/lit/ - Literature

>>21323393
Seconding Dawn to Decadence, that is an exceptionally erudite tome.

Thoughts?

>Barzun published the book when he was 93 years old, and described the book in its prefatory note as the culmination of "a lifetime" of study of Western thought.

>>19588833
Barzun did history better

>>19544199

Familiarize yourself

Read this first

this one desu

>>15479999
You could try pic related. It's not perfect and definitely not 100% pro-western (you can guess from the title what Barzun thinks of the current state of things,) but despite a lot of generalizations and a rambling style it's a pretty good book. The guy was incredibly well-read, at the very least you'll get some good recommendations for art, music, and literature. The book is more focused on culture than history and politics, though.

>>15098129
He's had his fan boys here, anon. Franco-American historian writing since the '40's who died at 106 or thereabouts between 5 and 10 years ago

Barzun is awesome.

also OP you'll like this, if you haven't read it yet. gets past napoleon and right up to bill clinton.

I'm reading Jacques Barzun's "From Dawn to Decadence" and it kind of depresses me for the following reasons:

1. It's mainly an overview of currents in Western European culture and thought, and tends to briefly cite various authors and historical figures before moving on to the next epoch. He had clearly been reading incessantly from youth until the time he wrote the book (it was published when he was 93), and it's very clear just from his outline that I will never even become familiar with a fragment of the canonical classics before I die. There's too much material.

2. As a Frenchman, he refers promiscuously to the difficulties of translation or cultural understanding between Gallic and Anglo societies. He notes that a lot of aphorisms are basically untranslatable. I would have to study French for a lot longer in order to attain that level of competence. That's probably not going to happen.

3. The book shifts sometime around the 1890's and then the immediate prewar era. We go from a progression of visual art from sloppy perspectival nonsense to photorealism but then into fucking cubism and abstract bullshit. His overt narrative is not one of cultural decline, really, but it's difficult to interpret things any other way. He traces the same evolution with classical music and literature itself. The ascent ended a long time ago, didn't it?

It's a well-written overview, though he skips a lot of material and over-emphasizes certain historical figures.

But at the end of it, I did not feel good at all about the broad direction of western societies.