Thursday, September 25, 2014
The Old and the New
Thomas Mann (1875-1955), Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn, as Told by a Friend, chapter XXVIII (tr. H.T. Lowe-Porter):
Newer› ‹Older
For just as little as one understands the new and the young, without being at home in the traditional, just so must love for the old remain ungenuine and sterile if one shut oneself away from the new, which with historical inevitability grows out of it.
Denn so wenig man das Neue und Junge verstehen kann, ohne in der Tradition zu Hause zu sein, so unecht und steril muß die Liebe zum Alten bleiben, wenn man sich dem Neuen verschließt, das mit geschichtlicher Notwendigkeit daraus hervorgegangen.
