A Curtain Call for Culture?

If loss can be pregnant with meaning, the recent death of historian Jacques Barzun assuredly was. It portended, as Ben Zimmer, Boston Globe language columnist, noted, "the passing of a classically informed view of language as a barometer of human nature" and of one of the English language's most committed defenders. And that barely scratches our presentiment of loss. The departure of one who so brilliantly embodied the "richest and best in the much abused word 'culture' seemed to mark the end of an era," Wilfred McCay writes in the University Bookman, "a curtain-lowering that left us without the promise of any encore." Hope or Despair? Roger Kimball and the Future of Culture

Timeless Moments

In this world, life and time are intimately entwined. "To try to imagine disentangling them," as Michael Clune observes in the Chronicle Review, "is like trying to imagine a melody of one note." And yet we all have, at one time or another, if only for a moment ― a moment that seemed much longer. The effort to counteract time, by poets or lovers, is twofold: a sensed slowing of time accompanying an intensely vivid perception and the persistence of that intensity. To achieve what Schiller called "annulling time within time" may elude us in the end, but isn't that is true of almost every worthwhile pursuit? Clune's essay is entitled "The Quest for Permanent Novelty," but, as in the search for the Holy Grail, what we seek is not new but eternal. ❦

Carnival of the Animals

As Mardi Gras nears, what better time to celebrate a carnival? Composed in 1886, While French composer Camille Saint-Saens was vacationing in Austria, Le Carnival des Animaux, a suite of 14 movements, remained unpublished until his death. From an era when cartoons were also classics. 

 

Garbage In, Culture Out

While the musical proclivities of more affluent youth in developed countries often turn towards trash, in a rubbish dump on the south side of Asunción, underprivileged Paraguayan youngsters have found an innovative means to make music. Using instruments crafted from discarded oil tins and other refuse, their orchestra, known locally as Los Reciclados, and in English as the Landfill Harmonic, has performed in Brazil, Panama, and Colombia, and has journeyed as far as Europe to play Mozart and Beethoven. As the orchestra's founder and director, Favio Chavez, a music teacher and environmentalist, aptly notes, “The world sends us garbage. We send back music.” And the world is richer for it. Landfill Harmonic 

What We Read Shapes Who We Are

Since broadband began its rapid expanse at the millennium's start, Internet use has skyrocketed. In 2012, users topped 2.4 billion, more than one in three of Earth's inhabitants. Time spent online averaged 16 hours a week globally (double that in high-use countries). “We have changed how we interact,” the New York Times confirms. “Are we also changing what we are?” The question was posed to three knowledgeable observers. Their responses raise others. Are We Becoming Cyborgs?

What, Me Worry?

The mission of Edge is succinctly, if self-servingly, stated: "To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves." Each year, Edge poses a question to its hand-picked clique of scientists, scholars, writers, artists, and sundry thinkers. This year, the question is: "What should we be worried about?" The essays culled for publication merit our attention, if only for the insights they provide into what the self-proclaimed "Brights" may have in mind for the 99%. Verbum Sapientis will spotlight a few of our selections here. Stay tuned.

From Culture to Kitsch

"High culture is the self-consciousness of a society," social critic Roger Scruton notes in Aeon. Its works of art, literature, scholarship, and philosophy establish a shared frame of reference among educated people. A precarious achievement, high culture "endures only if  it is underpinned by a sense of tradition, and by a broad endorsement of the surrounding social norms." When these "evaporate," to use Scruton's understated euphemism, "high culture is superseded by a culture of fakes."         The Great Swindle  [audio]