Preserving the Integrity of Literature’s Humanity

Man is com­posed of body and soul; he thinks and he acts; he has appetites, pas­sions, affec­tions, motives, designs; he has within him the life­long strug­gle of duty with incli­na­tion; he has an intel­lect fer­tile and capa­cious; he is formed for soci­ety, and soci­ety mul­ti­plies and diver­si­fies in end­less com­bi­na­tions his per­sonal char­ac­ter­is­tics, moral and intel­lec­tual. All this con­sti­tutes his life; of all this Lit­er­a­ture is the expres­sion; so that Lit­er­a­ture is to man in some sort what auto­bi­og­ra­phy is to the indi­vid­ual; it is his Life and Remains. — John Henry New­man, The Idea of a University

Liter­a­ture promises — if we shall per­mit it — to enlighten man’s under­stand­ing of him­self; act­ing as it does by virtue of its being a sec­ondary form of expe­ri­ence, gar­nered from the col­lec­tive obser­va­tions of mankind as a whole. It promises to inform our delib­er­a­tions with respect to our fel­low men. And it sup­plies the basic prin­ci­ples upon which we may develop a pol­icy, through which we may enter­tain a more human­is­tic approach toward each other. One that might be con­ducted in a spirit striv­ing for con­gruity and an appre­hen­sion of our com­mon traits.

An approach that may be couched in a sin­cere pur­suit of objec­tive truth — typ­i­fied by ortho­doxy, which we must untan­gle from its present asso­ci­a­tions that we might desire it for what it is, right opin­ion. If such is pos­si­ble. But what­ever the result of these inves­ti­ga­tions into the nature of truth, — whatever our for­mu­la­tions and con­vic­tions, Lit­er­a­ture allows us a win­dow into the coloured land­scape of man’s nature and allows us to tem­per our zeal for what we believe to be true with that char­ity, “with­out which ortho­doxy is vain; char­ity that ‘thin­keth no evil,’ but ‘hopeth all things,’ and ‘endureth all things’” (John­son 12, 305).

The fast­ness of my per­sua­sion con­cern­ing the above phi­los­o­phy has been drawn from a broad — but by no means extent — read­ing of Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture, within and with­out the con­fines of so– called ortho­dox Chris­tian­ity. It has been derived from numer­ous icons of Lit­er­a­ture, both antique and con­tem­po­rary, and has ram­i­fi­ca­tions through­out my world­view and my pecu­liar approach to this pil­grim­age called life.

As the open­ing quote would indi­cate I am indebted to Dr John Henry New­man, whose Idea of a Uni­ver­sity so per­fectly har­mo­nized the demands and ori­en­ta­tion of an Oxford-​model edu­ca­tion within the con­text of the Roman Church’s par­tic­u­lar sys­tem of val­ues. It also deals with the oblig­a­tion of a uni­ver­sity in prepar­ing a stu­dent for life by the read­ing of Literature.

I might pref­ace my fur­ther remarks by con­ced­ing that while Lit­er­a­ture is most effec­tive in the pur­pose thus assigned to it, that is, when it is a “mir­ror of life” which exhibits “the world in its true form” shew­ing us “what we are to expect” (John­son 7, 126), its effi­cacy as an instru­ment to that end has too often been damp­ened by ide­o­log­i­cal designs to purify it of all wicked­ness and bap­tise it into a plas­ter saint. This is typ­i­cally by way of cen­sor­ship or coer­cion as has hereto­fore been demon­strated by the long march of his­tory. Need requires only a few, select exam­ples to sat­isfy: the Index Libro­rum Pro­hibito­rum of Roman Catholi­cism, the Soviet Glavlit, the con­fis­ca­tion and par­tial destruc­tion of Friar Bernardino de Sahagún’s Flo­ren­tine Codex, the puri­tan­i­cal burn­ing of Thomas Hobbes in effigy and print at Oxford in the late sev­en­teenth cen­tury, &c.

This will­ful abuse of Lit­er­a­ture and neglect of its merit – a merit iden­ti­fied and pro­moted by Dr New­man – has only suc­ceeded in divert­ing men from orga­nized gov­ern­ment and reli­gion, rather than fos­ter­ing an “igno­rance is bliss” devo­tion. Nev­er­the­less, I believe that with the assis­tance of those fig­ures most influ­en­tial to my own con­vic­tions in regard to this sub­ject, I have been suc­cess­ful in suf­fi­ciently con­vinc­ing myself that such a dichotomy between Reli­gion and an open­ness to real­ity within Lit­er­a­ture — rather than an affected ide­al­ism — can be resolved.

New­man argues against an ideal, eth­i­cally unbur­dened Lit­er­a­ture, by impress­ing upon his read­ers that it is,

…a con­tra­dic­tion in terms to attempt a sin­less Lit­er­a­ture of sin­ful man. You may gather together some­thing very great and high, some­thing higher than any Lit­er­a­ture ever was; and when you have done so, you will find that it is not Lit­er­a­ture at all. You will have sim­ply left the delin­eation of man, as such, and have sub­sti­tuted for it, as far as you have had any thing to sub­sti­tute, that of man, as he is or might be, under cer­tain spe­cial advan­tages (New­man 229).

A Lit­er­a­ture devoid of man’s folly, his fre­quent wicked­ness, and his incom­pe­tence is a Lit­er­a­ture with­out human­ity — for human­ity is of its nature defectable, fal­li­ble, and imper­fect. What can we learn from Utopian ideals, but that they will always crum­ble beneath man’s incon­stancy? The Judæo-​Christian scrip­tures are “prof­itable for doc­trine, for reproof, for cor­rec­tion, [and] for instruc­tion in right­eous­ness,” (II Tim­o­thy 3 : 16) because they treat of man as he is and not as he should ide­ally be . They con­de­scend to teach by way of our iniq­ui­ties and trans­port us to a plane wherein we may fea­si­bly strug­gle against such incli­na­tions as beset us.

That we must enter into — as William Law advised — a “catholic affec­tion” for all mankind and delight in truth “…wher­ever it shines, or from what quar­ter it comes,” seems to me com­pelling. Like Pro­fes­sors Lewis and Tolkien we must acknowl­edge it Goethe’s words that “Lit­er­a­ture is a frag­ment of a frag­ment,” but it con­tains within its aus­pices a vision of real­ity that while being flawed ulti­mately edi­fies. Nei­ther Vergil nor Cicero is irrel­e­vant for the Chris­t­ian, nei­ther Augus­tine nor Aquinas is incon­se­quent to the Sec­u­lar Mate­ri­al­ist, the Qu’ran and Rab­bini­cal Tal­muds are not ger­mane if the Bud­dhist monk really seeks holis­tic fulfillment.

Whether we finally dis­miss a por­tion of the canon or not, each por­tion of our Lit­er­ary inher­i­tance is a valu­able asset that must be mined for those sliv­ers of truth that might enlighten and guide us in our mutual co– devel­op­ment as mem­bers of a sorely divided race. In study­ing Eng­lish Let­ters I am con­vinced that my con­tri­bu­tion to that diverse fab­ric will be one of will­ing­ness and open­ness to learn, to live, and to thrive by giv­ing a vote to the most obscure of all sets, our pre­de­ces­sors. Hav­ing taken that poll and illu­mi­nated our present con­di­tion with the par­al­lels of the past, per­haps we can avoid those mis­takes which thwarted our best efforts to co– exist peace­ably and plunged us into end­less conflict.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

John­son, Samuel. The Works of Samuel John­son. New Ed. Lon­don: A. Stra­ban, 1801.

New­man, John Henry. The Idea of a Uni­ver­sity. Rev. Ed. Lon­don: Long­mans, Green, & Co., 1907.

The PDF file that was sub­mit­ted through the Com­mon Appli­ca­tion and the Sup­ple­men­tal Writ­ing Port­fo­lio accom­pa­ny­ing it can be found here and here, respec­tively.