Degeneration / by Max Nordau.

  • Nordau, Max Simon, 1849-1923.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Degeneration / by Max Nordau. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    122/584 (page 102)
    and appropriated This ignorance on the part of the Symboh'sts, A .^^^^'^^'^l^^id.sh flaunting of a pret^uded culture, aVe openi; admitted by one of them. ' Very few of these young men,'says Charles Monce * have any exact knowledge of the tenets of religion or philosophy. From the expressions used in the Church services,^ however, they retain some fine terms, such as mon- f/-n''c'u ^1^°^^' etc.; several have preserved from Spencer, Mill, Shopenhauer (stc !), Comte, Darwin, a few technical terms l^ew are those who know deeply what they talk about, or those who do not try to make a show and parade of their manner of speaking, which has no other merit than that of being a conceit in syllables.' (Charles Morice naturally is responsible for this last unmeaning phrase, not I.) The original guests of the Fran9ois I. made their appearance at one o'clock in the day at their cafe, and remained there till dinner-time. Immediately after that meal they returned, and did not leave their headquarters till long after midnight! Of course none of the Symbolists had any known occupation, fThese 'degenerates' are no more capable of regularly fulfilling any duty than they are of methodical learning. If this organic deficiency appears in a man of the lower classes, he becomes a vagabond ; in a woman of that class it leads to prostitution ; in one belonging to the upper classes it takes the form of artistic and literary drivel. The German popular mind betrays a deep intuition of the true connection of things in inventing such a word as 'day-thief {Tagedieb) for such aesthetic loafers. Pro- fessional thieving and the unconquerable propensity to busy, gossiping, officious idleness flow from the same source, to wit, inborn weakness of brain. It is true that the boon companions of the caf6 are not con- scious of their mentally-crippled condition. They find pet names and graceful appellations for their inability to submit themselves to any sort of discipline, and to devote persistent concentration and attention to any sort of work. They call it * the artist nature,' ' genius roaming at large,' * a soaring above the low miasma of the commonplace.'' They ridicule the dull Philistine, who, like the horse turning a winch, performs mechanically a regular amount of work ; they despise the narrow-minded loons who demand that a man should either pursue a circumscribed bourgeois trade or possess an officially acknowledged status, and who profoundly distrust impecuniary professions. They glory in roving folk who wander about singing and carelessly begging, and they hold up as their ideal the ' commoner of air,' who bathes in morning dew, sleeps under flowers, and gets his clothing from the same firm as the lilies of the field in the Gospel. Richepin's La Chanson des Guetix is the most typical expression * Charles Morice, La Liiterature de ioli(-A-P/ieure. Paris, 1889, p. 274.