"Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do"
About this Quote
Auden smuggles a quiet provocation into a sentence that looks, at first glance, like praise. He defines genius less as raw brainpower than as alignment: the rare condition where obligation and desire collapse into the same act. “Luckiest” is the tell. Genius isn’t framed as moral superiority or heroic discipline; it’s a kind of existential good fortune, an accident of temperament and calling. The line flatters the gifted, then immediately demystifies them. Their advantage is not that they suffer more nobly, but that they don’t have to negotiate the daily civil war between duty and appetite.
The subtext is pointedly anti-romantic. Auden had little patience for the holy-artiste myth that great work is purchased only through torment. Here, the engine of achievement is not tragedy but compulsion that happens to be useful. “Must” carries the pressure of necessity: the genius is driven, even cornered, by an inner demand. Yet Auden twists that pressure into a privilege because it matches what they “most want” - not what they should want, not what earns applause, but what their desire already insists on.
Contextually, it reads like a poet taking stock in a century that professionalized creativity and turned “vocation” into a job title. Auden knew both the glamour and the grind of being a public writer. The line suggests a bleak arithmetic: most people ration themselves between work that pays and work that matters. Genius, for once, gets to spend the same hour twice.
The subtext is pointedly anti-romantic. Auden had little patience for the holy-artiste myth that great work is purchased only through torment. Here, the engine of achievement is not tragedy but compulsion that happens to be useful. “Must” carries the pressure of necessity: the genius is driven, even cornered, by an inner demand. Yet Auden twists that pressure into a privilege because it matches what they “most want” - not what they should want, not what earns applause, but what their desire already insists on.
Contextually, it reads like a poet taking stock in a century that professionalized creativity and turned “vocation” into a job title. Auden knew both the glamour and the grind of being a public writer. The line suggests a bleak arithmetic: most people ration themselves between work that pays and work that matters. Genius, for once, gets to spend the same hour twice.
Quote Details
| Topic | Motivational |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
More Quotes by H. Auden
Add to List
