TWO STORIES
481
please believe that. You, the accomplished master of that language,
to whom that fine, inherited tradition is intimately known, you, the
former poet, must naturally suffer more than others at the degen–
erative, transitional state in which our language, our whole former
culture, finds itself. The fact that as a compositor you are compelled
to be a daily witness of this deterioration, to participate in it indeed
and in some measure to collaborate, has something bitter, something
trag-" (at this word Johannes winced again so that the editor
automatically chose another phrase) "something of the irony of
fate about it. But I can do as little to remedy this as you yourself
or anybody else. We must let things go their way and resign our–
selves."
The editor looked sympathetically at the old typesetter's face
which wore an expression at once childlike and troubled. One had
to admit there was something to be said for these gradually disap–
pearing representatives of the old world, of the pre-modern, so-called
"sentimental" epoch; they were agreeable folk despite their mourn–
fulness. In a kindly tone he went on:
"You know, dear friend, about twenty years ago the last poetical
works were printed in our country, some in book form, although
that had already become very rare at that time, and partly
in
the
literary supplements of the papers. Then quite suddenly the realiza–
tion struck us all that there was something amiss about these poetical
works, that they were unnecessary, that actually they were silly. At
that time we became aware of something, something thrust itself on
our attention, that for a long time had been quietly ripening and
now all at once confronted us as an acknowledged fact: the time of
art was over, art and poetry in our world had died, and it was
better to say good-by to them for good, dead as they were, than to
go on dragging them about with us. For all of us, and for me too,
that was at the time a bitter realization. And yet we were right in
acting upon it. Whoever wants to read Goethe or anything of that
sort can do it just as well as before; he loses nothing simply because
there is no longer day by day a mountainous aftergrowth of new,
feeble, enervated verse. We all adapted ourselves. You did, too,
Johannes, by giving up your vocation of poet and seeking the simple
post of a wage-earner. And if today in your old age you suffer too
much from the fact that as typesetter you come so often into conflict
