The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination

by DANIEL J. BOORSTIN

  Chapter 38. New-World Epics. The Library of America gives attractive access. Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico and his Conquest of Peru are conveniently available unabridged in a single Modern Library Giant. Both works begin with an engrossing detailed exposition of the geography, institutions, religion, mythology, and science, and are surprisingly respectful of the peculiar institutions of these non-European peoples. While passages inevitably betray prejudices of Prescott and his age, they also show an impressive sympathy for the variety of human cultures and a sense of the interconnection of all of a society’s ways. William Charvat and Michael Kraus, eds., have provided Representative Selections (1943), with introductions. A cogent and appreciative introduction to Prescott’s life is the essay by Roger B.

  Merriman in the Dictionary of American Biography (1935). Harvey Gardiner, William Hickling Prescott (1969) provides a comprehensive critical biography.

  The Oregon Trail has often been reprinted in editions for young readers. Parkman’s other writings are less conveniently available today, but can be found in numerous subscription and library editions of the last century. An attractive sampler is the Parkman Reader (1955), selected and edited by Samuel Eliot Morison, with his usual grace. And, for Parkman’s life, begin with the essay by James Truslow Adams in The Dictionary of American Biography, then to the admirable biography by Mason Wade, Francis Parkman: Heroic Historian (1942), illuminated by Letters of Francis Parkman (2 vols., 1960), edited by Wilbur R. Jacobs. To put Prescott and Parkman in literary context: G. P. Gooch, History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century (new ed., 1959); Michael Kraus, The Writing of American History (1963); David Levin, History as Romantic Art: Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, and Parkman (1959); Robert E. Spiller et al., Literary History of the United States, Vol. 1 (1948); Van Wyck Brooks, The Flowering of New England (1936).

  Chapter 39. A Mosaic of Novels. For a wide perspective on the place of the novel in the history of printed literature, see: Warren Chappell, A Short History of the Printed Word (1970); S. H. Steinberg, Five Hundred Years of Printing (3d ed., 1974), a Penguin book; Daniel P. Resnick, ed., Literacy in Historical Perspective (1983); Richard D. Altick, The English Common Reader (1957), a social history of the mass reading public. And for great novelists’ perspectives: Henry James, French Poets and Novelists (1878); Essays on the Art of Fiction (Leon Edel, ed., 1956), Vintage paperback; E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (1927), often reprinted. For sharply focused views: W. Somerset Maugham, Ten Novels and their Authors (1954); Stefan Zweig, Three Masters: Balzac, Dickens, Dostoeffsky (1930), Balzac (1947); V. S. Pritchett’s vividly illustrated brief biography, Balzac (1973). André Maurois has found Balzac an ideal subject for his risky art of making biography read like a novel: Prometheus: The Life of Balzac (1965). The critical literature on Balzac is as copious as his works. Especially helpful are: Samuel Rogers, Balzac and the Novel (1969); H. J. Hunt, Balzac’s Comédie Humaine (1959); Harry Levin, The Gates of Horn … Five French Realists (1963). Balzac’s writings, often translated, are in numerous reprint series, notably the Modern Library and Penguin Classics.

  Chapter 40. In Love with the Public. Dickens’s beloved public has not forgotten him, and has organized the Dickens Fellowship, with headquarters in Dickens House in London, and branches across the world, three times a year publishing the Dickensian. For the dimensions of public enthusiasm, see G. K. Chesterton, Charles Dickens, Last of the Great Men (1942). We are fortunate that John Forster, Dickens’s close friend and publishing collaborator, wrote a detailed three-volume Life (1872–74), new ed. by A. J. Hoppe in Everyman Library (1969), providing a source for many later biographies. The standard recent life is Edgar Johnson’s admirable Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph (2 vols., 1952), abridged and revised (1986) for Penguin Books. For other views: the copious Norman and Jeanne Mackenzie, Dickens (1979); the massive Peter Ackroyd, Dickens (1990). For Dickens in perspective: Humphry House, The Dickens World (2d ed., 1962); Angus Wilson, The World of Charles Dickens (1970); Stefan Zweig, Three Masters (1930). Dickens’s writings are available in editions to suit any pocketbook—from the deluxe Nonesuch Dickens, to paperbacks at airports.

  Part VIII. From Craftsman to Artist

  The movement from craftsman to artist, from doing the familiar task better to doing something new is a legacy of the Renaissance, dramatized most vividly in Italy. The histories of the arts of the Renaissance are seldom tainted by the envy that can mar the history of literature written by authors manqué. The word “renaissance” (“rebirth”) is an understatement of the novelty that marked the creators we meet in Chapters 41–45. This spirit is savored in its pioneer spokesman Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (in German, 1860; available in many English translations and reprints). The idea of the Renaissance was popularized in the English-reading world by J. A. Symonds, History of the Renaissance in Italy (1875–86) and Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), and by John Ruskin’s championship of the Gothic against the Renaissance in his Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1851–53). As a stimulus to seeing and thinking, few can excel Erwin Panofsky: Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (1970), Meaning in the Visual Arts (1982), The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer (1971). For wider perspectives: E. H. Gombrich, The Story of Art (3d ed., 1950), Meditations on a Hobby Horse (1963), illustrated essays on the theory of art, and Art and Illusion (1972). And viewed by a historian of science: George Sarton, The Renaissance (1929). For a delightful plunge into the world and conceit of Italian Renaissance artists, read Benvenuto Cellini’s Memoirs in a newly unexpurgated translation in the World Classics (1961). An admirable selection of the writings by and about artists in this period is Elizabeth Gilmore Holt, ed., A Documentary History of Art, Vol. I (1980), in paperback. Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists (translated and selected by George Bull; 2 vols., 1987) is in Penguin Books.

  Chapter 41. Archetypes Brought to Life. In addition to the general works above, an excellent introduction to the life and works: Mario Bucci, Giotto (1968), with eighty color plates; Roberto Salvini, All the Paintings of Giotto (2 vols., 1963).

  Chapter 42. Roman Afterlives. Two good points of departure: Peter Murray, The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance (rev. ed., 1986); Jacob Burckhardt, The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance (revised and edited by Peter Murray, 1985). Alberti’s Ten Books of Architecture (the 1755 Leoni Edition) is in a Dover reprint (1986). Manetti’s Life of Brunelleschi has been edited with an introduction by Howard Saalman (1970). For the architect’s profession: Spiro Kostof, ed., The Architect (1986). And for another afterlife of Roman architecture, see James S. Ackerman’s brilliant essay Palladio (1966), in the Penguin series The Architect and Society, and Andrea Palladio, The Four Books of Architecture (1965), a Dover reprint.

  Chapter 43. The Mysteries of Light: From a Walk to a Window. The basic works on the history of perspective in this period are John White, The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space (3d ed., 1987), and Samuel F. Edgerton, Jr., The Renaissance Rediscovery of Linear Perspective (1975). For insight into the contrasting ways of nonperspective art, see Heinrich Schäfer, Principles of Egyptian Art (1974).

  Chapter 44. Sovereign of the Visible World. The life of Leonardo challenges both the historian of science and the historian of the arts. See my The Discoverers, Chapters 45 and 46. To bring the two cultures together, begin with Kenneth Clark, Leonardo da Vinci … His Development as an Artist (2d ed., 1952); Martin Kemp, Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man (1981), The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat (1990); Morris Philipson, ed., Leonardo da Vinci: Aspects of the Renaissance Genius (1966). For biographies, see: Ludwig H. Heydenreich, Leonardo da Vinci (2 vols., 1954); V. P. Zubov, Leonardo da Vinci (originally published in Russian, 1961, 1968); Serge Bramly, Leonardo: Discovering the Life of Leonardo da Vinci (1991). Leonardo’s own writings are best available in The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci (2 vols.
, 3d ed., 1970), edited from the original manuscripts by Jean Richter. See also The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (Edward MacCurdy, trans., 1941); Leonardo on Painting (1989, Martin Kemp, ed.), an anthology of his writings with documents on his career. For the interesting suggestion that Leonardo may have been right-handed, and some of the evidence, see Henry Petroski, The Pencil (1990), Ch. 1.

  Chapter 45. “Divine Michelangelo.” A stimulating introduction to the idea of the genius artist is Rudolph Wittkower’s essay “Genius: Individualism in Art and Artist,” in Dictionary of the History of Ideas (Philip P. Wiener, ed., 4 vols., 1973) at Vol. 2, pp. 297–312, amplified by his Born Under Saturn: The Character and Conduct of Artists … from Antiquity to the French Revolution (1963). For Vasari, see reference notes to Chapter 41 above, and especially Vasari, Lives of the Artists (2 vols., 1987), Vol. 2, Penguin Books. An excellent introduction to all aspects of Michelangelo is the article by Charles de Tolnay in Encyclopedia of World Art, Vol. 9, pp. 861–914. And for a full-length biography, the lively and subtle Charles H. Morgan, The Life of Michelangelo (1960). For documents, see: Charles Holroyd, Michael Angelo Buonarroti with … the Life by … Condivi and Three Dialogues of … d’Ollanda (2d ed., 1911); Documentary History of Art (Elizabeth G. Holt, ed., 4 vols., 1981), Vol. 1. A magisterial work is James S. Ackerman, The Architecture of Michelangelo (2 vols., 1961); and, with J. Newman, The Architecture of Michelangelo, with a Catalogue of Michelangelo’s Works (Penguin Books, 1971); to be consulted with Jacob Burckhardt, The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance (revised and edited by Peter Murray, 1985), and Robert J. Clements, Michelangelo’s Theory of Art (1961). For wider background, see: Burckhardt, Civilization of the Renaissance (1944); George Brandes, Michelangelo, His Life, His Times, His Era (1963); J. H. Plumb, Renaissance Profiles (1961); and the suggestive if dogmatic Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art (2 vols., 1951), Mannerism: The Crisis of the Renaissance and the Origin of Modern Art (1986). It is not surprising that Michelangelo has inspired romanticized and novelized biographies, for example Romain Rolland, Michelangelo (2 parts; French, 1905–6; English, 1962).

  Chapter 46. The Painted Word: The Inward Path of Tao. For anyone schooled in the West, discovering Chinese painting in its masterpieces (for example those in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan) is wonderfully refreshing. A lively orienting introduction is F. W. Mote, Intellectual Foundations of China (2d ed., 1989). For the backgrounds of Chinese culture, see above reference notes for Chapter 02, especially: Herrlee G. Creel, Confucius and the Chinese Way (1960), What Is Taoism? (1970); C. P. Fitzgerald, China: A Short Cultural History (4th ed., 1976), The Chinese View of Their Place in the World (1960); The Legacy of China (Raymond Dawson, ed., 1964). The general works I have found most helpful: William Willetts, Foundations of Chinese Art: From Neolithic Pottery to Modern Architecture (1965); Mario Prodan, An Introduction to Chinese Art (1958); Christian F. Murck, ed., Artists and Traditions: Uses of the Past in Chinese Culture (1976). On the history of the stylus and other early writing instruments, see the excellent illustrated Chapter 29, by S. H. Hooke, “Recording and Writing,” in Charles Singer et al., eds., A History of Technology (1967), Vol. 1. We are fortunate in having several vivid works to answer the Westerner’s puzzlement and explain the relation of Chinese painting to calligraphy: Laurence Binyon, Painting in the Far East … Pictorial Art in … China and Japan (1959), a Dover paperback; Chih-Mai Ch’en, Chinese Calligraphers and their Art (1966); Annie Chen, The What and How of Chinese Painting (1978); especially helpful—Mai-Mai Sze, The Way of Chinese Painting: Its Ideas and Techniques, with selections from the seventeenth-century Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting, available at the National Palace Museum, Taipei.

  For some of the painters and texts mentioned in this chapter see: Susan Bush and Hsio-yen Shih, eds., Early Chinese Texts on Painting (1985) and Chang Chung-yuan, Creativity and Taoism: A Study of Chinese Philosophy, Art and Poetry (1975). And for an illuminating example of the application of the traditions of Chinese painting by a talented Chinese artist in the twentieth century, see Shen C. Y. Fu, Challenging the Past: The Paintings of Chang Dai-chien (1899–1983) (1991), a catalog of an exhibit in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

  Part IX. Composing for the Community

  In addition to the general reference works listed under Chapter 28 above, of the countless works on Western music I have found especially helpful: Douglas Moore, A Guide to Musical Styles (rev. 1962); Donald F. Tovey, The Forms of Music (1956); Joan Peyser, ed., The Orchestra: Origins and Transformations (1986); Curt Sachs, The History of Musical Instruments (1940); Donald Jay Grout and Hermine Weigel Grout, A History of Western Music (rev., 1973), A Short History of Opera (3d ed., 1988). Of the many popular essays and biographies by musicologists for nonmusicians these are attractive: Aaron Copland, Music and Imagination (1957); Harold C. Schonberg, The Lives of the Great Composers (1989); Wallace Brockway and Herbert Weinstock, Men of Music, (rev. ed., 1950), The World of Opera (1962); Edward J. Dent, Opera (1978), illustrated; Gerald Abraham, One Hundred Years of Music (4th ed., 1974). Handy for dates and reference: Arthur Jacobs, The New Penguin Dictionary of Music (4th ed., 1979); Karl Nef, An Outline of the History of Music (1964). For an eighteenth-century view, see: Charles Burney, A General History of Music: from the earliest ages to the present period (1789) (2 vols., Frank Mercer, ed., reprint, 1935). Urban life in the ages of the great composers is vividly re-created by Ilsa Barea, Vienna (1966). And to bring the great figures together: Charles Rosen, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (1976).

  Chapter 47. A Protestant Music. The best introduction to Bach’s life is Karl Geiringer, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Culmination of an Era (1966). The foundation for later biographies remains the copious Johann Sebastian Bach: his work and influence on the music of Germany, 1685–1750, by Philipp Spitta (3 vols., 1873–80), now available in Dover reprints (1951); revised in Charles Sanford Terry, Bach (1928). An admirable and convenient collection of the documents is Hans T. David and Arthur Mendel, eds., The Bach Reader (1945). We should let Bach introduce us to the remarkable Albert Schweitzer (1875–1966), whose engrossing and personal J. S. Bach (Ernest Newman, trans., 2 vols., 1966, Dover reprints) reveals another Bach. A passionate Bach devotee, Schweitzer also made an enduring edition of Bach’s organ music. It is astonishing that this medical missionary to the African jungle (winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 1952), versatile and adventurous pursuer of “Reverence for Life,” found his hero in the craftsman-musician of German princelings. For the technical context: C. F. Abdy Williams, The Story of the Organ (1972).

  Chapter 48. The Music of Instruments: From Court to Concert. Excellent short lives of Haydn and Mozart by Denis Arnold appear in the New Oxford Companion to Music (2 vols., rev. 1990). Scholarly and readable full-length biographies: Karl and Irene Geiringer, Haydn: A Creative Life in Music (2d ed., 1968) and H. C. Robbins Landon, Haydn (1972); a shorter life, Rosemary Hughes, Haydn (5th ed., 1970). For Haydn’s own record, see H. C. Robbins Landon, The Collected Correspondence and London Notebooks of Joseph Haydn (1959), Haydn: Chronicle and Works (1976–80). The Mozart literature is vast for his brief life. Stanley Sadie helps us into the literature with his readable New Grove Mozart (1983). H. C. Robbins Landon and D. Mitchell, eds., The Mozart Companion (2d ed., 1965), essays by specialists. The debate over the cause of Mozart’s early death has never ceased. For a recent popular account arguing that he was poisoned and hurried to an unmarked grave to avoid autopsy: Francis Carr, Mozart & Constanze (1985).

  Chapter 49. New Worlds for the Orchestra. Excellent starting points for Beethoven are the readable and cogent George R. Marek, Beethoven: Biography of a Genius (1969), or Stanley Sadie, Beethoven (1967) in Faber’s Great Composer Series. The monumental life is by Alexander Wheelock Thayer, revised and edited by Elliot Forbes, Thayer’s Life of Beethoven (2 vols., 1967). But none of these has the intimacy and authenticity of Beethoven as I Knew Him (D. W. Macardle,
ed., 1966), by Anton Felix Schindler (1795–1864), the German conductor and Beethoven’s close friend. The great man is illuminated from many sides in C. G. Sonneck, ed., Beethoven: Impressions by His Contemporaries (1967), a Dover paperback. For the wider background and the auguries of Romanticism, see Jacques Barzun’s engrossing Berlioz and the Romantic Century (2 vols., 3d ed., 1969).

  Chapter 50. The Music of Risorgimento. Since Verdi was not a literary person, he left few writings about himself except his letters and we depend heavily on anecdotal materials. A perceptive introduction is Frank Walker, The Man Verdi (1962), supplemented by the full-length biography,

  Dyneley Hussey, Verdi (rev. 1973), illustrated with music examples. See also John F. Toye, Giuseppe Verdi (1931); D. Kimbell, Verdi in the Age of Italian Romanticism (1981), a documented panorama.

  Chapter 51. A Germanic Union of the Arts. Wagner’s own voluminous writings and his encompassing interests have produced a vast literature. A useful introductory essay is by John Warrack in The New Oxford Companion to Music. The standard up-to-date biography is Curt von Westernhagen, Wagner (2 vols., 1978). For copious detail: Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner (4 vols., 1933–47), The Wagner Operas (1949). Wagner’s own writings: My Life (A. Gray, trans.; Mary Whittall, ed., 1983), Opera and Drama (Edwin Evans, trans., 2 vols.), Three Wagner Essays (Robert L. Jacobs, trans., 1979). An intimate view: M. Gregor-Dellin and D. Mack, eds., Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (1978–80). And brilliantly suggestive essays for the context: Jacques Barzun, Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage (2d ed., 1981); George Bernard Shaw, The Perfect Wagnerite, a Commentary on the Ring (1923, 1967), a Dover paperback; Peter Viereck, Metapolitics, the roots of the Nazi mind, from the Romantics to Hitler (rev. 1961).