Once in a while I look for a book;
but usually I can’t find what I’m looking for, so I pick up the first book I
find and read it. Last month it was Wallerstein’s. After I finished it, I picked up Stuart & Marie Hall’s A Brief History of Science. Brief it is,
but well written, by literate writers for literate readers, in a style as
obsolete as Chaucer’s Middle English.
Nothing is more obsolete than a book about the
progress of human knowledge. Every age of reason and enlightenment has been a renaissance, a rediscovery of ancient knowledge lost. We keep losing our way, so for us progress always means going back
to the beginning. And we always lose more than we regain.
I finished the Hall’s book last night. This morning I woke, as I often do, with a phrase echoing in my head. It was We are dancing on the edge of a volcano.
Popular historians invariably use this phrase when writing about the Weimar Republic, but it’s older than Weimar. Ravel wrote it on the score of La Valse before the Great War, and he was quoting Salvandy, who used it about the July monarchy. Historians started using it about the USA a few years ago, but no longer. The parallels between Trump’s USA and Hitler’s Germany are too close. They now insist Trump is a unique phenomenon without precedent.
Peter Campbell wrote with contempt about the people who danced on the edge of the volcano between the world wars, but we've always lived on the edge of the volcano. What else should we do but dance while we can?
Popular historians invariably use this phrase when writing about the Weimar Republic, but it’s older than Weimar. Ravel wrote it on the score of La Valse before the Great War, and he was quoting Salvandy, who used it about the July monarchy. Historians started using it about the USA a few years ago, but no longer. The parallels between Trump’s USA and Hitler’s Germany are too close. They now insist Trump is a unique phenomenon without precedent.
Peter Campbell wrote with contempt about the people who danced on the edge of the volcano between the world wars, but we've always lived on the edge of the volcano. What else should we do but dance while we can?
There
may be trouble ahead
But while there's music and moonlight and love and romance
Let's face the music and dance
But while there's music and moonlight and love and romance
Let's face the music and dance
Dancing
in the dark
‘Til
the tune ends
We're dancing
in the dark
And
it soon ends
We’re
waltzing in the wonder of why we’re here
Time
hurries by, we’re here
Then
we’re gone
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