One epoch of history is unmistakably in its
decline, and another is announcing its approach. There is a sound of rending in every
tradition, and it is as though the morrow would not link itself with to-day. Things as they are totter and plunge, and
they are suffered to reel and fall, because man is weary, and there is no faith
that it is worth an effort to uphold them.
Views that have hitherto governed minds are dead or driven hence like
dethroned kings, and for their inheritance they that hold the titles and they
that would usurp are locked in struggle.
Meanwhile interregnum in all its terrors prevails; there is confusion
among the powers that be; the million robbed of its leaders, knows not where to
turn; the strong work their will; false prophets arise, and dominion is divided
amongst those whose rod is heavier because their time is short. Men look with longing for whatever new things
are at hand, without presage whence they will come or what they will be. They have hope that in the chaos of thought,
art may yield revelations of the order that is to follow on this tangled
web. The poet, the musician, is to
announce, or divine, or at least suggest in what forms civilization will
further be evolved. What shall be considered
good to-morrow – what shall be beautiful?
What shall we know to-morrow – what believe in? What shall inspire us? How shall we enjoy? So rings the question from the thousand
voices of the people, and where a market-vendor sets up his both and claims to
give an answer, where a fool or a knave suddenly begin to prophesy in verse of
prose, in sound or colour, or professes to practice his art otherwise than his
predecessors and competitors, there gathers a great concourse, crowding around
him to seek in what he has wrought, as in oracles of the Pythia, some meaning
to be divined and interpreted. And the
more vague and insignificant they are, the more they seem to convey of the
future to the poor gaping souls gasping for revelations, and the more greedily
and passionately they are expounded.
Such is the spectacle protested by the doings
of men in the reddened light of the Dusk of the Nations. Massed in the sky the clouds are aflame in
the weirdly beautiful glow which was observed for the space of year after the
eruption of Krakatoa. Over the earth the
shadows creep with deepening gloom, wrapping all objects in a mysterious
dimness, in which all certainty is destroyed and any guess seems
plausible. Form lose their outlines, and
are dissolving in floating mist. The day
is over, the night draw on. The old
anxiously watch its approach, fearing they will not live to see the end. A few amongst the young and strong are
conscious of the vigour of life in all their veins and nerves, and rejoice in
the coming sunrise. Dreams, which fill
up the hours of darkness till the breaking of the new day, bring to the former
comfortless memories, to the latter high-souled hopes.[1]
Max Nordau,
Degeneration (1892)
[1] Max Nordau, Degeneration [Scholar Select Reprint], pp. 5, 6. Degeneration
was first published in two volumes in German in 1892-3. It was translated into English in 1895. It can also be found online as a Project
Gutenberg E-book.
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