Poets as alleviators of life. – Insofar as they want to alleviate the life of men, poets either turn their eyes away from the toilsome present or they procure for the present new colours through a light which they direct upon it from the past. To be able to do this, they themselves have to be in many respects backward-looking creatures: so that they can be employed as bridges to quite distant ages and conceptions, to dead or dying religions and cultures. They are, in fact, always and necessarily epigones.
Reminds me of Iqbal. Is Iqbal only acting as a bridge to the past? Is he causing people passions and efforts to be wasted simply in artistry? Or does he impel them to action?
“Poets as alleviators of life. - Insofar as they want to alleviate the life of men poets either turn their eyes away from the toilsome present or they procure for the present new colours through a light which they direct upon it from the past. To be able to do this, they themselves have to be in many respects backward-looking creatures: so that they can be employed as bridges to quite distant ages and conceptions, to dead or dying religions and cultures.
They are, in fact, always and necessarily epigones. There are, to be sure, several things to be said against their means of alleviating life: they soothe and heal only provisionally, only for a moment; they even hinder men from working for a real improvement in their conditions by suspending and discharging in a palliative way the very passion which impels the discontented to action.”
