Word: berensons
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Without probably even intending to, Bernard Berenson has created in his last book, a life-enhancing work...
This is Bernard Berenson's swan B.B. died in I Tatti, the Florence villa which he willed to Harvard, after correcting the book's proofs. Composed of his diaries during summer journeys from to 1956, this work is suffused by the astoundingly fresh response to the and masterworks...
Perhaps the best thing about Berenson is that he communicates his pleasure so vividly. As a prose stylist, he approaches the great aestheticians of the past--Burke, Reynolds, Ruskin. He has the perfect control of a balanced sentence and a splendidly colorful use of words; in short, he is a master of rhythmic evocative prose...
Because The Passionate Sightseer offers so clear an image of Berenson's personality, one finds it hard not to fall under his spell. His way of life immediately communicates itself as a particularly rewarding one. His approach to life, his careful cultivation of the good and the beautiful (especially the beautiful) becomes intensely attractive...
...crabby old man. At his age, of course, one shouldn't expect other than this, but somehow one does wish he were kinder to tourists, to modern arrangement of pictures in the Uffiizi, to the motorcycles in Ravenna. These, after all, are the facts of life for modern Italy. Berenson seems to resent them for purely egocentric reasons: because they distract his own concentration, or in some way jibe with his memories of the past...