Isaiah Berlin: did he chatter himself out of greatness?
Two new books have appeared about Isaiah Berlin, the noted historian of ideas. One, the rather grandiosely named "The Book of Isaiah," includes reminiscences of Berlin by his friends, fellow dons, and students. The other is a collection of verbose letters he wrote (or "wrote," as he often used a Dictaphone) from 1946 to 1960.
Both books were edited by Henry Hardy, an English writer and literary figure. Yet, according to a review by A.N. Wilson, in the Times of London, Hardy seems not to have noticed that the two books offer strikingly different portraits of Berlin; they are often at cross-purposes.
"He was never sneaky or malevolent," observes Noel Annan in "The Book of Isaiah." Yet the letters display ample evidence of sneaky malevolence.
Consider Berlin's correspondence with and about A.L. Rowse, a historian of Elizabethan England and supposed friend. The 800 pages of letters "are peppered with malice about" Rowse, notes Wilson:
Rowse "grows more and more impossible and awful daily." Rowse’s absence is "a source of happiness." Rowse is "more Malvolio like than ever." Yet to Rowse himself, Berlin writes an Iago-like letter in which he says, "One cannot live for twenty years on and off with someone as wonderful & unique as, if you'll let me say so, you are & not develop a strong and permanent bond."
"It is hard," concludes Wilson, "to like the author of this letter." Meanwhile, Wilson observes, Rowse was writing the long, important books that Berlin never quite got around to.
Berlin did similar numbers on other friends, rejoiced in the social failures of various nemeses, and evinced snobbish delight in his parleys with dukes and duchesses. Writes Wilson: "If the reader, and even more the conscientious reviewer, who has read each page with notebook in hand, feels that the exercise of reading was a waste of time, that only half explains the misery that the exercise provokes. Reading the book, after all, takes only a week. But writing these tedious, infelicitous, prolix letters took fourteen years of a clever man’s life."
(Via The Awl)
