Volume 5, Number 1 · August 5, 1965
Mozart in the Stacks
By W.H. Auden
Mozart: A Documentary Biography
by Otto Erich Deutsch
Stanford, 572 pp., $17.50
An unbook, unwritten by, it would seem, an anal madman. I say madman because the theory of Truth presupposed by such an undertaking as this is insane, namely: 1) Truth resides in objects, the objects in this case being pieces of paper with words and figures written on them, among which, somewhere or other the name Mozart appears; 2) there is no other truth but these; 3) to think, that is to say, to compare one object with another, to ask their value and meaning, is to falsify. The only function of the human mind is, as it were, to photograph the objects which the hand has succeeded in collecting.
Review, 508 words
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