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"The Critic as Artist," by Oscar Wilde
Posted by Andrew on	3 February 2021, 9:41 am
A commenter pointed us to The Critic as Artist, by Oscar Wilde. I'd never heard of this story before, so I clicked on the link and read it, and it was excellent.
Some bits:
Ernest: But, seriously speaking, what is the use of art-criticism? Why cannot the artist be left alone, to create a new world if he wishes it, or, if not, to shadow forth the world which we already know, and of which, I fancy, we would each one of us be wearied if Art, with her fine spirit of choice and delicate instinct of selection, did not, as it were, purify it for us, and give to it a momentary perfection. It seems to me that the imagination spreads, or should spread, a solitude around it, and works best in silence and in isolation. Why should the artist be troubled by the shrill clamour of criticism? Why should those who cannot create take upon themselves to estimate the value of creative work? . . . in the best days of art there were no art-critics.
Gilbert: I seem to have heard that observation before, Ernest. It has all the vitality of error and all the tediousness of an old friend.
Ernest: It is true. . . . In the best days of art there were no art-critics. The sculptor hewed from the marble block the great white-limbed Hermes that slept within it . . .
Gilbert: But with regard to your statement that the Greeks had no art-critics, I assure you that is quite absurd. It would be more just to say that the Greeks were a nation of art-critics. . . . even if not a single fragment of art-criticism had come down to us from Hellenic or Hellenistic days, it would be none the less true that the Greeks were a nation of art-critics, and that they invented the criticism of art just as they invented the criticism of everything else. For, after all, what is our primary debt to the Greeks? Simply the critical spirit. And, this spirit, which they exercised on questions of religion and science, of ethics and metaphysics, of politics and education, they exercised on questions of art also, and, indeed, of the two supreme and highest arts, they have left us the most flawless system of criticism that the world has ever seen.
Ernest: But what are the two supreme and highest arts?
Gilbert: Life and Literature, life and the perfect expression of life. . . .
Ernest: I am quite ready to admit that I was wrong in what I said about the Greeks. They were, as you have pointed out, a nation of art-critics. I acknowledge it, and I feel a little sorry for them. For the creative faculty is higher than the critical. There is really no comparison between them.
Gilbert: The antithesis between them is entirely arbitrary. Without the critical faculty, there is no artistic creation at all, worthy of the name. You spoke a little while ago of that fine spirit of choice and delicate instinct of selection by which the artist realises life for us, and gives to it a momentary perfection. Well, that spirit of choice, that subtle tact of omission, is really the critical faculty in one of its most characteristic moods, and no one who does not possess this critical faculty can create anything at all in art. . . .
Ernest: I should have said that great artists work unconsciously, that they were `wiser than they knew,' as, I think, Emerson remarks somewhere.
Gilbert: It is really not so, Ernest. All fine imaginative work is self-conscious and deliberate. No poet sings because he must sing. At least, no great poet does. A great poet sings because he chooses to sing. . . .
Ernest: You have been talking of criticism as an essential part of the creative spirit, and I now fully accept your theory. But what of criticism outside creation? I have a foolish habit of reading periodicals, and it seems to me that most modern criticism is perfectly valueless.
Gilbert: So is most modern creative work also . . . criticism demands infinitely more cultivation than creation does. . . . Anybody can write a three-volumed novel. It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature. The difficulty that I should fancy the reviewer feels is the difficulty of sustaining any standard. . . .
Ernest: But, my dear fellow—excuse me for interrupting you—you seem to me to be allowing your passion for criticism to lead you a great deal too far. For, after all, even you must admit that it is much more difficult to do a thing than to talk about it.
Gilbert: More difficult to do a thing than to talk about it? Not at all. That is a gross popular error. It is very much more difficult to talk about a thing than to do it. In the sphere of actual life that is of course obvious. Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it. There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them, or above each other—by language, which is the parent, and not the child, of thought. . . .
Something about this passage reminds me of the psychology professor who sent me an email a few years ago saying:
There are two kinds of people in science: bumblers and pointers. Bumblers are the people who get up every morning and make mistakes, trying to find truth but mainly tripping over their own feet, occasionally getting it right but typically getting it wrong. Pointers are the people who stand on the sidelines, point at them, and say "You bumbled, you bumbled." These are our only choices in life.
If I'd only known about this Oscar Wilde essay at the time, I could've just sent it to that psychology guy and maybe he would've got the point. Or maybe not; any psychologist who with a straight face says, "there are two kinds of people," is probably beyond any hope of reform.
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