Skip to main content

God in Literature


George Steiner
God is always present in a good work of art, literature and music.  George Steiner says that in his book, Real Presences.  That God enters our being and asks us to change ourselves. 

Good literature, art and music have the power to change us.  They touch our souls, in other words.  Psychology tells us that a lot of our attitudes and behaviour are determined by our subconscious mind.  The subconscious mind is the seat of all the suppressed emotions which can take the shape of the devil at times –  when we lose our cool, for example. It is this subconscious mind that good literature touches, that good music soothes or good art cools.  The suppressed feelings undergo transformation under the influence of good art, literature or music.  That transformative power is God, in Steiner’s words. Aristotle gave it a more secular name: catharsis.

The process of writing is also deeply related to the subconscious mind.  Our themes and imagery, our style and diction, they all have their origin in that powerhouse called the subconscious mind.  Let us take three Jewish prophets, for example,  who found their place in the Bible and stayed there for centuries.  Isaiah viewed Yahweh as a King because the prophet came from a royal family.  For Amos, Yahweh was full of empathy for His people.  The fact is that Amos himself possessed that empathy.  Hosea described Yahweh as a jilted husband because his own wife, Gomer, was unfaithful to him.  Each one created Yahweh in his own image.

We will like the God of Isaiah or Amos or Hosea depending on the needs of our own subconscious mind.  

The author of sentences like “There is no love of life without despair about life” (Albert Camus) appealed to me much because that love as well as the despair was part of my subconscious mind.  The twilight of uncertainty in Kafka’s novels, the hopeless hope in them, has been an integral part of my own psyche. 

God can be found not only in the holy books or the dark corners of temples but also in the novels and poems of good writers. Of course, God can be found in the rose in your garden or the pine on the mountain.  In the gurgle of the brook or the murmur of the breeze.  In the pages of a novel or the lines of a poem.  It all depends on the nature and needs of your subconscious mind. 

The ideal would be each person finding his/her own God.  That is the only real God.  The rest are others’ gods and they turn inevitably bloodthirsty.  The other man’s subconscious is not mine.  Its devils are his.  Hence his gods can’t be mine. 

Good literature, art and music and a lot of other things can help us connect with our own subconscious and discover our own god. Steiner is right, after all.


Indian Bloggers




Labels:

Comments

  1. ilaksheeJanuary 1, 2016 at 10:25 AM

    Like they say, God is within us. Insightful reads, soulful music and other artistic forms only help to discover that peace and contentment within us. Thank you for the post!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 1, 2016 at 12:41 PM

      God is the harmony within. Good literature and similar things help us discover or attain or at least move towards that harmony.

      Delete
    2. sunaina sharmaJanuary 1, 2016 at 11:04 PM

      'Harmony' - you rightly put it.

      Delete
  2. sunaina sharmaJanuary 1, 2016 at 11:04 PM

    Lately, God has entered into my conversations with my son who keeps asking me who created God? To be precise, he asks me who gave birth to God. I tell him that humans did. Although he is little and unable to understand the implications of what I say, he wonders. I also tell him that God is in every good thing. I tell him that to be godly means to be good. God is 'goodness' principle. And that good principle is in literature, in art, in aesthetic sensitivities of probing 'hearts'. Can God be 'found'? I think he can only be 'felt' - on the pages, in the breezes, or the fountains, or the gentle touch of loving hearts.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 2, 2016 at 6:59 AM

      That 'feeling' is also a kind of 'finding', isn't it? Inner harmony is both a feeling and a discovery. Discovery in the sense that we have to make a conscious effort to arrive at it, to get that feeling, to set the house in order.

      Delete
  3. huong duongOctober 27, 2016 at 2:36 PM

    The university will teach you a lot of knowledge from the micro to the macro, from practical to academic, give you an overview and deeper. So you will have the knowledge and the more subtle choices in all areas of mortgage rates, car loan, retirement planning, and investment choices
    baixar musicas , baixar musicas gratis , musicas baixar , download musicas , musicas download

    ReplyDelete
  4. huong duongOctober 27, 2016 at 2:36 PM

    The difference in the opportunities for people with a college degree instead of just a high school diploma is quite remarkable. Add a university diploma, you will expand the limited career and his work
    snapchat , baixar snapchat , snapchat download , download snapchat

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

Sardar Patel and Unity

All pro-PM newspapers carried this ad today, 31 Oct 2025 No one recognised Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel as he stood looking at the 182-m tall statue of himself. The people were waiting anxiously for the Prime Minister whose eloquence would sway them with nationalistic fervour on this 150 th birth anniversary of Sardar Patel. “Is this unity?” Patel wondered looking at the gigantic version of himself. “Or inflation?” Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi chuckled standing beside Patel holding a biodegradable iPhone. “The world has changed, Sardar ji. They’ve built me in wax in London.” He looked amused. “We have become mere hashtags, I’d say.” That was Jawaharlal Nehru joining in a spirit of camaraderie. “I understand that in the world’s largest democracy now history is optional. Hashtags are mandatory.” “You know, Sardar ji,” Gandhi said with more amusement, “the PM has released a new coin and a stamp in your honour on your 150 th birth anniversary.”  “Ah, I watched the function too,” ...
15 comments
Read more

Being Christian in BJP’s India

A moment of triumph for India’s women’s cricket team turned unexpectedly into a controversy about religious faith and expression, thanks to some right-wing footsloggers. After her stellar performance in the semi-final of the Wormen’s World Cup (2025), Jemimah Rodrigues thanked Jesus for her achievement. “Jesus fought for me,” she said quoting the Bible: “Stand still and God will fight for you” [1 Samuel 12:16]. Some BJP leaders and their mindless followers took strong exception to that and roiled the religious fervour of the bourgeoning right wing with acerbic remarks. If Ms Rodrigues were a Hindu, she would have thanked her deity: Ram or Hanuman or whoever. Since she is a Christian, she thanked Jesus. What’s wrong in that? If she was a nonbeliever like me, God wouldn’t have topped the list of her benefactors. Religion is a talisman for a lot of people. There’s nothing wrong in imagining that some god sitting in some heaven is taking care of you. In fact, it gives a lot of psychologic...
16 comments
Read more

The wisdom of the Mahabharata

Illustration by Gemini AI “Krishna touches my hand. If you can call it a hand, these pinpricks of light that are newly coalescing into the shape of fingers and palm. At his touch something breaks, a chain that was tied to the woman-shape crumpled on the snow below. I am buoyant and expansive and uncontainable – but I always was so, only I never knew it! I am beyond the name and gender and the imprisoning patterns of ego. And yet, for the first time, I’m truly Panchali. I reach with my other hand for Karna – how surprisingly solid his clasp! Above us our palace waits, the only one I’ve ever needed. Its walls are space, its floor is sky, its center everywhere. We rise; the shapes cluster around us in welcome, dissolving and forming and dissolving again like fireflies in a summer evening.” What is quoted above is the final paragraph of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s novel The Palace of Illusions which I reread in the last few days merely because I had time on my hands and this book hap...
11 comments
Read more