The words in an ancient text are churning in my mind. In that text, poets were banned from the ideal city-state because they were deemed to be a bad influence on the cultivation of the ideal citizen. How so? Firstly, poets were deemed incapable of offering knowledge. It was felt that their poetry, while well-crafted and convincing in their selection of words paired with poetic convention, offered no knowledge but illusions of reality. Secondly, in offering no knowledge, poetry offered no truth. And thirdly, in offering no truth, the poet perverted the soul of the individual. Truth and the soul! Therefore, so detrimental was the poet’s perversion that not only did his work endanger the life of the individual in the here and now but also in the life to come. More precisely, the soul in the period of transition would not be knowledgeable enough to make the right choices and ultimately choose a good life for the reincarnation. Perhaps, surprisingly the text I refer to is Plato’s Book X of The Republic.
