>Charles Brown wrote:
>>
>>As to artists who actually become politicians, Hitler, Ronald
Reagan.
>>Sonny Bono, Fred Thompson.
>
>Add Paderewski (Polish President--frontman for Pilsudski) and Havel
>(Czech President--frontman for Klaus). Mao and Stalin fancied
>themselves poets.
>
>> I can't think of any artists who were
>>progressive heads of state...
>
>The conductor Kurt Eisner was the President of the (alas, so
>short-lived) Bavarian Soviet Republic, which he inaugurated with a
>performance of the
>Beethoven Ninth in the Heldenplatz. Solon of Athens was a renowned
poet.
Addendum: The poet Lamartine was [provisional] President of the Second French Republic.
>I don't know whether Enlightened Despots count as "progressive," but
>Friedrich der Grosse was a flautist and a not-bad minor composer, and
the
>emperor Nero always thought his true vocation was as poet, dramatist,
>actor, composer, and inventor of musical instruments (his last
words--
>"What an artist dies with me").
>
>Much supremely great poetry is attributed to David and Solomon, Kings
>of Jerusalem.
>
>Shane Mage
>
> "Mortals immortals, immortals mortals,
> living their deaths, dying their lives"
>
>Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 62
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
CB: Bravo !