literature is liberation of life speech
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Literature is the liberation of life for speech
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What is the relationship between literature and politics? What should that relationship be? Such questions have produced major literary controversies in this country for more than a decade. About ten years ago these questions were central in the discussion of so-called proletarian literature. Today these same issues are being discussed in connection with literature and democracy and literature and the war. In current discussions the language is different from what it was ten years ago, but both those who were the apostles of proletarian literature and those who today do mind that literature be politicalized in the name of democracy defend essentially the same attitude: in both instances the aim is to enforce the same attitude and the same kind of critical and political legislation upon the writer.[1]
The advocates of proletarian literature, who wrote principally in The New Masses, used to argue that literature is a weapon in the class struggle. If the writer is not on one side, he is either an open defender of the enemy or else he is giving aid and comfort to that enemy. At times it was even claimed that literature itself was on the barricades. In essence, such claims would, if successful, make literature the handmaiden of politics and the docile servant of an ideology. The writer, accepting this conception and attempting to make it operative in the actual construction of novels, would have to see politics first and then life, and he would have to deduce life from political programs. To the theoreticians of proletarian literature the theme of a book was considered to be its most important, its most essential, element; the total pattern of a novel, its unfoldment of characters and events, its insights which help to clarify for us the mysteries of man and his world, and its very style--these were all relegated to a secondary place. A true recreation of social relationships and of human being was considered to be less important than the ideology that was implanted into a novel and openly affirmed in the last chapter. The ending was stressed as against the entire story and its legitimate meaning. Most of the great writers of the present and of the past were attacked, often severely, as bourgeois defeatists; and in their place novelists such as Jack Conroy, Arnold Armstrong, William Rollins and others were hailed as the inheritors, not only of the literary traditions of America, but also of those of the whole world.
In this article it is not necessary for me to go into historical detail or to discuss this point of view at length. Those who sponsored it have themselves abandoned all their claims. They have themselves forgotten most of the writers whom they lauded at proletarian writers, and they now laud the writers whom they then attacked for instance, Thomas Mann. Most of the young writers who adopted this view of literature have themselves stopped writing. If a conception of literature produces no books, then it is obvious that that conception is defective. It remains sterile and formal. If the most rigid supporters of a conception abandon it, regardless of the reason, it is not necessary for me here to refute what they themselves have refuted in the most positive manner.
It is ironical to observe that some of the writers who defended the complete freedom of the writer from politics in the early 1930's are now included in the vanguard of the newest group of politico-critical legislators; they now demand that the creative artist adopt the same kind of attitude which they once attacked, even heatedly. The popular writers whose work appears in the slick magazines and who earn large sums of money in Hollywood sales are also included in this vanguard.
Pitfalls for Readers of Fiction, by Hazel Sample, a pamphlet publication of the National Council of Teachers of English, contains an able analysis of certain types of popular fiction and of the assumptions on which these are based. The most vulgar of those who would force literature to become official have even gone to the extent of hailing motion pictures--similar in content, basic assumptions, and in emphasis on escape values to the novels studied by Miss Sample--as greater contributions to American Chekhov, who was a great writer himself and a realist, remarked in one of his letters that if you want to portray suffering and sorrow it is usually necessary to be a little cold in your portrayal of it; otherwise, you fall into sentimentality. Such simple observations concerning literature are lost on many critics, journalists and others, who do not hesitate to speak on the subject with authority and, in order to derogate serious writers, even raise to a high level the most conventional and banal of novels and the most conventional motion pictures. It is with such ideas in mind that I recommend Pitfalls for Readers of Fiction.)
The advocates of proletarian literature, who wrote principally in The New Masses, used to argue that literature is a weapon in the class struggle. If the writer is not on one side, he is either an open defender of the enemy or else he is giving aid and comfort to that enemy. At times it was even claimed that literature itself was on the barricades. In essence, such claims would, if successful, make literature the handmaiden of politics and the docile servant of an ideology. The writer, accepting this conception and attempting to make it operative in the actual construction of novels, would have to see politics first and then life, and he would have to deduce life from political programs. To the theoreticians of proletarian literature the theme of a book was considered to be its most important, its most essential, element; the total pattern of a novel, its unfoldment of characters and events, its insights which help to clarify for us the mysteries of man and his world, and its very style--these were all relegated to a secondary place. A true recreation of social relationships and of human being was considered to be less important than the ideology that was implanted into a novel and openly affirmed in the last chapter. The ending was stressed as against the entire story and its legitimate meaning. Most of the great writers of the present and of the past were attacked, often severely, as bourgeois defeatists; and in their place novelists such as Jack Conroy, Arnold Armstrong, William Rollins and others were hailed as the inheritors, not only of the literary traditions of America, but also of those of the whole world.
In this article it is not necessary for me to go into historical detail or to discuss this point of view at length. Those who sponsored it have themselves abandoned all their claims. They have themselves forgotten most of the writers whom they lauded at proletarian writers, and they now laud the writers whom they then attacked for instance, Thomas Mann. Most of the young writers who adopted this view of literature have themselves stopped writing. If a conception of literature produces no books, then it is obvious that that conception is defective. It remains sterile and formal. If the most rigid supporters of a conception abandon it, regardless of the reason, it is not necessary for me here to refute what they themselves have refuted in the most positive manner.
It is ironical to observe that some of the writers who defended the complete freedom of the writer from politics in the early 1930's are now included in the vanguard of the newest group of politico-critical legislators; they now demand that the creative artist adopt the same kind of attitude which they once attacked, even heatedly. The popular writers whose work appears in the slick magazines and who earn large sums of money in Hollywood sales are also included in this vanguard.
Pitfalls for Readers of Fiction, by Hazel Sample, a pamphlet publication of the National Council of Teachers of English, contains an able analysis of certain types of popular fiction and of the assumptions on which these are based. The most vulgar of those who would force literature to become official have even gone to the extent of hailing motion pictures--similar in content, basic assumptions, and in emphasis on escape values to the novels studied by Miss Sample--as greater contributions to American Chekhov, who was a great writer himself and a realist, remarked in one of his letters that if you want to portray suffering and sorrow it is usually necessary to be a little cold in your portrayal of it; otherwise, you fall into sentimentality. Such simple observations concerning literature are lost on many critics, journalists and others, who do not hesitate to speak on the subject with authority and, in order to derogate serious writers, even raise to a high level the most conventional and banal of novels and the most conventional motion pictures. It is with such ideas in mind that I recommend Pitfalls for Readers of Fiction.)
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Expressions which cannot be expressed to people and to the world gets its escape through the means of literature. Literature provides a space where a person finds his freedom of expression and speech. It unbound the boundary which the society places in the life of an individual. Literature is that world which helps to know oneself in terms of writing and analyzing things. There are certain things which are very difficult to analyze in real life but when it comes to the world of literature, it forms a means of analysis of life. It paves the path of self-realization and self-exploration.
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