In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

314 CODES
people have a more functionally oriented, sober attitude toward life. [see
Sobriety vs. Exuberance] In The Plumed Serpent D. H. Lawrence depicts
the same contrast, through the disparate reactions of a forty-year-old and
a twenty-year-old to the atmosphere of a bullfight: "'Isn't it thrilling,'
cried Owen, whose will-to-happiness was almost a mania. 'Don't you
think so Bud?' 'Why, yes, I think it may be,' said Villiers, non-committal.
But then Villiers was young, he was only over twenty, while Owen was
over forty. The younger generation calculated its 'happiness' in a more
business-like fashion. Villiers was out after a thrill, but he wasn't going
to say he'd got one till he'd got it" (Lawrence, 9). [see Bullfighting] The
most popular emblems of the new generation's sober hedonism are fit
bodies and athletic rituals. Not surprisingly, Thomas Mann interprets
such "sportification of our youth" as a return to certain ideals of classical
Antiquity and, consequently, as a symptom for the impending demise of
the Christian era (W.E.S., 193). Far from making such far-reaching
associations, Ulrich Wilamowitz-Mollendorf, a celebrated professor of
classical philology at the University of Berlin, sees the fashion for sports
as nothing but a symptom of severe pedagogical crisis: "The danger does
not lie in a lack of ability or intention-but there is indeed a danger.
Above all, this has to do with a lack of general culture. No pedagogical
program-much less sports-can take its place" ("Deutsche Zukunft,"
219). But for Wilhelm Wien, an experimental physicist at the University
of Munich, sports are a mark of the younger generation's enviable vitality:
"Having recovered from the postwar chaos, the younger generation
in Germany is fully dedicated to its task. I have certainly not observed
any crisis or decline in quality. A particularly welcome development is
the new emphasis on physical education" ("Deutsche Zukunft," 218).
The identity of the Present is normally not derived from a comparison
with historically remote worlds. If the culture of ancient Egypt and the
pre-Christian Mediterranean civilizations are frequently evoked, they
stand for cosmological order and for an authenticity whose re-presentations
shed a pessimistic-rather than a clarifying-light on the Present.
[see Authenticity vs. Artificiality] The understanding of the Past, the
description of the Present, and the periodization of time in general thus
tend to involve identifying structures and patterns specific to the passage
of time [see Timepieces], and not in comparing different historical periods:
"In the flow of time, in this perpetual becoming that surrounds us,
there are moments in which we rest-only to suddenly discover that