Criticism in General

I

A FRIEND recently suggested that I should write (for the readers of my weekly literary review (in the first instance) one or two articles explaining the principles upon which criticism rested. The suggestion was a good one, for nowhere is our American mind more at sea than in questions of criticism—and questions of criticism are also questions of appreciation, for every reader who enjoys a book or fails to enjoy it and gives himself a reason is a critic. Criticism is a spiritual activity which takes place whenever one reacts consciously to a work of art. It may or may not be followed by the practical activity of putting one's critical reaction down upon paper.

It so happened that shortly after this suggestion was made, Mr. J. C. Squire first published his poem entitled "The Stockyards: Chicago," which has since been printed in his "American Poems" and which lends itself beautifully to purposes of demonstration.

Here is a piece of work in poetic form which is concrete, pictorial, and which is certainly moving; a record of something that moved Mr. Squire pro

foundly and that transmits his emotion to us. And yet it might well be argued whether this is a work of art at all, or whether it is something else entirely which has simply borrowed the clothing of a work of art.

What happened was this: Mr. Squire visited the stockyards and a number of things happened to him. He was filled with pity for the victims, for one thing, and, for another, he was made physically sick by the outward manner of their fate. And undoubtedly the one attitude was influenced by the other. Probably Mr. Squire accepts with a certain equanimity the fact that these animals would, in a state of nature, perish with more or less pain. And probably he would accept with equanimity the fact that we kill them in their prime if he knew that it was done in a painless manner-indeed, that would be preferable to their death by starvation or disease or the attacks of other animals in a state of nature.

But taking the thing as it is, what ought a man to do about it when he is affected as Mr. Squire was? He might say that the whole thing was so dirty and iniquitous that no decent man would have anything to do with it-and therewith become a vegetarian. Mr. Squire has not done that. Neither did Mr. Galsworthy, when he was similarly disgusted by conditions under which animals in England were killed. What he did do, however, was to write pamphlets and take other practical action toward reform in those meth

ods for it is well known that in Germany they use humane methods, and while it would have been disloyal to say this during the war, it may be safe to say so now without inviting any accusation of proGermanism.

Now Mr. Squire's poem will do either one of two things: It will merely sicken and depress its reader without further result, or it will cause him to agitate for reform in stockyard methods or to become a vegetarian. The first result is not desirable in itself, and the second result will be negligible for even though this poem has since been published in book form in America how many people in this country are in the habit of reading Mr. Squire's poetry?-or anyone else's for that matter.

What, then, has criticism to say of such a performance as this of Mr. Squire's? It might certainly begin by saying that this is a mixed performance. Mr. Squire mixes two subjects: our infliction of pain upon the lower creatures, and our infliction of death upon them—things which in practice are largely separable, and which, if the stockyard people did separate them, would leave his poem in bad shape even as a document. He mixes two or more sets of emotions— his tragic pity for beings condemned to death; his emotional and physical horror at the nasty accompaniments of that death, his satiric sense of the irrational gap between those physical horrors and the gaiety, good humor, blindness to the tragedy, of the people

who work in the yard-he has an effective picture of the pretty girls who wrap the hams and chatter among themselves without any apparent sense of the horrors just a few rooms away-and of the other people who live in Chicago and go to opera quite unconscious of the inferno so near them. Now some of those emotions are inherent in his theme; others, like his physical nausea, are only incidental.

And again his results are mixed; we are so shocked by the physical details of his theme that we do not think at all of his art. Our reaction is all along practical lines-practical, that is, in the wide sense of the term; we may feel like becoming vegetarians or like seeking for humaner methods in the stockyards. There is only one thing that we feel like doing with the poem as apart from the things in it—and that is, not read it again.

But when criticism has said all that about Mr. Squire's work it has really condemned it as a work of art. For a work of art has its own origin and its own sphere and effects, and to drive the reader to reformatory action is not its sphere and function, for, if it were, every successful work of art would effect some reform, and, the reform effected, the excuse for and the facts embodied in, the work of art would be gone, and the work would have done that which was required of it and would cease to exist. But one prime quality of works of art is that they interest us permanently. The rise of feminism does not affect

Shakespeare's heroines. The abolition of war by the League of Nations would not put Homer in the discard-although it might make "Alice in Wonderland" look commonplace.

Then what is a work of art? It is simply the record, in whatever medium, of some particular perception. It is our first conversation with Mother Nature and Father Time before they have begun to teach us lessons, and also our heart-to-heart talks with them after the lessons have been learned. When Walter de la Mare, writing of "Noon and Night Flower," tells us that:

Lovely beyond the rest

Are these of all delight

The tiny pimpernel that noon loves best,

The primrose palely burning through the night.

One 'neath day's burning sky,

With ruby decks her place,

The other when Eve's chariot glideth by

Lifts her dim torch to light that dreaming face.

-he is not telling us anything that we can compare to something else and from which we can announce a conclusion. He is only bringing us back to a simple recognition of something that we call beautiful because there mere perception puts us and Nature at our ease together and we recognize in her ourselves. To talk of the "moral lesson" in such poetry is an impertinence in both the true and colloquial senses of the word.