Which I knew when they were this small which will become small again, provided they have time left for it and which, because in the realm of organic growth no such transformation is possible, we had better call fat times and, truly, hard limes as well in these times in which things are happening that could not be imagined and in which what can no longer be imagined must happen, for if one could imagine it, it would not happen in these serious times which have died laughing at the thought that they might become serious which, surprised by their own tragedy, are reaching for diversion and, catching themselves red-handed, are groping for words in these loud limes which boom with the horrible symphony of actions which produce reports and of reports which cause actions: in these times you should not expect any words of my own from me – none but these words which barely manage to prevent silence from being misinterpreted. We share below Karl Kraus’ essay, “In these great times”, as it appears in english translation in the volume In These Great Times: A Karl Kraus Reader, Harry Zohn ed., Manchester, U.K., Carcanet Press, 1984. Walter Benjamin would say of Kraus: “To the ever-repeated sensations with which the daily press serves its public he opposes the eternally “news” of the history of creation: the eternally renewed, the uninterrupted lament.” (Walter Benjamin, “Karl Kraus”). In such times as these, those “who now have nothing to say because actions are speaking continue to talk.” Then let “him who has something to say come forward and be silent!”, a silence from which great “and elemental forces must have the strength to cope with evils by themselves”, without “the stimulation and need of a writer.” (Karl Kraus, “In these great times”) We live on the echo, and in this topsy-turvy world the echo arouses the call.” Or, as he states it more bluntly: “Wire dispatches are instruments of war.” (Karl Kraus, “In these great times”) For in the age of those who live through it, deeds are stronger than words, but the echo is stronger than the deed.
“Today the connections between catastrophes and editorial offices are far more profound and hence less clear. But equally, and no less significant, he saw how the expansion of “newspapers” transformed the relation between the events reported and the reports, between reality and its representations, with the written medium now capable of generating its own reality, from which actions follow. Kraus painfully witnessed the debasement of language and of sound judgment brought on by the press, something that could only culminate in a culture of stupidity.
The printed press has been supplanted by the radio, television and, of course, more recently, by the virtual diarrhea of hate and fear that floods daily the internet. In this, our times have only degenerated further. Yet Kraus condemns not only the war, but the media and commercial culture that contributed to its advent and which fed it daily with a profitable and malignant patriotism. And in some sense it is, for the First World War is not ours. To brandish Karl Kraus’ 1914 essay “In these great times” against our own may seem out of place.
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