The Art of Appreciation

We have discussed in class the question of whether or not we have a responsibility to appreciate things that we do not initially like in order to expand and multiply our pleasures. Since the Formalists believe that it is the readers' job to "fit" a poem or work of literature, to repress their immediate reactions or personal experiences of the poem and focus instead on becoming dedicated students of its' forms and literary structures, they would probably encourage the appreciation of objectively good literature, music, and art. Yet, are music and art objectively good in the same way that the Formalists believe that literature can be objectively good? Based solely upon the work itself, the unity, the literary devices, the elements that can be evaluated using exegetical methods? Wikipedia defines the concept of formalism in art in the following way:

"In art theory formalism is the concept that a work's artistic value is entirely determined by its form--the way it is made, its purely visual aspects and its medium. Formalism emphasizes compositional elements such as color, line, shape, and texture rather than realism, context, and content. In visual art, formalism is the concept that everything necessary in a work of art is contained within it. The context for the work, including the reason for its creation, the historical background, and the life of the artist, is considered to be of secondary importance."

Similarly, the formalist theory of music ascribes meaning to music depending upon its physical properties: melody, harmony, polyphony, form, rhythm, etc, rather than upon musics' expressive qualities or potential to evoke emotion in the listener. Realizing that formalist theory is concerned with the same measurable, objective characteristics of a piece whether it be a poem, painting, or concerto, we can further analyze this question of obligation to appreciate works which one does not instinctively like.

I would like to dissect the question a bit. What is the aim of working to appreciating art that we do not instantly appreciate? In class, we assumed that this aim was "to expand and multiply our pleasures." Who or what suggests to us that we should learn to appreciate said art? Friends? Intellectuals? The literary canon? What exactly is our true motivation when we persist in reading books or listening to music that is not instantaneously pleasurable for us? In a way, are we attempting to adhere to societal norms? If we are English majors, and we do not love Emily Dickinson, do we worry that we will be considered less scholarly for admitting to such? In the same breath, do some people voice their dislike for/disenchantment with a particular author or work just for the sake of being nonconformist? I know that I have felt pressure to appreciate a certain musical artist because the majority of my peers found his or her music to be deep and beautiful. Is the expansion and multiplication of pleasure that we receive when we finally come to appreciate opera or A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man truly rooted in understanding the inherent worth of that art? Or is that reward of a new vision of beauty also paired with the feeling that we now belong to a sophisticated group of people who like something untraditional? Also, is that reward supplemented by the pride we feel at the time we spent trudging through our dislike, willing ourselves to see what others had told us we might see? I am not trying to suggest that we are indeed not responsible for appreciating novels, pictures, and songs that we do not like, but rather to suggest that the motivations behind acquiring this appreciation may vary, as well as the authenticity of the outcomes.

The Internal, the External, and the Intermediate

In their essay, "The Intentional Fallacy," Wimsatt and Beardsley contend that an author's intention when writing a work cannot be studied and therefore the question of intentionality is not an appropriate question to ask in the field of literary criticism. They define three types of "evidence" that critics seek out in order to find the meaning of a poem:

1) Internal/Public: "discovered through the semantics and syntax of a poem, through our habitual knowledge of the language, through grammars, dictionaries, and all the literature which is the source of dictionaries, in general through all that makes a language and culture"

2) External/Private/Idiosyncratic: "not a part of the work as a linguistic fact: it consists of revelations (in journals, for example, or letters or reported conversations) about how or why the poet wrote the poem- to what lady, while sitting on what lawn, or at the death of what friend or brother"

2) Intermediate: "about the character of the author or about private or semi-private meanings attached to words or topics by an author or by a coterie of which he is a member"

While the formalists primarily emphasize the search for evidence which is internal or public, it is interesting to note that they seem to allow for a certain amount of intermediate evidence as well. Wimsatt and Beardsley distinguish between literary critics who concern themselves with either "evidence of type (1) and moderately with that of type (3)" or with "type (2) and with (3) where it shades into (2)." At the end of their article, they establish that in attempting to study allusions in poetry, such as in the example of whether Donne references exists in Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," it is acceptable to perform poetic analysis and exegesis but not to go directly to the author himself and ask about intention. I believe that Wimsatt and Beardsley might consider the scholarly search for connections between Eliot and Donne in order to discern the meaning of "Love Song" to be a search for this intermediate evidence, which is neither completely public nor private and which seeks to understand the associations that authors have in their use of words. The formalists critics would encourage the inclusion of intermediate evidence insofar as it contributes to the reader becoming a scholar of the poem. Far from contemplating or questioning the author's intention, the scientific study of some forms of intermediate evidence allows for a deepened understanding of the objective meaning of the poem. So, instead of imagining what woman inspired Eliot's "Love Song," or examining Eliot's personal life history in the year that he wrote the poem, or even wondering what the author intended with his inclusion of a specific line, the true literary critic limits him or herself to the study of the poem's form, language, and unity. This study might include a rigorous look at the history and meaning of the words, or the intermediate evidence: "The meaning of words is the history of words, and the biography of an author, his use of a word, and the associations which the word had for him, are part of the word's history and meaning."