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I can't believe we are at the last post of the semester. Where does the time go? I too have a few comments on Auden, including having a good, if astonished, laugh at the introduction. I'm quite sure that no one writes for money. That's why young people become rappers and clothing designers. To be a writer is a relatively obscure and low paying profession, and if anybody's falling back on something, it might be writers falling back on teaching, but that doesn't pay very well either. That's my essay for another class, though.

What did stand out about Auden's article to me was his statements about poets being interested less in the "public" and crowds, and more in individuals, especially him/herself. "...all an artist can be true to are his subjective sensations and feelings" (379). But don't we write that in an effort to communicate and connect with others? To show the commonalities between us? Or did I miss something in all this education I'm acumulating? I agree that our industrial, technological society (and its suspect big business, political, crowd control) has had an impact on what an individual considers valuable in relation to their own production. Auden writes "The artist, therefore, no longer has any assurance, when he makes something, that even the next generation will find it enjoyable or comprehensible. He cannot help desiring an immediate success, with all the danger to his integrity which that implies" (380). If that was true in 1962, how more true is that today, when our society and culture are even more expectant of instant gratification. What is the definition of success, however? Maybe immediate success in being satisfied with one's product, in one's ability to communicate with others, isn't a bad thing, and doesn't put integrity in danger. Maybe that's all the integrity some writers get to have. Or even want.

Some of that rant was probably fueled by Cronin's article about how a prosecutor understands more about South African poetry that an academic does. I doubt these poets have any thought for the monetary value of what they do. Their success really does lie in that their individual words do communicate to others, and while it has lived past their generation (or almost), was it meant to? Or was it meant to do something right then, right there? While it serves as an historical document, that wasn't the intention, that wasn't the purpose. Writing has many purposes and we shouldn't assume because we read lots of critical articles and theories that we understand all of them.