The criticism of poetry

Abstract

The basic distinction which should be kept in view when discussing the relationship between art and criticism is that the former is creative and the latter scientific. Both functions may be mutually exclusive, and when they happen to co-exist in the same personality, as was the case with, say, a major poet like T.S. Eliot, or a major novelist like O.H. Lawrence, one can easily detect influences of the pure intellect on the aesthetic spirit and vice versa. At least since when Structuralism became a salient point of reference to every professional critic, this unqualified overlapping is not easily acceptable any more. The poet and the critic seem to have found themselves on opposite sides, fully aware of the essential diversity of their respective natures. When both coincide in one personality, it is up to the man in question to sort out the distinction, establish the barriers and define himself according to parallel lines which probably, according to contemporary criteria, should never meet.