There are many people who do not believe in the power of creative literature (or is there such a thing as creative literature?) and the throne that it occupies in the intellectual world, to the point of criticizing it and the people involved in it. Most of these people are the objectivists, those who see things point-blank. For these people, the realm of literature is the imagination, and that literature must not go beyond it – it must not invade the world of reality. That truth and beauty (for what is literature but beauty?) cannot mix.

Literature is beauty, yes… For who will write about anything that is ugly? Well, people write about everything, even ugly things… but do these people write about something because it is ugly? I don’t think so. They may have seen it in its ugliness, but people will write about it because it has something that attracts them towards it – and what has the capacity to attract but only the beautiful things?

However, the point of argument that many people raise against literature when it comes to portraying the truth has to do with the very thing that it is consumed with beauty. And because there are so many things in this world which are not beautiful (and to that I must agree), many people say that literature is not capable of portraying these things as they are – in their own nature: ugly and despicable. That in as much as literature tries to catch these things and attempt to show them in their real color, it cannot. If it does, in words filled with sugar coating and veiled by purple curtains. The ugly becomes beautiful, and as such, it stops being real, stops being what it really is. It loses its truth.

Now here is my point. Literature does deal with the truth – even the ugly realities of the world. However, when it does, it usually does so for a purpose, most often to move people, catch their awareness and trigger them to act and do something, to make an ugly thing lose some of its ugliness (take poverty, for instance)… Now how does literature accomplish that? Only by portraying that ugly thing in a beautiful light… Why? By doing so, it appeals not only to the mind but as well as to the heart… And only when something appeals to the heart will the soul be truly moved… By then, literature triumphs in its purpose… And when it finally does inspire a person (even one person) to act and do something about an ugly reality that it has portrayed, isn’t that proof enough that literature deals with the truth? What is more real than a short literary piece that makes a person take even just a small step to make a change in this world?

... a reader, a writer, a dreamer...