Dear Unknown Friends:

We begin here to serialize the important, greatly kind lecture Criticism Is the Art of Responding to Value, which Eli Siegel gave in 1970.

Often, when people hear the word criticism they think of two things. Take someone we’ll call Greg Foster: he associates the word criticism with persons telling him, quite unpleasantly, what they dislike about him. Then he remembers that the word also has something to do with art, and with some people trying to say what’s good and bad in the various arts. Well, criticism can include these, but it’s much bigger, includes much more. It can be horribly wrong—and magnificently, warmly right.

Each of us, Aesthetic Realism explains, is a critic all the time, of everything we meet. As the title of this lecture states, “criticism is the art of responding to value.” And we constantly have a feeling (which may be right or wrong), about the value of what we meet. If we buy one product rather than another, we’re responding to what we consider their value. When we leave our house on a spring day and happily unbutton a jacket we’d put on, we’re responding to the value of April warmth for us. In another field: many a woman who had seen a man as a hero of love, later came to see him as a complete heel: she was likely wrong in both instances, but in both she was “responding to value.”

So we are critics always. And Aesthetic Realism shows that the first thing necessary to be a good critic is to have a desire—real and big—to know.

A Prelude

As a prelude to Mr. Siegel’s lecture, I am going to quote the first stanza of a poem by the Irish writer James Stephens (1882-1950). I do so because in those first four lines of “The Road,” various aspects of what criticism is come together.

Stephens is speaking here about how his fellow humans and he himself have seen the world. A definition of the world, Eli Siegel has explained, is “what is different from self.” And Stephens says we have responded falsely to the value of what’s different from ourselves:

Always, the World

That first stanza is about the big critical mistake people make about the world: seeing it as an enemy one should shrink away from. It happens that whenever we respond to the value of any particular thing, we have a feeling about, some judgment of, the world itself. When a baby smiles at light coming through the windows of her room, she is making a critical judgment (however unarticulated) about the world’s value: she feels the world has something lovely in it, glowingly friendly to her. That is a different way of “responding to value” from the way Stephens is describing.

The first line, “Because our lives are cowardly and sly,” says we’ve seen the world as something to fear and fool. The second line, “Because we do not dare to take or give,” says: to get meaning from other people and to be useful to them are harmful values, which we should eschew.

So the first aspect of criticism this poem is concerned with is: 1) people are critics—so often inaccurate, hurtful critics—of the world itself.

Then we have the second aspect of criticism this poem stands for. 2) We can rightly criticize false criticism. Stephens is criticizing others’—and his own—wrong criticism of the world. He says that as we are against the world, disdain it and its human representatives, we are against what our very lives are for: in making the world an enemy, “We do not live; we do not dare to live.”

Yet Stephens didn’t know the reason people respond so unjustly to the world. He would have very much wanted to know what Aesthetic Realism explains: there are two desires working in everyone, at war in each of us. There is the desire—equivalent to the purpose of our lives: honestly to like reality. And there is the desire to have contempt, get an “addition to self through the lessening of something else.” Contempt is the thing in the human self which, in every field of art and life, corrupts criticism, responds sleazily to value.

The Real Thing

With the third aspect of criticism represented in Stephens’ lines, we approach the reason why this poem is the real thing—is art, not just a keen statement put in rhyme. 3) Stephens, while against people’s unjust way of being, wants to be fair to them—see them deeply and widely. That desire to be fair shows itself musically.

The iambic lines of his I quoted have an inescapable percussive thrust in them, an emphatic beat with every other syllable: “Becáuse our líves are cówardlý and slý, / Becáuse we dó not dáre to táke or gíve.” The writer’s objection is firm, and it rings. YET: there is width in those lines too, and delicacy. The accented syllables have not only thrust but wonder. They linger, explore, even as they’re forceful. Stephens, wanting so much to be just to what he was describing, found the structure of the world itself there. What he was doing, what every true poet does, is explained by Eli Siegel in this landmark principle: “Poetry, like Art, is the oneness of the permanent opposites in reality as seen by an individual.”

So we have in those lines of Stephens a oneness of reality’s opposites, including force and nuance, the definite and the wondrous. And take the last line of the stanza: “We do not live; we do not dare to live.” It has intense objection yet tenderness and pity too.

We come to the fourth aspect of criticism exemplified in the Stephens stanza. It is of paramount importance, and I’ll simply state it, without commenting on it now. 4) Whenever an instance of true art comes to be, the artist has honestly liked the world: the artist has felt lovingly reality’s aesthetic structure in the material he or she is dealing with.

The fifth aspect of criticism in relation to the Stephens stanza is what has been happening here. That is: 5) a person, a critic, can look at an artwork and try to see and respond truly to its value. Here, as to the Stephens line, I am that critic—and I love my job. I love using as my basis the principles of Aesthetic Realism, come to by the greatest of all critics, Eli Siegel.

—Ellen Reiss, Aesthetic Realism
Chair of Education

Responding to Value

By Eli Siegel

I ’ve called today’s talk Criticism Is the Art of Responding to Value. The subject of criticism, value, is as fresh as ever, and the seeing of what criticism is can come in many ways. Just as the seeing of poems can be got at by looking at many poems, so the seeing of what criticism is, is to be had by looking at many critics, including some of now. I’m using today the February 1970 issue of Poetry, which has various book reviews and criticism.

The purpose of life, it can be said, is to respond to reality adequately and to be able to say why you respond. Put another way: the purpose of everyone is to find the best things to respond to, and respond to them in the best way. That goes along with Matthew Arnold’s idea that the purpose of culture and criticism is to know “the best which has been thought and said in the world.” It has been the purpose of every person to see what is best to have in one’s life and to see that in the best way. Criticism, then, is equivalent to any life that is aware of itself.

Being Just & Asserting Oneself

Criticism in the largest sense and criticism in the more belletristic sense meet in a review by Richard Eberhart that appears in this issue of Poetry. It’s of A Dirty Hand: The Literary Notebooks of Winfield Townley Scott. Winfield Townley Scott has died, but I know of him well enough and (having known people who knew him) know how agitated he was. He wanted, as many other persons do, to do the right thing and see things in the best way, and also assert himself.

It happens that to see things in the best way, which is humility, and to assert oneself, don’t usually go together well, because the assertion of oneself gums up the humility, falsifies the humility, makes one bungle with humility. This occurs in life and also occurs when one is dealing with an object in terms of art. —There’s a sentence in Eberhart’s consideration of A Dirty Hand: The Literary Notebooks of Winfield Townley Scott that I think should be looked at:

He had the courage in all these notes, so relatively short, easy to read, and fascinating, to entertain justice as a necessity. [P. 345]

The way Eberhart puts it, “to entertain justice as a necessity,” is roundabout, not strong enough, but the idea is part of criticism. The purpose of criticism is still to do justice to that which is beautiful. The word critic is related, still, to the word judge.* The seeing of justice as a necessity certainly ought to be encouraged. And this ethical statement of Eberhart is remarkable as a thing to be seen in Poetry, February 1970, but it is quite true. Justice is another term for oneself. And as I say this, everyone should hope to ask about it in a continuing way—what do I mean by saying that justice is the same thing as oneself?—and try to get some particulars.

There is a review by Laurence Lieberman, of various works. The first book he writes about is James Dickey’s Babel to Byzantium: Poets and Poetry Now. Though Dickey is very esteemed at this time, I have to say the esteem is not well enough based, because I don’t see him as having that respect for what poetry is which is needed.

Laurence Lieberman says:

The essays and reviews gathered together fortuitously in this volume were nearly all written on assignment as portions of poetry chronicles. [P.346]

The way poetry, and things about poetry, are written is concerned with how everything is, how the whole universe is: there’s an element of change, there are details that occur, and then there is something underlying. The purpose always should be to welcome the casual, the fortuitous, the unexpected, but to use the unexpected and the casual as part of a principle. When one does that, one makes life be as poetry is. Life is a mingling of the eternal and the casual, the orderly and the incoherent.

The reason I object to James Dickey is not that there is the fortuitous in his work, but that, as I see his work, the desire for some principle which is really honest is not strong enough in him. This criticism, which has to do with poetry and the writing about poetry, is the criticism that has to be given of all people in terms of life: they’re not convinced that seeing something with coherence and honesty is necessary for themselves. Maybe they’re right, but the present speaker doesn’t think so.

The Personal & the Impersonal

Then we have the matter of the personal in present-day poetic criticism. Lieberman says:

Usually, reviews by poets of their fellow poets tend to be written in a stuffy, idiosyncratic style, and when their raves or put downs aren’t at bottom propagandistic—a faintly disguised pamphleteering for their own poetic practice and personal esthetic—they are tirelessly disposed to arty shop talk. [P. 347]

Which is a way of saying that it’s easier to talk about poets than it is about poetry, and it’s easier to gossip than to talk about principles. Quite true. But in the sentence I just read, the impersonal and personal are constantly bumping into each other as if they weren’t friends. And most often they’re not.

“Usually, reviews by poets of their fellow poets tend to be written in a stuffy, idiosyncratic style….” As I said in a recent lesson, the chief thing in respecting a person is to try to ally that person to reality as a whole. When we don’t respect a person, we tend to see the person as a disjoined phenomenon—someone whom we’ve met, whom we may meet some more. We don’t try to see that person as representing all reality. Whether we see it or not, everything—including everyone—represents reality. Nobody has ever failed there, no matter how bad the person is. Three quarters of an oyster represents all reality, and a greasy pawnbroker represents all reality. The creepiest individual represents the principle of creep in the entire universe. And once there’s creep in an instance of reality, creep exists in the universe as such. But we have to use the instance and the underlying in each other’s behalf, always.

In dealing particularly with a poet, since every poet—every artist—says, I claim to represent reality, it is well to take the problem more consciously.

You don’t have to say you claim to represent reality. A hedgehog doesn’t have to say it, a turtle doesn’t have to, a thrush doesn’t. To be is to represent reality. Artists have had the audacity to say that they represent reality in another way: that they’re entitled to speak for it. Every person is entitled to be for it, to live for it; then there are certain persons who take it upon themselves to say they’re entitled to speak for it. That should be asked about. A question I have had in mind in every dealing with a poem is How well does this represent reality?

Lieberman uses the phrase “pamphleteering for their own poetic practice and personal esthetic.” Every person has a right to speak for oneself and for what’s here called a “personal esthetic.” But in speaking for that “poetic practice and personal esthetic,” there is the need for the justice that Winfield Townley Scott is said to have desired. And what should we be just to? That question is always with us, and I do wish it were a more living question with persons. Here, the trouble is not having “their own poetic practice and personal esthetic”—it’s the failure to be just to what is not included in that “poetic practice and personal esthetic.” If it were included, a “poetic practice” would be a universal practice, and a “personal esthetic” would be a personal-and-universal aesthetic.

“They are tirelessly disposed to arty shop talk.” Shop talk is that part of art criticism which deals with processes of things done. Every art consists of principles, the things that you don’t see but which can be talked about. Then, the particulars belong to shop talk. Again, if we have a constant relation between the two, we have something good.

As I read from this review, the persons listening should ask, What is it that a critic should do? What is a critic supposed to do? The idea of the critic that I’ve mentioned before is still there: the responsibility of a critic is to make a good thing look good, a bad thing look bad, and a not-so-good thing look not-so-good. This is a difficult job, because there’s that in the human mind which doesn’t want to see a good thing as good. The human mind is so often after that which it can manage, not after that which is good. And this interferes with the integrity of mind.

Two Things in Criticism

Two big things in criticism are referred to in a phrase of Lieberman. This is on page 348:

importing the authority of intuitive impulse from poetry or fiction—over a formal, didactic, impersonal criticism.

Criticism consists of instinct, impulse, thrust, spontaneity, and also knowledge—as piano playing does. Every person has an instinct to play the piano, which usually fares very badly if you show it too soon. But we do have such an instinct. What happens when we’re able to play the piano rightly is that the instinct has taken on something of an orderly forest. Liszt at a certain time had only an instinct to play the piano. Then he met the right company, and this instinct changed into mastery—as a baby has an instinct to walk, which later becomes an ability. Then the instinct to dance arises out of the instinct to walk, and occasionally that instinct to dance also changes into an ability, and, in certain instances, into a mastery.

So the purpose of instinct is to become conscious, elaborate, and fortunate. It is still instinct. Liszt never gave up his instinct to play the piano; the only thing that happened is, it flourished. It flourished so much that you forgot there was an instinct, just as you forget there was an acorn when you see the oak. But it’s there: the acorn is in the complete oak.

The two things in knowledge—instinct and consciousness—are everywhere in human life. We have an instinct to be decent; but if we honestly think about what being decent is, we become more decent. The purpose of all instinct is to get more intensity through consciousness.

So Lieberman is mentioning two ways in criticism. Both kinds of critics have made mistakes, the “intuitive” and the more cultivated. The person who has a hunch to say that something is bad can be as wrong as anything. Then, with all your studies, you can be wrong. You can be wrong in an elaborate way, and you can be wrong in all your unequipped innocence.