[ChrisW]

Art is a lie which tells the truth. -- Jean Cocteau

If you want to send a message, use Western Union. -- Samuel Goldwyn

Cocteau is pithily summing up a long tradition (arguably going back to Hesiod) when he says "Art is a lie which tells the truth."
If we apply this statement to literary texts, or at least to fictional texts, it becomes "(Fictional) literature is a tissue of falsehoods which tell a deeper truth." By means of the false claims about Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett, who never existed the artist somehow says something important about our own lives.
The trouble is that if telling us the truth is all the author is doing, then it seems we ought to be able to replace the round-about approach of the literary artist (poet, novelist etc.) with a bald statement of whatever truth the writer is trying to get across. And if one can do that why not do it? As Samuel Goldwyn says, "If you want to send a message, use Western Union."
This dilemma gives us apparently 4 choices:

1. Admit that literary language is merely "the adornment of thought". The literary work is just a sort of intricately embroidered sampler of some important truth.

2. Deny Cocteau's view and the tradition he is summing up. Literature isn't aimed at all at telling us the truth. There is no deep meaning, or if there is, it isn't very important to the aims of literature.

3. Admit that literature tells the truth, but insist that this truth is ineffable -- that it is in no way directly statable (though it can be indirectly revealed to us by the artist's indirections and fictions).

4. Say that literature aims not merely to "tell" the truth, but rather to show us the truth -- to persuade our hearts (our emotions) of a truth which our intellects may or may not already know. (Or perhaps I should say that they seek to have us fully understand, imaginatively and emotionally what we may already think we know.) In this case, the truth itself may well be stateable in other terms, but the writer's way of stating it may well be essential to the persuasion -- to the "showing" -- though not essential to the mere statement of the truth. In the case of Houseman's "When I watch the living meet", we can sum up the truth it tells as "we are all mortal." What the poem adds however is not mere embroidery on something all of us know intellectually, but rather a fuller awareness of what this truth really comes to -- it gets us to SEE what we mean when we say "we're all mortal." Art seeks not merely to communicate an intellectual truth, but rather to communicate a kind of practical and emotional wisdom (where an admission of a truth is at best only a first step).

I'm curious. Once position (4) has been stated, doesn't it seem like the best solution to the dilemma I started with? Or even after it has been stated, are there some who are more attracted to the other options? Is there something demonstrably wrong with option (4)? Are there any options I left out of my list?
[I post this here, because it is a continuation of a somewhat off-topic discussion which arose in another thread on this board -- "Politely depressed".]



[This message has been edited by ChrisW (edited April 29, 2004).]