The Literature We Live By - Salam Rahman Al-Tamimi

A society without literature, or a society that throws literature as a hidden sin to the limits of personal and social life, is a society that barbarizes the spirit, and even risks its freedom. Without literature, logic would kill us, and without music, we would be buried realism, and the wings of emotion would be clipped. Literature is a place that writers and readers build; It is a somewhat fragile place, but it is indestructible. When it cracks, we restore it because we need shelter. As the Peruvian writer and novelist Mario Vargas Llosa says, “Literature is the best thing ever invented to prevent unhappiness.” Literature, as we all know well, does not provide solutions, but poses puzzles. It is capable, in a particular novel or story, of revealing the infinite complexities of a moral question, and gives us the feeling that we have acquired a certain level of awareness with which we understand the world better. I am tempted to say that every book is preoccupied with In it, the reader asks a moral question, or rather, when the reader is able to dig under the surface of the text, he can extract from its depth a moral question, even if this question was not asked by the writer in many words. Through this alchemy, every literary text becomes somewhat metaphorical.

Pages: 320