Reality in Literature

Abstract

In this paper I am asking whether, and in what sense, we can speak of the reality of works of literature?works to which I shall refer hereafter by the generic term of poetry. We have before us two problems, both of which need to be treated with circumspection. Therefore, I must treat them in an abstract, purely theoretical way. The problems are of two quite different kinds: one is psycho logical, and the other ontological. But although distinct, they are, nevertheless, inti mately related, as I hope to show towards the end of the paper. In representative art the psychological problem does not seem to present extraordinary difficulties. In poetry, representative painting and sculpture, the object of the work?what the work is about?bears some sort of resemblance to the furniture of the daily world: to men and their actions, to the things they use, and to the ambient medium, artificial and natural, in which they live. For this reason we have to say in the case of poetry and of representative art, that their objects symbolize the same kind of reality as that actually possessed by mental objects. Insofar as this is true, we have no unique problem. A problem arises when the claim to perception is seriously entered. Sometimes our trans actions with poetry convey heightened feeling of reality, feeling that the ordinary world does not usually convey. It is an experience difficult to give an account of. It may be close relative to the mystical experience?I do not know. At its peak, the reader disappears, and all there is, is the thereness of the object of the poem. I call the event revelation, in the etymological meaning of the term: tearing of the veil, presentation of intense vividness of what the poem is about. The work before us stands out radiantly, with an effulgence that claims that we have taken step upwards, into reality that is usually hidden from us in our daily world. The semi-transparent film that stands between us and the furniture of the world in which we live daily has dissolved. We move up, to yield with anticipation to the increasing radiance that shows itself to us. The claim that the revealed object makes?and I am using my words with some care? cannot be disregarded, however we choose to interpret it. Let me press into use for our purposes vivid phrase that William James used in discussion of the sense of reality in slightly different context: a man's soul will sweat with con viction when his entire faculty of attention is absorbed by poem. Its object seems, as he puts it, more utterly utter what it is, than at other times. Thus James is one of our witnesses for the fact that poetry can convey on the oc casion of total absorption in it sense of superior reality. And kindly note that