"No artist tolerates reality", as far as this quotation of Nietzsche is concerned, it is true that artists – and therefore writers – cannot tolerate reality, and that is the reason why they often aim at changing this reality through their art, and in the case of writers, through their written work. That is also why every literary movement has been created in reaction to a previous movement or as a rejection of the context of this time. Nevertheless, even though they have been doing this since art exists, artists cannot get along without reality neither, for they are inevitably living in it. Artists are using art and artistic creation to express a rejection of reality, but in order to do so they necessarily have to consider what reality is and what it lacks which makes them unable to tolerate it.
[...] Moreover, it is important to notice that when Eliot wrote Wasteland, he was in a period of personal difficulties and the apparent disillusionment present all along the poem which can also be seen as a reaction of the post-war generation conveys this state. This is the evidence that the two Modernist poets could not tolerate the world in which they were living, that they needed a new and better place to live and art and poetry were the only possible ways to create this world. [...]
[...] What is to bear in mind is that, consequently, the role of artists is to improve this reality and thus to improve the future, thanks to their talent and their art. And that is exactly what Yeats did when he decided to establish the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1904 in order to spread culture and art in people's everyday life. Bibliography Smith, Stan. The origins of modernism: Eliot, Pound, Yeats and the rhetorics of renewal. New York; London: Harvester Wheatsheaf Stead, Christian Karlson. [...]
[...] Lastly, Eliot often expressed in his work a certain refusal of intellectualisation, because, according to him, it would be the end of the use of senses and sensitivity that are so important for poets. Likewise, Yeats, in addition to be a Modernist, can also be considered as a post- Romantic poet in many ways and particularly because of his opposition to the Enlightenment's point of view which stressed the primacy of reason. Yeats, on the contrary, preferred to give the primacy to feeling and imagination. [...]
[...] Finally, despite most of what could be understood in their work, we can affirm that Yeats and Eliot were tolerating reality for they both seemed to worry about this world they were living in and they wondered what would happen in the future. For instance, in his poem 'All I have said and done' from 'The Man and the Echo', Yeats wondered if one day his poetry would affect the world, whether it would be efficient or not and if it was not, what was the point of writing poetry then? [...]
APA Style reference
For your bibliographyOnline reading
with our online readerContent validated
by our reading committee
