Игра

The strangest thing that critics allow themselves is to suspect the artist of infidelity to his own work. And yet this is precisely what makes criticism artistic. To reveal the moral or socio-political resonance of the work, to highlight the cognitive-psychological moments in it, to assess its historical veracity - without all this, criticism would not fulfill its serious mission. However, none of these criteria, nor all of them together, are capable of achieving an artistic assessment. It can only be discussed when one penetrates the work's own logic - when one sees the internal expediency, in the spirit of which individual, even interesting in themselves, details would turn out to be unnecessary deviations or the shortcoming of "something" would stand out, undesirable roughnesses, imperfections, etc. would stand out. On this basis, the critic can make artistic demands on the author. And we would be making a grave mistake if we decided that we had entered a purely formal area.