What Is Literature And Life?

There is an intimate connection between literature and life, rather life is the subject-matter of literature. Life provides the raw material on which literature imposes an artistic form. Literature is the communication of the writer's experience of life, but this connection between literature and life is not as simple as it seems. It has always been open to polemics among the great and noted critics of the world. Both reality and imagination play their role in great literature. Literature is not merely a photographic copy of real life, nor is it a complete denial of life.

The writer derives his inspiration from real life, but all the material that he gathers by means of his various faculties is subjected to a process of recreation in the mechanism of imagination, and the resultant work is not the same as the material which provides the inspiration for the creative process. Art is a manifestation of the essential creativity of nature, through the creative mind of the artist.

As such the literature has deep affiliations with life. All great pieces of literature are "true to life". It stimulates us to noble deeds. The great books, therefore, are not "a mighty bloodless substitutes for life".