The New Criterion

Although he was a frequent subject of reviews, reconsiderations, and other commen-tary in The New Criterion, the celebrated writer and scholar Jacques Barzun, who died in October at 104, contributed only one essay to our pages. It was a review of Hector Berlioz’s opera Les Troyens at the Metropolitan Opera. That was in 1984, our second season, and Barzun had already been a grand old man of American letters for some years.

Born in France in 1907, Barzun had been a presence on the American intellectual and academic scene since the 1950s. From his perch at Columbia University, where he collaborated with the critic Lionel Trilling on a humanities course that deeply influenced a generation of students, Barzun (like Trilling) was part of the intellectual conscience of his age. He was a public intellectual before that role had been hollowed out by celebrity and the demotic faddis ...

This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchase

Subscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions)

Subscribe to TNC (Online only)

Purchase article credit and clip this article

If you already have an account login first