I Wish I’d Said That

Posted 5 December, 2007 in Uncategorized |

“Nearly all the discussions of criticism that I am acquainted with start off with a false assumption, to wit, that the primary motive of the critic, the impulse which makes a critic of him instead of, say, a politician or a stockbroker, is pedagogical — that he writes because he is possessed by a passion to advance the enlightenment, to put down error and wrong, to disseminate some specific doctrine: psychological, epistemological, historical, or esthetic. But this is true, it seems to me, only of bad critics, and its degree of truth increases in direct ratio to their badness. The motive of the critic who is really worth reading — the only critic of whom, indeed, it may be said truthfully that it is at all possible to read him, save as an act of mental penitence — is something quite different. That motive is not the motive of the pedagogue, but the motive of the artist. It is no more and no less than the simple desire to function freely and beautifully, to give outward and objective form to ideas that bubble inwardly and have a fascinating lure in them, to get rid of them dramatically and make an articulate noise in the world.”

– H.L. Mencken, reprinted in A Mencken Chrestomathy, p. 429

3 comments to “I Wish I’d Said That”

Zachariah Wells, December 6th, 2007 at 12:23 am:

• I wish I’d found and posted that!

B., December 6th, 2007 at 1:20 pm:

• A million thanks for a little Mencken. He’s on my Top 10 of all time.

Brian, December 7th, 2007 at 8:59 pm:

• What a great quote! Will I ever be able to purge those long, tedious hours spent trudging through page after page of bad criticism, bad writing and bad thoughts? While attending college, I spent my “working” hours toiling away at such doggerel; and it was only at night–once I’d put away the days work–that I encountered true criticism. I love reading Keats’ letters and the prosody handbooks put out by Shapiro and Hollander, works that reveal true devotion to the works themselves. Criticism is useful, sometimes even necessary, but often it loses sight of its focus: art, beauty, humanity. Let’s strive to understand these things and not waste our time in speculation or quibble over a critical vocabulary that’s fuzzy at best…Mencken, you’re the best!

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