Excerpt from "Biography and Criticism - A Misalliance Disputed" by Jacques Barzun:

Many years ago Degas said "Il faut decourager les arts." I am far from agreeing, but I am ready to say that critics of a certain kind are in need of active discouragement. Too much is written about matters that should be taken in by the beholder as he hears or scans the work. It is not desirable that his conscious mind should entertain - or be prepared to entertain - clear statements of what he experiences under the spell of a masterpiece. The very reason why art is finer when it shows rather than tells is that comprehension is then immediate, not discursive. Ideally, the spectator must absorb - in order to be absorbed; and this means that the critic should shut up until he is wanted. We have no need of a study of "Punctuality in Thomas Hardy." I am making up the subject, but everybody can think of dozens of comparable works of pseudo-scholarship and pseudo-criticism. Their only excuse is that the authors wrote them under Ph.Duress and cannot be blamed for being coerced.

Jacques Barzun is University Professor at Columbia University. Among his numerous books areClassic, Romantic and Modern, Berlioz amd the Romantic Century, The Use and Abuse of Art and, most recently, Clio and the Doctors: Psycho-History, Quanto-History, and History.

© 1975 by The University of Chicago. All excerpts appear in Critical Inquiry, Volume 1, Number 3 (March 1975). This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of US copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that this entire notice is carried and that the University of Chicago Press is notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or reduplication of this text in other terms, in any medium, requires both the consent of the authors and the University of Chicago Press.

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