“Why should those who cannot create take upon themselves to estimate the value of creative work? What can they know about it?” A seemingly uneducated man, Ernest, poses the question to his dinner host Gilbert (the voice of Oscar Wilde) in a written dialogue addressing the qualities and many facets of criticism through the endless arguments the men create.
Wilde begins by proving that critics have always been around, titling the Greeks as “a nation of art-critics,” who paved the way for the principles of life and literature, but most of all, the Greeks appreciated the most important critical aspect, the voice. “There is no fine art without self-consciousness, and self-consciousness and the critical spirit are one,” meaning art cannot exist without some form of known emotion living within the individual, and for the critic, this emotion is dying to come out.
The main argument Gilbert (Wilde) tries to get across is that criticism is an art form, and he refers to language itself as an art. The critic breathes and takes in the beauty of art, this beauty then becomes the main form of criticism that can transform any piece of art into a work of literature. This literature is one of the most pure forms of self-expression and is a “record of one’s own soul,” and this impression the art evokes is the reason the art is created in the first place. Expression is tossed aside from the view of the critic and the attention is focused only on the impression.
Wilde’s most controversial statement made throughout the dialogue is, “It is very much more difficult to talk about a thing than to do it,” meaning the task of critiquing the piece is actually harder than creating the piece. To help Ernest understand he uses the analogy that when a man describes something, he becomes a poet rather than a man who acts, who is merely a puppet. The real artist is one who can take the feeling and passion from a piece of art, not take a feeling and create art. “He gains his inspiration from form, and from form purely, as an artist should.”
After Ernest understands criticism is art, he asks why criticism is necessary and what could come of it. Criticism helps to write history, which is an extremely large task. Gilbert explains that the critic is a cultural person who holds the dreams and feelings of generations and is representational of a race at large. In other words, the critic is the spokes-person of generations’ emotions, and he even stated, “with the development of the critical spirit we shall be able to realize, not merely our own lives, but the collective life of the race” (humanity).
To exemplify this spirit of the critic, Wilde states,” We must surrender ourselves absolutely to the work in question, whatever it may be, if we wish to gain its secret. For the time, we must think of nothing else.” The critic should have no prejudices and should not strive to be “fair,” nor should they get caught up in their opinions. Everyone has a sense and knowledge (consciously or subconsciously) of beauty that is different from all of the other senses, and a critic uses the sense to help the impression and feelings come to life through language in a way that is not just portraying beauty but also is beautiful.
As the meeting closes Gilbert says, “Hours ago, Ernest, you asked me the use of Criticism. You might just as well have asked me the use of thought.” Wilde believed that criticism was the thoughts coming to life in writing, creating a work of art greater than the art that was originally viewed. This passion is something writers should both understand and try to experience to help the future of criticism become as great as Wilde believes it can be.
