There is So Much More to Literature

by Isabella Tarttelin

By definition, art is described by Oxford Languages as: ‘the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power’. At first thought one thinks that art is purely paints and brushes and canvases, that art is only the interpretation of the world through acrylics and watercolours, which actually pains me how wrong they are. Since the dawn of time, since the Stone Age caveman evolved and since mammoths roamed the Earth, we have been using language to interpret the world around us, even if it was simply a grunt to indicate food. As we grew, so did the language, birthing literature and poetry and novels. I find it so fascinating that we can manipulate simplicities such as talking and writing, to spark great images in our heads.

Whilst I read I lose myself in the words; they blur around me and I can disappear into this realm built on smiles and metaphors, adjectives and personification, adverbs and verbs. This is art. This is an expression. This is an interpretation of the wonder given to us: life. The great leaders of poetry: Keats, Wordsworth and more, spectacularly build these realms so beautifully that I am continuously in awe when I read their works. It almost angers me how at ease they are, smoothly and deftly interpreting emotion and nature and society into words, artfully expressing such topics exactly so. Robert Frost himself beautifully says that ‘Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.’

Complicated topics like emotion are hard to describe in itself, let alone with words, that's what makes literature so impressive for me. ‘Expression or application of human creative skill and imagination’. There is no doubt that painting comes under this category of ‘art’, but to express visual images into words is more complicated. To identify such emotion, then find the correct words and flow to successfully depict how you feel requires such talent, just as to paint and draw something does. I wonder why can’t we have museums for literature - have  some pages of books pinned up and let people admire its beauty with words. Because I for one believe that literature should be something to be adored just as much as paintings are.