Young idealists reject the wisdom of maturity
Now, unready to die but already at the stage when one starts to dislike the young…”. Well, not every boy and girl. We mustn’t take Auden too literally. But as for the stroppy types who burn with such conviction in the uniqueness of their moral ardour, it’s easy to see what he meant. “Safe spaces”. “Inappropriate behaviour”. “Tory scum”. And they turn on us oldies for or being “judgmental”!
Let us seek, therefore, the wisdom that comes with maturity and cock an ear to the man who was, improbably, Auden’s father-in-law. Thomas Mann was 64 when he published Lotte in Weimar in 1939, a year that may ring a bell even for those young shavers who affect to disdain the past as something beneath their dignity.
As the greatest German novelist, writing a book about Goethe, the greatest German poet, Mann was addressing the nature of national identity at a time when Germany was in the doghouse. Some of the words he put in Goethe’s mouth are worth hearing, particularly by the safespace warriors.
“Idealists cherish a fond belief in a revolutionary cleansing of the nations, in a purified humanity … in short, in a kingdom of happiness and peace on earth under reason’s rule”. There’s no great profundity there.
We can all recognise the likes of St Jeremy and his acolyte, Paul Mason, the oldest sixth-former in the land. But there is something very profound in what Mann goes on to say.
“To give up all that, to reconcile oneself to the bitter if tonic fact that ever and always the blind pitiless forces will sway to and fro, alternately overcoming each other – that is not easy, it must always set up inward conflicts.
“And when in the throes of such growing pains, a young man does resort for cheer to the bottle, or seeks to veil his troubled thoughts in the comforting haze from his pipe, may he not count on mild judgment from those, no matter how highly placed or powerful, who can sympathise with his struggles?”
A clincher. “You will always find that too much kindness and moral sensibility from above will not do in the long run”.
Something there for Comrade Mason, the Danton of Leigh, to ponder as he urges his followers to overthrow those reactionaries who would plunge them into a lifetime of drudgery.
Young people have always burned with indignation. But only in our age have they been accorded a rank equal, and sometimes superior, to those who have lived longer and seen more of those blind, pitiless forces.
That cannot be good for the health of any society. Intense feelings do not always result in wise actions. In the Sixties, a Hollywood producer was asked whether he would be building bridges in his films to assist those “confused” adolescents striving to reach the shores of adulthood. “When I was growing up”, he replied, “there were no bridges. We swam. They can swim too.”
Poets, wrote Shelley, who was one of the greatest among them, were the unofficial legislators of mankind. How old hat that sounds today, when comedians have undertaken the task of doing the hard thinking on our behalf.
Question Time? Get Steve Coogan on! An election special? David Mitchell is just the chap! All-round political analysis, with fizz and snap? Fetch Frankie Boyle! They’re even on the book programmes. Last week the increasingly poor A Good Read on Radio 4 featured a pair of pier-enders as guests.
What qualities mark them out for such kid-glove treatment? It’s instructive to read what Patrick Holland, the controller of BBC 2, had to say about Boyle’s return to the box. Apparently he has “an extraordinarily strong voice”, with an ability “to explore some of the issues of the day”.
He is also “important”, “contemporary”, “relevant”, and “challenging”. Not a whisper about being funny. Oh for those (not so innocent) days in the dim and distant when comedians were supposed to make folk laugh!
An “insidious” caste system. That’s how Brian Cox sees England. Now Cox is a superb actor, who played leading roles for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre before he went off to America to star in films. But really, talk of castes and elites in the world of mummers! As an embittered but amusing thespian said in Paul Bailey’s novel, Peter Smart’s Confessions, actors are the biggest halfwits to be found under the heavens – with the exception of directors.