Recent Thoughts

In an essay on Beowulf, Tolkien considers the act of the tale of Beowulf as a sort of tower.  A man has in his yard many stones from an ancient structure, and with those stones he builds a high tower.  Those who come after him are puzzeled by this and wonder why he didn’t build something else.  They knock it down and try to figure out what the stones made before.  One even finds oil underneath the tower and begins to dig for it.  No one is able to figure the man out, even his descendants.  In the final line of the allegory, Tolkien writes that, from the top of the tower, “the man had been able to look upon the sea.” I think this short tale of his own is at the center not only of Tolkien’s art, but also his approach to literature as a whole.

For me, it gets to the heart of why literature is important at all.  All over the world there are people who can’t even read, let alone pick up a book, and at times I feel that my own intended profession of an interpreter of literature seems somewhat away from the way so many people lead their lives.  I don’t need the people who ask what the purpose of literature teachers and professors are; I ask myself the question.

Yet ever since I was young I have been enamoured with stories, and the wonder I have felt from them has lead me to many amazing places in the world.  I feel as if there is something in tales and stories that is more important than the common, modern (or post-modern, whatever self-named period we’re currently living in) idea of the utilitarian need for literature.  I have heard that literature allows us a “window into the past,” or that by learning about how people thought by what they wrote, we can reconstruct how our culture got to be the way it is, and therefore somehow learn about humanity as a whole.  Yet all these things seem to be doing something with the tower other than climbing up it and looking at the view.  What is the importance of literature, pure and simple, as literature?

I remember reading somewhere in Josef Pieper’s books that philosophy has no true utilitarian usage.  At the time I read that I felt somewhat unsure what he was trying to describe as the importance of philosophy, but I think I better understand him when I look at literature.  I can’t quote him, as I’m sure Mike has the book I’m thinking of, but his idea that things are “good” without being “useful” really goes against the grain of our present day culture.

I had considered at a time that philosophy leads one to God.  I could say the same thing about literature.  I think this is still true, but there is a complication, details that range from large to unbelievably minute that make each of these sentences wholly…almost wrong.  They’re right, but they miss the point, and it is in the examination and the deepening of their main idea that I think their true meaning comes out.  It’s strange…very strange indeed.  When I truly began to think about philosophy and the meanings behind things, I thought I had a lot about life figured out.  Rather pompous of me, but I think I was very near the mark with many of the ideas I had.  Though getting near the mark and examining, through the act of living, that mark is where we truly learn what everything is about, and no truth can fit into any maxim, no matter how far we refine our thoughts, languages, or ideas.  Truth is wholly unspoken, but experienced, lived, acted. The act of reading literature, I believe, is a type of that act.

Good literature, when read correctly, is an act that can lead to truth, though in no case is it a truth that we as humans are able
to grasp even in discussing the supposed “theme” of a novel.  To
correctly read a story, in the same way to correctly do anything,
is to engage the full self in the act, to allow the story (or
painting or person or the night sky) affect oneself as deeply as
is possible.  Only then does anything objectively real become
subjectively real, and it is when the objective and the
subjective become one that we as humans see a truth.  We see
reality for what it is.

And, still, why is this important?  I can easily stop, for
myself, and say that it is, simply important, that seeing reality
for itself is important.  But, again, simply saying that, stating
it as a “rule of life” of some sort, won’t get me anywhere.
There is more depth to dig, and the something below begs to be
discovered.  The digging must continue.  Though I will have to save that for a different day, for now.

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