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Schule > Englisch > Ausarbeitungen, Interpretationen und Zusammenfassungen > Literature

Literatur – a personal comment

In my life I had the opportunity to enjoy musicals, concerts, movies, operas, theatre-plays, and books. From all these experiences, literature is the most impressive medium to me. The musicals I found sometimes quite confusing. Mostly I found the concerts I saw overloaded. The movies were good – few of them – but they limited the fantasy of the audience by the interpretation of the director. The operas were abstract, the theatre–performances even more. Literature and lyrics are very important to me. I write prose and lyrics by myself, and I improve my writing through reading books. Literature has an important value for me and I decided to study it at the university. With my studying I will not only concentrate on German authors. I want to speak many languages, in such a way as to enable me to read the original works and can understand them. Because literature is a very fine play with words and some ideas get loss in translation.
Literature is an instrument to open the mental horizon. It is a growing of knowledge and especially of experiences one can make without risk, because the one who shares the thoughts of a protagonist, his feelings and emotions is not in danger to experience the pain of this (common) reality. So the learning by experiencing the reality of other lives in literature is not so dangerous and threatening than experiencing it by oneself, Literature is a safe methode to gain knowledge and experiences.
Compared to movies, theatre-plays and musicals, books allow you to have a journey by your own fantasy.
But what is the sense of literature?
Information?
Communication?
Entertainment?
Answer: It has a bit of all of this.
First of all literature helps the escape out of a dull world without emotions and dreams into a more intensive world, which belongs only to the reader, the author and the protagonists. And for some people it is an opportunity to pull back into a softer world, wherein maybe is not so much pain like in the common reality.
But even books can bring disappointment. These disappointments are never that heavy-loaded than the ones in realitiy, because you can simply get yourself the next book and dive into a “virgin” world. Most people are more willing to give books a second chance than other people.
Specially the relationship of young people to literature is very important. There is a chance that frustrated juveniles may find a common sense and an understanding of their problems easier by fictive characters than by reality.
What is it that literature has to carry to enhance the reader and pull him out of his reality?
An author must have the ability to paint pictures out of words and speech like a musician plays with music and creates a landscape of visions. A writer can use simple words as well as difficult words.

In my opinion, there are eight points that literature has to fulfil to be classified as good:
First quality: The first and most important quality of literature is the ability to reach out for the readers emotions and call upon them. With that the author can not hesitate to be radical or to break rules (like socials norms or general rules for writers).
Second quality: Every sentence has to be an aesthetic harmony in itself and must be irreplaceable.
Third quality: The author should bring the known content exactly to the essential point, so the reader knows what he means and gets an addition to his own experience. So he would think: “Yes, exactly. That is what I know.”
Fourth quality: The book should transfer a new message or transfer an old message in a new way.
Fifth quality: The main characteres should be strong and convincing in their acting.
Sixth quality: Literature must open the opportunity to the reader to identify with feelings, places, persons and thoughts, but also to have the feeling to experience something new.
Seventh quality: Is to create a personal binding between the reader and the author's authentic truth should be created.
Eighth quality: The author has to fulfil all eight criterion in his own style.
The relationship between author and reader is like a reversing trust: The author opens an intimate world to the reader. And the reader is willing to be taken into the author's world.
A real good book is not finished after reading. It joins the reader the whole time and stays with him. The reader notices that parts of the feelings from the book reading he carries along through the day or even through the week. He feels the depression, the anger, the frustration, the love of his protagonist. He tries to figure out solutions to the conflicts and problems of the protagonist and how he would have done it. He somehow mergers into the fictive person even after the book is closed and finished.
I indeed had experiences with great literature and it took influence on my life. Even if good literature is rare and the hope for a next generation with talented authors small, both exist. I always search for them.
860 words

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