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Ideas: Reflections on freedom and art
- Source: The UNESCO Courier, Volume 2019, Issue 1, Apr 2019, p. 38 - 45
- Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, Spanish
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- 09 Apr 2020
Abstract
“Poets are not the unacknowledged legislators of the world, and never were and it is a good thing that they should be made to realize this,” writes W.H. Auden, dismissing the famous claim by English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Here, in this text written in 1947, the English-American writer questions the limits of freedom and art, their potential and their interactions. Far from the Romantic vision of art that gives it more importance than it actually has, Auden advocates the Shakespearean vision: art holding a mirror to nature.
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