Robert Burns – Friend of Freedom
Join us for a birthday celebration.
Sunday, January 24th, 6:00 pm EST
As the story goes, in 1793, at a private dinner in England, when the host proposed the health of William Pitt [first prime minister of Great Britain], the poet said, sharply, “Let us drink the health of a greater and better man – George Washington.” As the Schiller Institute Chorus takes its name from the Poet of Freedom, Friedrich Schiller, let us celebrate another friend of the human freedom, Robert Burns, born on January 25, 1759.
English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, in his essay, “A Defense of Poetry,” established that, in fact, it is the poets, who are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. In a moment as tumultuous as our present time, it is ever more important that we understand and develop in ourselves that poetic power capable of changing the course of human history for the better.
Join us in a celebration of the immortal life of Robert Burns through his own works and those of others; to help demonstrate that power of poetry and culture in strengthening the human spirit, to not only face adversity, but to overcome it with a greater good.
We plan to demonstrate how Burns fulfilled the great German poet, Friedrich Schiller’s demand, that a poet be both a patriot of his nation and citizen of the world. Please join us for an evening of song, poetry, and history, to advance the cause and the joy of true human freedom.
“A great poet is the most precious jewel of a nation.”
Ludwig van Beethoven
