The Nature of
Criticism
- Herbert
Read
The Nature of
Criticism is an essay in which he talks about the inclusion of scientific
elements or emotional appreciation.
There are many weapons which
are used to criticise a work of an art, perhaps the only successful attempt was
of Coleridge who tried to give literary criticism a scientific approach by
relating it to the technical aspect of the process of philosophy. In
traditional criticism, the structure of emotional analysis was important but
now it has perished and everybody is trying to look at the rationality of art.
Any science covers a large
variety of every field and he evaluates literature from that point of view. In
order to analyse literature aesthetically, you may have to consider all the
applications which are both social and ethical in nature.
We have therefore differentiated
one kind of literary criticism to another which would result individualistic
literary criticism. Taking into consideration psychology, it is only concerned
with the process of mental activity. Whereas, literary criticism takes into
count the product as per psychology ‘art is only an expression of mentality,
and he does not takes into consideration of the literary values, whereas
psychoanalysis involves the reduction of the symbols to its proper origin.
In art there are many symbols and according to Alfred “the attraction of
a work of art arises from its synthesis”. As a matter of fact, general
limitations of psychological criticism are evident and moving towards
psycho-analysis and its relation to literary criticism. One must be aware of
the fact that it is more concerned with literature than criticism.
One of the misuses of this kind
of criticism is that no literature can come out. It has to deal with the
experiences of life. On the basis of his understanding, he put forward three
basic questions,
1) What general function does psycho-analysis give to literature?
2) How does psycho-analysis explain the process of poetic creation and
inspiration?
3) Does psycho-analysis cause to extend in any way the function of
criticism?
According to Herbert Reade there are three people who can talk about
psycho-analysis in the best way, there are Freud, Jung and Adler.
In terms of general function of literature Jung is only one of the there
who writes about it in detail as we talk about the general principals of
contrasting attitudes: 1) introversions 2) Extraversion. There is a strong
division of self and therefore there is a lot of object, thoughts and feelings,
ideas and things. Any contrasting attitude is an outcome of a specific activity
which unites them and separates them. This activity according to Jung is
fantasy and this situation is known as an antithesis. Therefore it can be said
that a work of art requires fantasy for optimum imagination.
Part – 2
Coming to the second aspect, the social validity of any particular
symbol is very important. Symbol in literature is more intelligent than the
normal unconscious symbol of psychology. Any creative mind is capable of
psycho-analysis and in any mind there are two contrary tendencies: 1) being
conscious and 2) being imaginative
The central problem of literary criticism at present is the question
between romanticism and classicism, the complexity between classicism and
romanticism gives birth to the inspiration which is sometimes not at all
conscious in nature. Modern psychologists explain inspiration as the activity
of ideas which are combined together satisfactory to give the poetic
inspiration. But it does not have any format to understand the emotions. Any
inspiration is an outcome of effective procedure.
First there are thoughts which get converted into ideas those are
converted into mantle images which later on turn into physical forms which will
either be selected or rejected. While convincing the images there are a lot of
images going on together in one’s mind from which one either rejects or
selects. Any creative work starts when any exact word or image is found. It is
almost the same as the dynamic relationship between matter and the spirit and
life and soul. From 15th century onwards inspiration has become an
aesthetic term.
The classical and the romantic writers were totally different in their
attitudes but romantic writing was always subjective in nature which required
psycho-analysis to be done. The basic form of psycho-analysis is about dealing
with the artistic creation. Freud in his study said that fantasy turns into
imagination and that later on into creation which is of option aesthetic value.
On this basis Freud explain the individual in three levels: 1. Id, 2. Ego, and
3. Super ego. In Id, there are no values, no good or no evil or no morality it is
driven by pleasure. There is no idea of time, logic or anything else that can
be termed as rational. The Ego is the main agent of reality. It unifies the
basic mental process or processes and organizes it for moral and social aims.
The superego is something very different from id and ego and it is absolutely
followings the rules and regulations of the society. Superego strives for
perfection which is related to the higher things in life therefore any work of
art desires its inspiration from the id. Any work therefore is a product of the
unconscious mind corresponding to the quality of conscious mind.
There is something known as the abnormal mentality of the artist for
which the influence has to be understood and for that individual psychology is
taken into consideration. In order to become an artist or to study an artist
one has to do psychoanalysis because you may have to understand the neurotic
tendencies of the artist. Psycho-analysis finds in art a system of symbols which
represents a hidden relation and by analysing them you can understand testify
the genuineness of symbol.
Part – 3
It talks about the question that does psycho-analysis modify in any way
our conception of critics function. Clear modification is very difficult to
achieve but it may give you an understanding of their attitude through the
function of psychology. There are some questions which may have no answers, for
example the case of Hamlet, who hesitates in seeking the revenge of his
father’s murder.
According to Coleridge, Hamlet was a very kind hearted person and as a
result he was not capable of taking any decision on it, therefore Robertson
says that,
“Hamlet cannot be understood from within.”
According to Jung, a
psychological explanation can give the answers, though the understanding of
complexes known as Oedipus and Electra. This can in a way give answers to the
reasons of his father’s murder; one can apply this theory to literary criticism
and discover the strange and unfamiliar areas of human mind. In this way,
psychoanalysis tries to resolve the conflict and allow us to come to a common
stand point.
According to Jung, there are two
fundamental types: 1) Extraverted and 2) Introverted. From the both of them,
one is visible and other is imaginary. Therefore, psychoanalysis should take up
a position and must try to broaden the horizon of criticism. Understanding is
the outcome of experience which can be both individual as well as collective,
but according to hung the minds builds up turn into some kind of myth or
religion through which they find expression in literature.
Therefore we can say that
psycho-analysis has to look into the myths for actually understanding the
poetic imagination and it can only be done by building a hypothesis. The mind of
the psycho-analysis has to unite everything in order to criticise any
particular work and solve the problem.
Reference: Literary
Criticism A Reading by B. Das and J. M. Mohanty
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