The Function of Literature - Some Thoughts

The Function of Literature

SOME THOUGHTS

I recently had an occasion to look into a volume of Oscar Wilde, the well-known English author. He is not wholly new to me. I had already read some of his plays and stories and had been struck very much with the extraordinary depth and liveliness of his imagination. But nothing had stirred me and held my interest so profoundly as the story of "The Picture of Dorian Gray". Very few people knowing the English language, I think, would have missed reading this remarkable story. When I turned over its pages again after several years I was astonished to find it held me with the same absorbing interest as before.

The story is about a young man who is endowed with an uncommon beauty. An artist fascinated by his handsome looks paints his picture. But Lord Henry, the cynical friend of the artist, remarks to the youth while admiring the picture: "What a pity, you will lose your looks and grow old while this picture will remain fresh and beautiful as ever! Don’t you wish it may be the other way?" This idea makes such an impression on the young man that he begins really to wish for the picture to grow old and ugly while he himself maintained his young and beautiful self.

Then the story proceeds to tell how his beauty makes him so mean and selfish that he completely loses his mental balance and descends to one vile deed after another in his ungovernable desire for pleasure. Every time he commits a crime he goes and takes a look at the picture which he kept hidden in a room. There he finds a startling thing. It strikes him that something of the freshness has disappeared from the face and the picture seems to have undergone a definite change. It appears to grow old and withered! He cannot, however, rejoice over this. He is seized instead by a moral fear. But he pursues the same evil course and stops not till one day in utter despair he stabs the picture with a knife and people rushing into the room discover a withered old man lying dead with a knife through his heart and the picture of a handsome young man looking fresh and beautiful standing by his side. Thus, ends the story.

I laid aside the book with a deep breath of relief and was glad there was no more of it. For I began to entertain a sudden dislike for the tale and all it sought to convey to the reader. No doubt it was a genius who wrote it. One cannot but marvel at the imagination which could conceive of and produce such an ingenious piece of work. But what is it that causes a sudden revulsion of feeling towards it in the mind afterwards? Is it perhaps the unpleasant effect of the whole thing on the mind such as sickness caused after eating a delicious but unwholesome cake at dinner?

I have heard that wilde was censured for producing literature of such questionable kind. But he continued to write in the same strain in defiance of his censors and was in consequence expelled from the country. He was certainly a perverted genius. He took pleasure indeed in giving everything he uttered a tinge of sarcasm and he presented his half-truths sometimes in a singularly attractive way. He is eminently an artist. But his conception of art seems to have distorted his view of life. For we find him saying in his preface to the book the following words: "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all." And he adds that to the artist vice and virtue are only materials for an art.

Having such strange views upon art and literature in general, the author was bold enough to mould his works on those lines. So far he was genuine and true to himself. But was he right in his views?

The reading of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" set me reflecting on the subject of what is really the best in Literature. We know that in every age and in every country there have been great poets and thinkers. They found beautiful meanings in beautiful things and gave to the world only those thoughts they felt strongly impelled to give expression to. They seldom wrote indeed merely for their own pleasure! It may be seen plainly they were actuated by the purest and noblest of impulses for giving themselves in their writings, and it was ever in the interest of mankind! They were also great artists. Only their conception of art differed vastly from that of Wilde and some of the writers of our own day who have taken up the theory of realism in Literature.

Poets and writers in the past despised anything but the loftiest theme for giving expression to their genius, as a result of which we have the lives of the great saints and heroes in every country. These beautiful lives serve as beacon lights for showing the right way to the ordinary erring mortals. Much that passes now for good literature in fiction is hardly worthy of the name, if I may venture so bold a criticism upon it. All that glitters is not gold.

We shall, in the first place, indicate what is the best in fiction, poetry or any other form of writing. There is a Sanskrit verse which says that while the Vedas and the Upanishads tell us the right path with authority, as in a tone of command, Literature proposes like our beloved to lead us to it with sweet and tender words. The aim of both, then, we may take it, is the same though the means are different.

Nobody can deny that Literature, if it is of the best and the truest kind, contains the loftiest ideas and sentiments and has for its ultimate object the cultivation of the reader’s mind. It must, of course, gratify his intellectual as well as aesthetic sense. But it does not stop there. By a study of the best literature one is at peace with oneself and the world. It proves a great solace indeed to us in our hour of grief and in our declining years.

Similarly with the other arts in the old days. The ancient bards loved to sing nothing but of the glory of God. The sculptor dedicated his genius to the making of the divine images and the architect to the erection of the sacred shrines.

The true function of Literature is not only to entertain us in our happy moments but to be our best comforter when we are down with sorrow. We have seen in our own country the Ramayana proving an invaluable source of help to thousands of people in their hour of trial and tribulation. It has saved them from falling a prey to utter despair and desolation. The poetic excellence and lofty idealism of the Ramayana have for ages captivated the minds of people so much that it has been reproduced in all the languages of the country. It need not be taken from this, how ever, that it is suggested that apart from the Ramayana and similar immortal works there exist hardly true literature. Have not these marvellous books survived through out the ages without losing anything of their freshness and vitality? And can we ever conceive of a world without them?

It has been said of the Book of Islam, "What need for other books if there is the Koran? What avail all the books in the world if there is not the Koran?" The same sentiment may be expressed of all the great books of the world.

It will be of some interest here to make a study of the changes that literature has undergone from age to age. In the past it was, always the tale with a high moral. Then the age of romance and tales of heroic deeds captured the fancy of the poets and writers of fiction. It again gave place to a new outlook which made writers take to commonplace subjects. It induced them to paint the ordinary human life, its strength as well as its weakness. The sorrows and sufferings of the poor and the low moved these great souls to their very depths and they wrote with hearts bleeding for those afflicted beings. Temptations and severe mental conflicts were closely analysed and delineated with such sympathy and imagination as made their works live for ever. Indeed, the story of Hamlet would be like any ordinary story of murder and revenge if it were not for Hamlet and the terrible conflict of his soul for taking the life of his father’s murderer. What else but the wonderful fidelity of Shakespeare to nature could have made the readers exclaim in wondrous rapture that nature herself took the pen from his hand and wrote for him? In the same way it is said of Valmiki, Kalidasa and other great poets that they were blessed with the divine vision, which was alone responsible for their imperishable works.

It is not difficult for us to know at once the master-mind when it deals with the frail human being with ordinary human weaknesses and his redeeming qualities as well.

Many years ago an eminent English lady, a great friend of our, family, happened to, ask me casually what book I was reading at the moment. I gave the name of "East Lynne", a very popular novel, and really an excellent one for its high moral. The lady wore a look of disapproval and told me that it was not a good book and that I had better read Jane Austen’s novels. I took her advice.

Several years later I happened to read Tolstoi’s "Anna Karenina". The general theme and moral of both "Anna Karenina" and "East Lynne" are the same as every one knows. Both Anna and Lady Isabel commit wrong in the eyes of the world and suffer untold miseries ending in death. But what a difference we find in the two books! There is all the distance between them that there is between a bright well-trimmed lamp and a great glowing star in the sky. While the one goes straight to our hearts and excites our admiration for the wonderful insight with which the weakness of Anna and the terrible trial borne by her in consequence of her sin are described, the other though quite moving appears rather a story full of a simple and sentimental pathos. But really nothing can be said against "East Lynne" as my English friend was inclined to do. Its influence on the mind cannot be said, at any rate, to be unwholesome.

Now we wonder if we can say as much for the writings of some of the authors of our own day! These writers dissect poor human nature with merciless hands and expose the darkest and most obscure parts of it to our gaze. Thus in depicting a mental conflict between good and evil thoughts they love to represent the bad getting the better of the good. They write justifying unrestrained passions and vindicating them as if there is everything to be said for indulgence in them. Yet they claim to have portrayed nothing but what is absolutely true to life.

No doubt there exist two separate selves in man, the higher and the lower self. The lower self often gains advantage of the higher causing him to fall from his high estate. To save him from such a calamity it was thought essential, since the world began, to set up before him lofty ideals from which he could draw his courage and hope in moments of strong temptation. Now this noble view of literature, we find, is fading and the practice of depicting vividly the common thoughts and feelings of the ordinary man is fast gaining ground. We perceive this new method coming into vogue in every language and writers taking it up in earnest. Although a keen perception and a considerable amount of skill are needed and are certainly present in such works, the benefit to be derived from a study of them is much to be doubted.

One hopes writers will realise this serious defect in their writings and will try to mend it.

Will you go and gossip with your housemaid, or your stable-boy, when you may talk with queens and kings; or flatter yourselves that it is with any worthy consciousness of your own claims to respect that you jostle with the common crowd for entree here, and audience there when all the while this eternal court is open to you, with its society wide as the world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen, and the mighty, of every place and time? Into that you may enter always; in that you may take fellowship and rank according to your wish; from that, once entered into it, you can never be outcast but by your own fault. –RUSKIN.