«[...] philosophy does one thing, literature does many things and involves many different motives in the creator and the client. It makes us happy, for instance. It shows us the world, and much pleasure in art is pleasure of recognition of what we vaguely knew was there but never saw before. Art is mimesis and good art is, to use another Platonic term, anamnesis, 'memory' of what we did not know we knew. Art 'holds the mirror up to nature'. Of course this reflection or 'imitation' does not mean slavish or photographic copying. But it is important to hold on to the idea that art is about the world, it exists for us standing out against a background of our ordinary knowledge. Art may extend this knowledge but is also tested by it. We apply such tests instinctively, and sometimes of course wrongly, as when dismiss a story as implausible when we have not really understood what sort of story it is.»
Iris Murdoch. "Literature and Philosophy: a Conversation with Bryan Magee". Existentialists and Mystics. Writings on Philosophy and Literature. Edited by Peter Conradi. Penguin Books, 1998.
