Collected Essays

by Aldous Huxley

1st printing of the Harper Colophon Book. Draws on four decades of comment and speculation in every field of human experience and reflects the author's wide-ranging mind, keen wit, an intellectual virtuosity. Essays on Nature; Travel; Love, Sex and Physical Beauty; Literature; Painting; Music; Matters of Taste and Style; History; Politics; Psychology; Rx for Sense and Psyche; Way of life. Great reading! 399 Pages

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Philosophy, History, Classics, Literature, Politics

399 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1923

About the author

Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems.
Born into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with a degree in English literature. Early in his career, he published short stories and poetry and edited the literary magazine Oxford Poetry, before going on to publish travel writing, satire, and screenplays. He spent the latter part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of his time. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times, and was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962.
Huxley was a pacifist. He grew interested in philosophical mysticism, as well as universalism, addressing these subjects in his works such as The Perennial Philosophy (1945), which illustrates commonalities between Western and Eastern mysticism, and The Doors of Perception (1954), which interprets his own psychedelic experience with mescaline. In his most famous novel Brave New World (1932) and his final novel Island (1962), he presented his visions of dystopia and utopia, respectively.

Reviews

[Gabriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Esta colección trae ensayos de todo tipo: sobre el amor, la literatura, las drogas, la pintura. Fue como haber tenido conversaciones con Huxley. Sorprendentemente, los ensayos que más aprecié leer no fueron sobre temas que conozco, como historia y política, sino aquellos que nunca me han despertado mucho interés y de los cuales tengo una comprensión obtusa, como la pintura y la música clásica. La facilidad con la que escribe permite que su entendimiento se filtre en el texto, y gracias a ello, ahora poseo una nueva visión sobre estos temas. En especial aprecié estos ensayos porque me obligaron a ir más allá de la lectura y buscar las obras tardías de Goya u oír la música de Gesualdo.

Las tundas que le pone a Wordsworth y a Pascal, el retrato de la habilidad literaria de D.H. Lawrence y de la visión política del Padre José (Consejero de Richelieu), y su visión personal sobre lo que és el entendimiento fueron algunos de los ensayos que más disfruté.

Yo ubicaba a Huxley como un escritor, pero después de leer esta colección creo que es más firmemente un ensayista -en el libro incluso menciona que Brave New World es un ensayo. Más que nada, su valor reside en que es un autor que actúa como puente entre dos épocas: su conocimiento profundo de la tradición europea lo habilita de hablar sobre el "mundo de ayer" que se cayó con la llegada de la Primera Guerra Mundial, y su mentalidad abierta y sin prejuicios le permitió observar el rumbo que tomó la humanidad en los últimos años de su vida y hacer comentarios precisos sobre preocupaciones sobre el mundo actual, como el cambio climático o el uso de las drogas como método coercitivo.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are essays here on pretty much anything that struck Huxley's interest - which is, in itself, inspiring and admirable - but the unspoken theme running through much of the book is an effort to reconcile humanism with the colder truths of the 20th century (i.e. the long view of history, the long view of the cosmos, the long view of homo sapiens, and the capacity for technology to tamper with all of them)... and unfortunately he never really manages that reconciliation in a convincing way. He also tends to repeat himself. One feels that he's spinning his wheels hard against this grim stuff he's trying to grapple with - too hard, in fact, to make for truly edifying reading. An interesting intellectual self-portrait of a mind striving to see above and beyond the mid-20th century, but that's all. When, at the end, he reveals his sober enthusiasm for the spiritual possibilities of mind-altering drugs, it fits; you get the sense that, after years of questing, his consciousness had grown pretty disenchanted with what reality had to offer.

[Hristos Dagres #2 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Μεγάλη ανισορροπία μεταξύ των δοκιμίων. Θεωρώ όσα αναφέρονται στην τέχνη (μουσική, λογοτεχνία, ζωγραφική) σαφώς καλύτερα και πιο ενδιαφέροντα (όπως το εμβληματικό δοκίμιο για τον Τζεσουάλδο, τον μαέστρο των μαδριγαλίων, ή αυτό για τον Breughel). Αν και αυτά υποφέρουν -αν και σε μικρότερο βαθμό- από την αδυναμία του Χάξλεϋ να επαναλαμβάνει ξανά και ξανά τις ίδιες ιδέες και επιχειρήματα εντός του δοκιμίου.
Αντίθετα, τα πολιτικά/ιστορικά δοκίμια είναι και πιο μπερδεμένα και υποφέρουν από την προβληματική προσπάθεια του να προπαγανδίσει την ίδεα για την ατομική μυστικιστική ενόραση (μέσω των ψυχοδηλωτικών ουσιών, κυρίως τη μεσκαλίνη) η οποία υποτίθεται ότι προσφέρει μια εσωτερική θέαση της παγκόσμιας ενότητας του Σύμπαντος (μαζί με ένα δοκίμιο υπέρ της ύπνωσης ως την αποτελεσματικότερη μέθοδο ... αναισθησίας σε χειρουργικές επεμβάσεις).

[Marinello]

I couldn’t possibly give Huxley’s essays any rating but I will say that this type of prophetic intelligence cannot or should not go unnoticed.
Certainly, some of these essays are completely irrelevant or boring, but others like the one where he analyzes the catastrophic impact overpopulation will have on the planet, on democracy and economy are to be underlined and studied.
Makes one wonder why the politicians and the scholars of the world don’t pay closer attention to geniuses who foresaw things 50 years before they happened and warned the future generations about them..

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good introduction to Aldous Huxely's intellectual writing style. The variety of essays is nice. There is a very vivid piece of travel writing, a meditation on an LSD trip, ideas about art, psychology, diversity, theology, and the nature of understanding. Al considers El Greco, Salvador Dali, free love, Carl Jung and what it means to know things--all entertaining but, as essays do, they only scratch the surface of deeper ideas.

[Gleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was very clear when Huxley was on LSD when writing these.

[Matthieu Caldwel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pure genius

[Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://gnomeship.blogspot.com/2023/1...

[Tom Schulte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and rich, this is a touchstone among essay collections.

[Claire Binkley · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's useful to look into the mind of the man who wrote Brave New World.

[Himanshu Mishra]

The excerpts from "Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow" are really good.