a certain prosodic scheme. The work of creation, therefore, mostly involves rejection of the teeming fancies with which the author’s vision is overcrowded. The author knows that some of them are irrelevant. He will select only those which will be communicable to a public, however limited. Thus we see that an artist, to begin with, is his first critic, and perhaps a most pitiless one.

As soon as the work reaches its very first public, a response–either purely negative or positively approving–becomes inevitable. This response may well be styled as literary criticism.

Under modern conditions, when books have to be printed and published, they pass through criticism at every turn of the business. The work is submitted to a publisher who decides upon the probable response on the part of the public. If the publisher undertakes its publication, that means, in his opinion, the book is good, and that is an act of criticism. The booksellers are induced to confirm the publisher’s judgment through advertising in trade journals. The customers, in their turn, naively perhaps, depend on the recommendations of the booksellers. Thus, at every step in the creation, manufacture and distribution of the book, we find acceptance or rejection, that is to say, criticism, even before a professional critic pronounces any formal judgment on the work concerned.

Critics are often accused of following too literally St. Paul’s stern injunction, ‘Reprove, rebuke,’ and nothing is so unpleasant as eternal fault-finding. To criticise, however, does not mean to condemn; it means to judge, to try, to prove, to test, and most exactly, perhaps, to discriminate.

A fundamental objection to criticism is that it passes judgment when there is no established or accepted code of laws. Criticism would be legitimate if we had a dogmatic conception of what literature should be. Impressionism may form its exact antithesis. Between these two extremes there is room for a ‘judgment’ which is neither absolute nor purely personal.

Many prose writers, philosophers, historians, dramatists and novelists count among the great critics: Aristotle to begin with, Pascal, Moliere, Burke, Stendhal, Tolstoy, Zola, Anatole France; but also an even greater array of poets. Not only mediocre ones like Boileau, Dryden, Pope or Voltaire, but also those in whom there was an undeniable tinge of divine madness: Horace, Dante, Du Bellay, Sir Philip Sidney, Schiller, Goethe, Blake, Coleridge, it Wordsworth, Poe, Victor Hugo, Baudelaire, Swinburne and Mallarme.

It is interesting to note that no critic so far, purely as a critic, has achieved a rank comparable to Shakespeare’s or Balzac’s. The writer who attained the most notable position solely for has critical work is probably Sainte-Beuve.

Another common objection to criticism is that it destroys the immediacy and with it the purity and intensity of our pleasure. While admitting its partial truth it must be stated that criticism also heightens our power of enjoyment by refining our artistic taste. It is criticism, again, which induces the author and the public to meet on some common platform.

The usual task of the critic, however, is one of re-discovery and re-valuation. The critic is an interpreter from nation to nation, from age to age, from group to group. “The great function of criticism, when applied to works of the past, is to reveal under a puzzling variety of forms.” Criticism, above all, makes us realise that men were men in the days of Pericles, although they spoke a different tongue.

Unfortunately criticism is subject to the many vicissitudes of literary taste, which often varies with different ages and also with different individuals. It, however, helps the process of preservation by the very act of its approval of that which is eternally Good, Beautiful, and True. It is, in the last analysis, an attempt to define and enjoy the aesthetic or characteristic values of literature.

Roughly speaking, there are four types of criticism based on the different conceptions of literature. Firstly comes scientific criticism. It corresponds with that definition of literature which covers everything written. Its sole concern is to elucidate and not to judge. The most it can do is to pile up facts about a particular author, but never can it hope to introduce any notion of valuation, and hence it is not criticism at all. Secondly comes dogmatic criticism which corresponds with the idealistic conception of literature, determined by some eternal principles. Popular dogmas may be wrong, but dogmatic criticism, if ably done, has at least a stimulating value. Thirdly comes literary history. It corresponds with the pragmatic conception of literature, the criterion of which is an appeal to a sufficient number of people over a sufficient period of time. The pragmatic critic deals with only those authors who are a chosen few of the public: Shaw, Thomas Mann, Andre Gide, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce. Finally comes impressionistic criticism which corresponds with the individualistic conception of literature. Honesty of purpose is its watchword. In the last analysis, every form of criticism has its foundation in impressionism, for it is the self and nothing else that ultimately appreciates literature.

Coming to the criticism of the century, we find that it has amply responded to the changing social situation in much the same way as its imaginative literature, the characteristic feature of which is the lack of tradition to fall back upon. In fact, this lack of tradition is the key-note both to its literature and its criticism.

Mr. John Crowe, the American poet, in a recent volume of criticism, The World’s Body, states: “The kind of poetry which interests us is not the act of a child or of that eternal youth which is in some women, but the act of an adult mind, and, I will add, the act of a fallen mind, since ours too are fallen.” This attitude may well be considered to be the very basis of all modern criticism.

T. S. Eliot represents this attitude, alike through his literary efforts and critical writings. It is, however, interesting to note that the latter sometimes verge dangerously on the side of theology and metaphysics. In one of his later essays he says: “You can never draw the line between aesthetic criticism and moral and social criticism; you cannot draw a line between criticism and metaphysics.” In his short book, After Strange Gods, he asserts that criticism cannot dispense with theology. This is indeed a dogmatic assertion and one feels that this is not the way in which theology should modify criticism.

Eliot’s criticism is invariably tinged with theological implications. It is the product of a mind that is definitely aware of its “fallen” state. He has, however, ably illuminated Elizabethan and Jacobean poetry. He maintains that the poets of those two ages were capable of “digesting” a far greater variety of experiences than the 18th century poets could do. According to Eliot, therefore, experience in its fullness is only perceptible by a “fallen” mind and so there is a theological implication behind all his criticism.

Another characteristic feature of Eliot’s criticism is that he is out to trace the line of tradition in literature and consequently this leads to the contemporary social environment of the writers whom he is discussing, to morals, and, lastly, to theology. One feels that his sole aim was to be a traditionalist both in literature and criticism. That is why perhaps he was at home with the meta-physical poets, Pope, and Dryden. The tradition which Eliot has adopted has its roots in the Church. This implies sociological and educative implications. It is rather strange that in After Strange Gods, he has restated his traditional faith, unfortunately extending it beyond the world of literature: “What I mean by tradition involves all those habitual actions, habits and customs, from the most significant religious rite to our conventional ways of greeting a stranger, which represent the blood kinship of the same people living in the same place.” His criticism, I think, reflects the very atmosphere of his Waste Land. His influence on poetry and criticism was, however, far from negative.

Herbert Read, a critic of fine sensibilities, has much in common with T. S. Eliot, but differs from him in tendency. No doubt he stands for tradition, but how different is his outlook from Eliot’s Read’s chief concern is “to appreciate everything which frees man from institutionalized ways of thinking and feeling”. Eliot was too much of a theologian to achieve such a critical excellence.

Mr. I. A. Richards stands on quite a different level from the critics mentioned above. He is a figure by himself whose Principles of Literary Criticism was greeted as a revolutionary book. But hardly does it seem to have revolutionized. Mr. Richards is first of all an eminent psychologist. His chief concern, therefore, is to trace the effect of poetry on the mind. It is gratifying to note that he is an optimist, in so far as he hopes that such a kind of approach can sometime in future be scientifically sound. Here, faith in the future of neurology comes to his rescue. The mind, Mr. Richards holds, is the nervous system–a system of multitudinous responses. The understanding of the nervous system, therefore, serves for him as the criterion of poetry. The fundamental objection to Mr. Richards’ view is that it ignores the very spirit of poetry, by regarding it as a means to make the nervous system work properly. Mr. D. G. James, in his excellent book, Scepticism and Poetry, has ably brought out the glaring fault of Richards’ Principles of Literary Criticism. He states that it ignores the fact that poetry is a way of apprehending the world through imagination. In Coleridge and Imagination, Mr. Richards tries to supply this omission, but he still clings to his materialist “associationism”. The value of his works, however, lies not in the principles he lays down, derived as they are from science whose validity will not be demonstrable until A. D. 3,000, but in his realization of the many meanings implicit in poetry and the enthusiasm with which he pursues them. Mr. Richards thus attempts to bring a psychological science to bear upon the problems of the critic.

Richards’ chief disciple is William Empson who excels him both in fineness of spirit and intricacy of perception. Seven Types of Ambiguity is an excellent book, almost exasperatingly subtle. This book is certainly kaleidoscopic in its variety of interests. It illuminates the different shades of meanings from Shakespearean poetry, which it is a great pleasure to read. For one thing it deepens our understanding of some of the richest poetry. Its greatest contribution is towards a possibility of explanations of all the literatures of the world.

F. E. Spurgeon’s book, Shakespeare’s Imagery and what it tells us, is more or less mathematical in its critical outlook. Criticism is the serene enjoyment of artistic or literary creations. Too much of statistics mars the very life of criticism, and is almost annoying. However, this also is useful.

Lascelles Abercrombie presents a philosophical aptitude for aesthetic technique in the Principles of English Prosody. His two other works, The Epic and Romanticism corroborate the same thing.

One thing which strikes us most in regard to modern literary criticism is a lamentable lack of enthusiastic efforts on the part of critics and professors to survey the field of literature in an enlightening and perspective way. That is why there has been no interesting book in the historical field. The only admirable “History of English Literature” is by two French scholars Legouis and Cazamian. It is at once astonishingly scholarly and easily readable. Ford Madox Ford’s The March of Literature is, of course, an ambitious work. The book covers a wide range of world literature, from the early Egyptian and Chinese ages down to the present day (1939). But unfortunately the author allows himself to be overweighed by prejudices and hence he records his own impressionistic choice of individual works, by no means free from dogmatic assertions and unreliable magnitude of literary level.

It is high time that critical books of a historical nature, particularly in regard to contemporary British literature, should come forth both from the literary critics and experienced professors of English Literature. Prof. Albert Guerards Preface to World Literature, for example, is an excellent book by itself. Such efforts are, indeed, badly needed.

Recently, there has been in evidence a Marxian approach to literature. Sometimes it borders on absurdity. A poet like Auden, for example, is blamed for not identifying himself with the working class struggle. Besides, its attitude to tradition, on which Lenin so much insisted is uncertain. Such being the case, I had better content myself with only a casual mention of it.

Modern criticism has thus become all the more complex owing to the manifold and diverse influences that have gone to the making of the modern mind. Its tendencies are yet uncertain. Sometimes it defeats its own purpose, as in the case of I. A. Richards. The most that could be said about it is that it is still making its way towards a better understanding of literature. But whether it succeeds or fails is a matter for that inexorable factor called Time to decide. The modern critic has indeed a more responsible and formidable duty to perform. He is, as should only be expected, an ideal bridge between the author and the reading public. At a time when literature itself is passing through most puzzling stages, the literary critic, at best, is left to himself, with hardly a hope of succeeding in his otherwise splendid enterprise.

Back