dr Kurt Sommerfeld on the basic mental moods in peoples, which alternate in a mysterious rhythm.
Neue Freie Presse on July 31, 1922
The exuberance, spasmodically distorted to the point of a grimace, in which the “joie de vivre” rages today will certainly be interpreted by cultural critics of a later period as a characteristic of decay, degeneration, the beginning of the end, as that joy in the orgy, in intoxication , from the anaesthesia, as it was in Rome or in the Paris of Louis XVI. and Napoleon III. was observed; it is the phosphorescent glow of decaying matter and will-o’-the-wisps dancing across swamps.
Western culture, the end of which Oswald Spengler wittily, albeit somewhat superficially and hastily, predicted, has once once more reached a decisive turning point, and a rebirth of pessimism is being announced in the philosophical, literary, artistic fields as well as in the individual’s view of life on.
