The Kind Of Problem That Literature Raises

Literature Is Conscious Mythology: As Society Develops, Its Mythical Stories Become Structural Principles Of Story-telling, Its Mythical Concepts, Sun-gods And The Like, Become Habits Of Metaphoric Thought. In A Fully Mature Literary Tradition The Writerenters Intoa Structure Of Traditional Stories And Images.

It Is Clear That All Verbal Structures With Meaning Are Verbal Imitations Of That Elusive Psychological And Physiological Process Known As Thought, A Process Stumbling Through Emotional Entanglements, Sudden Irrational Convictions, Involuntary Gleams Of Insight, Rationalized Prejudices, And Blocks Of Panic And Inertia, Finally To Reach A Completely Incommunicable Intuition.

Literature Begins With The Possible Model Of Experience, And What It Produces Is The Literary Model We Call The Classic.

Science Begins With The World We Have To Live In, Accepting Its Data And Trying To Explain Its Laws. From There, It Moves Toward The Imagination: It Becomes A Mental Construct, A Model Of A Possible Way Of Interpreting Experience. The Further It Goes In This Direction, The More It Tends To Speak The Language Of Mathematics, Which Is Really One Of The Languages Of The Imagination, Along With Literature And Music. Art, On The Other Hand, Begins With The World We Construct, Not With The World We See. It Starts With The Imagination, And Then Works Toward Ordinary Experience.

The Objective World Is The Order Of Nature, Thinking Or Reflection Follows The Suggestions Of Sense Experience, And Words Are The Servomechanisms Of Reflection.