So this last month my class was on Literary Theory and Criticism and for my final last night I had to write my personal Theory based on the critics we've studied over the course. Here is my piece:
"True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As
those move easiest who have learned to dance (Pope, 204b)." This couplet
implies that those who express themselves in sincerity will have an easier time
with the task.
Pope gives some practical advice to "wanna-be"
writers and poets, and this short bit is the best in the piece because it
speaks of sincerity and truth. I believe if a writer expresses themselves with
genuine feelings those things will be conveyed to the reader and they will be
drawn to it. How an artist creates their
art, or a writer creates great literature, is known from a critical viewpoint
as an Expressive theory. After reading several critics I feel comfortable with
what I believe is the best creative process.
Truth, sincerity and integrity in writing is the key to a
great piece of literature. While doing this, however, it is important to keep
your own personality out of the quotient. Eliot explains that the writers
element in the process should be, "inert, neutral, and unchanged (Eliot,
540a)." "The more perfect the artist," he writes, "the more
completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which
creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions
which are its material (Eliot, 540a)." This seems an unnatural process for
a writer to approach but the truth is that the less personal the literature is
the more universal it feels for the reader.
Eliot explains, "The poet's mind is in fact a
receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images,
which remain there until all the particles which can unit to form a new
compound are present together (Eliot, 540b)." This technique seems
atypical for what might seem to be less personal really turns out to be more
personal for the reader. For example; sometimes when you hear a speaker you
believe they are talking only to you, in reality you are among a crowd and any
number of people feel the same way. This is the gift of a great speaker. The
same can be said for a beautiful piece of literature that seems to be universal
in nature because the writer took himself out of the process. He let the words
and phrases and images that have been storing up for years in the recesses of
his imagination finally come forth in a manner that is cohesive to the story but
not necessarily reflective of the author.
The reason this method works is because of integrity, as
Virginia Woolf explains it. "What one means by integrity, in the case of
the novelist, is the conviction that he gives one that this is the truth. Yes,
one feels, I should never have thought that this could be so; I have never
known people behaving like that. But you have convinced me that so it is
(Woolf, 604b)." This integrity is what helps give a piece the cohesive
feeling of, "the relation of human being to human being (Woolf,
604a)." The expression of a writer can and should be more sincere when
their feelings and personality are removed. This does not and should not mean
that real emotions are not involved, they definitely are, but on a level so unique
as to make a reader feel that they too are feeling those emotions and they
believe the events that are written, even if they are fictional.
To "learn to dance," as Pope suggests, means to me
that a writer has learned this process as described. Possibly it is an internal
gift, to be able to express the truth or rather the integrity of emotion, by
removing themselves and spreading the emotions from their mind onto a page.
Those feelings are then transferred into the minds and hearts of their readers.
This creates great art in literature, in my opinion.
Richter, David A. The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, Bedford/St. Martin's, 2006.
