Every Month a Picture — The Criticism We Need

My interlocutor said in a trembling voice: I used to cry when I was small; when I grew up, I learned how to dry my tears, and my crying ceased... Last night, I became a child again.

And he went on with his story:

I wrote a play and staged it with my fellow students, and we presented it to the public after planting in it every atom of our souls and every breath of goodness in our beings... We offered up our souls that night, and on silver trays, to the audience... I myself played the leading role... I lived on the stage and forgot those in the hall — until I heard voices rising from the corners of the hall to trouble the serenity of the atmosphere... The criticism the honorable audience began heaping upon us startled me... But I went on with the part... The play succeeded, and the audience applauded it long, long; but I stayed behind the curtain, not wishing to see the well-wishers... Instead, I wept.

No sooner had my interlocutor finished his tale than dozens of stories came crowding upon me — I am at a loss which of them to choose now — and all of them express a single idea... the killing of talents... the crushing of geniuses in their cradle... the wrecking of morale... And why?... Because we are negative, and because we lack sound criticism.

Yes, we need sound criticism in art, in literature, and in society — on condition that it be stripped of personal feelings and inclinations; that it take up the material, sift it, bring out the good elements in it, and encourage their growth.

A woman writer related that she was working as secretary to a great artist when a young man came in carrying a painting he wished to show the artist, to learn his opinion of it... The artist shook his head after contemplating the painting at length, then said to the young man: Turn from art to any other profession, or your life will go to waste.

The tender-hearted secretary was thunderstruck — the more so as she had been taken with the young man's good looks and gaiety — and she wished she could fling the painting in the old artist's face... But she gave up the idea when she met the same young man ten years later, and he had become one of the greatest men of business... She realized then that the old man had been right... He had told the young man the truth frankly, and spared him the toil...

It is of critics of this kind that we today stand in the most urgent need.