the ramble dump

In fending off the accusations of uselessness, in talking about how literature can make you think and make important suggestions, I haven't really said much about the other side of it: the side that is where literature holds most of its power. That is the aspect of literature, and all art, which has that emotional connection. 'What it means to us' doesn't just involve what it means to us in a general, philosophical sense, but what it means to us individually and subjectively.

The art that has left the biggest impression on me has this connection. Titus Groan and Gormenghast, for example, are my favourite novels not just because of what they have to say or suggest about the world, but because, for whatever reason, I find that they resonate within this thing called my brain more than any other books. They are personally significant enough to have made their way into my dreams on several occasions, in the obscure way of many other personally significant things. It is likely that not everyone will experience the same connection as I did because they are different people with different lives. Literature can provide something useful in a general, academic way as I already argued, but so what if it doesn't? It can still be meaningful on a very personal level.

One of my physicist friends is still declaring literature useless, despite anything I say. His latest comment was specifically that poetry was pointless; after all, why not just say it instead of wrapping it up in poetic form?

This person, like most people, is very into his music. He likes heavy metal. Ironically, given the position he puts me in during these arguments, he gets very frustrated when people accuse heavy metal of being a load of rubbish. Firstly, they accuse the lyrics of being silly, to which he fiercely objects. Secondly, he claims something that I actually agree with, which is that heavy metal is more about feeling the music, feeling the drive and the energy of it.

To start with, lyrics are a form of poetry anyway, and by defending them as a good quality of the music, he is therefore (hypocritically) defending it as an expressive medium and as something meaningful about the music. How can he claim that poetry or literature is useless or pointless and then defend it as a good quality of something else?

But even if he was to admit that heavy metal lyrics are nothing more than another layer of sound, let's consider music itself. Music is a form of expression. Even if you're just creating music that drives, it's driving at something -- it's driving at a certain feeling. And when you listen to it, you're acknowledging that feeling; it somehow resonates with you. Why bother putting this expression in music form? Why not just say it? The answer to that seems obvious: if someone came up to you and tonelessly said, 'Feel my anger', not only would you suspect that he was not in fact feeling any such anger, but as the recipient of his expression, you would not be able to identify with it. It's much more effective if he starts characterising it through specific intonation and screams, 'FEEL MY ANGER!!'. It's then not hard to imagine how you could progress to music. Music, as a form of expression, is a vehicle for it.

Poetry, as a different form, is just a different vehicle, with different features that affect the recipient in different ways. It might be more effective as an expression of something if it's structured so that it sounds or reads in a certain way. Certain words are used for their phonetic properties, but also for their very specific meanings, which can then allow the poem to develop from a purely emotional expression to something more intellectual. Lyrics can add a self-reflective dimension to music.

Many of the specifically linguistic aspects of literature also involve the employment of these poetic techniques. A novel could be seen as an even more complex form of expression because it has so many layers to it, at the deepest level providing something that could be interpreted as music, while at the top level the author is dealing with various themes or ideas which can be expressed all the more effectively because delivered with all the elaborate techniques in which the prose consists. No matter how complex it might get, it's still fundamentally a form of expression. Everything 'artistic' about it is simply a method or a vehicle for this expression.

Music is an artform. Literature is, above all, an artform -- or even many artforms. Art is expression. Art is an attempt at communication, with yourself as much as with anybody else. And art resonates. I'm not going to be so misty-eyed as to claim that art is the salvation of humanity or anything like that; neither do I claim that it's anything divine or inherently special. But it's a part of us, and if you insist on viewing everything in the world through a 'scientific' lens, you're failing to acknowledge that, for whatever reasons, divine or evolutionary, this need of expression is a part of the mind behind the viewing eye. This expression, this attempt to communicate, is a way for us to try and make sense of the world on a personal level. And if the form aids the function, so much the better.


Edit 22/01/08: Coincidentally, when this ramble ventured into the idea of form, I hadn't looked at the lecture timetable which told me that our 'review' lecture today would be exploring just that. We were given a few quotes, but here's the most relevant:

Had there been a clear understanding of Style as the living body of thought, and not its 'dress', which might be more or less ornamental, the error I am noticing would not have spread so widely. But, naturally, when regarded the grace of style as mere grace of manner, and not as the delicate precision giving form and relief to matter--as mere ornament, stuck on to arrest incurious eyes, and not as effective expression--their sense of the deeper value of matter made them despise such aid. A clearer conception would have rectified this error. The matter is confluent with the manner; and only through the style can thought reach the reader's mind.

--George Henry Lewes, Principles of Success in Literature (1865)

Labels: dreams, gormenghast, i am the ramblemaster, language, literature, rabbit-hole theory

# posted by Chris @ 2:01 PM