Doug,
The original German reads:
'Die Tradition aller toter Geschlechter lastet wie ein Alp auf dem Gehirne
der Lebenden.'
The German word 'Alp' or 'Alptraum' means a nightmare, which is probably
where the confusion starts. Thus the translation I gave from MEIA is not
totally correct (oops). That this is the most likely meaning is implied by
the next sentence where he writes: 'And just as they seem to be occupied
with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not
exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they
anxiously conjure up the _spirits of the past_ to their service, borrowing
from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new
scene in world history in this time-honored disguise and this borrowed
language.' (My emphasis.) He is referring to a form of false consciousness
about history, presumably using the metaphor of the nightmare
as something which has psychological reality for the individual, but does
not necessarily come to grips with the real world (hence leading to farce,
rather than tragedy).
Bruce Robinson