> ... writers must be judged by their 'writing alone.
> How exactly this is to be done is not clear...
> To believe that good writing overrides bad politics to create Literature [like] viewing the writer as a precocious child with a knack. Both beliefs want to keep literature and politics safely apart...
https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1983&context=kunapipi
#GithaHarihara on #VSNaipaul #NaipaulsNobel #WritersAndPolitics #ArundhatiRoy
> Time that is intolerant
Of the brave and innocent,
And indifferent in a week
To a beautiful physique,
> Worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives,
Pardons cowardice, conceit,
Lays its honors at their feet.
> Time that with this strange excuse
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well.
https://newrepublic.com/article/165810/wh-auden-memory-wb-yeats
#Auden #WHAuden on #PoliticalWriters
#RudyardKipling #PaulClaudel
I. He disappeared in the dead of winter.The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,And snow disfigured the public statues;The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.O all the instruments agreeThe day of his death was a dark cold day.Far from his illness,The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;By mourning tonguesThe deat...
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