I T E A C H A S I W R I T E : VA L U E S I N L I T E R AT U R E / L I T E R A RY VA L U E S

By Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo

“As readers, we have no access to the writer’s vision except through his or her words.”
I shall begin by stressing the obvious: the difference between the two phrases in my title:
“values in literature” and “literary values.”

By the first, I mean those concepts, ideas, perceptions which readers grasp as a result of their
encounter with a literary text. These are what readers perceive to be the author’s insights into
the experience which is the subject of his or her work.

By the second, I refer to the textual strategies, rhetorical techniques, stylistic devices, through
which these insights are presented, enacted, embodied—in short everything that constitutes the
writer’s craft, the way he or she uses words so that they yield their meaning—or their many
possible meanings—and how the practice of this craft in the particular literary text provides
pleasure, what is referred to as “aesthetic pleasure.”

The same impulse lies behind both my teaching and my writing. But I was a writer before I
became a teacher, so I shall speak first about my writing.

For me the impulse to write begins with my own need: I write because I need to make sense of
things. Life is not orderly or meaningful—it is arbitrary, random, full of unsolved mysteries and
dark secrets. The very act of writing is a way of imposing order, creating meaning out of the
chaos. When one writes, one has to detach from the experience and organize it; in short, to give
it form.

The experience might be a scene I witnessed as a child, when in the middle of the afternoon I
stumbled into something in our living room that disturbed and confused me. Or it might be a
problem I encountered while reading a book or an article in a magazine or on the Net,
something which puzzled me because it undermined what I had previously taken for granted. Or
it might be an event over which I had no control, which forced me to change the direction of a
life I thought was set in a calm and predictable course. Life has a way of catching us unawares
and confounding us. Each of these experiences left me helpless and vulnerable.

My reaction to this astonishment has always been art. My pen—these days, my laptop—is both
talisman and tool. I write so that I might understand. And I write so that I might remember.

Because there is that other mystery—memory. Memory is notoriously unreliable; it is, in fact,
treacherous. Even when there are actual records of a happening, those will differ widely. When
there is no record, the happening will disappear. In effect, it will be as if it never was.

I think that perhaps this is the reason why most writers write. We write to describe the
experiment, the journey, the relationship, the dream and its fruition—to ourselves first, and then
to the rest of the world. We put it down in words that we might take its full measure, and that we
might remember. Otherwise, when those who were witness to it are gone, the experience will
fade into obscurity and eventually be lost.

But, art is more than self-expression. The best writers I know do not write from mere self-
interest, i.e., as a form of ego-gratification, although that might come into it to a certain extent.
They do so from a desire to share something they believe might be useful or helpful to their
fellows.

“I honestly think that in order to be a writer, you have to learn to be reverent,” wrote Anne
Lammot. And by “reverence” she meant “awe, as presence in and openness to the world….
This is our goal as writers… to help others have this sense of… wonder, of seeing things anew,
things that can catch us off guard, that break in on our small, bordered worlds.” (1995, 99-100)

“To be a good writer,” she added, “you not only have to write a great deal but you have to care.
You do not have to have a complicated moral philosophy. But a writer tries, I think, to be part of
the solution, to understand a little about life and to pass this on.”(107)

More than a decade ago, the Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz contemplated what he called “the
troubles in the present phase of our civilization,” and the resulting sense of deprivation that has
afflicted contemporary man. Theology, science and philosophy are no longer effective, he said.
“They are at best able to confirm that our affliction is not invented… The world deprived of clear-
cut outlines, of the up and the down, of good and evil, succumbs to a peculiar nihilization, that
is, it loses its colors, so that grayness covers not only things of this earth and of space, but also
the very flow of time, its minutes, days, and years.”

This led him to turn, once again, to poetry. “By necessity, poetry is… on the side of being
against nothingness.”

A similar impulse must lie behind our own efforts to seek solace and salvation—from both global
crises and bankrupt political leadership—in the arts. And the more urgent the pressures, the
more beleaguered the dreams, the greater is the need for art truly luminous.

I think I became a teacher of literature for pretty much the same reason that I became a reader
and a writer of literature. I approach my students as I do my readers—with what I can only
describe as a kind of eagerness to start a conversation with them. As I have said elsewhere, I
was myself fortunate in having a remarkable set of teachers who entered into this sort of
conversation with me and greatly affected my attitude towards books. This began in high school
and continued through my undergraduate years, and into graduate school.

When I was an undergraduate at UST, my teachers didn’t think of themselves as writing

teachers. They were teachers of literature; there were no creative writing courses then. We
aspiring writers were either Philosophy students or Journalism students, but we took our
literature classes together. And our literature teachers were keenly aware that in all their
classrooms were students who dreamed of becoming writers. They nurtured our initial interest in
literature; deepened and enriched our appreciation and understanding of the stories we already
loved; and introduced us to some we had not yet encountered. I hope that I am doing the same
for my students.
When I teach literature, I try to interest them in the stories (and poems) which have fascinated
me all these years. And in so doing, I hope to come a little closer myself to understanding how
literature does what it does, and why it is not likely to go away, though it might morph in strange
ways, cease to be “works” and become “texts,” relocate to cyberspace, become part of a
computer cloud, turn interactive, whatever.

But I think my teachers had an easier time of it. To say that our students live in a completely
different world from the world that was ours in our own day as students is to stress the obvious.
The world they inhabit is not only different, it is changing even as we speak. And one wonders if
literature is still a part of that world, and if it is, for how much longer.

In 1993, Italo Calvino had no doubts about the matter. He wrote: “My confidence in the future of
literature consists in the knowledge that there are things that only literature can give us by
means specific to it.”(1993, 1) Literature, he said, has an existential function: the search for
lightness as a response to the enormous burden or weight of living. He singled out Milan
Kundera’s novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being as showing “how everything we choose
and value in life for its lightness, soon reveals its true unbearable weight.”

“Perhaps only the liveliness and mobility of the intelligence escapes this sentence,” he
continued. “The very qualities with which this novel is written and which belong to a world quite
different from the one we live in.” (7)

Let us follow him down this path for a little bit longer. “Whenever humanity seems condemned to
heaviness, I think I should fly like Perseus into a different space. I don’t mean escaping into
dreams or into the irrational. I mean that I have to change my approach, look at the world from a
different perspective, with a different logic and with fresh methods of cognition and verification.
The images of lightness that I seek should not fade away like dreams dissolved by the realities
of present and future…

“In the boundless universe of literature there are always new avenues to be explored, both very
recent and very ancient, styles and forms that can change our image of the world…” (7-8)

Today, 18 years later, can we express the same confidence in literature that Calvino had?

Perhaps our first role as teachers of literature is to show our students what these things are that
“only literature can give us by means specific to it.” The question we need to answer—for
ourselves first, and then for them—is: what is it in literature which provides a pleasure distinct
from the pleasure that might be provided by computer games, social networking sites, shopping
malls or rock concerts?

For me personally, the source of that pleasure is discovery, and the pleasure itself I describe as
astonishment.

The word embraces both surprise and recognition. The work of literature surprises us, startles
us, by a glimpse into someone’s heart. It surprises us further by allowing us to realize that this
“new” thing—this new image, new idea, new perspective—is “true,” is perhaps something we
had known all along, but never quite looked at in this way. Even more important, this
astonishment is brought about through language.

Literature is not alone among the arts in offering important insights into life. But only literature
does it through language, and through language used in particular ways—this is what Calvino
meant by “the means specific to it.”

As readers, we have no access to the writer’s vision except through his or her words. And so as
teachers we need to focus our students on how these words are made to work in combination
with each other to yield nuances of meaning. We must have a confident grasp of the formal
elements of literary texts, because that is where we need to begin. Other things may come into
play later. But we must start with the construct of words.

It is, however, very important that our students not be daunted by this activity, that they feel that
the text and its surprises are accessible to them, even if their actual experience thus far may be
limited to paperback romances or each other’s blog. The easiest way to intimidate them is
through the jargon of contemporary literary theory or “cultural criticism.”

One way of dispelling the notion that literature (like “classical music”) is “difficult” is to
demonstrate to them that they already recognize a literary work and know how to appreciate it.
The easiest way is through the lyrics of songs.

A couple of years back, when Adam Lambert was the front runner in the popular TV show
American Idol, I had my students watch a YouTube version of one of the songs he sang: “Mad
World” by Richard Orzabal (cover by Gary Jules), and we analyzed its lyrics.

Since the lyrics are simple, all my students understood them and most could identify with the
feelings of alienation they expressed. Not great poetry perhaps, but poetry nonetheless. And a
starting point from which the students were then more ready to follow me to more complex,
more nuanced pieces, like this short poem by Ricardo de Ungria.

I will go this time, I really

will. I’ll take my costumes,

Go to some headland and there

build a shanty. It’ll be a dream.

I’ll walk miles every day

and the hissing of the sea

will be music.
—Ricardo de Ungria,

“A Night at the Circus”

I always begin by reading the poem out loud so we might hear the music of it, sound being such
an important part of the meaning of a poem. Since the students will have come from reading the
actual lyrics of a song, they are ready for this.

Then we examine its appearance on the page, and try to explain such things as the line breaks,
which do not coincide with the grammatical structure of the sentences, the point being for them
to realize that such strategies alter the meaning of a sentence, at least slightly. For example,

I will go this time, I really

will;

is not quite the same as “I will go this time, I really will.” The half-pause after “really” calls
attention to the word, emphasizes it.

Similarly,

Go to some headland and there

build a shanty.

is slightly different from “Go to some headland and there build a shanty.” Again, the half-pause
after “there” highlights the word, its distance from the persona’s “here.”

Then we try to identify the speaker or persona. The title, as well as the word “costumes”
suggests that he/she is some kind of performer, a clown perhaps, or a trapeze artist or a lion
tamer. We discuss the dramatic situation. The persona is either talking to himself or to someone
else, assuring himself or the listener of his determination to leave, to pack away his costumes
and go. It would seem that the persona finds his or her personal situation unbearable.

And where is he determined to go? He describes his destination in a series of images that
evoke distance and isolation. First a “headland.” A headland is a high promontory, with a sheer
drop, extending out into the sea or body of water. And there he will build a “shanty.” He will walk
miles each day. The place will have no other people. Just the “hissing of the sea,” which to his
ears will be “music.” But the line: “It’ll be a dream” is ambiguous, and suggests either that it will
be dreamlike in its beauty, or that the whole plan, for all the persona’s avowed assurance, might
be an illusion.

Having examined the poem’s literary values, we approach the other values that it might contain,
the insight that it might offer into the experience which is the poem’s subject.
Of course a literary work is a complex and subtle affair, and we ought to be careful not to reduce
its meaning into a formula. We accept that there are many possible readings of a poem, and
that these readings will be affected by the reader’s age, personal experience, culture. My own
reading of the poem is that it is about the longing for escape. And the poet’s insight might be
that escape is illusory.

I shall take up one more example of a literary work which I like teaching. It’s a very short story,
“Sweet Summer” by Cyan Abad-Jugo.

It is summer and Camilla, Faye and Sara, all twelve years old, are perched on the village’s
water tank. The older boys have “begun to hover about like bees, ogling them like treats—but
only the two creamy, long-legged éclairs, not the nut-brown fudge in a housedress melting in the
sun.” (2007, 76) She’s Sara the Square, Sara the outsider.

When a younger boy, Frederick approaches with his dog, the two “creamy” girls make snide
remarks about him, but Sara “could not stand it,” and befriends him, reaching down to shake the
hand he holds out, then offering to walk with him, ignoring the taunts of her two friends who
think he is a “worm.” Still little more than children, they are soon cavorting in the grass, the girl,
the boy and his dog. But the touch of they boy’s hand and his “lemony breath” on her face have
awakened something strange and thrilling in Sara’s heart.

But all too soon it is over. Frederick’s older brother Felix, steps into the picture. Felix cuffs his
brother, calls him a “natural,” and, dismissing Sara, offers to introduce him to “some real
yummies over there.”

The story ends with this line: “Only the dog looked back, licking his nose.”

The simple story is only about two book pages long. The action takes place in around 15
minutes, maybe less. The dialogue is limited to a few lines. There are no lengthy descriptions of
either the characters or of the village where they live.

The point-of-view character is Sara, and she is sketched with just a few deft strokes: her
housedress, her raisin eyes, her sympathy for the boy being mocked by her friends, the cement
scraping the back on her thighs as she slides off the water tank to join Frederick and his dog,
her bouncing with glee at the idea that a boy (though he might be only 11, and had a brown,
pudgy face and a squarish body), is actually walking with her and talking to her, her laughter
when Dolby pins her down on the grass, her wish that it had been the boy, not the dog who had
jumped her.

When Frederick abandons her and follows his brother’s lead, the reader is not told what Sara
feels. There is no need for it. The rest of the story has done its job.

Again, at the risk of oversimplification, I would say that this story is about being an outsider. And
the insight that it offers is that summer holds no real sweetness for someone like Sara… and,
perhaps, never will?
The point of teaching our students to recognize literary values is of course to enable them to
distinguish good work from mediocre or bad work, to allow them to realize that when the literary
values of a piece of writing are flawed—or nonexistent—in short, when the piece is badly written
—its other values are compromised.

Wooden characters, a dull predictable plot, trite phrases, contrived situations, unearned
sentiments—all of these may prevent readers from even reading the story to the end. Having
bothered to do so, they are unlikely to be moved by the story’s insight, since the manner of
delivery has been itself so unconvincing.

On the other hand, technical dexterity by itself, will not make a literary work great. Greatness
requires much more. To paraphrase Longinus’ theory of the sublime, greatness is the result of
profundity of thought, vehemence of passion, and elevation of language. Technical dexterity fits
into the third quality mentioned above. The other two have more to do with the artistic vision.
However, it is only through the third that the first two may be effectively communicated.

Another important point that students should understand is that “artistic insight” is not the same
as “political statement” or “moral lesson” (although some works of art may contain such
statements or lessons). Artistic insight is the artist’s discovery about a specific experience or
situation or about humanity itself. And in a good work of art, this discovery—this “truth,” if you
will—is never directly stated. That is sloppy writing, the result of either laziness or insufficient
skill.

In a story or play, it is enacted; it is dramatized by characters playing their roles as part of the
plot in a specific time and place. In a poem it is rendered through images and symbols and
mood and tone. This is only part of it. There is, of course, much more to the craft of writing than
what I have outlined here. But this will do for a start.

Having said that I must add that to be great, an artist must also be moral in the deep sense of
the word. John Gardner (in that marvelous classic, The Art of Fiction), Susan Sontag said it
better than I can:

“… The great writer’s authority consists of two elements. The first we may call, loosely, his sane
humanness; that is, his trustworthiness as a judge of things, a stability rooted in the sum of
those complex qualities of his character and personality (wisdom, generosity, compassion,
strength of will) to which we respond, as we respond to what is best in our friends, with instant
recognition and admiration, saying, ‘Yes, you’re right, that’s how it is!” (1991, 809)

More recently, Susan Sontag had this to say:

“In my view, a fiction writer whose adherence is to literature is necessarily someone who thinks
about moral problems: about what is just and unjust, what is better or worse, what is repulsive
and admirable, what is lamentable and what inspires joy and approbation. This doesn’t entail
moralizing in any direct or crude sense. Serious fiction writers think about problems practically.
They tell stories. They narrate. They evoke our common humanity in narratives with which we
can identify, even though the lives may be remote from our own. They stimulate our
imagination. The stories they tell enlarge and complicate—and, therefore, improve—our
sympathies. They educate our capacity for moral judgment.” (2007, 211)

Let me repeat that I believe that it is our role as teachers to help our students work through the
literary values in a story or poem in order to arrive at the insight it offers, and decide for
themselves whether the experience of reading—the worth of the insight, and the delight
produced by the gradual revelation of it—has been worth the effort.

I believe it is also part of our role to cultivate in our students an open-mindedness and a
curiosity about the new and the unfamiliar; to encourage them to accept the fact that much of
life is paradoxical, mysterious, and uncertain; to help them realize that what every literary work
offers is not always even a tentative answer, but a question or questions; and, even more
important, that the questioning in itself is valuable, that the questioning attitude is itself an
important value.

And it is a measure of how well we have done our jobs if our students do feel at the end of the
day that the encounter with the literary work has indeed been worth the effort.

It doesn’t matter whether they read handsome hard-bound, gilt-edged volumes or cheap
paperback editions; whether they read on their I-pads or their cell phones. What matters is that
they go on reading, and that they do it for the reasons Annie Dillard enumerated:

“Why are we reading if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery
probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our
intellects and our hearts? Can the writer renew our hope for literary forms? Why are we reading
if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us to
wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the
deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power?” (1989, 72-73.)

Reflections:
What for you makes a good writing? How does Hidalgo describe a good and effective writer?
Write your thoughts. Do not be limited by this prompt.