Humane Arts: The Salon and Cafe'

thank you for coming out on this beautiful spring day finally we get one uh I wonder if we'll get yeah spring hour probably correct no keep hope alive right we've got to believe um this evening's topic salons and cafes uh be the discussion it's really a follow on from last month's conversation um so if you remember we talked about conversation uh as a shared attempt in speech for two or more people to to create something outside of themselves greater than what they would be able to produce by themselves and so it was a sort of shared communal effort of externalizing thoughts ideas Reflections that made it such a unique and important contributor to the history of humanist literature arts every creativity mathematics and science now um the places where conversation has historically taken place are salons and cafes hence the subjects of tonight's lecture if you look at the the little handout hopefully everybody got one I think this sort of sums up nicely what I would say is is essentially the history particularly here of of of the cafe the first one is uh from jeene shardan who was a a French ambassador to Isfahan um which was then a center ispahan is half the world was the phrase was a center of the Persian Islamic empire that covered uh I mean everything uh and and European ambassadors there tended to write back wow never coming home hope you all having fun there cuz it's very impressive City and is still considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world difficult to get to because it's in sort of uh Iran at the moment and so sort of difficult to negotiate so he talks about cafes when he arrives there one of the remarkable things he saw people engage in conversation for is there that news is communicated and where those interested in politics criticize the government and all freedom and without being fearful since the government does not heed what the people say uh innocent games resembling Checkers hobscotch and chess are played in addition Mull dervishes and Poets take turns telling stories in verse or Pros so that's from 1670s you should all recognize that as a regular Modern Day Cafe uh the coffee shop particularly important in Islamic Society of course because uh wine is out outlawed all alcoholic beverages ...