On the Tragedy of a Loss of Literature.

On the Tragedy of a Loss of Literature.

In olden times, people read more than they watched. Literature, as an art form, is dying even amongst those who perpetuate it. What little an individual reads is usually confined to the technical and the stringently rational. People forget that Rationalism itself may be, at best, an aesthetic movement. As I have pointed out, its algebraic logic, its tendency to equate things prematurely, ensnares the mind in a system of symbols held together like one of those plastic toys that start out as small balls of zigzagging connections and can be expanded by simply pulling the ball from two ends. If I devise a sphere that can be expanded not be pulling two ends but by exhaling air into it, is the one superior to the other? I can be more perplexed and amused by the inflation of the one, but I can play kick-ball with the other. It depends on my preference which ball I enjoy more, and at which moment. By the same token, it is entirely dependent on my preference whether I choose to represent my experience, symbolically, in the form of Rationalism or in some more vague form. What matters is that I find a new way to represent it once the one form has become either broken or terminally deflated.

 

Literature is peculiar in that it is at once an aesthetic mode of experience and a logical mode. The manipulation of symbols in literature are done, by a proficient writer, with as much if not greater regard for the sound and texture of the phrases as for the explicit meaning.

 

The trouble with a psyche that has no reserve of literary knowledge is that it will tend towards a stringent Rationalism where Rationalism is destructive. One can abuse the words that another uses simply by drawing “logical conclusions” between statements that the other had not intended at all. To assert that one did not intend for these equations and parallels to be made may attract accusations of sophistry and manipulation as quickly as a light attracts moths in our modern day and age. One is branded a kind of Wormtongue whose intent is only to cleverly weave intricate patterns of words aimed to deceive. One is met with the dogmatism of a class of people who claim that Logic has uncovered one’s true intentions. The fallacy therein is of course that one is only Wormtongue if what one is saying does not refer to a truth, but to a lie. Yet if the injustice of others plagues one’s self and yet no deep shame rests upon one’s heart after they have faded not only from sight but from consideration (which is unlikely to happen if the accusations had planted darts of unmerited guilt within one’s heart and mind), one can be assured, even in the midst of this madness, that one was not simply weaving a tangled web to ensnare others. The symbols referred to something REAL. As with most REAL things of tremendous import, the instrument of logic never suffices by itself. Logic, being abstract, obstructs. Verbal equations made between words are often done in a sphere of life totally removed from the concrete reality that one wishes to depict. They take place in the abstract realm of algebra and monetary concerns, a realm divorced from the material and the personally consequential (however one’s well-being may depend upon the consequences of the abstract and its effect upon the mind and the body).

 

A sort of elitism becomes necessary. One must shelter one’s self from the sophists and pseudointellectual Rationalists in an attempt to find clarity and acceptance with those who have a calm heart and a patient mind. One steadily finds that the justifications that one had required in the face of the prosecutors one does not need in the face of an understanding human being. The old red herrings are not slapped in one’s face, and an aethereal freedom emerges to express oneself without needing to make reference to a realm removed from one’s experiential reality. What had seemed mad now appears True in a way to surpass and predate mere brilliance of intellect. Steadily, one comes out into the upper half of the Sand-Clock, and the conversation, external and internal, is elevated like a feather in the wind to a place of blissful and heart-stopping sensitivity totally removed from the hostility and abuse of the earlier confrontations. Philosophy becomes artful and spiritual, and its responsibilities are now no longer towards the misguided whims of others but towards Truth. A new set of responsibilities which could not have probably thrived in the heated, intellectually arid climate, are now seen to be possible, and the old ways are obsolete in the presence of a new person free of pretense and prejudice. There is a receptivity which totally changes the quality of the secondary truth, and there emerges the possibility for both parties to more deeply understand the primary truth that the secondary truth sought to depict.

This depiction is seen to have been, from the outset, no mere technical depiction. Logic alone could not describe the primary truth. Logic could only refer to itself and its own rules and limitations. One cannot teach a computer how to write poetry, for however much it learns, poetry cannot be taught. The depiction was a literary depiction. One did not use words merely as direct, scientific references to obvious phenomena, but as paintings that employed both form AND COLOUR, both explicit meaning through the functionality of the words and implicit meaning through the aesthetics of their arrangement, to portray a condition that ultimately surpasses the reach of words and thoughts, if not consciousness entirely.

The allegations of the Rationalist are seen to have been merely cut corners and impatient shortcuts to understanding. They were equations made that had never been referred to either explicitly or implicitly in one’s original statements. Imagine that one had to walk every path in a labyrinthine neighbourhood to draw a map of the area, yet one chose instead to take shortcuts and only to arrive at the ultimate destination. If one had not known that, upon arrival at the ultimate destination, one would be asked to draw a map of one’s journey, one would see no reason not to cut these corners. And these are the corners that the Rationalist cuts. One fails to see, when one does this, that the equations that could so easily be made between different statements that one might think them obvious and self-evident paint an entirely different picture than the one that had been painted. They are a vandalism of the original mural, and it is no wonder that, after this vandalism had taken place, the true place that the mural was meant to depict was effaced from history.

 

Dm.A.A.