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Tue 14 Mar, 2006 05:18 am
Why Literature?
I have been concentrating on the study of history, science, philosophy and biography. Recently I have begun to direct my attention toward literature. This redirection has opened a great new continent for exploration.
One thing that I have learned by this redirection is just what the primary purpose of literature is. There are, no doubt, many roles for literature to play other than this one but I am convinced I have found the most important one.
Imagine the situation that instead of our being born with color vision we are born colorblind. Then imagine that a group of individuals tells us that they have acquired color vision. The first problem, of course, is how this group explains to the color blind just what color is. How does one explain blue to an individual who was born colorblind? This is an obvious impossibility.
Then imagine that the group informs us that anyone can gain color vision through study. That anyone can gain color vision through the conscious and focused act of the intellect.
I suspect most individuals would walk away from such seeming non-sense with a shrug and a grin. Those few who were sufficiently convinced with the statements of the group would give the idea a try. Suppose some of those making the proscribed effort found it to be a bore and a struggle and lost enthusiasm for the attempt until they stumbled into reading literature. Through the inducement found in reading an interesting plot with delightful characters they began to acquire a dim sense of color. This dim sense encourages the reader to continue in the pursuit of color vision.
Literature, all art, is the attempt by the artist to communicate a vision of reality to another person.
If I had the talent I would have been attempting to communicate my ideas by writing poetry or short stories instead of my essays.
I do not generally quote the bible but I found this quote in something I was reading and it seemed very appropriate for me. Quotation from Ecclesiastes "And I set my mind to search and investigate through wisdom everything that is done beneath the heavens. It is an evil task that God has given the sons of men with which to occupy themselves."
Frankly, I read literature in order to expand my life. I tend to identify with some of the characters and, as such, live a more noble existence, even if it is tragic at times.
Coberst,
Fundamentalists tend to proscribe the reading of novels presumably becauae they DO offer alternative realities.
Some esoteric philosophical movements divide literature and art in general, into "good" and "bad".
(Shakespeare is "good"...Mozart "good".....Beethoven "bad" !)
Re: Why Literature?
coberst wrote:Literature, all art, is the attempt by the artist to communicate a vision of reality to another person.
In some contexts, it's called propaganda. It was after the First World War, and then after the Cold War especially, that several generations of "Western" artists were extremely wary of this definition of art, at least as it applies to "high" art (no one seems to care much when pop musicians do it); in the 30s through the 50s it seemed like the very definition of socialist realism. The careers of artists who weren't wary of it suffered accordingly. Thankfully, we've since made some progress toward getting over that.
After readomg all of the works of AnthonyTrollope and Edith Wharton, I had a sense, almost an ethnographer's sense, of what it was like to live in the middle and upper classes of male 19th century England and female early 20th century New York. It was, while fictional, what amounted to two sets of cultural immersion. Very enlightening in its way.
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