The rational and the desiring part

Jennie Erdal at the FT on various matters:

Some months ago I interviewed Margaret Atwood on the subject of poetry. She has a theory that poems come from a different part of the brain – the part that is in charge of melancholy. Atwood believes that if you were to write nothing but poetry, you might easily just feed that melancholy, and find yourself going down a long dark tunnel with no exit. The Door, her new collection of poems, is pretty dark, but when asked about this last week in a crowded tent at Edinburgh, she revealed her playful, ironic Atwoodian persona. All writers possess a fundamental optimism, she said. “To think first of all that you can start a book; then to believe you can finish it; find a publisher; persuade people to buy it; read it; and review it – well, I rest my case.”

(NB I do not agree with Erdal's earlier observations about Plato's Republic, I read it again not too long ago in Tom Griffith's excellent translation and found it extremely delightful and really very funny indeed...)