And, because of these two deflecting factors, those who break
through old forms must well expect to be dead before the new forms they
have unconsciously created have found their true level, high or low, in
the world of Art. When a thing is new how shall it be judged? In the
fluster of meeting novelty, we have even seen coherence attempting to
bind together two personalities so fundamentally opposed as those of
Ibsen and Bernard Shaw dramatists with hardly a quality in common; no
identity of tradition, or belief; not the faintest resemblance in methods
of construction or technique. Yet contemporary; estimate talks of them
often in the same breath. They are new! It is enough. And others, as
utterly unlike them both. They too are new. They have as yet no label
of their own then put on some one else's!
And so--I thought it must always be; for Time is essential to the proper
placing and estimate of all Art. And is it not this feeling, that
contemporary judgments are apt to turn out a little ludicrous, which has
converted much criticism of late from judgment pronounced into impression
recorded--recreative statement--a kind, in fact, of expression of the
critic's self, elicited through contemplation of a book, a play, a
symphony, a picture? For this kind of criticism there has even recently
been claimed an actual identity with creation. Esthetic judgment and
creative power identical! That is a hard saying.
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