One of the fundamental issues that lies behind the chess model as a decision-making tool is the subjectivity of the player. The positional parameter, insofar as it attempts to formalize a global orientation to a problem of (almost) infinite complexity, inevitably admits that the position itself cannot be separated from the individual in position. Even the grandmaster cannot objectify his own parameters, or perfectly explain the rationale for his moves.

I believe that many of the ideas we have raised in discussing the chess model, and its ethical and aesthetic applications, can be of tremendous value to literature and literary theory. In fact, I would argue that the historical development of the chess model from centuries of grandmasters’ approaches to the game is representative of philosophical problems evolving throughout academia. If I may be so bold, the problem that typical Whartonites have with the implications of the positional style in the chess model for business is analogous to the problems that many other fields have with allowing for subjectivity and positional analysis. Thus, I would like to apply the chess model and some of the specific ideas it considers to a positional approach to literature and literary-aesthetic value, specifically in reference to poetry.

Below, I introduce some of the critical terminology invoked in the chess model and positional style to general literary terms and ideas. As this paper is meant to be the beginning of some cohesive theory, my main goal is to achieve a general sense for what kinds of issues and problems the theory will approach. Therefore, I will analogize the systematic approach to chess with that of poetry (and art). Before I proceed, let me make a fundamentally important point.

I believe that there is a combinational style to literature, and that in academic analysis, this is the most popular and accepted one. The approach, as I see it, is to use certain general concepts that provide for a way of linking the literature to some exterior theory, be it socio-economic, historical, sociological, or political. In my experience, although these analytical approaches are extremely valuable, they often suffocate some of the more aesthetic appreciations of literary works, and sacrifice subjective response for objective conceptualization. This can be suffocating and insensitive at times. Critics take chunks of the literature, suggest a logic that fits those discreet chunks into a historical or sociological system of value, and elaborate through deduction from paragraphs and sentences how the work fits and represents that logic.

The positional style to literature would not only refrain from deriving a priori concepts and impacting them in the literature, but would cultivate a means to understanding the aesthetic appreciation of a work in it’s entire progression, from beginning to end, without cutting out paragraphs and chapters and without adjoining them to some exterior theory. Positional values would also necessarily consider the reader’s subjective experience, his own "literary genesis" as it were, and the subjective experience with poetic language, imagery, and sound. In addition, a positional approach may be used at each step in the reading and interpretation. The difficulty that we have in linking the poem to the reader is the same difficulty of linking the beginning of the literature to it’s conclusion, since meaning and intention is developed by the reader as the reading occurs, and not combinationally in separate parts. More importantly, the positional approach will allow for the critical idea that the appreciation of the poem or artwork cannot be separated from the reader himself. Below, I expound on the methodology behind the positional values.

Let us analyze works of literature in the terms of the chess model. The initial conditions are, of course, the poem itself, mere language on a page, constructed and crafted by the poet. The poet chooses the initial conditions in the design of his title and the form of his poem at it appears on the page. The environment, however, consists of both the poem and the reader in relation to each other. Does literary experience have a multistage aspect? We may state that any work which has some sort of development or progression from within may have complex stages. They may be delineated in terms of stanzas, chapters, scenes, etc. Since the reader engages gradually, and not with the entire poem all at once, these stages are activated gradually too.

In literature, we also have both global problems and local problems. We evaluate literature both in terms of generalizations about the reading in terms of themes and ideas, as they are developed throughout the course of the work; and we also evaluate it in terms of detailed analysis of the text, its structure, and the correspondence of language to action and intention. The global problems are relatively easier to discuss, especially with the combinational style.

What are the rules and constraints of literature? This is an essentially linguistic and epistemological problem. Literature differs in that we cannot even hypothesize about a tree of possible moves, however tremendous, because epistemological (and linguistic) difficulties may forbid any finite relation between language and interpretation. Thus we cannot try to analogize Botvinnik’s attempt, which was premised on the notion that we can tolerate an inexact solution to an inexact problem because it is only that our speed and memory is deficient (limited). In our theory we commit ourselves to the claim that one can never reach the exact meaning and intention of the writer or artist. This, quite simply, is never the point anyway, as opposed to chess, where the rules of the game do in theory allow for a mini-max procedure.

Yet, we may emphasize here that assumptions about the artist/writer’s intention and meaning in the literature are valuable and in many ways necessary. There is always some teleology to the progression of a poem and this is important because the reader or audience can have something like an inexact solution. One might claim that since the exact meaning and intention of our writer can never be reached, it does not exist or matter in any important way. But we can suggest that the writer often takes an inexact "mini-max approach" in choosing how to express and create his project, by understanding the meaning of words and the function of grammar, and predicting how they will effect the reader.

The final goal would refer to the achievement of a cohesive comprehension of the poem by the reader. I believe that this goal is so explicitly vague and poorly defined, but that it is especially linked to the implications of the positional parameter. This leads me to suggest that the beauty of the positional move is derived from the very particularities of the position and the player, the poem and the reader, so that aesthetic value itself is by definition a strong force in the style. In literature, the end goal of the comprehension of the work is inextricably linked with the appreciation of the beauty of that comprehension. Furthermore, it is important that at the essence to a positional approach to literature is the impossibility of a tunnel process, since we take the literature as having meaning and intention only as it progresses. The conclusion of the poem cannot have a cohesive aesthetic value without development along the lines of the initial conditions of the poem — the development that the poet chooses. To skip to the end of the poem and "tunnel process" is to deny the fundamental significance of the poem as having value only through the establishment and development of the positions that the poem has within it.

Furthermore, this does correspond well with positional chess to the degree that the rules of language as utilized and articulated by a writer must presuppose that the outcome of the game, the reaction and evaluation of the poem, depends "solely on the strength of the player," the reader.

Function:

We can express the function of the reader’s position with respect to the poem in terms of induction. As interpretation and beauty is realized, assumptions about meaning and intention induce further interpretations on the poem. There is constant change as experience with a literary work progresses. A position does not give meaning to a poem without that meaning being compatible with previous ideas in the poem, since the reader’s position ought to remain cohesive. For this reason, we must emphasize that in no way is it merely adaptational.

Structure:

The structure of a reader’s position can be formalized with respect to material, quasi-material, and positional values, all complex in nature, though in different ways. Material values consist of the logical definitions of words, the logical meaning of these words as they function grammatically. But the clarity and precision of such values is not to be mistaken as being achieved simply, since such definitions and grammatical rules are subject to much variation over time and peoples. Furthermore, we must emphasize that an axiological approach to meaning is necessary to construct a proper model of how interpretation of meaning is structured and operates.

Quasi-material values would consist of poetic innovations of the syntax and sound of words, and grammatical innovations in number and emphasis of syllables, rhyme schemes, and line-breaks. An example will clarify this point.

I am trying to make a distinction here between mere language as it may work in prose (material), and language as it is utilized with innovation in poetry (quasi-material). Ostensibly, any word used in a poem has a "stereotypical" or "commonplace" logical definition such as that which would be used in a newspaper article or essay. These definitions would be evaluated as material values. Then, in considering issues of poetic form, there are quasi-material values, values which are based on words and grammar, but as distinct from how they are innovatively used in poetic forms. An evaluation of a sonnet, for example, is based on the meaning derived from logical words and syntax, but also on the skillful employment of the a-b-b-a rhyme scheme, the quatrain-quatrain-septet stanza form, and the ordering and emphases on syllables. These poetic stylistic devices are quasi-material because they are based on materials, but not defined by them only. Some aesthetic value is accounted for in the quasi-materials, and so we may call them quasi-positional to some degree as well.

Now material and quasi-material values are to be found in the poem itself as it is read from the piece of paper. However, the positional parameters are those that lay beneath the materiality and quasi-materiality of the poem, in its interpretation and construction by the reader. Needless to say, these are, as in chess, the most difficult to formalize, since the universe to which these positions are relative is completely subjective, and based on experience both in life and in literature. To paraphrase from Aron Katsenelinboigen’s Selected Topics in Indeterminism, we can look at literature from an infinite number of perspectives so the number of positional parameters also seems to be infinite.

Operation:

The cognitive operation of reading-responding will not be considered here, but will be left to the philosophers of mind and consciousness, though I do not pretend, for a moment, that such considerations are less than crucial. On the contrary, the emphasis on subjective aesthetic value would have more integrity to it with the integration of concepts from this field.

Operator:

The reader and his remarkably subjective universe of aesthetic appreciation.

Genesis:

The genesis of literature as understood in this theory would have to be quite intricate and extensive. For now, let me at least make the following observations: What I find fascinating about analogizing chess and literature is that the "grandmaster-poets" of our civilization are not only innovators of approaches to particular ideas and formalizations, but are changing the initial conditions of the literary system itself: it’s evolving words, meanings, interpretations, and structures. The "avant-garde" movement plays an especially valuable role in this development of literature, and, therefore, literary theory and value. So we can think about the historical development of literature as being the progress of innovative approaches to such things as language, rhyme, meaning, style, etc. But I believe that this theory will force us to reconsider the function and utility of such concepts as "theme," "plot," and "character." Often these generalized characteristics of literature are used as broadly objectifiable concepts which can be evaluated on the basis of a combinational approach. When critics try to understand a literary movement or "literary program" they use combinations of themes and plots and characters as support for their argument, or conclusions (see above, on the combinational approach).

In reference to the development of particular, personal responses to a poem, the general progress can be shaped most simply by attending to the developmental structure of the poem itself, with introduction, body, and conclusion. These three are clearly subject to incredible variations in style and shape. I have no conclusions as yet about how to approach this matter definitively. But the act of reading literature does not conform to a Markovian process, since the final position that the reader takes to the poem is based on past experience and present experience in the development of the narrative.

Let me also add that I believe that this positional approach to literature does some justice to the application of the field of psychology and especially psycho-analysis to literature. General theories of psychology, although highly controversial in philosophical circles, do provide a means of understanding the complex of personalities in some works of literature. I do not imply that psychology is necessarily positional. That would be too broad a generalization. Rather, by focusing on the intimate and subjective relations between characters and readers, it provides for a less combinational approach, one which allows for the progress of a non-static and subjective response to literature and literary ideas, and can account for the understood meaning of certain phrases and actions to the reader and his positions toward the poem or work.

In the first section, I attempted to lay out a general application of the positional approach from systems analysis to literature and literary theory. I had two important goals among other things: First, I protested the use of combinational methods using merely "theme," "plot," and "characterization" and, instead, emphasized the value of positional parameters, thus realizing that subjectivity is fundamental to aesthetics in literary analysis. Second, I wanted to conceptualize an approach that did not slice the literary work into discrete chunks, nor merely suggest broad generalizations; but rather treat the literary work as a continuous whole which, as a system, could be treated equally in its particulars and its generalities. In short, the literary work should be treated as a systemic unity, but, indeed, a unity which is aesthetically appreciated in a subjective way, not to be separated from the reader, or the implementor.

As I have continued my studies in both English literature and positional style decision-making, it seems that the systematic, positional approach continues to be of greater and greater value. Fundamentally, I believe that positional parameters as a concept can explicitly reveal peculiarities and particularities about art and life; and in this section, I would like to analyze an example which accentuates this contribution of great value. I have been at a loss, however, as to what I should choose and how I should limit myself. It is, as always, the plight of education that we cannot sustain both breadth and depth of insight; but must pick and choose pragmatically, and hopefully efficiently. Let me explain my difficulty further.

Poetry is always a good starting point for aesthetics in literature, perhaps because the position of the language adjacent to the idea is so complex, and yet so well formulated, that both aesthetics and literary analysis are activated easily. My notion of the positional parameter in poetry has two main focuses. First, I am intrigued by the ways in which language fundamentally seems to be both a positional and strictly material element. In its syntactical requirements and logical function, as Herr Dr. Prof. Katsenelinboigen has explained, words seem to require some axiological approach so that we can understand interpretation and meaning. Yet in the poem, words are like flowers with infinite petals, and infinite colors. The beauty of many poems is in their multi-dimensional aspects, their multi-valence, and sometimes even their "de-axiology" if I may call it that.

Yet, the positional approach seems to be of immense value for this very reason. If we can explicate the underlying system of a stanza, then we can test many of the possible meanings, and based on subjective position within that system, choose a valuable one, and a relevant position for the poem, as we interpret it. Indeed, many systemic parameters often need to be understood in prosaic language; but poetry incorporates such parameters not only in its actual language, but in other poetic ways. I will elaborate on two.

First, systematic sensitivities can be revealed by rhyme and meter. These two "quasi-material parameters" as I have called them, effect language in such a way as to highlight meanings and connote sounds which can be understood in terms of the underlying structure, the underlying system of a poem in its aural and lyrical qualities. Second, as Vera Zubarev has explained in detail in her chapter "Systems Approach and the Mytholiterary Continuum," myth-systems are crucial to modern genres of literature. When a myth is evoked in a poem (or, as I will discuss below, in a novel), a whole and unified system is evoked for the reader that is meant as a contrast and comparison to the ideas and personas in the actual poem. A skillfully evoked myth increases complexity in a poem by imposing another superstructure to view the work in a particularly valuable light. What is crucial is the position of the poem against the myth. New variables are introduced, new moral suggestions are made, and ultimately a more elaborate position is established for comprehending the poem.

I have searched the literature for relevant examples, and there are, of course, many poems that we could analyze. What comes to mind immediately is T.S. Eliot’s canonical Modernist poem "The Wasteland," which is sustained both by fragmentation of the persona’s experiences and ideas; and at the same time it is put in the explicit context (sometimes in irony, sometimes with more seriousness) of myths from Virgil’s Aeneid, Ovid’s Metamorphoses (including Tiresias and Zeus), and even the Upanishads.

Interestingly, rumor has it that when Eliot first read his poem at Harvard University, many students ran to the classical libraries in order to look-up all of the myths and allusions which he suggests in his lengthy poem. He eventually published an annotated version of his poem because of demand for a clear explication of his intentions. This is interesting to me because it is known that Eliot did not want to publish the annotations, and when he did, he was somewhat defiant in his style. Nonetheless, it is clear that he had to make such notes for a very important reason: the myths were critical to the poem. Even when the mythic systems are not well explicated or not referred to in detail, even if the poetic idea relates to only one aspect of the myth, the myth in it’s entirety becomes critically relevant. The subjective interpretation of the poem becomes circumscribed within the myth, and then it expands on the myth within the poem, and by implication, the poem itself expands. In a poem as complex and subversively structured as Eliot’s "The Wasteland," the myths and allusions are absolutely important — in fact, they are important in a way like no other parameters, since myths are premised on certain social and political parameters that are more formalized than in only a poem or novel. I will return to this notion below.

As far as lyrical and metric parameters in poetry, I decided not to delve deeply into this topic, because the issue of meaning and quasi-materiality continues to be a sophisticated one which is intimidating. This is fundamentally because positional values are so very critical. As a simple example, it is not only the ability to translate a work that is crucial, i.e., it is not only essential that I know English to appreciate some of the finer linguistic elements of an English poem. Rather, it is a very ("positional") appreciation of the fineness of the language itself that is often necessary. Combinational comparisons of the sounds of words just won’t do it. Were I to learn Russian today, I still could not claim to be able to appreciate, for example, Pushkin or Chekhov for their linguistic peculiarities. So we can deduce at least one approach to delineating the positional aspects of lyricism, beside the characteristic syntactical and idiomatic structures involved in knowing and understanding a language. There is metric quality — structural in nature — and a lyrical quality, which is intimately linked with one’s own flexibility and palatability for the expressive qualities of language.

Although I want to proceed to the next genre, let me at least bring an example of a post-modern American poem that, in my opinion, contains some of the most beautiful contemporary cadences. I hope to emphasize this lyrical quality by choosing one which has no typical formal meter or rhyme scheme. I present John Ashberry’s Posture of Unease.

I will leave it for the reader to speculate on the poetry, and will keep my own subjective view quiet for now. But because of this, I will admit that my efforts at specifying the positional aspects of a systematic approach to poetry are unsatisfactory. Thus, I proceed to the next genre.

We mentioned above the function of myth in poetry, and I believe, furthermore, that myth also has some unique structural elements of its own which can be appreciated in the context of the positional style. M.M. Bakhtin has some especially keen insights about the nature of the myth as a genre. He explains this in an essay entitled "Epic and Novel" from his collection The Dialogic Imagination. Before I proceed further, let me say outright that I will not stop at myth either, but I want ultimately to analyze the genre which I believe is most clearly linked philosophically and aesthetically to the positional style — the novel. Analysis of mythic structures will be of value both for its own sake and as a contrast to the novel genre. But myths are finally dead, as it were, and so I cannot be satisfied with a positional analysis of them either. (This seems sensible, as indeterministic economics and positional style are at the frontier of the academic field; it is only appropriate that I humbly attempt to apply the model to equally innovative and current subject matter!)

The link between closed mythic systems and the epic genre is quite discrete. It is based on what Bakhtin calls the "absolute past. " In epics and myths, the literary system is both complete and abstract. It is well-developed and attempts to encompass an entire world view. But in doing so it, severs the literary world from the real world. The position that a reader takes relative to an epic is based on a parameter which is much easier to elaborate and delineate. It is based on collective nationalistic feelings, a unified sociopolitical conception of a universe. When we read of Zeus or Ulysses, we not only engage in a universal system that is unrealistic in many ways, with anthropomorphic gods and majestical thunders and fires. That very system is itself whole, complete, and in many ways stationary. The appreciation of the genre is largely derived from a certain retrospective appreciation of a culture long gone, and a universe which is interesting and aesthetic, but fundamentally far away. The system is dosed, time is encapsulated in tight fashion, and is linked to ancient or pre-modern sentiments conceived in deterministic terms.

Current aesthetic experience with epics need not be pre-determined. The modern reader has a very critical standpoint from which he/she views the system, and since there is no logically necessary submission to the ancient socio-political parameters, the reader can criticize and fathom the system in many different ways. Yet, the number of ways does not seem infinite, because the mythic universe is fully established, and by the end of the genre it is made explicitly complete. As Vera Zubarev has put it, mechanisms rule the universe in these genres, and as they stand independently, these mechanisms remain stable. Only when the systems are brought into another different, unlocked genre of literature do they play critical positional and structural roles. Then they may enrich other types of narratives; but this is when myth is being used as an aesthetic means, and therefore when it becomes, unto itself, a new positional focus for fictional action. Myth as an end unto itself, however, is mechanistic without the same enrichment. It constitutes a universe and elaborates it, and once we cultivate that "absolute past" we can establish a positional parameter which only remains in the past. We cannot, in modern day, hypothesize about the nature of reality and epistemology under the condition of a myth, without also having an ironic tone, without undermining that very effort, since we know the world simply doesn’t work that way. Yes, it would be interesting to think about what a fire-breathing dragon might do in New York City, and how it might radically alter modern life and thinking, but when I am finished conjecturing the myth is exactly where it was yesterday, the day before, the century before. The values are perpetually unconditional. There are no semi-conditionals by which we can evoke a motive, dynamic positional parameter. And if I may attempt one of many possible analogies with business, the manager (reader) of the myth and the owner (narrator) of the myth are united in mind-set and intention. Bakhtin notes,

In this genre, all is linked. The price of a sacrifice on one day in the epic, is completely verifiable and adjustable to the price of such a heroic act on the next day. With this conceptualization of the epic-myth, we now approach the novel.

The novel is, historically, the product of a fundamental shift in the envisioning of the structure, function, and operations of literary potentialities. The aesthetic and thematic developments in the novel are brought up-close to real life through strong realism; and at its climax of novelization, in the heart of the activities of a novel, the reader and narrator meet on a turnpike, in which time is here continuous, and systemic formalization of reality is vivid, but indeterministic Time is developing, so that the fictional universe is in intimate contact with ours. Immediately, the existence of positional value and parameters becomes quite evident. The reader’s link with the text is constantly shifting, subject to the decisions of the narrator, the overall system of the work, and his/her own subjective activation of the novel’s universe. Language, object, and meaning all adjust relative to the tests of semi-conditional values which are engaged with the fictional system of the novel. I argue, then, that the systematic approach is so valuable for this very reason: We cannot pretend that novel’s aesthetic effect is objectifiable. Yet simultaneously we must approach this open-ended narrative with a systems approach in order to understand the significance of characters actions, the implication of the narrator’s discretely chosen explanations and explications, and the patterns of meaning which myths and other allusions reveal to understand the novel’s system of operation.

The genre of the novel should be understood as integrative internally and inter-dependently with the reader. The novel sustains images and scenes which we can relativize to our own weltanschauung. We have access to characters thoughts, and the ability to analyze their social, political, and economic relationships in ways which are comparable — indeed, fundamentally conditioned — on our own. Why is this so?

Personalities in the novel are not distinct entities with pre-determined courses. Will and consciousness are operating at the base of the novel’s structure, and so the "I" which is mentioned in the novel is an "I" which necessitates our granting of that "I’s" existence. The author needs our aesthetic sensitivities in order to succeed. Language, idiom, sound, expression, impression are all developing aspects of the novel as it progresses. The novel does not have a life of its own. Rather, the novel is a means to the contact between a concept and a reader in the fictional realm.

Interestingly, Bakhtin elaborate this notion and phrases it in a way so palatable to a reader who can comprehend the positional style. He writes,

In another passage he explains,

Immediately, we realize that analysis of the novel is not intended to arrive at objectifiable evaluations. There is contact, unique and dialogical, between the reader and the work, the reader and the narrator, and all critical focus can be conceptualized in terms of position. Why is knowledge of the literary system essential? To arrive at a position. Why are the stylistic, semantic, and thematic parameters crucial? To understand the position relative to the narrator. Ultimately, in a literary system where the narrator crafts the reality, but we — the readers — discover it, we must establish a parameter in which the materials and the quasi-materials and the positional elements are valued so that the inherent subjectivity of that system can be realized. We cannot presuppose that objective themes and characters were intended by the author to play combinational roles which are traceable and linkable with our world. This would sacrifice aesthetic experience for mere analytical programming.

Aesthetic experience should never be simplified, except, perhaps in explicitly pragmatic circumstances when methodology and formalization are made as clear as possible. It seems to be part of collective human nature, though, to objectify and simplify in order to don the illusion of predictability and detachment. Aesthetic pleasure, as Birkhoff has attempted to explain it, is intimately related with the strain, the complexity, the multi-dimensionality of a work with respect to order. The novel is ordered, yes, but only so much. A good author will be clear and often helpful in revealing the extent to which order is imposed, and is also subverted.

For this reason, many novels — and more often those which incorporate other mythic systems — have sharply ironic moments. These are moments in which we are forced to realize the moral and political dangers of certain orders, and simultaneously we must leap to realize the dangers which we may be engaging in ourselves. Dostoevski’s "Notes from the Underground" makes this quite clear. What the underground does to the man must also be understood in terms of how the underground is the man, shapes the man. Cynicism and depression and spite are specific consequences of this experience, which Dostoevski skillfully links with literature and modern consciousness.

For this reason also, genesis seems to be very important. Positions are often better understood in literature when we are aware of how they have developed, both microsystematically, in a particular work, and macro-systematically, within a literary historical time period. But this is not to demand necessary historical correlations; it is more to cultivate the ideological perspectives of the narrator which though constructed last year or last decade or last century, is interacting in the present readings.

I would like to conclude my analysis by asserting that although the positional style is so valuable to literature and aesthetics, it must still be clearly distinct from the field of economics and operations and information management. I believe that we can understand the distinction in several ways, but I’d like to chose one which may be illuminating.

Systematic analysis of literature, as has been shown by Vera Zubarev, is quite meaningful and significant. But when we do this analysis, it seems that our ultimate goal is personal, aesthetic, while at the same time explanatory and revealing. Economics, however, is a very practical science. And while emphasis on predispositions is critical, we do not confuse the nature of the predisposition with the nature of the system within which we are working. This is a complex matter, and I do not pretend to fully understand it. But it seems relatively clear that in economic matters, we will not engage in sensitivity to subjectivity merely for its own sake. No, the goal need not be material, as I have learned ; but there still is a teleology which is essential.

In literature, however, there is the philosophical issue of "art for art’s sake." And Oscar Wide has declared, "All art is quite useless." When we apply the systematic positional approach to economics, the teleological nature is fundamentally distinct. We will hardly say that economics is quite useless. And this may be the explanation for Wilde’s other famous aphorism, that art is not a reflection of life, but life is a reflection of art. In literature, the aesthetic order is often so brilliant, so real and in contact, that we can sometimes exchange life and art in the aesthetic act. Art seems more pure, more pure to form, more comprehensible, more congruous with our hopes and feelings which it brings us to develop, especially if we take the positional approach to a literary system. Whereas, in contrast, life is messy, life is disordered, it cannot be modeled in its totality. Economics professors will continue to remind their students of this, because analytic applications must never confuse the model with the phenomena to which we are applying the model. But with art this is not the case. Skill, complexity, and beauty are so appealing to the intellect, that it may resurrect and improve our visions and our dreams of life itself. And when we turn back to our real lives, they seem to have but a vague resemblance to our great ideas and aesthetic ideals. And yet they remain linked, since the medium of reflection is, of course, the literary work itself. And the novel specifically engages our reality with that of the work with such intensity and sensitivity, that the two are in contact. Literature itself is then a position between reality and fiction, between myth and irony, between life and art.

Back to Art & Literature

Back to Title Page