Degeneration

In Place of a Preface

To Professor Cesare Lombroso in Turin. Most esteemed and dear teacher!

I dedicate this book to you, in order to express aloud that I would not have been able to write this without your work.

Introduced into science by [Bénédict Augustin] Morel before anyone else and then brilliantly treated by you, the concept of degeneration emerged as fruitful in the most varied directions. [Research on it] threw a torrent of light upon many obscure chapters on psychology, on penal law, on political science, and on sociology, which only those who out of tenacious obstinacy ignore, or those—too myopic to grasp the benefit—do not wish to recognize.

Until now, your school has not brought to light your method of arts and letters in this unique field, wide and powerful.

The degenerates are not always delinquent, prostitutes, anarchists, or declared insane. Sometimes they are writers and artists. These people, however, when examined, reveal the same moral and physical characteristics of that anthropological family that satisfies its insane instincts not with the knife of an assassin or with the ammunition of a bomber, but instead with the quill or paintbrush.

Some of these degenerates from literature and from music and from painting have garnered extraordinary fame in the past years and are praised by many admirers as creators of a new art, like the heralds of the second coming.

This is not a phenomenon that one can observe with indifference. The books and works of art exert on the masses a potent suggestion; from them a whole era draws its own ideal of morality and beauty.

Thus, if they are absurd and antisocial, they will bring confusion and corruption into the ideas of a whole generation. The youth especially—impressionable and enthusiastic about everything that has the appearance of novelty—should be on guard and enlightened about the true nature of those creations so blindly admired. Nor will an ordinary critique suffice. An exclusively aesthetic-literary education is the worst preparation for recognizing the pathological character of the works of degenerates. The fine mind of a chatterer may present subjective impressions with more or less elegance, with bombast or with spirit; but he is not able to judge if such works are a part of a sick mind and identify the variety of alienation hidden within.

Keeping to, as far as possible, your method, I therefore set out to examine the modern direction of art and literature, trying to prove that this direction is due to the degeneration of their authors, and that their admirers are excited by expressions derived from moral insanity, of imbecility or dementia, more or less pronounced.

This volume, then, is an attempt at veritable critical science, that which judges a work not for its casual emotions, based on the temperament and state of being of the reader, but rather on that base of psycho-physiological elements from which it originated—and is moreover attempting to fill that lacuna that still exists in the grand edifice of your school of thought.

Regarding the consequences that one such endeavor has for me, I have no doubts whatsoever. Today one can attack the Church without running from danger, because it does not still put people on the stake; one can also write against monarchs and governors without any apprehension because at the worst they are put in prison and the halo of martyrdom indemnifies them. It would be bad, however, if this happens to someone who desires to criticize certain aesthetic modes as forms of intellectual degeneration. The targeted writer or artist will never be pardoned for having been recognized as aliens or as charmed charlatans; subjective criticism builds with rage among those who protest their superficiality and incompetence, or rather their indolence to follow the pack; and the public itself dislikes when it is made to recognize that it has heeded the insane and charlatans. Obsessive writers and critics, bodyguards [of the public], dominate the whole press and thus possess an instrument of torture to martyr the troubled frauds for the rest of their lives.

Nevertheless, the danger that a man exposes himself to should not hold him back from doing that which he considers his duty. When a scientific truth is found, one has the duty to reveal it, and not suppress it, just as woman cannot suppress the fruits of her innards.

Far from wanting to compare myself to you, one of the most splendid intellectuals of our century, I allow myself to take as model that smiling calm with which you proceed on your way, without worrying if others do not recognize how much you do, are jealous of you, and do not understand you.

In hope of always cherishing your benevolence, most esteemed and dear teacher, from your most devoted

Max Nordau