Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Gérard Souzay sings Duparc’s “L’invitation du voyage,” accompanied by Dalton Baldwin, in an undated telecast dating from the early Sixties:
(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally, both in mind and body, as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore as an Englishman always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The German’s self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth—science—which he himself has invented but which is for him the absolute truth.”
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude)