Matthew Arnold Principles of Criticism

Matthew Arnold, while talking about the function of a critic, says that criticism 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." How can a critic fulfil this task? First, the critic must "see things as they really are". Secondly, he should pass on his ideas to others-his aim being to "make the best ideas prevail". Thirdly, he prepares an atmosphere favourable to the creative genius of the future-and thus he releases "a current of ideas in the highest degree animating and nourishing to the creative power". The function of a critic then is to promote 'culture'. In Culture and Anarchy he analyses the duty of a critic pre-eminently as a man of culture, concerned with all aspects of living. Culture, according to him, is a study of perfection, which manifests itself in "the moral and social passion for doing good." The man of culture is, therefore, concerned not only with seeing and knowing truth, but with making it prevail.

It is necessary to understand fully what Arnold means by the term 'disinterestedness'. It is true that a critic should cultivate an unbiased, independent and objective outlook, he should have no axe to grind, as one might say. But Arnold had something more in his mind. We have to recall here his classification of the British people-the Barbarians, i.e., the aristocrat who is accomplished in 'spirit and politeness', but 'inaccessible to ideas and light'; the bawling, hustling, smashing and beer-drinking Populace; the Philistines-the middle classes with whom the world is too much, and who lay waste their powers, getting and spending. He wishes that the critic should not let himself be swayed by their ideas and prejudices, Philistinism is the antithesis of culture. In his essays on Heine he states the position clearly: "the enthusiast for the idea, the reason, values reason, the idea in and for themselves; he values them, irrespectively of the practical convenience which their triumph may obtain for him; and the man who regards the possession of these practical conveniences as something sufficient in itself, something which compensates for the absence or surrender of the idea, of reason, is, in his eyes a Philistine." It is the ideal of intellectual and spiritual excellence which he consistently upholds, and it is in accord with the best that has been known and thought in the world.

Now the point is that while he emancipates the critic from some degrading prepossessions-from interests that are intellectually unacceptable, he binds him down to "moral and social passion for doing good." It is not the kind of disinterestedness that we deemed of an artist and a critic. Behind Arnold's ideas of perfection is some moral prepossession; the disinterestedness which he recommends as the essential quality of a critic is of a limited kind. R. A. Scott James points out what this disinterestedness should be: When I say that the activity of the artist is disinterested, I do not mean that he may not be concerned with any conceivable theme under the sun, but that his business is to provide us with an experience, and that any end he may have beyond making that experience vivid and complete is an alien end, destroying his singleness of purpose wholly disruptive of his art and destructive of its energy." Arnold makes art and criticism subservient to "the moral and social passion for doing good." Arnold seems to assign a high responsibility on the shoulders of a critic. He thinks that the potential poet is waiting, sterile till the professional critic prepares the ground for him. In a sense, the critic is a John the Baptist. Arnold enjoins upon the critic a social responsibility. "The elements with which creative power works are ideas; the best ideas on every matter which literature touches, current at the time." And it is the business of the critic to make these ideas available to the creative artist; the creative artist's work is one of "synthesis and exposition". A great artist, say, one like Shakespeare, does not owe so much to a critic as Arnold makes him out to.