Examine Criticism through the point of of a critic

Criticism through the point of of a critic 

Ans . It has been said " The critic , if he is studying an old work , a classic , a book well read by all the world , must think away all the accretions of time and other men's study - all the second hand ideas that have been made to cluster round it by long familiarity in the class room , or through text book , commentary , or public - allusion - and yet must not fail to use so much as history can tell him to enable him to reconstruct the life of which the author wrote . Or if it is modern book which he is studying , he must think away all the irrelevancies with which slight acquaintance or gossip may have encumbered the subject ; he must be able to brush aside the common places which obscure the character of the familiar , and make it difficult for a weak mind to distinguish the unconventional which is true from the eccentric which is factitious and perverse . It is his business to follow that track as the author designed and made it , viewing the country through which it runs , and test it for what it is . From the word - structure the critic starts . When the critic has travelled over road of word structure , he will come at last to that track of life from which the author started . There at least , if there is to be understanding , author and critic must stand together on common ground . The critic must have some knowledge of that track of life from which the creative writer starts . That is to say , must have understanding of what we call life itself . The critic must know life means that he should be possessed of f knowledge and understanding . Mr.T.S.Eliot well writes in The Sacred Wood : " If the only form of tradition , of handing down , consisted in following the ways of the immediate generation before us in blind or timid adherence to its successes , " tradition " should positively be discouraged . Tradition is a matter of much wider significance . It cannot be inherited , and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour . It invokes in the first place , the historical sense , which we may call nearly indispensable to anyone who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty first year , and the historical sense involves a perception , not only of the pastries of the past , but of its presence ; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation of his bones , but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order The artist says , " This is the manner in which life may be characterised , but the critic , to whose gaze human existence is stretched out as it was for the other , may say : No - starting where you start , it must be like this , or like that , and never so , as you have shown it . " For the moment the critic has become creator , he has snatched the pen out of the others hands has almost begun fou to show him what he should write . His appreciation involves an active reconstruction of all the artist has done , and at times it must run into a positive construction of his own in which he begins to go his separate way . The literary work of art is presented to the reader as a form of words - the language . This language which artist speaks must be a language fully intelligible to the reader . But whatever it be a work well done or badly done - it will always sappear a form . The language should be such as the critic may guess it might have been , what the white wished it to be , what he dreamt that it would be so much more beautiful perhaps , than it is - when we are sure that we have grasped its language can the artist as artist be fairly judged . The critic need only explore the poet's personality in order to elucidate what might be obscure n the artist's expression . Mr. Eliot is misleading when he says a poet has " not a personality " to express . To him , " Impression and experience which become important in Poetry may play quite a negligible part in the men , the personality . " Scott - James criticises this by saying , " True , the impressions and experiences which he exhibits may not be those which he has felt as his own ; but the way in which he sees them , however objectively , is and must be all his own , and is wholly determined by his personality . For that reason , the critic cannot be indifferent to this all determining force ... Sir Walter Raleigh's short biography of Shakespeare is a brilliant example of the manner in which a subtle and imaginative critic may actually reconstruct the character of a man by a sympathetic study of his work . " Longinus has suggested the conditions which give us confidence in our judgment of the beautiful . ( a ) We may be sure that it is not lacking in passage which " always pleases , and pleases all readers " ( b ) We can trust no judgment of beauty but that one whose judgment of literature is long delayed reward of much endeavour . " ( c ) Such a one will discover it only in literature when I make the utmost demand on the attention , when it forces itself upon us importunately , irresistibly , and when it takes so strong a hold on the memory that it cannot be forgotten . ( d ) Here we may suggest that just as Arnold refers us to lines or expressions in the acknowledged masters , so Longinus refers us to Homer Plato , or Demosthenes . How would they have said it ? Or , better still , how would they have been affected if we had submitted such and such a passage to their judgment ? He seems to agree with Jonson that " to judge of poets is only the faculty of poets . "