THE PART OF CRITICISM.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 86, 28 April 1937, Page 4

THE PART OF CRITICISM.

"It is a far ory from the relatively minor restriotions of tlic libel law in England to the latest veto on free discussion issued by Dr. Goebbels in Germany," writes Mr R. A. Scott-James, in the London Mercury. "At a festival sitting of the Chamber of Culture he announced that henceforward no criticism of works of art, literature, music, drama, or of the artists engaged. for stage, cinema, or ' concert proformances will be permitted. ' The place of criticism is to be taken by objective analysis and description. A commentator must not say that a work of art is good or bad.' Dr. Goebbels speaks for the State. Henceforward no more criticism — no praise or blame — no investigation of what may be true or not true, genuine or spurious. "His words have a certain ingenuousness about them. He speaks as one who believes that in suppressing free criticism he is relieving the creative artist of a noxious enemy. He makes the old popular mistake of supposing that the creative writer and the critic are in the nature of things opposed, the latter being a 'scribbling grumbler' preferrihg to judge what be is unable to create. He forgets that some of the greatest crities of poetry have themselves been poets. 'Not every critic of art is a genius,' said Lessing- 'but every genius is born a critic of art.' And it was anotber eountryman of his, Schlegel, who said that literature % the eomprehensivo , esseaoe of tha intellectual life oi a nation*'*