/lit/ - Literature

>>22975741
What then is the character of the Mediocre?
By this term, I should say, we commonly signify that which brings us no new and unknown thing, but the known already in a pleasing and insinuating form. In a good sense, it would be the product of Talent—if we agree with Schopenhauer that Talent hits a mark we all can see, but cannot lightly reach; whilst Genius, the genius of "the Good," attains a goal we others do not even see.
Hence Virtuosity proper belongs to Talent, and the musical virtuoso affords the clearest illustration of the preceding definition. The works of our great composers we have always with us; but he alone can perform them rightly, and in the master's spirit, who has the talent. To let his virtuosity sparkle solely for itself, the musician often trumps up pieces of his own: these belong to the class of the mediocre; whereas their virtuosity cannot in itself be strictly ranged in such a class, for we must candidly confess that a middling virtuoso is of no class at all.— A virtuosity very near of kin to that denoted, accordingly the exercise of Talent proper, we find most pronounced in the literary profession among the French. As instrument they possess a language that seems purposely built for it, whose highest law is to express oneself cleverly, wittily, and in every circumstance neatly and clearly. It is impossible for a French author to gain acceptance, if his work does not before all else comply with these requirements of his native tongue. Perhaps the very excess of attention he thus has to devote to his expression, to his style regarded in and for itself, makes it difficult for a French writer to have novelty of thought, to recognise a goal which others don't yet see; and for the simple reason, that he would be unable to find for these wholly new ideas the happy phrase that at once would strike all readers. This may account for the French having such unsurpassable virtuosi to shew in their literature, whilst the intrinsic value of their works—with the great exceptions of earlier epochs—seldom rises above the mediocre.

>>22643374
Wagner on Socrates:

>At seven in the morning R. wishes me a good morning and says he has already been thinking a lot about Socrates. It is very remarkable (he says) that his whole approach Is negative; this means he is wise, but no philosopher, he is always trying to fathom where wisdom can be found, in Heaven and beneath the ground in Hades, everywhere. In this sense he can be compared with Kant, who in his Critique of Pure Reason declares that this problem cannot be solved, and he stands in relation to Plato more or less as Schopenhauer’s first book stands to his second. To this extent he is also the clearest example of a step forward in the development of the human spirit. He could only be mild and benevolent, since all around him he saw error. But he must have been terribly irritating, since he could not be put into any category, not even among the philosophers, and yet he attracted everyone to him; if he had only accepted money, all would have been well. Plato was the first philosopher—Socrates was simply his forerunner, of the greatest importance to him, since he threw doubt on all recognized values. Such earlier men as Anaxagoras, Pythagoras, etc., were practicians, they sought to explain the objective world. Plato was the first to recognize the world’s ideality, that the species was everything, the individual nothing.

>In the morning we again talk about Socrates. “Beyond this moral code Christianity could not go—-Christianity generated ecstasy, the complete destruction of the world, but as regards what the world itself can bring about, no one can ever go higher than Socrates. In the greatness of his heart the saint sees, but he can only speak in symbols, the symbols of religion, and those who do not see the picture in the same way as he cannot understand the symbols.”

>>22642657
Wagner on Socrates:

At seven in the morning R. wishes me a good morning and says he has already been thinking a lot about Socrates. It is very remarkable (he says) that his whole approach Is negative; this means he is wise, but no philosopher, he is always trying to fathom where wisdom can be found, in Heaven and beneath the ground in Hades, everywhere. In this sense he can be compared with Kant, who in his Critique of Pure Reason declares that this problem cannot be solved, and he stands in relation to Plato more or less as Schopenhauer’s first book stands to his second. To this extent he is also the clearest example of a step forward in the development of the human spirit. He could only be mild and benevolent, since all around him he saw error. But he must have been terribly irritating, since he could not be put into any category, not even among the philosophers, and yet he attracted everyone to him; if he had only accepted money, all would have been well. Plato was the first philosopher—Socrates was simply his forerunner, of the greatest importance to him, since he threw doubt on all recognized values. Such earlier men as Anaxagoras, Pythagoras, etc., were practicians, they sought to explain the objective world. Plato was the first to recognize the world’s ideality, that the species was everything, the individual nothing.

In the morning we again talk about Socrates. “Beyond this moral code Christianity could not go—-Christianity generated ecstasy, the complete destruction of the world, but as regards what the world itself can bring about, no one can ever go higher than Socrates. In the greatness of his heart the saint sees, but he can only speak in symbols, the symbols of religion, and those who do not see the picture in the same way as he cannot understand the symbols.”

From the essay Public and Popularity:

>What then is the character of the Mediocre?
>By this term, I should say, we commonly signify that which brings us no new and unknown thing, but the known already in a pleasing and insinuating form. In a good sense, it would be the product of Talent—if we agree with Schopenhauer that Talent hits a mark we all can see, but cannot lightly reach; whilst Genius, the genius of "the Good," attains a goal we others do not even see.
>Hence Virtuosity proper belongs to Talent, and the musical virtuoso affords the clearest illustration of the preceding definition. The works of our great composers we have always with us; but he alone can perform them rightly, and in the master's spirit, who has the talent. To let his virtuosity sparkle solely for itself, the musician often trumps up pieces of his own: these belong to the class of the mediocre; whereas their virtuosity cannot in itself be strictly ranged in such a class, for we must candidly confess that a middling virtuoso is of no class at all.— A virtuosity very near of kin to that denoted, accordingly the exercise of Talent proper, we find most pronounced in the literary profession among the French. As instrument they possess a language that seems purposely built for it, whose highest law is to express oneself cleverly, wittily, and in every circumstance neatly and clearly. It is impossible for a French author to gain acceptance, if his work does not before all else comply with these requirements of his native tongue. Perhaps the very excess of attention he thus has to devote to his expression, to his style regarded in and for itself, makes it difficult for a French writer to have novelty of thought, to recognise a goal which others don't yet see; and for the simple reason, that he would be unable to find for these wholly new ideas the happy phrase that at once would strike all readers. This may account for the French having such unsurpassable virtuosi to shew in their literature, whilst the intrinsic value of their works—with the great exceptions of earlier epochs—seldom rises above the mediocre.

>>22480610
From Wagner's Public and Popularity:

>What then is the character of the Mediocre?
>By this term, I should say, we commonly signify that which brings us no new and unknown thing, but the known already in a pleasing and insinuating form. In a good sense, it would be the product of Talent—if we agree with Schopenhauer that Talent hits a mark we all can see, but cannot lightly reach; whilst Genius, the genius of "the Good," attains a goal we others do not even see.
>Hence Virtuosity proper belongs to Talent, and the musical virtuoso affords the clearest illustration of the preceding definition. The works of our great composers we have always with us; but he alone can perform them rightly, and in the master's spirit, who has the talent. To let his virtuosity sparkle solely for itself, the musician often trumps up pieces of his own: these belong to the class of the mediocre; whereas their virtuosity cannot in itself be strictly ranged in such a class, for we must candidly confess that a middling virtuoso is of no class at all.— A virtuosity very near of kin to that denoted, accordingly the exercise of Talent proper, we find most pronounced in the literary profession among the French. As instrument they possess a language that seems purposely built for it, whose highest law is to express oneself cleverly, wittily, and in every circumstance neatly and clearly. It is impossible for a French author to gain acceptance, if his work does not before all else comply with these requirements of his native tongue. Perhaps the very excess of attention he thus has to devote to his expression, to his style regarded in and for itself, makes it difficult for a French writer to have novelty of thought, to recognise a goal which others don't yet see; and for the simple reason, that he would be unable to find for these wholly new ideas the happy phrase that at once would strike all readers. This may account for the French having such unsurpassable virtuosi to shew in their literature, whilst the intrinsic value of their works—with the great exceptions of earlier epochs—seldom rises above the mediocre.

CONT

>>22151961
Now, nothing more perverse can be imagined, than the adoption by German writers of that attribute which makes the French such brilliant virtuosi on the ground of speech. The attempt to treat the German language as an instrument of virtuosity could only occur to those to whom the German tongue is truly alien, and who therefore twist it to improper uses. None of our great poets and sages can be rated as virtuosi of speech: every one of them was in the same position as Luther, who had to ransack every German dialect for his translation of the Bible, to find the word and turn to popularly express that New he had discovered in the sacred books' original text. For what distinguishes the German spirit from that of every other culture-folk is this, that its creative sons had first seen something ne'er yet uttered, before they fell a-writing,—which for them was but a necessary consequence of the prior inspiration. Thus each of our great poets and thinkers had to form his language for himself; an obligation to which the inventive Greeks themselves do not appear to have been submitted, since they had at command a language always spoken by the living mouth, and therefore pliant to each thought or feeling, but not an element corrupted by bad pensters. In a poem from Italy how Goethe bewailed his being doomed by birth to wield the German tongue, in which he must first invent for himself what the Italians and French, for instance, found ready to their hand. That under such hardships none but truly original minds have risen to production among ourselves, should teach us what we are, and at any rate that there is something peculiar about us Germans. But that knowledge will also teach us, that if virtuosity in any branch of art is the evidence of talent, this Talent is denied in toto to the Germans, at least in the branch of Literature: who toils to acquire a virtuosity in this, will stay a bungler; if, following the musical virtuoso who composes pieces of his own, he trumps up poetical sketches for setting off his fancied virtuosity, however, they will not even belong to the category of the Mediocre, but simply of the Bad, the wholly null.

>>22027277
>I believe I may say without presumption that the thought worked out in that essay on "German Art and German Policy" was no idle caprice of a self-deluding fancy: it took shape within me from an ever plainer recognition of the powers and qualities peculiar to the German spirit, as witnessed by a lengthy roll of German masters all striving—in my way of feeling—for that spirit's highest manifestation in an Artwork national to the human race. The importance of such an Artwork for the very highest culture of this and all other nations, once it were tended as a living, ever new possession of our people, must strike the mind of him who has ceased to expect aught beneficial from the working of our modern State and Church machinery. If with Schiller we call them both "barbaric" by singular good fortune it is another great German who has rendered us the meaning of this word, and that from Holy Writ itself. Luther had to translate the eleventh verse of the fourteenth chapter of the first epistle of Paul to the Corinthians. Here the Greek word "barbaros" is applied to him whose tongue we do not understand; the Latin translator—for whom the word had already lost its Greek significance and become a mere synonym for uncivilised and lawless foreign races—sets down a half unmeaning "barbarus", no longer to the point. All subsequent translators, in every language, have followed the Latin example; especially weak and formal seems the French translation of the text, "Si donc je n'entends pas ce que signifient les paroles, je serai barbare pour celui a qui je parle; et celui qui me parle sera barbare pour moi"—from which one might deduce a maxim that governs the French to this day, and not to their advantage, in their judgment of other nations. Even in this connection, on the contrary, Luther's rendering of "barbaros" by "undeutsch" gives a milder, unaggressive aspect to our attitude towards the foreign. To the dismay of all philologists he translates the verse as follows: "If I know not the meaning (Deutung) of the voice, I shall be undeutsch to him that speaketh, and he that speaketh will be undeutsch to me."—

CONT

>>21043869
Read Wagner's lecture The Destiny of Opera and then follow with his major essays Beethoven, Actors and Singers and Opera and Drama.

>Here our first business would be to discover the exact principle on which the mimetic naturalism of Shakespeare's dramas is to be distinguished from what we call by that name in the case of almost every other dramatic poet.
>I venture to deduce this principle from the one fact that Shakespeare's actors played upon a stage surrounded by spectators on all sides, whereas the modern stage has followed the lead of the French and Italians, displaying the actors only from one side, and that the front side, just like the painted 'wings.' Here we have the academic theatre of the art-Renaissance, modelled upon a misunderstanding of the antique stage, in which the scene is severed from the public by the orchestra. The special-privileged "friend of art," who erst preferred to sit on each side of this modern stage as well, our sense of seemliness has finally sent back into the parquet, to leave us an untroubled view of a theatrical picture which the skill of the decorator, machinist and costumier has almost raised to the rank of a generic work of art. Now, it is both surprising and instructive to see how a trend toward rhetorical Pathos, intensified by our great German poets to the didacto-poetic pitch, has always preponderated on this Neo-european stage, miscopied from the antique; whereas on Shakespeare's primitive folk-stage, which lacked all blinding scenic glitter, the interest was centred in the altogether realistic doings of the meanly clad play-actors. Whilst the later, academically ordered English Theatre made it the actor's imperative duty under no circumstances to turn his back on the audience, and left him to sidle off as best he could in case of any exit toward the rear, Shakespeare's performers moved before the spectator in all directions with the full reality of common life. We may judge what a power the naturalistic mode of acting had here to exert, since it was backed by no auxiliary illusion, but in every gesture had to set in closest neighbourhood to us the poet's marvellously true and yet so curiously uncommon figures, and make us believe in them to boot: here was need of the very highest dramatic pathos, if only to maintain our belief in the truthfulness of this playing, which would otherwise have proved quite laughable in situations of great tragic moment.

>>20380479
>Here our first business would be to discover the exact principle on which the mimetic naturalism of Shakespeare's dramas is to be distinguished from what we call by that name in the case of almost every other dramatic poet.
>I venture to deduce this principle from the one fact that Shakespeare's actors played upon a stage surrounded by spectators on all sides, whereas the modern stage has followed the lead of the French and Italians, displaying the actors only from one side, and that the front side, just like the painted 'wings.' Here we have the academic theatre of the art-Renaissance, modelled upon a misunderstanding of the antique stage, in which the scene is severed from the public by the orchestra. The special-privileged "friend of art," who erst preferred to sit on each side of this modern stage as well, our sense of seemliness has finally sent back into the parquet, to leave us an untroubled view of a theatrical picture which the skill of the decorator, machinist and costumier has almost raised to the rank of a generic work of art. Now, it is both surprising and instructive to see how a trend toward rhetorical Pathos, intensified by our great German poets to the didacto-poetic pitch, has always preponderated on this Neo-european stage, miscopied from the antique; whereas on Shakespeare's primitive folk-stage, which lacked all blinding scenic glitter, the interest was centred in the altogether realistic doings of the meanly clad play-actors. Whilst the later, academically ordered English Theatre made it the actor's imperative duty under no circumstances to turn his back on the audience, and left him to sidle off as best he could in case of any exit toward the rear, Shakespeare's performers moved before the spectator in all directions with the full reality of common life. We may judge what a power the naturalistic mode of acting had here to exert, since it was backed by no auxiliary illusion, but in every gesture had to set in closest neighbourhood to us the poet's marvellously true and yet so curiously uncommon figures, and make us believe in them to boot: here was need of the very highest dramatic pathos, if only to maintain our belief in the truthfulness of this playing, which would otherwise have proved quite laughable in situations of great tragic moment.

>>20269446
>In the evening a letter from Prof. Nietzsche, which pleases us, for his mood had given us cause for concern. Regarding this, R. says he fears that Schopenhauer's philosophy might in the long run be a bad influence on young people of this sort, because they apply his pessimism, which is a form of thinking, contemplation, to life itself, and derive from it an active form of hopelessness.

>>20249767
Now, nothing more perverse can be imagined, than the adoption by German writers of that attribute which makes the French such brilliant virtuosi on the ground of speech. The attempt to treat the German language as an instrument of virtuosity could only occur to those to whom the German tongue is truly alien, and who therefore twist it to improper uses. None of our great poets and sages can be rated as virtuosi of speech: every one of them was in the same position as Luther, who had to ransack every German dialect for his translation of the Bible, to find the word and turn to popularly express that New he had discovered in the sacred books' original text. For what distinguishes the German spirit from that of every other culture-folk is this, that its creative sons had first seen something ne'er yet uttered, before they fell a-writing,—which for them was but a necessary consequence of the prior inspiration. Thus each of our great poets and thinkers had to form his language for himself; an obligation to which the inventive Greeks themselves do not appear to have been submitted, since they had at command a language always spoken by the living mouth, and therefore pliant to each thought or feeling, but not an element corrupted by bad pensters. In a poem from Italy how Goethe bewailed his being doomed by birth to wield the German tongue, in which he must first invent for himself what the Italians and French, for instance, found ready to their hand. That under such hardships none but truly original minds have risen to production among ourselves, should teach us what we are, and at any rate that there is something peculiar about us Germans. But that knowledge will also teach us, that if virtuosity in any branch of art is the evidence of talent, this Talent is denied in toto to the Germans, at least in the branch of Literature: who toils to acquire a virtuosity in this, will stay a bungler; if, following the musical virtuoso who composes pieces of his own, he trumps up poetical sketches for setting off his fancied virtuosity, however, they will not even belong to the category of the Mediocre, but simply of the Bad, the wholly null.