Some of the most offensive omissions were dictated by my title. If I had been talking about the history of art, it would not have been possible to leave out Spain; but when one asks what Spain has done to enlarge the human mind and pull mankind a few steps up the hill, the answer is less clear. Don Quixote, the Great Saints, the Jesuits in South America? Otherwise she has simply remained Spain, and since I wanted each programme to be concerned with the new developments of the European mind, I could not change my ground and talk about a single country.
Sir Kenneth Clark: Civilisation: A Personal View (1969) [Foreword].
He sounds so happy about dumping on Spain, doesn't he? Did he have a bad holiday?! Of course, Civilisation is subtitled 'A Personal View'.
No comments:
Post a Comment