A Jacques Barzun Reader by Jacques Barzun

A Jacques Barzun Reader Reviews

• 
  Trish

  A friend told me he was influenced by the thinking/writing of Jacques Barzun. Locally I could only find his books on criticism and language. I liked this one.
  
  In his essay on "Criticism: An Art or a Craft?" he writes

  "Criticism, however lofty, profound, subtle, and divinatory, remains exposition and analysis; it is referential and argumentative; it is not original, creative, independent of a text or a theory...We need it; at times we need it badly; but its loss would not mean the end of art...Great critics have been rare, perhaps because transcendent gifts of perception and composition have gone mostly into the making of art itself."

  On "Sentimentality" Barzun argues that sentimentality is not an excess of emotion or misplaced emotion, citing Shakespeare's emotional but never sentimental works. He instead floats the idea that

  "Sentimentality is feeling that shuts out action, real or potential. It is self-centered and a species of make-believe....the sentimentalist and the cynic are two sides of one nature...and the connoisseur can easily tell imitation feeling from the real thing."

  His essay on "The Permanence of Oscar Wilde" is worth the effort of procuring this book. He writes of Wilde's letter "De Profundis"and how

  "the manner of telling is perfectly adapted to the theme...one may read it over and each time feel as if one did not know the outcome...for the succession of ideas, of trivial facts and of measured indignation, remains unpredictable, which is to say dramatically and psychologically true."

  Barzun goes on to say that Wilde was "first and foremost a critic--one of the critics thanks to whose exertions Western art is unique in being an object not only of enjoyment but also of self-aware contemplation. We Occidentals do not merely live with the works of our artistic traditions, we live by them and by it." This idea seems so big and deep, I need to put it aside to think about.
  
  In "Lincoln the Literary Artist," Barzun suggests that "Lincoln's detachment was what produced his mastery over men," an idea I find has some validity.
  
  Barzun was an educator and his contributions to discussions of education policy will help to elucidate sides of the argument ongoing about our schools today. One section of this book entitled "On Teaching and Learning" is a series of essays fluent on ideas he has spent his adulthood thinking towards. "The Art of Making Teachers" reminds us of the alchemy that happens in a classroom; "The Centrality of Reading" reminds us of the basics; "The Tyranny of Testing" suggests he would feel vindicated with the new changes in rules about testing in schools today.
  
  Barzun weighs in on "Is Democratic Theory for Export?" reminding us that "political equality can be decreed but freedom cannot--it is a most elusive good." I understood this essay to reason that freedom and the concept of democracy must be developed indigenously, and cannot be exported, no matter how ardently we wish it.
  
  in 1959 Barzun wrote "The Three Enemies of Intellect" which he subsequently re-published in this book under the section heading "On America Past and Present." I don't think I understood it, and would like to discuss it with someone else. I think he is saying that intellectual tradition dictates a shared vocabulary of civilization that is now at the mercy of art, science, and what he calls philanthropy, or a yearning after someone's else's traditions. Art claims itself creative at its core, without the constraints of a shared history--it is anti-intellectual; science claims it can explain everything without resorting to ancient understandings; philanthropy suggests that intellect is something we can donate, give away or dabble in (?) when in fact anyone anywhere already has this capacity--it is the capacity to think. I am not sure this is right, but if it is, it does rather connect some of those writers who insist on the "thinking" part in human achievement and development, which adds a stabilizing block underneath the teetering and rather airy construction of my own reading/thinking.
• 
  Andrew Schirmer

  This book is the perfect introduction to Jacques Barzun's art. Wonderful, lucid criticism on seemingly everything Western civ has to offer: from Varese to baseball to crime fiction. Especially close to my heart is the essay "French and its Vagaries". It manages to be the best and most concise explication of French for English speakers. I cannot resist quoting one paragraph in full:
  
  This self-misrepresentation of the French vocabulary is compounded by another characteristic: French is not double like English, but single: it does not possess a second, Latinate word parallel to the Anglo-Saxon derivative--"tool" and "instrument," "strength" and "fortitude," "land" and "territory," "quick" and "rapid," "motherhood" and "maternity." Such pairs are not exact duplicates; usually, the sense of the Latin derivative is more abstract or lofty. Thus the spaceship was named Voyager and not Tripper (or even Traveler), and when Wordsworth wrote of Newton, he spoke of him as "voyaging through strange seas of thought." French has only the one word voyageur and the effect of this lack on the unreflecting English is that French poetry seems to be always "aloft," full of fancy words and resounding abstractions--"C'etait pendant l'horreur d'une profonde nuit"--why can't Racine say "dread" and "deep"? Because he has Virgil behind him and not Beowulf. And the critical mistake is to feel profonde as meaning profound when it does mean deep.
  
  Reading Barzun is an education, his passing marks the end of an era.
• 
  Ci

  Barzun is more Victorian and Old European in style and contents. His essays make rich dipping when one is fatigued by the cheap, flashy, and easy. Frequent visit of specific segments have the bracing effect of a tonic on one's mind. This is because there is rarely a sentence that is constructed to merely entertain the reader, or slipped in in writerly fancy. Barzun does not truck with the chatty nor pandering. His work rewards us with the austere beauty from a superior intellect.
  
  Readers are advised to read at least the first essay "Toward a Fateful Serenity" to see the range of his knowledge and the mastery of his art. Because of his range and depth in most humanistic fields, readers are forewarned to come to Barzun with certain literary and artistic readiness. I don't have much to do with the Music segment, nor the debate on scholar-critic method, while I am still much behind reading Goethe, Diderot or Hazlitt. Yet I feasted on his segment on Teaching and Learning, especially the necessity of reading classics as the center of learning. In his own elegant words, classics enables us "to live in a wider world ... wider than the one that comes through the routine of our material lives and through paper and factual magazines ..., wider also than friends' and neighbors' plans and gossips; wider especially than one's business or profession. For nothing is more narrowing than one's own shop, and it grows ever more as one bends the mind and energy to succeed". Amen to that!
  
  "
• 
  John

  Plenty highbrow.
• 
  Aaron

  All of the usual Barzun brilliance here, but with a bit more of his conservative leanings peppered in than most of his other essay collections.
• 
  Annabelle

  First reading: anytime between 2011 to 2013
  
  It took me a while to finish this highly intellectual bunch of random essays on topics ranging from the demise of education and French trivia as only a brilliant man can write it. Suffice to say that I of course did not get much of it. This is the kind of reading that makes you realize how much you DO NOT REALLY KNOW. That last statement however, does not mean I did not learn anything. AU CONTRAIRE! I will treasure this book and whoever it was who persuaded me to get it (for I honestly cannot remember!).
  
  Second reading: finished August 16, 2020
  
  In. Over. My. Head. Reading my earlier review, it seems like I understood more of it the first time around, when my reading options were more spontaneous, and not as carefully curated as it is now. After this second reading, I need to get my hands on a book that's more up to my comprehension levels!
• 
  Chris Cangiano

  A fascinating and varied selection of writing from the brilliant cultural historian Jacques Barzun spanning much of the 20th Century and touching on many and varied subjects (from literary criticism to a paean to baseball). Barzun wrote beautifully and with both great insight and much wit. Highly recommended both in its own right and as follow on to his magisterial From Dawn to Decadence.
• 
  Eve Lyons

  Barzun is very academic, but when he turns his academic analysis to the subject of baseball, it's just funny. And awesome. In a weird, dorky sort of way.
  
  I'm reading around in this one. They're mostly short essays. Most of them are pretty good.
• 
  Leonard Pierce

  Barzun isn't one of my favorite theorists/critics, but he's a very important one, and for a reason. This is a fine introduction to see if you want to find out more.
• 
  Douglas Ross

  Nicely done collection of Barzun's essays.
• 
  foundfoundfound

  barzun is an exemplary humanities scholar. it's a shame he was the last one.
• 
  Thomas

  Awesome essays.