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Literature
and Life
The Subject Matter:
There is no denying the fact that the subject matter
of literature may differ from one theme to another. Anyhow, simply we say that
life is the subject matter of literature. In the words of David Daiches,
literature is any written wording. If we probe Deeper, we come to the
conclusion that it is too narrow as well too broad. In the narrow sense, no details
are given. And in the wider sense, it covers everything in the cosmos.
There is an
intimate connection between literature and life. It is, in fact, the life which is
the subject matter of literature. Life provides the raw material on which
literature imposes an artistic form. Literature is the communication of the writer’s
experience of life. But this connection between literature and life is not as
simple as it seems. This problem has been discussed by some of the greatest
literary critics of the world, and their conclusions have been sometimes contradictory.
Plato On Literature:
Generally speaking, Plato, the great Greek
philosopher, was the first to give serious thought to this problem of the
relation of literature to life. In this discussion, he referred mainly to
poetry, but what he said about poetry can be equally applied to literature as a
whole. Regarded poetry as a mere ‘imitation ‘of life, and thus he condemned the
poets. His opposition to poetry was based on his theory of knowledge. According
to him, true reality consists in the ideas of things, of which individual
objects are but reflections or invitations. For example, when we see a black
dog, a good dog, a lame dog etc., we are comparing the dog which we actually
see with the ideal dog. Our idea of the dog, is the true, Unchanging
reality, while the dogs which we name as Black, good, lame etc. only reflect
and imitations of that reality.
Imitation of Life:
Simply, literature is an Exact imitation of life
and the objects of nature. Thus, the poet, who imitates objects which are
themselves limitations of reality, is obviously producing something, which is
still removed from ultimate reality. Plato developed this argument
first with reference to the painter.
Painting is an imitation of a specific
object or group of objects, and if it is nothing but that, if reality lies not
in individual objects but in general ideas or forms, then, from the point of
view of the philosopher, whose main interest is in apprehending reality, the
painter is not doing anything particularly valuable. Just as the painter only
imitates what he sees and does not know how to make or to use what he sees (he
could paint a bed, but not make it) so the poet imitates reality without
necessarily understanding it.
Imagination and Realism:
Poetry is thus not connected with the outside world
in the simple and direct fashion supposed by Plato. The poet first drives inspiration from the world by the power of his imagination; the art of poetry
then immediate this imaginative inspiration in language. The art of poetry or
literature as a whole exist to give shape and substance to a certain kind of
imaginative impulse; the existence of the earth implies the existence of the impulse.
Now it is just possible to imagine life exactly as it is, but the exciting
thing is to imagine life as it might be, and it is then that imagination
becomes an impulse capable of inspiring poetry. This is true even in the case
of what we call realism in Literature; it is true even when life is originally
an actuality of some highly exciting nature in itself.
Imagination me no more
than concentrating the actuality, by dropping out all its insignificant passages.
What that will be enough to make the resultant poetry, or literature, something
different from the copy of the world that Plato’s contamination assumed it to be.
This was Aristotle’s reply to Plato. Art or literature is not a slavish
imitation of reality twice removed from the truth. Presenting as it must do
individual men or women in the trappings and circumstances of life, it doesn't
leave them there but pierces to what is significant in action and character,
expressing through their words and actions what is true for all human nature poet
truth the universal truth. The poet is concerned with the truth but not the
truth of the analyst, the historian, or the photographer.
Poet as An Artist:
The poet’s
business is not to write of events that have happened, but of what may happen,
of things that are possible in the light of probability or necessity. For this reason,
poetry is a more philosophical, more serious thing than history. For whilst history
deals with the particular only this event or that event poetry deals with the universal.
The poet left Life according to the principle of poetic unity and poetic truth.
He seeks to draw out what is relevant and representative and to present it
harmoniously, in a self-contained situation. The truth with which he deals is
not that which the anatomist may lay bare on the dissecting table, but that
which a poet divines and translates. Sydney was right in saying that the poet
does not lie; rather he interprets the worries and woes of life in Innocence that
he makes some think new.
Poetry and History:
Broadly speaking, Aristotle, thus, mat Plato’s charge
that poetry is an imitation of an imitation by showing that the poet, by
concerning himself with fundamental probabilities rather than with casual actualities,
riches more deeply into reality than the historian. Sir Philip Sidney, who next
picks up the question of the relation of literature to lie, also refuted Plato’s
contention that literature is a mere imitation of an imitation. According to
him, the liquid does not imitate but creates. It is the reader who imitates what
the poet creates. Taking his material from the actual world, the poet creates
an ideal world by means of his imagination. For Sir Philip Sidney the ideal
world of the poet is of value because it is a better world than the real world
and it is presented in such a way that The Reader is stimulated to try and
imitate it in his own practice.
Dryden's Views:
Hence, this Enigma ostrich’s relation to life was
next taken up by Dryden who pointed out that imaginative literature gives us a ‘just
and lively image of human nature, by representing its’ passions and humour’
this point was further developed by Dry Johnson who expressed the view that the
poet’ hold up a mirror to nature. According to him,’ nothing can please many’
and please long, but just a representation of general nature. The way to please
the greatest number over the longest period of time, which is the duty of
imaginative literature, is to provide accurate pictures of nature.
Doctor Johnson's Verdict:
At a place
in’ the lives of poets’, Dr Johnson has said,’ the business of the poet is to
examine, not the individual, but the species. He must exhibit in his portraits
of nature such prominent and striking features as we recall the original to
every mind and must collect the minute discriminations, which one we
‘have remarked and another have
neglected, for those characters which are alike obvious to Vigilance’ and
carelessness.
He says
further’ but the knowledge of nature is only being half the task of a poet; he
must be acquainted likewise with all the modes of life. His character requires
that he estimates the happiness and misery of every condition, observed the
power of all the passions in all their combinations, arid trace the changes of
the human mind, as they are modified by various institutions and accidental
influencers of climate or custom, from the Spiritless of fancy to the
despondence of decrepitude. He must divest himself of the prejudices of his age
or country; he must consider right and wrong in their abstracted and variable
state; he must regard present laws and their opinions, Android to general and
transcendental truths, which will always be the same. He must, therefore,
content himself with the slow progress of his name, condemn the applause of his
own time, and commit his claims to the justice of posterity. He must write as
the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind and consider himself as
presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations, as being
superior to time and place.
Other Views:
Hence,
keeping in view the views of Dr Johnson
and other critics of literature, It is worthwhile to contend that the poet must
know the manners and Customs of men of all times and conditions, not because it
is his duty to make vivid to the reader the different ways in which we have
lived and behaved, but so that he is not
taken in by surface differences and is able to penetrate to the common humanity
underlying there.
20th Century Reviews:
Changing through the annals of history, literature
has taken a somewhat different concept in the 20th century. Hence, Walter pater, a critic of the later
19th century, who discussed the relationship of literature, and life in detail,
remarked in his essay on style’: ‘ just as in proportion as the writer’s aim consciously or
unconscious, comes to be the describing, not of the world, not of mere fact,
but his sense of it, he becomes an artist his work fine art; and good art in
proportion to the truth of his presentment of that sense.” This is the opinion
of Walter pater, a 20th-century critic.
Reality and Literature:
It is worthwhile to note that, in the light of the
above remote of different critics and past critics, we say that the literary
artist does not give us a photographic’ imitation of reality but a description
of his vision of it. It is from reality or life from which the artist starts,
but he tries to reconstruct it when he would see it steadily and see it whole.’
Taking into consideration the views of Plato,
Aristotle, Sidney, Dryden, Johnson and Pater, we conclude that the notion that
literature is not concerned with real life is wrong. All great pieces of
literature are true to life but the literature artist is not content to hold
the mirror up to nature, because his business, as Matthew Arnold has pointed
out is a criticism of life. He concentrates on those characteristics and
aspects of life which are permanent but might easily pass unobserved. He
clutches anything which promises some permanence among what is, always fleeting.
That is why he gives us a picture of reality which is more characteristic of
life than anything which we discovered through our own day-to-day observation. The
images which we are coating by our own observation of life at every moment of
our working experience are hazy, half-finished and unrelated it is the
literary artist who finishes them, makes them clear and put them in their wider
setting, and to that extent makes life less obscure, because he knows more
about life than anyone can know without regarding life with his eyes.
Conclusion:
To sum up, we can go further into the manifold
aspects of literature, especially in this satiric era of ours. It has been able
to cover all walks of life along with the wonders of science in the form of
science fiction.