Can Literature Survive Without Spirituality?

I'm all tired and nearly spouted off, "WELL BARKER'S AN ATHEIST." No, TJ, he's gay. Those are different things entirely.

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Agreed, but I think the genres would survive even if there was conclusive proof of a lack of God.

 

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Agreed.

 

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Sure, lets take the most popular novel of all time...The Lord of the Rings.

The whole story is about a sacrifice that extends beyond any particular lifetime...any moment passing into oblivion.

Tolkien apparently once admitted to a friend that the tale is metaphor for the sacrifice of Christ....where the ring symbolizes sin and the fall of man.

 

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Yes I would agree with you there. There is a psychological component that is wrapped in fear that will always confirm horror fiction's place.

One of my favorite Barker stories is a short story called 'In the Flesh'. Brilliant. It deals with sin and the afterlife and paying for sin and rebirth.

 

I loved "The Hellbound Heart," but never read that one.

 

Great I love Tolkien.

Yes they sacrifice to save humanity but they cannot survive themselves nor their loved ones without saving humanity. What motivates them then? Is it their loved ones? Their way of life? Or the notion of humanity? I say its their way of life and their loved ones in addition to themselves as opposed to 'humanity' in general. I think its like the motivation of Neo where he fights to save Trinity as opposed to fighting for man. Yet all these are wrapped up with each other. A soldier on the front line fights for his life and for the men next to him, he isnt thinking of democracy or liberty at that point though that is also why he may be there.


...And before sam or someone comes to inform me of Afghanistan or Iraq and how they don't care about democracy etc. I am referring to war in the ideal sense, like world war 2 for example.

 

Me too. He is one of the few writers who uses a woman as the main hero protagonist and not simply the one being saved, the victim in harms way.

 

Well thats not how its presented in the book, nor would it even be a good book if it was.

When a soldier signs up for war he doesnt even know the men next to him...nor is his immediate environment necessarily under any threat.

The Arthurian tales are another example of how spiritual continuity informs the context of literature without any overt reference to religion.

The story was eventually Christianized, but originally, Merlin calls forth the lady of the lake to yield the sword of power:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gludr0e_6U

Behold, Excalibur
Forged when the world was young
And bird and beast and flower
Were one with man
And death was but a dream

 

When a man signs up he doesn't know them but camaraderie is always fostered in the military and they do so for the reason that each soldiers life is dependent on the man next to him. The whole purpose of forming camaraderie is to prepare one for war.

A book is just as dependent on the readers interpretation or examination as it is in the writers intention. When Stoppard wrote Rosencrantz & Guildenstern he didn't have the intention of writing an existential piece nor theater of the absurd but it was interpreted as such. There is always more in a good novel than what an author intends.

You do realize you are speaking of a particular genre in literature and not literature itself? Fantasy tales, myths and horror are predicated on the supernatural but literature as a whole is not. You would have a difficult time proving that Fitzgerald, or Hemingway, Anais Nin, Tennessee Wiliams or William Burroughs are dealing with the supernatural because they do not and there work is also in the canons of literature.

 

No, I'm speaking of ALL literature.

The underlying principle simply takes on a less obvious role than you would find in tales of the supernatural.

 

Then prove so. Use examples of different novels from different genres that prove your case.

I mean how does Vanity Fair by Thakery for example, or Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, or Great Expectations by Dickens, Jouney To The End of the Night by Celine, Sexus,Nexus and Plexus by Miller exemplify these qualities you say exist in all of literature?

Declaring all of literature as so without outlining exactly what you mean by spirituality and not using actual texts from literature to prove this doesn't make your assumption true.

 

I outlined what is meant here by spirituality in the opening post, but in your own mind you cannot separate the word from the phenomena one encounters in a haunted house...or church.

Even literature that seems the most lacking in spirituality is merely a reaction to this emptiness. It derives power from this reactive force.

Your Journey to the End of Night is a good example:

"As its title suggests, Voyage au bout de la nuit is a dark, nihilistic novel of savage, exultant misanthropy, leavened, however, with an ebulliently cynical humour. Céline expresses an almost unrelieved pessimism with regard to human nature, human institutions, society, and life in general."

You can see here that the book is merely a revulsion in its entirety. Getting its power only from the disgust towards the strictly materialist vision rising up like a dreadful storm around the author...wrenching the dark clouds into a fury.

This is also where most punk rock gets its power...its a kind of vomiting crystallized in music.

 

Celine was drunk on life not revolted by it but he was revolted by the actions of men. He had a largesse of spirit but he was interested in the material because Celine saw no glory in poverty. His revulsion was for war which marked his life during the first and then the second world wars.

Although you have taken a description of the novel you haven't read the work itself. You say this work is a reaction to a lack of spirituality but Celine was an adventurer and his novel is a reaction to stupidity and lack of what he would have called the delirium of existence and you may see this as as aspect of spirituality but I do not, I see this more as a way of living. Celine would have rejected ideals as something that made man absurd and ridiculous and ready to run to war and and a number of other things he would have deemed ridiculous activities. The assertion you make about life being a 'strictly materialist vision' as opposed to 'spiritual values' he would have seen as a form of mysticism he would have naturally of rejected. Celine asserts individualism in the face of social values and norms, he speaks of drinking of life, of fucking and wine and bacchanalian reverie this is what he was his interested all of these being material pleasures as he didn't think it was possible to truly remove oneself from the machinery of society, to work in a factory and work on the front lines is the same to him, all life is absurd all life is a laugh and a horror. Because you haven't read the work you misunderstand the description because Celine was a lover of life but placed no faith in human beings. Celine would have said in a complex way war is absurd, if you asked him whether one should go to way he would have said "Go to war. Why not?" He himself is an adventurer who answers to no man and travels the world describing all sorts of people and events he finds absurd. Celine rejoices in life so the book in not a mere revulsion in its entirety and is also autobiographical. He was a man who asserted life in the here and now not in the afterlife nor beyond self.

He thought of everyday concerns for immortality a hinderance for example love he says in one of “Love, Arthur, is a poodle's chance of attaining the infinite, and personally I have my pride.” Great men like him did not need to think beyond themselves, they were enough, life was enough. He suffered tragedy and saw suffering and saw the meaningless of life but he didn't search beyond it rather he sought to 'eat it', 'swallow it', dance in it and drink to it.

I would suggest you actually read great works of literature before you attempt to discuss them.

Again you have not proven this idea that all of literature is either a revolt against materialism or an assertion of spirituality. Its not that I don't understand what you mean carcano, I have just read enough literature to know what you say is not true. To say what you say you have to prove that literature itself is dependent on this quality you say is there in it all, but there are ample examples of literature that serves other purposes than what you suggest.

Celine would have said something like this “To philosophize is only another way of being afraid and leads hardly anywhere but to cowardly make-believe.”

 

Having read X number of novels means nothing at all. Whats important is one's depth of insight, not their breadth of exposure.

For example, you may have read Celine's book but your contradictory views of its meaning indicates that you have not heard him.

 

Depends what kind of philosophy he's talking about.

Nihilism is certainly a philosophy.

 

To find nihilism in events is not to espouse nihilism as a personal philosophy. Celine was not a nihilist.

 

You want to speak of ALL literature, ALL of it. This means having a good sense of literature which you can only glean from reading a variety of books.

I am not being contradictory but I do want to describe him accurately. I have read this novel more than once and it is a dense piece of work.

You say I have not heard him but you wouldn't know would you? You haven't the material to use to back your claim?

 

By what knowledge do you espouse your assertion? Meaning what proof do you have for the assertion?

 

Its a contradiction to say Celine viewed life as absurd, without any substance aside from drinking, fucking and other assorted bacchanalities.

And then say he is not a nihilist.

Nihilism: (from the Latin nihil, nothing) is the philosophical doctrine suggesting that values do not exist but rather are falsely invented. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.

 

I'm using the material you have offered yourself.