So, first off, this is not written by me. I came across a document about Art and Knowledge. Though the whole thing traces the epistemological dimension of art, this particular excerpt caught my attention.
It underscores the power of the written word to transform an individual's life.
I HAD to post this, it was too tempting. This is exactly why i love reading :)
Warning: This may be a wee bit too profound for you, in which case you ought to read more.
A very young Susan Sontag wrote in her diary that reading Romain Rolland gave her a “knowledge of aliveness.” In a similar vein, Orhan Pamuk has recently said that though he regrets the “utilitarian” nature of the idea, he cannot help but think that “books exist to prepare one for life.” Pamuk has in mind books of all kinds, but certainly including prose and poetry. Both writers are expressing an important sense in which art, in their cases literature, contributes knowledge, which is to say that it has an import for one’s life, how it is understood and how it is lived. They have in mind, I imagine, the fact that literature offers one not so much information about the world, or something to which to aspire, as it exposes one to the range of experience and the possibilities inherent in it. Stories that occur in a setting with which one is familiar, one’s own time and place for example, and that include characters one can recognize, thereby expand one’s own experience. They often involve events in which one can place oneself and imagine one’s own reactions and behavior. But literature that places the reader beyond his own time and place can be, and probably usually is, even more expansive. Perhaps there are sufficient commonalities among people across cultures and through history that we are able to expand the possibilities of our own lives by engaging with them.
We can feel, which is to say we can understand, both the romanticism and the hopelessness of Don Quixote’s efforts, and we know what it means to “tilt at windmills,” though none of us have ever lived or will ever live in early modern Spain. We can feel the internal struggle and trauma of Sensei in Natsume Soseki’s Kokoro, though none of us have experienced the individual and cultural confusion of Meiji Japan’s struggle to confront the modern West. In such cases one learns not so much about early modern Spain or about Meiji Japan, but about the possibilities of experience; one’s own experience and its possibilities expand accordingly. Something like this, I take it, is the “knowledge of aliveness,” and the sense in which literature can “prepare one for life.”
It underscores the power of the written word to transform an individual's life.
I HAD to post this, it was too tempting. This is exactly why i love reading :)
Warning: This may be a wee bit too profound for you, in which case you ought to read more.
A very young Susan Sontag wrote in her diary that reading Romain Rolland gave her a “knowledge of aliveness.” In a similar vein, Orhan Pamuk has recently said that though he regrets the “utilitarian” nature of the idea, he cannot help but think that “books exist to prepare one for life.” Pamuk has in mind books of all kinds, but certainly including prose and poetry. Both writers are expressing an important sense in which art, in their cases literature, contributes knowledge, which is to say that it has an import for one’s life, how it is understood and how it is lived. They have in mind, I imagine, the fact that literature offers one not so much information about the world, or something to which to aspire, as it exposes one to the range of experience and the possibilities inherent in it. Stories that occur in a setting with which one is familiar, one’s own time and place for example, and that include characters one can recognize, thereby expand one’s own experience. They often involve events in which one can place oneself and imagine one’s own reactions and behavior. But literature that places the reader beyond his own time and place can be, and probably usually is, even more expansive. Perhaps there are sufficient commonalities among people across cultures and through history that we are able to expand the possibilities of our own lives by engaging with them.
We can feel, which is to say we can understand, both the romanticism and the hopelessness of Don Quixote’s efforts, and we know what it means to “tilt at windmills,” though none of us have ever lived or will ever live in early modern Spain. We can feel the internal struggle and trauma of Sensei in Natsume Soseki’s Kokoro, though none of us have experienced the individual and cultural confusion of Meiji Japan’s struggle to confront the modern West. In such cases one learns not so much about early modern Spain or about Meiji Japan, but about the possibilities of experience; one’s own experience and its possibilities expand accordingly. Something like this, I take it, is the “knowledge of aliveness,” and the sense in which literature can “prepare one for life.”
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