Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 12:19:42 -0500
From: Eric Yost <103423.421-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: Re: PLC: Anyone get Gass?


JF Parr writes:  "Criticism has no privilege over art, literature,
music, etc., and I guess what I'm trying to say is that the relationship
between
art and criticism is more problematic than simply saying: 'Art is another
form of
criticism,' 'Criticism is another form of art,' etc."

Certainly there's a difference between Twain writing about JF Cooper and
Twain writing The Mysterious Stranger.  The material is different and the
intellectual process is different.

When Yourcenar writes about Piranesi, for example, she is treating a set of
external objects as a nexus and explaining that nexus in terms of other
external objects.   A fiction writer, on the other hand, may receive an
ineffable impulse and try to find ways of expressing that "ineluctable"
thing in terms of other internal objects.  When Yourcenar writes Hadrian's
Memoirs, for example, it is not her immense grasp of the period that is
driving her writing; rather it is her empathy for the internal Hadrian she
has created.

Criticism is a form of nonfiction, and if done well, is an art.  I didn't
realize I was rehashing a "stale Romantic" notion of the artist:  I was
simply reporting the difference I feel between writing fiction and writing
an essay.

Best to all,
Eric


     --- from list phillitcrit-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---