Something Speaks to Me: Where Criticism Begins

by Michel Chaouli

An account of criticism as an urgent response to what moves us.

Criticism begins when we put down a book to tell someone about it. It is what we do when we face a work or event that bowls us over and makes us scramble for a response. As Michel Chaouli argues, criticism involves three Something speaks to me. I must tell you about it. But I don’t know how . The heart of criticism, no matter its form, lies in these surges of thoughts and feelings. Criticism arises from the fundamental need to share what overwhelms us.

We tend to associate criticism with scholarship and journalism. But Chaouli is not describing professional criticism, but what he calls “poetic criticism”—a staging ground for surprise, dread, delight, comprehension, and incomprehension. Written in the mode of a philosophical essay, Something Speaks to Me draws on a wide range of writers, artists, and thinkers, from Kant and Schlegel to Merleau-Ponty, Bachelard, Barthes, and Cavell. Reflecting on these dimensions of poetic experience, Something Speaks to Me is less concerned with joining academic debates than communicating the urgency of criticism.

Genres: Literary Criticism, Poetry, Nonfiction, Criticism, Literature

177 pages, Paperback

Published February 16, 2024

Reviews

[Katia N · Rating 5 out of 5]

Update 22/01/26

I've just finished Suppose a Sentence by Brian Dillion. Reading him has brought to mind this essay. It has appeared that i've posted the update on it almost exactly a year ago. Since then there were so many times i wanted to come back to it and write my thoughts. But it has not happened yet. I still think it is the best essay I've read on the nature of criticism and more generally -appreciation of art and literature. Maybe it would take me another year and another read to articulate my thoughts well enough to write a review. But for now I would add a few more excepts from his work here. For the context, the author starts this essay from quoting five passages including from Sontag, Barthes, Baldwin and attempts to understand what makes him in awe of these pieces.

In another news, it has been exactly a year since i've stopped to use star ratings here. (The initial post has reminded me of that and has appeared to be the last rated review). And ladies and gentlemen, it feels very liberating: at least it saves a lot of my energy not to compare apples with oranges etc.

Excepts:

What, then, is it that draws me to these passages? The same things that I suppose might draw anyone: seeing something I had not seen before, not in that way; humor; lucidity; cheek; fierce thinking. Yet, more than anything, it is to be exposed to the courage—the daring—in a piece of writing and to be seized and infected by it. It is to be struck by the blazing recognition that I did not know you were allowed to say that. I did not know you could call Othello “a requiem in which we participate at the ceremonious death of a portion ourselves.” I did not know that a novel’s significance could be described as being “like the light from a fire which consumes a witch.”
...
They write, rather, to free themselves of up and down (of right and left, and even of right and wrong). They write to lose their way and lose, too, some of the knowledge that guides them and weighs on them—lose, therefore, something of themselves—before coming upon a mode of thinking and feeling that discloses the world in a new way. (Or not: once you have lost your way, you never know what you may come upon.) They write “about” this or that, but mainly they write, period. Their writing is not the final resting place for research but the workshop where they work out the shape and weight and texture of ideas.

This from a perspective of a critic or a reader:

Sometimes it is, yes; sometimes all you need to say—all you can say—about a phrase is to quote it, the way a name, in its very nakedness, can be the most eloquent epitaph. But sometimes not: sometimes more needs to be said, not only because (as writing tutors insist) your reader needs more to see and to feel what you mean, but also because you need more to know what you mean. It is less a question of deciphering—of interpreting—what the voice speaking to you has said than of figuring out what you are to do about it. What does it want you to say or do? Did you hear right, or were you imagining the solicitation? In rallying your resources to face these questions, you undergo a process of becoming the kind of being capable of hearing the call in Kafka’s words, or Baldwin’s or Kael’s or Sontag’s.

That is what criticism is good for: in telling the other why something bowled you over, not only do you afford yourself a chance to discover why. You transform yourself such that you can be bowled over.

Adorno: The ideal perception of artworks would be that in which what is mediated becomes immediate.

Initial post @23/01/25

That was a simply gorgeous essay. I have a lot of thoughts about it. I will write more, but in meantime whoever is interested might read my numerous updates. Though I cannot wait with sharing the quote below:

“Every act of real criticism, fancy or artless, polished or rough, takes shape in three basic steps, I said: Something speaks to me. I must tell you about it. But I don’t know how.”

Not many people from real life would be so excited about an essay on criticism, but I think my GR friends might understand my thrill:-) And in the spirit of the season, if I would be able to give presents to my GR friends, for this peculiar audience, it would be three books that “I must tell you about it. But I don’t know how” (not yet anyway):

Lament for Julia, and Other Stories

Like a Sky Inside

And this one.

One novel and two extended essays. These are not for everyone, but I hope they will find more inspired readers to carry them into the world.

(And this is very likely would be the last review from me with the assigned star rating. So happened that I’ve stopped to see any sense in the stars in the context of my thoughts about books. Let them stay in the sky:-))

[Mai K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I rarely rate books these days, but since this one is underrated (literally), I feel inclined to.

This book touches on so many things and it does so in a way that speaks to me.

I loved this a lot.

[Kendra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book because I’m in a grad class where the professor wants us to write a book review on a book about academic criticism.

Although heady, I enjoyed the positions and philosophy brought up in this book. It is not light reading and there were no passages that I could adapt for my high school classroom, but I was fascinated with the idea of finding intimacy with text, responding to it, and working through blocks that appear when we want to discuss a piece that has moved us.

For what it is, an intriguing read.

[Shaf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Something speaks to me. As per book title. but instead of something profound being said, it’s just me feeling inspired at a chain cafe reading books. This unnamed speechlessness and hard-to-grasp elusive state of being is exactly what Michel Chaouli tries to get at in what makes poetic criticism.

To note: I had a headache because of reading this book, even with very frequent and prolonged breaks between chapters (sometimes even between sentences). The explanations were so abstract and didnt seem to be getting to anything at all until…
it clicked.

And not in the way that I can put into words. Similar to critiquing a painting, you see its individual parts for the technique and structure but what does the message convey in YOURSELF? Meaning to say, art begets art. The author’s self-expression = art. Art is made to move in some way. To influence. And in his painting, he evokes something in the viewer.

The point of critique, as posed by this book, is to influence and transport the reader into the critic’s state. The critic, compelled to speak of his compelling experience, shares his perspective through his criticism. And in sharing his experience, he too is trying to paint art that is significant. To make you care about his work, he goes beyond himself to paint vividly with language as the medium. That is the ideal of poetic criticism.