Some possible links (however few these may be) between economics and poetry: the Greeks believed it was the poet who could get nearest the truth

Abstract

In our analysis on the possible links between economics and poetry we highlight passages from four articles (in the form of extracts/excerpts and quotations) on: (i) the doubling of poetry and economics in Pound’s work (Sieburth, 1987) (ii) the inspirational friendship between the economist Kapp and the poet Wiechert (Berger, 2015) (iii) the three recurring topics in Paul Auster’s books, namely poverty in America, the new victims of austerity politics, and the starving intel-lectual heroes, which provide a problematic picture of America’s economy (Tedde, 2020) (iv) the relationship between two doctrines, Kant’s theory of aesthetics and the Austrian (economic) theory of entrepreneur (Cowen, 2003)

Perhaps what we want to do is to convey the following two messages: (i) as pointed out by Berger (2015): “the experience of works of art and poetry can reconnect economists with vital meanings that make eco-nomics more imaginative, beautiful and humane” (ii) Economics (and, more general, the world) without poetry, remind us of our native country, Greece, but without the Aegean sea and the Mediterranean sunny weather.