Literature, after all, is precisely that which is not bounded by “inflexible laws.” This does not mean it escapes those laws entirely, whether the laws of nature or the lawlike relations that govern our political and social lives. Literature is about life and thus contains everything in it that life contains—including politics, history and certainly disappointment. But when we read something that moves us to tears or laughter, pity or terror, conviction or bewilderment, it is because it reminds us that the “real” is not always disenchanted, our lives not always reducible to the conditions of their possibility. Perhaps we do live in a time, as our greatest poet of disenchantment once described it, of “specialists without spirit, and sensualists without heart.” All the more reason to resist the march toward a literary culture without love.
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January 28, 2020
All the more reason to resist the march toward a literary culture without love.
Literature, after all, is precisely that which is not bounded by “inflexible laws.” This does not mean it escapes those laws entirely, whether the laws of nature or the lawlike relations that govern our political and social lives. Literature is about life and thus contains everything in it that life contains—including politics, history and certainly disappointment. But when we read something that moves us to tears or laughter, pity or terror, conviction or bewilderment, it is because it reminds us that the “real” is not always disenchanted, our lives not always reducible to the conditions of their possibility. Perhaps we do live in a time, as our greatest poet of disenchantment once described it, of “specialists without spirit, and sensualists without heart.” All the more reason to resist the march toward a literary culture without love.
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