Humbling Transformation – The Humanity that is Literature

Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?
– Shakespeare, King Lear

What is literature? How is it different than history? Or science? Or film even? What is it that not just books can do, but that great stories alone can do? When we contemplate on literature, whatever answers we each arrive at, we must all come back to humanity. Literature is the greatness of humanity. There is not a more powerful way to know a man than to know his heart and mind. Science teaches us of life – the microscopic atom, the birth of biology, the subtlety of elements. For sure it is absolutely fascinating and vitally important to us for so many reasons no question, but there is no heart in science. Morals do not pervade the physics of a black hole or slow-aging geology. Right and wrong are not found in Nature – she embraces all of life and death, absorbing all as one and the same. History as well, is really another story told and accepted as fact. To be sure things do happen, and it is of great importance that we understand our past and learn from whence we have come, but what actually occurred who can truly say? The dead and vanquished write few histories. Everything has fractures and angles. History can view humanity from an elevation so high that the human motivations, the particular forces of individuals, are difficult to perceive. In history the individual becomes microscopic or circumstantial. And yet even still goodness has ushered forth through time. Mankind, since before ancient Mesopotamia, has been gaining upon its own better nature. Heaving one more giant block of history unto itself. As such Freedom has gained some footholds to be sure, and the study of history has definitely played a key role in that there can also be no question. But from whence does goodness come? Where shall it be most expressed? Most potent? The truth lies more in fiction. Literature holds the life of man.

In Walden Pond Thoreau states in his chapter entitled “Reading” the following regarding the value of books (also here is a link to the full text if you’re interested):

No wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with him on his expeditions in a precious casket. A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself…Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind. When the illiterate and perhaps scornful trader has earned by enterprise and industry his coveted leisure and independence, and is admitted to the circles of wealth and fashion, he turns inevitably at last to those still higher but yet inaccessible circles of intellect and genius, and is sensible only of the imperfection of his culture and the vanity and insufficiency of all his riches, and further proves his good sense by the pains which he takes to secure for his children that intellectual culture whose want he so keenly feels; and thus it is that he becomes the founder of a family. 

Even after gaining wealth, all men eventually return to the arts and to literature in order to become truly wise, for that is where all of life’s real riches lie. Literature contains the best of what is man. Something awesome occurs when we don’t just tell stories, but tell them brilliantly. God lives in man, and of course we can learn from God all over, but in man is He most unique. Made in His image as it were. Sprung forth to life, innocent and flailing, man is a divine madness. A book does more in percolating all of a man’s essence. Great literature is the greatest of all the arts. It speaks more comprehensively, more beautifully, and more clearly about who we actually are, what we are really doing, and why we love or hate at all.

When I was in college, I took my first introduction to poetry writing course as a sophomore. Once during class our poet / teacher told us how she had once set out to write a book of poems about an overweight woman. She explained how originally she intended for there to be an air of humor about this woman and her life, but the more she actually wrote the poems, the more she realized there was no humor here at all but a deep sadness. I was struck to hear her explain that she herself was shocked to discover the real emotions underneath her own poems and in the character she had created. It really taught me that poems and literature transform humanity. As a writer or a reader of literature we approach a character we think we know, only to soon realize they are not at all who we perceived them to be. Humans are complex creatures. Our motivations elude even ourselves all too often, let alone the motivations of others. We really don’t know ourselves. We don’t know anyone. Who are we if not everyone? What are we capable of if not everything? Literature exposes the breadth and depth of ourselves – how horribly evil we all are, how incredibly wise, how truly hilarious, and devastatingly sad. Nothing of man escapes a great story.

Yann  Martel, the writer of the famous novel Life of Pi, did an interview which can thankfully be found on Youtube here. In it he states something very fitting for our discussion.

 There’s no greater representation of reality than a great novel. Nothing can beat a great novel. Nothing. Not cinema, not music, not painting. They all have their strengths, but if you want to capture a past reality, you know Russia in the 19th century, nothing will do it better than a great novel by Tolstoy….Nothing can beat a great, great novel. It is the greatest mode of representation.

When I first heard him speak these words I was immediately struck by their weight and force and authority. The more I linger upon the value of story, the more I write and read stories myself each day, the more I firmly and absolutely agree with Martel. Perhaps this post is indeed my own testament to such a great resolution. Yann Martel continues discussing the nature of story:

Stories at their greatest are religious; not explicitly so, but stories at their greatest define who we are as a species. We are story animals…We have stories, and that makes us unique and that’s what we’re entirely about…The saddest, saddest thing, in human terms, is to have a human being who has no stories, because a human being who has no stories is someone who has not been loved and who has not been able to love. As soon as you engage yourself in being human, you start developing stories.

Again Yann Martel speaking with such force and power and authority. And of course he’s absolutely right! What fascinated me about this quote is that it reminds me of a post I wrote a number of weeks ago called “And God Created Story” where I discuss to some length the relationship between mankind, evolution, and story. If you are interested you can find that post here.

What happens to a human when you put them into a story? In short the answer is understanding and transformation. As soon as you attempt to read or to write a story you are attempting to understand someone, and in that understanding a transformation occurs. We observe, ponder, and obsess over what is happening to our characters, what will they do next, and more importantly why. In literature, unlike music or painting for example, we harness language, perhaps the most human trait of all, that we may understand who these characters really are, and that we do so through the majesty of language. We see into them, or at least catch glimpses of who they may or may not be, and in the case of great literature, we do it with an eloquent and piercing rapture that strikes us either with terror or awe or perhaps even a blend of both. We see people for not just what they do and say, but for who they are, what they are thinking, desiring, and dreaming. More than anything it is this window into the interior mind of man that literature accomplishes far more powerfully than any other art form can. In film for example we can only see what people do and only hear what they say. I suppose we can work around the limitations of the medium with voice-overs and flashbacks and such, but it is only that – a workaround. It is not what that art form is designed for in the way novels and poems are. Literature captures and distills man to his core being, his root motivations, and displays the gamut and range of his power, force, and greatness.

In the classic book The Art of Dramatic Writing, Lajos Egri states that every character has an arc of transformation, and it is the drawing of that arc which all great works master. This means then that the characters are what control great literature. And what controls characters? Their humanity. Egri states the following (and in case you aren’t familiar with this great book on playwriting you can find it here):

We contend that character is the most interesting phenomena anywhere. Every character represents a world of his own, and the more you know of this person, the more interested you become…Every great literary work grew from character, even if the author planned the action first. As soon as his characters were created they took precedence, and the action had to be reshaped to suit them.

This quote by Egri succinctly explains why with story character is king. It is the integral unit of measurement in a story. The dynamism of character driven action is precisely what happened to my poetry teacher’s process with her character of an overweight, middle-aged woman. Before she had really birthed that character onto the page, she thought the woman was going to come across as funny. But once she actually discovered the real arc of this fictionalized woman, the deeper motivations, fears, and perhaps even shattered dreams that she held onto emerged from the watery depths, and that was when my poetry teacher realized who the character really was. And because of all this her entire project of poems transformed completely. As Egri states above “the action had to be reshaped.” As a story transforms for the writer, so too does it transform for the reader. Stories pull us in because we witness characters transforming. All great literature is transformation. It showcases the transformation of one character colliding into the transformations of other characters just like in our own lives and relationships. These intersections between various characters and their often competing transformations naturally create conflict, and in turn conflict builds drama, to which drama helps to shape plot, and before you know it you have something akin to a piece of literature on your hands! Then to make the language sing! In this way literature guides us beautifully through the labyrinth of our twisted hearts and minds, the cartography of our humanity surveyed and set to scale that we may understand more clearly the boundaries and demarcations of who we truly are and perhaps even assist us to transform, grow, and transcend.

The quote at the top of this post is from King Lear. I was watching a new rendition of the great play this very evening on Amazon and starring Anthony Hopkins (you can find it here). The king utters those lines in Act 3 as he is descending further and further into madness. He is speaking of his own daughters and how horribly they are treating him, and as I listened to him bemoan his fate I realized he was speaking directly to the theme of this post on the humanity of literature. The answer, my dear King Lear, is yes absolutely there are reasons why the hearts of men and women harden to deadened stone. Yes. More than anything in this world, it is literature, of which you my dear King Lear deeply personify, which reveals to us those sacred, cardinal mysteries.