Whatever is an anachronism is due to mediaevalism.It is the Greeks who have given us the whole system of art-criticism,and how fine their critical instinct was,may be seen from the fact that the material they criticised with most care was,as I have already said,language.For the material that painter or sculptor uses is meagre in comparison with that of words.Words have not merely music as sweet as that of viol and lute,colour as rich and vivid as any that makes lovely for us the canvas of the Venetian or the Spaniard,and plastic form no less sure and certain than that which reveals itself in marble or in bronze,but thought and passion and spirituality are theirs also,are theirs indeed alone.If the Greeks had criticised nothing but language,they would still have been the great art-critics of the world.To know the principles of the highest art is to know the principles of all the arts.
But I see that the moon is hiding behind a sulphur-coloured cloud.
Out of a tawny mane of drift she gleams like a lion's eye.She is afraid that I will talk to you of Lucian and Longinus,of Quinctilian and Dionysius,of Pliny and Fronto and Pausanias,of all those who in the antique world wrote or lectured upon art matters.She need not be afraid.I am tired of my expedition into the dim,dull abyss of facts.There is nothing left for me now but the divine [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]of another cigarette.Cigarettes have at least the charm of leaving one unsatisfied.
ERNEST.Try one of mine.They are rather good.I get them direct from Cairo.The only use of our ATTACHES is that they supply their friends with excellent tobacco.And as the moon has hidden herself,let us talk a little longer.I am quite ready to admit that I was wrong in what I said about the Greeks.They were,as you have pointed out,a nation of art-critics.I acknowledge it,and I feel a little sorry for them.For the creative faculty is higher than the critical.There is really no comparison between them.
GILBERT.The antithesis between them is entirely arbitrary.
Without the critical faculty,there is no artistic creation at all,worthy of the name.You spoke a little while ago of that fine spirit of choice and delicate instinct of selection by which the artist realises life for us,and gives to it a momentary perfection.Well,that spirit of choice,that subtle tact of omission,is really the critical faculty in one of its most characteristic moods,and no one who does not possess this critical faculty can create anything at all in art.Arnold's definition of literature as a criticism of life was not very felicitous in form,but it showed how keenly he recognised the importance of the critical element in all creative work.
ERNEST.I should have said that great artists work unconsciously,that they were 'wiser than they knew,'as,I think,Emerson remarks somewhere.
GILBERT.It is really not so,Ernest.All fine imaginative work is self-conscious and deliberate.No poet sings because he must sing.At least,no great poet does.A great poet sings because he chooses to sing.It is so now,and it has always been so.We are sometimes apt to think that the voices that sounded at the dawn of poetry were simpler,fresher,and more natural than ours,and that the world which the early poets looked at,and through which they walked,had a kind of poetical quality of its own,and almost without changing could pass into song.The snow lies thick now upon Olympus,and its steep scarped sides are bleak and barren,but once,we fancy,the white feet of the Muses brushed the dew from the anemones in the morning,and at evening came Apollo to sing to the shepherds in the vale.But in this we are merely lending to other ages what we desire,or think we desire,for our own.Our historical sense is at fault.Every century that produces poetry is,so far,an artificial century,and the work that seems to us to be the most natural and simple product of its time is always the result of the most self-conscious effort.Believe me,Ernest,there is no fine art without self-consciousness,and self-consciousness and the critical spirit are one.
ERNEST.I see what you mean,and there is much in it.But surely you would admit that the great poems of the early world,the primitive,anonymous collective poems,were the result of the imagination of races,rather than of the imagination of individuals?
GILBERT.Not when they became poetry.Not when they received a beautiful form.For there is no art where there is no style,and no style where there is no unity,and unity is of the individual.
No doubt Homer had old ballads and stories to deal with,as Shakespeare had chronicles and plays and novels from which to work,but they were merely his rough material.He took them,and shaped them into song.They become his,because he made them lovely.
They were built out of music,And so not built at all,And therefore built for ever.
