Literature and Experience

There are three basic uses of language:

(a) To communicate practical and scientific information,

(b) To persuade, as in advertising and propaganda, and

(c) To communicate experience.

Each particular use of language is a combination of these three items.

When language is primarily used to communicate experience, we call it literature.

Experience may be transmitted to us through science and through literature and these two methods are not rival but complimentary. If we are to understand something fully, we really need both. To explain what I mean let me repeat the example given in Laurence Perrine's wonderful book on poetry Sound and Sense.

Let's say you wish to learn about the eagle. You open up an encyclopedia and you see what it looks like, you find out what it eats, how it hunts, how it raises its young. You may also look it up on You Tube and see how it moves. But do you know anything about the soul of an eagle? What about its power and lonely majesty in the wild grandeur of its surroundings? Now read the short poem below:

The Eagle

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ringed with the azure world, he shands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

Compare now the two methods of transmitting experience. Science gives us a subject's analytical information and literature its essence in synthesized form.

Literature is almost as old as the written language. It communicates concentrated and organized experience and it allows us to imaginatively participate in it. In this way it broadens as well as deepens our personal experiences and gives us a more complete life.

Although we have a need to broaden our horizons through the experience of others we also need to express ourselves, to convey to others our own experiences. In fact, most people would rather talk than listen. Even so, the number of people who wish to convey their experiences through writing is not large because it is rather more difficult to write than it is to talk. It requires greater effort, skill and time. You also don't get the immediate satisfaction of an audience. Still, a surprising number of people want to write. Of those who manage to finish something, very few succeed.

Why? I think because they have forgetten, or never really understood, exactly what literature is. They think they can make-up a story and a place, invent characters, use flamboyant language and people will avidly read it. But if the author has not met the characters he writes about and has not lived through the experiences he describes, he does not convince. It is not easy to explain why, but only through actual experience do we find the proper words and word chains that will transfer our experience to others. This lack of conviction of the author is quickly picked up by the intelligent or the experienced reader who will disbelieve the author and stop reading his book.

If you wish to start writing fiction, please remember that literature is the transfer of experience. When you are new, it's too soon to invent characters, stories and settings and hope to convince with your writing. Write about people you have met, places you have visited and events you have experienced in simple language and you might convince.

Many authors whose books are still being read, have done little more!