In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

124 ARRAYS
their compositions (Chronik, 186). But many European intellectuals
continue to resist jazz, as a predominantly African-American form. For
Thomas Mann, jazz, boxing, and film mean nothing but "crudeness and
flatness" (Kolbe, 378). The philosopher and journalist Theodor Lessing
noisily complains about the noisiness of modern culture [see Gramophone]-yet
not without a certain ambivalence: "Only recently our culture
has adopted the custom of adding the strange effect of the human
voice to the amazing panoply of sounds that include aggressive clinking
against glass, abrupt crumpling of paper, clanging of steel, mournful
tones of wood, stopped-up, clanging, clattering, clapping noises. We call
the source of this nonsense and fun a jazz band. The Jays are such a jazz
band" (Lessing, 232). Lessing's value judgments are situated between the
poles of "nonsense and fun" throughout this text. It is as if he did not
quite dare to come to an unequivocally negative conclusion. At the end
of his essay, he praises both jazz and jays. But he denies them what by
Western standards are the most heroic faculties of human existencenamely,
the capacity of being creative and of being tragic: "Free flight is
denied them. And when these show-offs and jesters enter the open space
of the heavens, they become helpless and subdued. They are denied their
own song. There is no song that they are forced to sing, but there is also
none that they cannot simply imitate and echo. They are genuinely
beautiful and barren. But this flight is without tragedy" (233). [see
Action = Impotence (Tragedy)] Obviously, it is difficult to appreciate the
strength of cultural forms before one has become familiar with them.
Related Entries
Assembly Lines, Bars, Boxing, Dancing, Employees, Gomina, Gramophone,
Movie Palaces, Revues, Authenticity vs. Artificiality, Center vs.
Periphery, Individuality vs. Collectivity, Uncertainty vs. Reality, Action =
Impotence (Tragedy), Individuality = Collectivity (Leader)
References
Johannes R. Becher, Maschinenrhythmen. Berlin, 1926.
Bertolt Brecht, "Eine kleine Versicherungsgeschichte" (1926). In Gesammelte
Werke, vol. 11. Frankfurt, 1967.
Chronik 1926: Tag fur Tag in Wort und Bild. Dortmund, 1985.