What is the essence of literature?

Finally, we are making progress. Is it to reflect reality and describe reality? Why don't you invite a photographer? Is it to criticize reality, expose ugliness, praise goodness and publicize human nature? It is better to listen to the speeches of politicians and moralists. Is it to reveal the universal ideals and love of mankind? It is better to invite religious people to preach. I think literature is literature because there is a literariness in it, and literariness is the essence of literature. I think literariness is the skills of defamiliarization, poetic language, aesthetic atmosphere and spiritual passion. (1) Defamiliarization skills The so-called defamiliarization means that things that people are familiar with and commonplace are appropriately deformed, that is, they are appropriately unfamiliar, thus prolonging the time for people to feel things and making people pay more attention to things that are commonplace. The purpose of literature is to arouse people's love for life and love for life. To maintain love for life and life, we must continue to love people, things and things in life, love every inch of life, and break the mediocrity and numbness in life. If we want to crush the boring mediocrity and numbness in life, we must have a delicate feeling about life and life, and the defamiliarization method is to defame and distort the common things and casual feelings in life, prolong the feelings and experiences of life, and thus realize the meaning and passion of life. The writer's creation is based on the purpose of this kind of literature. Therefore, all successful writers must pay attention to the skills of defamiliarization. For example, Balzac used realism to describe the French bourgeois nouveau riche's gradual victory over the declining aristocrats, and used defamiliarization in both technique and plot, which made people understand the social life of an era in France from the form and content of his works, while Stendhal, who was far away from him, made innovations in Red and Black, which included romanticism and a delicate psychological description in addition to realism. In content, it describes the personal struggle history of the petty bourgeoisie during the Bourbon Restoration, thus using defamiliarization skills in both skills and plots, so that we can understand the social life and personal life of France during the Bourbon Restoration from the form and content of the novel. Later, Proust used a lot of stream of consciousness techniques, adopted a church-like structure in structure, played down the plot, and adopted defamiliarization techniques, which made people have a deep understanding of the upper-class life and people's spiritual life in the late France. The application of defamiliarization is also manifested in many aspects. For example, Tolstoy's War and Peace, observing a war from a non-military perspective, gives people a brand-new feeling. Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury repeatedly observed and described a family from the perspectives of a servant, a master and an idiot with different personalities, identities and intelligence levels. This is not just defamiliarization, but many times of defamiliarization. Therefore, the application of defamiliarization is not only put forward by Russian formalists, but also a law reflected in the whole literary history. In order to arouse people's love for life, literature must be defamed to life, and to defame life, it is necessary to defame the skills and plots of works, and the defamiliarization of novel skills and plots is the driving force for the continuous progress and innovation of novels from content to form. This is the requirement of readers, the requirement of literature and the purpose of literature. (2) Poetic language Poetic language, or literary language, is relative to prose language or spoken language. Poetry language is actually a kind of defamiliarization, which is the defamiliarization of spoken language. Literature originates from life, is higher than life, is independent of life, and reacts on life. That is to say, the material of literature comes from people's lives, but it is different from life, just being alienated by writers. People have deepened their experience of life and life through their understanding of literary works and aroused their love for life. Language is a means for people to exchange ideas and express their feelings. If you want to defame life and life, you must defame language. Language defamiliarization means oral defamiliarization, that is, using written language. In ancient Greece, people's words were as short and pithy as Aesop's fables, unlike Homeric figurative language with distinctive features in Homer's epics, but it was Homeric language that deepened people's feelings and experiences of Homer's era. The language of Shakespeare's sonnets and plays is also different from spoken language, which adopts poetic language and deepens people's understanding and feelings about the Elizabethan era. A language without Proust's cultural background is not spoken language, but poetic language. Only defamiliarization can show its literary talent. The same is true in the history of China literature. For example, the language of the Book of Songs in the pre-Qin period is not spoken, which is different from other prose schools in the same period, such as Shangshu and Guoyu. The latter is closer to spoken language, while the former uses poetic language, which is not only conducive to reading and singing, but more importantly, it prolongs and deepens people's experience of social life and emotional life in the Zhou Dynasty. Another example is the poetry of Tang Dynasty and Song Dynasty, which is a wonderful work in the history of China literature. But obviously, the language form of Tang poetry and Song poetry is far from the spoken language of people in Tang and Song dynasties. There are so many strict rules in Tang poetry and Song poetry that people can't "export poetry" or "export poetry" in their daily lives. However, it is the poetry formed by these poetic languages that "China, however, holds our friendship and the sky is still our neighbor" extends and deepens people's friendship, and "When there is a bright moon, ask the sky for wine" extends and deepens people's yearning for friends and family. "Businessmen don't know how to hate their country, but still sing backyard flowers across the river." "Flowers fall helplessly, Yan returns to his hometown" prolongs and deepens people's regret over the passage of time ... China's ancient novels were not orthodox literature for a long period of time, so they were named "novels" because of their colloquial language, lack of poetry, being equal to life and not easy to feel life. It was not until the classical novels "Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio" and "Dream of Red Mansions" in the Qing Dynasty that they gained high reputation. The two novels Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio use classical Chinese in language, which is the defamiliarization of spoken language. Compared with the previous Water Margin and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, A Dream of Red Mansions pays more attention to literary talent, that is, the use of written language. Therefore, the defamiliarization of spoken language is an important condition for classical novels to gain life. In modern times, the importance of oral defamiliarization can also be seen from the history of modern poetry. At the beginning of the new culture movement, the poet proposed to abandon classical Chinese and advocate vernacular Chinese, and created a large number of vernacular new poems with great enthusiasm. Although this has its progressive significance against tradition, its contribution to poetry is not high. For example, Hu Shi, Shen and Liu Bannong wrote many poems in spoken language. At that time,