H. Auden
H. Auden
mother mistake drama
Drama is based on the Mistake. I think someone is my friend when he really is my enemy, that I am free to marry a woman when in fact she is my mother, that this person is a chambermaid when it is a young nobleman in disguise, that this well-dressed young man is rich when he is really a penniless adventurer, or that if I do this such and such a result will follow when in fact it results in something very different. All good drama has two movements, first the making of the mistake, then the discovery that it was a mistake.
art sick letters
All good art is in the nature of a letter written to amuse a sick friend. Too much art, particularly in our time, is only a letter written to oneself.
doe torture no-nonsense
Of course,Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture.
criticism conversation casual
Criticism should be a casual conversation.
drama practice community
Drama began as the act of a whole community. Ideally, there would be no speculators. In practice, every member of the audience should feel like an understudy.
light play
The lights must never go out, The music must always play
names nicknames
Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.
inspirational graduation education
A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep.
grateful analysis be-grateful
Aside from purely technical analysis, nothing can be said about music, except when it is bad; when it is good, one can only listen and be grateful.
Words have no word for words that are not true.
believe fields debate
Whatever the field under discussion, those who engage in debate must not only believe in each other's good faith, but also in their capacity to arrive at the truth.
hope food cooking
A poet's hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere.
song clever stupid
Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character; it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so.
voice noble cases
Base words are uttered only by the base And can for such at once be understood; But noble platitudes — ah, there's a case Where the most careful scrutiny is needed To tell a voice that's genuinely good From one that's base but merely has succeeded.