Principles of literary criticismRichards, I. A. (Ivor Armstrong)
Philosophy
Principles of literary criticism
Richards, I. A. (Ivor Armstrong)
Criticism
The diagram and account given of the processes which make up
the reading of a poem may be easily modified to represent what
happens when we look at a picture, a statue or building, or listen
to a piece of music. The necessary changes are fairly obvious,
and it will only be necessary here to indicate them briefly.
Needless to say the importance to the whole response of different
kinds of elements varies enormously from art to art; so much
so as to explain without difficulty the opinion so often held
by persons interested primarily in one of the arts—that the others
(or some of them) are entirely different in nature. Thus painters
often aver that poetry is so different, so indirect, so second-hand
in the way in which it produces its results, as hardly to deserve
the name of an art at all. But, as we shall see, the differences
between separate arts are sometimes no greater than differences
to be found in each of them; and close analogies can be discovered
by careful analysis between all of them. These analogies indeed
are among the most interesting features which such scrutiny as
we are here attempting can make clear. For an understanding of
the problems of one art is often of great service in avoiding
misconceptions in another. The place of representation in painting,
for example, is greatly elucidated by a sound comprehension of
the place of reference or thought in poetry, just as a crude
view on this latter point is likely to involve unfortunate mistakes
upon the first. Similarly a too narrow view of music which would
limit it to an affair merely of the appreciation of the pitch
and time relations of notes may be corrected most easily by a
comparison with the phenomena of colour in the plastic arts.
Comparison of the arts is, in fact, far the best means by which
an understanding of the methods and resources of any one of them
can be attained. We must be careful of course not to compare
the wrong features of two arts and not to find merely fanciful
or insecurely grounded analogies. The dangers both of too close
assimilation and too wide separation of the structures of different
arts are well illustrated in criticism, both before and since
the days of Lessing. Only a thorough psychological analysis will
allow them to be avoided, and those whose experience leads them
to doubt whether analogies are of service, may be asked whether
their objection is not directed merely to attempts to compare
different arts without a sufficient analysis. With such an analysis,
comparison and the elaboration of analogies involve no attempt
to make one art legislate for another, no attempt to blur their
differences or to destroy their autonomy.
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