criticism

interpretation

interpretation is

is a judgement of vision; interpretation a reconstruction of vision

Thus criticism is active and looks ahead, often treating past work as material on which to base future standards and canons of art; interpretation is passive, and looks back, regarding only the imperative challenge of a poetic vision. Criticism is a judgement of vision; interpretation a reconstruction of vision. p.2

is distinguished from interpretation in that criticism is a deliberate objectifying of a work, while interpretation tends to merge into the work it analyzes, to understand its subject in the light of its own nature, employing external reference.

‘Criticism’ to me suggests a certain process of deliberately objectifying the work under consideration; the comparison of it with other similar works in order especially to show in what respects it surpasses, or falls short of, those works; the dividing its ‘good’ from its ‘bad’; and, finally, a formal judgement as to its lasting validity. ‘Interpretation’, on the contrary, tends to merge into the work it analyses; it attempts, as far as possible, to understand its subject in the light of its own nature, employing external reference, if at all, only as a preliminary to understanding; it avoids discussion of merits, and, since its existence depends entirely on its original accept- ance of the validity of the poetic unit which it claims, in some measure, to translate into discursive reasoning, it can recognize no division of ‘good’ from ‘bad’.

is distinguished from criticism in that criticism is a deliberate objectifying of a work, while interpretation tends to merge into the work it analyzes, to understand its subject in the light of its own nature, employing external reference.

is a reconstruction of vision; Criticism, a judgement of vision.

G. Wilson KnightThinkers

G. Wilson Knight