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ATTTHOP Frye, Northrop TITLE Criticism, Visible and Invisible. ImSTTTTITION National Council of Teachers of English, Champaign, Ill. PUP DATE Oct 64 NOTE 10p. JOURNAL CIT College English; v26 n1 p3-12 Oct 1964

EDPS PRICE ET)PS Price MF-$0.25 HC -T0.60 DESCRTPTOPS Critical Peading, Educational Objectives, *Educational Philosophy, *English Instruction, *English Literature, Evaluation Criteria, Impressionistic Criticism, Learning Experience, Learning Processes, Literary Analysis, *Literary Criticism, Literature Appreciation, Productive Thinking, Peading Comprehension, *Theoretical Criticism, Verbal Communication, Verbal Learning

ABSTRACT The central activity of literary criticism, the understanding of literature, is related to the process of establishing a context for the works of literature being studied. Choosing not to discuss the factual elements of literary criticism, the author clarifies and concentrates on the "lower" and "upper" limits of criticism. While the "lower" limit essentially deals with a defense of freedom of speech and thought, the "upper" level is noted to be the ultimate function of criticism in that it leads toinner possession of literature as an imaginative force. The understanding of literature, eauated with having literary experience,therefore, leads the author to discuss why literature cannot be taught.While criticism must begin with "visible" orientation toward its object, it arrives at its true goal when rendered "invisible" through self-reali7ation of the literary experience. Some remarks on humanism, philology, "new criticism", personal taste as criticism, estheticism (critical dandyism), and evaluative criticism are also included. (Pt)

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ti From: College English; v26, nl, October19640

Criticism, Visible and Invisible qa NORTHROP FRYE %CI THERE IS A DISTINCTION, certainly as oldand known that is different. The differ- Das Plato and possibly as old as the humanence is that something conceptual has I.C1mind, between two levels of understand-become existential: this is the basis of the ing. I say levels, because one is nearlytraditional contrast between knowledge Q always regarded as superior to the other,and wisdom. whether in kind or in degree. Plato calls This distinction is of great importance Cithem, in his discussion of the divided line U.iin the Republic, the level of nous and thein religion: Maritain's Degrees of Knowl- level of dianoia, knowledge of things andedge is one of many attempts to dis- knowledge about things. Knowledgetinguish a lower comprehension from a about things preserves the split betweenhigher apprehension in religious experi- subject and object which is the first factence. When St. Thomas Aquinas re- in ordinary consciousness: "I" learnmarked on his deathbed that all his work 'that": what 1 learn is an objective bodyseemed to him so much straw, he did not mean that his books were worthless, but of facts set over against me and essentially that he himself was passing from the unrelated to me. Knowledge of things, ondianoia to the nous of what he had been the other hand, implies some kind ofwriting about. I mention the religious identification or essential unity of subjectparallel only to emphasize a principle and object. What is learned and the mindwhich runs through all education: that of the learner become interdependent,what Plato calls nous is attainable only indivisible parts of one thing. through something analogous to faith, Three principles are involved in thiswhich implies habit or consistent will, conception. First, learning about thingsthe necessary persistence in pursuing the is the necessary and indispensable preludegoals of the faith. to the knowledge of things: confronta- I am dealing here, however, only with tion is the only possible beginning ofthe application of the principle of two IN, identity. Second, knowledge about thingslevels of knowledge to the ordinary No is the limit of teaching. Knowledge oflearning process. Here the clearest illus- things cannot be taught: for one thing,tration is that of a manual skill. In be- the possibility that there is some principleginning to learn a skill like driving a of identity that can link the knower andcar, a conscious mind comes in contact the known in some essential relation iswith an alien and emotionally disturbing 0indemonstrable. It can only be accepted,object. When the skillis learned, the 0 whether unconsciously asan axiom orobject ceases to be objective and becomes deliberately as an act of faith. He whoan extension of the personality, and the V)knows on the upper-level knows that helearning process has moved from the knows, as a fact of his experience, butconscious mind to something that we call he cannot impart this knowledge di-unconscious, subconscious, instinctive, or rectly. Third, nous is (or is usually con-whatever best expresses to us the idea sidered to be) the same knowledge asof unmediated unity. We think of this dianoia: it is the relation between knower subconscious,usually,as more with- drawn, less turned outward to the world, Mr. Frye is Principal of Victoria College, Uri- .,ersity of Toronto. He is the author of a numberthan the consciousness: yet it is far less of books, including the highly influential Anatomy solipsistic. It is the nervous novice who is of Criticism. the solipsist: it is the trained driver, with

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4 COLLEGEENGLISH a hidden skill that he cannot directly im-was closely associated with a more spe- part to others, who is in the communitycificfaith in the greatness of certain of the turnpike highway, such as it is.Greek and Latin classics. The classics Literature presents the same distinc-were great, certainly, and produced an tion. There is the dianoia of literature,astonishingly fertile progeny in, the ver- or criticism, which constitutes the wholenaculars. But the conception of literature of what can be directly taught andinvolved tended to be an aristocratic one, learned about literature. I have explainedand had the limitations of aristocracy elsewhere that it is impossible to teachbuilt in to it. It saw literature as a hier- or learn literature: what one teaches andarchy of comparative greatness, the sum- learns is criticism. We do not regardmit of which provided the standards for this area of direct teaching and learningthe critics. as an end but as a means to another end. In the philologists of the nineteenth A person who is absorbed wholly bycentury, dealing with the vernaculars knowledge about something is what wethemselves, one sometimes detects a late ordinarily mean by a pedant. Beyond thishumanistic pedantry which takes the is the experience of literature itself, andform of critical arrogance. All too often the goal of this is something that wethe philologists, one feels, form an initi- call vaguely the cultivated man, the per-ated clique, with literary standards and son for whom literature is a possession,models derived (at several removes) from a possession that cannot be directly trans-the "great" poets, which are then applied mitted, and yet not private, for it be-to the "lesser" ones. Old-fashioned books longs in a community. Nothing that weon English literature which touch on can teach a student is an acceptable sub-"lesser" poets, such as Skelton and Wyatt stitute for the faith that a higher kindin the early sixteenth century, maintain of contact with literatureispossible,an attitude toward them of slightly in- much less for the persistence in that faithjured condescension. Criticism of this which we call the love of reading. Evensort had to be superseded by a democ- here there is the possibility of pedantry: ratizing of literary experience, not merely literature is an essential part of the cul-to do justice to underrated poets, but tivated life, but not the whole of it,to revise the whole attitude to literature nor is the form of the cultivated lifein which a poet could be judged by itself a literary form. standards derived from another poet, The great strength of humanism, as ahowever much "greater." Every writer conception of teaching literature, wasmust be examined on his own terms, to that it accepted certain classics or modelssee what kind of literary experience he in literature, but directed its attentioncan supply that no one else can supply beyond the study of them to the pos-in quite the same way. The objection session of them, and insisted on their"But Skelton isn't as great a poet as relevance to civilized or cultivated life.Milton" may not he without truth, but We spoke of pedantry, and there wasit is without critical point. Literary ex- undoubtedly much pedantry in human-perience is far more flexible and varied ism, especially at the level of elementarythan it was a century ago, but hier- teaching, but not enough to destroy its effectiveness. Browning's grammarianarchical standards stilllinger, and the was not a pedant, because he settled hoti'ssubjection of the critic to the Laiqueness business and based oun in the light of aof the work being criticized is still not blindingly clear vision of a communitya wholly accepted axiom. Also, the rele- of knowledge. The act of faith in literaryvance to criticism of what used to be experience which humanism defendedregarded as sub-literary material, primi- bn

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tr 7 CRITICISM, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 5 01 r tive myths and the like, is still resistedbased on the senses of distance, and it is F in many quarters. easy to think of critical taste as a sublima- All teaching of literature, which istion, the critic being an astral gourmet literary dianoia or criticism, must pointand literature itself being, as Plato said beyond itself, and cannot get to whereof rhetoric, a kind of disembodied cook- itispointing. The revolution in theery. This gastronomic metaphor is fre- teaching of English associated with thequently employed by writers, for phrase "new criticism" began by chal-instance at the opening of Torn Jones, lenging the tendency (less a tendency ofthough when recognized as a metaphor teachers, perhaps, than of examination-it is usually only a joke. It suggests that haunted students) to accept knowledgethe literary work is presented for enjoy- about literature as a substitute for literaryment and evaluation, like a wine. The experience. The new critics set the objectconception of taste is a popular one be- of literary experience directly in frontcause it confers great social prestige on of the student and insisted that he grapplethe critic. The man of taste is by defini- with it and not try to find its meaning ortion a gentleman, and a critic who has his understanding of it in the introductiona particular hankering to be a gentleman and footnotes. So far, so good. No seriousis bound to attach a good deal of im- 1 teaching of literature can ever put theportance to his taste. A generation ago object of literary experience in any otherthe early essays of Eliot owed much position. But new criticism was criticismof their influence and popularity to their too: it developed its own techniques ofcavalierism,their suggestion that the talking about the work, and providing socialaffinities of good poetry were another critical counterpart of the workcloser to the landed gentry than to the to read instead. No method of criticism,Hebrew prophets. Taste leads to a spe- as such, can avoid doing this. Whatcific judgment: the metaphor of the criticism can do, to point beyond itself,critic as "judge" is parallel to the meta- is to try to undermine the student's sensephor of taste, and the assumption under- of the ultimate objectivity of the literarylying such criticism is usually that the work. That, Ifear,is not a very in-test of one's critical ability is a value- telligible sentence, but the idea it ex-judgment on the literary work. pressesisunfamiliar. The studentis If this is true, the critic's contribution confronted by an alien structure of imagi-to literature, however gentlemanly, seems nation, set over against him, strange ina curiously futile one, the futility being its conventions and often in its values,most obvious with negative judgments. a mysterious and stylized "verbal icon."Ezra Pound, T.S.Eliot,Middleton It is not to remain so:it must becomeMurry, F. R. Leavis, are only a few of possessed by and identified with the stu-the eminent critics who have abused dent. Criticism cannot make this act ofMilton. Milton's greatness as a poet is un- possession for the student; what it canaffected by this:as far as the central do is to weaken those tendencies withinfact of his importance in literatureis criticism that keep the literary work ob-concerned, these eminent critics might jective and separated. Criticism, in orderas well have said nothing at all. A journal to point beyond itself, must be more thaninterested insatire recently quoted a merely aware of its limitations: it needscritic as saying that satire must have a to be actively iconoclastic about itself.moral norm, and that Fielding's Jonathan The metaphor of "taste" expresses aWild was a failure because no character real truth in criticism, but no metaphorin it represented a moral norm. The ques- is without pitfalls. The sense of tastetion was referred to me, and I said, some- is a contact sense: the major arts arewhat irritably, that of course a moral I .

6 COLLEGEENGLISH norm was essential to satire, but that itthe critic enjoys it or blamed because was the reader and not the satirist whohe does not. Kierkegaard himself was so was responsible for supplying it. My realimpressed by the prevalence of this atti- objection however was to the criticaltude in the arts that he called it the procedure involved in the "X is a failureaesthetic attitude, and tended to identify because" formula. No critical principlethe arts with it. We do not escape from can possibly follow the "because" whichthe limitations of the attitude by trans- is of any importance at all compared toposing its judgments from an aesthetic the fact of Jonathan Wild's position ininto a moral key. F. R. Leavis has always the history of satire and in eighteenth-commanded a good deal of often re- century English culture. The fact is aluctant respect because of the moral in- fact about literature, and, as I have triedtensity he brings to his criticism, and to show elsewhere, nothing can followbecause of his refusal to make unreal "because" except some kind of pseudo-separations between moral and aesthetic -critical moral anxiety. Thus: "King Learvalues. Reading through the recent re- is a failure because it is indecorous toprint of Scrutiny, one feels at first that represent a king on the stage as insane."this deep concern for literature, whether We recognize this statement to be non-the individual judgments are right or sense, because we are no longer burdenedwrong, is the real key to literary experi- with the particular social anxiety it refersence, and therealintroduction that to, but all such anxieties are equally with-criticism can make to it. But as one goes out content. Matthew Arnold decidedon one has the feeling that this concern, that "Empedocles on Etna" was a failurewhich is there and is a very real virtue, because its situation was one "in whichgets deflected at some crucial point, and the suffering finds no vent in action; inis prevented from fully emerging out of which a continuous state of mental dis-the shadow-battles of anxieties. Perhaps tress is prolonged, unrelieved by incident, what the point is is indicated by such hope, or resistance; in which there iscomments of Leavis himself as "the poem everything to be endured, nothing to beis a determinate thing: it is there," and, done." These phrases would exactly de-"unappreciated, the poem isn't 'there.' " scribe, for instance, Eliot's "Prufrock,"An insistence on the "thereness" or sepa- one of the most penetrating poems ofration of critic and literary work forces our time, or a good deal of Arnold's con-one, for allone's concern, to go on temporary, Baudelaire. We cannot ques-playing the same "aesthetic" game. The tion Arnold's sincerity in excluding hisparadox is that the "aesthetic" attitude poem from his 1853 volume, but all heis not a genuinely critical one atall, demonstrated by excluding it was hisbut social:concern makes thesocial own anxious fear of irony. reference more impersonal, but does not The attitude that we tna,, call criticalremove it. dandyism, where the operative concep- Evaluating criticism is mainly effective tions are vogue words of approvol or theas criticism only when its valuations are reverse, like "interesting" or "dreary,"favorable. Thus Ezra Pound, in the mid- is an extreme but logical form of evalu-dle of his Guide to Kulchur, expresses ating criticism, where the critic'srealsome disinterested admiration for the subject is his own social position. Such lyrical elegies of Thomas .I-Iardy, and the criticism belongs to the wrong side ofeffect, in that book, is as though a gar- Kierkegaard's "either-or" dialectic: it isrulous drunk had suddenly sobered up, an attitude for which the work of artfocused his eyes, and begun to talk sense. remains permanently a detached objectBut, of course, if my argument suggests of contemplation, to be admired becausethat everything which has acquired some

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CRITICISM, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 7 reputation in literature should be placedpressed by the term "insight," the no- "beyond criticism," or that histories ofticing, of things in the literary work of literature should be as bland and officialparticular relevance to one's own experi- as possible, I should merely be intensify-ence, is perhaps the nearest that criticism ing the attitude I am attacking, turningcan get to demonstrating the value of the verbal icon into a verbal idol. Mywhat it is dealing with. Insight criticism point is a very different one, and it beginsof this kind, however, is a form of divina- with the fact that the work of literaturetion, an extension of the principle of I' 1 is "beyond criticism" now: criticism cansortes Virgiliazzae: it is essentially random do nothing but lead into it. both in invention and in communication. There are two contexts in which a In short, all methods of criticism and work of literature is potential, an internalteaching are bad if they encourage the context and an external one. Internally,persisting separation of student and liter- the writer has a potential theme and triesary work: all methods are good if they to actualize it in what he writes. Ex-try to overcome it. The tendency to ternally, the literary work, actualized inpersistent separation is the result of shift- itself, becomes a potential experience foring the critical attention from the object student, critic, or reader. A "bad" poemof literary experience to something else, or novel is one in which, so the criticusually something in the critic's mind, feels, a potential literary experience hasand this. deprives criticism of content. not been actualized. Such a judgmentI know that I have said this before, but implies a consensus: the critic speaks forthe same issues keep turning up every allcritics, even if he happens to beyear. This year the issue was raised by wrong. But an actualized work of litera-Professor Rowse's book on Shakespeare. ture may still fail to become an actualizedThe questions usually asked about experience for its reader. The judgmentShakespeare's sonnets, such as who was here implies withdrawal from a con-W. H. and the like, have nothing to sensus: however many critics may likedo with Shakespeare's sonnets or with this, I don't. The first type of judgmentliterary criticism, and have only got at- belongs primarily to the critical reactiontached to criticism because, owing to to contemporary literature,reviewingShakespeare's portentous reputation, and the like, where a variety of newcritics have acquired an impertinent itch authors are struggling to establish theirto know more about his private life than authority. The second type belongs pri-they need to know. It seemed to Pro- marily to the tactics of critical pressurefessor Rowse that such questions were groups that attempt to redistribute theproperly the concern of a historian, and traditional valuations of the writers ofhe was quite right. True, he had no new

the past in order to display certain newfacts about the sonnets and added nothing, writers, usually including themselves, toto our knowledge of this alleged subject, better advantage. There is no genuinelybut his principle was sound. But Professor critical reason for "revaluation." BothRowse went further. It occurred to him activities correspond in the sexual life tothat perhaps literary criticism was not what Freud calls the "polymorphous per-a genuine intellectual discipline atall, verse," the preliminaries of contact withand that there could be no issues con- the object. Judicial criticism, or review-nected with it that could not be better ing,isnecessarily incomplete:itcan dealt with by someone who did belong never free itself from historical variables,to a genuine discipline, such as history. p such as the direct appeal of certain in-One of his sentences, for instance, begins: group conventions to the sophisticated"A real writer understands better than critic. The kind of criticism that is ex-a mere critic." Literary criticism ought 4 4

8 COLLEGEENGLISH to be profoundly grateful to Professorother poems. But I think of the term as Rowse for writing so bad a book:itindigenous to criticism, not as transferred practically proves that writing a goodfrom Neoplatonic philosophy or Jungian book on Shakespeare is a task for a merepsychology. However, I would not fight critic. Still, the fact that a responsiblefor a word, and I hold to no "method" scholar in a related field could assume, inof criticism beyond assuming that the 1964, that literary criticism was a parasiticstructure and imagery of literature are pseudo-subject with no facts to build withCentral considerations of criticism. Nor, and no concepts to think with, deservesI think, does my practical criticism illus- to be noted. trate the use of a patented critical method I do not believe, ultimately, in a plural-of my own, different in kind from the ity of critical methods, though I can seeapproaches of other critics. a division of labor in critical operations. The end of criticism and teaching, in any case, is not an aesthetic but an ethical I do not believe that there are differentand participating end: for it, ultimately, "schools" of criticism today, attached toworks of literature arc not things to be different and irreconcilable metaphysicalcontemplated but powers to be absorbed. assumptions: the notion seems to me toThis completes the paradox of which reflect nothing but the confusion inthe first half has already been given. critical theory. In particular, the notionThe "aesthetic"attitude,persistedin, that I belong to a school or have inventedloses its connection with literatureas a school of mythical or archetypal criti-an art and becomes socially or morally cism reflects nothing but confusion aboutanxious: to treat literature seriously as me. I make this personal comment witha social and moral force is to pass into some hesitation, in view of the great,the genuine experience of. it. The ad- generosity with which my books havevantage of using established classics in been received, but everyone who isteaching, the literary works that have understood by anybody is misunderstoodproved their effectiveness,is that one by somebody. It is true that I call thecan skip preliminary stages and clear .elements of literary structure myths, be-everything out (if the way except under- cause they are myths; it is true that Istanding, which is the only road to pos- call the elements of imagery archetypes,session. At the same time it is easy for because I want a word which suggestsunderstanding to become an end in itself something that changes its context buttoo. The established classics are, for the not its essence. James Beattie, in Themost part, historically removed from us, Minstrel, says of the poet's activity: and to approach them as new works in- volves a certain historical astigmatism: From Nature's beauties, variously comparedbut to consider them as historical docu- And variously combined, he learns to frame ments only is again to separate student Those forms of bright perfection and literary work. In teaching manual skills, such as car-driving, an examination and adds a footnote to the last phrase:can test the skill on the higher level; "General ideas of excellence, the imme- diate archetypes of sublime imitation,but an examination in English literature both in painting and in poetry." It wascannot pass beyond the level of theoreti- natural for an eighteenth-century poetcal knowledge. We may guess the quality to think of poetic images as reflectingof a student's literary experience from "general ideas of excellence"; it is naturalthe quality of his writing, but there is for a twentieth-century critic to thinkno assured way of telling from the out- of them as reflecting the same images inside the difference between a student

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CRITICISM, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 9 who knows literature and a student whoupon the literary work, so as to let the merely knows about it. world know how deeply we respect it." Thus the teaching of literature, an ac-An important critical principle is con- tivity of criticism which attempts to castcealed in this remark. Itis an illusion its bread on the waters without knowingthat only great literature can be com- when or how or by whom it will bemented on, and that the existence of such picked up, is involved in paradox andcommentary proves or demonstrates its ambiguity. The object of literary experi-greatness. It is a writer's merits that make ence must be placed directly in frontthe criticism on him rewarding, as a rule, of the student, and he should be urgedbut it is not his merits that make it pos- to respond to it and accept no substitutessible. The techniques of criticism can as the end of his understanding. Yet itbe turned loose on anything whatever. does not matter a tinker's curse whatIf this were not so, a clever parody like a student thinks and feels about literatureThe Pooh Perplex could hardly make until he can think and feel, which is notits point. Hence a mere display of critical until he passes the stage of stock response.dexterity or ingenuity, even as an act of And although the cruder forms of stockdevotion, is not enough: criticism, to be response can be identified and the studentuseful both to literature and to the public, released from them, there are subtlerneeds to contain some sense of the forms that are too circular to be easilyprogressive or the systematic, some feel- refuted. There is, for instance, criticaling that irrevocable forward steps in narcissism, or assuming that a writer'sunderstanding are being taken. We notice "real" meaning is the critic's own attitudethat all the contributors to The Pooh (or the opposite of it, if the reaction isPerplex claim to be supplying the one negative). There is no "real" meaningessential thing needed to provide this in literature, nothing to be "got out ofsense of progress, though of course none it" or abstracted from the total experi-of them does. Thus the piling up ofcom- ence; yet all criticism seems to be con-mentary around the major writers of cerned with approaching such a meaning.literature may in itself simply be another There is no way out of these ambiguities:way of barricading those writers from us. criticism is a phoenix preoccupied with Yeats tells us that what fascinates us constructing its own funeral pyre, with-is the most difficult among things not out any guarantee that a bigger and betterimpossible. Literary criticism is not in phoenix will manifest itself as a result. so simple a position. Teaching literature A large part of criticism is concernedis impossible; that is why it is difficult. with commentary, and a major work ofYet it must be tried, tried constantly and literature has a vast amount ofcom-indefatigably, and placed at the center mentary attached to it. With writers ofof the whole educational process, for at the size of Shakespeare and Milton, suchevery level the understanding of words a body of work is a proper and necessaryis as urgent and crucial a necessityas it part of our cultural heritage; and so itis on its lowest level of learning to read may be with, say, Melville or Henryand write. Whatever is educational is James or Joyce or 1'. S. Eliot. The exist-also therapeutic. The therapeutic power ence of a large amount of commentaryof the arts has been intermittently recog- on a writer is a testimony to the sensenized, especially in music since David of the importance of that writer amongplayed his harp before Saul, but the fact critics. As the first critic in The Poohthat literature is essential to the mental Perplex says, on the opening page of thehealth of society seldom enters our specu- book: "Our ideal in English studies islations about it. But if I am to take seri- to amass as much commentary as possibleously my own principle that works of e

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10 COLLEGEENGLISH literature are not so much things to be"worst" of what every young person studied as powers to be possessed, I needreads or listens to. to face the implications of that principle. Third, if I am right in saying that 111 I wish all teachers of English, at everyliterature is a power to be possessed, and level, could feel that they were con-not a body of objects to be studied, then cerned with the whole of a student'sthe differehce between good and bad verbal, or in fact imaginative, experience,is not something inherent inliterary not merely with the small part of it thatworks themselves, but the difference be- is conventionally called literary. The in-tween two ways of using literary experi- cessant verbal bombardment that studentsence. The belief that good and bad can get from conversation, advertising, thebe determined as inherent qualities is the mass media, or even such verbal gamesbelief that inspires censorship, and the as Scrabble or cross-word puzzles,is attempt toestablish grades and hier- addressed to the same part of the mindarchies in literature itself. to distinguish that literature addresses, and it does farwhat is canonical from what is apoc- more to mold their literary imaginationryphal,isreally an "aesthetic" form than poetry or fiction. It often happensof censorship. Milton remarked in that new developments in literature meetAreopagitica that a wise man would make with resistance merely because they bringa better use of an idle pamphlet than to life conventions that the critics hada fool would of Holy Scripture, and decided were sub-literary. Wordsworth'sthis, I take it,is an application of the Lyrical Ballads met with resistance ofgospel principle that man is defiled not this kind, and in our day teachers andby what goes into him but by what critics who think literature should be acomes out of him. The question of cen- matter of direct feeling and are preju-sorship takes us back to the metaphor diced against the verbal puzzle find thatof taste by a different road, for censor- theirstudents,unlike themselves,areship is apparently based on an analogy living in the age of Finnegans Wake.between mental and physical nourish- There is a real truth, for all of what has been said above, in the belief that thement, what is censorable being inherently critic is deeply concerned with evalua-poisonous. But thereis something all tion, and with separating the good fromwrong with this analogy:it has often the bad in literature. But I would modifybeen pointed out that the censor himself this belief in three ways. First, as justnever admits to being adversely affected said, the area of literature should not beby what he reads. We need to approach restricted to the conventionally literary,the problem that censorship fails to solve but expanded to the entire area of verbalin another way. experience. Hence the evaluating activity In primitive societiesartisclosely should not be concerned solely with civilbound up with magic: the creative im- wars in the conventionally literary field.pulse is attached to a less disinterested Second, the distinction of good and badhope that its products may affect the is not a simple opposing of the conven-external world in one's favor. Drawing tionally literary tothe conventionallypictures of animals is part of a design to sub-literary, a matter of demonstratingcatch them; songs about bad weather are thesuperiorityof Henry James topartly charms to ensure good weather. Mickey Spillane. On the contrary,itThe magical attachments of primitive seems to me that an important andart, though they may have stimulated neglected aspect of literary teaching isthe creative impulse, also come to hamper to illustrate the affinities in structure andit, and as society develops they wear off imagery between the "best" and theor become isolated in special ritual corn- 1.1l. ----- CRITICISM, VISIBLEAND INVISIBLE 11 partments. Many works of art, includingshocking,absurd,angry,and similar Shakespeare's Tempest, remind us thatconventions in contemporary art one the imaginative powers are released bymay recognize a strong kinetic motiva- the renunciation of magic. In the nexttion. Even in the succession of fashions stage of civilization the magical or nat-there is something of this, for the suc- ural attachment is replaced by a socialcession of vogues and movements in the

14. one. Literature expresses the preoccupa-arts is part of the economy of waste. tions of the society that produced it,Most cultivated people realize that they and it is pressed into service to illustrateshould overlook or ignore these attach- other social values, religious or political.ments in responding to the imaginative This means that it has an attachment toproduct itself, and meet all such assaults other verbal structures in religion or his-on their sense of decorum with a tolerant tory or morals which is allegorical. Hereaplomb that sometimes infuriates the too is something that both hampers andartist still more. Here again, the attach- stimulates the creative impulse. Muchment beginsasastimulus and may of Dante's Commedia and Milton's Para-eventually become a hindrance, unless the dise Lost is concerned with political andartist is astute enough to detach himself religious issues that we regard now asat the point where the hindrance begins. merely partisan or superstitious. The It is the critic's task, in every age, to poems would never have been writtenfight for the autonomy of the arts, and without the desire to raise these issues,never under any circumstances allow and as long as we are studying the poemshimself to be seduced into judging the the issues are relevant to our study. Butarts, positively or negatively, by their when we pass from the study to the pos-attachments. The fact that, for instance, session of the poems, a dialectical separa-Burroughs' Naked Lunch is written in tion of a permanent imaginative structuretheconvention ofthepsychological from a mass of historical anxieties takesshocker does not make it either a good place. This is the critical principle thator a bad book, and the fashion for pop- Shelley was attempting to formulate in his artpaintingisneither good because Defence of Poetry, and in fact the Ro-painters ought to rediscover content nor mantic movement marks the beginningbad because they ought not. But an es- of a third stage in the attachments of thesential part of the critic's strategy, to arts, and one that we are still in. the extent that the critic is a teacher, This third stage (to some extent "de-is in leading his students to realize that cadent," as thefirst one isprimitive,in responding to art without attachments though we should be careful not to getthey are at the same time building up a trapped by the word) is both social andresistance to kinetic stimulus themselves. magical, and is founded on the desire toLiterary education is not doing the whole make art act kinetically on other people,of its proper work unless it marshals the startling, shocking, or otherwise stimu-verbal imagination against the assaults lating them into a response of heightenedof advertising and propaganda that try awareness. It belongs to an age in whichto bludgeon it into passivity. This is a kinetic verbal stimulus, in advertising,battle that should be fought long before propaganda, and mass media, plays auniversity, because university comes too large and increasing role in our verballate in a student's life to alter his mental experience. Sometimes the arts try tohabits more than superficially. I think of make use of similar techniques, as thea public school teacher I know who got Italian Futurist movement did, but morehis grade eight students to analyze the frequently the attempt is to create arhetorical devices in a series of magazine kind of counter-stimulus. In the variousadvertisements. The effect was so shat- 1

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12 COLLEGE ENGLISH tering that he thought at first he mustwords. Relation to context accounts for be working with too young an agenearly the whole of the factual basis of group: children who were contemptuouscriticism, the aspect of it that can progress of Santa Claus and the stork were stillthrough being verified or refuted by later not ready to discover thatadvertisingcriticism. This central activity itself has a was no more factual than the storks theyfurther context, a lower and an upper told their parents. Eventually, however,limit, with which I have been mainly he realized that he was right, and thatconcerned in this paper. On the lower he had uncovered a deeper level of liter-limit is criticism militant, a therapeutic ary response than literature as such canactivity of evaluation, or separating the ordinarily reach at that age. good from the bad, in which good and bad are not two kinds of literature, but, The direct response to a verbal kineticrespectively, the active and the passive stimulus persists into adult life, and is,approaches to verbal experience. This of course, what makes the propaganda ofkind of criticism is essentially the defence totalitarian states effective for their ownof those aspects of civilization loosely people. Such response is not an inabilitydescribed as freedom of speech and free- to distinguish rhetorical from factualdom of thought. On the higher limit is statement, but a will to unite them. Evencriticism triumphant, the inner possession though a Communist, for example, under-of literature as an imaginative force to stands the difference between what iswhich all study of literature leads, and said and the political necessity of sayingwhich is criticism at once glorified and it, he has been conditioned to associate invisible. . rhetoric and fact when they are produced in a certain area of authority, not to We reimmber the discussion in Joyce's separate them. Iii the democracies wePortrait in which the characteristics of are not trained in this way, but we arebeauty are said to be integritas, conson- continually being persuaded to fall intoantia, and claritas; unity, harmony, and the habit, by pressure groups trying toradiance. Poet and critic alike struggle establish the same kind of authority, andto. unify and to relate; the critic, in par- by certain types of entertainment inticular,strugglestodemonstratethe which the kinetic stimulus is erotic. Iunity of the work of literature he is recently saw a documentary'movie of thestudying and to relate it to its context rock-and-roll singer Paul Anka. The re-in literature. There remains the peculiar porter pried one of the squealing littleclaritas or intensity, which cannot be sexballs out of the audience and askeddemonstrated in either literature or criti- her what she found so ecstatic aboutcism, though all literature and criticism listening to Anka. She said,stillin apoint toward it. No darkness can com- daze: "He's so sincere." The will to uniteprehend any light; no ignorance or in- rhetorical and direct address is very cleardifference can ever sec any claritas in I here. literature itself or in the criticism that attempts to convey it,just as no saint The central activity of criticism, whichin ordinary life wears a visible gold plate is the understanding of literature, is es-around his head. All poet or critic can sentially one of establishing a context for the works of literature being studied.do is to hope that somehow, somewhere, This means relating them to other things: and for someone, the struggle to unify to their context in the writer's life, in theand to relate, because itis an honest writer's time, in the history of literature,struggle and not because of any success and above all in the total structure of liter-in what it does, may be touched with a ature itself, or what I call the order ofradiance not its own.

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