Younger Generations and Empathic Communication: Learning to Feel in Another Language with Shakespeare at the Silvano Toti Globe Theatre in Rome

Summary

In a speech delivered in 1943 at the British–Norwegian Institute in London at the British Council’s request, T. S. Eliot asked his audience what relevance poetry had in the society of that period; of course, he could not articulate more explicitly the question that was clear to all those attending the conference: that is, what is the use of poetry when society is being devastated by a global war? The conflict was raging throughout Europe, and when it finally ended, Eliot repeated the same speech and asked the same question in a recently liberated Paris, in May 1945. According to T. S. Eliot in ‘The social function of poetry’ – the title under which his address was finally published in The Adelphi in July 1945 – it is undeniable that poetical language must in the first place ‘give pleasure’; however, the author is also persuaded that poetry is not only pleasure-giving but useful, in that it is able to convey ‘some new experience, or some fresh understanding of the familiar, or the expression of something we have experienced but have no words for, which enlarges our consciousness or refines our sensibility’. To put it differently, poetry possesses a unique power to endow all people, even those ‘who do not enjoy poetry’, with words for what they experience but would not know how to say otherwise. Ergo, it does have a relevance in any society and at any time in history. And this is true for all poetic languages, I argue, including dramatic poetry, and Shakespeare’s above all.