The Arts Without Mystery
The Henry James Professor of Letters at New York University, Denis Donoghue, gives the last of six lectures on the place of the arts in modern society.
A Talent for Conviction
' We can't safely assume that reading a great novel will do us some kind of good or activate our moral sense. There is no point in being scandalised by reports that commandants in Auschwitz worked all day at their monstrous jobs and went back to their quarters in the evening to listen to Bach or Mozart. The claims made for the arts, by which they would undertake the duties of priests or otherwise pursue an ethical purpose, are spurious.' (Rptd.- Sun 5.0 pm, R3)
(This lecture appears in THE LISTENER dated 16 Dec)