Literature: A Quest for
Aesthetics of Liberty
DR. B. GOPAL RAO
It is the function of the fine arts to
provide us with pleasure, but pleasure of a distinctive kind and quality. Life
offers many pleasures that are different in kind and are not here in question.
The kind of pleasure provided by the fine arts is called aesthetic. The term is
not easy to define, and ever since Aristotle, twenty-three centuries ago,
attempted to analyse the nature of the aesthetic experience, philosophers and
art critics have continued to debate about it. Nevertheless, even though we are
as far away as ever from understanding why the arts affect us as they do, the
fact is uncontested that in the presence of objects of art something happens to
alter the quality of our consciousness. There is a marked intensification of
the feelingelement, so marked on occasion that it may even produce physical
reactions, such as the thrill which runs up the spine, or the inhibiting for a
time of all other sensuous experience. The fine frenzy which possessed the
artist at the moment of creation is in some degree reproduced in the observer.
Though the emotive nature of aesthetic
experience is a matter of controversy today, many would concede that the art
object does induce an evocation of the emotional side which our own experience
corroborates. Many would agree, in this regard, with what Leo Tolstoy says:
To evoke in oneself a feeling one has
experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then, by means of movements,
lines, colours, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so as to transmit that
feeling that others may experience the same feeling. It is the activity of
art…..It is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same
feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress towards well-being of individuals
and of humanity.1
Aesthetic pleasure, then, is a function of
feeling. We have under the influence of great art a sensation of living more
abundantly. Some deep-down levels of our personalities, normally quiescent, are
stirred so that we suddenly become more fully aware of ourselves and of the
possibilities that lie in us. Through art the spirit of man is liberated from a
concern with the practical issues of life, and he stretches his hands towards
the ideal. As Susanne K. Langer has rightly pointed out: “Art is the surest
affidavit that feeling, despite its absolute privacy, repeats itself in each
individual life”.2
Literature is concerned not only with what
is, but how it came to be what it is, and also with what it is in the process
of becoming. It compares and contrasts, seeks analogies, makes judgments,
explores the significances of things. There are no regions of experience or
speculation into which literature does not penetrate and gather sustenance for
the imagination.
Among all the arts, therefore, literature,
invading time and space like a monarch, enjoys the widest franchise and wields
the greatest power. Seeing the end in the beginning and the beginning in the
end, it can move in all directions at once. It can bid us use our reason to
follow a patient analysis of cause and effect, or it can, in a single flash of
imaginative insight, illuminate the universe for us. This is the reason why
Indian aestheticians argue that art gives us the privilege which only the gods and
angels have: witnessing the artistic experience without getting personally
involved in it. As Ananda Coomaraswamy discussing art in Indian life says
“...art reflects and answers to man’s every need, whether of affirmation (pravritti) or denial (nivritti) being no less for the spectator than the
artist a way (marga)...”. 3
Literature is the art which helps each one of
us to create for himself a mental counterpart to the world of sense, a private
universe of thought and feeling in which one may move freely and at ease, and
which for many is far more vivid and palpable than the universe of things.
Literary modes of expression are generally
considered to be cyclical alterations of human attitudes to the environment.
More often than not, it is forgotten that literature itself is an education, a
refinement of the human mind, interpreting human spirit in terms of beauty.
Often literary categories are classified as Classicism or Romanticism, Realism
or Naturalism, without realising that these expressions basically mean a
certain kind of endeavour on the part of the human spirit. The literary
embellishment
in which this effort is expressed has a tendency to erect these categories as
self-sufficient entities without any relation to the basic impulses that give
rise to them. Hence we find literary discussion defining terms without
realising that ultimately they imply urges of the mind that are constantly
seeking creative self-expression at once free and unrestricted.
When the Romantic movement began to take
shape with the publication of The
Lyrical Ballads, (1798) of
Wordsworth and Coleridge, it was taken to be a reaction to the 18th century age
of reason. That it meant the quest for liberty which was denied by the
restraint of reason was hardly comprehended. In fact, literature has always
been a struggle to escape the bondages under which life labours in its
practical preoccupations. It is true that on the level of day-to-day existence
the considerations of practical life have to be paramount. But man is fundamentally
an incarnate isolation, being essentially separated from others by his
corporeal individuality. In realising and asserting this individuality lies the
freedom and authenticity of human existence. Hence the human spirit always
breaks out in rebellion against every form of restraint and tries to be free
and uncontrolled. As we case a glance at the literary history of the western
world, we realise that literature has always been a quest for liberty in spite
of certain periods during which restraint became the dominant note of literary
creation.
The Grecian world was basically an
individualistic world in spite of the city states and the social consciousness
that governed it. Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides represent the
individualistic heroism of the Greek mind achieving tragic majesty by defying
every restriction, imposed not only by the society but also by Moira, the deity
of Fate herself. Breaking away from bondage and experiencing the highest reach
of human power in physical or spiritual spheres was the ideal that inspired the
Greek heroes. For them the world was a prize to be conquered by the might of
one’s own self by setting at nought the opposing will of even Zeus himself.
This quest of might underwent a radical disintegration, during the one
Hellenistic Period, when the pursuit of might turned to pursuit or pleasure on
the one hand and pursuit of ascetic cynicism on the other. Even this expression
of the self was a form of realizing one’s possibilities after having arrived at
one ultimate in the heroic direction. Inevitably the Roman world brought in the
Stoic restraint and the Augustan law and order. But the Latin literature was
also a quest of realizing the unrestricted integration that the mind is capable
of restraint for the sake of restraint ends in literature that is without the
vitality of the spirit and turns out to be a kind of preaching or propaganda
that lacks the creative impulse.
The Medieval world was essentially restricted
in its theological outlook and as a result gave rise to a Chivalric literature
that sought freedom in heroism and love. The tension between the Medieval
theology and the Chivalric impulse constitutes one of the major illustrations
of the literary urge for freedom in spite of oppressive social bondage.
The Renaissance asserted the right of man for
absolute physical freedom even to the highest tragic extent. Marlowe’s plays
indicated Tamburlaine’s lust for power, Faustus’s lust for knowledge, the Jew
of Malta’s lust for splendour and Hero and Leander’s lust for passion.
Unrestricted outward plunge into space from the earlier theological confinement
marked the Renaissance quest for liberty. When this external adventure grew
sadistic and masochistic, the age of reason stepped in to control the
disintegration and contribute a new dimension in self-integration. By accident
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries supported the rational orientation of
integration by discovering a universe characterized by law and order. But it was soon realised that the restraint of
integration has a tendency to suppress the impulses and it was no surprise that
the Romantic wave set in with a view to transcending every restriction.
Wordsworth, Coleridge and Scott sought a physical orientation by identifying
themselves with the multiplicity of nature the supernatural and the
historically remote. Byron, Shelley and Keats went still beyond and sought a
spiritual freedom through egoism, mystical love, and pagan identification with
the sensuous and the concrete. The Romantic age indicated literature’s
essential character to seek liberty and found that with the restraining society
that was emerging, literature was never to be at ease in the social practical
sphere. The literary man began to find himself alienated and an outsider.
Since the 19th century, the individual artist
has realized that he is a unique existent and that his genuineness lies not in
conformity but in authentic freedom of experience and expression. The
literature of today is basically turning to existentialism because of the human
spirit’s uncompromising quest for freedom. It is only when we realize the
character of literature as quest for liberty that we begin to under. Stand the
nature and dimensions of literary terms.
1 Leo Tolstoy, What is
Art? Tr by Aylmer Mande
(Oxford University Press, 1905. p. 86.)
2 Susanne K. Langer, Mind:
An Essay on Human Feeling. (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins Press. 1967. p. 64)
3 Ananda Coomaraswamy, Selected
Papers (New Jersey,
Princeton University Press, 1977.
Indian edition, OUP, 1977. p.
94)