What is Literature? `The truth about the world about us.

" Truth' is a word used in many different ways--'You're

not telling the truth.' `The truth about conditions in Russia." Beauty is truth, truth beauty.' I want
Anthony Burgess in “English Literature” to use it here in the sense of what lies behind an outward show. Let me hasten to explain by
giving an example. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. That is what we see; that is the
The subjects we study at school can be divided roughly into two groups-the sciences and `outward show'. In the past the outward show was regarded as the truth. But then a scientist
the arts. The sciences include mathematics, geography, chemistry, physics, and so on. came along to question it and then to announce that the truth was quite different from the
Among the arts are drawing, painting, modelling, needlework, drama, music, literature. The appearance: the truth was that the earth revolved and the sun remained still-the out ward show
purpose of education is to fit us for life in a civilised community, and it seems to follow was telling a lie. The curious thing about scientific truths like this is that they often seem so
from the subjects we study that the two most important things in civilised life are Art and useless. It makes no difference to the average man whether the sun moves or the earth moves.
Science. He still has to rise at dawn and stop work at dusk. But because a thing is useless it does not
mean that it is valueless. Scientists still think it worthwhile to pursue truth. They do not expect
Is this really true? If we take an average day in the life of the average man we seem to
that laws of gravitation and relativity are going to make much difference to everyday life, but
see very little evidence of concern with the sciences and the arts. The average man gets up,
they think it is a valuable activity to ask their eternal questions about the universe. And so we
goes to work, eats his meals, reads the newspapers, watches television, goes to the cinema,
say that truth-the thing they are looking for-is a value.
goes to bed, sleeps, wakes up, starts all over again. Unless we happen to be professional
scientists, laboratory experiments and formulae have ceased to have any meaning for most A value is something that raises our lives above the purely animal level -the level of getting
of us; unless we happen to be poets or painters or musicians-or teachers of literature, our food and drink, producing children, sleeping, and dying. This world of getting a living and
painting, and music-the arts seem to us to be only the concern of schoolchildren. And yet getting children is sometimes called the world of subsistence. A value is something added to the
people have said, and people still say, that the great glories of our civilisation are the scien - world of subsistence. Some people say that our lives are unsatisfactory because they are mostly
tists and artists. Ancient Greece is remembered because of mathematicians like Euclid and concerned with things that are impermanent things that decay and change. Sitting here now, a
Pythagoras, because of poets like Homer and dramatists like Sophocles. In two thousand degree or so above the equator, I look round my hot room and see nothing that will last. It won't
years all our generals and politicians may be forgotten, but Einstein and Madame Curie and be long before my house collapses, eaten by white ants, eroded by rain and wind. The flowers
Bernard Shaw and Stravinsky will keep the memory of our age alive. in front of me will be dead tomorrow. My typewriter is already rusty. And so I hunger for
something that is permanent, something that will last forever. Truth, I am told, is a thing that
Why then are the arts and sciences important? I suppose with the sciences we could say
will last forever.
that the answer is obvious: we have radium, penicillin, television and recorded sound,
motor-cars and aircraft, air-conditioning and central heating. But these achievements have Truth is one value. Another is beauty. And here, having talked about the scientist, I turn to the
never been the primary intention of science; they are a sort of by-product, the things that artist. The scientist's concern is truth, the artist's concern is beauty. Now some philosophers tell
emerge only when the scientist has performed his main task. That task is simply stated: to us that beauty and truth are the same thing. They say there is only one value, one eternal thing
be curious, to keep on asking the question `Why?' and not to be satisfied till an answer has which we can call x, and that truth is the name given to it by the scientist and beauty the name
been found. The scientist is curious about the universe: he wants to know why water boils at given to it by the artist. Let us try to make this clear. There is a substance called salt. If I am a
one temperature and freezes at another; why cheese is different from chalk; why one person blind man I have to rely on my sense of taste to describe it: salt to me is a substance with a taste
behaves differently from another. Not only 'Why?' but `What?' What is salt made of? What which we can only call `salty'. If I have my eyesight but no sense of taste I have to describe salt
are the stars? What is the constitution of all matter? The answers to these questions do not as a white crystalline substance. Now both descriptions are correct, but neither is complete in
necessarily make our lives any easier. The answer to one question-`Can the atom be split?'- itself. Each description concentrates on one way of examining salt. It is possible to say that the
has made our lives somewhat harder. But the questions have to be asked. It is man's job to scientist examines x in one way, the artist examines it in another. Beauty is one aspect of x, truth
be curious; it is man's job to try to find out the truth about the world about us, to answer the is another. But what is x? Some people call it ultimate reality-the thing that is left when the
big question `What is the world really like?' universe of appearances, of outward show, is removed. Other people call it God, and they say
that beauty and truth are two of the qualities of God.

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 Anyway, both the artist and the scientist are seeking something which they think is real. to have nothing in common with each other at all. A sculptor will take hard, shapeless stone and
Their methods are different. The scientist sets his brain to work and, by a slow process of force it into the resemblance of a human figure; there unity has been established between
trial and error, after long experiment and enquiry, he finds his answer. This is usually an completely different things; soft flesh and hard stone, and also between the shapely human
exciting moment. We remember the story of Archimedes finding his famous principle in the figure and the shapeless inhuman rock. The musician takes the sounds produced by scraping a
bath and rushing out naked, shouting `Eureka!' (`I've found it!') The artist wants to make string and blowing down a tube, and he creates order out of them by forcing on them the shape
something which will produce just that sort of excitement in the minds of other people-the of a tune or the order of harmony. The novelist takes incidents from human life and gives them
excitement of discovering something new about x, about reality. He may make a picture, a a plot, a beginning and an end-another pattern.
play, a poem, or a palace, but he wants to make the people who see or hear or read his
Unity, order, and pattern may be created in other ways too. The poet may bring two
creation feel excited and say about it, `That is beautiful.' Beauty, then, you could define as
completely different things together and make them into a unity by creating a metaphor or
the quality you find in any object which produces in your mind a special kind of
simile. T. S. Eliot, a modern poet, takes two completely different pictures-one of the autumn
excitement, an excitement somehow tied up with a sense of discovery. It need not be
evening, one of a patient in a hospital awaiting an operation - and joins them together like this
something made by man; a sunset or a bunch of flowers or a tree may make you feel this
excitement and utter the word `Beautiful!' But the primary task of natural things like let us go then, you and I,
flowers and trees and the sun is perhaps not to be beautiful but just to exist. The primary When the evening is laid out against the sky,
task of the artist's creations is to be beautiful. Like a patient etherised upon a table.

Let us try to understand a little more about this `artistic excitement'. First of all, it is what Beethoven, in his Ninth Symphony, makes the chorus sing about the starry heavens, and
is known as a static excitement. It does not make you want to do anything. If you call me a accompanies their song with a comic march on bassoons and piccolo. Again, two completely
fool and various other bad names, I shall get very excited and possibly want to fight you. opposed ideas-the sublime and the grotesque-have been brought together and fused into a unity.
But the excitement of experiencing beauty leaves one content, as though one has just You see, then, that this excitement we derive from a work of art is mostly the excitement of
achieved something. The achievement, as I have already suggested, is the achievement of a seeing connections that did not exist before, of seeing quite different aspects of life unified
discovery. But a discovery of what? I would say the discovery of a pattern or the realisation through a pattern.
of order. Again I must hasten to explain. Life to most of us is just a jumble of sensations,
That is the highest kind of artistic experience. The lowest kind is pure sensation: `What a
like a very bad film with no plot, no real beginning and end. We are also confused by a
beautiful sunset!' means we are overwhelmed by the colour; `What a beautiful apple-pie!'
great number of contradictions: life is ugly, because people are always trying to kill one
means that our sense of taste--either now in the act of eating or else in anticipation-is being
another; life is beautiful, because we see plenty of evidence of people trying to be kind to
pleased. Between this kind of experience and the experience of `patterns' comes another kind:
one another. Hitler and Gandhi were both human beings. We see the ugliness of a diseased
the pleasure of finding an artist able to express our feelings for us. The artist finds a means of
body and the comeliness of a healthy one; sometimes we say, `Life is good'; sometimes we
setting down our emotions-joy, passion, sorrow, regret and, as it were, helps us to separate
say, `Life is bad'. Which is the true statement? Because we can find no single answer we
those emotions from ourselves. Let me make this clear. Any strong emotion has to be relieved.
become confused. A work of art seems to give us the single answer by seeming to show that
When we are happy we shout or dance, when we feel sorrow we want to weep. But the emotion
there is order or pattern in life. Let me show how this works.
has to be expressed (i.e. pressed out, like juice from a lime). Poets and musicians are especially
The artist takes raw material and forces or coaxes it into a pattern. If he is a painter he expert at expressing emotions for us. A death in the family, the loss of money and other
may choose from the world about us various single objects-an apple, a wine-bottle, a table- calamities are soothed by music and poetry, which seem to find in words or sounds a means of
napkin, a newspaper-and arrange them into a single composition on canvas-what is called a getting the sorrow out of our systems. But, on a higher level, our personal troubles are relieved
'still-life'. All these different objects are seen to be part of one pattern, a pattern bounded by when we can be made to see them as part of a pattern, so that here again we have the discovery
the four sides of the picture-frame, and we get satisfaction out of seeing this unity, 2 unity of unity, of one personal experience being part of a greater whole. We feel that we do not have
created out of objects which previously seemed to bear this sorrow on our own: our sorrow is part of a huge organisation-the universe-and a
necessary part of it. And when we discover that a thing is necessary we no longer complain
about it.

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 Our concern is with literature, but the student of literature must always maintain a live freely, it not only calls up associations but also, at times, suggests other completely different
interest also in music and painting, sculpture, architecture, film, and theatre. All the arts try meanings and perhaps even other words. Here is an extreme example
to perform the same sort of task, differing only in their methods. Methods are dictated by Action calls like a bugle and my heart
the sort of material used. There are spatial materials-paint, stone, clay-and there are Buckles ...
temporal materials-words, sounds, dance-steps, stage movements. In other words, some arts
work in terms of space, others in terms of time. You can take in a painting or building or Now what does ‘buckle’ mean there? We use it to denote the fastening of a belt and also the
piece of sculpture almost immediately, but to listen to a symphony or read a poem takes collapsing of any solid body-sheet metal, a bicycle wheel. Now in a piece of scientific or legal
time-often a lot of time. Thus music and literature have a great deal in common: they both writing the word must have one meaning or the other. But in this fragment of verse we are not
use the temporal material of sounds. Music uses meaningless sounds as raw material; so restricted. The word can carry two meanings, can suggest two different things at the same
literature uses those meaningful sounds we call words. time. So that this passage means: `I am called to action and I get ready for it: I buckle on my
military equipment. But at the same time I am afraid; my heart seems to collapse inside me, like
Now there are two ways of using words, one artistic, one non-artistic. This means that a wheel collapsing when it meets an obstacle.'
words themselves can be viewed in two different ways. There is, in fact, the meaning that a
word has in the dictionary (what is called the lexical meaning or the denotation) and the This may serve to illustrate how the creator of literature makes his words work overtime. It
associations that the word has gained through constant use (the connotations of the word). is not only dictionary meaning that counts-it is sound, suggestion of other meanings, other
Take the word `mother', for instance. The dictionary definition is designed only to make you words, as well as those clusters of harmonics we call connotations. Literature may be defined as
understand what the word means. It means the female parent of an animal. That is words working hard; Literature is the exploitation of words.
denotation. But the word, because we first use it in connection with our own mothers, But literature has different branches, and some branches do more exploiting of words than
carries many associations - warmth, security, comfort, love. We feel strongly about our others. Poetry relies most on the power of words, on their manifold suggestiveness, and in a
mothers. Because of these associations `mother' is used in connection with other things sense you may say that poetry is the most literary of all branches of literature; the most literary
about which we are expected to feel strongly our country, our school (thus `motherland' and because it makes the greatest use of the raw material of literature, which is words. Once upon a
`alma mater', which means `dear mother'). We say then that `mother' is rich in connotations. time, the only kind of literature that existed was poetry; prose was used merely for jotting down
Connotations appeal to the feelings, denotations to the brain. Thus various activities which laws and records and scientific theories. With the ancient Greeks, poetry had three departments-
involve the use of words and are concerned with giving orders or information-the framing lyric, dramatic, and epic. In lyrical poetry the author was concerned with ex pressing certain
of club rules, for instance-will try to restrict words to denotation only. The writer of a emotions-love, hate, pity, fear-relying all the time on the power of his words. In dramatic poetry
science book, the creators of a new constitution for a country-these do not want to appeal (or plays) he did not have to rely quite so much on words (although Greek drama was packed
to> the emotions of the reader, only to his brain, his understanding. They are not writing with lyrical poems) because there was action, a plot, human character. In epic poetry he could
literature. The writer of literature is much more concerned with the connotations, the ways tell a tale-again making use of character and action and there perhaps his skill as a narrator and
in which he can make his words move or excite you, the ways in which he can suggest his constructive power would be more important than the suggestive qualities of words.
colour or movement or character. The poet, whose work is said to represent the highest
form of literature, is most of all concerned with the connotations of words. We still have these three ancient divisions, but two of them are no longer-except very
occasionally-presented in the form of poetry. The epic has become the novel, written in prose.
Connotations can be likened to the clusters of sounds you hear when you strike a single (Sometimes people still write novels in verse, but they are not very popular.) The dramatic
note on the piano. Strike middle C forcefully and you will hear far more than that one note. poem has become the film or the play (only rarely in verse nowadays). Lyrical poetry is the
You will hear fainter notes rising out of it, notes called harmonics. The note itself is the only kind of poetry left. In other words there is very little room for the epic poet or the dramatic
denotation, the harmonics the connotations. poet nowadays: the poet, as opposed to the playwright or the novelist, writes short lyrical
The writer of literature, especially the poet, differs from the scientist or lawyer in not poems, publishes them in magazines, and does not expect to make much money out of them.
restricting his words. The scientist has to make his word mean one thing and one thing only, There is no living poet who can make a living out of his poetry. This is a bad sign and perhaps
so does the lawyer. But once the word-like our note on the piano-is allowed to vibrate means that there is no future for poetry. But this is something we can discuss later.

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 There are other branches of literature and `near-literature' which we shall consider in this
book, particularly the essay, which is what a man writes when he has no gift for poetry or
the novel. But I should like you to keep those three main forms in mind-the novel, the
drama, the poem -for they are the forms which have attracted our greatest names during the
last few centuries. In our own age it seems likely that only the novel will survive as a
literary form. There are few readers of poetry, and most people prefer to enjoy drama in the
form of the film (a visual form, not a literary form). But before we come to the problems of
the present we have a good deal to learn about the past, and the past of English Literature is
the subject of the pages that follow.

Slightly adapted