it is the whole duty of a critic to write about
interpreters, about the interpretative arts. Less is understood about
acting, singing, and dancing than about anything else in the field of
aesthetic discussion, the more that is written about them, therefore, the
better. Besides creative artists speak for themselves. Anybody can read
a book; anybody can see a picture, or a reproduction of it. As for
posterity it rejects all contemporary criticism of creative work; it has
no use for it. It goes back to the work itself. So the critic of
creative work entirely disappears in the course of a few years. After
his short day nobody will read him any more.

Now an actor, a singer, or a dancer, can appear in comparatively few
places for a comparatively short time. The number of people who can see
or hear these interpreters is relatively small; consequently they like
to read about them. As for posterity it is absolutely dependent upon
books for its knowledge of the interpreters of a bygone day. That is the
only way it can see the actors of the past. For that reason I am
perfectly sure in my own mind that of such of my books as are devoted to
criticism this is the one most likely to please posterity.

All criticism may not be creative writing, but certainly all good
criticism is. For all good writing should be self-expression and the
subject treated and the form into which it is cast are mere matters of
convenience. There is no essential difference between poetry, fiction,
drama, and essay. An essay may be as creative as a work of fiction,
often it is more so. You will find criticism elsewhere than in the work
of acknowledged critics. Dostoevsky's "The House of the Dead" is
certainly a critical work, but the author chooses to criticize the
conditions under which human beings are compelled to live rather than
the works of Pushkin. Turgeniev once wrote to Flaubert, "There is no
longer any artist of the present time who is not also a critic." He
might have added that while all artists are assuredly critics, all
critics are not artists. On the other hand Walter Pater's famous passage
about the _Monna Lisa_ is certainly creative; it might almost be held
responsible for the vogue of the picture. Before the war, nearly any day
you might find frail American ladies from the Middle West standing in
front of Leonardo's canvas and repeating the lines like so much
doggerel. All artists express themselves as they may but they are not
artists unle