Misreading Auden

Interesting and thought-provoking article, thanks for posting.

Poetry, as the purest and most potent form of language, belongs in an educated life. Encountering a great poem such as Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts" is an intellectual pleasure that mere prose cannot match. Ultimately, the Times's poetry columnist Elisa Gabbert does not understand what she is writing about, as her thinking is ideologically cramped. To say (as she does) that as I read a poem over time, "I'm making the poem better" doesn't make any sense. The perspective is backward. Art can influence a reader, but the reader can't influence the art. She completely misses it when she writes, “Ignoring [human suffering]," in a summary of Auden’s intentions in writing the poem, “is the most natural thing in the world. It is also a moral error.” Siegel's response: "You could spend decades searching for a great poet who trafficked in pointing out moral errors, but you’d never find one. Art doesn’t scold, or make clear moral points, let alone cluck-cluck its superior virtue." That is absolutely correct. I wish the immoral busybodies like Gabbert who virtue signal by rote would get over their compulsion to teach morality to their moral betters. That requires gall.