OROCE'S DEFINITION OF LITERARY CRITICISM ALDO SCAGLIONE, ‘Those who are sequainted with things Ttalian know that literary eritieism has always received a great deal of attention in that country, and that in the last hundred years or so aesthetic speculation and methodology of eritieism, going hand in hand, have reached an unusually high level, culminating in the work of Benedetto Croce (1866-1052) It is my purpose to deseribe the method of this crucial figure of modem eul- ‘ture, both in theory and in praetice, and to diseuss some fundamental problems raised by that method, without emphasizing the positive achievements which T beg leave to take for granted. “Throughout my childhood I always felt as though T had w heart within my heart; and this heart, this innermost and cherished inelination of mine, was literature or rather history.” With these words, in a masterly philosophical autobiography, Groce pinpoints for us the central interest of his formative ‘years—in fact, of his whole eareer, However, he long felt somehow disoriented in the atmosphere of late nine- teenth-eentury positivism, with its mechanistic reduction of spiritual life and creative individuality in art and history, until he was enabled to step out from purely crudite research and investigate for his own clarification the essence and nature of art and history. So it was that he beeame a philosopher. ‘When the doctrine of art as intuition began to ring in the ears of Ttalian literati in the first decade of our century, it sounded particularly loud in that, it echoed familiar notes. Bergson’s intuitionism, and the various forms of ir- rationalism—activism, impressionism, expressionism, symbolism, aesthetist decadentism, mysticism, pragmatism, futurism with related sympathies for the primitive and the instinctive—all these “isms” were fermenting in the restless consciences of those years as part of the reaction against positivism, Undaubt- edly all this contributed to the enthusiastic weleome enjoyed by Croce's theo- vies, as was effeotively shown in the militant poriodieals Leonardo (1903—), La Voce (1909-1916), and Lacerba (1913-1915) 2 Though not entirely unjusti- fiod, it was a misunderstanding. Bergson’s approach had indirectly contributed, *Contrbuto ala evitee i mo atcaso (1018 and 1950). Translations inthis paper ate mie, Cf, teans. by Te. G, Collingwood: An Autobiograpiy (Oxford, 1027). Cf, for the quoted pasoge, Brion ¢ Pottien (Bari, 1045), p. 368 and Pilovofo-Poesia Storia (Miluao-Nepol, 3051), p. 110, This anthology will hereafter be refered to as FPS, As early a5 195 G. A. Borges in his Stora della critica romandioa in Ttaia hailed Croce’ eethetics asthe euthentic culmination of Taian Romantiewna. On La Voce, with reerenees to Croce, see P Gennelli, “La prose ai aleuni cevitor della "Voce" Coneiusrm, XV (1867), 69-70 and C. Vasoli, “Note ete: La Vooe,” i Ponte, XILL (67), 300-401. For the relationship botweoa modsm Italian “hermetio" pacts and’ the Croce of the “First Aewe thesia” cf. . Fabbri de Cresstti, Las Covrientee de Critica ¢ Hittoriopralia Ktcroias en 1a Haka actusl (Mentovideo [Apectado 14 de la Revista de ls Fac, de Hum, y Ciencias), 1855), esp. pp. 231-257 ar48 ALDO ScKELIONE ‘dare surmise, to the ripening of Croce’s viewpoint, but its systematic implica- tions had little in commen with Croce’s. ‘The sage from Naples showed at times a curious slowness in sensing the dangers, but when ready, his reaetions always came firm and uncompromising. At last in 1925, when the practical (social and political) developments had revealed the close alliance hetween those turbid currents and the nationalistic deviations of the post-war peried, he flung down the gauntlet, and denounced all those neo-romantic interpretations of his thought. It was then that the healthy minds felt that they could unequivocally rally themselves on his side for the struggle against falsehood and bad taste alike Both the irrationalistie movements of the early 1900's and Groce’s aesthetie approach stemmed from ‘the Romantie heritage, but that of Croce was not to be confused with any sort of unti-intellectualistie panaestheticism, solidly grounded as it was on an une shakable faith in the ordering, clarifying, and diseriminating power of reason Tn rolative eontrast with the Romantic afiiation of his theory, Croce’s literary taste was decidedly classical, and this never ceased to shock those of his early supporters who expected from him what could soc a logical appreciation of ‘contemporary impressionistic and eymbolistic literature, which he, instead, fas- tidiously rated as morbidly post-romantie.* ‘Once he had systematically formulated his thought, Croce retumed to the “essays” which occupied most of his productive life until his death in 1952. ‘Phe basic method of his thinking is defined as the dialoetie of distinctions (dialottica dei distinti) versus Hegel’s dialectic of opposites (dialettica degli opposti) as well as versus Giovanni Gentile’s preoccupation with the ultimate unity of the Spirit, ‘To amplify Eugenio Garin’s felicitous ehoice of the philos- opher's own words, he seemed to be always looking for the right place to insert human activities and values, and this ordering of things (meetter le cose a posto) js “distinguishing.” Thus he came to the division of all spiritual life, all human reality into four grades or forms: cognition of the particular by intuition (art) ‘and of the universal by logic (philosophy), and volition of the particular or ‘useful (economies) and of the universal or good (etliies). And finally the identi- fication of philosophy and historiography or reduction of the former to the latter, as both tending to the eognition of the conerete in its universal aspect (universale concreto}, This decisive step was undoubtedly stimulated by Gen- "Cf. G. Calogero and D. Petsni, Seudi Crociont (Rieti, 1990), ep. pp. 49-78. Petras ‘opening words mark, in 8 rather polemical voin, the dispel of the delus Groves "De Sensis mas the Int voive of Remantic erm” Tn concl no loager the Croce of La Voce" ¢p. 57) "Che destheticn in muce (1028), trans. in Rnoyclopredin Britannica, With ei (1920, 8. ““Aemhesioa”: Tt is aid tbat art cannot behave {a an jratiogal manger and cannot ignore Togies and certainly itis neither icrtional nor logical; but ite own rationality, its own ogo, i quite diferent thing from the dialectical logieof the concep, and it was in order to indicate thio peculie and vaique character that the name ‘logic of sense’ or ‘nesthetie™ ‘wae invented.” Cr, “Il cacattere di totalith dellespressione artstica” (1917), Nuovi Saggi di Estetica (ari, 1920) snd FSP, e9p. pp. 246-247,‘cnoce’s DEFONITION OF LITERARY carTICISit 49 tile Within this system nothing pertaining to human activity is negative per se: error and evil are but a misplacement of values. If we conceive by intellee« ‘ual thinking where and when we should conceive by images, we perform ugli- ‘noss (the opposite of beauty, artistio error, neither art nor philosophy); if we will our personal interest where we should seek the common good, we commit san evil act (the opposite of the good). But negations have no actual reality; they are not anti-values strugeling within each sphere of activity against their positive opposites as in what one could term the “Manichacan” terminology of Hegel Finally, what is the place of literary and art criticism in this system? Croce never wrote a formal treatise on that important part of his thought and activ- ity, but he discussed it more or less exhaustively in a great number of short essays and notes, In these writings he dealt with criticism in general and spe- cifically for various forms of art (precisely literature and the fine arts; music, for one, being notably absent from his pages), but always with the understand- ing that a correct definition of criticism must apply to all arts, in harmony with his postulate that art is one, and its various forms but erapirial, artificial dis- tinctions Criticism is judgment, and as such belongs to philosophy or historiography, ‘which, we have seen, are the same. It is cognition of art objects, historiography of a particular activity, of one of the four forms, in the same way that we can make historical judgments on the ethico-politieal aeivity or any other partic- ular aspect of life, ineluding logieal thinking itself (history of philosophy). ‘This may seem a far ery from Gentile's unification of criticism and artistic creation (“a confusion,” countered Croce), and from the traditional conception of the oritie as a technician who has an unlimited freedom de facto within the sundry and variable methods supplied to his profession by the loesl cireum- stances, the needs, the tartes—and the prejudices—of his time, But the inclu- sion of the role of the eritie within the sphere of conceptual thinking invelved, in Croce's hands, a risk. Because he presented himself as a philosopher, that i, one who dolimite fields and assigns tasks according to certain rigorous and comprehensive definitions, everything he formulated tended to impose itself ns ‘an absolute, implying a challenge to refute the premises or accept the conse- ‘quences and conform to them in practice. Likewie, the new “science” of man (seienza dello Sprite), with the foundation ofthe fist “ecience of art” (Estetica come scienca dell expressions), logically was to lead to a science of criticism, to a “scientific” (in the philosophical, not in the naturalistic sense) school of citicism, whereby the truc, optimum method of studying, writing about, and judging works of art was to be founded. Of course, the "absolute relativism” lying at the base of Croce’s doctrine pointed out that whatever is right and true and good isso only from the point of view of the very act of life that enacts those values and gives them concrete reality, but, without going into this much dise cussed antinotny, it seems fair to obsorve that in practice all this has led to a certain dogmatic intolerance among Crocian eritics for almost half a century. “C1.U, Spirit, Vote ul ponsero di G. Gentile (Firenze, 1954), I: “Gentile » Crow.”