Plato is, arguably, one of the most misunderstood of all philosophers. He is often seen as someone who thought poorly of art/poetry. In the Plato vs. Poets faceoff, invectives are often flung at him for seeking to banish the poets from the ideal state. However, to be fair to Plato, his opposition to mimetic poets has to be read in the context of the “ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry” and the “innumerable other signs of ancient enmity between them.” Plato’s disapproval of “the honeyed muse” is based on three premises: poetry is illusive and is thus far removed from reality; it is unethical because it appeals to the baser human passions; and it is not pragmatic and is thus inferior to other didactic arts. The deceptive poetic rhetoric, though uninformed by truth, has more power than the rigor of the philosophical idiom to delude the common people into believing that they are in pursuit of true knowledge, avers Plato and hence seeks to keep his people away from “her charms.”

Plato’s opposition to poetry springs from his belief that life in an ideal state should be one of moderation devoted to the search for truth based on reason and justice, and not one of amoral enjoyment and sensual satisfactions. It would be interesting to conjecture here whether Plato, if he were around, would call the poetry/literature of today ‘a mere pastime,’ as he did the mimetic arts of his times. Would he still argue that poetry helped neither in character building nor in the promotion of the wellbeing of the state? He wouldn’t. For there are enough hints in The Republic to reveal that Plato was not averse to giving the poets their due if they proved that their trade was useful to the society: “Notwithstanding this, let us assure our sweet friend and the sister arts of imitation that if she will only prove her title to exist in a well-ordered State we shall be delighted to receive her—we are very conscious of her charms.” And literature, though still does maintain its primary non-didactic character, that of entertaining, has also evolved, especially in the last two centuries or so, as a change agent, or in Plato’s words, “useful to States and to human life” and proved that “there is a use in poetry as well as a delight.”

Adds Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, in his essay “Why Literature?”: “There is still another reason to grant literature an important place in the life of nations. Without it, the critical mind, which is the real engine of historical change and the best protector of liberty, would suffer an irreparable loss. This is because all good literature is radical, and poses radical questions about the world in which we live.” To Llosa, literature “is the food of the rebellious spirit, the promulgator of non-conformities, the refuge for those who have too much or too little in life. One seeks sanctuary in literature so as not to be unhappy and so as not to be incomplete.” In short, all art is not quite useless.

Literature, for instance, has been playing a substantial role in creating awareness and increasing the strength and diversity of community-based response to tackling the AIDS epidemic through firsthand and informed narrative about the affliction. In the first paper, “‘From the Paralysis of Fear to the Response of Solidarity’: Mapping the Literary AIDS in America,” Sathyaraj Venkatesan and Gokulnath A document the major literary responses from American literature to AIDS and trace the evolution of literary AIDS over the decades since the emergence of the much-dreaded and less-understood epidemic.

Often, neurosis could feed a career in letters. For, at least in a few cases, art and neurosis are inextricably bound up together. Put differently, what might be considered pathological in others, may turn out to be a blessing in the context of creativity. In the second paper, “Anaïs Nin’s House of Incest: The Brother as Lover,” Hoshang Merchant, using Barthes’ thesis of Texts of Pleasure vs. Texts of Bliss, shows how Nin releases her libidinal repression, her neurosis, through the “orgasm of the text” and achieves liberation.

If Nin’s was an attempt to escape from “the woman’s season in hell,” Richard Wright’s was to escape from his early life experiences that were “dark and lonely as death.” In Uncle Tom’s Children, Wright writes, “I was never to throw cinders any more. I was never to fight any more wars. I was never, never, under any conditions, to fight white folks again.” But he returns, two years later, with Native Son to carry on his fight against racism. In the third paper, “Democracy and Dilemma: Richard Wright’s Native Son,” Nibir K Ghosh explains how Wright blends literature and politics to take an uncompromising look at racism in American society.

Maya Angelou is someone who needed no such self-justification. She never considered herself a slave to circumstances nor a prisoner of traditions, and she has, importantly, lived her life on her own terms. In the fourth paper, “Woman in Introspection: Maya Angelou, the Phenomenal Woman,” M H Mohamed Rafiq shows, through a textual interpretation of her five-volume autobiography, how Maya Angelou explores themes such as idealization of marriage, femininity, motherhood, and family against African-American cultural norms and Euro-American impositions.

According to Lionel Trilling, “The function of literature through all its mutations has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.” Unsurprisingly, some of the questions that Trilling raised in his criticisms include the nature of good and evil and the moral choices we make, among others. In the fifth paper, “Lionel Trilling and Cultural Criticism: A Discourse Against Dogma,” Shakuntala Kunwar makes an appraisal of Trilling’s criticism, highlighting Trilling’s liberal and holistic approach to criticism and its relevance to the present.

Arthur Miller was another author who believed in the ability of the individuals to instigate social changes. Miller saw his plays as a way to transform American society, and “that meant,” in his own words, “grabbing people and shaking them by the back of the neck.” No wonder when he died in 2005, the Chicago Tribune mourned the passing away of “the preeminent social conscience of the world stage.” In the sixth paper, “Arthur Miller as a Critic of Contemporary Social Values,” Pawan Kumar Sharma and A S Rao discuss Miller’s social themes, values, and concerns with examples from his works.

Edward Albee takes an unvarnished look at modern life in his play The Zoo Story, which, in composer David Diamond’s words, is “a very moving, disturbing, and thoroughly ruthless exposé of human conflicts and the pathetic inability of personal communication.” In the seventh paper, “The Story of Jerry and the Dog: A Study of Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story,” Uma Neela elucidates how through the characterization of Jerry and Peter, Albee takes an unflattering view of the modern human predicament of alienation and spiritual impoverishment.

-- R Venkatesan Iyengar
Consulting Editor