My friend, Literature

There isn’t really any standing definition of literature. For in one instance by it one might just mean information – as in, do you have any literature about your product? And in another instance one might mean classics and nothing more. Sometimes people fail to see the art of it.

This is how I see it: Literature is an art whose primary medium is story and whose secondary medium is language.

This may seem like a confused definition to a poet, especially one of limericks and haikus and other such short poetry. But the truth and significance of this art form lies in its contents, and its
cleverness lies in the way in which it is presented.

Truth and significance are more important than cleverness.

Some of the dystopian novels are a real drag to read, but they pack a punch in terms of meaning. Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Poetics, Augustine’s Confessions, Descartes’ Meditations, Locke’s Essays, and Kant’s Critique were not particularly enjoyable reads, but each in its turn has changed the way I think forever. Conversely, Hannah Montana songs may be catchy and cute, but they are not of literary merit. Sorry.

However, when good stories meet profound language, then we have an ideal bit of literature. Language supplements plot. It nourishes, and expounds on, the significance of a story.

Presently, publishers and critics belong to neither the school of plot, nor the school of language. They belong to the school of bestsellers. They tell writers to be concise in their language and to get to the point. Bestsellers these days are always page turners. But I think you’ll agree that a painting whose artistic significance is profound and multilayered is preferable to one that is merely fun to look at.

In the introduction to an anthology of George MacDonald quotes, C.S. Lewis defends the literary Genius of the man (because critics often attack his style) by saying that the greatest of stories have little basis in language. Lewis says that with classics such as the tale of Icarus and his flight that went too close to the sun, that the story is in our hearts, not in a book. He says that when he thinks of the tale of Icarus, no particular version of the story comes to mind, just the essence of the story itself. There are many versions of the story, many more epic poems about it, songs about it, and even many paintings of it, but the real story lives without its particular versions. Lewis then argued that MacDonald’s stories were in league with such classics, and that the way in which it was delivered was more of the plot’s choosing than it was of the author’s. He said that a good teller of stories lets the stories tell themselves, that the best stories come alive when they are told and are never told the same way twice.

Stories choose language as a husband chooses a wife, to let it share in the story, and to become one with it. Literature is the marriage of story and language, where story is the head of the house and language is its mistress.