STATE OF CRITICISM
39
ment these can become arid, or rather they stop being criticism. (A
bad work of art can offer as much for description, analysis, and
interpretation-yes, interpretation-as a good work of art. It's possible
to
go on as long about a fail ed Goya as about a successful one.) As
Meier-Graefe and Fry show us, description and analysis can carry value
judgments with them, implicitly and otherwise. The literary criticism
of F.R. Leavis shows that too, eminently. Donald Francis Tovey, in
writing about music, shows it comparably. (It takes nothing away from
Tovey to suggest that music, of all arts, seems most
to
compel the critic
to evaluate as he describes or anal yzes. )
But what about the extraaesthetic contexts of art: social, political,
economic, philosophical, biographical, etc., etc.? The historical mo–
ment? Don't they have
to
be brought in? And how can aesthetic value
be kept enough in sight in such contexts?
It
doesn 't have
to
be. For
when such contexts are brought to the fore it's no longer criticism
that's being practiced. It's something else, something that can be
valuabl e, something that can be n ecessary. But it's not criticism. And
let those who occupy themselves with such contexts not think they're
doing criticism; or that they' re rendering criticism proper unnecessary.
I want now to enter a plea for the discipline of aesthetics. It's
become routine lately
to
refer disparagingly to aesthetics, and there
may be some justification. When you see the aestheticallucubrations of
a philosopher like Nelson Goodman treated with respect by others in
the field you want to throw up your hands and conclude that anything
can be gotten away with here, just as in art criticism. But that's not the
whole story. Certainly artists don't need to be acquainted with aesthet–
ics. However, it might be of help to those who teach art-acquaintance,
that is, with the right kind of aesthetics, the kind that shows you what
it's possible to say rel evantly about art or aesthetic experience and what
it's not possible to say relevantly. Acquaintance with this kind of
aesthetics would most certainly be of help to a critic.
It
might lead him
to
keep more firmly in mind that aesthetic value judgments can't be
demonstrated in a way that would compel agreement; consequently,
that in the last resort it's his reader's or listener's taste that he has to
appeal
to,
not his reason or understanding. The critic might also be
brought, with the help of aes thetics, to see more clearly what his own
experience onl y too often doesn't bring him to see at all: namely, that
content and form can never be adequately differentiated, since the term
form
is always somewhat indefinite in application, while the term
content
is of no definiteness at all. An awareness of this might head off
a lot of vain controversy. (It might also keep someone like Joshua
