At the best he is likely to find that it is mixed and
various; that fragments of aesthetic vision jostle with unsubordinated
intellectual judgments.
But, in regarding the work of art as a thing in itself, he will never
forget the hierarchy of comprehension, that the active ideal of art is
indeed to see life steadily and see it whole, and that only he has a
claim to the title of a great artist whose work manifests an incessant
growth from a merely personal immediacy to a coherent and
all-comprehending attitude to life. The great artist's work is in all
its parts a revelation of the ideal as a principle of activity in human
life. As the apprehension of the ideal is more or less perfect, the
artist's comprehension will be greater or less. The critic has not
merely the right, but the duty, to judge between Homer and Shakespeare,
between Dante and Milton, between Cezanne and Michelangelo, Beethoven
and Mozart. If the foundations of his criticism are truly aesthetic, he
is compelled to believe and to show that among would-be artists some are
true artists and some are not, and that among true artists some are
greater than others.
Pages:
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35