IN Ireland, the standards by which we evaluate works of art are based almost exclusively on mercantile premises, and on a repertoire of vainglorious delusions about "how others see us". Thus our vastly inflated reputation as a literary nation", based primarily on the works of mainly exiled authors who flourished before the middle of this century, plus the French novelist Samuel Beckett, provides an impressive backdrop to the posturing of hand pumping poetasters and journalist novelists whose works, mainly published in England, are hyped today and forgotten tomorrow.

Our visual artists, perhaps the most vital and productive body of creators amongst us, are in danger of falling victim to over ambitious curators intent on peddling only that art which may further their own careers internationally, by which I mean art conforming to that anonymous international style of cool abstraction sought by corporate buyers as re saleable wallpaper to their banks and offices. Already The Arts Council seems to be influenced by such criteria in its support for individual artists.

We appear to have lost - if ever we possessed it - the capacity to assimilate culture as an autonomous realm. The arts must feed our vicarious self esteem proof positive that self esteem is precisely what we lack - they must provide jobs for arts administrators, they must lure tourists to our shores. An inability to appreciate artistic autonomy goes hand in hand with an inability to cope with any form of autonomy, be it personal or political.

It is inevitable that classical composition should suffer more than any of the other arts from this mentality, as there is already a sufficiency of central European and Italian classical and romantic music available to supply a repertoire for our performing musicians, to provide entertainment and relaxation for tired executives or corporate clients, to provide an evening out for the fashion conscious to show off their new clothes.

Contemporary music, be it Irish or foreign, must be taken on its own terms; it requires alertness and concentration; it must be listened to and not just heard; worse still, it never sets out to reassure us or to flatter our vain glory; and, worst of all, it doesn't make much money for anybody. In its resistance to exploitation and commodification, in its insistence on its autonomy, it is in many ways the proudest of the arts, and an art to be cultivated by a proud people.

It is not cultivated by those in Ireland who have the power to do so. Instead, the acme of our musical life is RTE's Summer Proms, which bear witness to the fact that Irish people don't like to listen to classical music, but love to be seen wearing a funny hat while it is being performed.

Clearly these observations go against the grain of recent public discourse in this country, riddled as it is with the excesses of PR and marketing hype. Much of this verbiage, when analysed, reveals an insidious notion that we are brilliantly pulling the wool over the eyes of gullible foreigners, all too eager to pat us on our broad backs because we're such lovable leprechauns.

HERE is an Irish Times editorial in the wake of yet another catastrophic Eurovision Song contest: "It was difficult to be left unmoved by the brooding traditional (sic) melody of the winning Irish entry . . . there appears to be a general goodwill towards Ireland and the Irish . . . It helps to explain how Ireland continues to receive vastly more per capita from Brussels than some of our poorer EU partners".

Here, if I read this correctly, our capacity to bamboozle the Eurovision juries with our musical blarney is equated with the capacity of our politicians - the cute hoors! - to secure eurofunds to which we are not entitled, thus slyly scoring against the even more impoverished Greeks and Portuguese, who can't even manage to win the Eurovision! And here is Lar Cassidy, Director of Ireland and its Diaspora (the festival appended to the Frankfurt Book Fair): "Ireland may be one of the minnows of Europe in population terms, but, culturally, we are one of the giants of the world".

This is strong talk, even if the literature officer of The Arts Council (currently on sabbatical) should have had the courage of his metaphor and followed up those "minnows" with "sharks". Such thundering rhetoric has a Skibbereen Eagle smack to it, and is suspiciously suggestive of a massive inferiority complex that doth protest too massively.

Later, Mr Cassidy rephrased his propositions for an Irish Times article by Luke Clancy called How real a renaissance in the arts? (June 12th, 1996) in the six columns of which the opinions of five arts administrators - and no mere artists were sought. It now appeared that Lar Cassidy, a paraphrased by Mr Clancy, is sensible of a gap between how cultural life in Ireland might be described abroad and how it might be experience (sic) at home." Now why should such a gap exist? Is it because the Germans are being subjected to a massive media campaign designed to gull them into thinking that everything is culturally rosy in the grune Insel about which they so love to fantasise?

Mr Clancy also managed to coax a startling quote from Doireann Ni Bhriain, administrator of L'Imaginaire Irlandais, one of which Leopold von Sacher Masoch would have been proud: "You don't go out and flog yourself unless you feel good about yourself". This "feel good" ideology is an importation from newagers in the United States, where too many people really do feel terrible about themselves, often with good reason. People who genuinely "feel good" about themselves, people who are truly as self confident as we claim to haven become - or is this a self confidence trick? - have no need to keep reminding themselves of how universally beloved and admired they are. Instead, they diligently; go about the business of ensuring that everything at home is in good running order and that standards are being rigorously maintained, before they go "flogging themselves" to all comers.

IN the title of this paper I have rather cunningly anticipated the comments most likely to be made by Irish readers: that I am a spoilsport, a party pooper with a chip on my shoulder, in short - a begrudger. Originally the word "begrudger accurately described a peculiarly Irish phenomenon: the person who resents another's success. There was a nuance to this: the begrudger often encourages the other person to strive after success, but once that has been achieved, seeks to pull the other down lest he or she become too high and mighty.

"F**k the begrudgers!" became the battle cry of those determined on celebrating success at all costs, and, as battlecries go, who can fault it? Unfortunately, once the notion - a rather Thatcherite notion - became established that success is always praiseworthy, and that there is no such thing as unmerited success, the concept of "f**king" begrudgery became a less positive one. For the worship of success for its own sake, regardless of its merits and heedless of how it has been achieved, is a mark of immaturity at best and cynicism at worst.

In such a climate, accurate criticism often becomes confused with begrudgery. The dreaded "bword" thereby becomes a useful form of moral blackmail. Therefore, in the spirit of Erasmus praising folly, let me praise begrudgery and exhort us all to become fearless begrudgers. Thus, perhaps, the wheat may be sifted from the chaff and just recognition be accorded to the genuinely fine work that is being produced in all artistic disciplines in this country.