The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination
Read The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination Online
Authors: Daniel J. Boorstin
DANIEL J. BOORSTIN’S
THE
CREATORS
“Impressive … Boorstin has a magisterial gift.”
—
Time
“Lucid and often entertaining … Boorstin brings us into the presence of his subjects. With his sensitivity to their memorable words and deeds, he takes his readers to the source of their creativity.”
—
Seattle Times/Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“Mr. Boorstin is inviting and provocative.… The scope of this work is as broad as history itself, leading, with some beguiling detours, to the modern era … a book that distills the best of human achievement into human terms.”
—
Wall Street Journal
“Magisterial … Boorstin imposes stylistic order on his massive chosen subject.”
—
Christian Science Monitor
“
The Creators
is compelling history.… Boorstin’s is a clear and unpretentious prose and he has an eye for the amusing touch.”
—
Birmingham Post-Herald
“The good things in this book are legion.… [It] throws startling light upon the odd byways of the creative adventure.… This genial, sensible, incredibly knowledgeable and invariably welcome historian has so much to give. He’s created another winner.”
—
Washington Times
“
The Creators
is a feast of knowledge, a veritable smorgasbord of ideas, individuals and human accomplishments.…
The Creators
is a masterful work. It is one of the few surveys of human culture that itself is a work of art.”
—
Wichita Eagle
BOOKS BY DANIEL J. BOORSTIN
The Discoverers
*
The Creators
*
The Seekers
*
The Americans: The Colonial Experience
The Americans: The National Experience
The Americans: The Democratic Experience
*
The Mysterious Science of the Law
The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson
The Genius of American Politics
America and the Image of Europe
The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America
The Decline of Radicalism
The Sociology of the Absurd
Democracy and Its Discontents
The Republic of Technology
The Exploring Spirit
The Republic of Letters
Hidden History
Cleopatra’s Nose
The Daniel J. Boorstin Reader
The Landmark History of the American People
(with Ruth F. Boorstin)
A History of the United States
(with Brooks M. Kelley)
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, OCTOBER
1993
Copyright © 1992 by Daniel J. Boorstin
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by Random House, Inc., New York, in 1992.
Owing to limitations of space, permission credits to reprint previously published material can be found starting on
this page
.
The photographs on
this page
,
this page
,
this page
,
this page
,
this page
,
this page
,
this page
, and
this page
are from the Bettmann Archive and the photograph on
this page
is from the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Boorstin, Daniel J. (Daniel Joseph), 1914–
The creators: a history of heroes of the imagination / Daniel J.
Boorstin.—1st Vintage Books ed.
p. cm.
Originally published: New York: Random House, c1992.
Companion volume to: The discoverers. 1983.
eISBN: 978-0-307-81721-1
1. Civilization—History. 2. Arts—History. 3. Creation.
I. Title.
[CB69.B65 1993]
909—dc20 93-15502
v3.1
FOR RUTH
To me there is no past or future in art. If a work of art cannot live always in the present it must not be considered at all. The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past, perhaps it is more alive today than it ever was.
—
PABLO PICASSO
(1923)
In art, we are the first to be heirs of all the earth.… Accidents impair and Time transforms, but it is we who choose.
—
ANDRÉ MALRAUX
(1950)
THE RIDDLE OF CREATION: A PROLOGUE
BOOK TWO: RE-CREATING THE WORLD
A
FTER
The Discoverers
, a tale of man’s search to know the world and himself, I was more than ever convinced that the pursuit of knowledge is only one path to human fulfillment. This companion book, also a view from the literate West, is a saga of Heroes of the Imagination. While
The Discoverers
told of the conquest of illusions—the illusions of knowledge—this will be a story of visions (and illusions) newly created. For this is a story of how creators in all the arts have enlarged, embellished, fantasized, and filigreed our experience. While ancient science has only a historical interest, and Galen and Ptolemy live only for the scholar, the ancient arts are living treasures for all of us.
These creators, makers of the new, can never become obsolete, for in the arts there is no correct answer. The story of discoverers could be told in simple chronological order, since the latest science replaces what went before. But the arts are another story—a story of infinite addition. We must find order in the random flexings of the imagination. Here I have chosen creators who appeal to me, who have brought something new into the arts. But each of us alone must experience how the new adds to the old and how the old enriches the new, how Picasso enhances Leonardo and how Homer illuminates Joyce.