Fairy Tale
(The Downfall of the First Enlightenment and the Resurrection by its Second Coming.)Actors: The CHILDREN, I MYSELF.
The CHILDREN ask:
You have told us a wondrously simple tale, Uncle Heinz. Still, why does no one know it except you yourself ?
I reply:
You know, don't you, how crazy adults can be. And particularly crazy they were when, a long time ago, they started out on a rather peculiar game. It was called: Making everything new and better. To begin with, however, everything old had to be demolished as it was quite plain that otherwise there would not have been enough room for anything new. All took part in this game, but quite especially the physicists, philosophers, politicians and artists. Each of them tried to surpass everyone else. It turned into an outright competition. I believe that in the end the politicians won out. In order to get rid of everything old, they touched off a World War with the result that all others could no longer keep pace, try as they might.
In this way more and more came to be ruined and the well-intended game had long ago turned into a bad job with nobody really feeling good any more. What made matters worse was that in spite of everything they were unable to stop this game that had gone awry. They simply had forgotten what they originally had set out to do and so just went on and on.
And in the process all simple tales were lost.
The CHILDREN ask:
And your story, Uncle Heinz, is one of those old tales that have been lost?
I reply:
No. The old stories can never be told again.
The CHILDREN ask:
So where do you have it from?
I reply:
You know, as time went on the game became ever crazier and more complex, and the players ever more clever and skilful, and they discovered many things which no one had known before. In this way the game that had turned evil still had a vestige of good in it, and if only they would finally be able to desist from what they were doing they would notice that now, at long last, it has really become possible to do what, originally, was the whole reason for the game: To make a new world, in which new, simple stories could be told which are much more beautiful than the old ones.
And my story is one of these new stories which only now can be told.
