out of the blue

Please forgive the abstract ramblings of this journal. It covers a lot of what I've been thinking over the last few months. Even though its primary focus is on literature, I still expand the scope dramatically at the end, and throw in a bunch of random thoughts.

You know what? Good literature is, and always has been, relative. In the 5th century B.C., Sophocles was being all daring, and breaking every conventional rule of drama by adding a controversial third player into his works, allowing such brilliant dramatic situations as someone overhearing a conversation between two other players! Unheard of! Absurd!

"So what? Today, we almost never have plays with such a small number of players. We have advanced interactions between hundreds of people at a time, allowing for…." Don't be stupid.

We have the tendency of looking back and seeing those early plays as so much rubbish. This is because, frankly, they don't live up to modern standards. Sure they address issues that we still deal with today, in such a way as to still be meaningful, but they can be sadly lacking in other ways.

That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them.

People who say that old stuff isn't worth reading for these reasons are being just as silly as someone saying that modern literature isn't worth reading because newfangled innovations are just a glossy coat over the institutions developed hundreds of years ago. The mark of true literary appreciation is being able to enjoy BOTH of them for their respective qualities. Try putting yourself in your parents' shoes when they watched Star Wars for the first time, rather than when (as a disillusioned youth) you saw it in the setting of today's amazing computer generated special effects. Try putting yourself in your children's shoes when, just as you might see ancient silent films, they scoff at your two-dimensional masterpieces such as The Matrix, or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (which is, even now, moving into the "ancient" category of literature). "How can you watch that stuff, Pops?" "Mum, why didn't they use holographic imagery in Moulin Rouge?"

Recently, I've read Robert Heinlein, and E.E. "Doc" Smith, and compared the two. I've also read, in the past few years, numerous space operas that were very good, such as Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga and David Weber's Honor Harrington novels. Frankly, Doc Smith's Lensman series is often not nearly as well organized, and far less believable than Bujold's or Weber's. But he was writing in an entirely different climate, where some innovations hadn't been developed, and he was setting standards for the next generation of science fiction (then an emerging genre). In fact, his ideas were so innovative (and based in reality, to some extent) that his projections for future technology sometimes became self-fulfilling prophesies. The most direct (and proven) example is the "tank" (in the novels) and the "Combat Information Centers" (in the Navy). It was copied by the U.S. Navy.

Writers throughout the ages have built on existing literature, and expanded it to advance the art even further. This is true of the visual arts, the kinetic arts (dancing, etc) and even of philosophy. The inclusion of new lines of thought, such as eastern philosophy, added new ideas to Western philosophy. The renaissance philosophers built on the ancients, and are in turn built on by the modern philosophers. Thinkers such as Socrates are obviously not lampooned for not understanding the innovations in philosophy by later philosophers like Immanuel Kant. Political theoreticians such as James Madison should not be criticised for holding slaves. After all, one person cannot, however brilliant, overcome ALL the unfortunate trappings of the current misconceptions of their time. I'm sure that, if you become a brilliant philosopher who makes great advances in the science (or art), you won't appreciate all the future critics who discount your works just because you happened to not notice a problem that seems obvious to them at their later date.

The moral of the story? When judging people's accomplishments, try to incorporate their setting into your opinions. Don't assume that if you know something, that they necessarily should know it also. If you work from this assumption, your arguments will go over better, and your criticism will be more fair.