From "The Critic as Artist, With Some Remarks on the Importance of Doing Nothing".

Ernest. But, my dear fellow - excuse me for interrupting you - you seem to me to be allowing your passion for criticism to lead you a great deal too far. For, after all, even you must admit that it is much more difficult to do a thing than to talk about it.
Gilbert. More difficult to do a thing than to talk about it? Not at all. That is a gross popular error. It is very much more difficult to talk about a thing than to do it. In the sphere of actual life that is of course obvious. Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it. There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them, or above each other - by language, which is the parent, and not the child, of thought. Action, indeed, is always easy, and when presented to us in its most aggravated, becomes most continuous form which I take to be that of real industry, becomes simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatsoever to do. No, Ernest, don't talk about action. It is a thing, dependent on external influences, and moved by an impulse of whose nature it is unconscious. It is a thing incomplete in its essence, because limited by accident, and ignorant of its direction, being always at variance with its aim. Its basis is the lack of imagination. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.
....
Ernst. But is Criticism really a creative art?
Gilbert. Why should it not be? It works with materials, and puts them into a form that is at once new and delightful. What more can one say of poetry? Indeed, I would call criticism a creation within a creation.
....
Gilbert. It is the highest form of Criticism, for it criticizes not merely the individual work of art, but Beauty itself, and fills with wonder a form which the artist may have left void, or not understood, or understood incompletely.
Ernst. The highest Criticism, then, is more creative than creation, and the primary aim of the critic is to see the object as in itself it really is not; that is your theory, I believe?
....
Gilbert. ...so the critic reproduces the work that he criticizes in a mode that is never imitative, and part of whose charm may really consist in the rejection of resemblance, and shows us in this way not merely the meaning but also the mystery of Beauty, and by transforming each art into literature, solves once for all the problem of Art's unity.
But I see it is time for supper. After we have discussed some Chambertin and a few ortolans, we will pass on to the question of the critic considered in the light of the interpreter.
Ernst. Ah! you admit, then, that the critic may occasionally be allowed to see the object as in itself it really is.
Gilbert. I am not quite sure. Perhaps I may admit it after supper. There is a subtle influence in supper.

Oscar Wilde.
Genius.
I believe this is somewhat of the debate I am getting myself into.
Perhaps I should read the next play: "The Critic as Artist, With Some Remarks on the Importance of Discussing Everything."