A thought on literature

One of the things that perhaps differentiates literary authors from other fiction writers, is perhaps this, that they lay out a frame for you, and rather than all the time moving within the frame like other mortal fiction writers, great authors sort of break the frame, immediately falsify the truth they've established, and take you out of the frame. And like the paradox of reality, of absences and presences, that creation and breaking, somehow meets the whole of the reader, and not just the narrative & reason following mind, but the deeper mind that somehow knows in its core that everything is, and everything is not.

Here's Tolstoy after he just sets up a detailed scene in Sevastopol, about 'a beautiful city and a dirty bivouac' which, 'is not only not beautiful but seems repulsive disorder; it even seems to you that every one is thoroughly frightened, and is fussing about without knowing what he is doing. But looking more closely',  a few words later:

Look at this little soldier from the provinces, for example, who is leading a troika of brown horses to water, and is purring something to himself so composedly that he evidently will not go astray in this motley crowd, which does not exist for him; but he is fulfilling his duty, whatever that may be, -- watering the horses or carrying arms, -- with just as much composure, self-confidence, and equanimity as though it were taking place in Tula or Saransk. You will read the same expression on the face of this officer who passes by in immaculate white gloves, and in the face of the sailor who is smoking as he sits on the barricade, and in the faces of the working soldiers, waiting with their litters on the steps of the former club, and in the face of yonder girl, who, fearing to wet her pink gown, skips across the street on the little stones.

Somehow, this, this taking you with the story, and then safely bringing you back home is perhaps done only by a few generous souls. Most fiction writers perhaps as normal mortals on a narrative, leave you out there after the story with a random frame, which you have to eventually balance out with some sentiment or emotion of your own, either a desire or some sympathy, it seems to ask something of you. But the generous souls, their pleasure is sharing. They take you out there, and bring you back to yourself, enriched for the experience.

I feel this in Bridge on Drina. In Independent People. In Moby Dick. In Butchers Crossing. And the pleasure of reading these works is much deeper than the random horizontal business of human range of emotions. These somehow transcend them, by creating, and then dissolving, without taking anything away, just leaving you tranquil, firmly grounded, somehow stronger, where you are with perhaps some deeper seeing, a deeper tranquil peaceful wisdom rather than any ask of its own for you.

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Perhaps they let you feel the humanity running through each being, irrespective of the material of any particular life. They begin with particulars, yet, very soon, they are talking to something beyond your private reality, they are talking to the deep Self inside any being. By thus engaging a whole being, peace & strength, sort of the waters of the source fountain flow out to the particular being reading it.

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Or maybe it is this journey which sort of explains and completes life. A transcendence from the frame, a sort of journey through creation and dissolution, which, in one human life, in a transient, changing life, (as day cannot explain night, but day and night together make something whole which either cannot fathom by themselves), something in that way, taking a life through a creation and dissolution perhaps addresses something deep inside, this wonder that we have about living, which only living cannot answer as day cannot account for all time. Something on those lines, such art, transcends the day of life, and meets the whole of being and non-being.

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I think of Yeats and the long-legged fly:

That civilisation may not sink,
Its great battle lost,

Quiet the dog, tether the pony

To a distant post;

Our master Caesar is in the tent

Where the maps are spread,

His eyes fixed upon nothing,

A hand under his head.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream

His mind moves upon silence.

That the topless towers be burnt

And men recall that face,

Move most gently if move you must

In this lonely place.

She thinks, part woman, three parts a child,

That nobody looks; her feet

Practise a tinker shuffle

Picked up on a street.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream

Her mind moves upon silence.

That girls at puberty may find

The first Adam in their thought,

Shut the door of the Pope's chapel,

Keep those children out.

There on that scaffolding reclines

Michael Angelo.

With no more sound than the mice make

His hand moves to and fro.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream

His mind moves upon silence.