While movies gave actors a newly vivid role, they obscured the “author,” who often disappeared from the scene. Even while movie rights to books sold for astronomical sums, films “based on” them often had scant resemblance to the original. Some of the best authors, despairing at the scenes, the characters, and the ideas mangled out of their works, refused to participate in their “story conferences,” and became refugees from Hollywood.
An increasingly technological and industrial art, the movies gave technicians, lighting experts, and cinematographers crucial roles in making every film, just as the collaboration and enthusiasm of bankers, movie moguls, and executives were essential. By the 1920s there developed in Hollywood a “studio system,” with companies like Warner Bros., M-G-M, and Universal organized to focus vast investment and countless collaborators. How did the popular products emerge from this technological-industrial-artistic maelstrom? Some suggested that there was a Genius of the System, which, like the Muses of ancient Greece, somehow converged and balanced all the elusive elements. But by the 1950s the colossi of the studio system were themselves in decline, and “independent” producers were producing some of the most successful films. While this diffused the powers of movie creation, it did not dissolve the mystery.
The heart of the mysteries of this new art was the audience. While Dickens could await public response to one number of his novel before shaping the next, the moviemakers could not so easily test their costly product as it was being created. From the beginning there was a hint of mystery in the movie audience. Since stage drama required light, the early Elizabethan theaters were in the open air, and performances were limited by the climate and the season. The movie house required darkness, where spectators could hardly see one another. Still, the public had become the patron and had to be pleased.
And who was the public? Moviemakers had the box-office test of whether they were pleasing their audience. But every step in the rise and diffusion of film drama deepened the mystery of the audience, who became less and less dependent on a theater. Now anyplace could be a theater. In every living room, television viewers could choose the film to be played and replayed at their pleasure. The creators of the newest art were in bondage to a spectral master.
SOME REFERENCE NOTES
These notes will help the reader share my delight in the lives and works of the creators treated in this book. At the same time they will suggest my debts to other scholars. I have selected accessible works likely to be found in a good public library or the library of a college or university, omitting the more specialized works and the articles in learned journals. For each book the date of the most recent publication is noted, and I have tried to note works still in print and in paperback editions. Many of the books listed here contain helpful bibliographies. Where subjects in this volume overlap or touch on those in my companion book, The Discoverers, the reader can consult its Reference Notes. In treating literary works from languages other than English I have tried, where the quoted passage is lengthy and of literary interest, either in the text or in these Reference Notes to credit the translator, who is too seldom adequately rewarded and recognized. Of course there is no substitute for seeing the great works of art and architecture and hearing the great works of music. I would hope this book would encourage readers to see and hear for themselves.
GENERAL
There is a vast literature on “creativity” that tends to tell us more about the authors than about their subjects. It seeks simple explanations for the most elusive, complex, and mysterious of all human processes, and homogenizes the people and the works that interest us precisely because of their uniqueness. Among the general works on artists that I have found most interesting are William James, Principles of Psychology (2 vols., 1890), with brilliant observations on genius and imagination; Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation (1964), with intriguing descriptions of “bisociative” thinking and the creative leaps; Milton C. Nahm, The Artist as Creator (1956), offering the creativity of the artist as a new ingredient of freedom introduced by the West; Rudolf and Margot Wittkower, Born under Saturn (1963), on sources of creativity in the personal miseries of artists. And on the artists’ products and their meanings: André Malraux, The Voices of Silence: Man and His Art (1953), a bold view of how modernity—the museum and photography—has created a “museum without walls” and the consequences; Joseph Alsop, The Rare Art Traditions (1982), an original history of art collecting and its linked phenomena.
As a devotee of reference books, I find no substitute for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. For individual creators there is nothing of the scope and quality of the Dictionary of Scientific Biography (C. C. Gillispie, ed., 16 vols., 1970–80). General reference works that illuminate the subjects of this book include notably: The Encyclopedia of Religion (Mircea Eliade, ed., 16 vols., 1987); Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (James Hastings, ed., 12 vols., n.d.); Dictionary of the History of Ideas (Philip P. Wiener, ed., 4 vols., 1973). For American and British readers the inexhaustible treasure house of The Oxford English Dictionary (James A. H. Murray and others, eds., 13 vols., 1930; R. W. Burchfield, ed., 4 supplements, 1972–86) makes our language an avenue to the history of all our arts. For epochal works on print, see Printing and the Mind of Man: The Impact of Print on Five Centuries of Western Civilization (John Carter and Percy H. Muir, eds., 1967).
For the visual arts a delightful starting point, elementary in the best sense of the word, is E. H. Gombrich’s concise The Story of Art (3d ed., 1950). And for reference: Encyclopedia of World Art, McGraw-Hill (15 vols. 1959–1968; 2 vols. supp. 1983–1987), copiously illustrated, but with a heavy bias toward Italian scholarship. The most satisfactory textbook is H. W. Janson, History of Art (4th ed., rev. by Anthony F. Janson, 1991), bulky but brilliantly illustrated, with convenient aids and time charts. More compact is the Thames and Hudson Encyclopaedia of the Arts (Herbert Read, ed., 1966). On particular periods I have enjoyed The Oxford Classical Dictionary (2d ed., 1970; N.G.L. Hammond and H. H. Scullard, eds.); The Oxford History of the Classical World (John Boardman et al., eds., 1986); the admirable Dictionary of the Middle Ages (Joseph R. Strayer, ed., 13 vols., 1982–86); the compendious and sensible Penguin Companion to the Arts in the Twentieth Century (Kenneth McLeish, ed., 1985). All these offer bibliographies.
An array of imaginative scholars in this century have opened paths from arts to all the rest of our history: the stimulating and original works of Sigfried Giedion, Mechanization takes Command (1948), Space, Time and Architecture (1949), The Eternal Present: The Beginnings of Art (1962); E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion (1972); Erwin Panofsky’s subtle Meaning in the Visual Arts (1955; 1982), Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (1970); Heinrich Wolfflin, Principles of Art History (1932). Basic texts are conveniently collected in Great Books of the Western World (54 vols., 1952; rev. ed., 1990), a publication of Encyclopaedia Britannica.
THE RIDDLE OF CREATION: A PROLOGUE
A good introduction to the difficulty mankind has experienced in coming to the idea of novelty is any one of the lucid works of Mircea Eliade, beginning with his brief Cosmos and History: The Myth of Eternal Return (1959), then Myth and Reality (1968), or Patterns in Comparative Religion (1972), explored in more detail in his History of Religious Ideas (3 vols., 1978–85). For concise essays on the contrasts of Western and Eastern cosmologies, we are fortunate in having Hajime Nakamura’s Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples (1964) and his Comparative History of Ideas (2d ed., 1986). Cyclical thinking has also charmed the West—from Plato to Vico, Hegel, and Toynbee—and seemed to provide a refuge from the complexity of history. Helpful introductions are Grace E. Cairns, Philosophies of History (1962), and G. W. Trompi, The Idea of Historical Recurrence in Western Thought (1979).
The vast literature of Eastern religions and alternatives to religion can overwhelm the Western reader. An accessible path is the Introduction to Oriental Civilizations series (William Theodore de Bary, ed., Columbia University Press, 1958–64), with its Sour
ces of Indian Traditions (1958) and companion volumes on the Chinese and the Japanese traditions. And for a collection of lively scholarly essays: Mythologies of the Ancient World (Samuel Noah Kramer, ed., 1961). There is no better reference guide than the Asia Society’s readable and scholarly Encyclopedia of Asian History (Ainslie T. Embree, ed., 4 vols., 1987) with bibliographies.
Part I: Worlds without Beginning
Chapter 1. The Dazzled Vision of the Hindus. We are lucky to have A. L. Basham’s readable The Wonder That was India (1954; 1971) and illuminating brief works: Diana L. Eck, Darsan, Seeing the Divine Image in India (1981) and Banaras, City of Light (1982); S. Radhakrishnan, The Hindu View of Life (1957). For a visual sample of the awesome multiplicity of roles of Hindu gods, see Stella Kramrisch, Manifestations of Shiva (1981), the catalog of a brilliant exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Where the translator is not indicated in the text, the source is: de Bary (ed.), Sources of Indian Tradition.
Chapter 2. The Indifference of Confucius. For a straight path to Confucius, see Arthur Waley’s translation of The Analects of Confucius (1938) and his Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China (1956). On Confucius and Confucianism, Herrlee G. Creel offers models of scholarly liveliness in Confucius and the Chinese Way (1960) and What Is Taoism?, (1970), besides his classic The Birth of China (1964). Especially helpful: C. P. Fitzgerald, China: A Short Cultural History (4th ed., 1976); L. Carrington Goodrich, A Short History of the Chinese People (4th ed., 1958); Herbert G. Giles, A History of Chinese Literature (n.d.), and Frederick W. Mote, Intellectual Foundations of China (2d ed., 1989). More specialized are Derk Bodde, Essays on Chinese Civilization (1981); Benjamin I. Schwarz, The World of Thought in Ancient China (1985); Chang Chung-yuan, Creativity and Taoism: A Study of Chinese Philosophy, Art and Poetry (1975); On Chinese views of nature, see Joseph Needham’s brilliant and succinct Within the Four Seas, the Dialogue of East and West (1979). No one should miss Kenneth Clark’s Landscape into Art (1949; 1976). Where the translator is not indicated in the text, the source is: de Bary (ed.), Sources of Chinese Tradition (2 vols., 1960), or Shigeru Nakayama and Nathan Sivin (eds.), Chinese Science (1973).
Chapter 3. The Silence of the Buddha. A convenient access to the Scriptures is Edward Conze, Buddhist Scriptures (Penguin Books, 1973), illuminated by his Buddhism (1953) and Buddhist Meditation (1956), supplemented by Sacred Books of the Buddhists (T. W. Rhys Davids, ed., 4 vols., 1910–21). Where the translator is not indicated in the text, the source is: de Bary (ed.), Sources of Indian Tradition (1958).
Chapter 4. The Homeric Scriptures of the Greeks. While Homer provides a delightful touchstone of ancient Greek thought, the literature about Homer is a microcosm of Western literary culture. For a spirited introduction M. I. Finley has given us The Ancient Greeks (1963), The World of Odysseus (2d ed., 1977), and The Greek Historians (1959). A lively path into Greek thinking about origins is W.K.C. Guthrie, In the Beginning (1965), broadened by his The Greeks and Their Gods (1955), and documented by his History of Greek Philosophy (2 vols., 1962–65). For the work of Milman Parry, see a detailed account by a brilliant disciple who pursued the implications and applications of Parry’s techniques: Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (1960); and Adam Parry, ed., The Making of Homeric Verse (1971).
To place Homer in context, see G. S. Kirk, Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures (1973), Homeland the Oral Tradition (1976), Homer and the Epic (1979); C. M. Bowra’s eloquent The Greek Experience (1957), Homer (1972); G. Lowes Dickinson, The Greek View of Life (1958); W. H. Auden, ed., The Portable Greek Reader (1955). For reference, see A.J.B. Wace and F. H. Stubbings, eds., A Companion to Homer (1962). We glimpse the iridescence of Homer in the English translations from Chapman (1611; 1614–15) to Hobbes, Dryden, and Pope and those in our century: the verse of Robert Fitzgerald (1961), Richmond Lattimore (1965–67), and Robert Fagles (1990), and the prose translations of E. V. Rieu (the first Penguin Classic, 1946) and I. A. Richards (1950). Matthew Arnold’s lectures On Translating Homer (1861) defines “the grand style” and shows us the apotheosis of “the Poet.” For Hesiod’s Works and Days and his Theogony, see the translation by Apostolos N. Athanassakis (1983), to compare with that by Richmond Lattimore (1959).
Part II: A Creator-God
The history of theology, written mostly for theologians and believers, does not offer us easy paths of entry. But we are fortunate in having The Encyclopedia of Religion (Mircea Eliade, ed., 16 vols., 1987), which offers us succinct and readable scholarly essays. And see William Foxwell Albright, “From the Stone Age to Christianity,” in Monotheism and Historical Process (1957). Jaroslav Pelikan’s magisterial survey of the history of Christian theology has the authentic flavor of personal conviction: The Christian Tradition (5 vols., 1971–89). Or more succinctly The Melody of Theology (1988), and Jesus Through the Centuries (1985). His Mystery of Continuity (1986) introduces us to the amplitude of Saint Augustine’s thought and influence. A convenient reference work is Harper’s Bible Dictionary (8th ed., 1973).
Chapter 5. The Intimate God of Moses. I am much indebted to Martin Buber’s Moses (1946) and his I and Thou, (1937), which makes the Mosaic experience a basis for his version of Judaism. Sigmund Freud, too, found his own meanings in Moses and Monotheism (1939), recently explained as an aspect of his own personal quest, in Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Freud’s Moses (1991). For Moses’ place in the history of theology, see William F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity (2d. ed., 1957), and George Foot Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era (2 vols., 1946). Of extraordinary interest is Josiah Royce’s article “Monotheism” in Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. 8, pp. 817ff., which reminds us of the many varieties of belief traveling under that name.
Chapter 6. The Birth of Theology. The literary background of the intriguing Philo is brightened by Edward A. Parsons, The Alexandrian Library: The Glory of the Hellenic World (1952), and F. E. Peters, The Harvest of Hellenism … the Near East from Alexander the Great to the Triumph of Christianity (1970). The main avenue to him is Erwin R. Goodenough, Introduction to Philo Judaeus (2d ed., 1963), followed by Harry A. Wolfson’s comprehensive Philo, Foundations of Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (2 vols., 1947).
Chapter 7. The Innovative God of Saint Augustine. Saint Augustine of Hippo remains one of the most versatile and challenging thinkers in Western history. The best introduction to his thought is Jaroslav Pelikan, The Mystery of Continuity: Time and History, Memory and Eternity in … Saint Augustine (1986) and The Excellent Empire: The Fall of Rome and the Triumph of the Church (1987). For biography, see Peter Brown’s readable Augustine of Hippo (1967) and Homes F. Dudden, The Life and Times of St. Ambrose (2 vols., 1935). For the wider background, see: Charles N. Cochrane’s brilliant Christianity and Classical Culture (1944); Ludwig Edelstein, The Idea of Progress in Classical Antiquity (1967); Robert Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress (1980). Saint Augustine’s Confessions are in popular English translations by E. B. Pusey (1930) and F. J. Sheed (1943). The City of God is in the Everyman Library (2 vols., 1945–47) and in the Modern Library, trans. Marcus Dods, with an introduction by Thomas Merton. Both with a selection of theological writings are in Great Books of the Western World, Vol. 18 (1952).
Chapter 8. The Uncreated Koran. The strangeness of the idea of the uncreated Koran to those raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition is a clue to the effort required of the English reader to grasp the meanings of Islam. The best introduction in English to the problem of interpreting the Koran is Bell’s Introduction to the Qur’an (revised by W. Montgomery Watt, 1970). For the history of interpretation and the wider context, see the articles “Kalam” and “Qur’an” in The Encyclopedia of Religion; Gustave von Grunebaum, Medieval Islam (2d ed., 1971); F. E. Peters, Allah’s Commonwealth: a History of Islam in the Near East, 600–1100 (1973); Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (1991), especially the brilliant essay in Chapter 4, “The Articulations of Islam,
” and The Encyclopaedia of Islam (1960–). The special role of language and the word in Islam is revealed in the distinctive study of Kalam surveyed in Harry A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalam (1976). This has given Islam a linguistic cultural role quite different from that in Christianity. While the sacred Scriptures in Western Christendom have had a leading role in spreading and defining vernaculars (German, French, English), Islam itself has been a powerful agent for the spread of Arabic. Strictly speaking, “translation” of the Koran is not possible and not permissible—which explains why M. M. Pickthall can give us only The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (“An Explanatory Translation,” 1930; Mentor Paperback, 1959). The version generally accepted by Muslims in the English-language world, The Holy Qur’an, Text, Translation and Commentary, by A. Yusuf Ali (3d ed., 1946), offers the Arabic and the English in parallel columns.
BOOK ONE: CREATOR MAN
Part III: The Power of Stone
In this century, the history of architecture has invited bold and imaginative interpreters, who carry us out from the buildings we see. The most far-ranging and cosmopolitan of these is the Swiss Sigfried Giedion, who has made contemporary art and technology his point of departure. Start with his Space, Time and Architecture, the growth of a new tradition, (1949), then Mechanization Takes Command (1948). Especially relevant for this Part of the book are The Eternal Present: The Beginnings of Art (1962) and The Beginnings of Architecture (1981). Architecture is the starting point also for Lewis Mumford’s reflections on American and other civilizations, from his Sticks and Stones (1924) to The City in History (1961) and Roots of Contemporary Architecture (1972). A concise survey is Nikolaus Pevsner, An Outline of European Architecture (new ed., 1948). The Architecture Book (1976), by Norval White, is an illustrated glossary of architectural terms. A brilliant array of scholars offer well-illustrated studies of periods in the volumes of The Pelican History of Art, listed under topics below. For essays on the relation between architecture and the sophisticated currents of thought, see Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (1973); Geoffrey Scott, The Architecture of Humanism (1974); Heinrich Wolfflin, Principles of Art History (1932).
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