Laudator Temporis Acti

Goethe, Italian Journey (October 8, 1786, Venice; tr. W.H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer):

My tendency to look at the world through the eyes of the painter whose pictures I have seen last has given me an odd idea. Since our eyes are educated from childhood on by the objects we see around us, a Venetian painter is bound to see the world as a brighter and gayer place than most people see it. We northerners who spend our lives in a drab and, because of the dirt and the dust, an uglier country where even reflected light is subdued, and who have, most of us, to live in cramped rooms — we cannot instinctively develop an eye which looks with such delight at the world.

Meine alte Gabe, die Welt mit Augen desjenigen Malers zu sehen, dessen Bilder ich mir eben eingedrückt, brachte mich auf einen eignen Gedanken. Es ist offenbar, daß sich das Auge nach den Gegenständen bildet, die es von Jugend auf erblickt, und so muß der venezianische Maler alles klarer und heiterer sehn als andere Menschen. Wir, die wir auf einem bald schmutzkotigen, bald staubigen, farblosen, die Widerscheine verdüsternden Boden, und vielleicht gar in engen Gemächern leben, können einen solchen Frohblick aus uns selbst nicht entwickeln.

Id.:

The art of mosaic, which gave the Ancients their paved floors and the Christians the vaulted Heaven of their churches, has now been degraded to snuff boxes and bracelets. Our times are worse than we think.

Die Kunst, welche dem Alten seine Fußboden bereitete, dem Christen seine Kirchenhimmel wölbte, hat sich jetzt auf Dosen und Armbänder verkrümelt. Diese Zeiten sind schlechter, als man denkt.

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A friend sent me a link to Helen Whittle, "Should German schools stop teaching classics like Goethe?," Deutsche Welle (September 11, 2025), quoting "Susanne Lin-Klitzing, former German teacher and chairwoman of the German Philologists' Association":

"I think it's good to have a more representative body of texts and not just works by so-called 'old white men,'" she told DW. "It would certainly help to make the experiences, perspectives, and voices of women or people with roots outside of Germany more visible and valued, but it's also important to choose a diversity of literary genres with high quality and relevance regardless of the author."

Depressing.