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New Writing Worlds
Choman Hardi
Literary value
When Jon Cook asked me to write a short piece about literary value I had
a few moments of panic. I am not a critic and have not read much literary
theory. The best I can do is to have a personal response drawing on what
some of the writers have been saying during the last three days in the
New Writing Worlds symposium.
Kant believed that the value of a work of art is determined by the fact that
we derive pleasure from it. This pleasure cannot be moral, neither can it
be sensual. In this sense, Kant distinguishes between three kinds of
pleasures: the pleasure we achieve through doing the right thing, i.e.
moral pleasure, the pleasure of eating and having sex, i.e. sensual
pleasure, and what he calls aesthetic pleasure. Aesthetic pleasure, Kant
argues, unlike the other two kinds of pleasure, is totally disinterested. By
this he means, we do not enjoy a work of art because it satisfies an end
for us (be it moral or sensual) but we enjoy it as an end in itself. Here I
will concentrate on literary value, and whenever I say a work of art I
mean a work of literature.
In this sense, for a piece of writing to be valuable, it needs to please us
not because it is a moral piece of work, neither because it sexually excites
us (for example) but because we can we take disinterested pleasure in it.
The question which arises here is what exactly is this ‘disinterested
pleasure’? Kant argues that a poem, for example, is valuable because it
has an aesthetic idea which is expressed in a way that quickens our
senses. By reading a good work of art our mental faculties (by which he
means the imagination and the understanding) are in harmony and
perfection with each other. Hence a valuable work of art has the capacity
to make us feel more complete. This does not mean that a work of art
cannot disturb or puzzle us, but that in doing so it brings our mental
faculties into a sort of togetherness which may explain why we derive
pleasure from tragedy. There are many objections to Kant’s aesthetic
theory but I will not go on to discuss these issues. I have merely
introduced Kant’s theory because it is a good introduction to what I want
to talk about next. I will try to bring in some of the points that were raised
by the writers during the symposium.
Two days ago (on the 17th June) Mourid Barghouti talked about how,
more than ever, the notion of shared space is threatened, about the
ambiguities of the meaning of place. He argued that for 69 Palestinian
women giving birth at checkpoints and the children who are so born to
grow up in a restricted space, their path to school forever divided by
checkpoints, the notion of place, bed, and road are far from the ordinary.
In reaction to his talk, A B Yehoshua argued that Mourid’s story does not
deal with the complexity of the situation, and therefore is not fair - it talks
about women giving birth at checkpoints but does not mention why the
checkpoints exist.
Yesterday, David Constantine spoke of the importance of translation and
of the clarity of language. He argued that a man who does not think
clearly is oppressed. He provided some examples of slippery language,
language which intentionally uses certain words so that the meaning of
the situation becomes ambiguous. He provided examples from the Abu
Ghraib prison, how ‘torture’ was named ‘intense interrogation’, and the
relationship between the torturer and the victim was called ‘prisonerguard’ relationship, alongside others (e.g. Michael Howard’s discourse on
refugee and asylum seekers). David Solway argued that David
Constantine should have provided examples from both sides of the
conflict, for example the language used by Islamic terrorists is as slippery
and ambiguous as that used by the Americans.
In his talk yesterday, Austin Clarke noted that The Merchant of Venice
was banned in Canada because of its racial dimensions. Just before
Austin’s talk, AB Yehoshua pointed to the importance of morality in
judging a work of art; how we cannot ignore the moral aspect in works of
literature. In the discussion that followed A B Yehoshua’s talk and Gillian
Beer’s response, it became apparent that for many writers the issue of the
morality of a work of art does enter into consideration.
Personally, I have divided feelings about this. On the one hand I think
that whether or not a work of literature is moral, it can be good or bad. If
we decided to cleanse the literary scene of all literature that has some
racist, sexist, colonialist and Orientalist aspects, we may need to demolish
many great works of literature. On the other hand I am aware of the
power of literature to reemphasize negative stereotypes and to justify the
imbalanced power relationships in the world. Maybe the best thing is to
be aware of the moral dimension of the work, without having to abandon
the work altogether. Gillian Beer pointed to the reader’s resistance to
morally corrupt issues, which I think is a key concept in this debate. But
this in itself requires a mature, aware and intelligent reader. For example,
I read ‘Gone with the Wind’ when I was fourteen, living in Iran, and I
only saw a love story in it. It was only when I was 19, living in the UK,
that I become aware of its racial dimensions.
Eva Hoffman pointed out that we should maybe use the word
‘seriousness’ instead of morality. By this she meant how a work of
literature should expand our perceptions of humanness - its value will lie
in how seriously it attempts to do this.
This resonates with George Szirtes’ comment that good literature aims at
the truth, and we find profound pleasure in becoming aware that these
human truths exist.
Similarly, David Constantine pointed out that he writes to fight back the
current powers that mystify language, and therefore manage to fill our
world with untruths. In this sense, thinking clearly and writing clearly are
essential to reclaiming language and abiding by the truth.
The ambiguity still remains as to whose truth, but I hope that the reader’s
intelligence and resistance, Gillian’s concept, will help him/her to judge
the work. Even though truth is not always a black and white matter and
there are times when listening to two sides of an argument when we can
understand and sympathise with both. This may be a truth in itself, to be
forever open, to be curious and prepared for a work of art to ‘unsettle us’
(Constantine’s concept).
From my own perspective, I believe that as readers and writers we are
forever concerned with truth and justice. I write to defy the blind spots of
truth and justice that exist within all of us. I write to challenge current
norms, challenge the people who decide whose cause is justified and
whose is not, whose voice will be heard and who will be silent, whose
suffering is more important than the other. I write to tell my truth, the one
that has been sidelined and silenced. Only when we know the truth can
we try to do the right thing.