Two quotes from Secondary Worlds that I find shocking (and imagine that others will, too). They’re both restrictive and yet somehow liberating.
#1 (against O’Connor-esque art, perhaps?)
It is necessary that we know about the evil in the world, about past evil that we may know what man is capable of, and be on the watch for it in ourselves, and about present evil so that we may take political action to eradicate it. This knowledge it is one of the duties of the historian to impart. But the poet cannot get into this business without defiling himself and his audience. To write a play, that is to construct a secondary world, about Auschwitz, for example, is wicked: author and audience may try to pretend that they are morally horrified, but in fact they are passing an entertaining evening together, in the aesthetic enjoyment of horrors.
(page 84, “The World of the Sagas”)
#2 (against art as evangelism)
In a magico-polytheistic culture all events are believed to be caused by personal powers who can be understood and to some extent controlled by speech, and the nearest that man can come to the concept of necessity is in the myth of the Fates who determine events by whim; in such a culture, therefore, poets are the theologians, the sacred mouthpieces of society: it is they who teach the myths and rescue from oblivion the great deeds of ancestral heroes. That to which the imagination by its nature responds with excitement, namely, the manifestly extraordinary and powerful, is identified with the Divine. The poet is one whose words are equal to his divine subjects, which can only happen if he is divinely inspired. The coming of Christ in the form of a servant who cannot be recognized by the eye of flesh and blood, only by the eye of faith, puts an end to all such claims. The imagination is to be regarded as a natural faculty the subject matter of which is the phenomenal world, not its creator. For a poet brought up in a Christian society, it is perfectly possible to write a poem on a Christian theme, but when he does so, he is concerned with it as an aspect of religion, that is to say, a human cultural fact, like other facts, not as a matter of faith. The poet is not there to convert the world.
(pages 137-138, “Words and the Words”)
Thoughts?
“author and audience may try to pretend that they are morally horrified, but in fact they are passing an entertaining evening together, in the aesthetic enjoyment of horrors.”
Well, not exactly. That is what the undisciplined viewer does. This is what N Wilson railed against freshmen guys doing. If we are enjoying the horrors, we have a personal problem. It is a weak character that enjoys the horrors presented through art. We shouldn’t be enjoying them, we should be learning from them. This is the job of the historian, says the author (who is the author?). Why can’t the poet share in the job of the historian?
Gabe,
You’re absolutely right, though I think Auden’s warning is still
worth remembering. I’ve seen too many movies that committed this error. (The Last King of Scotland is the first example that comes to mind.)