A while ago, I was watching a video that was talking about some of the works of Yukio Mishma, one of Japan’s most celebrated postwar authors. It struck me as kind of weird that his work wasn’t plastered anywhere, wasn’t advertised, and wasn’t even widely discussed. This video got a meager 273 views compared to 1.5k views for another video, from the same channel, that talked about the philosophy of J.D. Salinger. I found this kind of odd and also deeply disappointing. As a person who can at least appreciate the transcending messages that works from foreign cultures seek to convey, I was somewhat surprised that a lot of people weren’t looking abroad for good literature: many Americans seem to assume that good literature can only be found relatively close to us and that that’s all that the elite literary world can truly offer.
For quite some time, the literary minds of the many have been dominated by the thoughts of the few. Most people grow up reading a small, select grouping of works which are considered ¨refined¨ or ¨superior¨ to other forms of literature. We can look no further than what is considered classical & proper – Russian, French, English, German, and American literature have completely conquered the entire realm of novels, short stories, and related works. Russia, for example, has produced great authors, from Tolstoy to Dostoevsky to Chekov; France had authors like Proust, Hugo, and Balzac; England, & the United Kingdom in general, is known for Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, and Tolkien.
While each of the authors mentioned are admirable and brilliant in their own right, there is a perturbing pattern when we discuss ¨great¨ works: each work and each writer is from the collective region that is the West. There seems to be no substantive discussion or insightful debate about critical non-Western work in mainstream culture. We talk about War and Peace, but not about The Tale of Genji. Make no mistake, this applies to non-Western societies as well. Even though readers in Asia, Africa, and the general Middle East delight in Western writings, indigenous work has often been outright neglected, and people in countries like the U.S, seldom read Rumi, Yasunari, or Tagore as much. Why is this? It’s simply a result of too little emphasis on foreign books and literature and the supercilious belief that anything not made from the constructs of Western culture or a Western outlook is objectively of less quality.
The idea that Western literature is the pinnacle and insuperable in content, meaning, narration, exposition or whatever arbitrary benchmark, is obviously a flawed idea that deserves to be vehemently challenged. Great stories can and have been written outside America & Europe, and many of our modern world’s greatest storytellers are, in fact, not Western. Although different writers may express ideas in different ways and with varying intents, each work which vividly and thoroughly explores a topic or topics of great importance should be considered a great work in the worldy sense. Countless novels flow and weave between sentences to create motifs, general themes, and wonderful plots. The synopsis of a book like Journey to the West can be measured equally with a book like The Brothers Karamazov. What we need to realize is that human beings, given certain experiences, circumstances, and introspection, can create meaningful and valuable stories, no matter where they are or in what way they write.
It’s time for us to come to the understanding that every piece of literature in world history has its own shine. When I read The Tale of Genji, I felt the feelings of solitude & isolation that Genji had. I could understand the motivations for his conduct and the results of it. Likewise, when I read The Romance of the Three Kingdoms a few months ago, I received an inspiring tale of romantic heroism & patriotism, of intrepid people attempting to salvage their country when tyranny threatened everything.
By all accounts, our education system needs to do much, much better when it comes to respecting foreign literature. A word or sentence from a writer across the globe some millenia ago can carry just as much weight as one from our country today. Ultimately, we are only limited by our own ignorance and biases. It is clear to me that an interest in and respect for foreign literature will not only make us more open-minded but also transform us into individuals who are more sympathetic to the vicissitudes of the world and the sometimes grueling, sometimes resplendent realities of nature.
Skyline Learning Center 