Volume 44, Number 11 · June 26, 1997
Free Spirit
By Robert Darnton
The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and Their History
by Sir Isaiah Berlin, edited by Henry Hardy, with an introduction by Patrick Gardiner
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 278 pp., $25.00
Of all the lost arts—the stained glass of Chartres, the tiles of Delft, the ink of Gutenberg, the memory system of the Renaissance, the singing of the castrati, the speech of the ancient Romans, the poetry of the minnesingers, illuminated manuscripts, Gobelin tapestry, real tennis, old ale, oral epics, public hangings, penmanship, motherhood, savoir faire, and dolce far niente—the most lamented is the art of conversation. Where is the despot of the breakfast table today? Where the after-dinner raconteurs? The salon lions? The philosophers, strolling in gardens and ordering the world through talk?
Review, 3940 words
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