It is often the case that scientific developments surge ahead beyond the age in which they are originated, setting a trend for the future, with potentials that are not immediately realized.  The latest such event occurred in the latter half of the 1800s.  One of the scientific developments that occurred in this period, if it had been universally understood, would have prevented every war that occurred during the 20th century.  The life of over 200 million people would have been saved if those wars had not occurred.  In a very real way, therefore, the history of humanity does not reflects mankind's true nature and its full potential, but reflects whatever portion of its potential humanity had chosen to avail itself of, which is often far too little, and often comes too late.

At the end of World War II for example, when Europe lay in ruins, even as the smoke still rose from the ashes, Richard Strauss sat down and assembled into a symphonic suite the most exquisite pieces of his finest opera - as it were a kind of parting gesture, his "farewell to a beautiful world."

The work referred to is the suite of walzes from the Rosencavalier which celebrates one of the grandest qualities of humanity, its generosity.  The opera describes a love relationship between a man and two women - an older, mature woman, and one that is young.  The opera describes the conflicts, but it doesn't end in conflict.  It ends with a grant gesture of romantic generosity in which the older woman steps aside and lets the youthful unfolding take its course.

This is what makes that specific opera great.  It is great, because it describes the noblest face of humanity in which the grant nature of man comes most clearly to light.  It may have been this quality of generosity that Richard Strauss was bearing tribute to with his fare well gesture, as he must have felt that the epoch of grand generosity was ending.  Indeed, the postwar decades to the present time can hardly be defined as an epoch of generosity as if this quality was stamped out by the atomic bomb.

It seems unlikely, of course, that Richard Strauss understood the political movements of the time that brought to a close the era of generosity that he had experienced, an era of renaissance that had blossomed, though interrupted, from the mid 1400s onward.  Richard Strauss, himself, grew up in one of the brighter times of that era.  Perhaps he could sense that the spirit of those times had become lost.  The years that followed proved him right.

Indeed, generosity had not yet died in the world during the days that were marked by Adolf Hitler's atrocities, who had devastated much of humanity on the European continent.  Generosity had flourished in rich measure on the American shores.  Whatever may be said about America, that nation roused itself in the midst of its deepest depression to rescue humanity from Nazism by which the whole of humanity was threatened and its civilization was becoming destroyed.

All of this, however, ended with the end of the war, with the death of the leader who had aroused the American nation into committing itself to this act of generosity.  In a very real sense, countless people had given their life to save mankind's civilization, and they had been successful.  Soon, however, the stream of generosity, which should have continued to uplift the world and bring development and economic prosperity to all peoples and nations, was choked off as it had threatened the survival of the oligarchy of this worlds, notably that of the British Empire that had not been defeated during that war, or after the war, as President Roosevelt had indicated it should be.

The end of the era of generosity came with the death of Franklin Delanor Roosevelt.  With the man's death ended a dream that he had begun to turn into reality.  This dream had become a vision, and this vision had saved a state of civilization.  His goal had been to end colonialism and imperialism across the entire world, for all times to come, and to aid the nations of the world in their economic self-development for a richer life for all mankind.  But, here, a historical boundary was created.

Next Page

|| - page index - || - chapter index - || - Exit - ||

Stories about  Love from novels by Rolf A. F. Witzsche