Bennington semi-weekly banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 1894-1902, 1895-03-22
WHEELS IN OUR HEADS.
Professor Nordau Believes the
World Is Going Crazy.
IN ART, MUSIC AND LITERATURE.

macy of the Poets, Dramatists and Writ
ers of the Day-WiIde, Whitman and
ToIstoi.
Max Nordau, the distinguished German
Savant, has startled Europe by learned
and exhaustive review of the nineteenth
century, in which he establishes to his own
satisfaction that we are all going to Bed
lam on the road of unrest. He declares
that several generations of overstimulated
nerves have produced a worldwide alien
ism and decadence, and he does not hest
tate to point our Magnetism, Ibsenism,
womanism and degenerate Rstheticism
as remarkable examples of this lamenta
BILE condition,
Oscar Wilde's EgOmania.
Discussion of Oscar Wilde comes in the
Ehapter called "Egomania:''
What really determines his actions Is
the hysterical craving to lie noticed to &C.
cupy the attention of the world with him.
self, to get talked about.
when, therefore, an Oscar Wilde goes
about in aesthetic costume among gazing
Philistines, exciting either their ridicule
or their wrath, it is no Indication of indie.
pendence of character, but rather from a
purely antisocialistic, egomaniaCal reck-
lessness and hysterical longing to make
sensation, justified by no exalted aim, nor
is it from strong desire for beauty but
from malevolent mania for contradic-
tion.
BE that as it may, Wilde obtained, by
his buffOon mummery, a notorioty in the
whole Anglo-SaXon world that his poems
and dramas would never have acquired for
him. | have no reason to trouble myself
about these, since they are feeble imita-
tions of Rossetti and Swinburne and of
dreary inanity. His prose essays, on the
contrary, deserve attention, because they
exhibit all the features which enable us
to recognize in the aesthetic tho comrade
in art of the decadent"
ToIstoiism.
A chapter is devoted to Tolstoi and Toll
stoiism. He admits Tolstoi's strong and
farreaching influence and wonders that he
has formed no school.
"Tolstoi's theory of life, the fruit of the
despairing mental labor of his whole life,
is therefore nothing but haze, failure
to comprehend his own questions and an
swers and hollow verbiage. His ethics
on which he himself lays a far greater
stress than on his philosophy-are not in
much better case than the latter He
comprises them in five laws, of which the
fourth is the most mportant-'Do not re-
sist evil; suffer wrong and do more than
men ask, and so judge not nor suffer to
be judged. To avenge ones self only
teaches to avenge ones self.
The accusation of dishonesty cannot be
brought against Tostol. He believes
what he says But childish his complaints
and his mockery certainly are. He speaks
of science as a blind man of color. He
has evidently no suspicion of its essence,
its mission, its methods and the subjects
with which it deals.
Mad Walt Whitman.
II should like here" Nordau continues,
'to interpolate few remarks on Walt
Whitman, who is likewise one of the del
ties to whom the degenerate and hysterical
of both hemispheres have for some time
been raising affairs. Lombroso ranks him
expressly among mad geniuses.' Mad
Whitman was without doubt. But
genius? That would be difficult to prove.
his poems contain outbursts of erotomania
so artlessly shameless that their parallel
i'll literature could hardly be found with
the authors name attached.
For his fame he has to thank Just
those bestially sensual pieces which first
drew to him the attention of all the pruri-
ency of America. He is morally insane
and incapable of distinguishing between
good and evil, virtue and crime. This is
the deepest theory of susceptibility, he
says in one place, without preference or
exclusion; the negro with the wooly head,
the bandit of the high road, the invalid,
the ignOrant-none are denied. And in
another place he explains he loves the
murderer and the thief, the pious and
good, with equal love- An American
driveler, W. d. O'Connor, has called him
on this account the good gray poet. We
know, however, that this goodness,
which is in reality moral obtuseness and
morbid sentimentality, freq uently accom-
panies degeneration and appears even in
the Cruelest assassination example, in
Ravachol."
Ibsen's Poverty of Ideas.
Herr Nordau finds in Ibsen every posi-
bic quality of egomania and degeneration.
after all the mental stigmata of Ibsen
with which we have become acquainted
his theological obsessions of original SIM
of confession and redemption, the absurdi-
ties Of his invention, the constant contra
diction of his uncertain opinions his
vague or senseless modes of expression, his
onomatomania and his symbolism-he
might be numbered among the mystic de-
generates with which l have concerned
myself in the previous chapters. We are,
however, justified in assigning him his
place among the egomaniacs, for the dis
eased intensifcation of his ego conscious.
ness is even more striking and characteris-
tic than his mysticism. His egomania
assumes the form of anarohism. He is in
a state of constant revolt against all that
exists. He never exercises rational criti-
cism with regard to this. He never shows
what is bad, why it is bad and how it
could be made better. No; he only re-
proaches it with its existence and has only
one longing-to destroy IT. -
Ibsen seems to Nordau a particularly
good subject. He has SO many mental
maladies.
"In addition to his mysticism and ego
mania, Ibsen's extraordinary poverty of
ideas indicates another stigma of degener-
acy. Superficial or ignorant judges who
appraise an artists intellectual wealth by
the number of volumes he has produced |