The art of the salon

Refining our cultural conversations

Featured in

  • Published 20200804
  • ISBN: 978-1-922212-50-4
  • Extent: 304pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook

WE TYPICALLY THINK of the grandest, most impressive parts of European culture in terms of physicality: castles, palaces, libraries, gardens, food, cafés, galleries, museums and monuments. These are the items we list on itineraries for a trip.

However lovely these things are, they don’t fully represent the best that a culture has to offer. There’s a touching moment, recorded in his diary, when the American writer Henry James realises this for himself. He’s spent the day in Florence, visiting the Uffizi Gallery to see the works of Botticelli, and he’s strolled through the Boboli Gardens and wandered around the narrow streets near the Palazzo Vecchio. Finally he sits down on an old marble bench set into the wall of a distinguished palazzo, still occupied by descendants of the people who built it. As he leans his head back against the wall, he realises that he’s outside and he wants to know the life on the inside. He wonders what the family might be doing, what they think and feel about their city – and he imagines the kinds of conversations they might have with their friends. It’s these discussions, he realises, that lie behind the beauty and charm of the city: it was built by people who, across many generations, talked to one another about how to see things, what to care about, how to live with grace and dignity.

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

Share article

More from author

Merchants of light

Some ProvocationsI: The great question THE TERM 'RESEARCH' is central to the discussion of higher education. There are research rankings, research-focused universities, research-funding bodies, research...

More from this edition

The signal line

Fiction GEO AND WES didn’t talk on the fifteen-minute drive from the airport, although that in itself wasn’t unusual. When they arrived at Royal Hobart,...

This south and that north

Introduction Click here to listen to Ashley Hay reading her introduction ‘This south and that north’.   THERE IS A particular ebb and flow in crafting a co-­­edited collection, in...

The breathing artist

Memoir I WORKED AS part of an ever-changing small team of lighthouse keepers in 1973, on three uninhabited islands off the West Coast of Scotland....

Stay up to date with the latest, news, articles and special offers from Griffith Review.