/lit/ - Literature

>>23464595
>The path of Science lies from error to knowledge, from fancy ("Vorstellung") to reality, from Religion to Nature. In the beginning of Science, therefore, Man stands toward Life in the same relation as he stood towards the phenomena of Nature when he first commenced to part his life from hers. Science takes over the arbitrary concepts of the human brain, in their totality; while, by her side, Life follows in its totality the instinctive evolution of Necessity. Science thus bears the burden of the sins of Life, and expiates them by her own self−abrogation; she ends in her direct antithesis, in the knowledge of Nature, in the recognition of the unconscious, instinctive, and therefore real, inevitable, and physical. The character of Science is therefore finite: that of Life, unending; just as Error is of time, but Truth eternal. But that alone is true and living which is sentient, and hearkens to the terms of physicality (Sinnlichkeit). Error's crowning folly is the arrogance of Science in renouncing and contemning the world of sense (Sinnlichkeit); whereas the highest victory of Science is her self−accomplished crushing of this arrogance, in the acknowledgment of the teaching of the senses.
>The end of Science is the justifying of the Unconscious, the giving of self−consciousness to Life, the re−instatement of the Senses in their perceptive rights, the sinking of Caprice in the Want of Necessity. Science is therefore the vehicle of Knowledge, her procedure mediate, her goal an intermediation; but Life is the great Ultimate, a law unto itself. As Science melts away into the recognition of the ultimate and self−determinate reality, of actual Life itself: so does this avowal win its frankest, most direct expression in Art, or rather in the Work of Art.
>The actual Art−work, i.e. its immediate physical portrayal, in the moment of its liveliest embodiment, is therefore the only true redemption of the artist; the uprootal of the final trace of busy, purposed choice; the confident determination of what was hitherto a mere imagining; the enfranchisement of thought in sense; the assuagement of the life−need in Life itself.
>The Art−work, thus conceived as an immediate vital act, is therewith the perfect reconcilement of Science with Life, the laurel−wreath which the vanquished, redeemed by her defeat, reaches in joyous homage to her acknowledged victor.
- The Artwork of the Future

>>23408743
>He takes a bath, which refreshes him, and in our breakfast conversation we come via C. Frantz and his Schellingianism to Schopenhauer and his “Will.” Yesterday R. said that everything manifests itself as a hunger, a splendid name Schopenhauer gave to “something hollow and ungraspable.” Sad that so few are capable of accepting this doctrine; because it makes no concessions to politics, ignorant people believe that it inhibits activity. — The fact that human beings fashion laws in accordance with their understanding of things, that does not prove the validity of these laws, nor does it explain the things themselves; “Will” is an explanation.

>>23159244
>He takes a bath, which refreshes him, and in our breakfast conversation we come via C. Frantz and his Schellingianism to Schopenhauer and his “Will.” Yesterday R. said that everything manifests itself as a hunger, a splendid name Schopenhauer gave to “something hollow and ungraspable.” Sad that so few are capable of accepting this doctrine; because it makes no concessions to politics, ignorant people believe that it inhibits activity. — The fact that human beings fashion laws in accordance with their understanding of things, that does not prove the validity of these laws, nor does it explain the things themselves; “Will” is an explanation.

>R. talks once more about Schelling and C. Frantz, and when somebody mentions the former’s philosophy of mythology and recalls Creuzer, R. says: “All these people like Creuzer saw something, they made mistakes but they saw some thing. Their successors see nothing, just think they ought to say something, too.”
- Cosimas Diaries

>This brings me to the one aspect of your theory which causes me misgivings. You locate the realm of history in the sphere of man’s ‘free will’, whereas I can see the freedom of the will only in the act of denying the world, i.e. in the advent of the ‘kingdom of grace’. If the realm of history were to offer us anything other than the workings of an arbitrary despotism – which certainly does not mean freedom of the will, but rather the will’s subjection to blind self-interest –, it would be most surprising if, for ex., ideas like yours had no influence whatsoever on the course of history.
- Letter to Constantin Frantz

>>23158770
Richard Wagner.

>invents gesamtkunstwerk
>invents the concept of a tetralogy
>fought in the revolutions of 1848
>revolutionised all music after him
>creates his own festival

What is it about Wagner that causes such seething on this board? I really don't understand.

>>22999414
>The path of Science lies from error to knowledge, from fancy ("Vorstellung") to reality, from Religion to Nature. In the beginning of Science, therefore, Man stands toward Life in the same relation as he stood towards the phenomena of Nature when he first commenced to part his life from hers. Science takes over the arbitrary concepts of the human brain, in their totality; while, by her side, Life follows in its totality the instinctive evolution of Necessity. Science thus bears the burden of the sins of Life, and expiates them by her own self−abrogation; she ends in her direct antithesis, in the knowledge of Nature, in the recognition of the unconscious, instinctive, and therefore real, inevitable, and physical. The character of Science is therefore finite: that of Life, unending; just as Error is of time, but Truth eternal. But that alone is true and living which is sentient, and hearkens to the terms of physicality (Sinnlichkeit). Error's crowning folly is the arrogance of Science in renouncing and contemning the world of sense (Sinnlichkeit); whereas the highest victory of Science is her self−accomplished crushing of this arrogance, in the acknowledgment of the teaching of the senses.
>The end of Science is the justifying of the Unconscious, the giving of self−consciousness to Life, the re−instatement of the Senses in their perceptive rights, the sinking of Caprice in the Want of Necessity. Science is therefore the vehicle of Knowledge, her procedure mediate, her goal an intermediation; but Life is the great Ultimate, a law unto itself. As Science melts away into the recognition of the ultimate and self−determinate reality, of actual Life itself: so does this avowal win its frankest, most direct expression in Art, or rather in the Work of Art.
>The actual Art−work, i.e. its immediate physical portrayal, in the moment of its liveliest embodiment, is therefore the only true redemption of the artist; the uprootal of the final trace of busy, purposed choice; the confident determination of what was hitherto a mere imagining; the enfranchisement of thought in sense; the assuagement of the life−need in Life itself.
>The Art−work, thus conceived as an immediate vital act, is therewith the perfect reconcilement of Science with Life, the laurel−wreath which the vanquished, redeemed by her defeat, reaches in joyous homage to her acknowledged victor.
- The Artwork of the Future

>>22566469
>As instrument the French possess a language that seems purposely built for virtuosity, 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.

>>22565927
>In the evening we are visited by Dr. Rée, whose cold and precise character does not appeal to us; on closer inspection we come to the conclusion that he must be an Israelite.
>R. reads some of Nietzsche's latest book [Human, All Too Human] and is astonished by its pretentious ordinariness. "I can understand why [Paul] Rée's company is more congenial to him than mine." And when I remark that to judge by this book N.'s earlier ones were just reflections of something else, they did not come from within, he says, "And now they are Rée-flections!"

>>22456081
From Art and Revolution:

>Hand−in−hand with the dissolution of the Athenian State, marched the downfall of Tragedy. As the spirit of Community split itself along a thousand lines of egoistic cleavage, so was the great united work of Tragedy disintegrated into its individual factors. Above the ruins of tragic art was heard the cry of the mad laughter of Aristophanes, the maker of comedies; and, at the bitter end, every impulse of Art stood still before Philosophy, who read with gloomy mien her homilies upon the fleeting stay of human strength and beauty.

>To Philosophy and not to Art, belong the two thousand years which, since the decadence of Grecian Tragedy, have passed till our own day. In vain did Art send hither and thither her dazzling beams into the night of discontented thought, of mankind grovelling in its madness; they were but the cries, of pain or joy, of the units who had escaped from the desert of the multitude, and, like fortunate wanderers from distant lands, had reached the hidden, bubbling spring of pure Castalian waters, at which they slaked their thirsty lips but dared not reach the quickening draught unto the world. Or else it was, that Art entered on the service of one or other of those abstract ideas or even conventions which, now lighter and now more heavily, weighed down a suffering humanity and cast in fetters the freedom both of individuals and communities. But never more was she the free expression of a free community. Yet true Art is highest freedom, and only the highest freedom can bring her forth from out itself; no commandment, no ordinance, in short, no aim apart from Art, can call her to arise.

>The free Greek, who set himself upon the pinnacle of Nature, could procreate Art from very joy in manhood: the Christian, who impartially cast aside both Nature and himself; could only sacrifice to his God on the altar of renunciation; he durst not bring his actions or his work as offering, but believed that he must seek His favour by abstinence from all self−prompted venture. Art is the highest expression of activity of a race that has developed its physical beauty in unison with itself and Nature; and man must reap the highest joy from the world of sense, before he can mould therefrom the implements of his art; for from the world of sense alone, can he derive so much as the impulse to artistic creation. The Christian, on the contrary, if he fain would create an art−work that should correspond to his belief; must derive his impulse from the essence of abstract spirit (Geist), from the grace of God, and therein find his tools. What, then, could he take for aim? Surely not physical beauty, mirrored in his eyes as an incarnation of the devil? And how could pure spirit, at any time, give birth to a something that could be cognised by the senses?

>>22098760
Wagner predicted Hitler. From his article Shall We Hope?:

>On the other hand what must be will shew itself when everybody must-s for once; though, to be sure, it then will appear as an outward obligation, whereas the inner Must can only dawn on a very great mind and sympathetically productive heart, such as our world brings forth no longer. Under the spur of this fully conscious inner Must, a man so equipped would gain a power no so-called Free-will—no choice of Free-trade or Protection, let us say—could possibly withstand. This, however, is the wondrous plight into which the German Folk has fallen: whilst the Frenchman and the Englishman know quite by instinct what they will, the German doesn't, and lets himself be managed as "one" wills.

>Beside the polish of these latinised nations of Europe, and suffering under the un-German-ness of all his higher social system (Lebensverfassung), is the German already tottering to his fall; or dwells there in him still a faculty of infinite importance for the redemption of Nature, but therefore only cultivable by endless patience, and ripening toward full consciousness amid most wearisome delays—a faculty whose full development might recompense a new and broader world for the fall of this old world that overshadows us to-day?

>>21854110
>From the moment when Man perceived the difference between himself and Nature, and thus commenced his own development as man, by breaking loose from the unconsciousness of natural animal life and passing over into conscious life, when he thus looked Nature in the face and from the first feelings of his dependence on her, thereby aroused, evolved the faculty of Thought, from that moment did Error begin, as the earliest utterance of consciousness.

>The path of Science lies from error to knowledge, from fancy ("Vorstellung") to reality, from Religion to Nature. In the beginning of Science, therefore, Man stands toward Life in the same relation as he stood towards the phenomena of Nature when he first commenced to part his life from hers. Science takes over the arbitrary concepts of the human brain, in their totality; while, by her side, Life follows in its totality the instinctive evolution of Necessity. Science thus bears the burden of the sins of Life, and expiates them by her own self−abrogation; she ends in her direct antithesis, in the knowledge of Nature, in the recognition of the unconscious, instinctive, and therefore real, inevitable, and physical. The character of Science is therefore finite: that of Life, unending; just as Error is of time, but Truth eternal. But that alone is true and living which is sentient, and hearkens to the terms of physicality (Sinnlichkeit). Error's crowning folly is the arrogance of Science in renouncing and contemning the world of sense (Sinnlichkeit); whereas the highest victory of Science is her self−accomplished crushing of this arrogance, in the acknowledgment of the teaching of the senses.

>The end of Science is the justifying of the Unconscious, the giving of self−consciousness to Life, the re−instatement of the Senses in their perceptive rights, the sinking of Caprice in the Want ("Wollen" ) of Necessity. Science is therefore the vehicle of Knowledge, her procedure mediate, her goal an intermediation; but Life is the great Ultimate, a law unto itself. As Science melts away into the recognition of the ultimate and self−determinate reality, of actual Life itself: so does this avowal win its frankest, most direct expression in Art, or rather in the Work of Art.

>The actual Art−work, i.e. its immediate physical portrayal, in the moment of its liveliest embodiment, is therefore the only true redemption of the artist; the uprootal of the final trace of busy, purposed choice; the confident determination of what was hitherto a mere imagining; the enfranchisement of thought in sense; the assuagement of the life−need in Life itself.

>The Art−work, thus conceived as an immediate vital act, is therewith the perfect reconcilement of Science with Life, the laurel−wreath which the vanquished, redeemed by her defeat, reaches in joyous homage to her acknowledged victor.

>>21818363
Wagner. If you want a qrd read his Beethoven essay, but that's just one side of his thought, the musical. Basically classical music is innately reactionary.

Is Wagner the founding father of biological antisemitism?

>>21747816
>In the evening we are visited by Dr. Rée, whose cold and precise character does not appeal to us; on closer inspection we come to the conclusion that he must be an Israelite.
(11-01-76)
>At noon arrival of a new book [Human, All Too Human] by friend Nietzsche—feelings of apprehension after a short glance through it; R. feels he would be doing the author a favor, for which the latter would one day thank him, if he did not read it. It seems to me to contain much inner rage and sullenness, and R. laughs heartily when I say that Voltaire, here so acclaimed [Nietzsche dedicated Human, All Too Human to Voltaire], would less than any other man have understood The Birth of Tragedy.
(04-25-78)
>Firm resolve not to read friend Nietzsche's book [Human, All Too Human], which seems at first glance to be strangely perverse.
(04-27-78)
>We find it hard not to speak now and again about friend N.'s sad book [Human, All Too Human], although both of us can only surmise its contents from a few passages, rather than really know it!
(04-29-78)
>N.'s pitiful book [Human, All Too Human] makes [R.] exclaim to me, "We shall remain true to each other."
(04-30-78)
>R. has written to Prof. Overbeck, thanking him for his nice letter; in it he mentions N. and says meaningfully that he hopes Nietzsche will one day thank him for not having read his book [Human, All Too Human].
(05-23-78)
>R. wanted to amuse himself by sending Prof. Nietzsche a telegram of congratulations on Voltaire's birthday [Nietzsche dedicated Human, All Too Human to Voltaire], but I advise him against it and recommend silence here, as in many other things.
(05-28-78)
>Over coffee he [R.] comes back to Prof. Nietzsche and his book [Human, All Too Human], which seems to him so insignificant, whereas the feelings which gave rise to it are so evil.
(05-30-78)
>R. reads some of Nietzsche's latest book [Human, All Too Human] and is astonished by its pretentious ordinariness. "I can understand why [Paul] Rée's company is more congenial to him than mine." And when I remark that to judge by this book N.'s earlier ones were just reflections of something else, they did not come from within, he says, "And now they are Rée-flections!"
(06-24-78)
>R. had a good night; he goes for a walk in the palace gardens with children and dogs and then takes a rest with Prof. Nietzsche's book [Human, All Too Human], the trivial contents of which thoroughly disgust him.
(06-25-78)
>[R.] continues reading Prof. N.['s book Human, All Too Human].
(06-26-78)
>N.'s book [Human, All Too Human] provokes R. into saying playfully, "Oh, art and religion are just what is left in human beings of the monkey's tail, the remains of an ancient culture!"
(06-27-78)

>>21636249
>Even our complex Civilisation cannot succeed in veiling our utterly unchristian origin; and if the Gospel, to which we nevertheless are sworn in tenderest youth, cannot be summoned to explain, to say nothing of justifying it,—we can only recognise our present state as a triumph of the foes of the Christian faith.
>Whoever has made this clear to himself, will have no difficulty in discovering why an equal and ever deeper decline is manifest in the sphere of mental culture: violence may civilise, but Culture must sprout from the soil of peace, as it draws its very name from tillage of the fields. From this soil alone, belonging only to the busily creative Folk, have sprung in every age all knowledge, sciences and arts, nursed by religions in harmony with the people's spirit for the time being.

>It hitherto has been a commonplace of heartless and thoughtless minds alike, that so soon as the human race were freed from the common sufferings of a sinful life, its state would be one of dull indifference, (allusion to Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human)—whereon it is to be remarked that they consider a mere freedom from the very lowest troubles of the Will as lending life its varied charm, whilst the labours of great thinkers, poets and seers, they have always densely set aside. We, on the contrary, have learnt that the life essential to us in the future can only be freed from those cares and sufferings by a conscious impulse, whereto the fearful riddle of the world is ever present.

>>21523819
>In the evening we are visited by Dr. Rée, whose cold and precise character does not appeal to us; on closer inspection we come to the conclusion that he must be an Israelite.
>R. reads some of Nietzsche's latest book [Human, All Too Human] and is astonished by its pretentious ordinariness. "I can understand why [Paul] Rée's company is more congenial to him than mine." And when I remark that to judge by this book N.'s earlier ones were just reflections of something else, they did not come from within, he says, "And now they are Rée-flections!"

>>21461289
>A remarkable individuality the polygamous can not beget save under influence of the ideal canon of Monogamy; a force which sometimes exerts its power, through passionate affection and love's loyalty, in the very harems of the Orientals. It is here that the Woman herself is raised above the natural law of sex (das natürliche Gattungsgesetz), to which, in the belief of even the wisest lawgivers, she remained so bound that the Buddha himself thought needful to exclude her from the possibility of saint-hood.

What does the ring represent? Money? Technology? Or is it just a magic ring?

>>21412091
>destroys Nietzsche with his own logic

'Then R. comes back to Nietzsche, observes that the one photograph is enough to show what a fop he is, [Probably referring to a photograph of Nietzsche (wearing a fur coat, hat, scarf, and gloves) that Nietzsche sent to Cosima ca. End March 1871. The fur coat was borrowed from Franz Overbeck. Read Cosima's 1871 reply, criticizing Nietzsche's pose in the photograph.] and declares him to be a complete nonentity, a true example of inability to see. [....] [Hermann] Levi tells us that Nietzsche recommended to him a "young Mozart," [Heinrich Köselitz, a/k/a Peter Gast (1854-1918)] actually a thoroughly incompetent musician! This gives us food for thought! R. says to me eventually that Nietzsche has no ideas of his own, no blood of his own, it is all foreign blood which has been poured into him.'