Even Aristophanes -- who was, we should remember, a comedian and not a critic -- seems to have been made uneasy by the sadistic aspects of criticism. "I cannot judge anymore," his Dionysos apologizes when the word-weighing is over. "I must not lose the love of either one of them. / One of them's a great poet. I like the other one." The lines remind you that loving and liking are as much a part of criticism as are hating and hacking; and that the impulse underlying good criticism ought to be affection for literature rather than animus toward writers.
Daniel Mendelsohn
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