Tuesday, April 20, 2010

The arts as a means of redemption

Jane Addams (1909) was concerned for the youth of her generation who loved the illicit pleasures that lowered the quality of living. But she didn't blame them. Their love of play was just misplaced. Because when the arts become absent in society, vice is what we turn to...

It was society that "cared more for the products they manufacture than for their immemorial ability to reaffirm the charm of existence” (1003). Boys and girls were worked to death in a city void of artistic atmosphere and high culture.

She advocated a connection between music and morals, saying that it would "fit to this gross and heavy stuff the wings of the mind, to scatter from it the clinging mud of banality and vulgarity, and to speed it on through our city streets amid spontaneous laughter..."

"It would thus bring charm and beauty to the prosaic city and connect it subtly with the arts of the past as well as with the vigor and renwed life of the future" (1007 APT)

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