284
ALVIN C. KIBEL
IMPRACTICAL CRITICISM
LOGIC AND CRITICISM.
By
William Righter. Chilmark Press, Inc. $4.95.
Briefly, Mr. Righter's argument is that the final judgments,
the acts of acceptance or rejection that tenninate literary conversations,
are interesting not in themselves, but in the light of the argumentative
criteria from which they proceed; they have an interest borrowed from
the reasons that support them. "Aesthetics," he says
is a reason-giving activity.... There are neither limits to the
sort of reasons we can give, nor rules to govern our choice of
explanations. This choice springs
entirely
[my emphasis] from
the context of our meeting with the work of art and depends
on what aspect of it we find exciting, what critical issue may call
for attention, or simply, what disagreement may arise with a
friend.
Take the rather obvious case of Mr. Blackmur's "gesture." Sooner or
later, Mr. Righter argues, an instance of poetic success will surely
be
found that the analogy suggested by "gesture" fails to illuminate.
(Actually, for Mr. Righter, most of Mr. Blackmur's own examples
are
such instances.) At this point, Mr. Blackmur must choose between two
alternatives: either he can stick to his guns and dismiss the instance
(which implies an abrupt termination of critical argument, and an
attempt to coerce the experience of poetry out of one's own predilections),
or else he can argue that, although it does not seem the case, the work
is
an instance of "gesture" because it exemplifies, as ordinary gestures
do
not, what Mr. Blackmur privately means by the word. And Mr. Righter
clearly seems
to
think that this is what critics of generous persuasion have
universally had to do; misled by the supposed importance of their con·
clusions, they have had to convert the serious business of offering reasons
for their appreciations into the trivial occupation of furnishing verbal
equivalents fur the word "poetry."
Quarrels over words are meaningless: to use the jargon of the
schools, they are
analytic,
and bear no reference to experience. Does
it
follow that criticism is either the coercion of literary discrimination or
else a useless haggling over words disguised as fundamental opposition
in response--in any case, the arena of irreconcilable antagonisms and
of the fierce display of personal will? Not so. Recall Eliot's early dump–
ing of Milton and Dryden; the conclusions have become eccentric and
cannot stand, but the arguments supporting them (according to
Mr.
