V a l u e1 8 7writings of Shakespeare, Milton, Blake and Yeats resonate so deeply
of their own times and places that they can echo down the centu-
ries and across the globe.
No work of literature is literally timeless. They are all products of
specific historical conditions. To call some books timeless is just a
way of saying that they tend to hang around a lot longer than ID
cards or shopping lists. Even then, however, they may not hang
around forever. Only on Judgement Day will we know if Virgil or
Goethe managed to make it through to the end of time, or whether
J.K. Rowling beat Cervantes by a short head. There is also the ques-
tion of spread in space. If great works of literature are universal,
then presumably Stendhal or Baudelaire must in principle speak as
relevantly to the Dinka or Dakota as they do to Westerners, or at
least to some Westerners. It is true that a Dinka might come to
appreciate Jane Austen just as well as a Mancunian. To do so,
however, he or she would need to learn the English language, gain
some knowledge of the Western novel form, grasp something of the
historical background against which Austen’s fiction makes sense,
and so on. To understand a language is to understand a form of life.
The same would be true of an English reader intent on exploring
the riches of Inuit poetry. In both cases, one needs to reach beyond
one’s own cultural environs to enjoy the art of another civilisation.
There is nothing impossible about that. People do it all the time.
But there is more to understanding the art of another culture than
there is to understanding a theorem produced by its mathemati-
cians. You can grasp a language only by grasping more than a
language. Nor is it true that Austen is meaningful to other societies
simply because everyone, English, Dinka and Inuit alike, shares the
same humanity. Even if they do, it would not be sufficient grounds
for them to enjoy Pride and Prejudice.