LITERATURE: ...SHOULD WE KILL HER?

Juan Carlos Soto

Publicado en Capital Letter No. 4

Noviembre de 2003

   Literature is a beautiful art which represents  through letters the human nature in all respects. It is the glass that contains the writers' souls, the essence of the senses. It can be compared to a muted voice guiding the reader's mind in a particular story, where it is possible to see, reflected, a plural history to many human beings.

   As a reader, I have experienced feelings that are totally indescribable to others. Nevertheless, I know they can be similar to those sensations felt by another reader. When we readers casually meet up, due to a common reading, it is a situation which permits us to share feelings freely. However, when we are asked to expose them in a very formal manner there is something that affects the feeling. In simple words, guided literary studies are not as effective as the free ones. Allow me to explain my point through a short story as an example.

   You are a doctor who knows all about medicine. You have the perfect wife; she is extremely beautiful, clever, sophisticated, and understanding when you have to leave home at midnight. And she has something that keeps all your attention when she asks for it. You suspect there is something inside her that drives you crazy most of the time. You really love this woman. But suddenly, she dies from a strange condition that cannot be cured. Because you adored her when she was alive, you decide to have the autopsy done. Then you, using all your science, discover that the special thing you loved from her was a device.

   Such a foolish thing makes you think "she was not so special after all", and perceive her not as the woman but as a woman. It is possible to say that when you revise deeply your favourite literary texts, those which have caused a wonderful effect on your soul, you see them like a simple order of interesting ideas developed with letters, as a series of well related events and no more. I am not trying to accuse literary studies for revealing the magic in literature. My aim is to show a reason -I dare doing it!- to ask literature professors to guide students through the path of sensibility I have mentioned above, not by the autopsy of our beloved art inspired by muses, literature.