SLSL It's raing cats and frogs

[William Zantzinger]

The Renaissance:  Studies in Art and Poetry
By Walter Pater

To see the object as in itself it really is," has been
justly said to be the aim of all true criticism
whatever, and in æstheticcriticism the first step
towards seeing one's object as it really is,
is to know one's own impression as it really is, to
discriminate it, to realise it distinctly. The objects
with which æsthetic  criticism deals --music, poetry,
artistic and accomplished forms of
human life-- are indeed receptacles of so many powers
or forces:  they possess, like the products of nature,
so many virtues or qualities. What is this song or
picture, this engaging personality 
presented in life or in a book, to me? What effect
does it really produce on me? Does it give me
pleasure? and if so, what sort or  degree of pleasure?
How is my nature modified by its presence,
and under its influence? The answers to these
questions are  the original facts with which the
æsthetic critic has to do; and, as in the study of
light, of morals, of number, one must  realise such
primary data for one's self, or not at all. And he who
experiences these impressions strongly, and drives
directly at 
the discrimination and analysis of them, has no need
to trouble himself with the abstract question what
beauty is in itself, or  what its exact relation to
truth or experience --metaphysical questions, as
unprofitable as metaphysical questions elsewhere.  He
may pass them all by as being, unanswerable or not, of
no interest to him. 

The aesthetic critic, then, regards all the objects
with which  he has to do, all works of art, and the
fairer forms of nature  and human life, as powers or
forces producing pleasurable  sensations, each of a
more or less peculiar and unique kind. 

To know one's own impressions is the first step. It's
the first step for all critics, not only the aesthetic
critic (impressionistic critic) but for all critics.
Moreover, it is the first step not only for all
critics but also for all readers.  I bring Pater into
this not because I want to argue impressionistic
reader response theory or defend the extreme
subjectivism (Freudianism) that has been employed here
to argue an allusion to Aristophanes' Frogs or to take
the other side and argue formalist "objectivity."   I
cite Pater because Pater still maintains the old
dualistic assumption of a certain passivity on the
part of the reader while he seeks in the clarification
of his impression what he calls "the formula" of the
"object," the work. 
In other words, Pater's excessively subjective
impressionistic criticism is not a complete rejection
of the formalist's so called objectivity. 

That being said, we can return to Pater's first step:
To see the object as in itself it really is and know
one's own impression as it really is. 

To Nabokov's Lectures On Literature

>From Nabokov's Lectures
Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only
reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active
and creative reader is a rereader. And I shall tell
you why.When we read a book for the first time the
very process of laboriously moving our  eyes from left
to right, line after line, page after page, this
complicated physical work  upon the book, the very
process of moving our eyes from left to right, line
after line, page after page, this complicated physical
work upon the book, the very process of learning in
terms of space and time what the book is about, this
stands between us and artistic appreciation. When we
look at a painting we do not have to move our eyes in
a special way even if, as in a book, the picture
contains elements of depth and development ….But at a
second, or third, or fourth reading we do, in a sense,
behave towards a book as we do towards a painting...a
book of fiction appeals first of all to the mind. The
mind, the brain, the top of the tingling spine, is, or
should be, the only instrument used upon a book. 

Nabokov LOL.3-4

The reader's primary objective is to have as complete
as aesthetic experience as possible, given her own
capacities and the sensibilities, preoccupations and
memories she brings to the reading. Critics tend to
focus on the admittedly important question of how
books differ in their ability to generate such
intensity and complexity, such tingling in the spine. 

TBC ...varieties of imagination in the reader...

PS I think Hollander misreads Nabokov's Lecture and
that his claim that Pynchon has internalized much of
Nabokov's teaching is preposterous. That being the
case, Hollander's reversed polarity image is
marvelous, enchanting even. 


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