Max Nordau
Backward or forward?
Preface to the Russian edition of the book “Degeneration” 1894
The author of "Degeneration" is well known among us. Almost none of his works remained untranslated into Russian, and all of them were read with interest, even with enthusiasm. What explains this? Is it just the literary talent of the author, the brilliance and popularity of his presentation, his erudition? No, there is one more circumstance, perhaps the most significant, forcing the reader to pay special attention to the works of Max Nordau. In them he touches on the most pressing issues of our time and discusses them from a point of view that, in my opinion, represents an inevitable step in the development of the worldview of the modern intelligentsia. We will now clarify our idea in more detail, but for now we only want to note that when an author who has taken such a point of view and is fully prepared to defend it with success, undertakes to present us with an overview of almost all modern literature and art, when he gives us a detailed explanation from this point of view an assessment of their most outstanding representatives, starting with the French and English symbolists and decadents, various Rossettis, Swinburnes, Mallarmés, Verlaines, Maeterlincks, etc., and ending with such thinkers or artists as Tolstoy, Richard Wagner, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Zola, then his book acquires special interest for the general public, because the main representatives of literature and art constantly attract the attention of the entire intelligentsia, influence their worldview, and at the same time absorb a significant part of their mental activity, aimed at satisfying the highest interests of the spirit. Max Nordau's new work, the book “You Are Born,” was written with the same brilliance, with the same erudition, with the same ability to present the most complex and abstract issues in an extremely accessible form for everyone, as his previous works. But perhaps none of his works establishes so clearly a continuity between the ideals by which we have been inspired recently and those by which we are likely to be inspired in the near future, nor does it so powerfully destroy many of the misconceptions, prejudices, and superstitions that have thanks to our instability, our tendency to renounce the most sacred principles of life for a person, does not make clear as clearly the inconsistency of the disappointment that has taken hold of us and does not prompt us so eloquently and cheerfully to take on with new forces the implementation of tasks that many of us are already ready to frivolously hand over to the archives and replace them with others that are completely untenable, as the author of “Degeneration” explains to us, and in many respects even extremely dangerous.
Our author's remarkable work was subjected to passionate attacks even before the second part, in which its main idea was finally clarified, was published. He was attacked by those who, in the apt expression of one of our philosophers, create “idols” for themselves instead of “ideals”, and those who join the celebrity of the day in order to attract attention to themselves, and those who echo various charlatans who can invent fashionable trends or cleverly exploit them in their favor, and, finally, those who sincerely thirst and hunger for the truth, but do not have sufficient critical sense to understand complex abstract issues, and therefore, naturally, become victims of these shameless people. It is this largest group of readers that the author primarily has in mind, who understands perfectly well that the intelligentsia in all civilized countries is now experiencing a time that can be characterized by the words “in search of truth.” In his new work, our author speaks of the “twilight” mood that has taken possession of the European intelligentsia as a distinctive feature of the end of the expiring century. Previous ideals have been overthrown, new ones are not being born, everything we believed in has lost its charm for many, healthy skepticism has been replaced by painful ones, we feel some kind of disappointment, satiety, as if we are again “shamefully indifferent to good and evil”, “we hate and love by chance “, as if “life again torments us, like a smooth path without a goal,” and we again fear that a descendant will insult our ashes with “the bitter mockery of a deceived son over a squandered father.”
But is there any real reason to “look sadly at our generation”? This is the question that Max Nordau is trying to resolve. He looked very closely at modern life as it manifests itself in literature and art. The conclusions he comes to are disappointing. The situation in modern literature and art reminds him of a hospital - how much sickness and abnormality there is in them. But what caused this ugly situation? Is it because our ideals really turned out to be untenable, or maybe we ourselves were guilty of not being able to properly stand up for them, because we cowardly renounced them at the first failure - we renounced the “fertile thought” and hastened to replace it tinsel that seduces us for a moment, but only prepares for us more and more disappointments.
With extreme clarity and sometimes very deep analysis, Max Nordau explains to us that we have indeed committed an apostasy unworthy of mature people. In order to better note his main idea in this regard and at the same time his main merit, we consider it useful to mention here what is not mentioned in the book, because it is directly related to the topic chosen by the author, but which nevertheless constitutes the background of the picture that the author of “Degeneration” masterfully portrays to us.
The question arises: why is a “twilight” mood now taking over the intelligentsia everywhere, why is disappointment and painful skepticism so often observed, why well-thought-out “ideals” are replaced by various “idols”? Were those ideals that colored our life, gave it the highest social, civil meaning, essentially untenable? In this case, the “twilight” mood of the end of the century would be completely understandable and legitimate, and we would only have to look for new ideals, and until they are found, “languish in life as if on a smooth path without a goal.” But isn’t there obvious absurdity in such a formulation of the question, which seems to correspond to the current mood of the majority of intelligent people? Humanity did not begin to live with us: its historical life has already been measured in millennia, and its gradual approach to greater well-being, to a greater amount of happiness on earth, has lasted for entire millennia. And the course of historical development has always been such that ideals gradually changed, rooted in the past, developing in the present, preparing the ground for the future. What a strange self-deception, taking on the character of conceit, to think that this eternally unchanging historical process is interrupted by our short earthly existence, that the future is “empty or dark” because we ourselves have lost faith in our ideals! This would be reminiscent of a man who, being saddened and killed by the betrayal of his beloved woman, himself came to the conviction and began to convince others that true love in the world is impossible. Consequently, the very formulation of the question is absurd and can be explained solely by the fact that we are too impatient, we want to immediately see in practice the results of that “fertile thought” in which we believed, for which we were carried away, for which we were ready to selflessly fight. As a result, a funny optical illusion results: the entire centuries-long life of a person is, as it were, identified with the life of a given generation. We do not understand that some thirty years constitute an insignificant period of time even in comparison with the historical life of mankind alone. But no matter how absurd such self-deception may be, it is very widespread and is the source of that disappointment, that “twilight” mood that is now observed among the European intelligentsia and finds quite clear expression in literature and art with their pessimism, the tendency to return to the long-past past, skepticism about in relation to what was sacred to us so recently. We are dealing here with a very broad pan-European trend that arose along with the philosophy of the 18th century, found expression in the great revolution of the end of this century, reflected in the most decisive way on the worldview of all educated people, aroused immoderate hopes in all countries and ended, as it turns out, with a general fatigue, disappointment. This trend covers all private, public and political life. In political life it means the overthrow of previous forms; in the social sphere - the gradual introduction of more and more new classes to culture; in the private - the liberation of the individual from various forms of suppression of the freedom of one person by the arbitrariness or interests of others. The source of all these diverse phenomena, however, is the same: they all boil down to the widespread conviction that the possibility of progress, the achievement of greater well-being of all people in general and each individual depends mainly on the establishment of freedom. Thus, freedom constitutes the ideal in which we believed and which we are now beginning to doubt, renouncing it at the same time in political, public, and private life. In political life there is a reaction against such a firmly established conviction about the unconditional salvation of democracy. This reaction takes on the most diverse forms and is observed simultaneously in almost all peoples: parliamentarism, the most progressive forms of government, and universal voting meet passionate antagonists even in the camp where, it would seem, they would least be expected. There are voices not only asserting that all political innovations have served solely to benefit the bourgeois elements, but also declaring that the new political forms created by the great revolution of the end of the last century represent an obstacle to the achievement of normal development of state life. Political equality encounters resistance not only from figures hostile to freedom, but also from those who, apparently, value it most. The latter, granting broad political rights to the masses begins to seem dangerous from the point of view of ensuring all types of freedom that the enlightened part of society values most: religious freedoms, freedom of speech and thought. There is some vague premonition that the masses of the people, who have stood aloof from cultural life for so many centuries, are still mired in ignorance, in religious and economic prejudices, having secured political influence, will disdain what an enlightened person values most in the world.
Max Nordau's psychopathological theory of degeneration
Max Nordau is a Norwegian psychiatrist (real name Simon Sudfeld) - a student and follower of Ch. Lombroso. M. Nordau decided to analyze modern literature from the point of view of Lombroso's ideas, however, like his teacher, he did not at all believe that all geniuses are crazy.
Nordau's work on the “psychophysiology of geniuses” appeared in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century. and gained great popularity (it is often mentioned in Gorky’s “The Life of Klim Samgin” - a sure sign of popularity among the intelligentsia of the beginning of the century). The book “Degeneration consists of 5 parts. The first part describes the mood of the end of the 19th century “Fin de siècle” as the state of minds of all Europeans, without time falling into the senility of the spirit. Old ideals have been overthrown, new ones are not being born... he wrote: “This twilight mood is extremely vague; he has feverish tirelessness and dull despondency, unaccountable fear and the humor of a man sentenced to death. Its predominant feature is a feeling of death, extinction. This is a confession and at the same time a complaint” 1.
Investigating the disease of the expiring (19th) century, he gives it a direct diagnosis - “Degeneration”. In the chapter “The Death of Nations,” he defines this mood as follows: a general renunciation in practice of traditional decency, which in theory is still fully recognized. In a dissolute person it is expressed by unbridled instincts; in a callous egoist - complete disregard for one’s neighbor and his interests, the destruction of all barriers that restrain gross self-interest and thirst for pleasure; in the skeptic - a shameless manifestation of base aspirations and motivations, which until now, if not suppressed, were hypocritically hidden; in the believer - weakening of faith, complete materialism; in aesthetics - by the denial of the ideal in art and the powerlessness to make an impression with old forms; in all people in general - lack of sympathy for the previous orders, which for thousands of years satisfied the requirements of logic, restrained criminal impulses and contributed to the emergence of beautiful works of art.”
Nordau goes on to diagnose modern society: “degeneration and hysteria, a form of which is known as neurasthenia.” Note that Nordau is not limited to analyzing the psychology of an individual, as was the case with Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky, or some part of its psychosphere (“complexes” of Freud), but tries to determine psychopathic manifestations in the whole society, especially in the intelligentsia, which has the opportunity to express them in philosophical treatises, and even more specifically - in products of artistic creativity.
In the next part of the chapter, the author of the book examines the causes of this disease, drawing, as elsewhere, a parallel between the development of this pathology in humans and societies. Degeneration and hysteria are caused by organic exhaustion that befell peoples as a result of the strong development of large cities. At the same time, new trends in literature: neorealism or naturalism of the Zola type, decadence in all its forms, neo-mysticism and its various types are, according to Nordau, signs of degeneration. They point the way not forward, but back, to the past: “What appears to the layman as an explosion of ebullient young forces and a stormy desire for creativity” is nothing more than convulsions and spasms of exhaustion...
In this regard, Nordau sees the degenerate preconditions of the “Decline of Europe” in the work of the idols of his time: Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Verlaine, Wilde, the Pre-Raphaelites and others - the three subsequent chapters of his book are devoted to their unique exposure. Particularly interesting and profound in this regard is the chapter devoted to the theory of mysticism. Nordau explains that the revival of mysticism, the wide spread of this mental mood, is explained by psychological reasons, fatigue, the inability of concentrated attention it causes and the tendency to indulge in vague dreams. Hence the influx into literature and art of various fantastic plans that are not based on an accurate study of reality; hence the tendency to throw overboard the most thoughtful and lasting ideals and traditions, replacing them with tinsel, phantasmagoria, the creation of which requires only imagination, estranged from real soil and hovering in vague ideas. Max Nordau includes the Pre-Raphaelites, Symbolists, Tolstoyans and Wagner as mystics.
In the next grave, Nordau exposes the so-called “egotists”: the Parnassians, the decadents, the aesthetes, Ibsen and Nietzsche. They are all united by egotism - the tendency to constantly talk about oneself: “An egotist places his own personality and activity extremely highly, because he is occupied exclusively with himself and very little with the outside world. The egotist invents philosophical systems to justify his perversity or glorifies it in eloquent prose and sonorous verse. Thus, demonism and decadence arise in the field of literature. Decadents and demonists differ from criminals only in that some limit themselves to dreams and words, while others have the determination and strength to move to action. But both of them should be classified as antisocial creatures.
The fourth chapter of Degeneration is devoted to the psychological analysis of Emile Zola and his followers. And in the last chapter of the book, M. Nordau gives a disappointing forecast for the twentieth century: suicide clubs, professions of “morphine and cocaine injectors,” same-sex marriages, various spiritualist communities, etc.
Nordau makes the following prediction about the development of literature: “Books in their present form will go out of fashion. The text will consist of incoherent words or syllables, even just letters or numbers with symbolic meanings that the reader will have to guess. Poets who publish works consisting of a few letters or simply blank pages without any content will excite everyone's admiration. Entire societies of amateurs are formed to comment on such books. (This is written as if about the soon-to-emerge futurism, then OBERIU, in the 60s - neo-futurists like Gennady Aiga, or already at the end of the twentieth century, the idols of postmodernism).
Despite this, Nordau is convinced that this hysteria will inevitably be forgotten. Perverted forms of art have no future.
In the preface to the Russian edition of the book “Degeneration,” published in 1894 and repeated when the book was released in 1995, R. Sementkovsky evaluates the method proposed by Max Nordau: “The fruitfulness of Max Nordau’s method in evaluating philosophical and artistic works lies precisely in the fact that thanks to this method we are able to more clearly distinguish between different aspects of creativity, which are still mostly confused, for example, we understand more clearly what until now only deeper critics have felt, namely, that a given writer can be a significant artist and at the same time a very mediocre or even completely incompetent thinker. Very valuable in this regard are the conclusions that our author comes to by studying the question of the association of ideas and the role played here by the ability to concentrate attention, i.e. consciously control the often involuntary association of ideas”... “Nordau, however, is harsh when he sees what enormous harm the dominance of psychopathic movements in literature and art causes to the eternal ideals of humanity: truth, science, freedom and meaningful, sober work aimed at bringing man closer to these ideals" 1
1 Nordau Max. Degeneration - M., publishing house "Republic", 1995. P.26
1 Sementkovsky R. Back or forward? // Nordau M. Degeneration. –M., 1995.P.18
The author of "Degeneration" is well known among us. Almost none of his works remained untranslated into Russian, and all of them were read with interest, even with enthusiasm. What explains this? Is it just the literary talent of the author, the brilliance and popularity of his presentation, his erudition? No, there is one more circumstance, perhaps the most significant, forcing the reader to pay special attention to the works of Max Nordau. In them he touches on the most pressing issues of our time and discusses them from a point of view that, in my opinion, represents an inevitable step in the development of the worldview of the modern intelligentsia. We will now clarify our idea in more detail, but for now we only want to note that when an author who has taken such a point of view and is fully prepared to defend it with success, undertakes to present us with an overview of almost all modern literature and art, when he gives us a detailed explanation from this point of view an assessment of their most outstanding representatives, starting with the French and English symbolists and decadents, various Rossettis, Swinburnes, Mallarmés, Verlaines, Maeterlincks, etc., and ending with such thinkers or artists as Tolstoy, Richard Wagner, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Zola, then his book acquires special interest for the general public, because the main representatives of literature and art constantly attract the attention of the entire intelligentsia, influence their worldview, and at the same time absorb a significant part of their mental activity, aimed at satisfying the highest interests of the spirit. Max Nordau's new work, the book “You Are Born,” was written with the same brilliance, with the same erudition, with the same ability to present the most complex and abstract issues in an extremely accessible form for everyone, as his previous works. But perhaps none of his works establishes so clearly a continuity between the ideals by which we have been inspired recently and those by which we are likely to be inspired in the near future, nor does it so powerfully destroy many of the misconceptions, prejudices, and superstitions that have thanks to our instability, our tendency to renounce the most sacred principles of life for a person, does not make clear as clearly the inconsistency of the disappointment that has taken hold of us and does not prompt us so eloquently and cheerfully to take on with new forces the implementation of tasks that many of us are already ready to frivolously hand over to the archives and replace them with others that are completely untenable, as the author of “Degeneration” explains to us, and in many respects even extremely dangerous.
Our author's remarkable work was subjected to passionate attacks even before the second part, in which its main idea was finally clarified, was published. He was attacked by those who, in the apt expression of one of our philosophers, create “idols” for themselves instead of “ideals”, and those who join the celebrity of the day in order to attract attention to themselves, and those who echo various charlatans who can invent fashionable trends or cleverly exploit them in their favor, and, finally, those who sincerely thirst and hunger for the truth, but do not have sufficient critical sense to understand complex abstract issues, and therefore, naturally, become victims of these shameless people. It is this largest group of readers that the author primarily has in mind, who understands perfectly well that the intelligentsia in all civilized countries is now experiencing a time that can be characterized by the words “in search of truth.” In his new work, our author speaks of the “twilight” mood that has taken possession of the European intelligentsia as a distinctive feature of the end of the expiring century. Previous ideals have been overthrown, new ones are not being born, everything we believed in has lost its charm for many, healthy skepticism has been replaced by painful ones, we feel some kind of disappointment, satiety, as if we are again “shamefully indifferent to good and evil”, “we hate and love by chance “, as if “life again torments us, like a smooth path without a goal,” and we again fear that a descendant will insult our ashes with “the bitter mockery of a deceived son over a squandered father.”
But is there any real reason to “look sadly at our generation”? This is the question that Max Nordau is trying to resolve. He looked very closely at modern life as it manifests itself in literature and art. The conclusions he comes to are disappointing. The situation in modern literature and art reminds him of a hospital - how much sickness and abnormality there is in them. But what caused this ugly situation? Is it because our ideals really turned out to be untenable, or maybe we ourselves were guilty of not being able to properly stand up for them, because we cowardly renounced them at the first failure - we renounced the “fertile thought” and hastened to replace it tinsel that seduces us for a moment, but only prepares for us more and more disappointments.
With extreme clarity and sometimes very deep analysis, Max Nordau explains to us that we have indeed committed an apostasy unworthy of mature people. In order to better note his main idea in this regard and at the same time his main merit, we consider it useful to mention here what is not mentioned in the book, because it is directly related to the topic chosen by the author, but which nevertheless constitutes the background of the picture that the author of “Degeneration” masterfully portrays to us.
The question arises: why is a “twilight” mood now taking over the intelligentsia everywhere, why is disappointment and painful skepticism so often observed, why well-thought-out “ideals” are replaced by various “idols”? Were those ideals that colored our life, gave it the highest social, civil meaning, essentially untenable? In this case, the “twilight” mood of the end of the century would be completely understandable and legitimate, and we would only have to look for new ideals, and until they are found, “languish in life as if on a smooth path without a goal.” But isn’t there obvious absurdity in such a formulation of the question, which seems to correspond to the current mood of the majority of intelligent people? Humanity did not begin to live with us: its historical life has already been measured in millennia, and its gradual approach to greater well-being, to a greater amount of happiness on earth, has lasted for entire millennia. And the course of historical development has always been such that ideals gradually changed, rooted in the past, developing in the present, preparing the ground for the future. What a strange self-deception, taking on the character of conceit, to think that this eternally unchanging historical process is interrupted by our short earthly existence, that the future is “empty or dark” because we ourselves have lost faith in our ideals! This would be reminiscent of a man who, being saddened and killed by the betrayal of his beloved woman, himself came to the conviction and began to convince others that true love in the world is impossible. Consequently, the very formulation of the question is absurd and can be explained solely by the fact that we are too impatient, we want to immediately see in practice the results of that “fertile thought” in which we believed, for which we were carried away, for which we were ready to selflessly fight. As a result, a funny optical illusion results: the entire centuries-long life of a person is, as it were, identified with the life of a given generation. We do not understand that some thirty years constitute an insignificant period of time even in comparison with the historical life of mankind alone. But no matter how absurd such self-deception may be, it is very widespread and is the source of that disappointment, that “twilight” mood that is now observed among the European intelligentsia and finds quite clear expression in literature and art with their pessimism, the tendency to return to the long-past past, skepticism about in relation to what was sacred to us so recently. We are dealing here with a very broad pan-European trend that arose along with the philosophy of the 18th century, found expression in the great revolution of the end of this century, reflected in the most decisive way on the worldview of all educated people, aroused immoderate hopes in all countries and ended, as it turns out, with a general fatigue, disappointment. This trend covers all private, public and political life. In political life it means the overthrow of previous forms; in the social sphere - the gradual introduction of more and more new classes to culture; in the private - the liberation of the individual from various forms of suppression of the freedom of one person by the arbitrariness or interests of others. The source of all these diverse phenomena, however, is the same: they all boil down to the widespread conviction that the possibility of progress, the achievement of greater well-being of all people in general and each individual depends mainly on the establishment of freedom. Thus, freedom constitutes the ideal in which we believed and which we are now beginning to doubt, renouncing it at the same time in political, public, and private life. In political life there is a reaction against such a firmly established conviction about the unconditional salvation of democracy. This reaction takes on the most diverse forms and is observed simultaneously in almost all peoples: parliamentarism, the most progressive forms of government, and universal voting meet passionate antagonists even in the camp where, it would seem, they would least be expected. There are voices not only asserting that all political innovations have served solely to benefit the bourgeois elements, but also declaring that the new political forms created by the great revolution of the end of the last century represent an obstacle to the achievement of normal development of state life. Political equality encounters resistance not only from figures hostile to freedom, but also from those who, apparently, value it most. The latter, granting broad political rights to the masses begins to seem dangerous from the point of view of ensuring all types of freedom that the enlightened part of society values most: religious freedoms, freedom of speech and thought. There is some vague premonition that the masses of the people, who have stood aloof from cultural life for so many centuries, are still mired in ignorance, in religious and economic prejudices, having secured political influence, will disdain what an enlightened person values most in the world.
Current page: 1 (book has 49 pages total) [available reading passage: 12 pages]
Max Nordau
Backward or forward?
Preface to the Russian edition of the book “Degeneration” 1894
The author of "Degeneration" is well known among us. Almost none of his works remained untranslated into Russian, and all of them were read with interest, even with enthusiasm. What explains this? Is it just the literary talent of the author, the brilliance and popularity of his presentation, his erudition? No, there is one more circumstance, perhaps the most significant, forcing the reader to pay special attention to the works of Max Nordau. In them he touches on the most pressing issues of our time and discusses them from a point of view that, in my opinion, represents an inevitable step in the development of the worldview of the modern intelligentsia. We will now clarify our idea in more detail, but for now we only want to note that when an author who has taken such a point of view and is fully prepared to defend it with success, undertakes to present us with an overview of almost all modern literature and art, when he gives us a detailed explanation from this point of view an assessment of their most outstanding representatives, starting with the French and English symbolists and decadents, various Rossettis, Swinburnes, Mallarmés, Verlaines, Maeterlincks, etc., and ending with such thinkers or artists as Tolstoy, Richard Wagner, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Zola, then his book acquires special interest for the general public, because the main representatives of literature and art constantly attract the attention of the entire intelligentsia, influence their worldview, and at the same time absorb a significant part of their mental activity, aimed at satisfying the highest interests of the spirit. Max Nordau's new work, the book “You Are Born,” was written with the same brilliance, with the same erudition, with the same ability to present the most complex and abstract issues in an extremely accessible form for everyone, as his previous works. But perhaps none of his works establishes so clearly a continuity between the ideals by which we have been inspired recently and those by which we are likely to be inspired in the near future, nor does it so powerfully destroy many of the misconceptions, prejudices, and superstitions that have thanks to our instability, our tendency to renounce the most sacred principles of life for a person, does not make clear as clearly the inconsistency of the disappointment that has taken hold of us and does not prompt us so eloquently and cheerfully to take on with new forces the implementation of tasks that many of us are already ready to frivolously hand over to the archives and replace them with others that are completely untenable, as the author of “Degeneration” explains to us, and in many respects even extremely dangerous.
Our author's remarkable work was subjected to passionate attacks even before the second part, in which its main idea was finally clarified, was published. He was attacked by those who, in the apt expression of one of our philosophers, create “idols” for themselves instead of “ideals”, and those who join the celebrity of the day in order to attract attention to themselves, and those who echo various charlatans who can invent fashionable trends or cleverly exploit them in their favor, and, finally, those who sincerely thirst and hunger for the truth, but do not have sufficient critical sense to understand complex abstract issues, and therefore, naturally, become victims of these shameless people. It is this largest group of readers that the author primarily has in mind, who understands perfectly well that the intelligentsia in all civilized countries is now experiencing a time that can be characterized by the words “in search of truth.” In his new work, our author speaks of the “twilight” mood that has taken possession of the European intelligentsia as a distinctive feature of the end of the expiring century. Previous ideals have been overthrown, new ones are not being born, everything we believed in has lost its charm for many, healthy skepticism has been replaced by painful ones, we feel some kind of disappointment, satiety, as if we are again “shamefully indifferent to good and evil”, “we hate and love by chance “, as if “life again torments us, like a smooth path without a goal,” and we again fear that a descendant will insult our ashes with “the bitter mockery of a deceived son over a squandered father.”
But is there any real reason to “look sadly at our generation”? This is the question that Max Nordau is trying to resolve. He looked very closely at modern life as it manifests itself in literature and art. The conclusions he comes to are disappointing. The situation in modern literature and art reminds him of a hospital - how much sickness and abnormality there is in them. But what caused this ugly situation? Is it because our ideals really turned out to be untenable, or maybe we ourselves were guilty of not being able to properly stand up for them, because we cowardly renounced them at the first failure - we renounced the “fertile thought” and hastened to replace it tinsel that seduces us for a moment, but only prepares for us more and more disappointments.
With extreme clarity and sometimes very deep analysis, Max Nordau explains to us that we have indeed committed an apostasy unworthy of mature people. In order to better note his main idea in this regard and at the same time his main merit, we consider it useful to mention here what is not mentioned in the book, because it is directly related to the topic chosen by the author, but which nevertheless constitutes the background of the picture that the author of “Degeneration” masterfully portrays to us.
The question arises: why is a “twilight” mood now taking over the intelligentsia everywhere, why is disappointment and painful skepticism so often observed, why well-thought-out “ideals” are replaced by various “idols”? Were those ideals that colored our life, gave it the highest social, civil meaning, essentially untenable? In this case, the “twilight” mood of the end of the century would be completely understandable and legitimate, and we would only have to look for new ideals, and until they are found, “languish in life as if on a smooth path without a goal.” But isn’t there obvious absurdity in such a formulation of the question, which seems to correspond to the current mood of the majority of intelligent people? Humanity did not begin to live with us: its historical life has already been measured in millennia, and its gradual approach to greater well-being, to a greater amount of happiness on earth, has lasted for entire millennia. And the course of historical development has always been such that ideals gradually changed, rooted in the past, developing in the present, preparing the ground for the future. What a strange self-deception, taking on the character of conceit, to think that this eternally unchanging historical process is interrupted by our short earthly existence, that the future is “empty or dark” because we ourselves have lost faith in our ideals! This would be reminiscent of a man who, being saddened and killed by the betrayal of his beloved woman, himself came to the conviction and began to convince others that true love in the world is impossible. Consequently, the very formulation of the question is absurd and can be explained solely by the fact that we are too impatient, we want to immediately see in practice the results of that “fertile thought” in which we believed, for which we were carried away, for which we were ready to selflessly fight. As a result, a funny optical illusion results: the entire centuries-long life of a person is, as it were, identified with the life of a given generation. We do not understand that some thirty years constitute an insignificant period of time even in comparison with the historical life of mankind alone. But no matter how absurd such self-deception may be, it is very widespread and is the source of that disappointment, that “twilight” mood that is now observed among the European intelligentsia and finds quite clear expression in literature and art with their pessimism, the tendency to return to the long-past past, skepticism about in relation to what was sacred to us so recently. We are dealing here with a very broad pan-European trend that arose along with the philosophy of the 18th century, found expression in the great revolution of the end of this century, reflected in the most decisive way on the worldview of all educated people, aroused immoderate hopes in all countries and ended, as it turns out, with a general fatigue, disappointment. This trend covers all private, public and political life. In political life it means the overthrow of previous forms; in the social sphere - the gradual introduction of more and more new classes to culture; in the private – the liberation of the individual from various forms of suppression of the freedom of one person by the arbitrariness or interests of others. The source of all these diverse phenomena, however, is the same: they all boil down to the widespread conviction that the possibility of progress, the achievement of greater well-being of all people in general and each individual depends mainly on the establishment of freedom. Thus, freedom constitutes the ideal in which we believed and which we are now beginning to doubt, renouncing it at the same time in political, public, and private life. In political life there is a reaction against such a firmly established conviction about the unconditional salvation of democracy. This reaction takes on the most diverse forms and is observed simultaneously in almost all peoples: parliamentarism, the most progressive forms of government, and universal voting meet passionate antagonists even in the camp where, it would seem, they would least be expected. There are voices not only asserting that all political innovations have served solely to benefit the bourgeois elements, but also declaring that the new political forms created by the great revolution of the end of the last century represent an obstacle to the achievement of normal development of state life. Political equality encounters resistance not only from figures hostile to freedom, but also from those who, apparently, value it most. The latter, granting broad political rights to the masses begins to seem dangerous from the point of view of ensuring all types of freedom that the enlightened part of society values most: religious freedoms, freedom of speech and thought. There is some vague premonition that the masses of the people, who have stood aloof from cultural life for so many centuries, are still mired in ignorance, in religious and economic prejudices, having secured political influence, will disdain what an enlightened person values most in the world.
The reaction in the social sphere, mainly economic, is no less significant. And here the formal equalization of rights is recognized as a beginning that is not nearly as charming as it was just recently. If the normal social system should consist in the fact that every person, whatever his position, enjoys the elementary conditions worthy of human existence, and has the opportunity, according to his mental abilities and moral qualities, to make his way in life, then here too freedom is not the intended goal is achieved because numerous groups of the population, due to their complete economic inability and due to the dominance of capital, cannot take advantage of it: it exists for them only on paper, but in reality, talking to them about freedom means mocking them. This is the ground on which the consciousness of the need to suppress the freedom of some in order to bring freedom to others is strengthened, and this consciousness is now manifested with great force in the new doctrine, which is usually called state socialism and which is a direct denial of those principles of social freedom that we valued so much ourselves, and our fathers.
Finally, in the private sphere, the benefits of freedom are also subject to various doubts. Simply eliminating the fetters that constrained the individual no longer seems sufficient. And in this matter there is a reaction everywhere. Whatever sphere of private life we have in mind, everywhere we come across doubts, denial: the ideal of a person completely free in the pursuit of his goals, worshiping only reason as his highest legislator, relying in his activities exclusively on knowledge, proud of it and rejecting everything , which constitutes an obstacle to life according to nature - this ideal, if not archived, is then largely darkened, and at the same time the source of light that illuminated our life dries up. A proud man, self-confident, breaking ties with the past and cheerfully looking to the future, begins to humble himself: and he is overcome by disappointment, fatigue, the “twilight mood” that has found such clear expression in modern philosophy. Every now and then a new philosophical worldview arises, presenting a complete contrast to the recent cheerful mood. It is worth mentioning Schopenhauer with his preaching of nothingness, Nietzsche - with his contempt for the mob and exaltation of the chosen, aristocratic natures, Tolstoy - with his invitation to imitate the unenlightened masses in life, it is worth pointing out the replacement of cheerful skepticism, enthusiasm for positive science with a return to superstition, pessimism, disgust for life in order to understand how deep the change has taken place in the worldview of the modern intelligentsia. No matter how different our views on this turning point may be, one thing is certain: in private life, freedom ceases to be the ideal that we worship.
It is against the background of all these world phenomena that a worldview begins to emerge, revealing to us the prospect of a better future, built not on the denial of everything that we valued, that was most sacred to us, but on the strengthening, on the further development of those political, social and individual principles, for the triumph of which our fathers and grandfathers fought and which we are called upon to defend against the approaching “twilight”. One of the most talented and efficient fighters of this kind is the author of the book about “Degeneration”. Every page of his work testifies that he believes in a future built on forgotten, but not yet forgotten, ideals of knowledge and freedom. This is the enormous significance of his book, which appears precisely at such a moment when well-known philosophers and leaders of society, echoing people who lose courage in the face of temporary setbacks, take up arms against science, against energetic work aimed at creating better conditions, against struggle and recommend us passivity, a return to ignorance, aversion to life, self-destruction...
On what, however, does our author base his claim that, within the framework of the question he is discussing, he “came not to destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfill”? We have seen that the continuity of ideals has been lost mainly in the sense of a mistrust of the fruitfulness of freedom that has taken possession of the minds. Why could this kind of skepticism arise and spread widely, or, to put it differently, why were rationalism, with its deep faith in the human mind, and materialism, with its deep faith in human nature, in the fruitfulness of liberating it from the fetters that constrain it, replaced by mysticism and pessimism? Isn't the reason for this phenomenon that we have not quite correctly assessed both the human mind and human nature? In fact, let us return to the starting point of the broad current we have indicated, which gripped European thought in the second half of the last century. The greatest manifestation of rationalism in life was the Great French Revolution. No people's passion for freedom manifested itself with such sudden force as the French did at the end of the last century. It was a passionate, unbridled impulse, a kind of intoxication. Power was in the hands of the most persistent and convinced freedom fighters. They crushed everything in their path; there was no force that could resist them. The rest of the peoples looked with hope at France, confident that from this country would come the final abolition of everything that was hindering the establishment of the kingdom of freedom. It turned out, however, that both France itself and other nations were deceived in their expectations. The people who carried out the first French revolution were convinced that as soon as freedom triumphed, the people would be able to use it to ensure their well-being. This was a necessary assumption of the whole turn. But it soon became clear that the people themselves began to rebel against their liberators, and the matter ended with the fact that they eliminated them and nominated Napoleon, i.e. figure who abolished all people's rights. The defenders of freedom stood up for the people, but they rejected them. This means they were wrong about him. Already at that time, more far-sighted figures began to say that the failure of the French Revolution was explained by an incorrect assessment of the people's aspirations, insufficient acquaintance with the “great stranger” who then first appeared on the political stage as a sovereign master. All profound researchers of the French Revolution up to the present day have confirmed this view of the matter.
But how could such a mistake happen? Ignorance of the people was an inevitable consequence of the direction that science took during the Renaissance and in modern times. The thinkers did not notice that they were, in essence, working on dead material. Philosophy, government, and jurisprudence were, of course, based on human nature, but when they talked about a person, they meant a creature who still wore the Roman toga or the medieval costume of a knight, prelate, judge, bourgeois. Is it necessary to explain that philosophy, history, politics, and jurisprudence were imbued with views drawn from classical antiquity, that when the leaders of the first French revolution began their coup, they, establishing the kingdom of freedom, felt as if they were in the ancient Roman forum , what seemed to them like they were addressing the freedom-loving Romans with their speeches? But the Romans did not exist a long time ago, and this whole mistake was all the more fatal because, in essence, both in science and in life it was necessary to solve a question that remained unresolved by classical antiquity, which caused the collapse of the entire classical world - the question of , how to introduce the “great stranger” to the cultural life of an insignificant number of people who were ahead of him in their mental development by many centuries. This “great stranger” had no idea either about classical antiquity, or about science, or about those spiritual goods that were treasured by the handful of people who controlled his destiny. His interests were very base, although at the same time very vital, and his worldview did not at all coincide with those brilliant ideals of human life that enlightened people inherited from classical antiquity.
Almost the same thing is repeated to this day. When we fight for freedom, we usually have in mind an abstract person or, at best, people like ourselves. But between a modern intelligent person and the masses of the people there still exists, especially in some countries, for example ours, the same enormous difference as between a figure of the French revolution, brought up on classical ideals, and a serf, who was just beginning to emerge from the medieval darkness, from the state of , not much different from the plight of a beast of burden. This is one of the sources of disappointment that constantly befalls us. The mistake made by theory and practice at the end of the last century was partly recognized. This gave literature a new direction. Pseudo-classicism disappeared: all these Greeks and Romans, demigods, kings, heroes, noble people, who formed almost exclusively the subject of artistic creativity, gradually left the stage, and representatives of the “third estate”, bourgeois elements began to appear on it, as later along with them in the peasant and the proletarian appear in literature. This was an outward manifestation of the recognition of a mistake made, which was reflected in science. Rationalism and the philosophy of the 18th century gradually began to lose credit. Materialism was born as a reaction against rationalism, and this teaching spread amazingly quickly everywhere precisely because it corresponded to the desire to find new foundations for life instead of those that turned out to be untenable. A merciless war was declared on all previous social institutions and institutions in the name of human nature, in the name of its innate instincts, needs, and aspirations. The one-sided worship of spirit was replaced by the one-sided worship of matter in the crude sense of the word. But if at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries it became clear that it was impossible to count on the human mind as an unchanging quantity in any case, then in the second half of our century it became clear, with the same obviousness, that human nature with its innate instincts is not an unchanging quantity, that if the mind and nature of all men are the same, nevertheless they present in particulars such differences as, in practical terms, at a given time and place, must inevitably have a very strong effect on political and social conditions and institutions. Thus, the intelligentsia was again led to the need to study more closely the “great stranger” and to look deeper into themselves.
But is it necessary to explain that all this seemed to destroy the previous, so clear and definite worldview. It turned out that we were deprived of any solid guiding principles. We first have to carefully study the environment in which we want to operate, and then act. In a word, it turned out that humanity does not yet have that talisman, has not yet thought of that panacea that would ensure sudden successes on the path of progress and the establishment of general well-being.
Could this conclusion, however, serve as the basis for the pessimism now observed, for that “twilight” mood that Max Nordau speaks of? What happened to us was constantly repeated in history. Not a single generation has escaped the consciousness that the ideals they set forth need further improvement, that the truth is, as it were, inaccessible to man. But this cannot yet serve as a reason either for pessimism or for preaching a return to those primary times when science and freedom occupied a very modest place in people’s consciousness. Pessimism and preaching of this kind could be considered legitimate only if someone managed to prove that humanity in its development is moving not forward, but backward; but, of course, no one has yet succeeded in presenting convincing evidence in favor of such a view of the matter, and at the same time it would be cowardice to indulge in despair over various temporary failures. Indeed, we see that, despite the appearance of pessimistic teachings and preaching about the futility of science, about non-resistance to evil, doing nothing, etc., people in general move forward cheerfully and in practice are least inclined to listen to this kind of sermon, but tirelessly and They work with all their might to expand their knowledge, to benefit science, this foundation of all fruitful activity aimed at ensuring human well-being. If in practice we have drawn incorrect conclusions from science, then it is not science that is to blame; if it does not always immediately reach the correct conclusions, then, on the other hand, there is no sphere of human thinking that would provide more guarantees in this regard, because science essentially values the truth, the truth alone; it itself presupposes, as an indispensable condition for its success, freedom, because without freedom it, as we know, can live just as little as an organism without air.
But nevertheless, among a certain part of the intelligentsia, both here and in the rest of Europe, there is disappointment, pessimism, some kind of instinctive aversion to life and to those slogans with which we were so passionately carried away so recently. We have already noted one of the main reasons for this phenomenon. Reality did not live up to our expectations. But if this conclusion is correct, then the question arises: why could we indulge in such immoderate expectations, why could we, contrary to centuries of historical experience, think that humanity would suddenly make a huge leap and immediately achieve complete well-being? It is difficult to find another historical era when humanity in general or almost all peoples individually would have experienced such a mass of grandiose events as the last century. During this period of time, humanity, figuratively speaking, made a forced march towards a goal that it seemed to him to clearly see. But in general for all mankind and in particular for every individual people, as we approached this goal, it became clear that it was not so tempting and did not promise such a radical cure for all ailments as was expected from it. Does this mean, however, that the goal itself, objectively speaking, is something illusory, something not worthy of the efforts and sacrifices made for its sake? Or, on the contrary, the goal itself is quite worthy of these efforts and sacrifices, and if it does not seduce us as before, it is only because we valued it not as people deeply convinced of its fruitfulness and saving power, but as people who expected from it personal benefits. Thus, we approached the issue we have already noted from a different angle. If freedom is such a valuable good that it is worth living for it with oblivion of personal benefits, then at the same time, valuing it, we must be most attentive to the conditions that most likely ensure its triumph in life. Among these conditions, one of the first places is occupied by the structure of the people in its entirety. At the same time, the psychology of society and the masses in general is acquiring enormous importance for us. But society and the masses consist of individual individuals, therefore, individual psychology has the same, if not more significant, significance. Whether we study the question of how best to ensure the kingdom of freedom, or the question of why humanity is so slowly approaching it and why it is so often disappointed in this matter, we will equally be convinced that the answer to these questions can be given to us. to give only a careful study of the people's soul, which is made up of the views, beliefs, and aspirations of individual individuals. Consequently, our final conclusion should not be pessimism, not a cowardly renunciation of eternal ideals. No, a strong person, having made a mistake and realizing it, hastens to correct it and cheerfully moves forward. Our grandfathers overestimated the power of the mind, we ourselves overestimated the instincts given to man by nature, and both mistakes occurred due to insufficient study of the real person. The result is an incorrect worldview, but the historical experience we have learned and the amazing successes of accurate knowledge give us every opportunity to replace it with a new, more substantial one.
Indeed, we see that both art and science have embarked on precisely this path. The passion with which partly sociology, partly psychology and especially psychophysiology are now being developed everywhere testifies to the fact that humanity has understood how closely the general well-being, ensured most likely by knowledge and freedom, is dependent on a correct assessment of the psychological life of individual individuals and the masses of the people. from the point of view of the natural laws that govern it. But until now a huge area of human thought has been studied almost completely from this point of view. This is all the more unfortunate because the area of human thinking that we are talking about, in essence, has a very decisive influence on practical activity. Philosophy, fine literature and art prepared the way for grandiose upheavals in the lives of peoples and constantly influenced one or another course of events. Meanwhile, these very areas of human thought have received almost no research at all from the point of view of the natural laws governing human mental activity. In artistic criticism there are all kinds of methods: comparative, historical, eclectic, dogmatic or tendentious, by which we mean the assessment of works of art from the point of view of the critic’s favorite idea, which has the meaning of dogma for him, but the psychological method still occupies a very modest place. True, when assessing this or that writer, data from his life are usually cited that influenced the direction of his thought, but the thought itself is almost never analyzed from the point of view of psychophysiological laws. This is explained, of course, by the fact that psychophysiology is still a relatively new science, in many of its parts still poorly developed, but no serious attempt has yet been made to use the important conclusions to which it has already come to criticize works of art. The first serious attempt of this kind belongs to the author of “Degeneration,” and we must do him justice that with his book he throws a bright light on artistic and partly on scientific creativity in a psychological sense.
How Max Nordau was led to this attempt, he himself explains to us in his work. The impetus for it was given by the works of Lombroso, mainly the book “Genius and Madness,” in which, as is known, the idea is advanced that extraordinary talents very often constitute a manifestation of a disease of the nervous system. But in Lombroso, this conclusion follows from a more general idea, which boils down to the fact that various deviations from the normal type in one direction or another, i.e. towards extraordinary talent or towards the absence of the most ordinary mental abilities, towards extraordinary moral qualities or extraordinary depravity, are largely equally determined by the abnormal state of the nervous system. There is no need to explain how Lombroso came to this conclusion. He is a psychiatrist by profession and, therefore, had the opportunity to observe a lot of the life of the mentally ill. At the same time, he, of course, made appropriate generalizations, summed up the facts under certain headings, and then transferred the conclusions obtained in this way to people who were not directly subject to his observation, but who were mentally very similar to his patients. In other words, clinical observations are extended in this way to all people, and the researcher looks for analogies between quite pronounced forms of insanity, which are represented by persons known to be sick, and less clearly manifested forms of the same disease, found in people recognized as healthy. Observations made by Lombroso of the mentally ill led him to further develop the concept of degeneration as a painful deviation from the normal organic state. The question for him came down to determining to what extent in life those forms of degeneration that he observed in the mentally ill occur, and he came to the conclusion that many features in the lives of people recognized as normal are essentially explained by deviations of their body from norms, i.e. degeneration. This includes diverse phenomena in mental life: outstanding talent, a penchant for crime, sexual perversion, etc. But we will not dwell on this issue, because the conclusions to which Lombroso came are well known. We recalled them only in order to find out how Max Nordau came up with the idea of subjecting outstanding representatives of modern literature and modern art to analysis from the psychiatric point of view indicated by Lombroso. The author of “Degeneration” himself, as is known, is a psychiatrist; in addition, he studied European literature very carefully. Thus, he turns out to be fully prepared to solve the task he has taken on. The concept of degeneration, despite many very interesting and practical works, cannot be considered firmly established in science, mainly because the external signs of an organic state, which is usually called degeneration, still suffer from some uncertainty, especially when we mean signs of non-physical, but spiritual degeneration. It is sometimes very difficult to distinguish a mentally normal person from an abnormal one, and even psychiatrists cannot always accurately determine whether a given person should be recognized as healthy or sick. There are even many forms of clearly expressed nervous diseases, very significant and quite suitable for the clinical picture of degeneration, in which, however, there can be no talk of mental illness in the proper sense of the word. This includes the currently very common forms of the disease - neurasthenia and hysteria. But from the point of view of the task Nordau set himself, this is not the question. A person can maintain his position in society and nevertheless be mentally ill in the broad sense of the word: at first glance it will be difficult to distinguish him from a normal person, but in fact his normal life is completely disrupted. Nordau establishes a number of signs of such deviation from the norm, and, for the most part, it is confirmed that in one case or another we are dealing with people who are truly sick. Studying writers and artists from this point of view, he provides very convincing evidence in favor of his thesis. Some of the writers who now attract general attention turn out to be crazy in the literal sense of the word: such, for example, is the newest German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who made so much noise with his works; This is partly the leader of the French Symbolists, the poet Verlaine; others, although they cannot be considered insane in the literal sense of the word, present in their lives and activities undoubted signs of complete compliance with the clinical picture of degeneration. At the same time, it turns out that writers or artists who suffer from these signs, at the same time, represent in their worldview the greatest deviation from the worldview characteristic of the vast majority of enlightened people. The author of “Degeneration”, with a remarkable depth of analysis, explains to us the psychological foundations of this phenomenon. We find the chapter devoted to the psychology of mysticism especially interesting and profound. The revival of mysticism, the wide spread of this mental mood, is actually explained to a large extent, as Nordau correctly explained to us, by psychological reasons, fatigue, the inability to concentrate attention it causes and the tendency to indulge in vague dreams. It is clear that in such a mood, interest in positive knowledge should weaken, and that the strict succession of tasks, gradually solved by a person with great effort, cannot seem particularly attractive. Hence the influx into literature and art of various fantastic plans that are not based on an accurate study of reality; hence the tendency to throw overboard the most thoughtful and lasting ideals and replace them with tinsel, phantasmagoria, the creation of which requires only imagination, detached from real soil and hovering in vague ideas.
Max Nordau
Backward or forward?
Preface to the Russian edition of the book “Degeneration” 1894
The author of "Degeneration" is well known among us. Almost none of his works remained untranslated into Russian, and all of them were read with interest, even with enthusiasm. What explains this? Is it just the literary talent of the author, the brilliance and popularity of his presentation, his erudition? No, there is one more circumstance, perhaps the most significant, forcing the reader to pay special attention to the works of Max Nordau. In them he touches on the most pressing issues of our time and discusses them from a point of view that, in my opinion, represents an inevitable step in the development of the worldview of the modern intelligentsia. We will now clarify our idea in more detail, but for now we only want to note that when an author who has taken such a point of view and is fully prepared to defend it with success, undertakes to present us with an overview of almost all modern literature and art, when he gives us a detailed explanation from this point of view an assessment of their most outstanding representatives, starting with the French and English symbolists and decadents, various Rossettis, Swinburnes, Mallarmés, Verlaines, Maeterlincks, etc., and ending with such thinkers or artists as Tolstoy, Richard Wagner, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Zola, then his book acquires special interest for the general public, because the main representatives of literature and art constantly attract the attention of the entire intelligentsia, influence their worldview, and at the same time absorb a significant part of their mental activity, aimed at satisfying the highest interests of the spirit. Max Nordau's new work, the book “You Are Born,” was written with the same brilliance, with the same erudition, with the same ability to present the most complex and abstract issues in an extremely accessible form for everyone, as his previous works. But perhaps none of his works establishes so clearly a continuity between the ideals by which we have been inspired recently and those by which we are likely to be inspired in the near future, nor does it so powerfully destroy many of the misconceptions, prejudices, and superstitions that have thanks to our instability, our tendency to renounce the most sacred principles of life for a person, does not make clear as clearly the inconsistency of the disappointment that has taken hold of us and does not prompt us so eloquently and cheerfully to take on with new forces the implementation of tasks that many of us are already ready to frivolously hand over to the archives and replace them with others that are completely untenable, as the author of “Degeneration” explains to us, and in many respects even extremely dangerous.
Our author's remarkable work was subjected to passionate attacks even before the second part, in which its main idea was finally clarified, was published. He was attacked by those who, in the apt expression of one of our philosophers, create “idols” for themselves instead of “ideals”, and those who join the celebrity of the day in order to attract attention to themselves, and those who echo various charlatans who can invent fashionable trends or cleverly exploit them in their favor, and, finally, those who sincerely thirst and hunger for the truth, but do not have sufficient critical sense to understand complex abstract issues, and therefore, naturally, become victims of these shameless people. It is this largest group of readers that the author primarily has in mind, who understands perfectly well that the intelligentsia in all civilized countries is now experiencing a time that can be characterized by the words “in search of truth.” In his new work, our author speaks of the “twilight” mood that has taken possession of the European intelligentsia as a distinctive feature of the end of the expiring century. Previous ideals have been overthrown, new ones are not being born, everything we believed in has lost its charm for many, healthy skepticism has been replaced by painful ones, we feel some kind of disappointment, satiety, as if we are again “shamefully indifferent to good and evil”, “we hate and love by chance “, as if “life again torments us, like a smooth path without a goal,” and we again fear that a descendant will insult our ashes with “the bitter mockery of a deceived son over a squandered father.”
But is there any real reason to “look sadly at our generation”? This is the question that Max Nordau is trying to resolve. He looked very closely at modern life as it manifests itself in literature and art. The conclusions he comes to are disappointing. The situation in modern literature and art reminds him of a hospital - how much sickness and abnormality there is in them. But what caused this ugly situation? Is it because our ideals really turned out to be untenable, or maybe we ourselves were guilty of not being able to properly stand up for them, because we cowardly renounced them at the first failure - we renounced the “fertile thought” and hastened to replace it tinsel that seduces us for a moment, but only prepares for us more and more disappointments.
With extreme clarity and sometimes very deep analysis, Max Nordau explains to us that we have indeed committed an apostasy unworthy of mature people. In order to better note his main idea in this regard and at the same time his main merit, we consider it useful to mention here what is not mentioned in the book, because it is directly related to the topic chosen by the author, but which nevertheless constitutes the background of the picture that the author of “Degeneration” masterfully portrays to us.
The question arises: why is a “twilight” mood now taking over the intelligentsia everywhere, why is disappointment and painful skepticism so often observed, why well-thought-out “ideals” are replaced by various “idols”? Were those ideals that colored our life, gave it the highest social, civil meaning, essentially untenable? In this case, the “twilight” mood of the end of the century would be completely understandable and legitimate, and we would only have to look for new ideals, and until they are found, “languish in life as if on a smooth path without a goal.” But isn’t there obvious absurdity in such a formulation of the question, which seems to correspond to the current mood of the majority of intelligent people? Humanity did not begin to live with us: its historical life has already been measured in millennia, and its gradual approach to greater well-being, to a greater amount of happiness on earth, has lasted for entire millennia. And the course of historical development has always been such that ideals gradually changed, rooted in the past, developing in the present, preparing the ground for the future. What a strange self-deception, taking on the character of conceit, to think that this eternally unchanging historical process is interrupted by our short earthly existence, that the future is “empty or dark” because we ourselves have lost faith in our ideals! This would be reminiscent of a man who, being saddened and killed by the betrayal of his beloved woman, himself came to the conviction and began to convince others that true love in the world is impossible. Consequently, the very formulation of the question is absurd and can be explained solely by the fact that we are too impatient, we want to immediately see in practice the results of that “fertile thought” in which we believed, for which we were carried away, for which we were ready to selflessly fight. As a result, a funny optical illusion results: the entire centuries-long life of a person is, as it were, identified with the life of a given generation. We do not understand that some thirty years constitute an insignificant period of time even in comparison with the historical life of mankind alone. But no matter how absurd such self-deception may be, it is very widespread and is the source of that disappointment, that “twilight” mood that is now observed among the European intelligentsia and finds quite clear expression in literature and art with their pessimism, the tendency to return to the long-past past, skepticism about in relation to what was sacred to us so recently. We are dealing here with a very broad pan-European trend that arose along with the philosophy of the 18th century, found expression in the great revolution of the end of this century, reflected in the most decisive way on the worldview of all educated people, aroused immoderate hopes in all countries and ended, as it turns out, with a general fatigue, disappointment. This trend covers all private, public and political life. In political life it means the overthrow of previous forms; in the social sphere - the gradual introduction of more and more new classes to culture; in the private - the liberation of the individual from various forms of suppression of the freedom of one person by the arbitrariness or interests of others. The source of all these diverse phenomena, however, is the same: they all boil down to the widespread conviction that the possibility of progress, the achievement of greater well-being of all people in general and each individual depends mainly on the establishment of freedom. Thus, freedom constitutes the ideal in which we believed and which we are now beginning to doubt, renouncing it at the same time in political, public, and private life. In political life there is a reaction against such a firmly established conviction about the unconditional salvation of democracy. This reaction takes on the most diverse forms and is observed simultaneously in almost all peoples: parliamentarism, the most progressive forms of government, and universal voting meet passionate antagonists even in the camp where, it would seem, they would least be expected. There are voices not only asserting that all political innovations have served solely to benefit the bourgeois elements, but also declaring that the new political forms created by the great revolution of the end of the last century represent an obstacle to the achievement of normal development of state life. Political equality encounters resistance not only from figures hostile to freedom, but also from those who, apparently, value it most. The latter, granting broad political rights to the masses begins to seem dangerous from the point of view of ensuring all types of freedom that the enlightened part of society values most: religious freedoms, freedom of speech and thought. There is some vague premonition that the masses of the people, who have stood aloof from cultural life for so many centuries, are still mired in ignorance, in religious and economic prejudices, having secured political influence, will disdain what an enlightened person values most in the world.
