Literature as Part of Life

universals and particulars

It is said that literature is universal and it is said that literature is particular. Sometimes it is said that literature is universal through its particulars. All of this treats literature as commentary and representation, separate from humans the way humans are separate from nature. It treats literature as relational to life.

Humans are also part of nature as well as separate from nature, and literature is also part of life as well as relational to it. This is obvious in the case of realism. David Copperfield blacked bottles just as Charles Dickens did. It is obvious in the view of poetry as “overheard” expression. George Herbert’s poems are George Herbert’s prayers. It is obvious too in the performance of literature: in theatres and courts and sitting rooms. Even when literature “lies” it is part of life as well as relational to it: we live the poem and the prayer as we read them. When literature represents it does so as part of the flow of life, like a photograph on a wall, or the ornaments that we live with.

Is there some third thing that literature is that is not universal or particular but simply part of life? Literature might be always mingled, not universal through particularity, but universal and particular simultaneously: a compound not a mirror.

If so, literature is part of the compound, not just in the receipt but in the making. Homer, Beowulf, Cervantes all had a quality of being drawn from life and simultaneously part of how living happened.

We do not ask, while we are living, whether we are living particularly or universally. The question “Is the love I am feeling right now particular or universal or both?” makes no sense. Not because love is obviously both, but because as soon as we ask the question we are no longer in the feeling but making commentary about it, the way Samuel Pepys had to stop living to write his diary, but also had to live always partially distracted so that he could write his diary afterward. Likewise to some novelists everything is copy. Boswell is unthinkable without this realisation.

To read, then, is not to receive commentary; it is not to see art as a mirror of the world or the lamp of a soul. It is to live. It is another way of living, just as walking and eating and loving and talking are. It is criticism that makes literature into commentary, particular or universal. Criticism is also part of life, but in a smaller niche within literature.

George Steiner commented that the most profound lines in Homer were at the end of the Iliad when Priam and Achilles agree that despite their grief they must eat. That is the perfect example: not universal or particular, but life: life as we find it in the restaurants and ballrooms of Anna Karenina, the taverns and chambers of Shakespeare, the mud and shades of Dante, the fire and ice in Robert Frost.

Think of life as a game we have to play. To play is to continue (or modify) the game. Literature is a new move in the game, a new way of living. Literature is always part of the game, part of life. We either adapt it to the rules of our ongoing games, or we join in with the original sport as best we can.