In ancient Egypt, someone thinks:
"Truly the old days were gone." (p. 116)
Has that been thought in every age? In 464 AD, another character thinks:
"All these newfangled notions!"
-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 5, p. 36.
A local Asian businessman remarked, "The younger generation have a different attitude." I replied, "Usman, I am seventy-three [or whatever age I was at the time] and people have been saying that since I was seven!" However, I think that he had a point. He was of the generation that had come to Britain and had set up businesses and established themselves. Of course the next generation who grew up here had a different attitude! But that is a one-off case.
But nevertheless we are always remembering the old days and the times:
"...when all the world was young." (p. xiii) (See here.)
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Days and times can be bad! It's my belief times in the UK has become steadily worse since Margaret Thatcher resigned as PM.
Nor is the US excepted, our single worse problem being a crushing national debt nobody of either major party is willing to tackle--because doing so inevitably means making painful and politically unpopular decisions.
Adam Smith famously said nations have a good deal of ruination in them. But that supply of tolerable ruination is not infinite.
Ad astra! Sean
Paul: Yes, but that's occasionally true. For example, young people still play 60's and 70's music as well as more recent stuff. In the 1950's, people didn't play 1910's and 20's music (except jazz).
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
But I have doubts that kind of music will remain popular for centuries. In HUNTERS OF THE SKY CAVE we see Aycharaych expressing appreciation for the music of Johan and Richard Strauss. And Old Nick was fond of Beethoven. And, since I'm rereading your BLACK CHAMBER, I've seen mention of Luz O'Malley greatly liking Mozart.
Ad astra! Sean
90% of everything is crud, but at least part of the other 10% gets remembered decades or centuries later.
Music by Gershwin has been played ever since he wrote it in the 1920s & 30s.
Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and many others have written music that has been played ever since it was written.
Some things get forgotten and then rediscovered
J. S. Bach was mostly forgotten for decades after his death, but interest in him revived when Felix Mendelsohn conducted one of his major pieces.
Similarly Vivaldi was mostly forgotten & then in the 20th century copies of his music were discovered and recorded.
Then there is the 12th century nun Hildegard von Bingen, whose music has been revived only in the last few decades.
Kaor, Anonymous!
Of course, I agree! Sometimes works of great art are forgotten till more perceptive persons in later generations grasp they don't belong with that 90% of crud.
Ad astra! Sean
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