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PARtiSAN REVIEW
they did not invade, likewise destroyed the boundaries between ages.
What, leaving the biological factors aside, distinguished genera–
tions? The man who had arrived professionally, who had had a full
experience of life, was visibly separated from the youth who was not
yet on the way; a group still physically, socially, and intellectually
immature gradually took the place of another, which had arrived.
With the concept "arrived," the concept youth is also canceled. What
advantage have the old over the young now? For the same reason,
the young have no advantage over the old- unless it is the greater
likelihood of their being called up for military service or making a foot–
ball team.
The old do not command, the young do not obey-and are so
little in opposition that they rather pity the old, who are burdened
with too many prejudices from their own youth to have new experi–
ences. But even
in
that pity there is an undertone of the idea that
those who have lived longer ought, by the law of nature, to be more
experienced than those who came after them.
Anyone who studies the description of the Younger Generation
without preconceptions will recognize all the living generations
in
it.
A thunderbolt has obliterated the annual rings. Anyone who misses the
usual father-son conflict, anyone who misses the fine exuberance of
youth, is not thinking in terms of the present. Young Siegfried unfor–
tunately cannot do the confused Wotan, with his desperate clutching
at youth, the favor of acting like a clown.
It may be that our twenty-year-olds are the oldest Younger Genera–
tion. Kant once said that an old man deserves respect because he has
held out so long.
If
we accustom ourselves to measuring age not by the
clock but by what a man has gone through, we shall not
be
surprised
if those who are young today are so unyoung.
(Translated from the German by Willard R. Trask)
