ABSTRACT
Hard times call for hard choices. Why, after all, should one seek to ferret out the secrets of literary texts in a crisis? Does this not constitute a particularly egregious example of fiddling while Rome burns? This chapter argues that literature that has survived the vicissitudes of time also invariably encodes a basic set of algorithms for species survival. That is what makes it invaluable; why it is emblematic, in John Milton's prescient words, of ‘reason itself’. From Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron to Albert Camus's The Plague, to cite a couple of obvious examples, literary texts serve as immunity shields against, even cure, individual and social mental breakdowns when the going gets really rough. Regardless of their contingent cultural origins, they are critical messaging devices from distant spheres and their core message is simple. Extreme risk is an essential part of the human cognitive environment. Dangers can come at us anytime from wars and viruses, from out-of-control technologies, from inner devastation or from outer space. If one strictly adheres to the tenets of what have in recent times been dubbed the philosophies of ‘happyism’ and ‘safetyism’, then one might of course go about one's quotidian life without ever having read a novel or listened to Raag Yaman Kalyani or stared in open-mouthed wonder at a Kahlo painting. One would surely still survive in a physical sense but one's capacity to anticipate that unexpected jolt to the nerves, to experience life's intangible thrills and small rewards, to empathize with one's radical others, would be so severely diminished that one would be rendered virtually comatose. We would risk losing that vital part of the human psyche specifically designed to insure against hopelessness and hazard: namely, the narrative belief in a future where countless worlds must, for our own well-being, be imagined into existence. That's a good reason to don our coronavirus masks and open wide our post-coronavirus eyes – right now.
