The Spirit of Man in Asian Art: Being the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures Delivered in Harvard University 1933-34

Every work of art is fragrant of its time. Such a voyage of exploration among the arts of the East is fascinating in itself, for the new shapes and modes of beauty brought into our ken. But also it enables us to look back on the art and ideals of the west with a freshened vision, and perhaps to see them more truly. My experience is that when one arrives in the Far East, and one’s thoughts turn back westward, all that western civilization means to us assumes by contrast a more definite form and character than when one is in the midst of it. If for a moment, then, we place ourselves outside side that civilization in which we have grown up, we can better relize the rich complexity of the mental heritage which in daily life we take for granted. Greece, Rome, Judea- it is above all from these far fountain-heads that the streams flow to mingle in the modern Western mind. From Greece most of all. it is the Greeks who determined the bent of the western mind toward science, who set it on the unending road it journeys in the pursuit of truth for its own sake the Greeks who to our vast good fortune gave us masterpieces of poetry on a grand scale such as no other early literature has approached.

Robert Laurence Binyon, CH (10 August 1869 – 10 March 1943) was an English poet, dramatist and art scholar. Born in Lancaster, England, his parents were Frederick Binyon, a clergyman, and Mary Dockray. He studied at St Paul's School, London and at Trinity College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate Prize for poetry in 1891. He worked for the British Museum from 1893 until his retirement in 1933. In 1904 he married the historian Cicely Margaret Powell, with whom he had three daughters, including the artist Nicolete Gray. Moved by the casualties of the British Expeditionary Force in 1914, Binyon wrote his most famous work "For the Fallen", which is often recited at Remembrance Sunday services in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. In 1915, he volunteered as a hospital orderly in France and afterwards worked in England, helping to take care of the wounded of the Battle of Verdun. He wrote about these experiences in For Dauntless France. After the war, he continued his career at the British Museum, writing numerous books on art.

THESE lectures, when delivered to a general audience at Harvard in 1933-34, were il- lustrated by lantern-slides. It has not been found possible to illustrate them quite so fully in their printed form; but I hope that the illustrations here given will suffice the reader. For per- mission to reproduce paintings and sculpture which appear in this book I am indebted to owners both of public and private collections; to the authorities of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Metropolitan Museum, New York, the Freer Gallery, Washington, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Louvre, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, the Berlin Museum, and the Bibliothèque Egyptienne, Cairo; also to H. E. H. the Nizano of Hyderabad, the editor of The the directors of the Shimbi Shoin, Mrs. J. D. Rockefeller, Jr., Mr. Chester Beatty, Mr. Philip Hofer, and Mr. Charles Hoyt.

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