This blog post examines how literature, through poetic truth, reveals depths of emotion and perception beyond faithful reproduction of facts, exploring how fiction acquires its own unique truthfulness.
Literature depicts plausible events—things that could reasonably occur according to the world’s laws—while history deals with accidental, one-time occurrences. Thus, the perspective that literature narrates a more universal truth than history corresponds to the classical argument defending poetic truth against criticism of literature’s fictional nature. Nevertheless, writers seem to have long felt a kind of inferiority complex before historians. This was because the prevailing notion that anything not matching actual events could not be true remained strong. The fact that early modern European novelists often claimed their works were true stories or history clearly demonstrates how deeply rooted this notion was.
Entering the 20th century, the concept of poetic truth was again questioned by followers of positivism. They held that the truth of a proposition could be judged through proof by logical laws or empirical verification, and that a proposition incapable of being judged was meaningless. From this standpoint, literary statements are generally nothing more than false or meaningless tactics. For instance, the line “Winter is a rainbow made of steel” from Yi Yuk-sa’s “The Climax” is seen as a lie that insists the impossible is possible, or mere nonsense that stubbornly claims existence without proof.
In response, Richards actively defended poetic truth. He distinguishes between the ‘scientific use’ and the ‘emotional use’ of language. The truth of language used scientifically is determined through proof or verification, but the truth of language used emotionally is determined by its effect on the recipient’s subjective emotions and attitudes. Richards argues that the language of poetry is precisely this language of emotional use, and that poetic tactics are pseudo-tactics—forms of speech justified by their effectiveness in releasing or organizing our impulses and attitudes. While his view has the limitation of reducing poetic truth to subjective effect, it provides an alibi that lends a kind of legitimacy to poetic truth by focusing on the specificity of literary language.
Indeed, poetic license, common in classical Western verse, granted writers creative freedom to deviate to some extent from general linguistic conventions or facts. While poetic license is known for permitting departures from normative grammar for specific aesthetic effects like meter, it was applied more broadly to historical and geographical facts as well. Writers enjoyed a kind of immunity for well-intentioned falsehoods.
The ‘paradox’ emphasized by New Criticism theorists as a fundamental attribute of poetic language also demonstrates that the truthfulness of literary language can be acknowledged in a different way than logical language. Paradox appears contradictory on the surface but is actually a tactic that reveals truthfulness in a new light. For instance, in Kim Sowol’s “Azalea Blossoms,” the speaker tells the departing beloved to “tread lightly upon” the flowers he has sown. This passage appears superficially contradictory. Yet the complex emotions often intertwined at parting—resentment and self-reproach, lingering attachment and resignation—are rendered all the more vivid precisely through such paradoxical expression. The fact that our complex experiences and the perceptions and emotions stemming from them can sometimes only be revealed through paradoxes that transcend logical norms demonstrates another possibility of poetic license.
That said, inconsistencies with facts or logical contradictions are not always tolerated as poetic license. What matters is whether such tactics can be accepted without strain within the overall context of the work. In “Climax,” the speaker’s desperate situation—standing on “a plateau exhausted to its end” with “not even a foothold to step on”—is already presented, which is why the poetic tactic gains persuasiveness. Poetic licentiousness is ultimately a kind of contextual licentiousness, and the licentiousness of literary tactics is judged by the consistency and persuasiveness revealed within the context of the entire work.
Viewed this way, a path opens to discuss the licentiousness even of pure imagination or fantasy. This perspective once again recalls the classical view of poetic licentiousness. While it is difficult to assert that contextual plausibility directly connects to the principles of the world, the lists of ‘good works’ distilled by both perspectives share a considerable overlap. Works within this overlap will, at the very least, acquire a contextual plausibility that is validated within the context of the internal coherence of the fictional world the work presents.
