BACK PAGES:POET FR Higgins went into the lion's den of the Dublin Rotary Club to address its members on the subject of businessmen and poets. According to the report in today's paper in 1934, he didn't pull his punches and, of course, his address gives a flavour of the intellectual times.
BUSINESSMEN AND POETS
[. . .] The stability of a race is maintained by two forces, said Mr Higgins – the economic and the spiritual. In the rightly-proportioned state the balance is always in favour of the spiritual – namely, those subconscious forces of the race as revealed by tradition or expressed through a rejuvenating intellect by the artist in various phases of cultural activity. These re-vitalising expressions or emanations of the racial inner life are of sterling value towards the solvency of a people. They represent the culture of a people, and culture is the fruiting of a civilisation.
Culture is not expressed and preserved, as the parish politician says it is, by the agile feet of a champion step-dancer; nor by the expert palm of a handball player. It is expressed through the head, and the artist is its priest.
Our cast-iron businessman – largely, the shopkeeper – is given a position of weight in the nation out of all proportion to his importance; while the poet, as the cultural representative, is entirely disregarded and without any consideration as to his eminence in racial affairs. Indeed, the businessman – the shopkeeper – does not recognise the poet as a national asset, or even as an equal; he does not even appreciate poetry. He has no time to nurture his spiritual nature with pure poetry, simply because “the world is too much with him”.
Any man spiritually and intellectually solvent appreciates poetry; for poetry is at best a glow of the subconscious flashed from intellectual heights which the poet, even as peasant, scales unawares. Most creators or producers, more readily than others, appreciate poetry. I make no indictment against them, nor, let us say, against the manufacturer who delights in his craft. These, with the pioneers and the defenders, are essential and praiseworthy. They are vital. Not so the shopkeeper. I do definitely indict the shopkeeper.
You know the type of man I have in mind – that soft and self-complacent commercial man who holds social eminence by reason of his shrewd financial deals – his business acumen, as they say – and yet who entirely lacks the quality of leadership in intellectual affairs, unless it is obtained for him from the head of a hireling. These are the merchant princes of our day – the parasites of an antiquated system of distribution, who by their increase would have us dubbed contemptuously as “a nation of shopkeepers”.
As a man the poet utilises the power of an organised intellect. His apprehension and the control of his materials are evidence of faculties – painfully missing in many Irish businessmen. Indeed, the poet’s sense of vision, his imagination and his initiative give him powers of organisation very useful in business, and these he marshals in the operation of his art. How many businessmen possess these powers and manipulate them to commercial advantage? Very few. How many poets utilise them to advantage? Every poet worthy of his name and calling. But they are rarely of commercial advantage; and that is an admission of failure, according to the false values of modern industrial life.
There are men in commerce who have vision, imagination, initiative and intellect. Such men use these powers in business, and their superiority is immediately noticeable. They are permanent assets to the State – they are not the foolish barn-builders of a night; but such men are lamentably few, and the lack of such men may explain the appalling amount of imitation in business affairs.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1934/0501/Pg006.html#Ar00606
To read other items making the news on this day in 1934, go to www.irishtimes.com/150