The connection between literature and life is intimate and vital. Literature is the expression of individual and social life and thought through language. While the subject matter and treatment must be such as are of general human interest, the expression must be emotive; the form must give aesthetic pleasure and satisfaction.
Literature must not be confounded with sociology, philosophy, religion or psychology, though these give substance and depth to literature. It may or may not impart knowledge or religious or moral instruction directly. Its theme may be social problem or political revolution or religious movement; but it may, with equal justification, be an individual’s passion, problem or fantasy. But the object is not so much to teach as to delight.
Books are literature when they bring us into some relation with real life. Herein lies its power and universal appeal. While there are some who take perfection of form to be the chief pre-occupation of literature, many more are inclined to the view that the primary value of literature is its human significance. Literature must be woven out of the stuff of life as its mirror. Its value depends on the depth and breadth of the life that it paints.
It was used to be believed at one time that the deepest things in life are those that deal with what were called the eternal varieties of life. The ideas of God, for example, or of certain moral virtues, were supposed to be eternal. But experience and a wider knowledge of the changing conditions of social life have shaken man’s faith in the unchangeableness of such concepts.
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Ideas change with those conditions, which are never static. Thus, peoples have different ideas of the Godhead. There are many who believe in a persona/ God; others worship an all-pervasive Presence in this Universe. The laws of morality, again, undergo changes from country to country and from age to age.
Hence, in modern times, our conception of the depth of literature is not related to this doctrine of eternal truths. We try rather to understand the forces behind these social changes. Therefore with regard to literature, our ideas of its value depends on the extent to which is has been able to express the changing conditions of social life. Great literature always grasps and reflects these truths of life that emerge triumphant out of the ruins of the past.
Literature is great because of its universality. It does not deal with the particular society of a particular community but with society as a whole or in its entirety. For this reason, the literature that appealed to the people through the spoken word had a greater appeal than that which appeals through the written word—which may not reach all men.
The recited epics of Homer, the acted plays of Shakespeare, the chanted songs of Chandidas or the communal reading of Mangala Kavya had a more extended appeal than our modern poets and novelists who express only segments of social life. Poetry that expresses intensely individual views and sentiments, novels that depict the manners of a limited class of community or deal with highly specialised problems, cannot surely be of the same level as are Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas or Kritibas’s Ramayana, which had and still have a mass appeal. This led Aristotle to affirm that the proper subject of poetry is human action.
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The restricted appeal of modern literature resulted from the dependence of writers on the patronage of high-born persons. Necessarily such writers had to produce work that would appeal to their patrons primarily. As a result, their range became limited; Chaucer was a much richer artist; his insight into life was also profound; but he lacked the spontaneity, the range, the popular appeal of the ballad-writers, that of the ballads of “Mymansingha Gitika”.
Modern writers have developed a flair for expression, feelings and situation that are subtle and complex in language, Wordsworth realized this and advocated that poetry should be the language of common speech, the heightened speech of the rustics. The more literature is free from its class limitations, and becomes the vehicle of the thoughts and feeling of the common man, the working people, the more will it tend to become popular and public.
Literature mast has social functions. Art for art’s sake, pursuit of pure beauty through art, the creation of a literary or artist’s masterpiece as an end in itself—are now falling into disfavor. Great literature must always serve the need of the people. It must voice their inmost desires, their noblest aspirations.
In the second place, by drawing the attention of the people to the emerging truths of life, literature should lead the people forward to a higher plane of life and thought. That is what Walt Whitman meant when he said that the object of literature is “to free, arouse and dilate the human mind”. Literature, in this sense, must emancipate the mind from its limitations; arouse it to a consciousness of the dynamic urge of life.