di Albert Tarimo Antipas

It was in the evening of 17th March 2007, when the climate was cool, I had a walk to our famous square Monteverde. I carried with me a book: “A che cosa serve la letteratura” by Antonio Spadaro, to which I intended to read a chapter on literary intelligence. Reaching to the square I looked for a suitable place free of noise, with sufficient light and comfortable bench, so as to explore my text. I was concentrated enough, with poses after every subtitle. Poses endowed me with moments to experience myself in relation to the literature I was reading and also to listen different voices from the square. There was a group of old pensioned people in another angle with different newspapers reading and exchanging views of what each was experiencing from the reading. Their discussions were basing on politics, economics, family life, culture and religion. Comparing my experience from the text I was reading on literary intelligence, I realized that they were discussing on the mystery of life in relation to its concrete daily situations. They were creating as if it were a hill of experience from their reading and discussion. Back to my literature, on literary intelligence. I realized that just as rhetoric is the art of speaking well, so is literary intelligence to the reading. It is the art of reading ourselves in the reading. Is the art of interpreting the metaphor of our imagination, like: “you are as just as Saint Joseph” . Indeed is one of the resources which give us courage to enter into our identity along with its potentialities. Yes, the courage to say I’m a man of all colours, not just one. It is by literary intelligence we able to say: do not paint me red for tomorrow I might be black, neither should you paint me black for tomorrow I might be green, white,… and the litany goes like this infinitely, leading us to the fact that we can give identification and interpretation to people but also we must leave a space for literary intelligence to better it always. In literature, Literary intelligence gives us the possibilities to explore our potentialities as through it, with it, in it and in the unity with other possibilities, we can see, feel, sense, smell, taste and touch the mysteries our life in relation to concrete situations of our daily encounter. In this way, literature has a polysemic character from which we are able to experience the polysemic significance of our life, to experience the 1,2,3s…(i.e numbers) and the do,re,mi,fa,so,la,si,dos (notes) of the significance of our life. It is from this truth that; one literature, with literary intelligence every one finds the identity of his mysterious life according to his culture and historical background. Literature from this point of view of literary intelligence is an exercise of discernment. We discern because in the mystery of life, we are situated in an ample possibilities of identification and interpretation, at times we are in cross roads. We need to discern which road to take. When we listen a harmonised orchestra we may all of us say it is very melodious. But each one of us gets a different category of utility and gratification. We may read our unity in diversity in it. We see and feel the necessity and authenticity of our identity in it. Conclusively, I would say that, literature is the field of research with literary intelligence as an art which break the borders of our ideologies. We are often enclosed in the cages of cultural, anthropological, sociological, religious and political ideologies. Literature could break the borders of these cages and demonstrate our IDENTITY in the mysteries of life.