Dalmatinische Reise (Classic Reprint) Quotes

“Elsewhere the descendent has an easy task in entering the heritage of the fathers because it contains a single will and a uniform sense. In us, however, shout a hundred voices of the past, the struggle of the fathers is not settled, each must decide it anew, each must choose among his fathers, each must for himself pass through the entire past again. For the past of our men has this in particular, that none of them was ever closed, nothing was fought out, the father recedes before his son, but in the grandson he goes ahead again, nobody is or feels secure, each feels him- self divided, our men have too much inborn. Elsewhere one can confidently follow his fathers, we cannot do this because our fathers, disunited among themselves, make an appeal to our judgment. Je ne puis vivre que selon mes morts, ("I can only live according to my dead ones."), Barrès said. But we cannot live according to our dead ones because we would be torn apart since each of our dead ones tears in an opposite direction.”
― Hermann Bahr, Dalmatinische Reise (Classic Reprint)