Sir Isaiah Berlin

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 30:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety two, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:32

My castaway this week is an intellectual and philosopher. He was born in Latvia eighty two years ago, but his family moved to St. Petersburg and then to England, arriving here when he was ten years old.

Presenter0:44

He himself does not believe that his traditional British education, Saint Paul's School, London, and Corpus Christi, Oxford, gave any hint of the distinguished career that was to come.

Presenter0:54

Nevertheless, he is now regarded as one of the most brilliant scholars of his age, a man whose enormous learning has made him an analytical master of the swirling ideas of this century.

Presenter1:04

During the last war Winston Churchill, it's said, delighted in his dispatches from Washington and Moscow. To day scholars all over the world continue to enjoy the benefits of his wisdom. He is Sir Isaiah

Presenter1:17

You're an intellectual and a philosopher. I suppose it's too much to ask that you're a practical man as well, and could uh exist on our desert island.

Sir Isaiah Berlin1:25

I doubt if I could survive. I'm not very practical. I don't know what I could do on Desert Island. I couldn't build a boat. I wouldn't know what to eat. I didn't know which roots I could eat or which berries were poisonous.

Sir Isaiah Berlin1:38

I didn't think I could catch fish with my bare hands.

Presenter1:42

So you're not going to have a very easy time on the island. Um would you panic, do you think?

Sir Isaiah Berlin1:47

No, I wouldn't panic, because I don't think I'm very panickable by nature, but I'd be very gloomy, because I don't like extended solitude.

Presenter1:57

But as a man whose life's work has been philosophy and ideas,

Presenter2:02

Would you be able to avoid loneliness? Would you be able to keep yourself company by going inside your own head as it would be?

Sir Isaiah Berlin2:08

I don't think so. The thought of simply being sunk in thought for hours and hours and hours is not what I do. I only think, I think, when I read books.

Sir Isaiah Berlin2:17

and react. Or when I talk to people and react. Simply to sit in a chair and think is not at all my habit.

Presenter2:25

What about music, though? Would that be your salvation? Is it your salvation?

Sir Isaiah Berlin2:29

Oh yes, if I could I'd be very, very miserable without it. It's been my accompaniment all my life, practically. I can't conceive of any degree of happiness without it.

Presenter2:40

What's the first record that you'll put on your gramophone?

Sir Isaiah Berlin2:42

Ah yes, that's a record.

Sir Isaiah Berlin2:44

which comes in the opera Baris Gotanov.

Sir Isaiah Berlin2:47

By Mutzotki.

Sir Isaiah Berlin2:48

Russian computer.

Sir Isaiah Berlin2:50

I'll tell you why I chose it.

Sir Isaiah Berlin2:52

The very first piece of

Sir Isaiah Berlin2:53

what may be called important music.

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Good music, in fact, to which I was exposed.

Sir Isaiah Berlin3:00

was in Petrograd, as the Petersburg was called at the time, in nineteen sixteen.

Sir Isaiah Berlin3:06

And in the Malinsky Theatre.

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now called Kirov, and called Marinsky again.

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The song with the main part was sung by Shredapin.

Sir Isaiah Berlin3:16

Who created the room?

Sir Isaiah Berlin3:18

Well, I remember nothing at all about it.

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I was six.

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Except for one thing.

Sir Isaiah Berlin3:24

When he sees

Sir Isaiah Berlin3:25

The

Sir Isaiah Berlin3:26

Ghost of the murdered Prince Dmitri

Sir Isaiah Berlin3:30

whom he disregarded.

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As heavy murdered.

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He becomes very frightened.

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And Shrellapin.

Sir Isaiah Berlin3:37

crawled under the table.

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pulled the table cloth over his head, and sang from underneath the table.

Sir Isaiah Berlin3:44

That, a child, would remember, and I always have.

Sir Isaiah Berlin3:48

Hence this is the scene, or portion of it, which I would like to hear again.

Speaker 43:56

Yee ya! Ye ya toil kill cutcha hair. Choo

Speaker 44:02

Frontier!

Speaker 44:04

Yeah.

Speaker 44:06

You know.

Speaker 44:08

Here, you are.

Speaker 44:11

On your maroon, you

Speaker 44:15

Shur Gita Shur Shur

Speaker 44:24

Whoa, Spurty

Presenter4:52

The clock scene from Mazorksky's Boris Goodenough, sung by Fyodor Shaliapin, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Max Steinmann.

Presenter5:00

The fact, Sir Isaac Berlin, that your parents were taking you to the opera when you were just six years old would indicate that your family was was cultured and possibly affluent too. Would that be clear?

Sir Isaiah Berlin5:10

Well, I'm not very affluent. My family was never either very rich or poor.

Sir Isaiah Berlin5:15

They were a perfectly ordinary bourgeois family, who, so to speak, my father earned sufficient income to keep us going.

Presenter5:22

What was the family business?

Sir Isaiah Berlin5:23

Timber, my father was a timber merchant.

Sir Isaiah Berlin5:26

He inherited it from his great-grandfather.

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who was a very rich man, ruined forests.

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In western Russia.

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And these

Sir Isaiah Berlin5:35

Um forests were cut by peasants.

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and then floated down the river Dina to Riga, which is where my family comes from.

Presenter5:42

The Baltic Seaport.

Sir Isaiah Berlin5:45

And then it was sewn in Riga and then sold to the West. And my father was a man who used to go to England, France, Germany, to sell it.

Presenter5:54

And then you moved from Riga to St. Petersburg, or Petrograd, as it had become, and you were living there in nineteen seventeen. You'd have been eight when the revolution broke out.

Presenter6:04

Did you witness or experience any of it?

Sir Isaiah Berlin6:07

The First Revolution was like um something on the stage. Great crowds, people walking about with exalted faces, every one very happy. I don't think perhaps the Tsarists were very happy, but my family was, because they were sort of ordinary liberal bourgeois.

Sir Isaiah Berlin6:23

And um

Sir Isaiah Berlin6:24

Then let me see the thing which I remember painfully on that occasion.

Sir Isaiah Berlin6:29

Was

Sir Isaiah Berlin6:30

Uh the fact that though the man

Sir Isaiah Berlin6:33

Sort of caught by a lynching bee. Let me explain. The only people remain loyal to the Czar.

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We're the police. That's not in the books, but it is true. And they sniped in the revolution is from

Sir Isaiah Berlin6:44

roofs or attics and things.

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And um

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This man was dragged down obviously by a crowd, was being obviously taken to not very agreeable fate. And I saw this man struggling.

Sir Isaiah Berlin6:57

in the middle of a crowd of about twenty, dragged off. Well, I didn't realize it was a policeman, I was told that afterwards. But that gave me permanent horror of physical violence.

Sir Isaiah Berlin7:07

which has remained with me for the rest of my life.

Presenter7:10

Let's have your second record.

Sir Isaiah Berlin7:13

That is the record from Berdie's opera.

Sir Isaiah Berlin7:16

Triviata?

Sir Isaiah Berlin7:17

My memory of that is is the following: My mother had a very pretty voice, pretty soprano voice.

Sir Isaiah Berlin7:23

Something between a contralto and a soprano.

Sir Isaiah Berlin7:26

She wanted to be a singer.

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She got the composer Arimsky Korsakov to admit her to the concertoire in Petersburg.

Sir Isaiah Berlin7:35

Her father was a religious bigot.

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of the most terrible sort. He wouldn't have a piano in the house, didn't give her money to go to the capital city, and was altogether a most oppressive old gentleman whom I never liked.

Sir Isaiah Berlin7:48

So she couldn't go.

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Pejau is thereing.

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And what she sang was ideas from the kind of operas which the German opera has in Riga.

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Did.

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In the nineteenth, twentieth century.

Sir Isaiah Berlin8:01

What did that mean?

Sir Isaiah Berlin8:03

Previata, regoletto, contravatore, commen, things that all I mean, marta.

Sir Isaiah Berlin8:10

She has a beautiful ten idea and so on.

Sir Isaiah Berlin8:12

And my mother used to sing this at home, I thought, very beautifully.

Sir Isaiah Berlin8:17

And what she sang very beautifully was this particular aria, not perhaps as well as Tebaldi who sing it.

Sir Isaiah Berlin8:24

But it it made a deep impression on me at that period. I loved Verdi, I loved Bizet, I loved all the composers she sang. She never sang Puccini, which is why I acquired a definite permanent distaste for him.

Speaker 48:54

Perhaps nothing that I've come

Speaker 49:09

I say glory

Presenter9:33

Bronata Tibaldi, singing part of the Aria A Forze et Lui, from Act One of Verdi's La Traviata, with the Orchestra of the Academy of St. Cecilia, Rome, conducted by Francesco Molinari Pradelli.

Presenter9:45

So you and your family left in 1920 for England, and you were just over ten when you got there. Could you speak any English you personally at all?

Sir Isaiah Berlin9:52

I said I'm an English teacher with a view to moving to England, but I knew very few words.

Sir Isaiah Berlin9:58

I was sent to school.

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In of all places Surbiton.

Sir Isaiah Berlin10:02

where my father settled.

Sir Isaiah Berlin10:03

I can tell you why, but it's not really interesting.

Sir Isaiah Berlin10:06

I don't think I spoke much English.

Presenter10:07

But you could sing a song, couldn't you?

Sir Isaiah Berlin10:10

In the pipe and night I sang Daisy Daisy, is what I could sing.

Sir Isaiah Berlin10:14

Give me your answer true, never knew.

Presenter10:17

Or give me your answer do, eh?

Sir Isaiah Berlin10:18

And give me an answer, do yes.

Presenter10:20

But apparently all three of you, you and your mother and father, all spoke English. My mother did not speak English.

Sir Isaiah Berlin10:23

My mother did not speak English much. My father spoke it quite well.

Presenter10:26

Hmm.

Sir Isaiah Berlin10:27

I didn't speak at all hardly at all. I was sent to this preparatory school.

Sir Isaiah Berlin10:32

Yeah.

Sir Isaiah Berlin10:33

And I don't remember what happened, except that I learnt the language somehow. I was extremely well treated by the masters and by the headmaster, who was a very nice man, and the other boys were extremely kind to me, which is unheard of.

Sir Isaiah Berlin10:47

Boys are well known to be cruel.

Sir Isaiah Berlin10:49

And heartless? Not at all. I was very well treated. There was only one boy who ever insulted me, and he said, You dirty German, because of my name.

Presenter10:59

Berlin

Sir Isaiah Berlin10:59

Well, I must have been German. The other boys sat on him and beat him up. Such a thing has never happened in the history of any school.

Sir Isaiah Berlin11:07

So they had an absolutely happy time.

Sir Isaiah Berlin11:10

in my prep school, and uh so much English did I learn that at the end of that year

Sir Isaiah Berlin11:16

Twenty one, I think it was, probably. I was second murderer in Babes in the Wood.

Presenter11:22

What did you do at Second Murderer Dave North?

Sir Isaiah Berlin11:22

Secure.

Sir Isaiah Berlin11:23

I had to say, I'm a come in, I'm a come in. That's all I had to say. But I said it.

Presenter11:29

Was that because your English was so poor?

Sir Isaiah Berlin11:31

No, no. This is just the part I played. I s we were all signed rails.

Presenter11:35

Ha ha ha.

Sir Isaiah Berlin11:35

No, my English was by nineteen twenty one, twenty two, my English was, so to speak, okay.

Presenter11:42

Record number three.

Sir Isaiah Berlin11:45

That's the record.

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of um the thrill movement.

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One of Bach's Walen Concertos played by Isaac Stern.

Sir Isaiah Berlin11:54

After Verde.

Sir Isaiah Berlin11:55

and Mark Army and that kind of thing. I had a sharp reaction against this and decided that this kind of music was popular and cheap and vulgar, and didn't want to listen to it at all towards the end of my period at St. Paul's.

Sir Isaiah Berlin12:09

and shied away from it, and went to the promenade concerts conducted by Seony Wood in the old Queen's Hall. And Bach is what I went for in a big way, and I listened to things like Art of Fugue, which was a real piece of contrabuntle.

Sir Isaiah Berlin12:25

Continuity.

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which seemed to me marvellous, because Bach seemed to me

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The one composer of Malcanta.

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His like was daily bread.

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One could listen to it forever. If I was left with only one c composer in my life, it would have to be Bach. It's basic.

Sir Isaiah Berlin12:43

It's absolutely foundation of all musical life, it seems to me, in the West.

Presenter13:49

Isaac Stern playing part of the slow movement of Bach's violin concerto No. two in E major, with the English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Alexander Schneider.

Presenter13:58

Let's go back to your education. After the crammer you went then to Saint Paul's, and not to Westminster School, which had been your first choice. Now why not?

Sir Isaiah Berlin14:05

Well, I'll tell you. It's a funny story.

Sir Isaiah Berlin14:08

I went to grammar for Westminster. Christmas thought that my Latin wasn't very good. My mathematics went up to it.

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And at a certain point my grandma said to me,

Sir Isaiah Berlin14:19

Your name is Azar? Yes. Do you know it's a funny name?

Sir Isaiah Berlin14:23

Very few people in England have it.

Sir Isaiah Berlin14:26

I think the boys

Sir Isaiah Berlin14:27

Might

Sir Isaiah Berlin14:28

Be a little bit

Sir Isaiah Berlin14:30

Mocking about that. They might tease you about that. Don't you think you could change it to some nice old English name, like James, or Alfred, or something of that kind?

Sir Isaiah Berlin14:42

For some reason I know I am very by nature not prone to be rebellious in any way. But on this occasion I suddenly thought, No, I don't want to go to a school.

Sir Isaiah Berlin14:52

Where this was the case, it seemed to me the whole team is obviously too stiff and too conventional.

Presenter14:54

Uh

Presenter14:58

So you went to some balls which was much more egalitarian.

Sir Isaiah Berlin15:00

And much more cosmopolitan in some ways.

Presenter15:02

Hm. And you enjoyed yourself?

Sir Isaiah Berlin15:03

Very much.

Presenter15:04

Um but apparently you have said that you you know were not showing any signs of any great intellect at school, that no one could have spotted that you might have gone on to an academic career.

Sir Isaiah Berlin15:14

Well, I'll tell you, I was never top of any form throughout my school days.

Presenter15:18

It's very difficult to believe.

Sir Isaiah Berlin15:19

I think I was second at some point.

Sir Isaiah Berlin15:22

Towards the end when I made huge spurt, I learnt Latin and Greek.

Sir Isaiah Berlin15:26

for something like six years, and never really learnt them properly. I never really enjoyed work in my life. So as far as I worked it's out of shame but not working.

Sir Isaiah Berlin15:37

Sometimes, of course, I was caught up by it, and sometimes I worked and worked and worked at things which were became exciting to me. But the beginning of any piece of work is always a torment. I think on the whole I'm pleasure loving.

Sir Isaiah Berlin15:50

Rather than work tabby.

Presenter15:51

What then i has been the attraction? Has it been um that you've simply well, not simply, but that you've enjoyed the academic element, that all of that you've been at home?

Sir Isaiah Berlin15:59

Always I enjoyed being at university very much. I was very at home in Oxford from the beginning.

Presenter16:06

Record number four.

Sir Isaiah Berlin16:09

Ah, that is the record

Sir Isaiah Berlin16:11

of the second movement.

Sir Isaiah Berlin16:12

of a Berlin Parisonata Grey Barto Schnabel.

Sir Isaiah Berlin16:16

Now, why I chose that is because Schnabel was a pianist who transformed.

Sir Isaiah Berlin16:21

Murder?

Sir Isaiah Berlin16:22

Musical understanding.

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by playing Beethoven Schubert.

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I'd never heard it played like that.

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One must taught a great deal. In a way it was didactic.

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But he played it in a very serious and profound manner.

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And I suddenly realized what the depth

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and the nobility of composers like Beethoven and Schubert were.

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Schnabel had a radical effect.

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On my musical taste.

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I've never really looked back from that.

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Do you know he was the first person really to play Schubert's sonatas?

Sir Isaiah Berlin16:56

In Europe. I mean, nobody ever played them in the nineteenth century. They are marvellous works, of the greatest depth and beauty.

Presenter17:59

Artur Schnabel playing part of the second movement of Beethoven's piano sonata number thirty two in C minor, opus a hundred and eleven.

Presenter18:07

You were sent Isaiah Berlin to Washington during the war to work for the British Embassy, from where you sent weekly telegrams here to the Cabinet on US opinions just to keep them up to date. What kinds of things would you put into those telegrams?

Sir Isaiah Berlin18:20

Public opinion, both in governing circles in Washington.

Sir Isaiah Berlin18:25

Not during governing, but I mean journalists and the like. And also there was a service of newspaper readers in New York who used to send me Precy.

Sir Isaiah Berlin18:33

On the American press, I used to bake the whole thing into a cake.

Presenter18:36

But it was apparently a very succinct cake, it was a very wise cake, and Winston Churchill rather liked eating it to finish the

Sir Isaiah Berlin18:41

And Winston Churchill.

Sir Isaiah Berlin18:44

I think it's even brotherly myth. I had no relation to Churchill.

Sir Isaiah Berlin18:48

He read it because it went to the Cabinet and it went to all ambassadors and broadened large numbers of ministries.

Presenter18:55

But nevertheless, as a result, a very strange dinner party took place at number ten. Would you a lunch party took place at number ten. Would would you mind recounting the story as told to you by everyone else who was there?

Sir Isaiah Berlin19:07

Well, this occurred in the spring of nineteen forty four.

Sir Isaiah Berlin19:11

I should say February or March.

Sir Isaiah Berlin19:14

What happened actually with this?

Sir Isaiah Berlin19:16

misses Churchill said to Winston,

Sir Isaiah Berlin19:19

Herving bird it is in town.

Sir Isaiah Berlin19:21

He's been very generous to us.

Sir Isaiah Berlin19:24

He's given large sum of money to a war charity, I don't know which, with which she was connected.

Sir Isaiah Berlin19:29

If you meet him, do tell him. We are very pleased with him.

Sir Isaiah Berlin19:32

mister Churchill said, I want him to come to lunch. She said no, no, no, I didn't mean that. I mean if you meet him at the Churchill Club. She said, just pat him on the on the shoulder and say we we were very grateful to him. I want him to come to lunch, she said, but she couldn't understand why.

Sir Isaiah Berlin19:48

Well, maybe when it sat next to, Winston?

Sir Isaiah Berlin19:51

Truthful?

Sir Isaiah Berlin19:52

Rouse said to him, mister Merlin, what is the most important piece of work?

Sir Isaiah Berlin19:56

You've done for it lately, in your opinion.

Sir Isaiah Berlin19:59

Poor Verlin obviously couldn't quite make out what this man said, after some hesitation.

Sir Isaiah Berlin20:06

I don't know. It'll be white Christmas, I guess.

Sir Isaiah Berlin20:10

And Winston said

Sir Isaiah Berlin20:11

Are you an American? This is Thick American Accent.

Sir Isaiah Berlin20:14

Spurgeon said, Why why why yes

Sir Isaiah Berlin20:18

Then Yvgin turned to mister Berlin and he said

Sir Isaiah Berlin20:23

Do you think Roosevelt will be reelected this year?

Sir Isaiah Berlin20:27

Having said, Well, in the past I voted for it myself.

Sir Isaiah Berlin20:31

This year I am not so sure.

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At this point mister Turrell became rather gloomy.

Sir Isaiah Berlin20:37

couldn't understand who he was dealing with. He still thought it was me. Obviously my despatches were quite coherent, but he obviously had an idiot before him. Finally Winston said

Sir Isaiah Berlin20:48

mister Berdin, when do you think the European war is going to end?

Sir Isaiah Berlin20:52

Berlin said, Sir,

Sir Isaiah Berlin20:53

I shall never forget this moment.

Sir Isaiah Berlin20:56

When I go back to my own country, I shall tell my children and my children's children that in the spring of nineteen forty four the Prime Minister of Great Britain asked me when the European World's Corp going to end. Winston was very displeased about this. He really more or less lost his temper. Got up. Lunch was over.

Sir Isaiah Berlin21:14

Paul Verl Berlin went off to the Savoy, where he was sharing rooms with Sir Alexander Koda.

Sir Isaiah Berlin21:20

And it's a recording.

Sir Isaiah Berlin21:22

Mr. Tusher is probably the greatest man in England, or in the world, maybe.

Sir Isaiah Berlin21:27

But I didn't know what it was. I somehow felt we didn't click.

Sir Isaiah Berlin21:31

I don't know what it was. Now she's a wonderful woman. I could talk to her always. With him I don't know. Something, something, I just can't make it out.

Presenter21:32

Now she's a woman.

Presenter21:41

Just didn't click.

Sir Isaiah Berlin21:41

Winston immediately went to a Cabinet meeting. After lunch, told them the story with the greatest pleasure.

Presenter21:47

Next piece of music

Sir Isaiah Berlin21:48

Ah, now that's in great great contrast. I suddenly thought well, as all the previous works were rather grave.

Sir Isaiah Berlin21:54

and deep and serious. Something ought to be done about my return to Belcanto, to opera in the nineteenth century, when once more I became totally addicted to Verdi and to Rossini and to Bellini and all the composers of that period. Rossini never ceased to please me, particularly comic operas.

Sir Isaiah Berlin22:15

There's a kind of

Sir Isaiah Berlin22:16

I don't know how to describe it electric tempo in Rossini. Some kind of unceasing forward movement which exhilarates one beyond that of any other composer. There's a unique quality in Rossini's lively music.

Sir Isaiah Berlin22:32

which is unique to him, so that one can tell.

Sir Isaiah Berlin22:35

That it's music by Rossini, as you can tell about certain painters, that the painting is by them from whatever distance you see it.

Presenter23:43

The overture from Rossini's The Italian Girl in Algiers, played by the Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra of New York, conducted by Arturo Toscanini.

Presenter23:52

After the war you return to Oxford, where you've remained for nearly sixty years, lecturing first in philosophy and then changing tack to the history of ideas. I wonder do decades of studying other people's ideas make it any easier for you to clarify your own position, or does in fact in the end a deep understanding of everyone else's viewpoint prevent you from adopting any one as your own?

Sir Isaiah Berlin24:16

No, I don't think. I can say that it scatters one's attention in that way.

Sir Isaiah Berlin24:22

The reason why I took up this particular

Sir Isaiah Berlin24:25

feel was because I wanted to know about the Russian Revolution.

Sir Isaiah Berlin24:28

So I began reading.

Sir Isaiah Berlin24:30

The Forerunners.

Sir Isaiah Berlin24:32

of the Russian Revolution in the nineteenth century.

Sir Isaiah Berlin24:35

and some of them, my hero, Alexander Hurtson, wrote a most marvellous autobiography.

Sir Isaiah Berlin24:40

of the nineteenth century, the most wonderful book in the world, called My Pasts and Thoughts.

Sir Isaiah Berlin24:45

I came across it accidentally in the London library.

Sir Isaiah Berlin24:49

And when I read it I knew that that's what I was interested in, even while I was still teaching philosophy.

Presenter24:56

But some of your followers are are frustrated, aren't they, that you haven't come up with what they might be able to take hold of as the big idea. They they they would like you to put forward to show them some guidance to sort of spread the light along the road ahead, which you steadfastly refuse to do.

Sir Isaiah Berlin25:12

But late on what?

Sir Isaiah Berlin25:14

On how to live?

Sir Isaiah Berlin25:15

No, that is not my business not the kind of thing I can do.

Sir Isaiah Berlin25:19

I've done what I can, is all I can say.

Presenter25:22

Uh so

Presenter25:23

There is no one big idea, but there are principles, and your guiding principle, obviously, is is liberalism.

Sir Isaiah Berlin25:28

I've had ideas in my life which I have stuck to.

Sir Isaiah Berlin25:33

For example, the idea that

Sir Isaiah Berlin25:35

Ultimate values are often incompatible.

Sir Isaiah Berlin25:38

and therefore the idea of a perfect world in which all good things

Sir Isaiah Berlin25:43

can be got together can't be true.

Sir Isaiah Berlin25:46

You can't combine what we say.

Sir Isaiah Berlin25:48

And justice and mercy

Sir Isaiah Berlin25:50

You can't combine.

Sir Isaiah Berlin25:52

Liberty and equality, completely.

Sir Isaiah Berlin25:54

Complete liberty means that the

Sir Isaiah Berlin25:57

Bike hit the cop.

Sir Isaiah Berlin25:59

The wolves eat the sheep. Complete equality means people who get above other people have to be kept down.

Sir Isaiah Berlin26:05

in order to promote.

Sir Isaiah Berlin26:06

Um, chances for everybody. The two things can't be had together, but they're both perfectly noble ultimate ends.

Sir Isaiah Berlin26:14

and one has to choose in the end. Now the idea that all values not all but some values are incompatible leads to the idea that Utopias are intrinsically unattainable, not merely in practice, but even in concept. That, I think, has kept me going.

Sir Isaiah Berlin26:34

And that's one of the ideas which I've had. I've had very few others, not very many.

Presenter26:39

More music.

Sir Isaiah Berlin26:41

Next comes

Sir Isaiah Berlin26:43

Beethoven's string quartet, played by Busch Quartet. The Bush Quartet is in a way like Schnabel. That again.

Sir Isaiah Berlin26:50

Shaped.

Sir Isaiah Berlin26:51

my sense of how instruments could be played. They were persons of unimpeachable integrity.

Sir Isaiah Berlin26:57

They didn't seek to please.

Sir Isaiah Berlin26:59

They had no virtuosity, but they played marvellously. They were totally dedicated and serious.

Sir Isaiah Berlin27:06

and here patient played by them had a direct moral effect on one.

Presenter28:11

Part of the third movement of Beethoven's string quartet in C Sharp minor, opus one hundred and thirty one, played by the Busch Quartet.

Presenter28:19

You said, Sir Isaiah, that you're nervous before giving a lecture, you're nervous during a lecture, and you're nervous after the lecture is over. That's terribly difficult to believe of a man who has had such a distinguished career as a lecturer. Is it true?

Sir Isaiah Berlin28:33

Thank you for your praise, but let me say

Sir Isaiah Berlin28:36

I've never enjoyed giving a lecture in my life. That is the truth.

Sir Isaiah Berlin28:42

I'm a nervous lecturer.

Sir Isaiah Berlin28:43

I prepared it very carefully.

Sir Isaiah Berlin28:46

Forty pages of manuscript.

Sir Isaiah Berlin28:49

Then I boil it down to

Sir Isaiah Berlin28:51

Eleven pages. The eleven pages then become three pages, and finally a postcard with headlines in case something goes wrong.

Sir Isaiah Berlin28:59

I cannot look at the manuscript when I lecture.

Sir Isaiah Berlin29:03

Nor can I look at a human face.

Sir Isaiah Berlin29:05

Because I'm too nervous about the audience. The face might smile, or frown, or cough.

Sir Isaiah Berlin29:11

or low contemptuous, or something terrible may happen.

Presenter29:14

or have any kind of reaction.

Sir Isaiah Berlin29:15

Whatever it may be, even if it smiles, no good.

Sir Isaiah Berlin29:19

So then because it stopped me dead?

Sir Isaiah Berlin29:21

The only other person about whom I know this is true is the philosopher Kant, to whom I don't compare myself.

Presenter29:27

So where do you look when you're giving a lecture?

Sir Isaiah Berlin29:27

20

Sir Isaiah Berlin29:28

On top right hand corner.

Sir Isaiah Berlin29:30

Otherwise

Sir Isaiah Berlin29:32

which didn't really improve the quality of the delivery.

Sir Isaiah Berlin29:35

But

Sir Isaiah Berlin29:36

It always gave a sort of curious low jajunction to my voice, which I could hear but couldn't prevent.

Presenter29:44

Next piece of music.

Sir Isaiah Berlin29:46

Oh, now we come.

Sir Isaiah Berlin29:48

True.

Sir Isaiah Berlin29:49

Brendel playing Schubert.

Sir Isaiah Berlin29:51

Let me explain. Alfred Brendel in my

Sir Isaiah Berlin29:55

Estimation is the equal of Schnabel in our days. He too is a wonderful pianist of remarkable gifts.

Sir Isaiah Berlin30:03

Extremely profound.

Sir Isaiah Berlin30:05

Reveals deep layers in the composers whom he plays.

Sir Isaiah Berlin30:10

He is also a highly educated man, he knows painting, he understands literature, and this comes out in his playing.

Sir Isaiah Berlin30:18

Both intellectual grasp.

Sir Isaiah Berlin30:20

and a profound emotional understanding, and no scientific desire to um affect the audience, to please the audience, no virtuosity.

Sir Isaiah Berlin30:30

of a conscious kind. And that I think is an absolutely wonderful thing.

Presenter30:34

that you shun virtuosity.

Sir Isaiah Berlin30:36

Well, art has been taken with extreme seriousness, and conveys that art is communication.

Sir Isaiah Berlin30:43

Not just a beautiful object.

Sir Isaiah Berlin30:45

I mean there are two views about. One is what Evelyn Warman said.

Sir Isaiah Berlin30:49

Let us say silver box. You don't ask.

Sir Isaiah Berlin30:52

Who made it? We don't ask. Is the man who made it a good husband? Or did he was he sincere? Or did he make it for money? Silver box, if it's beautiful, is beautiful. No nonsense about the authorship.

Sir Isaiah Berlin31:04

I don't believe that.

Sir Isaiah Berlin31:05

I think art is communication.

Sir Isaiah Berlin31:08

by one human being to others, and to understand a work of art is in some sense to be spoken to.

Sir Isaiah Berlin31:15

To be addressed.

Sir Isaiah Berlin31:17

And that's what Brendel does beyond any pianist now playing, in my view.

Presenter32:22

Alfred Brendel playing part of the second movement of Schubert's piano sonata in B-flat.

Presenter32:27

You threw in your lot with this country, with Britain, Isaiah Berlin, a very long time ago. It's the best country in the world, you said, which is a great compliment. How do you justify it? What do you mean when you say it?

Sir Isaiah Berlin32:39

Well, and what can I say to you? I think it's civilized. I think it's fundamentally liberal.

Sir Isaiah Berlin32:45

I think it's unsqualid.

Sir Isaiah Berlin32:47

Even its economic life is not as oppressive and as unjust as in some countries we can think of.

Sir Isaiah Berlin32:54

I think on the whole

Sir Isaiah Berlin32:56

So speak people are more tolerant.

Sir Isaiah Berlin32:58

And if liberal civilization is what we're in favor of,

Sir Isaiah Berlin33:02

That I think.

Sir Isaiah Berlin33:04

It is of the great countries of the world.

Sir Isaiah Berlin33:07

I think perhaps comes top of that. No doubt other countries may have other qualities.

Presenter33:12

What characterizes, though, that liberalism for you? Civil liberties, of course, but apart from those, what what's the greatest example that strikes you?

Sir Isaiah Berlin33:21

I think one of liberalism means.

Sir Isaiah Berlin33:24

that different people pursue different ideals.

Sir Isaiah Berlin33:27

That if you pursue one ideal, even if you are opposed to somebody else's ideal, you understand it, which means you can understand what it would be like.

Sir Isaiah Berlin33:37

Pursue this purpose, which in fact you are against.

Sir Isaiah Berlin33:40

If we don't understand it, then no communication.

Sir Isaiah Berlin33:43

A liberal society is a society which tolerates a large variety of opinions, provided they are not directly destructive.

Sir Isaiah Berlin33:53

It means that people are left to do whatever they please and go wrong in their own way if need be, provided they don't obstruct, they don't simply get in the way of other people too much.

Presenter34:06

Fast record.

Sir Isaiah Berlin34:09

No.

Sir Isaiah Berlin34:10

P.

Sir Isaiah Berlin34:11

Come to the composer of my deft eyed so far, which might be thought monstrous.

Sir Isaiah Berlin34:16

Mozart, after all, is a divine composer, who can deny it? And it seems to me that Figaro, the marriage of Figaro, is the best opera ever written by human beings.

Sir Isaiah Berlin34:28

But there is one idea in it.

Sir Isaiah Berlin34:31

Not often particularly noticed.

Sir Isaiah Berlin34:34

which is at the beginning of the fourth act.

Sir Isaiah Berlin34:36

where the girl of Barbarina is looking for a pin.

Sir Isaiah Berlin34:41

which she has to pick up in order to take it.

Sir Isaiah Berlin34:44

So I think Susanna, which indicates that she's going to meet the count. It's part of the plot. She can't find it.

Sir Isaiah Berlin34:51

And she's very unhappy. It's a most wistful

Sir Isaiah Berlin34:54

Melancholy, beautiful.

Sir Isaiah Berlin34:56

Said.

Sir Isaiah Berlin34:57

But exquisite area in the entire opera in some ways. I think it's wonderfully beautiful and very, very, very touching.

Speaker 435:08

Hold on, let me skip.

Speaker 435:12

Fuck his song of this love.

Speaker 435:17

He swallowed his soul

Speaker 435:24

A lot wrong.

Speaker 435:29

Oh not wrong

Speaker 435:34

This can never smooth office.

Speaker 435:54

Is

Speaker 435:57

The good hold of his own profession.

Presenter36:07

Margaret Price singing the aria L'O Peduta Memeschina from Act four of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, with the new Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Otto Klemperer. Now we come to the really impossible choice, Sir Isa. Which of your eight records is the one you'd most like to have?

Sir Isaiah Berlin36:24

The bedroom quartet.

Sir Isaiah Berlin36:26

It's a thing which one can never in a sense fully plumb. You always discover new things in it.

Sir Isaiah Berlin36:33

It's a work of great depth, the posthumous quartets, among the profoundest works of man.

Presenter36:40

And your book as well as the Bible and Shakespeare.

Sir Isaiah Berlin36:42

The book I should like is The Works of Pushkin in Russian, in one volume.

Sir Isaiah Berlin36:47

Prose and verse.

Sir Isaiah Berlin36:49

That is inexhaustible.

Sir Isaiah Berlin36:51

With Goethe, he is one of the two greatest poets of the nineteenth century.

Sir Isaiah Berlin36:56

And I say that in spite of Wordsworth.

Sir Isaiah Berlin37:00

In spite of

Sir Isaiah Berlin37:02

Shelley.

Sir Isaiah Berlin37:03

In spite of Dennison or anyone else you'd like to mention.

Presenter37:06

And your luxury.

Sir Isaiah Berlin37:08

I will tell you what my luxury is. I'd like a large arm chair with a very great many cushions, and rather like a sit down chair, a sort of cover on top.

Sir Isaiah Berlin37:18

I presume, if possible no, I I think almost certainly of some kind of impermeable cloth, so that rain doesn't penetrate and the sun doesn't penetrate. If you give me that

Sir Isaiah Berlin37:30

I'll ask for nothing more.

Presenter37:31

In which to lean back and uh absorb your push.

Sir Isaiah Berlin37:33

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter37:37

Sir Eisa Berlin, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Speaker 337:49

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.