The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination (146 page)

Since this book is a kind of autobiography, it has profited from my opportunities to read at leisure and to visit the art galleries and architectural monuments of Europe and the Mediterranean. I owe these opportunities in the first instance to the generous advantages many years ago of a Rhodes Scholarship and to the Oxford calendar of long vacations. And more recently I owe them to my experiences of teaching and lecturing in universities in the United States and in Europe, Japan, and India. The monuments and works of art here described, almost without exception, I have visited and seen more than once. During the last fifty years I have had the special advantage of the inspiration and companionship of my wife (and editor) Ruth F. Boorstin, who has shared these sights and visits. And my reflections on literature, first stirred by my college tutor, F. O. Matthiessen, during these years have had the benefit of her guidance, stimulus, and encouragement. As this book is intended to be not a mere exposition but an invitation, I hope it may entice readers to the source, the works of the creators, a journey always enriched by the right companion.

This book would have been impossible without the incomparable collections of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

It is a pleasure to thank friends and fellow scholars who have given me suggestions or read parts of the manuscript. They have saved me from errors of fact, but often have not shared my interpretations or my emphases. They include: Dr. James S. Ackerman, Professor of Fine Arts Emeritus, Harvard University; Mr. Yoshinobu Ashihara, architect, Tokyo, Japan; Dr. Jacques Barzun, University Professor Emeritus, Columbia University; Dr. Kenneth Brecher, Professor of Astronomy and Physics, Boston University; Dr. Alan Fern, Director, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Dr. Gerald Holton, Mallinkrodt Professor of Physics and Professor of History of Science, Harvard University; Mr. Eugene Istomin, concert pianist, Washington, D.C.; Mrs. Marta Istomin, former Artistic Director, Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C.; Mr. David Jackson, architect, Sydney, Australia, Dr. Joseph Kerman, Professor of Music, University
of California, Berkeley; Dr. Bernard Knox, Director Emeritus, Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington, D.C.; Dr. Angeliki Laiou, Professor of Byzantine History, Harvard University; Director, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, Washington, D.C.; Dr. R.W.B. Lewis, Professor Emeritus of American Studies and English, Yale University; Dr. Kenneth Lynn, Arthur O. Lovejoy Professor of History Emeritus, The Johns Hopkins University; Dr. William H. McNeill, Robert A. Millikan Distinguished Service Professor of History Emeritus, University of Chicago; Dr. Henry A. Millon, Dean, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Dr. F. W. Mote, Professor Emeritus of East Asian Studies, Princeton University; Dr. Jaroslav Pelikan, Sterling Professor of History, Yale University; Dr. Phillips Talbot, President Emeritus, The Asia Society, New York, N.Y.; Dr. Paul Walker, Chicago, Illinois; Mr. George M. White, The Architect of the Capitol, Washington, D.C.; Dr. Esmond Wright, former Director of the Institute of United States Studies and Professor Emeritus of American History, University of London; and my sons, Paul Boorstin, Jonathan Boorstin, and David Boorstin.

My friend Genevieve Gremillion has helped at every stage in the preparation of the manuscript. Once again, her devotion to the project, her patience, and her good cheer have lightened the task of preparing and revising these many pages. Mrs. Mae Barnes has given prompt and valuable assistance in the final stages. Mrs. Sono Rosenberg has given the copy editing of this book the benefit of her exceptional knowledge and expertise.

Robert D. Loomis, vice president and executive editor of Random House, once again has shown me how a publishing editor at his best can guide and encourage an author. Most important has been his feeling for what this book should (and should not) try to be. By his close editing of what I have included and his rigorous insistence on what I should omit, he has helped me give focus and direction to the book.

Ruth F. Boorstin, my wife, has been as always my principal and most penetrating editor. Her poetic feeling for words and her impatience with vagueness and the cliché have made the book briefer, clearer, and more readable than it otherwise would have been. To dedicate this book to her is, once again, a conspicuous understatement, which is only one of the literary virtues she has tried to teach me.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

Georges Borchardt, Inc.: Excerpts from
Prometheus, The Life of Balzac
by André Maurois, published by Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc. Copyright © 1965 by Librairie Hachette. Translation copyright © 1965 by The Bodley Head Ltd. Reprinted by permission.

Dover Publications, Inc.: Excerpts from
Painting in Islam
by Thomas W. Arnold. Reprinted by permission.

Faber & Faber Ltd: Excerpts from
Stravinsky
by Eric Walter White. Copyright 1948. Reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd.

Kathleen W. Frame: Excerpt from
Montaigne, A Biography
by Donald M. Frame. Copyright © 1965 by Donald M. Frame. Reprinted by permission of Kathleen W. Frame.

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., and Faber & Faber Ltd.: Excerpts from “The Waste Land,” “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and “The Hollow Men” from
Collected Poems, 1909–1962
by T. S. Eliot. Copyright 1936 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., and copyright © 1964, 1963 by T. S. Eliot. Excerpts from
The Family Reunion
by T. S. Eliot. Copyright 1939 by T. S. Eliot and copyright renewed 1967 by Esme Valerie Eliot. Rights throughout the world excluding the United States are controlled by Faber & Faber Ltd. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., and Faber & Faber Ltd.

The Johns Hopkins University Press: Excerpts from
Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days. Shield.
, translated by Apostolos N. Athanassakis, published by The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, London, in 1983. Reprinted by permission of The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Macmillan London: Excerpts from
The Wonder That Was India
by A. L. Basham. Copyright © Sidgwick and Jackson. Reprinted by permission.

New Directions Publishing Corporation and Faber & Faber Ltd: Excerpt from “E P Ode pour l’Election de Son Sepulchre” published in
Collected Shorter Poems
by Ezra Pound in Great Britain and in
The Cantos of Ezra Pound
by Ezra Pound in the United States. Excerpt from “Cantos” from
The Cantos of Ezra Pound
. Copyright 1948 by Ezra Pound. Rights throughout the world excluding the United States and Canada are controlled by Faber & Faber Ltd. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation and Faber & Faber Ltd.

Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.: Excerpts from
Franz Kafka: Pictures of a Life
by Klaus Wagenbach. Copyright © 1984 by Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

Penguin Books Ltd: Excerpts from
The Confessions
by Rousseau, translated by J. M. Cohen (Penguin Classics, 1954). Copyright 1954 by J. M. Cohen; excerpts from
Gargantua and Pantagruel
by Rabelais, translated by J. M. Cohen (Penguin Classics, 1955). Translation copyright © 1955 by J. M.

Cohen; excerpts from
Essays
by Michel Montaigne, translated by J. M. Cohen (Penguin Classics, 1958). Copyright © 1958 by J. M. Cohen; excerpts from
The Odes of Pindar
, translated by C. M. Bowra (Penguin Classics, 1969). Copyright © 1969 by The Estate of C. M. Bowra. All material reprinted by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.

Penguin USA: Excerpts from
The Portable Cervantes
by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, translated by Samuel Putnam. Translation copyright 1949, 1950, 1951 by Viking Penguin, Inc. Excerpts from
The Decameron
by Giovanni Boccaccio, translated by Mark Musa and Peter Bondanella. Translation copyright © 1982 by Mark Musa and Peter Bondanella. Introduction by Thomas Bergin. Copyright © 1982 by The New American Library, Inc. All material reprinted by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc.

Random House, Inc.: Excerpts from
The Complete Greek Drama
by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O’Neill, Jr. Copyright 1938 and copyright renewed 1966 by Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.

Random House, Inc. and Random House, UK: Excerpts from
Remembrance of Things Past
by Marcel Proust, translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin. Translation copyright © 1981 by Random House, Inc. Rights throughout the world excluding the United States and Canada are controlled by Random House UK. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc. and Random House, UK.

Schocken Books, a division of Random House, Inc.: Excerpts from
The Diaries of Franz Kafka
, translated by Martin Greenberg, edited by Max Brod. Copyright 1949 and renewed 1977 by Schocken Books. Reprinted by permission of Schocken Books, published by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

Schocken Books, a Division of Random House, Inc., and Martin Seeker & Warburg Ltd: Excerpts from “The Burrow” from
The Great Wall of China
by Franz Kafka, translated by Willa and Edwin Muir. Copyright 1946 and renewed 1974 by Schocken Books. Excerpts from “Josephine and Singer” from
The Metamorphosis, The Penal Colony and Other Stories
by Franz Kafka, translated by Willa and Edwin Muir. Copyright 1948 and renewed 1975 by Schocken Books, Inc. Rights throughout the British Commonwealth are controlled by Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd. Reprinted by permission of Schocken Books, published by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc. and Martin Seeker & Warburg Ltd.

Historian, public servant, and author,
DANIEL J. BOORSTIN
, who was Librarian of Congress Emeritus, directed the Library from 1975 to 1987 He had previously been director of the National Museum of History and Technology, and senior historian of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D C. Before that he was the Preston and Sterling Morton Distinguished Service Professor of History at the University of Chicago, where he taught for twenty-five years.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Boorstin graduated with highest honors from Harvard College and received his doctorate from Yale University. As a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford, England, he won a coveted double first in two degrees in law and was admitted as a barrister-at-law of the Inner Temple, London. He was also a member of the Massachusetts bar He has been visiting professor at the University of Rome, the University of Geneva, the University of Kyoto in Japan, and the University of Puerto Rico In Paris he was the first incumbent of a chair in American history at the Sorbonne, and at Cambridge University, England, he was Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions and Fellow of Trinity College. Boorstin lectured widely in the United States and all over the world. He received numerous honorary degrees and was decorated by the governments of France, Belgium, Portugal, and Japan.

The Discoverers
, Boorstin’s history of man’s search to know the world and himself, was published in 1983. A Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection,
The Discoverers
was on the
New York Times
best-seller list for half a year and won the Watson Davis Prize of the History of Science Society. This and his other books have been translated into more than twenty languages.

Boorstin’s many books include
The Americans: The Colonial Experience
(1958), which won the Bancroft Prize;
The Americans: The National Experience
(1965), which won the Parkman Prize; and
The Americans: The Democratic Experience
(1973), which won the Pulitzer Prize for History and the Dexter Prize and was a Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection. Among his other books are
The Mysterious Science of the Law
(1941),
The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson
(1948),
The Genius of American Politics
(1953),
The Image
(1962), and
The Republic of Technology
(1978). For young people he has written the
Landmark History of the American People
His textbooks for high schools,
A History of the United States
(1980), written with Brooks M. Kelley, has been widely adopted. He edited
An American Primer
(1996) and the thirty-volume series
The Chicago History of American Civilization
, among other works. He died in 2004.

THE AMERICANS

The Colonial Experience

In Volume I of
The Americans
Boorstin presents “a superb panorama of life in America from the first settlements on through the white-hot days of the Revolution” (Bruce Lancaster,
Saturday Review
).

Winner of the Bancroft Prize
History/0–394-70513-0/$12.00 (Can. $15.00)

The National Experience

Boorstin continues his study of Americans, exploring problems of community and the search for a national identity.

“This exceptionally good book … abounds in concrete, entertaining details, and in bright, original ideas about those fascinating people, us.”

—
The New Yorker

Winner of the Francis Parkman Prize
History/0-394-70358-8/$14.00 (Can. $17.50)

The Democratic Experience

In the final volume of
The Americans
, the story of the last 100 years of American history is told “through countless little revolutions in economy, technology, and social rearrangements … illuminated by reflections that are original, judicious and sagacious” (Henry Steele Commager).

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
History/0-394-71011-8/$15.00 (Can. $19.00)