Educating the Literary Taste

by Paz Latorena

It was a Spanish thinker and moralist, Baltazar Gracian, who first used and
popularized the term, hombre de buen gusto, during the seventeenth century,
although by it, he simply meant a tactful person. The adoption of the term, in the
aesthetic field took place in France, according to literary history, and La Bruyere
affirms that during his time discussions centered on good taste and bad taste until
the term grew into wide use, and, by the beginning of the following century , had
established itself in Europe.

Certainly Addison, in one of his essays published in the Spectator, defined

literary taste as the discernment and appreciation of that which is fundamentally
excellent in literature; in another essay, he defined it as a faculty which discerns the
beauties of literature with pleasure and its imperfections with dislike. These two
definitions, according to Coleridge, make of literary taste a rational activity but with
a distinctly subjective bias.

It remained for Ruskin, however, to make the distinction between literary taste
and literary criticism with which it is being continuously confounded. He said that
literary criticism is a formal action of the intellect, a deliberate search for perfections
and imperfections by the application of universally accepted standards to al literary
composition; on the other hand, taste is the instant, almost instinctive preferring of
one literature to another, apparently for no other reason except that the first is
more proper to human nature. To have literary taste, therefore, from the foregoing
definitions and distinctions, is to have a feeling and an inclination for what is fine and
beautiful in literature, to savor and to appreciate it, and to dislike and reject what is
vulgar and tawdry in it.

There comes a time in the life of every man when he discovers for himself or is
led to discover the wide and varied world of literature, a world as wide and varied as
the life from which it draws its sustenance. It is a world of prose and poetry in which
the interplay of human passions, the greatness and the misery of man, his heroism
and his wickedness, his strength and his weakness, are portrayed with relentless
analysis by those whose minds have probed human life to its deepest and most
hidden springs of action. When he finds himself in that world, and eventually he will,
man will stand in need of good literary taste. For unless he knows how to
discriminate, how to separate truth from falsehood, good from bad, the specious
from the true, the meretricious from the sincere; unless he knows how not to take
the truth of the portrayal for the truth of the thing portrayed, unless he is convinced
that aptness of expression and brilliance of diction do not turn falsehood into truth,
his sense of literary values runs the risk of being falsified.

Fortunately, according to Sir Joshua Reynolds, taste can be taught. It can be

acquired by determined intercourse with good models. And it is one of the more
important functions of education; that is, to train the student, the seeker of light, to
distinguish between pleasures that are becoming to a man and pleasures that are
unbecoming to him, to find delight in what ought to delight him, and to feel
repulsion for what ought to repel him, especially in the field of literature.

The popularity of literature courses in high school and college augurs well for
the development of a sound, wholesome, literary taste. A great deal of work and the
responsibility falls on the teacher whose attitude towards the teaching of literature
should be, that the interpretation and appreciation of individual authors and their
works are important not so much in themselves but as means to the refinement of a
taste that will make of literature, when school days are over, a source of pure
pleasure and spiritual adventure for the student.

What literary ideals, then , should the teacher emphasize? What literary
standards should guide him in the selection of the literature, intercourse with which,
would develop good literary taste? In other words, what literary values make the
literature that can serve that end?

First, there is the intellectual value of literature. By intellectual value, we mean

something in a literary composition which makes the reader think to some purpose
so that his mental life is enriched and enlarged as a result.
 The other arts do not place great emphasis on intellectual value. Music, painting,
sculpture, the dance—all these appeal primarily through the senses and they convey
beauty through ear and eye. The sound and sight in themselves enrich the senses.
Yet all art has some intellectual appeal. How much more must literature, the vehicle
of which is articulate speech, appealing through the physical or the mind’s eye to the
mind itself and setting up a train of ideas, consider intellectual content important!

This does not mean, however, that all literature must present a profound truth,
solve a pressing intellectual problem, make its readers think long and deeply. In
intellectual value, as in other maters, there are degrees. We would be very reluctant
to condemn a charming romance by Stevenson, a sparkling comedy of the Quintero
brothers, the delightful society verses of the French, even the glamorous poetry of
Swinburne from all of which we have had so much and so many kinds of pleasure
even though the intellectual value be slight.

But all great literature, that of universal and enduring appeal, will, upon close
scrutiny, be found to contain a high degree of intellectual value. No play of
Shakespeare or Calderon de la Barca, no poem of Dante or Milton, no novel of
Tolstoi or Hardy is without the quality that appeals to the human mind and enlarges
it.

And the quality that appeals to the human mind and enlarges it is truth; better
still the truth as presented by literature. Not the truth that is mere information or
that is factual, but the truth that imagination and art transmute from merely dry
bones put together into breath and life. Not the truth supplied by romanticism
alone, or realism, or idealism or naturalism, but a truth that does not depend on
such methods but on something more fundamental. The romantic may be as true as
the realistic; the idealist may look at life as truly as a naturalist. The point is that
human life and human experiences which is the stuff of literature is a complex; it is
neither wholly material nor wholly spiritual; it is neither completely abscribed by the
details of physical existence nor entirely given to dreams. It is compounded of divine
ideals and animal desires, of large visions and petty anxieties. Hence the literature
that represents only one side of this compounded experience, invariably the more
sordid side—and this is our first brief against much o fthe literature of our own
days—contains only part of the truth and falsifies values.

From literature sans intellectual value, and therefore not literature at all, from
literature that contains half-truths and falsified human values, from literature that
leaves the reader unsatisfied, good taste should be trained to shrink from.

Second, there is the emotional value of literature which is as significant as its

intellectual value. An appeal to the emotions is the distinguishing mark of any
literature worth its name. And even the dullest of novels, the flattest of dramatic
failures, the worst poem show an endeavor to express and to arouse emotion.

For the purpose of literature, the term “emotion” may be made largely
inclusive. Under the shadows of the two main classes, pleasant and unpleasant
emotions, there walk many experiences that we commonly call moods, feelings,
attitudes.

Strangely enough, the so-called pleasant emotions have had very little appeal
for writers. Grief, pathos, fear, even horror have stirred the creative faculty more
that happiness and serenity, from Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound to Sheriff’s
Journey’s End. And the obvious explanation is that the life is more of the material of
tragedy and of pathos and the writer takes what gives him most and uses it.

However, literature proves that it can take the unpleasant and painful from life
and so represent them that pleasure and not pain is the resulting emotion of the
reader. Otherwise tragedy would repel and not attract. But in art, literature in
particular, there is always associated with the painful, even with the horrible,
something which arouses desirable emotions. The desirable element may be closely
associated with the painful stimulus itself or it may be in the effect which the painful
stimulus has upon the reader. The figure of a weak man might be contemptible, but
it arouses pity. An act of cruelty and injustice may give painful emotions to the
reader and at the same time stir moral indignation which in itself is healthy; the war
poems of Siegfried Sassoon would be almost unbearable because of the horrors they
depict were it not for the suggestions of heroism and sacrifice and for the hope they
carry, the eventual abolition of war. Here are emotions growing out of and involved
with our contempt but they satisfy, enlarge and ennoble. So in larger scenes of
horror, or tragedy, or pathos, our pleasure4 in the nobility that withstands pain and
evil, our sympathy with suffering lift us out of the realm of the merely unpleasant or
painful. Thus almost any emotion may be represented in art, no matter how painful,
no matter how unpleasant, if the imagination of the writer finds in it meanings and
associations that arouse wholesome and pleasurable feelings.

The statement that literature should appeal to the nobler and higher emotions
invariably brings forth the question of what the nobler and higher emotions are. To
which the answer is that they are those emotions and feelings and attitudes which
are ours because we are human beings and not animals, those emotions which
control our conduct as moral beings, those emotions that move us to right and
happy living. And those are the emotions, which a good literary taste instinctively
looks for in literature and without which literature would have very little to account
for its being.

Third, there is the ethical value of literature which has more frequently been a
storm center than either of the other content values. Emphasis on the ethical
significance of literature has been derided as frequently as it has been demanded.
Art for art’s sake has been a cry raised on and off, especially in modern times, but it
has been countered by the works of great didactic writers, from Plato to Tolstoy.

It is not for us here to take sides as to which the correct concept of the end of
literature is, didactic, that is for instruction as Plato says, or aesthetic, that is for
pleasure Aristotle holds. We have always favored Horace who believes in literature
that both teaches and delights. But this we know, that literature that is immoral does
not and cannot delight man, much less instruct him.

Judgment as to what constitutes immorality in literature varies greatly. Let us,

for one, consider the morality of expression. There are those who believe that
frankness of speech does not constitute immorality. In fact, they hold, it is healthier
to speak frankly of the normal facts of life than to veil imperfectly, even maliciously.
The use of concealing phrases which probably deceive nobody is often far more
suggestive, far more over stimulating to the imagination than modern frankness.
 We believe that there is a grain of truth in that contention. However, when
language goes beyond the normal to express abnormality, and so gives the reader
unhealthy information and stimulates the morbid imagination, then it is immoral. Its
aim becomes not that of expressing truth but obscenity. The conclusion of this
matter of morality or immorality in expression is that it is not so much a question of
the words that are used as the purposes for which they are used.

Which brings us to the consideration of the morality of the theme. There are
those who hold that a literary composition, the theme of which is immorality is not
necessarily immoral. The history of literature, they contend, shows that there are
few books that do not deal with vice and crime of some sort. Were we therefore to
reject as immoral all the literature dealing with vice and crime we would have to
banish creative writing as a whole. The Iliad, Oedipus Tyrannus, Macbeth, Faust are
not immoral books.

That we admit. But there are books that deal with similar themes and are
definitely immoral. What makes the difference?

Obviously, the answer lies in the purpose and aim of the writer and in his
emphasis. If the aim of the writer is to focus the attention of the readers upon evil,
for evil’s own sake, his purpose is degrading; consequently his book is immoral.

The realist will say that the writer portraying life should present vice as
attractive. True. But the attractiveness of vice is not the whole truth about it. Great
writers have presented vice as attractive but they have also presented the ashes into
which that attractiveness turns, if we yield to its lure. That is representing the whole
of life, which usually includes reaction, and later, retribution.

An appeal to facts shows that all supreme literature has a positive ethical value.
Creative writing, emanating from and dealing with man’s experience, must have
some reference to his conduct. And since we are men and not animals, since we are
moral beings with a conscience, good literary taste demands that in all literature
there should be found a positive influence that will bring us higher values, both as
individuals and as members of a social order.
 There is witnessed in the world today a cult of the formless and the ugly in the
various arts of human life, but it manifests itself more strongly and shamelessly in
literature, particularly in the novel and the drama. And as for the motion picture, it
fairly reeks with it. The effect on society and individual is distressing.

I conclude, education must erect barriers against rampant vulgarity. And good
taste is not only a barrier but a means of de-vulgarization; a taste that is attuned to
the fine and beautiful, a taste out of sympathy with the false and the ignoble, a taste
that would be one of the instruments for richer living.