CLASSROOM SESSION - RC#2 - 7TH MAY

Directions for questions 36 to 38: The passage given below is followed by a set of three questions.

Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.

Perhaps the most important part of criticism is the fact that it presents to the creator a problem which is

never solved. Criticism is to him a perpetual presence. If he could satisfy his mind that criticism was a

certain thing: a good thing or a bad, a proper presence or an irrelevant, he could psychologically dispose of

it. But he cannot. For criticism is a configuration of responses and reactions so intricate, so kaleidoscopic,

that it would be as simple to categorize life itself.

The artist remains the artist precisely in so far as he rejects the simplifying and reducing process of the

average man who at an early age puts life away into some snug conception of his mind and race. Not so,

the artist. In the moment when he elects to avoid by whatever makeshift the raw agony of life, he ceases to

be fit to create. He must face experience forever freshly: reduce life each day anew to chaos and remould

it into order. Thus only may he retain and record that pure surprise whose earliest voicing is the first cry of

the infant.

The unresolved expectancy of the creator toward life should be his response to criticism also. He should

hold it as part of his adventure. He should understand in it, particularly when it is impertinent, stupid and

cruel, the ponderable weight of life itself, reacting upon his search for a fresh conquest over it. Though it

persists unchanged in its role of purveying misinformation and absurdity to the public, he should know it for

himself a blessed dispensation.

With his maturity, the creator's work goes out into the world. And in this act, he puts the world away. For

the artist's work defines: and definition means apartness: and the average man is undefined in the social

body. Here is a danger for the artist within the very essence of his artistic virtue. During the years of his

apprenticeship, he has struggled to create for himself an essential world out of experience. Now he begins

to succeed: and he lives too fully in his own selection: he lives too simply in the effects of his effort. The

gross and fumbling impact of experience is eased. The rawness of Family and Business is refined or

removed. But now once more the world comes in to him, in the form of the Critic. Here again, in a sharp

concentrated sense, the world moves on him: its complacency, its hysteria, its down-tending appetites

and fond illusions, its pathetic worship of yesterdays and hatred of tomorrows, its fear-dogmas and its

blood-avowals.

The artist shall leave the world only to find it, hate it only because he loves, attack it only if he serves. At

that epoch of his life when the world's gross sources may grow dim, Criticism brings them back. Wherefore,

the function of the Critic is a blessing and a need.

36. According to the passage, the essential difference between an artist and an average man is:

(a) The average man has simplistic, preconceived notions about life while the artist looks at every

moment in a new and different way.

(b) The average man simplifies and reduces the process of criticism while an artist rejects it.

(c) The artist rejects the process of criticism while the average man simplifies and reduces the

process as dictated by his mind and race.

(d) The artist rejects snug conceptions of race and mind while the average man welcomes them.

37. According to the author, what should be the artist's attitude towards criticism?

(a) He should ignore it as it is impertinent, stupid and cruel.

(b) He should persist unchanged as it is a purveyor of misinformation to the public.

(c) He should accept its role as a purveyor of misinformation.

(d) He should accept it as a part of life itself.

38. According to the author, what is the function of criticism in an artist's life?

(a) Criticism is either a boon or a curse depending on how the author overcomes it.

(b) Criticism is either a blessing or a need in that it creates or destroys an artist.

(c) Criticism is both a need and a blessing as it brings the mundane features of life to an artist.

(d) Criticism can become a blessing and a need if an artist is successful in 

handling it.