Can literature "tell the truth" better than other Arts or Areas of Knowledge?
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ANSWERS: 3
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Good question... Literature is quite a wide field (poetry, essays, fiction, biography, journalism, drama, screenplays, etc.) and it speaks - obviously, because it's made of words. The other arts (music, painting, sculpture, photography, etc.) don't use words in the same way - the individual has to find their own words to describe the work. Can a person always have the right words to hand to do that? Can truth (or even just "significance") be better realised through your own words or those of someone else? I'd be tempted to say that other people's words can bring us closer to the truth than our own - we can only think the words available to us; a library can think words we'd never conceive of. So, my vote is for literature. :)
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Jean Cocteau once said, "The poet is a liar who always tells the truth." In many ways that's true of the other forms of literature too. There's human experience in all literature I'm aware of - and therein lies it's 'truth'. For everyone, truth is where you find it. Some find it in maths calculations, some in music, some in visual arts, some in nature. We're all different, and for many literature doesn't quite provide what they're looking for. For many more, however, it does, and for that reason I'd say the answer is 'yes'.
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I believe that while literature can tell the truth with its own intensity the same can be said of others. Music for an example…..I love music, literature comes second to music in my world…..there are some truths that I can only assign to literature as there are some that I can only assign to visual arts and some only to music….in each case I say “some truths” because not all writings state real life experiences like in biographies…..you have novels ….these can’t be said to “tell the truth”…..while most of music is based on life experience (influenced by the author or singer of the song)…there are songs that do not necessarily tell the real-life story…….visual arts like paintings are also either purely imagined or tell the story!!!
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