The Critic’s Responsibility

THE CRITIC'S RESPONSIBILITYIJohn Peter It is an occupational hazard of our profession that we should be obliged to read almost anything that can be read, and sometimes a good many things that can't, such as Finnegans Wake or our students' essays. All of us have gory scalps dangling from our belts-books that we've read, books that we hope never to read again-and if I produce one I hope it will be regarded more with the equanimity of the damned than with revulsion. My share in damnation, or part of it, goes by the name of A Short-Title Catalogue of English Books, 1475- 1640, a compilation by two minor fiends improbably described as Pollard and Redgrave which I once read all the way through. Among its 26,000 entries there is admittedly much variety. Some of them, such as "A defence of the appendix to the Antidote," are secretive and enigmatic; others, such as "The batchelars banquet: or a banquet for batchelars," almost insultingly well-defined. Still, it isn't what one would call an engrossing book. The style is terse to the pOint of incomprehensibility, the plot inscrutable, the characters multitudinous and (like Calvin or Queen Elizabeth) poorly drawn. Having finished it one puts it aside concurring with the sentiment expressed on page 484: "Faultes, faults, and nothing else but faultes." For arousing sheer depression in a reader, though, there must be many books to surpass this one, especially when it comes to books of criticism, or to those periodic digests, such as The Year's Work in English Studies, in which critical books and essays are summarized, usually with the rider that they offer "a valuable contribution" to their chosen field. It seems that "valuable" is one of those words that nobody bothers to use correctly any more, like "imagery" or "contemporary." One has to study the context before one can say what its connotations are. "Futile," "pedantic ," "besotted," "written by a friend of mine"-we can add a meaning >ltAn address to The Association of Canadian University Teachers of English, June 1959. 110 JOHN PETER or two, but tbese are pretty clearly the basic ones. Actually if you take tbe time to check one of tbese valuable contributions, testing its assertions against tbe text or texts it's supposed to be expounding, the chances are about one to five that you'll find your flesh creeping about in pure horror, and about two to five that, not being equipped to comprehend unintelligible dialects, it won't be given the chance even to creep. Let us get down to cases: at any rate let us get down to one representative and (I hope) unprovoking case, to illustrate tbe form such criticism can take. 1 can't pretend to have read tbe book from which my example comes all tbe way tbrough-there are still some experiences a determined reader can avoid-but what troubles me is tbat so many of my students should try to read it, especially after I've told tbem to leave it severely alone. 1 must begin by quoting two passages from Donne's intricate exercise "The Extasie," botb of tbem taken from the second half of tbe poem, where, having conceded that love is primarily a conjunction or fusion of souls, Donne shifts his attention to the lovers' bodies and argues that these also have an important role to play in any amorous relationship. The beginning of his argument will be familiar enough: But 0 alas, so long, so far Our bodies why do we forbear? They're ours, though they're not we; we are The intelligences, they the sphere. We owe them thanks, because they thus Did us, to us, at first convey, Yielded their forces, sense, to us, Nor are dross to us, but allay. "Allay"-"alloy" as we say nowadays. The lovers' bodies are not to be ignored or neglected, for it is through the means tbat tbey provide tbat tbe lovers' souls can perceive each other, and act upon each other too. Far from being waste products, impurities to be skimmed of! as dross or raked out as slag from tbe molten union...