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at that time actually felt? Could it not in some sense reflect a particular seg–
ment, admittedly a very articulate, creative segment, of the intelligentsia, who
felt trapped by a feeling of morbidity, unresolved personal conflicts, inability
to find their place in the society? Perhaps it also reflected their material con–
ditions which were detached from the normal life experience of most people.
Isn't it possible that around 1900 even people who were far worse off had the
greatest sense of possibilities of improvement? I am not thinking only of
movements such as socialism. Even from a historian's point of view it is inter–
esting that we have two apparently contradictory images of the 1890s. One is
the concept of decadence, but there is the equally familiar idea of what the
French called
la belle epoque.
In central Europe there has been a lot of nostal–
gia for that period as a sort of golden age, not
only
culturally but in terms of
personal security, stabili ty, etc., that was destroyed after the first world war.
Mter all, at the end of the century, there had been a tremendous improve–
ment in material, scientific, and technological terms. Everything seemed
possible then. New inventions had transformed life, so while some were pes–
simistic .about where it would lead, most people could see the benefits. But
they had not gone through the disastrous experiences we have in the twen–
tieth century-two world wars, horrible massacres, the Holocaust, the
possibility of thermonuclear war. That must play itself out in a different sense
of what this fin de siecle means, but I am not quite sure in what way. From
our point of view, the people you were describing could almost have been
posturing, in terms of the tragic nature of what they saw around them. I am
not saying they were insincere, but their experiences almost seem trivial in the
light of what we have experienced in the twentieth century.
Denis
Donoghue:
I would agree with most of what you said except with
the word "posturing."
J
do think that many of the most alert and sensitive
people at the end of the nineteenth century felt deep misgivings about
many of the political, social, and cultural assumptions with which they had
grown up, and about the notion of empire. Mostly, they did not feel the
glory of bringing civilization to the natives but rather the appalling cruel–
ties and vanities displayed by western nations in the process of doing so,
including Britain, France, Germany, and Belgium. Not
only
in Conrad's
Heart
if
Darkness,
but also in his own experience of investigating what had
been going on in the Belgian Congo. I don't think that that is "posturing."
Insofar as we can make any kind of useful comparison between our
own fin de siecle and the 1890s, there is one source of barely suppressed
dismay, which is our realization that our achievements have not brought
about the slightest improvement in sensitivity, in the moral imagination.
The moral sense remains profoundly untouched. We can register all the
abominable things that have happened and been done, culminating indeed
in the Holocaust-but not ending in that.
