But is it possible to claim that the only reality of literature is literature itself and at the same time maintain a responsible approach to intellectual labour?
Responsibility implies an acknowledgement that every choice has a consequence in the world – a definition that seems diffuse enough to not be controversial. The choice to see literature as something in the world or arising from the world but not strictly speaking something of this world, a something that occupies a reality of its own, amounts to a withdrawal from the world. The stance I was defending yesterday is one that refuses its own consequences: it turns literature and the criticism it gives birth to into a snake obliviously devouring its own tail, while the world goes about its business around it.
And maybe it would not be too bad to assert that literature is practically and politically useless, moreover, that its beauty stands in an inverse relation to its lack of utility so that the very fact that we have literature even though we do not need it is the best reason for us to carry on reading and writing – maybe such an assertion would not be too bad had it not been that it is only possible to assert this because of certain political conditions that enable certain individuals to concern themselves with the stuff of literature rather than the mere survival.
Which is not to say that we live in an ideal world, but that we live in a world that at least gives us the opportunity to imagine the ideal. And therefore is it not our responsibility, as idealists, to contribute to the maintenance of such a world – at least until we can find a way of improving it?
Thoughts fallen by the wayside 