Dana Gioia: The Importance of Literature - 'Remembering What It Would Impoverish Us To Forget'

The Importance of literature in telling the story of an individual, and of a People, and the dangers of losing possession of that narrative to hostile forces:

"The ancient people know that they need to know the stories of their ancestors. If they don't know where they came from, how can they possibly know where they're going?? We lead our lives by the stories we tell.
I've known a number of people who have killed themselves. All of them were people who felt they were trapped in a narrative they could not change."

"Robert Frost defined poetry as: "A way of remembering what would impoverish us to forget"
The ancient people know that they need to know the stories of their ancestors. If they don't know where they came from how can they possibly know where they're going?? And those stories are embodied in poems.

The purpose of poetry, like the purpose of art, is to awaken us to our humanity. That is why society needs art. We lead our lives by the stories we tell. I met a number of people at the reception and they would tell me a story about themselves. It wasn't even the content of the story, (but) the whole order of the story, where they chose to begin, where they chose to go, who they chose to acknowledge, that told me all kinds of things about themselves that they might not have been consciously revealing. Each of us as our life changes has to revise the story of ourselves. Part of being healthy is to be a writer, to constantly update your story to include new people, to deal with new events, to deal with new problems you're facing.

That is why everyone needs to study literature. Because unless you learn from an early age the multiplicity of stories, the variety of characters, how when you run into problems there are rescues and reversals and plot twists, you will be in trouble, because you will not be able to deal with the constant challenges of your life.

I've known a number of people who have killed themselves. All of them were people who felt they were trapped in a narrative they could not change."

Dana Gioia

The Importance of Literature To Awaken Us to Our Identity and Humanity
(Mirror) Excerpts, Dana Gioia - Not by Bread Alone: Why Beauty is Not a Luxury but a Human Necessity
Roberta Green Ahmanson interviews Dana Gioia, poet, critic, and former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts at the Museum of Biblical Art on June 12, 2012.

“The greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.”
(Charles A. Lindberg, Speech at Des Moines, Iowa, September 11, 1941).

"Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience... from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation."
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

"Midnight comes often in the dusk of my life, when
I look back upon all that I have survived. The deaths
of so many for whom I cared and loved in my heart,
have expunged all sense of glory from my thoughts.
To have escaped those random fates has lost all
triumph.

I know you have seen me, friend, my lined face
and silent regard, the cold calcretions that slow
my embittered pace, as I walk down the last
years, clothed in darkness as are all old men,
haunted by memories . . .
'

The Road Before You
Jhorum of Capustan
https://i.imgur.com/qIR32rv.png

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