For, however
sympathetic one may feel toward this new criticism, however one may
recognise that the recording of impression has a wider, more elastic, and
more lasting value than the delivery of arbitrary judgment based on rigid
laws of taste; however one may admit that it approaches the creative gift
in so far as it demands the qualities of receptivity and reproduction--is
there not still lacking to this "new" critic something of that thirsting
spirit of discovery, which precedes the creation--hitherto so-called--of
anything? Criticism, taste, aesthetic judgment, by the very nature of
their task, wait till life has been focussed by the artists before they
attempt to reproduce the image which that imprisoned fragment of life
makes on the mirror of their minds. But a thing created springs from a
germ unconsciously implanted by the direct impact of unfettered life on
the whole range, of the creator's temperament; and round the germ thus
engendered, the creative artist--ever penetrating, discovering,
selecting--goes on building cell on cell, gathered from a million little
fresh impacts and visions. And to say that this is also exactly what the
recreative critic does, is to say that the interpretative musician is
creator in the same sense as is the composer of the music that he
interprets. If, indeed, these processes be the same in kind, they are in
degree so far apart that one would think the word creative unfortunately
used of both.
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