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Translated into English for the first time--set in Paris, London, Berlin, and Weimar, with trips to America and Asia--a selection of the early diaries, 1880-1918, of Count Harry Kessler, the Anglo-German art patron, aesthete, museum director, publisher, cultural critic, cultural attaché, and secret agent. Passionate, thoughtful, and incisive, Harry Kessler, Zelig-like, is present at all the major turn-of-the-century events in European art and politics. In Germany, bloggers have called Kessler "Count Cool." These diaries cover a seminal moment in cultural and political history: the beginning of modern dance, music, art, and design--the Ballets Russes; Impressionism, Art Nouveau; the obsession with Wagner and Nietzsche; the rise and fall of Bismarck and World War I. More than Proust: Some of the same world, but in Germany: society, love, homosexuality, art, theatre, and music, but much more accessible. Kessler is more intellectual and also covers politics, diplomacy, and war.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
An Epic Life in European Art and Politics
24 Dec 2011
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
An astonishing number of important people and events intersected with the life of Count Harry Kessler. The diary entries presented in this lengthy book cover the transformational years in modern art and European politics between 1880 to 1918. A ton of vivid thumbnail character sketches are scattered throughout its pages.
Kessler embodied the highest culture of Europe. He was at Nietzsche's home shortly after the philosopher's death; admired Gorky; hobnobbed with the dancer Nijinsky, was friends with Degas and Rodin in Paris; help spark Max Beckmann's artistic career; and, enjoyed the company of George Bernard Shaw in London.
Then the war with England, France and Russia came and, as a German patriot, Kessler first participated directly in Berlin's military effort and was then an international political operative of sorts for the remainder of that brutal conflict. (His comments on how the Bolsheviks were handled near the end of World War I by Germany were of special interest to me.)
Professor Laird M. Easton has performed a great service in the clear editing of this valuable historical material. I now hope the good professor will continue serving both scholarship and a grateful reading public by providing an English translation of Kessler's journal covering the Count's four month tour of America in the 1920s.
Kessler embodied the highest culture of Europe. He was at Nietzsche's home shortly after the philosopher's death; admired Gorky; hobnobbed with the dancer Nijinsky, was friends with Degas and Rodin in Paris; help spark Max Beckmann's artistic career; and, enjoyed the company of George Bernard Shaw in London.
Then the war with England, France and Russia came and, as a German patriot, Kessler first participated directly in Berlin's military effort and was then an international political operative of sorts for the remainder of that brutal conflict. (His comments on how the Bolsheviks were handled near the end of World War I by Germany were of special interest to me.)
Professor Laird M. Easton has performed a great service in the clear editing of this valuable historical material. I now hope the good professor will continue serving both scholarship and a grateful reading public by providing an English translation of Kessler's journal covering the Count's four month tour of America in the 1920s.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
The man who met everyone and went everywhere
17 Mar 2012
Format:Hardcover
At almost 1,000 pages and covering almost forty years, this book is quite overwhelming. Kessler was a magnificent writer and had the uncanny ability to meet everyone worth meeting, and go everywhere worth going, not to mention being in the audience for Cyrano, Peter Pan and Nijinsky. He managed to get to Verlaine and Nietzsche before they died. The mere list of people that he met is astonishing, and the fact that he knew many of them intimately is all the more impressive. He was at the very center of the action. We are given a tour of the world early on -- the Alamo, the Taj Mahal, the pyramids -- and he describes the crowds in New York, in Paris, in Berlin, in London, in Constantinople, the world of the Belle Epoque, of Proust, of Wilhelmine Germany, all the French artists, the Austrian and German and British cultural worlds, it just goes on and on -- until the Archduke is shot and Europe is drenched in blood. His description of battlefields littered with ghastly corpses is Dantesque in its power. There is also homosexuality here, for Kessler was gay, although he only speaks of others and not of himself. I get the impression that Maillol was a repressed bisexual. I was surprised to learn that Verlaine claimed that his liaison with Rimbaud was platonic. Was this in the same category with Whitman's denial to Symonds? There was another volume of the diary that appeared in English forty years ago, but it failed to make a splash. Hopefully this volume will place Kessler where he belongs -- among the greatest German writers.
A Significant Read
21 Jan 2012
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
As a diarist, Kessler commands our attention since events he describes give a sense of immediacy. Along with The Proud Tower,Barbara Tuchman, and Proust's novels, Kessler's Journey to the Abyss contributes to our understanding of European civilization before and during the Great War.
Caviat: skip lightly over Kessler's trip round tne world and delve into his descriptions of German society.
Caviat: skip lightly over Kessler's trip round tne world and delve into his descriptions of German society.
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