Every culture is a crisis and every language is born from the corruption of another

There is an anthological entry in Julien Green's diaries in which the most French author in American literature recalls that, at the age of seven, he told his sister Anne: "It was better before."

With seven years

Beyond the anecdote of the author of

—a classic that has disappeared from conversation—, those three words ―“it was better before”― well summarize the mantra that our language “is very battered” ―as Rafael Cadenas said on Monday in his Cervantes speech― and that culture is experiencing an unprecedented moment of crisis.

Not so much.

Rather, culture is a perpetual crisis: let's not forget that "our language" is a corruption of Latin.

The only unprecedented thing is, perhaps, the speed at which it is now being produced.

In 2011 Mario Vargas Llosa stated in

that we had hit rock bottom.

Exactly the same thing that TS Eliot had decreed in

in… 1948. That is to say, approximately a century after Georg Simmel reflected a similar opinion in

an essay collected in

.

We may be living in an accelerated version of the Middle Ages, another time of disrepute in which literary genres did not exist, orality ruled, romance languages ​​were born and cut and paste triumphed.

The characteristic of each era is to announce the Apocalypse, that moment of panic that time ends up confusing with Genesis.

It is enough to remember that terms like

or

were born as insults.

The same as

, weighed down by a negative connotation against which EH Gombrich could do nothing when he proposed to call it “post-classical style of the Renaissance”.

Too long.

Perhaps the only exception to the recurring "let's go less" occurred in 1550. That year Giorgio Vasari published his

to consecrate the geniuses of his time and celebrate that the "rough" medieval painting, executed following, according to him, "the ugly Greek way", that is, the Byzantine way, had been left behind.

For centuries, culture was built in favor of history or against it.

The first we call tradition.

Second, vanguard.

But even that was blown up when Octavio Paz announced that there was a "tradition of the avant-garde."

Revolting against the past is an exercise in memory whose counterweight is not always biblical decadence but mere wear and tear.

Perhaps—we were so Christian!—we are two visits to the Sistine Chapel from forgetting who St. Bartholomew was.

Also our great-grandparents stopped recognizing Marsyas, another flayed.

Should we call them ignorant?

Today, it is true, there is a forgetful culture that does not measure up to history or confront it: it stands on the sidelines.

Without pride but without complex.

Regardless of what until now was considered a live music concert, a tangible work of art or even a well-written novel.

We may be living in an accelerated version of the Middle Ages, another disreputable era in which literary genres did not exist, orality ruled, romance languages ​​were born and cut and paste (the sampler of the time)

.

Of course, no one will miss the fear of God.

The impatient can wait for the umpteenth neoclassicism.

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