Principles of literary criticism

by I. A. Richards

From certain visual signs, then, the contemplator constructs, muscularly as well as visually, the spatial form of the statue. We have seen that the picture-space is a construction, similarly the statue-space is a construction, and the proportions and relations of the volumes which in this statue-space make up the statue are by no means necessarily the same as those of the mass of marble from which we receive our signs. In other words, the scientific examination of the statue and the imaginative contemplation of it do not yield the same spatial results. Thus the process of measuring[*] statues with a view to discovering a numerical formula for Beauty is little likely to be fruitful. And the work of those, such as Havard Thomas, who have attempted to use this method, show the features which we should expect. Their merits derive from factors outside the range of the theory. The psychological processes involved in the construction of space are too subtle, and the differences between the actual configuration of the marble and the configuration of the statue in the statue-space are brought about in too many ways for any correlation to be established.

Among the factors which intervene in the building up of the imaginative form the most obvious are the lighting, and the material.

With change of lighting, change of form follows at once through change in the visual signs, and since stone is often a translucent not an opaque material, lighting is by no means such a simple matter as is sometimes supposed. More is involved than the avoidance of distracting cast shadows and the disposal of the brightest illumination upon the right portions of the statue. The general aim should obviously be to reproduce the lighting for which the sculptor designed his work, an aim which requires very sensitive and full appreciation for its success. An aim, moreover, which in the case of works transported from North to South and vice versa is sometimes impossible of realisation.

The interpretation of form is an extraordinarily complex affair. The consequences of the asymmetricality of space as we construct it must be noted. Up and down have distinct characters which differ from those of right and left, which differ again from those of away and towards us. A measured vertical distance does not seem to us the same as an equal horizontal distance. Nor does a equal distance away from us seem equal to either. These effects are modified again, sometimes reinforced, sometimes reduced, by effects due to quite a different source, to the relative ease or difficulty with which the eye follows certain lines. The greater and less compatibility of certain eye movements with others is the cause of much of what is confusedly called Rhythm in the plastic arts. After certain lines we expect others, and the success or failure of our expectation modifies our response. Unexpectedness, of course, is an obvious technical resource for the artist. The intervention here of the representational factor cannot be overlooked. An eye movement which encounters difficulty for any of a number of possible reasons, among which so-called rhythmical factors deserve special notice, is interpreted as standing for a greater distance than an equal but more easy movement. This is only a rough rule, for yet other psychological factors may come in to nullify or even reverse the effect; for example, an explicit recognition of the difficulty. Yet another determining condition in our estimation of intervals of space is the uniformity of their filling. Thus a line one inch long hatched across will generally seem longer than an equal line unhatched, and a modulated surface seem larger than a smooth one.

These instances of the psychological factors which help to make the imaginatively constructed statue-space different from the actual space occupied by the marble will be enough to show how intricate is the interpretation by which we take even the first step towards the appreciation of a statue. Our full response of attitude and emotion is entirely dependent upon how we perform the initial operations. It is of course impossible to make these interpretations separately, consciously and deliberately. Neural arrangements over which we have little or no direct control perform them for us. Thanks to their complexity the resultant effect, the imagined form of the statue, will vary greatly from individual to individual and in the same individual from time to time. It might be thought therefore that the hope that a statue will be a vehicle of the same experience for many different individuals is vain. Certain simplifications, however, save the situation.

Form, we have seen, is, through our selection among the possible signs present, within certain limits what we like to make it. As it varies, so do our further or deeper responses of feeling and attitude vary. But just as there are congruences and compatibilities among the responses we make, in the case of colour, which tend, given certain colours, to make us pick out of a range of possible colours one which will give us a congruent (or harmonious) response, so it is with form. Out of the multitude of different forms which we might construct by stressing certain of the signs rather than others, the fixing even temporarily of a part of the form tends to bias us towards so interpreting the rest as to yield responses accordant with those already active. Hence a great reduction of the disparity of the interpretations which arise, hence also the danger of an initial misapprehension which perverts the rest of the interpretation.

This Chapter, like the last, is intended as an indication, merely, of the ways in which a psychological analysis may assist the critic and help to remove misconceptions. The usual practice of alluding to Form as though it were a simple unanalysable virtue of objects—a procedure most discouraging to those who like to know what they are doing, and thus very detrimental to general appreciation—will lapse when a better understanding of the situation becomes general. None the less there are certain very puzzling facts as to the effects of forms when apprehended which in part explain this way of talking. These are perhaps best considered in connection with Music, the most purely formal of the arts.

CHAPTER XX
The Impasse of Musical Theory

Will twenty chapters render plain
Those lonely lights that still remain
Just breaking over land and main?

For fairly obvious reasons the psychology of Music is often regarded as more backward than that of the other arts, and the impasse which has here been reached more baffling and more exasperating. But such advance as has been possible in the theory of the other arts has been mainly concerned with them as representational or as serviceable. For poetry, for painting, for architecture there still remain problems as perplexing as any which can be raised about music. For example, what is the difference between good and bad blank verse in its formal aspect, between delightful and distressing alliteration, between euphony and cacophony, between metrical triumph and metrical failure? Or in the case of Painting, why do certain forms excite such marked responses of emotion and attitude and others, so very like them geometrically, excite none or produce merely confusion? Why have colours their specific responses and how is it that their combinations have such subtle and yet definite effects? Or what is the reason that spaces and volumes in Architecture affect us as they do? These questions are at present as much without answers as any that we can raise about Music; but the fact that in these arts other questions arise which can in part be answered, whereas in Music questions about the effects of form overwhelmingly preponderate, has in part obscured the situation.