Heh

Verily Nietzsche says unto you, 'A university scholar can never become a philosopher; for even Kant could not do it and remained to the end, in spite of the innate striving of his genius, in a quasi-cocoon stage.'

Nietzsche's criteria for warfare

Tempted though I am to go to war with some bad artist fools, they do not meet Nietzsche's criteria for warfare:

First: I only attack causes that are victorious; I may even wait until they become victorious.

Second: I only attack causes against which I would not find allies, so that I stand alone – so that I compromise myself alone. – I have never taken a step publicly that did not compromise me: that is my criterion for doing right.

Third: I never attack persons; I merely avail myself of the person as of a strong magnifying glass that allows one to make visible a general but creeping and elusive calamity. Thus I attacked David Strauss – more precisely, the success of a senile book against the 'cultured' people of Germany: I caught this culture in the act.

Thus I attacked Wagner – more precisely, the falseness, the half-couth instincts of our 'culture' which mistakes the subtle for the rich, and the late for the great.

Fourth: I only attack things when every personal quarrel is excluded, when any background of bad experiences is lacking. On the contrary, attack is in my case a proof of good will, sometimes even of gratitude.

Something for the academics to ponder

In my case, every kind of reading belongs among my recreations – hence among the things that liberate me from myself, that allow me to walk about in strange sciences and souls – that I no longer take seriously. Reading is precisely my recreation from my own seriousness. During periods when I am hard at work you will not find me surrounded by books: I'd beware of letting anyone near me talk, much less think. And that is what reading would mean.

Actually, the implications of that are something for me to ponder. In the meantime, though, I'll carry on looking at Picabia pics. After all, your work is something that should never be taken seriously.

Behold the man

I've just started reading Nietzsche's Ecce homo, which is a kind of philosophical autobiography. The title's taken from the words Pilate spoke to Christ: 'Behold the man!' I've read extracts from it before, and even ripped them off in an artist statement, but not the whole thing.

The chapter titles are a good indication of the treat I have in store. They are 'Why I am so wise', 'Why I am so clever', 'Why I write such good books', and 'Why I am a destiny'.

Here's the first section of the preface:

Seeing that before long I must confront humanity with the most difficult demand ever made of it, it seems indispensable to me to say who I am. Really, one should know it, for I have not left myself 'without testimony'. But the disproportion between the greatness of my task and the smallness of my contemporaries has found expression in the fact that one has never heard nor even seen me. I live on my own credit; it is perhaps a mere prejudice that I live.

I only need to speak with one of the 'educated' who come to the Upper Engadine for the summer, and I am convinced that I do not live.

Under these circumstances I have a duty against which my habits, even more the pride of my instincts, revolt at bottom – namely, to say: Hear me! For I am such and such a person. Above all, do not mistake me for someone else.

The irony is that he has been constantly mistaken for someone else, from proto-fascist to proto-postmodernist. As the translator, Walter Kaufmann, says, 'we should gladly trade the whole vast literature on Nietzsche for this one small book'.

And Nietzsche again

Let the most heroic souls question themselves about this. Every smallest step on the field of free thought and the individually formed life has always been fought for with spiritual and physical torments: not only moving forward, no, above all moving, motion, change have required innumerable martyrs, all through the long path-seeking and basic millennia of which, to be sure, people don't think when they talk, as usual, about 'world history', that ridiculously small segment of human existence. And even in this so-called world history, which is at bottom much ado about the latest news, there is no really more important theme than the primordial tragedy of the martyrs who wanted to move the swamps.

Nothing has been bought more dearly than that little bit of human reason and of a feeling of freedom that now constitutes our pride. But it is this very pride that now makes it almost impossible for us to feel with those vast swathes of time characterised by the 'morality of the mores' which antedate 'world history' as the real and decisive main history that determined the character of humanity – when suffering was a virtue, cruelty a virtue, dissimulation a virtue, revenge a virtue, the slander of reason a virtue, while well-being was a danger, the craving for knowledge a danger, peace a danger, pity a danger, being pitied ignominy, work ignominy, madness divine, change immoral and pregnant with disaster.

You think all of this has changed? You who think you know man, learn to know yourselves better!

Nietzsche against contemporaries

May the living forgive me that occasionally they appear to me as shades, so pale and sombre, so restless and, alas, so lusting for life – while those men then seem so alive to me as if now, after death, they could never again grow weary of life. But eternal aliveness is what counts: what matters ‘eternal life’ or any life!

Just for something completely different – a Nietzsche quote

To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities – I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not – that one endures.

Time for a Nietzsche video

More Nietzsche

379 The fool interrupts – The writer of this book is no misanthrope; today one pays too dearly for hatred of man. If one would hate the way man was hated formerly, Timonically, wholly, without exception, with a full heart, with the whole love of hatred, then one would have to renounce contempt. And how much fine joy, how much patience, how much graciousness do we owe precisely to our contempt! Moreover, it makes us the 'elect of God': refined contempt is our taste and privilege, our art, our virtue perhaps, as we are the most modern of moderns.

Hatred, on the other hand, places people on a par, vis-a-vis; in hatred there is honour; finally, in hatred there is fear, a good and ample amount of fear. We fearless ones, however, we more spiritual human beings of this age, we know our own advantage well enough to live without fear in this age precisely because we are more spiritual. We shall hardly be decapitated, imprisoned, or exiled; not even our books will be banned or burned. The age loves the spirit; it loves and needs us, even if we should have to make clear to it that we are virtuosos of contempt; that every association of human beings makes us shudder slightly; that for our mildness, patience, geniality, and politeness, we cannot persuade our nose to give up its prejudice against the proximity of a human being; that we love nature the less humanly it behaves, and art when it is the artist's escape from man, or the artist's mockery of man, or the artist's mockery of himself.

And another for the night

310 Will and wave – How greedily this wave approaches, as if it were after something! How it crawls with terrifying haste into the inmost nooks of this labyrinthine cliff! It seems that it is trying to anticipate someone; it seems that something of value, high value, must be hidden there. – And now it comes back, a little more slowly but still quite white with excitement; is it disappointed? – But already another wave is approaching, still more greedily and savagely than the first, and its soul, too, seems to be full of secrets and the lust to dig up treasures. Thus live waves – and we too who will – more I shall not say.

So? You mistrust me? You are angry with me, you beautiful monsters? Are you afraid I will give away your whole secret? Well, be angry with me, arch your dangerous green bodies as high as you can, raise a wall between me and the sun – as you are doing now! Truly, even now nothing remains of the world but green twilight and green lightning. Carry on as you like, roaring with overweening pleasure and malice – or dive again, pouring your emeralds down into the deepest depths, and throw your infinite white mane of foam and spray over them: Everything suits me, for everything suits you as well, and I am so well-disposed toward you for everything; how could I think of betraying you? For – mark my word! – I know you and your secret, I know your kind! You and ! – are we not of one kind? – You and I – do we not have one secret?

Time for a Nietzsche quote

283 Preparatory human beings – ...For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is – to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves!

Some final Nietzsche for the night

156 – Who is most influential – When a human being resists his whole age and stops it at the gate to demand an accounting, this must have influence. Whether that is what he desires is immaterial; that he can do it is what matters.

158 An inconvenient trait – To find everything profound – that is an inconvenient trait. It makes one strain one's eyes all the time, and in the end one finds more than one might have wished.

166 Always in our company – Whatever in nature and in history is of my own kind, speaks to me, spurs me on, and comforts me; the rest I do not hear or forget right away. We are always in our own company.

172 Spoiling the taste – A: 'You keep spoiling the taste; that is what everyone says.' B: 'Certainly. I spoil the taste of this party for everyone – and no party forgives that.'

173 Being profound and seeming profound – Those who know they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound strive for obscurity. For the crowd believes that if it cannot see to the bottom of something it must be profound. It is so timid and dislikes going into the water.

174 Apart – Parliamentarianism – that is, public permission to choose between five basic political opinions – flatters and wins the favour of all those who would seem independent and individual, as if they fought for their opinions. Ultimately, however, it is indifferent whether the herd is commanded to have one opinion or permitted to have five. Whoever deviates from the five political opinions and stands apart will always have the whole herd against him.

Another Picabia poem

Baccarat

I am a beautiful monster
who shares his secret with the wind.
What I love most in others
is myself.*

I am a beautiful monster;
I have the sin of virtue for support.
My pollen stains the roses
from New York to Paris.

I am a beautiful monster
whose face conceals his countenance.
My senses have only one thought:
a frame without a picture!**

I am a beautiful monster
with a velodrome for a bed;
transparent cards***
populate my dreams.

I am a beautiful monster
who sleeps with himself.
There are only seven in the world
and I want to be the biggest.

*Compare with Nietzsche:

240 At the sea – I would not build a house for myself, and I count it as part of my good fortune that I do not own a house. But if I had to, then I should build it as some of the Romans did – right into the sea. I should not mind sharing a few secrets with this beautiful monster.

242 Suum cuique [To each their own] – However great the greed of my desire for knowledge may be, I still cannot take anything out of things that did not belong to me before; what belongs to others remains behind. How is it possible for a human being to be a thief or robber?

**See Picabia's Tabac-rat:

***Apparently, transparent cards are a name for pornographic pictures. See also Picabia's transparencies:

Some Nietzsche for Rose

88 Being serious about truth – Being serious about truth: what very different ideas people associate with these words! The very same views and types of proof and scrutiny that a thinker may consider a frivolity in himself to which he has succumbed on this or that occasion to his shame – these very same views may give an artist who views them and lives with them for a while the feeling that he has now become deeply serious about truth and that it is admirable how he, although an artist, has at the same time a deep appetite for the opposite of mere appearance. Thus it can happen that a man's emphatic seriousness shows how superficial and modest his spirit has been all along when playing with knowledge. – And does not everything that we take seriously betray us? It always shows what has weight for us and what does not.

90 Lights and shadows – Books and drafts mean something quite different for different thinkers. One collects in a book the lights that he has been able to steal and carry home swiftly out of the rays of some insight that suddenly dawned on him, while another thinker offers us nothing but shadows – images in black and grey of what had built up in his soul the day before.

93 – But why do you write? – A: I am not one of those who think with an inky pen in their hand, much less one of those who in front of an open inkwell abandon themselves to their passion while they sit in a chair and stare at the paper. I am annoyed by and ashamed of my writing; writing is for me a pressing and embarrassing need, and to speak of it even in a parable disgusts me.

B: But why, then, do you write? – A: Well, my friend, to be quite frank: so far, I have not discovered any other way of getting rid of my thoughts. – B: And why do you want to get rid of them? – A: Why I want to? Do I want to? I must. – B: Enough! Enough!

I might have to steal from 93 for an artist statement. Fuck it, my last one ripped him off, and I don't see why I should stop now.

More Nietzsche

57 To the realists – You sober people who feel well armed against passion and fantasies and would like to turn your emptiness into a matter of pride and an ornament: you call yourselves realists and hint that the world really is the way it appears to you ... That mountain there! That cloud there! What is 'real' in that? Subtract the phantasm and and every human contribution from it, my sober friends! If you can! If you can forget your descent, your past, your training – all your humanity and animality. There is no 'reality' for us – not for you either, my sober friends. We are not nearly as different as you think, and perhaps our good will to transcend our intoxication is as respectable as your faith that you are altogether incapable of intoxication.

58 Only as creators! – This has given me the greatest trouble and still does: to realise that what things are called is incomparably more important than what they are. The reputation, name, and appearance, the usual measure and weight of a thing, what it counts for – originally almost always wrong and arbitrary, thrown over things like a dress and altogether foreign to their nature and even to their skin – all this grows from generation unto generation, merely because people believe in it, until it gradually grows to be a part of the thing and turns into its very body. What at first was appearance becomes in the end, almost invariably, the essence and is effective as such. How foolish it would be to suppose that one only needs to point out this origin and this misty shroud of delusion in order to destroy the world that counts for real, so-called 'reality'. We can destroy only as creators. – But let us not forget this either: it is enough to create new names and estimations and probabilities in order to create in the long run new 'things'.

I cannot believe it's taken me this long to read this. Ye gods!

I am an idiot!

Idiot!

Idiot!

Last Nietzsche quote for the night

41 Against remorse – A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions – as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all. To be annoyed or feel remorse because something goes wrong – that he leaves to those who act because they have received orders and who have to reckon with a beating when his lordship is not satisfied with the result.

42 Work and boredom – Looking for work in order to be paid: in civilised countries today almost all men are at one in doing that. For all of them work is a means and not an end in itself. Hence they are not very refined in their choice of work, if only it pays well. But there are, if only rarely, men who would rather perish than work without any pleasure in their work. They are choosy, hard to satisfy, and do not care for ample rewards, if the work itself is not the reward of rewards. Artists and contemplative men of all kinds belong to this rare breed, as do men of leisure who spend their lives hunting, travelling, or in love affairs and adventures. All of these desire work and misery if only it is associated with pleasure, and the hardest, most difficult if necessary. Otherwise, their idleness is resolute, even if it spells impoverishment, dishonour, and danger to life and limb.

This and today's other Nietzsche quotes (including the poems) are from The gay science (which is not about homosexuality but rather about Nietzsche's approach to philosophy). Yes, just in case you couldn't tell, I'm very much enjoying reading it.

On the advice of the translator, I'm reading it in its entirety from start to finish, as opposed to just dipping in here and there, as I've done with other Nietzsche books (Thus spake Zarathustra and Human, all too human) or reading secondary sources. After this, I plan to read Human, all too human properly.

A Picabia poem (to compare with Nietzsche)

Let chance overflow

Faithful to nature and incomplete!
In the end I write what pleases me
But what pleases me???
That which I think I know how to do!
If I was allowed to choose freely
I wouldn't choose anything
Perhaps a little spot for myself
in the midst of happiness
and for me still
and more willingly before its door
My quill scrawls
Who then reads what I write?
But you are from above
for you live even above praise
Predestined to your orbit
you acknowledge only a single law
Be pure!

This is an example of what Marc Lowenthal alleges is Picabia's plagiarism of Nietzsche. The sources he gives for all but the last five lines are a couple of posts below (numbers 55, 57, and 59). The last five lines are allegedly from:

60 Higher men

He should be praised for climbing; yet
The other men comes always from a height
And lives where praise can never get–
Beyond your sight.

63 Star morals

Called a star's orbit to pursue,
What is the darkness, star, to you?

Roll on in bliss, traverse this age–
Its misery far from you and strange.

Let farthest world your light secure.
Pity is sin you must abjure.

But one command is yours: be pure!

Considering that Lowenthal translated the Picabia poems, used the same translation of Nietzsche as I have, and would want to make the best case for his claim of plagiarism that he could, I think we can discount translation for the differences between the Picabia poem and the Nietzsche ones.

Lowenthal makes a big deal of being the first to discover Picabia's plagiarism. I think he's making a bid for art historical relevance that's not warranted. If he'd toned down his claims to borrowings, appropriation, or influence, that would be a different story.

You have the evidence. What do you think? Plagiarism or not?

Some nice Nietzsche poetry

7 Vademecum – Vadetecum*

Lured by my style and tendency,
you follow and come after me?
Follow your own self faithfully–
take time – and thus you follow me.

10 Scorn

There is much I drop and spill:
I am full of scorn, you think.
If your beaker is too full,
There is much you drop and spill
Without scorning what you drink.

14 The good man

Better a whole-hearted feud
Than a friendship that is glued.

18 Narrow souls

Narrow souls I cannot abide;
There's almost no good or evil inside.

24 Medicine for pessimists

Nothing tastes good to you, my friend?
I'm tired of your belly-aching.
You spit, rage, slander without end;
My patience and my heart are breaking.
I have a remedy; just follow
My good advice and rest assured:
A toad is what you need to swallow,
And your dyspepsia will be cured.

33 The solitary

I hate to follow and I hate to lead.
Obey? Oh no! And govern? No indeed!
Only who dreads himself inspires dread.
And only those inspiring dread can lead.
Even to lead myself is not my speed.
I love to lose myself for a good while.
Like animals in forests and the sea,
To sit and think on some solitary isle,
And lure myself back home from far away,
Seducing myself to come back to me.

43 Admonition

What you want is fame?
Then note the price:
All claim
To honour you must sacrifice.

55 Realistic painters

'True to nature, all the truth: that's art.'
This hallowed notion is a threadbare fable.
Infinite is nature's smallest part.
They paint what happens to delight their heart.
And what delights them? What to paint they're able.

57 Choosy taste

If it depended on my choice,
I think it might be great
To have a place in Paradise;
Better yet – outside the gate.

59 The pen is stubborn

The pen is stubborn, sputters – hell!
Am I condemned to scrawl?
Boldly I dip it in the well,
My writing flows, and all
I try succeeds. Of course, the spatter
Of this tormented night
Is quite illegible. No matter:
Who reads the stuff I write?

*Vademecum: a manual or guidebook; literally, 'go with me.' Vadetecum: go with yourself.

Fair warning: There is likely to be a fair bit of Nietzsche on its way.

Quote of the day

How repulsive pleasure is now, that crude, musty, brown pleasure as it is understood by those who like pleasure, our 'educated' people, our rich people, and our rulers! How maliciously we listen now to the big county-fair boom-boom with which the 'educated' person and city dweller today permits art, books, and music to rape him and provide 'spiritual pleasures' – with the aid of spirituous liquors!

How the theatrical scream of passion now hurts our ears, how strange to our taste the whole romantic uproar and tumult of the senses have become, which the educated mob loves, and all its aspirations after the elevated, inflated, and exaggerated! No, if we convalescents still need art, it is another kind of art – a mocking, light, fleeting, divinely untroubled, divinely artificial art that, like a pure flame, licks into unclouded skies. Above all, an art for artists, for artists only!

We know better afterward what above all is needed for this: cheerfulness, any cheerfulness, my friends – also as artists: let me prove it. There are a few things we now know too well, we knowing ones: oh, how we now learn to forget well, and to be good at not knowing, as artists!

- Friedrich Nietzsche (the first dada), Preface to the second edition of The gay science

Quote of the day

For Schopenhauer, the object of art is a form which has a universal quality, which rises above the confines of space and time, and can only be seen by one who detaches himself from what is local and personal. This view leads us to a difficulty in the case of lyric poetry.

Lyric poetry is essentially personal and the singer fills it with his own moods, his loves and his sorrows. But lovers are fickle, and sorrows do not last for ever. How is it possible to reconcile this personal, individual, fleeting aspect with the claim that the object of art must be universal and above change?

Schopenhauer is half-hearted, and solves the difficulty by a compromise, according to which the poet, or the singer, alternates between two attitudes, sometimes taking up that of the individual and sometimes that of the universal.

Nietzsche will have none of this; boldly and in accordance with Schopenhauer's own fundamental principles he unites the two principles directly. And surely he is right!

Lyric poetry is personal and the life of the song is a mood. But who is the person? The poet? Yes, but more than the poet. The singer? Yes, but which singer? Surely every singer; and every hearer too.

Everyman is the hero of the song, and therein lies its universality. Again, it expresses a mood, and moods are fleeting. But in the song the mood is lifted out of its context, raised above mutability, and enshrined for ever in a timeless, passionless calm. The individual and the universal, passion and the passionless, time and the timeless come together in the lyric and are at one. In the song the mortal puts on immortality, and the singer becomes the vehicle of something infinitely greater and more universal than himself.

- HA Reyburn, Nietzsche