Matthew Arnold: Critic's Critic

Mathew Arnold

Mathew Arnold is perhaps the greatest of the Victorian critics as he not only criticized the books, but also taught others how to criticize them. He laid down certain principles of criticism which the writers of his time followed almost blindly. He commanded obedience from the victorians as Aristotle did from the people of medieval times.

Yes Arnold was different from Aristotle. Scott James James writes, “Aristotle shows us the critic in relation to art. Arnold shows the critic in relation to the public. Aristotle dissects a work of art. Arnold dissects a critic. The one gives us the principles which govern the making of a poem; the other, the principles by which the best poems should be selected and made known. Aristotle's critic owes allegiance to the artist but Arnold's critic has a duty to society. He is a propagandist tilling the soil so that 'the best ideas' may prevail, making 'an intellectual situation of which the creative power can profitably avail itself '. To prepare a social which will stimulate the artist- to make the best that has been written familiar to the public – this was the new task of criticism"

Arnold has also considered the basic principles governing the making of a poem. 

1. The poet must choose an excellent subject matter. 

2. It should be unfolded in a treatment appropriate to the subject. 

3. Various parts of a literary work should be harmoniously arranged in order that they may form a beautiful whole. 

4. There must be organic unity in a work of art, and its total impression upon the reader should be delightful. 

In all this Arnold is fully in agreement with Aristotle, Coleridge and Goethe.

Arnold insisted that both the matter and the manner of representation must be equally good. The action chosen for representation is good when it appeals to the great primary human affections. The manner is good when the action is appropriately unfolded, when justice is done to the subject, and when the whole composition becomes a dignified representation. The aim of art, according to Arnold, is the faithful representation of life, not mere expression of an artist's unsteady impressions. But this representation is not important for its own sake. It should aim at providing enjoyment. Arnold supports Schiller's view that "All Art is dedicated to Joy. The right art is that alone which creates the highest enjoyment."

Arnold said that any action if it appealed to the primary human affections would do for poetry. But he contradicts his own statement when he says in one of his lectures on Homer that grand style is that which "arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject.  He proceeds to explain that modern age being age of industrial development and an age wanting in moral grandeur has no special fitness for supplying subjects to the poet. Hence, poets should choose their subjects from ancient times only.

But Arnold is not right in excluding modern life and modern themes from the subject of poetry. There is no reason why an artist should not embody in his work today what he sees and hears all around him, the experience in the present which comes to him the easier and almost effortlessly then the imaginative constructions founded on antiquity. The great writers of 19th and 20th centuries have presented in their works the life and ideas of their own time which are by no means bad works of art. Scott James poses a question to Arnold: "Would Arnold dare to commit himself to such a limiting view were he alive today? Would he dare to pass over so disdainfully the poetry, drama, or fiction of such men as Ibsen,  Walt Whitman, Flaubert, Thomas Hardy, Tchekhov, Verhaeren? Is there nothing in the works of such writers which can afford to men "the highest pleasure which they are capable of feeling"? How can this usually discerning critic, who says that art is a "criticism of life", venture to condem so much life as unfit for the artist's criticism? ... Simplicity and severity are good. But Arnold has given us no good reason for concluding that art demands the exclusion of the complex, or the shunning of an age of material progress."

According to Arnold, the function of a critic is to promote culture. His mission of life is "A disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world and thus to establish a current of fresh and true ideas." His function is three fold in character. First he must studiously learn "to see things as they really are" in life and letters. Secondly he must "make the best ideas prevail". He must interpret the masterpieces of literature to the people and cultivate in them good taste and love for classic art. Thirdly, he has to promote "a current of Ideas in the highest degree animating and nourishing to the creative power." He has to prepare the atmosphere of Ideas wherein the growing genius of an author yet to appear may effortlessly breathe them.

The culture which Arnold's critic has to promote has moral aspect too. "It is a study of perfection which moves by the force, not only of the passion for knowledge but also of 'the moral and social passion for doing good...' ... The man of culture is as much concerned with making the truth prevail as in seeing and learning. He aims at 'getting acceptance for his ideas' in carrying others along with him in his march towards perfection." (RASJ)

But in all this Arnold has lost impartiality which should be the characteristic of an ideal critic. He has urged that the critic should be free from ignoble interests but in doing so he has asked for his subjection to certain other interests which may be the more certainly begailing because they are noble. He has emancipated him from certain intellectually unworthy interests only to bind him all the more tightly to spiritual interests determined, however sweetly and reasonably, by the moral and social passion for doing good." Literature may incidently be edifying. It may increase wisdom or promote culture. But it's function is to afford delight. We cannot find fault with literature if it does not teach or serve some utility or other. But we can certainly call it bad if it does not afford literary delight. A critic ought to approach a work of art with reasonable sympathy and detachment. He must judge of its excellences and shortcomings in the light of the principles of art only.

Arnold, nevertheless, has made the critic conscious of his high duties. There is some truth in his contention that a good critic has to prepare the soil for the creative genius and that the critic is just like John the Baptist, paving the way for the greater than he to come whose shoe string he is unworthy to unloose. This truth however must not be overstated or exaggerated.

Arnold insisted that a critic should carefully avoid the 'historic estimate' and the 'personal estimate' in order to arrive at the real estimate of a given work of literature. There must be truth and seriousness in the substance of classic poetry, and worth, beauty, power in the style, diction and the entire composition of poetry. The critic must have in mind the lines of the best masters in order that he applies them as a touchstone to judge of the value of the work he examines. Arnold, in this, has hinted at the comparative method of criticism. We must extend this method of comparing lines with lines to the comparison of the total impression of one work with that of the other.

Let us conclude on the criticism of Arnold's views in some passages of R A Scott James:

" The comparative method is an invaluable aid to appreciation in approaching any work of art. This is just as true of fiction as of poetry, of painting as of literature. And it is helpful not merely thus to compare the masterpiece and the lesser work, but the good with the not so good, the sincere with the not quite sincere, the clever with the too clever by half."

" Some have felt that Arnold is too austere too exacting. Few of us, however, are endangered of erring on that side. But we may ask whether it is fair to demand that all hills should be Alps. Is there not an excellence in some minor poetry worthwhile on its own account? May we not miss its qualities if we too insistently disparage it by contrast with the greatest?"

Arnold did a service to criticism by his sheer inexorableness. There was no compromise in his war to the end against deception, insincerity, and charlatanism. 'In poetry which is thought and art in one, it is the glory, the eternal honour, that charlatanism shall find no entrance; that this noble sphere be kept inviolate and inviolable.' In defending its honour we can never afford to neglect his bidding to keep in mind those universal and shining examples which have been handed down to us from the past through many languages, filling our minds with that right reason which rejects excess, which puts new half-truths to the test of higher truths, and distinguishes the alive, the vital, the sincere from the shoddy, the showy, the merely clever."