Genius and Taste
By Irving Babbitt
Irving Babbitt is a leading moral critic. In Roderick Random(1748) the poet Melopoyn
pronounces with great significance of voice and gesture a very elegant and resourcefulspeech
upon the different between genius and taste. Mr. Spingarn in his Creative Criticism views on genius and
taste as ultramodern which takes us back to the 18th century. A new
movement began to gain head and there was opposition between this ultramodern
and traditional conceptions appear clearly in its reinterpretation of words
like genius and taste. Voltairedefined genius as ‘Judicious imitation’ that is
the imitation of the approved modals according to certain rules and conventions.
If Voltaire is astringent and restrictive is his attitude towards literary
genius means he is hardly less in his attitude towards taste. Voltaire says
that in the whole world a few men of genius are mostly found in Paris. Voltaire
views genius and taste as very vivid and vital things, but they both operate
within the limits imposed by the neo-classic doctrine of imitation, a doctrine
which suffered from flaw of formalism. Some sought to purge literature from
this flaw began to oppose the neoclassical harping judgment and imitation as a
plea for imagination and originality. The genius who emerged at this time had a
strong leaning towards primitivism.
According to the Older School, art aims not at the
expression of the individual, but at the universal the “grandeur generality”.
On the contrary, Edward Young says genius resides in one’s ultimate
idiosyncrasy which makes every man different from his fellows. If one wishes to
be a creator and not a mechanical imitator, one should simply be one’s
temperamental self and submit to no constraint upon one’s imagination. If one
is not to be contaminated by imitation it is an advantage. Young hints that
many genius are those who could neither write nor read.
Diderot says “Genius calls for something enormous, primitive and
barbaric”. According to the primitivist “If genius is something purely
expressive, a spontaneous temperamental overflow then taste according to
Babbitt is at the opposite pole from the taste of the neo-classicist.Mr.
Spingarn says that critic should ask what the creator aimed to do and whether
the aim is intrinsically worthwhile. He should value the creation with
reference to some standard set both above his own temperament and that of the
creator. On the contrary, According to the primitivist, the genius has simply
to let himself go both imaginatively and emotionally and says that the whole
business of the critic is to perceive so keen an impression from the resulting
expression, which passed through his temperament issues forth as a fresh
expression. Thus taking part in the creative thrill of genius, the critic in
turn becomes creative hence Genius and taste are one.
Taste has been defined as a man’s
literary conscience.Mr. Spingarn says that the identity of genius and taste is
the final achievement of modern thought on the subject of art; and it means
that fundamentally the creative and critical instincts are one and the
same.A.W.Schlegal in his Berlin Lectures protests
against a fault-finding criticism that looked upon genius as the evil principle
and wished to subordinate it to the negative principle. So called good taste So
Genius and Taste are indivisibly one.
If the creator
has merely to get his own genius i.e. his own uniqueness expressed, it is hard
to see why the critic should be more disinterested and why should not be less
concerned with the faithfulness of the impression that he receives from the
work. The ultimate implications of the expressionistic impressionistic view
have been worked out by no one more consistently than Oscar wild in his dialogue
‘The Critic as Artist’states that “Criticism is the only civilized form of
Autobiography”.
Mr. Spingarn
is craving for an indeterminate vagabondage of imagination and emotion. The
neo-classicist hoped to gain their grandeur of generality by judicious
imitation. Yet Voltaire declared that “illusion is the queen of the human
heart”. Aristotle says the poet are superior to historians. They reveal the
actual truth in their poems. So he strongly accepts that the poet must be a
master of illusion. Goethe points out that the best art gives “the illusion of
a higher reality”. Imitation, in the theory ofAristotle and the practice of
Sophocles or Phidias, is not merely judicious, but creative, and creative
because it is imaginative. For the Greek, genius should have imaginative
perception with a universal point of view. Homer praises Aristotle as the
greatest of poets because he never entertains reader but he is merely an
imitator.Shakespeare, is one of the most imaginative of men. His imagination is
not irresponsible like an original genius but is disciplined to reality. At his
best he is ethical in the Greek sense. Greek sense is not to preach or to
agitate problems, but to see life with imaginative wholeness. Mr. Spingarn
holds that a creator should not submit to truth and reality but should simply
“let himself go” emotionally and imaginatively. He should get rid of “inner and
outer inhibitions”.
On the contrary Mr. Spingarn credit the creator of
this type with a ‘vision of reality’ and ‘spiritual exaltation’. He says that
if one puts no check on his imagination and at the same time convinced of his
spiritual exaltation is in a fair to go mad, but one may disagree with him in
considering the madness as a divine madness. In its mildest form this whole
theory of genius and taste encourage conceit in its more advanced forms Megalomania.
Mr. Spingarn’s exhortation to get rid of both inner and outer inhibitions and
let oneself follow the lines of least resistance and be a genius.
The doctrine of
imitation means that one needs to look up to some standard set above one’s
ordinary self. Mr. Spingarn is tending to discredit the very modern spirit. He
says that if to be modern means it should be positive and experimental in one’s
attitude towards life. The whole conception of genius and taste is to have a
flavor of a decadent estheticism. Dr.
Johnson defines genius as ‘only mind of large general power accidentally
determined to some particular direction’. The critic cannot afford any more
than the creator simply to let himself go. He will begin to have taste only
when he refers the creative expression and impression of it to some standard.
If this standard is to be purified, it must not be merely traditional but must
be ethical. Mr. Spingarn says that the opening night of the International
Exhibition (1913) was one of the most adventures that he had ever experienced.
Many of the pictures that have been appearing in this and similar exhibitions
of late years.
Napoleon
proclaims that imagination governs the world. Those who believe in the need of
a humanistic reaction at present should be careful to renew the neoclassical
error Aristotelian sense, the imagination does not wander aimlessly but is at
work in the service of a supersensuous truth that it is not given to man to
seize directly; and that the result is ‘the illusion of a high reality’.
Submitted By
SHERLIN
JOHNSON
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