For the rest, there is no part of the past we know so little about, for all sorts of reasons, as the three to five decades between our own twentieth year and that of our fathers.One's own first twenty years offer an intimate view of the times, though neither a broad nor an impartial one. Why our view of the preceding decade or so should be so obscure, I don't know. Do we take our parents' words for how things were? And one can only suppose that Musil has in mind a deep understanding, not a knowledge of facts. During the last decades of the 19th Century the press relentlessly collected and published facts, and the rate of this has only increased since.
(Also, "three to five decades"? The governing classes of the Dual Monarchy seem to have married late.)
I think it is true that the governing classes of the dual monarchy married late. Hence all the Schnitzler plots involving young gentlemen and "schoene Maedel". Men married only once established in a career, "nice" women were kept sheltered at home, lots of transactional relationships in the interim.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting point, and one that is adumbrated in Musil, e.g. Ulrich's loves, the attitudes of Diotima's husband.
DeletePerhaps it is simply due to the younger generation finding it impossible to believe in their bones that their parents were once not their parents, and young...
ReplyDeleteAn interesting point. The impossibility or at least difficulty is evident. Yet Musil specifies the period as beginning with the father's twentieth year, by which time a good deal of youth is past.
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