Principles of literary criticism

by I. A. Richards

The value of the experiences which we Seek from the arts does not lie, so we have insisted, in the exquisiteness of the moment of consciousness; a set of isolated ecstasies is not a sufficient explanation. Its inadequacy is additional evidence that the theories of value and of the mind upon which it rests are defective. We must now consider what wider explanations are made possible by the theory of value and the outline account of mental activity and of communication above indicated. The ground, in part at least, is cleared. What now can be said as to why the arts are important and why good taste and sound criticism are not mere luxuries, trivial excrescences grafted upon an independent civilisation?

A number of accounts of varying adequacy each in some degree interesting but needing careful interpretation have been put forward. The arts communicate experiences, it has been said, and make states of mind accessible to the many which otherwise would be only possible to few. To this it might be added that the arts are also a means by which experiences arise in the mind of the artist which would never otherwise come about. Both as an occasion for a collectedness and concentration difficult to attain in the ordinary course of life, and as the means by which human effort may acquire a continuity analogous to but more subtle than the continuity of science, the study and practice of the arts can give immensely increased power to the artist, preserving him from that diffusion of his energies which is perhaps his greatest danger. All this is true, but it does not go to the root of the matter.

Again the educational aspect of the arts is constantly being stressed, sometimes in a manner which does them disservice. ‘Message’ hunting—the type of interest which discovers in Macbeth the moral that ‘Honesty is the best policy’; in Othello a recommendation to ‘Look before you leap’, in Hamlet perhaps a proof that ‘Procrastination is the Thief of Time’, or in King Lear an indication that ‘Your sins will find you out[*]’, in Shelley an exhortation to Idealism, in Browning comfort for the discouraged and assurances as to a future life; but in Donne or Keats no ‘message’—this mode of interpreting the phrase ‘a criticism of life’, though to a minute degree on the right lines, is probably more damaging than those entirely erratic theories, of which ‘Art for Art’s sake’ is an example, with which we have been more concerned.

None the less but in subtler ways the educational influence of the arts is all-pervasive. We must not overlook bad art in estimating it. “I should be said to insist absurdly on the power of my own confraternity” wrote a novelist of the 19th century “if I were to declare that the bulk of the young people in the upper and middle classes receive their moral teaching chiefly from the novels that they read. Mothers would no doubt think of their own sweet teaching; fathers of the examples which they set; and schoolmasters of the excellence of their instructions. Happy is the country which has such mothers, fathers and schoolmasters! But the novelist creeps in closer than the father, closer than the schoolmaster, closer almost than the mother. He is the chosen guide, the tutor whom the young pupil chooses for herself. She retires with him, suspecting no lesson . . . and there she is taught how she shall learn to love; how she shall receive the lover when he comes; how far she should advance to meet the joy; why she should be reticent and not throw herself at once into this new delight.”

The influence is also exerted in more indirect ways. There need be, we must remember, no discernible connection or resemblance whatever between the experience due to the work of art and the later behaviour and experience which is modified through it. Without such resemblance the influence may easily be overlooked or denied, but not by anyone who has a sufficient conception of the ways in which attitudes develop. No one who has repeatedly lived through experiences at the level of discrimination and co-ordination presupposed by the greater writers, can ever, when fully ‘vigilant’, be contented with ordinary crudities though a touch of liver may of course suspend these superior responses. And conversely, keen and vigilant enjoyment of Miss Dell, Mr Burroughs, Mrs Wilcox or Mr Hutchinson, when untouched by doubts or the joys of ironic contemplation, is likely to have as a consequence not only an acceptance of the mediocre in ordinary life, but a blurring and confusion of impulses and a very widespread loss of value.

These remarks apply even more evidently to the Cinema. People do not much imitate what they see upon the screen or what they read of in best-sellers. It would matter little if they did. Such effects would show themselves clearly and the evil would be of a manageable kind. They tend instead to develop stock attitudes and stereotyped ideas, the attitudes and ideas of producers: attitudes and ideas which can be ‘put across’ quickly through a medium that lends itself to crude rather than to sensitive handling. Even a good dramatist’s work will tend to be coarser than that of a novelist of equal ability. He has to make his effects more quickly and in a more obvious way. The Cinema suffers still more than the stage from this disability. It has its compensating advantages in the greater demands which it makes of the audience, but hitherto very few producers have been able to turn them to account. Thus the ideas and attitudes with which the ‘movie fan’ becomes familiar tend to be peculiarly clumsy and inapplicable to life. Other causes, connected with the mentality of producers, increase the effect.

The danger lies not in the fact that school-girls are sometimes incited to poke revolvers at taximen, but in much subtler and more insinuating influences. Most films indeed are much more suited to children than to adults, and it is the adults who really suffer from them. No one can intensely and whole-heartedly enjoy and enter into experiences whose fabric is as crude as that of the average super-film without a disorganisation which has its effects in everyday life. The extent to which second-hand experience of a crass and inchoate type is replacing ordinary life offers a threat which has not yet been realised. If a false theory of the severance and disconnection between ‘æsthetic’ and ordinary experience has prevented the value of the arts from being understood, it has also preserved their dangers from recognition.

Those who have attempted to find a place in the whole structure of life for the arts have often made use of the conception of Play; and Groos and Herbert Spencer are famous exponents of the theory. As with so many other Æsthetic Doctrines the opinion that Art is a form of Play may indicate either a very shallow or a very penetrating view. All depends upon the conception of Play which is entertained. Originally the view arose in connection with survival values. Art, it was thought, had little practical value of the obvious kinds, so some indirect means must be found by which it could be thought to be of service. Perhaps, like play, it was a means of harmlessly expending superfluous energy. A more useful contribution was made when the problem of the value of play itself was seriously attacked. The immense practical utility of most forms of play then became evident. Characteristically play is the preparatory organisation and development of impulses. It may easily become too narrowly specialised, and the impulses active may be such as never to receive ‘serious’ exercise. None the less with our present understanding of the amazingly recondite interactions between what appear to be totally different activities of the nervous system, the importance of play is not likely to need much insistence.

There are many human activities which, fortunately or unfortunately as the case may be, are no longer required of or possible to civilised man. Yet their total discontinuance may lead to grave disturbances. For some of these play serves as an opportunity. The view that art provides in some cases an analogous outlet through vicarious experience has naturally been put forward, notably by Mr Havelock Ellis. “We have lost the orgy, but in its place we have art[†].” If we do not extend the ‘sublimation’ theory too far or try to bring under this Safety-valve heading work with which it has no concern, it may be granted that in some cases the explanation is in place. But the temptation to extend it, and so to misconceive the whole matter, is great.

The objection to the Play Theory, unless very carefully stated, lies in its suggestion that the experiences of Art are in some way incomplete, that they are substitutes, meagre copies of the real thing, well enough for those who cannot obtain better. “The moralising force of Art lies, not in its capacity to present a timid imitation of our experiences, but in its power to go beyond our experience, satisfying and harmonising the unfulfilled activities of our nature.”[†] The Copy View, with the antithesis between Life and Literature which so often accompanies it, is a devastating misconception. Coupled with the suggestion involved by the word ‘Play,’ that such things are for the young rather than for the mature, and that Art is something one grows out of, it has a large share of the responsibility for the present state of the Arts and of Criticism. Its only rival in obscuring the issues is its close cousin the Amusement or Relaxation Theory.