In what way is literature 'superior'?

I came across this quote: ‘Literature is the greatest of artistic forms because it is capable of incredible subtlety’. There’s so much wrong with that, where do you start? The misuse of the word ‘incredible’ is a bit of a giveaway – lacking subtlety, one might say. And is it being suggested that the masses of Palestrina, say, or Beethoven’s last quartets or a Rembrandt drawing, lack subtelty?

Here are some other quotes that are, similarly, just as likely to be conversation-stoppers as conversation-starters:

• ‘Words are often so ambiguous, so vague, so easily misunderstood in comparison to music’ – Felix Mendelssohn.

• ‘All the arts live by words’ (‘Tous les arts vivent de paroles’) – Paul Valéry.

• ‘Painting is the most artificial of the arts’ – Francis Bacon.

There are flaws in all of these, illustrating how inadequate language is (what is meant by ‘misunderstood’ here, or ‘vivent’, or ‘artificial’…?). The inadequacy of language in ennabling humans to communicate effectively with one another – for example in attempts to arrest the decline we have brought to the planet – reflects the muddle of our partial evolution, and I fear the contribution of literature is relatively trivial.

I think there is great value in reflecting on any art in relation to any other art; but no value whatsoever in claiming one to be superior to others.