In his magisterial Aspects of the Novel (1927), EM Forster, the British author, calls literary tradition to be a borderland lying between literature and history. However, while imagining the boundaries of this borderland, Forster asks us to believe in two things: a) ‘that literature belongs to history and cut it off accordingly’, and b) ‘we must refuse to have anything to do with chronology’ (Forster, 26).
Let me quote here a set of similar sentiments from the Leaf, Water and Flow:
What’s the subject of the novel?…The subject of this novel is not something that can be expressed in brief…quite the same way, he [the author] saw some people dying too and he felt something. His feeling that something, for him, was a story…given the limited strength of the author, it would be difficult to hunt out the address [of these stories] …This novel, then, is that work; it is a novel about what this writer feels. It is not as if you [the reader] should be compelled to feel the same kind of feelings. (pp. 9-31)