The Appreciation of Arts There is nothing more misapprehensive than saying "The arts cannot be enjoyed unless one has a specialized knowledge of them." The mistake of this saying is confusing appreciation and enjoyment. A good judgement and a broad outlook are needed to appreciate a novel or a piece of poetry, especially for a professor, who intends to write a discourse on a novel written by Dostoevsky, must having read all the letters, diaries, epistles of Dostoevsky and having a good knowledge of the history of literature and literary criticism. In contrast, a six-year-old child may fall into ecstasy when he hears a piece of Bach's Violin Concertos, even though he has no notion of Bach or the baroque music. It is true that one knows something about artistic theory could have a good time when he is in the face of a work of art, for picking up more details which would be ignored by bad-educated persons.