Degeneration

by Max Nordau, George L. Mosse (Introduction)

Max Nordau was a famous writer, a practicing physician, a bourgeois examplar of enterprise and energy when his Degeneration appeared in Germany in 1892. He argued that the spirit of the times was characterized by enervation, exhaustion, hysteria, egotism, and inability to adjust or to act. Culture had degenerated, he said, and if criminals, prostitutes, anarchists, and lunatics were degenerates, so were the authors and artists of the era.

Degeneration, and the controversy it aroused, served to define the fine de siècle. Its targets included Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Richard Wagner, Zola, and Walt Whitman. The book was enormously influential. Nordau anticipated Freud in describing art as a product of neurosis, and he set a precedent for psychological and sociological critiques of literature. You may wish to talk back to Degeneration, as George Bernard Shaw did, but you will be entertained by its vitality. Holbrook Jackson, in The Eighteen Nineties, called the book "an example of the very liveliness of a period which was equally lively in making or marring itself."

Excerpt:
Fin-de-siècle is a name covering both what is characteristic of many modern phenomena, and also the underlying mood which in them finds expression. Experience has long shown that an idea usually derives its designation from the language of the nation which first formed it. This, indeed, is a law of constant application when historians of manners and customs inquire into language, for the purpose of obtaining some notion, through the origins of some verbal root, respecting the home of the earliest inventions and the line of evolution in different human races. Fin-de-siècle is French, for it was in France that the mental state so entitled was first consciously realized. The word has flown from one hemisphere to the other, and found its way into all civilized languages. A proof this that the need of it existed. The fin-de-siècle state of mind is to-day everywhere to be met with; nevertheless, it is in many cases a mere imitation of a foreign fashion gaining vogue, and not an organic evolution. It is in the land of its birth that it appears in its most genuine form, and Paris is the right place in which to observe its manifold expressions.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Sociology, Criticism, Theory, Art

566 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1892

About the author

Max Simon Nordau (born Simon Maximilian Südfeld), was a Zionist leader, physician, author, and social critic. He was a co-founder of the World Zionist Organization together with Theodor Herzl, and president or vice president of several Zionist congresses.

As a social critic, he wrote a number of controversial books, including The Conventional Lies of Our Civilisation (1883), Degeneration (1892), and Paradoxes (1896). Although not his most popular or successful work whilst alive, Degeneration is the book most often remembered and cited today.

(wikipedia)

Reviews

[Matthew W · Rating 4 out of 5]

Early Zionist Max Nordau's "Degeneration" is an important and insightful book yet not for reasons most would assume. Nordau describes "degenerate" artists as anti-social individuals that lack the normal social traits of his race. The degenerate will dress absurdly just to get a rise out of his kinfolk and lacks the self-control to conduct his behavior in a normal healthy way. Funny thing is all of this was stated by one of the co-founders (with Modern day Zionist founder Theodor Herzl) of the World Zionist Organization, a movement set out to return the Jews to the mythical heroism of King David's Kingdom. Back during Nordau's day, only a small minority of Jews were Zionists. As the brilliant Otto Weininger once stated of Zionism, it "is the negation of Judaism, because it seeks to ennoble what cannot be ennobled. Whereas Judaism stands for the world dispersion of Jews, Zionism strives for their ingathering." It seems Nordau was doing nothing more but projecting his own new found cultural degeneracy onto brilliant Europeans minds such as Tolstoy, Wagner, and Nietzsche.

If one were to utilize Nordau's theories for the modern day, it is apparent that all modern day institutions now advocate and legally enforce degeneration on it's victimized citizenry. This cultural degeneracy would virtually engulf every aspect of American society: Gender, Race, Sex, Literacy, The Arts, Film, Education, Philosophy, etc. etc. First world countries now flood their nations with uneducated, unassimilable, and hostile (especially towards the indigenous populations) third world aliens, which academia and the internationalist "Western" media describes as "progress" (despite all evidence towards the contrary). By Nordau's standards, multiculturalism would be at the pinnacle of cultural degeneracy, a sign of a very sick, confused, and distorted racial collective. Funny, how the same people that promote Zionism (NeoCONS for example), also endorse the bulldozing of all National borders (except for Israel of course, those borders are expanding) and organic cultures. We live in a world where "whites" now feebly imitate other races and it's considered the height of American culture. Whether it is some white trash wigger like Eminem (Western music is known for it's complex melodies, RAP has no melody at all) or a world class whore like Lady GaGa (who is weird for weirds sake), the traits of cultural degeneration are more than obvious.

The claims that Nordau makes against Nietzsche and Wagner are minor compared to what passes off as "Art" nowadays. "Degeneration" is a book that truly puts things in perspective, showing how a certain secular Zionist movement is consciously subverting every aspect of Western culture to it's own advantage. If a degenerate is a racially deracinated individual, that would make Karl Marx (if one were to consider him a German) the biggest degenerate of all. Of course, he was no doubt conscious of the fact that he was promoting the destruction of all aristocracies, nations, cultures, and Western civilization with his fundamentally Anti-Western theories (a legacy in which Freud, Boas, and Einstein would continue). After all, Karl Marx (like Lenin) was a failed bourgeois (who mostly lived off the generosity of others which included Engels), so if you can't join them, you might as well destroy them. Of course, Max Nordau makes no mention of Marx in all of "Degeneration." Innovating atheist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer is routinely criticized as a top degenerate.

We now live in a world of complete intellectual abstraction and anti-kultur/anti-organic internationalism. "Degeneration" was written at a time when the world had yet to be "Globalized" and most Europeans/Americans actually felt proud of their nationality (and back then, they could). Their nations were still producing great art movements, philosophers, writers, and other cultural producers. Now we live in a world of intentionally stupid (and soulless) media/Hollywood, junk/fast food, hyper consumerism, pseudo-individualism, and other related societal ills that are propagated by an international plutocracy willing to do anything for an extra buck.

When read and put in context with the changing times (both past and present), "Degeneration" makes for an enlightening read.

[Dionysius the Areopagite · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am contemptuously unsure how or why an entire panel just the other day was shocked, dismayed to find out that the "Two Greatest Jews" I mentioned in a paper were not the two so many had assumed.

Fools, goyim, common bipedals! I was of course referencing Max Nordau and Edward Dahlberg.

[Emily]

nordau thinks modernity is a disease. heavy stuff, these germans.

[Brina]

"Degenerates are not always criminals, prostitutes, anarchists, and pronounced lunatics; they are often authors and artists."

This has to be one of the best quotes form a book I have ever read. But this is not "just" a book, this is an attack on the modern art, and the modern values that come with it. Modern values as resistance against fascism, self-expression and self-exploration. It also gives us an insight on the "slaughter" enforced upon modernism during the 1920s, by labelling artists as "degenerate" during the Nazi regime in Germany. A subject, one I start talking about it, I cannot stop.

[noblethumos · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Degeneration" is a book written by Max Nordau, a Hungarian physician, in 1892. The book is a critique of what Nordau saw as the cultural and artistic decline of the late 19th century. Nordau used the term "degeneration" to describe the decay of Western civilization and the decay of art and literature during this period. He argued that the era was marked by a growing sense of moral decay, insanity, and cultural decline.

Nordau believed that the works of many contemporary artists and writers were symptomatic of this degeneration. He believed that their works were characterized by a lack of discipline, a rejection of traditional values, and an embrace of irrationality and decadence. He argued that these works were not just aesthetically flawed, but also morally corrupting.

"Degeneration" was a popular and influential work in its time, and it had a significant impact on the development of modernism in art and literature. However, its ideas were also controversial, and the book was criticized for its sweeping generalizations and its simplistic views on culture and society. Nonetheless, it remains an important document of the cultural and intellectual debates of the late 19th century.

GPT

[Maxim · Rating 3 out of 5]

A crude hypothesis despite of being scientific (!); trying to explain every creative act according to divine materialism (on the other hand Dante was rational enough) is being ignorant about the relationship between subject and the world (half intensity is related to speed of modern age, but another half is the same shit about "is it illusion or real?" stuff).

[zoe ♡ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nordau seems to hate everything fun and also has very few solid beliefs other than criticising what others think. This isn't surprising considering he was a co-founder of the Zionist movement so clearly had a lot of hatred generally. Regardless, this book covered a lot of helpful topics like fin de siecle, mysticism, decadence and the symbolist movement, so at least it was bit useful.

[Normann Cremer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting for perspective, although I do not agree with most of the conclusions. I found the insults and ramblings towards Wagner very amusing though.