Principles of literary criticism

by I. A. Richards

One set we have seen (Chapters X and XXIV) to be merely conditions of communication having nothing essentially to do with value, conditions involved in valueless and valuable communications alike. We have suggested above, however, that this kind of detachment and severance from ordinary circumstances and accidental personal interests may be of special service in these supremely valuable[*] communications, since it makes the breaking down of inhibitions more easy. This same facilitation of response is also, it should be added, the explanation of the peculiarly pernicious effect of bad but competent art.

We may now turn to consider that other set of characters which have been confused with these communicative conditions, and which may justifiably be taken as defining a special field for those interested in the values of experience. There are two ways in which impulses may be organised; by exclusion and by inclusion, by synthesis and by elimination. Although every coherent state of mind depends upon both, it is permissible to contrast experiences which win stability and order through a narrowing of the response with those which widen it. A very great deal of poetry and art is content with the full, ordered development of comparatively special and limited experiences, with a definite emotion, for example, Sorrow, Joy, Pride, or a definite attitude, Love, Indignation, Admiration, Hope, or with a specific mood, Melancholy, Optimism or Longing. And such art has its own value and its place in human affairs. No one will quarrel with ‘Break, break, break,’ or with the Coronach or with Rose Aylmer or with Love’s Philosophy,[*] although clearly they are limited and exclusive. But they are not the greatest kind of poetry; we do not expect from them what we find in the Ode to the Nightingale, in Proud Maisie, in Sir Patrick Spens, in The Definition of Love or in the Nocturnall upon S. Lucie’s Day.

The structures of these two kinds of experiences are different, and the difference is not one of subject but of the relations inter se of the several impulses active in the experience. A poem of the first group is built out of sets of impulses which run parallel, which have the same direction. In a poem of the second group the most obvious feature is the extraordinarily heterogeneity of the distinguishable impulses. But they are more than heterogeneous, they are opposed. They are such that in ordinary, non-poetic, non-imaginative experience, one or other set would be suppressed to give as it might appear freer development to the others.

The difference comes out clearly if we consider how comparatively unstable poems of the first kind are. They will not bear an ironical contemplation. We have only to read The War Song of Dinas Vawr in close conjunction with the Coronach, or to remember that unfortunate phrase ‘Those lips, O slippery blisses’! from Endymion, while reading Love’s Philosophy, to notice this. Irony in this sense consists in the bringing in of the opposite, the complementary impulses; that is why poetry which is exposed to it is not of the highest order, and why irony itself is so constantly a characteristic of poetry which is.

These opposed impulses from the resolution of which such experiences spring cannot usually be analysed. When, as is most often the case, they are aroused through formal means, it is evidently impossible to do so. But sometimes, as in the above cited cases, they can, and through this accident literary criticism is able to go a step further than the criticism of the other arts.

We can only conjecture dimly what difference holds between a balance and reconciliation of impulses and a mere rivalry or conflict. One difference is that a balance sustains one state of mind, but a conflict two alternating states. This, however, does not take us very far. The chief misconception which prevents progress here is the switchboard view of the mind. What conception should be put in its place is still doubtful, but we have already (Chapters XIV and XX) discussed the reasons which make a more adequate conception imperative. The rest of the difficulty is due merely to ignorance; we do not yet know enough about the central nervous system.

With this preliminary disavowal of undue certainty we may proceed. The equilibrium[*] of opposed impulses, which we suspect to be the ground-plan of the most valuable æsthetic responses, brings into play far more of our personality than is possible in experiences of a more defined emotion. We cease to be orientated in one definite direction; more facets of the mind are exposed and, what is the same thing, more aspects of things are able to affect us. To respond, not through one narrow channel of interest, but simultaneously and coherently through many, is to be disinterested in the only sense of the word which concerns us here. A state of mind which is not disinterested is one which sees things only from one standpoint or under one aspect. At the same time since more of our personality is engaged the independence and individuality of other things becomes greater. We seem to see ‘all round’ them, to see them as they really are; we see them apart from any one particular interest which they may have for us. Of course without some interest we should not see them at all, but the less any one particular interest is indispensable, the more detached our attitude becomes. And to say that we are impersonal is merely a curious way of saying that our personality is more completely involved.

These characters of æsthetic experiences can thus be shown to be very natural consequences of the diversity, of their components. But that so many different impulses should enter in is only what may be expected in an experience whose ground-plan is a balance of opposites. For every impulse which does not complete itself in isolation tends to bring in allied systems. The state of irresolution shows this clearly. The difference between any such welter of vacillating impulses and the states of composure we are considering may well be a matter of mediating relations between the supporting systems brought in from either side. One thing only perhaps is certain; what happens is the exact opposite to a deadlock, for compared to the experience of great poetry every other state of mind is one of bafflement.

The consciousness which arises in these moments of completed being lends itself inevitably to transcendental descriptions. “This Exstasie doth unperplex”, we seem to see things as they really are, and because we are freed from the bewilderment which our own maladjustment brings with it,

The heavy and the weary weight