The erudite and entertaining M.D. Aeschliman of Boston University and the University of Italian Switzerland has written a fine tribute to that promethean intellectual figure of our time, Jacques Barzun, who turns 100 this month and will be feted at Columbia University.http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=ZDhjM2Y1YzhlY2JmNjE4NWZmNjk1NThhNTA0MjlkYTc=
Dr. Barzun published From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life in 2000--when he was 93, a great inspiration for all of us!
I like him also because he was onto Marx early, onto Darwin early, and quick to see the limits of the modernist artistic perspective.
I like him further because he disputes the determinist interpretations of history that threatened to prevail for his entire lifetime. He believes that individuals make a difference.
One individual who makes a difference is Jacques Barzun. In a time when intellectual pipsqueaks, montebanks and popinjays scurry about our culture, what a welcome relief a giant makes against the horizon!
Leave a comment