“Literature today lives on the narrow margin of security that the democratic West, fighting for its life, can afford; and that margin may grow more narrow every day.”
The above quote sounds like it might have been written yesterday, as both art and democracy are under threat from right-wing “populists” and authoritarians. But it comes from On Native Grounds, by Alfred Kazin, from 1942, when fascism and militarism seemed literally to be taking over the world. It strikes a chord because in times of intense pressure to survive, literature often seems a bit more marginal than it does during peacetime in a developed society. When I teach the first half of the American lit survey course, much of what we read in the first third are texts that one might not regard as “literary”: sermons, histories, letters, discovery narratives, captivity narratives, conversion narratives. That is, they were texts designed to achieve a relatively short-term goal, whether it was to save souls, promote exploration and settlement, or convey news. We read them precisely because they are time-bound: they give us an insight into what the authors – and perhaps those around them – were thinking. What we think of as literary genres don’t flourish in America until the very late 18th c.; before that, what poetry there was written was largely religious or political in character. It wasn’t for lack of learning: the authors on our syllabus are mostly highly-educated persons. It’s just that they were confronted by immediate challenges that preoccupied them: waging war, running from war, trying to survive genocide, surviving in a (to them) alien environment and territory, surviving alien invasion, trying to govern themselves, trying to avoid damnation. I tell students that I see literary works as individuals’ responses to their world. As such, it is necessarily historically situated, which is why I’m most comfortable with literary history in the context of broader history. When we say a text is “timeless” or “universal,” what we mean is that it speaks to us in our time. Whether that means that the authors have hit upon immutable truths of human nature and the universe, or we simply reinterpret their works in light of our own particular needs (as with the quotation above), is beside the point. The point is that writers write to deal with what’s in front of them. Whether that is a novel or a political tract depends upon the situation and the person. But there were more tracts than novels written in North America during the Revolutionary War. And when George Washington staged Addison’s Cato for his officers at Valley Forge, it wasn’t a USO show: he did it to achieve a particular military purpose. All of which is to say that, as we march further into an era that promises to make life less predictable and pleasant, we might not be well served by the distinction between “literature” and the rest of writing. We may need to use whatever generic conventions are ready to hand, in whatever form they occur to us, in order to meet our logistical, social, political, or psychological needs and those of our readers or students (if there are any). Horace urges us to “believe that every day that dawns will be the final one for you [and to] receive each unexpected hour with gratitude.” The same might be true of industrialized society; we may want to write whatever we’re writing as though it were the last thing we were able to write – because it might well be. It bears noting that Horace was writing a letter. (next time: orature: here first & maybe last)
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |