“The function of criticism, if it has a legitimate function at all, can only be one function - that of dealing with the subconscious part of the author's mind which only the critic can express, and not with the conscious part of the author's mind, which the author himself can express. Either criticism is no good at all (a very defensible position) or else criticism means saying about an author the very things that would have made him jump out of his boots.”
G.K. Chesterton, Introduction to “The Old Curiosity Shop,” Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens. Collected Works Vol. 15 p. 272.
"Nothing sublimely artistic has ever arisen out of mere art, any more than anything essentially reasonable has ever arisen out of the pure reason. There must always be a rich moral soil for any great aesthetic growth."
-- A Defence of Nonsense (1901)
"Poets and such persons talk about the public as if it were some enormous and abnormal monster -- a huge hybrid between the cow they milk and the dragon that drinks their blood."
-- Illustrated London News, July 31, 1926
No comments:
Post a Comment