Monday, February 21, 2011

Shadowtricks.

One must hate himself if he hates his shadow,
Everything it stands for, but who's the one standing?
Cut down the middle, split – I've meddled
Like civil war, a country bent – but standing.

So when it falls, will I rise?
If it's the moon, am I the tide?
If I blame my luck on his stride,
Will the sun shine green on that other side?

Oh, that boy - his wheel/squeaks incessantly,
Don't you hear?
But is that what causes the old floor to creak?
If aged oak is as true as day,
Then let Dylan say as he do,
I am meek as wood, 'tis true.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Not dead, yet.



[Personal Selections of Nietzches Epigrams, out of 'Beyond Good And Evil']

72. Not the intensity but the duration of high feelings makes high men.

76. Under peaceful conditions a warlike man sets upon himself.

79. A soul that knows it is loved but does not itself love betrays its sediment: what is at the bottom comes up.

81. It is terrible to die of thirst in the ocean. Do you have to salt your truth so heavily that it does not even-quench thirst any more?

88. One begins to mistrust very clever people when they become embarrassed.

97. What? A great man? I always see only the actor of his own ideal.

98. If we train our conscience, it kisses us while it hurts us.

104. Not their love of men but the impotence of their love of men keeps the Christians of today from-burning us.*

106. In music the passions enjoy themselves.

113. "You want to prepossess him in your favor? Then pretend to be embarrassed by his presence-"**

117. The will to overcome an affect is ultimately only the will of another, or of several other, affects.

118. There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day.

123. Even concubinage has been corrupted-by marriage.

125. When we have to change our mind about a person, we hold the inconveniences he causes us very much against him.

126. A people*** is a detour of nature to get to six or seven great men.-Yes, and then to get around them.

[ 129. The devil has the broadest perspectives for God; therefore he keeps so far away from God-the devil being the most ancient friend of wisdom. ]

131. The sexes deceive themselves about each other-because at the bottom they honor and love only themselves (or their own ideal, to put it more pleasantly). Thus man likes woman peaceful-but woman is essentially unpeaceful, like a cat, however well she may have trained herself to seem peaceable.

132. One is best punished for one's virtues.

134 All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.

166. Even when the mouth lies, the way it looks still tells the truth.

175. In the end one loves one's desire and not what is desired.

180. There is an innocence in lying which is the sign of good faith in a cause.

[ 184. The high spirits of kindness may look like malice. ]

[ 185. "I don't like him."-Why?- "I am not equal to him." - Has any human being ever answered that way? ]







*If Christians were really passionately concerned for the salvation of their fellow men in the hereafter, they would still burn those whose heresies lead legions into eternal damnation.

** My own asterisk goes to #88?

***Ein Volk: the polemical and sarcastic thrust of this epigram depends on the heavy reliance of German nationalism-both in Nietzche's time and in the twentieth century-on the mystique of the Volk