Art goes beyond politics. Even if there are writers who are

The words of Eugene Ionesco — “Art goes beyond politics… it’s not their politics which is going to count, but the fact of having given life to feelings, of having created characters and made a living work of art.” — proclaim the immortality of art above the fleeting struggles of politics. He speaks as one who knows that governments rise and fall, ideologies burn hot and fade, but the human heart remains, ever hungry for meaning, beauty, and truth. The artist who gives shape to feelings and breathes life into characters creates something that will outlast the empires of men.

The meaning is profound. While politics may command armies and laws, its victories are temporary, bound to the age in which they are forged. But art, once it takes root in the soul, transcends centuries. The politics of Shakespeare’s England is studied by the scholar, yet it is Hamlet’s grief and Lear’s madness that still move the world. Ionesco reminds us that what endures is not the party or policy of the writer, but the eternal resonance of the human spirit captured in words, music, or image.

History itself proves this. The poet Homer may have lived in a world of kings and city-states long forgotten, yet the Iliad and the Odyssey live on. We no longer remember the precise disputes of Achaean lords, but we know the wrath of Achilles, the longing of Odysseus, the tears of Penelope. Their feelings, carved into epic song, became timeless, while the politics of their day crumbled into dust. So too with Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, or Ionesco himself — remembered not for party loyalty, but for the living works of art they left behind.

The origin of Ionesco’s wisdom lies in his own life as a playwright of the absurd, where satire and surrealism cut through the illusions of ideology. He knew that laughter and sorrow carry truths that no manifesto can capture. By giving voice to the absurdity of existence, he created works that transcended his own century’s conflicts, carrying meaning to generations far beyond his time.

Therefore, O seekers of wisdom, mark this lesson well: art is the seed of eternity, politics but the weather of an age. Do not despise the political, for it shapes the lives of the living; yet know that it is the artist’s gift of feeling and character that speaks to the unborn. As Ionesco teaches, the work that endures is not the slogan but the song, not the policy but the poem, not the power but the passion. And thus, the artist becomes the true immortal, carrying the soul of humanity across the centuries.