If the literature indicates the whole of works written - and so oral - to which one recognizes an esthetic purpose, the literary phenomenon is universal, specific to all the times of the history and all the people of the world.

The literary activity, at its origins closely related to the religion, as well in Sumer as in Black Africa, in Greece d' Homère as in ancient India, tends from now on to be detached from the collective conscience, to constitute itself like an independent phenomenon having its own laws, which can make say to Kafka: “To write, like prayer forms”.