From Dawn to Decadence

[Skull]

A truly noble work of a lifetime. The cultural history of the West for the last 500 years. The author J. Barzun died at 104 years wise, in 2012.

From Dawn to Decadence

A little from his preface:

"It takes only a look at the numbers to see that the 20th century is coming
to an end. A wider and deeper scrutiny is needed to see that in the West the
culture of the last 500 years is ending at the same time. Believing this to be
true, I have thought it the right moment to review in sequence the great
achievements and the sorry failures of our half millennium.

This undertaking has also given me a chance to describe at first hand for
any interested posterity some aspects of present decadence that may have
escaped notice, and to show how they relate to others generally acknowledged.
But the lively and positive predominate: this book is for people who
like to read about art and thought, manners, morals, and religion, and the
social setting in which these activities have been and are taking place. I have
assumed that such readers prefer discourse to be selective and critical rather
than neutral and encyclopedic. And guessing further at their preference, I
have tried to write as I might speak, with only a touch of pedantry here and
there to show that I understand modern tastes."

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Hereditary power,wealth,and influence are the secret cancers that destroy all civilizations. Barzun is the product of the university, which is a toxic aristocratic institution. Make Every Dynasty Die Nasty.

 

[Skull]

How his Prologue begins:

Looking at the phrase "our past" or "our culture" the reader is entitled to
ask: "Who is we?" That is for each person to decide. It is a sign of present disarray
that nobody can tell which individuals or groups see themselves as part
of the evolution described in these pages.

This state of affairs has its source in that very evolution. Our culture is in
that recurrent phase when, for good reasons, many feel the urge to build a wall
against the past. It is a revulsion from things in the present that seem a curse
from our forebears. Others attack or ignore selected periods. In this latter mood,
national, religious, or cultural ancestry becomes a matter of choice; people who
feel the need "dig for roots" wherever they fancy. The storehouse of traditions
and creeds offers an over-abundance, because the culture is old and unraveling.

This passion to break away explains also why many feel that the West has
to be denounced. But we are not told what should or could replace it as a
whole. Anyhow, the notion of western culture as a solid block having but one
meaning is contrary to fact. The West has been an endless series of opposites—
in religion, politics, art, morals, and manners, most of them persistent beyond
their time of first conflict. To denounce does not free the self from what it
hates, any more than ignoring the past shuts off its influence. Look at the youth
walking the street with ears plugged to a portable radio: he is tied to the lives of
Marconi and of the composer being broadcast. The museum visitor gazing at a
Rembrandt is getting a message from the 17C. And the ardent follower of
Martin Luther King might well pause over his leader's given names, which
evoke ideas from the Protestant Reformation and link the 20C to the 16th.

On the workaday plane, anyone receiving some form of social security
here or abroad is the beneficiary of a long line of theorists and activists along
which are found such disparates as Florence Nightingale, the Comte de Saint-
Simon, Bismarck, and Bernard Shaw. The political refugee who finds his host
nation evidently more congenial than the one he fled from can now breathe
freely thanks to the heroic efforts of thousands of thinkers and doers, famous
or obscure, martyrs or ordinary folk, embattled in the cause of political freedom—
though often enemies when so engaged.