Importance of Literature

The most interesting statement for me in all of the readings on the Snow-Leavis controversy is when Trilling makes his criticism about Snow’s statement about how scientists have “the future in their bones,” and states some reasons for the defense of literature and Snow’s misunderstanding of it. When referring to students ‘of radical social and political opinion’ he says that: “they are to trust the tale and not the teller of the tale. They perceive that the tale is always on the side of their own generous impulses. They know that, if the future is in the bones of anyone, it is in the bones of the literary genius, and exactly because the present is in his bones, exactly because the past is in his bones. They know that if a work of literature has any true artistic existence, it has value as a criticism of life” (Trilling, III).

First, Trilling is recognizing the importance of history and the present to inform and motivate movement towards the future, something that Snow neglects. Snow seems focused on what the future can be in the light of science.

Also this passage seems to be saying that the value in a work of literature is not to be found entirely in the literary intellectuals or “Luddites,” but instead in the value of the work as it stands in contrast to ourselves and the qualities of life we should have. Snow is focusing on the writers themselves and the messages that they are putting forth, crudely I agree, but the relationship of the work to the reader and their beliefs is being ignored. People have the ability to understand that ideas brought to light by literary geniuses can have faults, as Trilling says: “they happen upon contempt for some idea which they have connected with political virtue, they are not slow to understand that it is not the in its ideal form that is being despised, but the idea as it passes current in specious form, among certain and particular persons.” The literary genius hits on a point of concern or a philosophy, and then it is up to the readers to discern it. Is this the kind of exchange between writer, idea, and reader that needs to be gotten rid of in Snow’s conception of the future? Could a world be constructed where regard for history is ignored?