Josephine the Songstress

Now and again efforts are made in this direction, one should really let the children be children, they need their own special freedom, their own considerations, a protected space, they have a right to a carefree existence, a bit of romping about, some rolling and tumbling, a little playtime-everybody likes to agree with this, we all do what we can to bring this about, it's a grand promotion and there's practically nobody who says anything to the contrary, there's basically nothing that is worth promoting if this isn't-but, then too, there's also nothing that's so impossible to realize, such contradicts the reality of our lives; one agrees wholeheartedly with the promotion, one attempts to do what one can to fulfill the good sense that is inherent in it but before you know it everything has reverted back to the way it was before. Our life is as it is; a child, just as soon as he's learned to move about a little and as soon as he can differentiate amongst his surroundings, so he has to take care of himself just like an adult; all of the areas in which-due to the economic realities that govern our lives-we are forced to live our lives all scattered about, well, such a space is too big, our enemies are way too numerous, all of the dangers are beyond our powers of calculation... there's just no way that we could keep our children apart, secluded from the fight for survival, if we even were to attempt to do so this itself would mean their premature end. Beyond all of this, so sad as all of the previous is, there's yet another factor, something a bit more uplifting, the fertility of our tribe. Each generation-and every one of them is bounteous-each presses upon the next and drives them forth; the children simply don't have any time in which they might be children. It may well be so that with other folk the children are carefully tended, that schools are built for them, that the little darlings stream into these schools on a daily basis, that they are heralded as the future of the race, looking up beauteously toward the visage {Anblick} of the patriot, so in such circumstances it's always the same children attending school for a longer period of time, going to school and coming back from school. We don't have any schools but in practically no time at all there come hoards and hoards of our children, you can't see any end to them, they come hissing or peeping for so long as they haven't learned how to whistle, they come propelled forward, waltzing along or rolling forth until they've learned how to run properly, clumsily they feel their way about through thick and thin until they've trained their eyes to see things properly-our children! And it's not as it was with the formerly mentioned schools, over and over the same children in attendance, no no-it's always new ones, never ending, not even pausing, barely has a new child appeared and it's no longer a child, there are already new faces that are forcing their way through from behind, an undifferentiated mass in their teeming multitude and their hurry, pink in their blessed happiness {Glück}. Indeed, no matter how beauteous all of this may be and despite how envious others may be, and rightfully so, all the same there's simply no way that we would be able to provide our children with a viable childhood, one that is real. Naturally, there are consequences.