I don't know if this is off base, but Nicholas threw out an opportunity, which is hard to resist for me. I became addicted to Jane Austen growing up in India many eons ago. There is nothing shocking about 'gentle' Jane's writing on money, sex and power (a conference on this topic is planned this year by Jane Austen Society). Because Austen was a clear-eyed observer of social and economic norms and described them with masterly touches of a novelist. Her private letters show just what a deep-down cynic she could be on human nature and behavior. But more importantly, in her books she showed the real effects of the rigid British class-society. She did not moralize, just showed it for what it was. She is criticized for 'accepting' the socio-economic order of her day. She was not a reformer like Charles Dickens. But she didn't have to be. The portrait of her times, economic and otherwise, is a stinging rebuke on many levels.
I suppose this is off- base after all. My apologies, indeed.
Cheers,
Sumitra Shah
________________________________
From: Societies for the History of Economics [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nicholas Theocarakis [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, June 25, 2012 6:26 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [SHOE] R: [SHOE] allusion to Pareto
Roy is of course correct that the reference does not flatter Pareto. In this autobiographical poem-essay Auden is trying to show what has changed since the times of Lord Byron ; aesthetic relativism is one of those things. Hence "It’s just as well to warn him there’s no stain on/Picasso, all-in-wrestling, or the Ballet". All-in-wrestling appeared in the early '30s and Picasso painted the Guernica in 1937 the same year Auden's poem was published [hence the antifascist explanation MAY not apply]. Pareto [guilty of superficiality selon Auden] is of course in good company. Auden finds Sibelius pretentious, as he finds hypocritical a sensitive reaction to Elgar. Tennis, golf and bridge [see the preceding stanza] are on an equal footing with other intellectual pursuits.
There is, however, a place in the poem where Auden does discuss economics:
I must remember, though, that you were dead
Before the four great Russians lived, who brought
The art of novel writing to a head;
The help of Boots had not been sought.
But now the art for which Jane Austen fought,
Under the right persuasion bravely warms
And is the most prodigious of the forms.
You could not shock her more than she shocks me;
Beside her Joyce seems innocent as grass.
It makes me most uncomfortable to see
An English spinster of the middle-class
Describe the amorous effects of 'brass',
Reveal so frankly and with such sobriety
The economic basis of society.
[pace David Landes who thought differently on Jane Austen]
On Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 4:25 PM, E. Roy Weintraub <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
These comments to me appear way off base. At the time Auden was writing, he was politically engaged as an anti-fascist having a most recent passion about the Spanish Civil War. Pareto would not have been an economist to him, but rather two other things: first, an excuse for governments' doing nothing in the Depression (a la the Harvard Pareto Circle) and second as Mussolini's house sociologist and fascist apologist. The poem's quoted lines suggest that the poem's speaker saw the then present time valuing Pareto over Plato: this hardly represents mankind's triumphant evolution. And to make the ironic point clearer, the poem's speaker employs Pareto's "acquaintance" and Plato's "intimate".
On Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 3:48 AM, luigino bruni <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
On the other hand, Pareto's works are full of references to
literature, poems, and humanities in general.
2012/6/22 Parisi Daniela Fernanda <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>:
> Passion for literature does not know any limits among knowledge fields.
> That is incredible today!!
>
> ________________________________
> Da: Societies for the History of Economics [[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>] per conto di Anthony Waterman [[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>]
> Inviato: giovedì 21 giugno 2012 20.26
> A: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> Oggetto: Re: [SHOE] allusion to Pareto
>
> Auden and Harrod knew one another and their (Oxonian) social circles somewhat overlapped.
>
> Anthony Waterman
>
>
>
> On 21/06/2012 10:42 AM, Paul Dudenhefer wrote:
> For what it's worth, I was reading the English poet W. H. Auden the other night and was astonished to come across a reference to Pareto. It occurs in Auden's long poem, Letter to Lord Byron (1937):
>
>
> But if in highbrow circles he would sally
>
> It’s just as well to warn him there’s no stain on
>
> Picasso, all-in wrestling, or the Ballet.
>
> Sibelius is the man. To get a pain on
>
> Listening to Elgar is a sine qua non.
>
> A second-hand acquaintance of Pareto’s
>
> Ranks higher than an intimate of Plato’s.
>
> I take it the "he" is Byron, although that's not entirely clear.
>
> Paul
>
>
>
>
> --
> Paul Dudenhefer
> Managing Editor, HOPE
> 213 Social Science Building
> Box 90097
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> 919-660-6899<tel:919-660-6899>
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>
>
>
>
>
> ----------------------------- Messaggio istituzionale ---------------------------------------
>
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--
E. Roy Weintraub
Professor of Economics
Fellow, Center for the History of Political Economy
Duke University
www.econ.duke.edu/~erw/erw.homepage.html<http://www.econ.duke.edu/~erw/erw.homepage.html>
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