The joyous science, p.11
The Joyous Science, page 11
85
The Good and the Beautiful
Artists glorify continually – they do nothing else – that is to say, all those conditions and things which have a reputation for being able to make man feel good or great, or intoxicated, or cheerful, or well and wise. Those select things and conditions whose value for human happiness is considered settled and assured are the objects of artists; they are always lying in wait to discover such things, and to draw them into the domain of art. I will say this: they are not themselves the assessors of happiness and of those who are happy, but they always throng around these assessors with the greatest inquisitiveness and enthusiasm, in order to put their assessments immediately to use. They do so because, apart from their impatience, they also have the big lungs of heralds and the feet of runners, and thus are always among the first to glorify the new good, and often seem to be the first to call it good and assess it as good. This, as I have said, is a mistake; they are merely quicker and louder than the actual assessors.
And who then are these? The rich and the idle.
86
Of the Theatre
Once again, this day has given me strong and elevated sentiments, and if I could have music and art in the evening, I know full well what kind of music and art I would not like to have: namely, the kind which intoxicates its listeners and excites them to a fever pitch of strong and elevated sentiment – listeners with ordinary souls, who in the evening are not like victors on triumphal chariots, but like tired mules to whom life has too often applied the whip. What would those people ever know of ‘elevated moods’, if there were no means of intoxication and idealistic strokes of the whip! And thus they have their men to inspire them as they have their wines to intoxicate them. But what is it to me, this drink and drunkenness of theirs? Does a man who is truly inspired need wine? Rather, he looks back with a kind of disgust at both the means and the mediator which are supposed to produce an effect here without sufficient reason – an imitation of the high tide of the soul!
What? We give the mole wings and proud conceits – before he goes to sleep, before he crawls back into his hole? We send him into the theatre and put great magnifying glasses in front of his weak and weary eyes? Men for whom life is no ‘action’ but business sit before the stage and look at strange beings for whom life is more than business? ‘That is respectable,’ you say, ‘that is diverting, that is what culture is!’
All too often, this is the kind of culture in which I am lacking, because all too often I find the sight of this kind of thing disgusting. Anyone who has enough tragedy or comedy within himself already probably prefers to stay away from the theatre; or, on those rare occasions when he goes, the entire proceedings – theatre and public and poet included – are for him the real tragic or comedic spectacle, in comparison to which the performance itself means very little. A man who is something like Faust or Manfred18 cares nothing for the Fausts or Manfreds of the theatre – though it certainly gives him pause that such figures are ever brought into the theatre in the first place. The strongest thoughts and passions are brought before those who are capable of neither thought nor passion – but only of intoxication? And this as a means to that end? Theatre and music as the European form of the hashish-smoking and betel-chewing?19 Oh who will recount for us the whole history of narcotics! It is almost the history of ‘culture’ itself, of so-called higher culture!
87
Of the Vanity of the Artists
I believe artists often do not know what they can do best, because they are too vain, and have set their minds on something grander than those seemingly little plants which are able to grow to true perfection in their soil, as something new, rare and beautiful. They thoughtlessly underestimate the ultimate worth of their own garden and vineyard and their love is not equal to their insight. Here is a musician,20 who, more than any musician, has his mastery in finding the tones from the realm of suffering, oppressed, tortured souls, and who can even make dumb beasts speak. No one is his equal in the colours of late autumn, in the indescribably moving happiness of a final, all too final and all too brief enjoyment; he knows the tones for those mysterious midnights of the soul when cause and effect seem out of joint, and at any moment something may emerge ‘out of nothing’. He draws most successfully from the dregs of human happiness, from its drained goblet as it were, where, for better or worse, the bitterest and most distasteful drops have finally mingled with the sweetest. He knows that weary shuffling of the soul which can no longer leap or fly, indeed, which can no longer even walk; he has the shy glance of secret pain, of understanding without comfort, of farewells without confessions; indeed, as the Orpheus of all secret misery, he is greater than anyone; and he has added much to art which was hitherto inexpressible and which even seemed unworthy of art, and which words in particular could only chase away and not grasp – those recesses of the soul which are quite small, even microscopic; oh yes, he is the master of the quite small. But he does not want to be! His character loves to paint daring frescoes on great walls! It entirely escapes him that his spirit has a different taste and inclination, and prefers to sit quietly in the corners of collapsed houses – there, concealed, concealed even from himself, he paints his authentic masterpieces, all of which are very short, often only one measure long – because only there does he become wholly good, great and perfect, there and perhaps there alone.
But he does not know it! He is too vain to know it.
88
Seriousness about the Truth
Seriousness about the truth! What different things men understand by these words! Precisely the same views and types of examination and evidence which a thinker regards as frivolous but to which he himself, to his shame, has succumbed at one time or other – precisely the same views may give an artist who encounters them and accepts them for a while the impression that the most profound seriousness about the truth has now taken hold of him, and that it is quite admirable that although he is an artist, he also shows the most serious desire for the opposite of appearances. It is thus possible that someone may, by the very pathos of their seriousness, betray just how superficial and undemanding their intellect has hitherto been when playing in the realm of knowledge.
And does not everything which we take to be weighty betray us? For it shows what has weight with us, and what does not.
89
Now and Formerly
Of what use is all the artistry in our works of art, if that higher art, the art of the festival, is lost? Formerly all works of art were erected along the great festival road of mankind, as monuments and memorials to its high and happy moments. Now we want to use works of art to lure the exhausted and sickly away from mankind’s great road of suffering for brief moments of respite; we offer them a little intoxication and madness.
90
Light and Shadow
Books and writings are different things for different thinkers. One has gathered together in his book as much of the light from an illuminating experience as he could quickly take hold of and bring home; while another has given us only shadows, the grey and black images of what the day before had arisen in his soul.
91
Caution
Alfieri,21 as is well known, lied a great deal when he told the story of his life to his astonished contemporaries. He lied out of a despotism towards himself which he also exhibited, for example, in the way in which he created his own language, and tyrannized himself into becoming a poet – he finally found a severe form of dignity into which he forced his life and his memory, and must have suffered in the process.
I would also give no credence to a memoir of Plato’s, had he written one, any more than I do to Rousseau’s Confessions, or to Dante’s Vita Nuova.
92
Prose and Poetry
It is noteworthy that the great masters of prose have almost always been poets, either openly, or secretly and for their own private enjoyment; and truly, good prose is written only in light of poetry! For prose is the result of an uninterrupted, polite war with poetry; all its charm consists in the fact that poetry is constantly avoided and contradicted; every abstraction wishes to be presented as a piece of roguishness against poetry and with mocking voice; all dryness and coolness is supposed to drive the lovely goddess to lovely despair; often there are momentary compromises and reconciliations between the two, and then a sudden rebound into laughter; often the curtain is drawn back and harsh light let in just when the goddess was enjoying her twilights and dull colours; often her words are taken from her mouth and sung to a melody which makes her hold her delicate hands over her delicate ears – and so there are a thousand pleasures to this war, the defeats very much included, of which the unpoetic, the so-called prose writers, know nothing – which is why they write and speak only bad prose! War is the father of all good things;22 war is also the father of all good prose!
In this century, there have been four quite peculiar and truly poetic men who have achieved mastery in prose, something for which this century is not otherwise suited, for lack of poetry, as I have indicated. Setting aside Goethe, who may be fairly claimed by the century which produced him, only Giacomo Leopardi, Prosper Mérimée, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walter Savage Landor, the author of Imaginary Conversations, seem to me worthy of being called masters of prose.23
93
But Why, Then, Do You Write?
A: I am not one of those who think with pen in hand; and still less one of those who entirely give way to their passions before an open inkwell, sitting on their chair and staring at the paper. I am annoyed and ashamed by all writing; writing is for me a necessity – even to speak of it in parables is repugnant to me. B: But why, then, do you write? A: Well, my friend, let me tell you in confidence: I have yet to find any other means of getting rid of my thoughts. B: And why would you want to get rid of them? A: Why would I want to? Want to? I have no choice! B: Enough! Enough!
94
Growth after Death
Those bold little words about moral matters which Fontenelle24 jotted down in his immortal Dialogues of the Dead were regarded in his day as the paradoxical and sportive remarks of a not altogether innocuous wit; even the highest judges of taste and intellect – and perhaps even Fontenelle himself – saw nothing more in them. In the meantime, something incredible has occurred: these thoughts turned out to be true! Science proves them! The game becomes serious! And we receive a different impression from reading those dialogues than Voltaire and Helvétius did; we instinctively elevate their author into another and much higher order of intellect than they did. Rightly? Wrongly?
95
Chamfort25
That such a connoisseur of men and of the crowd as Chamfort should stand by the crowd, instead of standing apart in philosophical renunciation and disapproval – that I am unable to explain, except as follows: there was an instinct in him stronger than his wisdom which had never been satisfied: a hatred of all nobility of blood; perhaps it was his mother’s old and all too explicable hatred which was sanctified in him by his love for her – an instinctive desire for revenge from his boyhood onwards that waited for the moment to strike. But then the course of his life, his genius, and alas! most likely, the paternal blood in his veins seduced him into ranking himself among precisely this nobility and according himself the same rights as they had – for many, many years! In the end he could no longer bear the sight of himself, the sight of an ‘old man’ under the old regime; he flew into a violent rage of remorse, and in this state put on the garb of the mob as his very own hair-shirt! His bad conscience was due to his dereliction of duty, the duty to avenge his mother.
Had Chamfort remained somewhat more philosophical, the Revolution would not have gained its tragic wit and its sharpest sting; it would have been regarded as a much more stupid affair, and would not have had such a seductive influence on men’s minds. But Chamfort’s hatred and vindictiveness educated an entire generation; and the most illustrious men passed through his school. Bear in mind that Mirabeau26 looked up to Chamfort as to his higher and older self, from whom he expected and endured impulses, warnings and judgements – Mirabeau, who as a man belongs to an entirely different order of greatness than even the foremost among the great statesmen of yesterday and today.
Strange, that despite having such a friend and advocate – we have Mirabeau’s letters to Chamfort – this wittiest of all moralists has remained a stranger to the French, no less than Stendhal, who perhaps had the most fertile and perceptive mind of any other Frenchman of this century. Is it that Stendhal had too much of the German and the Englishman in him for the Parisians to find him tolerable – while Chamfort, a man whose profound soul contained a wealth of ulterior motives, grim, suffering, ardent – a thinker who found laughter necessary as the remedy for life, and who almost gave himself up as lost every day in which he had not laughed – seems more like an Italian, a kinsman to Dante and Leopardi, than a Frenchman? We know Chamfort’s last words: ‘Ah! Mon ami,’ he said to Sieyès, ‘je m’en vais enfin de ce monde, où il faut que le cœur se brise ou se bronze’.27 These are certainly not the words of a dying Frenchman.
96
Two Speakers
Of these two speakers, the one is able to furnish all of the reasons in support of his case only when he yields to passion; only this pumps enough blood and heat into his brain to compel his superior intellectuality to reveal itself. The other may well try to do the same now and again: to argue his case with the aid of passion sonorously, vehemently and ravishingly – but usually without success. His argument becomes obscure and confused; he exaggerates, makes omissions and arouses suspicion against the reasons in support of his case; indeed, he himself feels this suspicion, which explains the sudden shifts in tone from warm and attractive to cold and repulsive, tones which raise a doubt in the listener as to whether his passion is genuine. With him, passion always submerges his intellect; perhaps because it is stronger than in the other man. But he is at the height of his powers when he resists the impetuous storm of his feelings, as if to ridicule them; it is only then that his intellect fully emerges from its hiding place, a logical, sportive, mocking yet altogether formidable intellect.
97
Of the Loquacity of Authors
There is the loquacity of wrath – often in Luther, also in Schopenhauer. The loquacity of too large a stock of conceptual formulae, as in Kant. The loquacity of delight in ever-new ways of expressing the same thing: we find it in Montaigne. The loquacity of malice: whoever reads contemporary magazines should be able to think of one or two such writers. The loquacity of delight in elegant words and turns of phrase, not unusual in Goethe’s prose. The loquacity of a noisy and confused sensibility attaining inward satisfaction, in Carlyle, for example.
98
In Praise of Shakespeare
The most beautiful thing I could say in praise of Shakespeare, in praise of the man, is that he believed in Brutus, and cast not a shadow of doubt on this kind of virtue! It is to him that Shakespeare dedicated his best tragedy – it is still called by the wrong name – to him, and to the most formidable epitome of a superior morality. Independence of soul! That is what is at issue here! For this, no sacrifice can be too great; for its sake, we must be willing to sacrifice even our dearest friend, even if he is the most magnificent of men, the ornament of the world, a genius without peer – when we actually love freedom as great souls love freedom, and this freedom is put at risk by such a man, this is what we must do – but this must be what Shakespeare himself felt! The height at which he placed Caesar was the finest honour he could possibly bestow on Brutus; it is only in this way that he was able to increase the magnitude of Brutus’ inner problem to immense proportions and likewise increase the magnitude of the inner strength required to cut this knot!
And was it really political freedom which drove the poet to sympathy with Brutus – and made him into his accomplice? Or was political freedom merely a symbol for something inexpressible? Do we perhaps stand before some obscure and as yet unknown event or adventure within the poet’s own soul, of which he preferred to speak in signs? What is all of Hamlet’s melancholy compared to the melancholy of Brutus! And perhaps Shakespeare also knew this, as he knew the other, from experience! Perhaps he too had his dark hour and his evil angel, just like Brutus!
But whatever similarities and hidden allusions there may have been, Shakespeare abased himself before the whole figure of the man, finding such virtue inaccessible to him and feeling himself unworthy by contrast – the evidence for this being written into the tragedy itself. Twice he presents a poet, and twice he heaps upon him such impatient and extreme contempt that it sounds like a cry – a cry of self-contempt. Brutus, even Brutus loses his patience when the poet appears, self-important, pathetic and importunate, as poets tend to be – creatures who seem to be full of possibilities for greatness, even for moral greatness, and yet whose ethics and conduct rarely rise even to the level of common decency. ‘I’ll know his humours when he knows his time – jigging fool, hence!’28 shouts Brutus. We should translate this back into the soul of the poet who wrote it.
