Kritiek en criteria. Menno ter Braak en het literaire waardeoordeel

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Summary^1.

Criticism and Criteria: Menno ter Braak and Literary Value Judgments

The book consists of two parts. In the Theoretical Introduction I have attempted to set up a theory which can establish the basis for describing the programme of a literary critic; in other words the principles that enable the reader to identify types of criticism. In the second part, Practical Application, the results of the Introduction are tested on a number of critical pieces by Ter Braak.

Ter Braak's function in this study is important, but the analysis of his work has only been used as a means to an end. My primary purpose was to investigate the role of criteria in criticism. In the first part Ter Braak was used to introduce, illustrate or delimit specific problems; in the second I have tested my theoretical ideas on examples chosen from his work.

1. Mijn Engels is verbeterd door Henry I. Schvey.

A. Theoretical Introduction

I. What can a reader expect from a critic? This question is derived from a situation in which a critic (in this instance Ter Braak) is asked for his programme. Approximately the same question is posed in the discussion between F.R. Leavis and René Wellek. However, there the disagreement was concentrated on Wellek's demand for criteria as a point of departure for the understanding of criticism - a demand ignored on principle by Leavis.

In this chapter I have further investigated the reasons for Leavis' denial and raise the question whether or not in the absence of specific guidelines it is possible for the reader te deduce them himself. My provisional conclusion is that it is useless for the critic to offer criteria in advance and that it is not a viable alternative for the reader to propose them himself.

II. The fact that advance criteria may not be obtainable does not imply that value judgments cannot be ascertained, or that there is no firm basis for such judgments. It is in this context that I have raised the problem of objectivity. In order to introduce the question of the objectivity of value judgments I have chosen to examine the work of Ter Braak, since his views on historical and scientific objectivity as defended in his doctoral dissertation are still relevant to his later critical work. I have then briefly sketched some of the main theories about literary evaluation in order to indicate the precise

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purpose of this study: to establish a theory of how the reader can satisfactory identify various kinds of criticims. To this end I have arrived at a conception inspired by Wittgenstein's later work as defended by John Casey.

III. Of necessity, I was obliged to return to the demand for criteria, since scholars who claim to work along the lines of Wittgenstein may both refuse criteria (as Casey does) or insist upon them (as Morris Weitz does). Therefore, I have directed my attention both to theorists who provide criteria in their attempt to describe the essential nature of a critical work, or who claim that a critic should offer criteria and explicitly defend them (whether or not of Wittgenstein's turn of mind). Precisely as in the first chapter I have opposed these conceptions and was therefore obliged to ask how one can describe criticism if one refuses to use criteria for this purpose.

IV. Some theoreticians have proposed (following the American Frank Sibley) to examine a piece of criticism for what Sibley calls its ‘aesthetic concepts’: concepts which are used to attribute aesthetic qualities to objects, or as Beardsley says, concepts that are used for qualities that could be cited to support a judgment of aesthetic value. Although in this way certain problems are brought into sharper focus, Sibley's ‘aesthetic concepts’ are ultimately too restricted to form the basis for an answer to the questions raised in this investigation.

Up to this point in the Theoretical Introduction I still had not established a suitable theory for the analysis of Ter Braak's criticism (or for literary criticism in general). However, at the conclusion of Chapter IV I refer to the old Humanistic concept of ‘ruminate’, used for the ‘lectio divina’ or study of holy texts, which I then attempt to apply to the analysis of criticism. Although no simple solution is revealed by this process, definite indications do become apparent: in criticism one must look for themes and problems that are repeated over and over to find an adequate frame of reference. My hypothesis is that it is possible to identify these ‘landmarks’ (as I term them) by concentrating on recurring concepts in the texts.

B. Practical Application

V. In order to ascertain the ‘landmarks’ of Ter Braak, I have concentrated on the first period of his employment as a literary critic for the newspaper Het Vaderland (November 1933). Although the most important of his book reviews and articles have been reprinted in his Verzameld Werk, I have also taken in account shorter pieces which are available only in back issues of Het Vaderland.

The decision to examine only a brief period in Ter Braak's career (spanning only fifteen days) was deliberate, since my goal was to illustrate

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the thesis that a reader can rapidly discern what sort of a critic he is dealing with regardless of his ability to discover criteria. An additional advantage of this procedure was the fact that, precisely during this period, Ter Braak was asked to produce his literary programme. This underlines the connections between chapters I and V which are already suggested by the chapter headings.

VI. The support offered by ‘landmarks’ is not of the same kind as a specific list of criteria or an explicitly defined programme, since such points of reference are revealed only in practice and there is obviously room for considerable variation. This is indicated in the final chapter which investigates the meaning of ‘Multatuli’ for Ter Braak. Multatuli, the name of an important nineteenth century Dutch writer, often functions as a substantive for Ter Braak (the reason I have placed his name in inverted commas) with wide-ranging possibilities of application.

My conclusion is: it may be impossible to provide criteria or necessary and sufficient conditions for the definition of my ‘landmarks’, yet it remains possible to delineate the frame of reference of a critic as demonstrated in his criticism.