“Here is the conclusion of the matter: Wagner, other artists and history have taught us that an immoral person can create good art. Indeed, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but if that eye is jaded or opaque, then is it good art that the critic sees, or a perversion? If God is the creator of every beautiful thing (including creating man to create good art), then isn’t it true that the degree man is loyal to God is the degree any genius in his art becomes transcendent?” — “Socrates”

Ellis Washington convenes another symposium, this one comprised of Socrates; Richard Wagner, German Romantic composer; Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler’s filmmaker; Wimsatt & Beardsley, The New Criticism School; Ezra Pound, American expatriate poet; Publius, pupil of Socrates and conflicted lover of Wagner’s music.

Socrates states their aim: “We are gathered here today at my Symposium to discuss the venerated discipline of aesthetics and to seek to answer this question of the ages – Can immoral art be good? Or more pointedly, can an immoral person create good art?”

Washington’s article — “Symposium: Art, music and the Wagnerian dilemma” — is available on WND.

Wimsatt & Beardsley’s The Verbal Icon, in which they propound their intentional fallacy theory, is available on Amazon.com., as is the Literary Essays of Ezra Pound. Also find there Praising It New: The Best of the New Criticism, a collection of essays by and in support of the New Critics.