We the people, we now know that our civilization can die.

We have heard of worlds disappearing entirely, of kingdoms sinking to the bottom of the sea with their people and their instruments; that they plunged into the unfathomable depths of centuries, taking with them their gods and laws, their academies of science. and the pure and applied sciences, their grammars, their dictionaries, their classical, romantic, and symbolic schools, their criticisms and criticisms of criticisms. We know that the entire earth's surface is made of ash, and that ash means something. We glimpse through the thickness of history some ghostly ships laden with wealth and spirit. We can't count them all. Ultimately, however, these devastations are not our business.

Elam, Nineveh, Babylon, are beautiful but vague names, and the utter destruction of these worlds means as little to us as their existence itself. However, France, England, Russia... are also beautiful names. Lusitania is also a beautiful name. We now see that history is an abyss, big enough to hold the whole world. We feel that civilization and life are equally fragile. The circumstances linking Keats and Baudelaire to Menander are not at all inconceivable: they are all in the press.

That’s not all. The latest lessons are even more comprehensive. Our generation knows from its own experience that the most beautiful and ancient things, the most exquisite and the most orderly things can die unexpectedly; it has seen some strange phenomena and abnormal phenomena occur in the fields of thought, common sense and emotion. An unexpected achievement, a gross deception of the truth.

I will give just one example: The great efficiency of the German peoples has caused more disasters than the sins of laziness. We see firsthand that conscious labor, the most solid education, the most serious discipline and its observance are used to achieve monstrous purposes.

Without such effectiveness, there would not be such atrocities. Undoubtedly, a lot of knowledge is required to kill so many people, squander so much wealth, and destroy so many cities in such a short period of time; however, the spiritual talents required are not less. Knowledge and responsibility, are you suspicious?

Therefore, the spiritual Passapolis is no less eroded than the physical Sus. Not everything is dead, yet everything feels like it is dying.

An unusual shiver ran through the bones of Europe. It feels with all the thinking core it possesses that it does not recognize itself, that it no longer resembles itself, that it is losing consciousness - a misfortune that can be endured through centuries, through thousands of A first-rate man, a consciousness acquired through countless geographical, racial, and historical opportunities.

Then, as if in desperate defense of its physical existence and possession, all its memories vaguely surfaced. Its great men and great books reappeared before it in disarray. People never read as much or with as much enthusiasm as during the war: just ask the booksellers. Never have people prayed so hard or so deeply: just ask the priests. People have called all saviors, all founders, all protectors, all martyrs, all heroes, all founding fathers, all saints, all national poets...

In In the same mental confusion, out of the same anxieties, civilized Europe saw the rapid resurrection of its countless ideas: doctrines, philosophies, heterogeneous ideas; three hundred different ways of interpreting the world, a thousand and one colours. of Christianity, Two Dozen Positivisms: The full spectrum of spiritual light unfolded in mutually incompatible colors, illuminating the end of the European soul with a strange paradoxical light. While inventors in their images and in the annals of bygone wars feverishly search for ways to break free from barbed wire, foil submarines or paralyze the flight of airplanes, the soul is earnestly calling out all the incantations it knows. It scrutinizes the most bizarre prophecies; it seeks for itself hiding places, signs, and comforts in memories, in all records of past actions, in the attitudes of its ancestors. This is the well-known product of worry, the chaotic behavior of the mind, which rushes from reality to nightmare and back to reality, panic-stricken like a trapped mouse...

Military Crisis Maybe it's over. The economic crisis is in full swing; but the spiritual crisis is more subtle, and by its very nature presents the most deceptive appearance (since it proceeds within the realm of falsehood), a crisis which makes it difficult to grasp its true nature. degree, that is, its stage.

No one can say what will die and what will survive tomorrow in literature, philosophy, and aesthetics. No one knows what concepts and expressions will be added to the death list, or what new concepts and expressions will be announced.

Of course, hope is still there, and it sings quietly:

Et cum vorandi vicerit libidinem

Late triumphet imperator spiritus.

However, hope is nothing more than man's doubts about the accurate prophecies of his spirit.

It implies that all conclusions that are unfavorable to a man must be an error of his spirit. But the facts are clear and brutal. Thousands of young writers and artists died. The illusion of a European culture has been shattered, and knowledge has proven that it cannot save everything; science has suffered a fatal blow in its spiritual ambition, and the cruelty of its application is tantamount to humiliation; idealism has not been easy to win, and because of Its dreams are deeply wounded; realism has been disappointed, defeated, and riddled with sin and error; greed and self-denial have been mocked; faith is mixed in different camps, the cross against the cross, the crescent against the new. Month; Skeptics are also silenced by an event so sudden, so brutal, so touching, playing with our minds as a cat plays with a mouse - the skeptics lose their doubts, find them, and lose them again I don’t know how to control their spiritual movements.

The ship rocked so violently that the lamp eventually fell off, no matter how well it was hung.

What makes a spiritual crisis so profound and serious is the state of the patient to whom it confronts.

I do not have the time or ability to explain clearly the mental state of Europe in 1914. And who dares to draw a picture of this state of affairs? The subject is huge; it requires knowledge in all aspects and requires endless amounts of information. Moreover, when it comes to such a complex whole, the difficulty of restoring the past, even the recent past, is similar to the difficulty of constructing the future, even the recent future; or rather, the difficulty is the same. The prophet and the historian became one family. Then let them stay together.

All I need now is a vague and general recollection of what people were thinking on the eve of the war, the research that was done and the books that were published.

If I therefore omit all details and confine myself to simple impressions and the natural whole that a momentary perception can provide, then what I see will be - nothing - , nothingness, even though it is an infinitely rich nothingness.

Physicists tell us that in a nearly white-hot furnace, if our eyes can still exist, what they will see will be nothing. There is no light difference, and the position in space cannot be discerned. This great hidden power leads to the invisible, to the imperceptible equality. And such an equality is nothing but ideal chaos.

So what causes this confusion in our spiritual Europe? —Because the most dissimilar ideas, the most opposed principles of life and knowledge, exist freely among cultured people. This is characteristic of the modern period.

I am not opposed to popularizing the concept of modernity, nor am I opposed to using this name to refer to a certain way of existence. I do not want to use it as a pure synonym for contemporary. There are some times and places in history that we moderns can enter without disturbing the harmony of those times too much, without something very strange, very conspicuous, and something offensive and incongruous. , unassimilable people. If our entry could be silent, we would be almost at home. It is evident that Trajan's Rome and Ptolemaic Alexandria attract us more easily than many other places which, although not so distant in time, are more peculiar in their unique type of customs, perfectly adapted to A race, a culture and a system of life.

Okay! Europe in 1914 may have reached the edge of this modernism. Every person of a certain class is a crossroads leading to various public opinions; any thinker is a universal display of various ideas. There are some spiritual writings whose richness of contradictory and contradictory impulses reminds one of the crazy lighting effects of the capitals of the time: Eyes burned, overwhelmed with trouble... To make this carnival possible, was established as the highest level of humankind. How much material, labour, calculation, plundered centuries and heterogeneous lives combined do the forms of wisdom and achievement require?

In one of the books of this era - and not the most mediocre - one finds without difficulty: - the influence of Russian ballet, - a dash of Pascal's gloomy style, - much Goncourtian impressions, - something Nietzsche, - something Rimbaud, - some consequences of association with the painter, sometimes the tone of scientific publications, - everything radiates There is an indescribable British flavor that is difficult to determine the extent of! … Just take a look at every ingredient in this hodgepodge and one will surely find something else. There is no use looking for these things any more: that would be to repeat what I just said about modernism and to review the entire spiritual history of Europe.

Now, standing on the vast terraces of Elsinore, from Basel to Cologne, to the sands of Newport, the swamps of the Somme, the chalk of Champagne, the mountains of Alsace Granite,—European Hamlet looks upon thousands of ghosts.

However, this Hamlet is an intellectual. He pondered the life and death of truth. All the objects of our discussion are his ghosts, all the names of our glory are his regrets; he is overwhelmed by the weight of discovery and knowledge, and cannot resume this unlimited activity. He contemplates reviving the troubles of the past and the madness of wanting to always innovate.

He lurches between two abyss, as two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and chaos.

He picked up a skeleton, the skeleton of a famous person. ——Whose was it? ——This one belongs to Renal Tuo. He invented the trapeze, but the trapeze did not exactly serve the inventor's intention: We know that today, the trapeze artist riding his big swan (il grande uccello sopra del desso del suo magnio cecero) has other uses and no longer It is to collect snow from the top of the mountain and sprinkle it on the streets of the city when the weather is hot... The other skeleton belongs to Leibniz, who dreamed of universal peace. This is Kant's, Kant qui genuit Hegel, qui genuit Marx, qui genuit...

Hamlet didn't know what to do with these skeletons. But how about throwing them away! ...Is he no longer himself? His extremely sober mind gazed upon the process from war to peace. This process is more obscure and dangerous than the process from peace to war; all nations are terrified by it. "And I," he said to himself, "I, the European intellect, what will become of me? ... What is peace? Peace is perhaps that state of things in which the natural hostility between men does not manifest itself in war. The destruction caused is manifested in creation. It is an era of competition in creation, an era of struggle for production. And am I not tired of production? Aren’t I exhausted by my desire for exploration? Have I abused the clever mixture? Should I set aside my difficult responsibilities and my superhuman ambitions? Should I follow the trend, like Polonius, who now leads a major newspaper? Is he flying a plane somewhere? Like Rosencrantz, what is he doing under the name of a Russian?

"Farewell, ghosts! The world doesn’t need you anymore, and it doesn’t need me anymore. The world names its precise tendency toward a destiny as progress, and strives to link the benefits of death with the benefits of life. A certain chaos will still prevail, but before long everything will become clear; we will finally see the miracle of animal society emerge, a perfect and ultimate ant colony. ”

(Translated by Guo Hongan)

Notes:

Alam, Nineveh, and Babylon: These three places are all famous ancient cities in Eurasia. The birthplace of civilization.

Lusitania: an ancient Spanish city.

Keats (1795-1821): British poet. 1821-1867): French poet.

Menander (about 342 BC-292 BC): Ancient Greek comic poet.

Passapolis: ancient Persian city. p>

Sousse: Ancient Iranian city

Latin, meaning: When the desire to read prevails, the spiritual commander will gain great victory

Trajan (. 53-117): Ancient Roman emperor.

Ptolemy (about 90-168): Ancient Greek astronomer.

Goncourt: 19th century French writer, equally famous.

Rimbaud: (1854-1891): French poet.

Elsinore: The place where the plot of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" takes place.

Rainer. Ertuo: Unknown.

Italian, meaning: A big bird riding on the back of another big bird.

Leibniz (1646-1716): German philosopher.

Latin: Kant begat Hegel, Hegel begat Marx, Marx begat...

Polonius: In the play "Hamlet" Character, Chancellor

Laertes: Character in "Hamlet", son of Polonius

Rosencrantz: Character in "Hamlet". Courtier.

Appreciation

"We people, we now know that our civilization can die. "This famous saying comes from the mouth of Mr. Valery. At the time when the First World War had just ended, people were full of thoughts: The war was over, they could rebuild their homes, everything would start from scratch, and mankind would be greeted by a new era full of hope. A new era of history. Unexpectedly, at this moment, the poet, literary critic and thinker Mr. Valery went against the public and declared: Although the military crisis has ended, the economic crisis is in full swing. More subtle than these two crises, and with more serious consequences, is the spiritual crisis. This declaration has an explosive effect, but please do not think that Mr. Valery is deliberately trying to attract everyone. Eyeballs, hype for yourself.

First of all, he does not need to advertise for himself anymore, because he is already famous enough based on his collection of poems "Seaside Cemetery"; secondly, in the context of that time, such words are simply disrespectful to the world. , which is likely to attract opposition and even curses for him.

Faced with such tremendous pressure, the source of Valery’s insistence on writing straightly is the foresight, conscience and sense of responsibility of a thinker and an intellectual, because He felt that human history is like an abyss, "civilization and life are equally fragile", "the most beautiful and oldest things, the most wonderful and the most organized things can die unexpectedly". The reason that led the author to this rather pessimistic conclusion was, of course, the first brutal war on a world scale that occurred in human history and the first cruel war since mankind entered modern civilization - "World War I". What is most painful and unacceptable to the author and the whole world is that this most uncivilized behavior actually came from one of the most educated, disciplined and "civilized" modern countries - Germany. “The great efficiency of the German peoples has caused more disasters than the sins of laziness. We see with our own eyes that conscious labor, the most solid education, the most serious discipline and its observance are used to achieve all kinds of appalling purposes. Without such efficiency, There would be no such atrocities. Undoubtedly, a lot of knowledge is required to kill so many people, squander so much wealth, and destroy so many cities in such a short time; however, the required spiritual knowledge is not enough. Talent should not be less. ”

It’s terrible, ridiculous, and sad. Isn’t what mankind strives for to defeat laziness with hard work, defeat ignorance with education, and replace barbarism with civilization? But as this goal gradually approaches us, we unexpectedly discover that there is something more terrifying than laziness, ignorance, and barbarism, and that is spiritual emptiness and chaos—spiritual crisis. An unusual shudder ran through the marrow of "civilized" Europe, "it felt through all the thinking core it possessed that it did not recognize itself, that it no longer looked like itself, that it was losing consciousness - A consciousness gained through centuries of tolerable misfortune, through thousands of first-rate men, through countless geographical, racial, and historical opportunities.”

The reality of history is inexorable. Clearly tell mankind: "Knowledge has been proven to be unable to save everything; science has suffered a fatal blow in its spiritual ambitions, and the cruelty of its application is tantamount to humiliating it; idealism was originally difficult to win, but it was defeated by its dreams. The internal wounds are deep; realism has been disappointed, defeated, covered with sin and error; greed and self-denial have been mocked; faith is mixed in different camps, the cross against the cross, the crescent against the crescent... ” So what causes this mental confusion? In Valery's words, that is because "the most dissimilar ideas, the most opposing principles of life and understanding exist freely among literate people. This is exactly the characteristic of a modern period."

Such a judgment is really a warning from a wise man who said, "Everyone is drunk, but I am alone." At the same time, the famous German philosopher Spengler's masterpiece "The Decline of the West" was born. These far-sighted remarks are not only a profound summary and reflection on that war, but also an unfortunate prophecy for a larger and more brutal war in the history of human civilization 20 years later.

(Shi Lina)