Make it new- Anthony Burgess

“How to make it new” is a problem and a duty of any artist, says bestseller-writer Anthony Burgess, quoting the American poet Ezra Pound. Burgess describes the working processes of Igor Stravinsky and James Joyce, the two contemporary artists who have meant most to him, and their difficulties to make art new. Burgess describes the agony that Joyce experiences when writing, over every world, and the agony at every note felt by Stravinsky. Like his two idols Burgess lives in exile – in voluntary exile in Italy, far away from the gloomy mists of England. Joyce created the better part of his work out of Ireland. He never left Dublin in his writing, but he changed the English language for ever. Stravinsky heard Russian peasant music in his inner ear during his exile, but he turned this music into something completely new, changing the sound of music for ever. The programme was originally an interview – rather sophisticated cutting gave life to a new form of programme, that seen superficially seems traditional, but in reality succeeds to penetrate very deep into Burgess’s thoughts.