Of Recapitulation

"The best parts of a poet's work, [T.S. Eliot] says, are not those which are the most original, but those in which the voice of his predecessors can be most clearly heard speaking through him" - Peter Barry

This above is a quote from the book I'm reading - Beginning Theory, although I could've done without "beginning" with a little pride (truth isn't always what I'm after; indeed, it appears I am seldom in need for it). It is attributed to T.S. Eliot (although most certainly not a direct quote), and describes his niche of the liberal humanist movement. 

The chapter has by and large introduced various ideas shaping and forming literary theory as it stands today, and perhaps English studies as a whole, many of them based on literature being used not solely as a device for entertainment but also as a spiritual and educational guide. Understandably, of course, considering the time period most of the ideas of that fashion were created, and the concept of literature as entertainment appears to have grown truly first after the heavier waves of the Industrial Revolution. It makes perfect sense, of course; in a time when even the most basic education - being able to read and so on - is a precious privilege, what little written fiction you might have couldn't be spared for such a mundane and superfluous matter as entertainment. And as religion faded and common literacy grew, this emphasis started to move towards a purely spiritual basis, and the idea of literature as nothing but entertainment grew.

Keep in mind, of course, that these are just theories and ideas of single people; they have not attained some kind of global credulity, and they likely never will due to the fact that most of them were laid down by people in the 19th century.

What we thus are led to believe is that writers need to act somewhat of a historian - someone not only wizened by the flow and ebb through the ages, but who is in the very act of preserving it for future generations. Indeed, as literature is often the sole remnant of entire civilizations, their importance in determining the core stanza of lost communities is immenduous. Such as the works of Aristotle, Plato, Socrates et al - and how important they are in basing our own contemporary system of beliefs.

So what Eliot is saying - and what some of his predecessors said before him, suitably - is a vital pointer to what the ancient Greek philosophers must have thought themselves. Remind yourselves of Plato, the eager student, recording many of the conversations that Socrates held with the inhabitants of Athens, and later made immortal through his Socratic dialogues. Whether or not this was indeed Plato's greatest work, as the principle quoted above would hold, we cannot say, but it is surely most of how we understand Socrates, and perhaps more importantly how we understand Plato.

Of course, literature as such held a vividly different place in society before the rise of the printing press, and much later (and far more importantly) common literacy. But it might be worthwhile to remind ourselves once or twice about what our predecessors said, and reflect upon it in what we write.