The Future of Books as Seen in the Nineteenth Century
The Predictions of a Zionist Physician
Max Nordau (1849- 1923) hungarian Doctor and author living in Paris, around 1905/Getty Images
Books in their present form will go out of fashion. They will be printed on black, blue, or golden paper with a different ink; the text will consist of incoherent words or syllables, or even simply letters or numbers with a symbolic meaning, which the reader will guess according to the color of the paper and printing, the size of the book, the size and type of the font. Writers seeking popularity will make it easier for readers to guess the meaning by explaining the text with symbolic arabesques and impregnating the paper with perfume. Poets who publish works consisting of only a few letters or simply colorful pages without any content will arouse general enthusiasm. Whole societies will be formed to comment on such books, and the fascination with them will reach the point where the commentators and their followers, each defending his own interpretation, will engage in bloody battles with each other.
Max Nordau (1849–1923) was an Austrian physician and writer. He wrote the famous work Degeneration, in which he attacked late nineteenth-century art and philosophy, believing them to be signs of mental illness.
