Making Sense of ‘Literary Sensibility’

By Dr. Siri Galhenage

(Psychiatrist)

The exclusive role of literature is the transmission of complexities of human experience, calling into play our emotional and intellectual faculties. Literary analysts observe, that great works of art and literature have the capacity to ‘convey serious truths and significant ideals’, ‘broaden our understanding’, ‘kindle our imaginations’, ‘raise our spirits’ and ‘enhance our sensibility’. Seen from a psychological perspective, such therapeutic ingredients in Literature have the potential to assist us in elevating our lives to a higher plane of existence, bringing order and meaning to the seeming chaos of daily living.

At the heart of the above observation is the concept of literary ‘Sensibility’ – an idea that has shaped modern consciousness with regard to the evaluation and interpretation of literature. Variously interpreted, the concept has undergone transformation over time. The purpose of this essay is to explore the many nuances of its meaning and to underscore its worth.

Origin and Transformation

The term sensibility is an offshoot of the word ‘sense’ with its roots in Latin [‘sentire’: to feel]. Borrowed by neuroscience, ‘sense’ refers to the faculty of ‘perceiving’ by the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. The term is broadly synonymous with the higher cerebral functions of cognition, judgement, discernment and intuition [‘the sixth sense’] governed by the ‘sensorium’ – the component of the brain that deals with receiving and interpreting external stimuli.

The word ‘sense’ has made a vast contribution to the English vocabulary by generating a range of derivatives with shades of meaning. It has given birth to such kindred words as ‘sensitive’ [being sympathetic when dealing with the needs or feelings of others]; ‘sensible’ [having good sense or judgement]; ‘sensuous’ [coined by Milton to suggest the idea of being alive to sensations], transcending the baser term ‘sensual’ with connotations of sexual arousal; and SENSIBILITY, amongst many others.

Geoffrey Chaucer, the legendary English poet of the middle Ages, widely considered to be the father of English poetry, is credited for having conceived the notion of sensibility. The idea was fostered in the 18th Century by a group of philosophers and writers who formed the so called ‘literary cult of sensibility’. Initially used to refer to individual response to physical and emotional stimuli [exaggerated and self-indulgent, implying individual susceptibility], the meaning of the word transformed into understanding and experiencing the feelings of others, akin to empathy.

The above themes were soon picked up by novelists, such as Jane Austen, who created her masterpiece, ‘Sense and Sensibility’ as a parody of emotional response, featuring two sisters who both seek love, endure loss and find happiness in their own way – Marianne: passionate and impulsive; Elinor: dignified and thoughtful, in their responses.

Sensibility, from a modern perspective, appears to cover the whole spectrum of literary activity, suggesting a highly developed emotional and intellectual capacity for both literary creativity as well as literary analysis.

The Deeper Realm in Literature

Every reader could be considered a latent literary analyst. But those with literary sensibility are regarded as having developed a more refined ability to elicit, discern, comprehend and respond to the deeper layers of meaning of a text [the subterranean realm], signifying a heightened level of consciousness.

What is the source of this subterranean realm of knowledge [wisdom] in great art and literature which the discerning mind could draw from? The legendary poet Milton believed that it is God given. But there is evidence to suggest that great literary figures drew heavily from mythological tales and folklore which the celebrated Swiss Psychiatrist Carl Jung asserted embodied ancient wisdom – ‘the storehouse of universally shared experience’ which he called our ‘collective unconscious’ – lying deeper than the ‘individual unconscious’.

Ancient wisdom regarded the universe as alive, and all its objects – humans, plants, animals, celestial bodies – and natural phenomena, in continuous interaction within it, bringing about both favourable as well as adverse outcomes. The preliterate humans were yet unaware of the biological and physical forces that controlled the ecosystems around them. Confined to their natural habitat, they were, by necessity, constantly in tune with their environment, inventing narratives loaded with myths, creating images on rocks, performing spiritual ceremonies with totems and taboos necessary to bring order and meaning to their lives. The experience of their daily life merged imperceptibly into mythological tales and folklore which has now gained the tag of ‘art’.

Jung hypothesised that the collective unconscious was a reservoir of ‘predispositions and potentialities’ to act or react in certain ways which have universal meaning. He called them ‘archetypes’. These predispositions which are inherited collectively compel us to experience life in a manner conditioned by the past history of mankind. By endless repetition such experiences have become engraved in our psychic constitution but with some modifications during psychological evolution. The archetypes generate an abundance of metaphors which make up the arts and are the building blocks of creative thought.

Thus, the arts appear to have originated in antiquity, in the real world; it’s defining quality being the expression of human experience. The works of art that endure embody universal traits that are deeply humanistic and are faithful to nature. They are judged by their precision and their adherence to human nature. Over centuries such universal themes have strengthened the creative powers of the human mind and expressed in ‘original’ works of art.

Shakespeare and the Archetypal Legends

Shakespeare, unarguably the greatest dramatist and poet of all time in the English language, and perhaps in any language, drew heavily from archetypal legends and folklore. For example, Hamlet, widely regarded as his magnum opus, has its roots in the archetypal legend of Amleth, first recorded in the Gesta Danorum written by the 12th century Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus – a legend with parallel plots in the folklore of other cultures, embedded in the ‘psychological heritage of humanity’. Hamlet portrays a wide array of patterns of emotion, behaviour and relationships drawn from our deeply embedded storehouse of universally shared experience.

Shakespeare, by using this knowledge, exercised his creative genius to give dramatic expression not only to the concerns of his contemporary audiences of the Elizabethan era but also spoke to us in the modern world. Many literary analysts and others in recent history have exercised their sensibility in exploring the moral, socio-political and psychological depths in Hamlet while romancing his written word – Carl Marx and Sigmund Freud amongst them.

Possibly drawn in by Hamlet’s invitation to ‘pluck out the heart of my mystery’, Freud made psychoanalytic explorations into the psyche of the young prince and his relationship with his mother who in ‘indecent haste’ married the usurper who killed his father.

Many a psychiatrist would be in awe of Shakespeare’s descriptions of ‘Melancholia’ and ‘Mania’ in Hamlet and Ophelia, respectively, long before theoretical frameworks were developed in the diagnosis of such mental disorders. Modern day neurochemistry has established a biological predisposition to the above conditions bringing about a consilience of literary sensibility and science. Sensibility, thus, has the potential to act as a driving force in expanding knowledge.

In his monograph ‘What Is Art’, the celebrated Russian author Leo Tolstoy, renowned for his deep social conscience, asserted that a moral message should transcend aesthetic beauty in a piece of Art, including literary Art. His work is abounding in psychological insights too. All such ingredients are amply depicted in his literary artistry. If the young reader is unable to afford the much needed sustained attention in reading Tolstoy’s novels, ‘War and Peace’, ‘Anna Karenina’ and ‘resurrection’, I suggest reading his popular novellas, ‘Cossacks’, ‘Death of Ivan Ilych’, ’Kreutzer Sonata’, Hadji Murad’ and ‘How Much Land Does a Man Need’, which provide a window to his literary landscape.

A good piece of literature provides a basis for the cultivation of social conscience, fostering of moral wisdom, development of psychological insights and the appreciation of beauty [aesthetics] in varying degree, elevating human existence to a higher plane. In my view, the word sensibility in modern terminology encompasses the ability to explore the above matters of considerable human interest, entombed in the deeper vaults of literary treasures.

Early Reading and Sensibility

There is a close association between brain development, reading ability and literary sensibility. We are not born with reading aptitude; the ability does not develop automatically. Reading has to be learned. Helping children learn to read early in their lives facilitates neuronal development by the integration of several systems of the brain enhancing its cognitive capacity – an important dynamic in developing literary sensibility in later life. Reading a story regularly to a child and engaging him or her in meaningful conversation that flows on from the stories, helping them to look beyond the narrative, is considered to be the best predictor of later reading interest and the accomplishment of literary sensibility.

In addition, research shows that early literacy in children plays a key role in academic achievement in later life by facilitating their cognitive skills such as attention, concentration, working memory and flexibility in thinking. It also places them on a trajectory of personality development helping them in enhancing their self-esteem, interpersonal skill, organisational skill and emotional stability, assisting them to comprehend and cope with the crises that we confront in daily living – thus strengthening the structure of individual personality and by extension the nature of society and civilisation.

Losing Our Romance with the Written Word

There is a growing perception that we are losing our romance with the printed word. We live in a hurried world, and most people, especially the young, are showing a decline in the amount of time spent on reading. Intellectual and emotional engagement with a text demands time, motivation and focussed concentration. The digital age we live in fosters ‘light reading’: entranced before the computer or phone screen we cruise websites for a quick pick up of information and entertainment, and to remain connected. The Net has come to stay and it plays a vital role in our modern day living. But it does not provide a platform for ‘deep reading’ [a notion advocated by Sven Berkerts] that fosters sensibility a good text of literature can offer.

We have an ancient literary tradition, the custodian of our values – the very foundation of our civilisation. People of my generation will well remember the following verse from Vadan Kavi Potha: ‘Allata singawath rasa nethi kevili kaka/ Walkola bima athuta nidhi noleba duk thaka/ Kalgiya redhi verali henda deli kunen waka/ Elmen akuru uganivu idiri weda thaka’ – a crude translation being, ‘Learn your letters with love, for future benefit, despite having to face hardship and impoverishment’. The word ‘akuru’, here, connotes a broader education.

The decline of the printed word, and hence the decline of sensibility, and the rise of much less civilising forms of communication and entertainment, has led to the poverty and emptiness of our popular culture. The decline in morality, intimately linked to the decline of sensibility, is more degrading than the economic woes that we are afflicted with today. At the root of so much social disorder we witness around us, such as the wanton destruction of nature, our lack of understanding of our common humanity, our greed and self-indulgence and the heinous crimes that we often hear of, are but the outward manifestations of a collective soul deprived of sensibility.

[sirigalhenage@gmail.com]

References

David Mikics: [2013] Slow Reading in a Hurried Age. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press

Edward O. Wilson [1998] Consilience – The Unity of Knowledge Vintage Books, A Division of Random House. Inc.

J.A.C. Brown: [1961, 1964] Freud and the Post-Freudians, Penguin Books.