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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Why I am so clever one? Why do I know
more things than other people? Why in fact am I
so clever? I have never pondered over questions that are
not questions. I have never squandered my strength of actual
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religious difficulties. For instance, I have no experience. I have
never known what it is to feel sinful. In the
same way, I completely lack any reliable criterion for ascertaining
what constitutes a brick of conscience. From all accounts, a
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brick of conscience does not seem to be a very
estimable thing once it was done. I should hate to
leave an action of mine in the lurch. I should
prefer completely to omit the evil outcome, the consequences from
the problem concerning the value of an action. In the
(01:04):
face of evil consequences, one is too ready to lose
the proper standpoint from which one's deeds ought to be considered.
A brick of conscience strikes me as a sort of
evil eye. Something that has failed should be honored all
the more jealously, precisely because it has failed. This is
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much more in keeping with my morality God, the immorality
of the soul salvation, a beyond to all these notions,
even as a child, I never paid any attention whatsoever,
nor did I waste any time upon them. Maybe I
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was never naive enough for that. I am quite unacquainted
with atheism as a result, and still less an event
in my life. In me, it is inborn instinctive. I
am too inquisitive, too incredulous, too high spirited to be
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satisfied with such a palpably clumsy solution of things. God
is a too palpably clumsy solution of things, a solution
which shows a lack of delicacy towards us thinkers. At bottom,
he is really no more than a coarse and root
prohibition of us. Ye shall not think I am much
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more interested in another question, a question upon which the
salvation of humanity depends to a far greater degree than
it does upon any piece of theological curiosity. I refer
to nutrition. For ordinary purposes. It may be formulated as follows,
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how precisely must thou feed thyself in order to attain
to thy maximum power or virtue in the Renaissance style,
a virtue free from moralic acid. My experiences in regard
to this matter have been as bad as they possibly
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could be. I am surprised that I said myself this
question so late in life, and that it took me
so long to draw rational conclusions from my experiences. Only
the absolute worthlessness of German culture its idealism, can to
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some extent explain how it was that precisely in this
matter I was so backward that my ignorance was almost saintly.
This culture, which from first to last teaches one to
lose sight of actual things and to hunt after thoroughly
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problematic and so called ideal aims, as for instance, classical culture,
as if it were not hopeless from the start. To
try to unite classical and German in one concept it
is even a little comical. Try and imagine a classically
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cultured citizen of Leipzig. Indeed, I can say, up to
a very mature age, my food was entirely bad. Expressed morally,
it was impersonal, selfless, altruistic to the glory of cooks
and all other fellow Christians. It was though the cooking
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in vogue at Leipzig, for instance, together with my first
study of Schopenhauer eighteen sixty five, that I earnestly renounced
my will to live to spoil one's stomach by absorbing
insufficient nourishment. This problem seemed to my mind solved with
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admirable felicity by the above mentioned cookery. It is said
that in the year eighteen sixty six changes were introduced
into this department. But as to German cookery in general,
what has it not got on its conscience? Soup before
the meal still called a la tedesca in the Venetian
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cookery books of the sixteenth century, meat boiled to shreds,
vegetables cooked with fat and flour, the degeneration of pastries
into paperweights, and if you add thereto the absolutely bestial,
post prandile drinking habits of the ancients are not alone
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of the ancient Germans, you will understand where German intellect
took its origin. That is to say, in sadly disordered intestines,
a German intellect is indigestion. It can assimilate nothing but
even English diet, which, in comparison with German and indeed
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with French elementation, seems to me to constitute a return
to nature, that is to say, to cannibalism, is profoundly
opposed to my own instincts. It seems to me to
give the intellect heavy feet, in fact, englishwoman's feet. The
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best cooking is that of Piedmont. Alcoholic drinks do not
agree with me. A single glass of wine or beer
a day is amply sufficient to turn life into a
valley of tears. For me, in Munich lived my antipods.
Although I admit that this knowledge came to me somewhat late,
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it already formed part of my experience even as a child.
As a boy, I believed that the drinking of wine
and the smoking of tobacco were, at first but the
vanities of youth, and later merely bad habits. Maybe the
poor wine of Numburg was partly responsible for this poor
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opinion of wine in general. In order to believe that
wine was exhilarating, I should have to have been a Christian.
In other words, I should have had to believe in what,
to my mind is an absurdity, strange to say. Whereas
small quantities of alcohol, taking with plenty of water, succeeded
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in making me feel out of sorts, large quantities turned
me almost into a rollicking tar even as a boy.
I showed my bravado in this respect to compose a
long Latin essay in one night to revise and recopy it,
to a spy with my pen, to emulating the exactitude
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and the terseness of my model Cellust, and to pour
a few very strong grogs over it. All. This mode
of procedure, while I was a pupil at the venerable
old School of Forta, was not in the least out
of keeping with my physiology, nor perhaps with that of Sallust,
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however much it may have seemed alien to dignified Perforta.
Later on, towards the middle of my life, I grew
more and more opposed to alcoholic drinks. I an opponent
of vegetarianism, who have experienced what vegetarianism is, just as Wagner,
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who could inverted me back to meet experienced it, cannot,
with sufficient earnestness advise all more spiritual natures to abstain
absolutely from alcohol. Water answers the purpose. I have a
predilection in favor of those places where in all directions
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one has opportunities of drinking from running Brooks, Niece, Turin Sills,
in vino veritas. It seems that here once more I
am at variance with the rest of the world about
the concept truth with me spirit moves on the face
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of the waters. Here are a few more indications as
to my morality. A heavy meal is digested more easily
than an inadequate one. The first principle of a good
digestion is that the his stomach should become active as
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a whole. A man ought therefore to know the size
of his stomach. For the same reasons, all those interminable meals,
which I call interrupted sacrificial feasts, and which are to
be had at any tabla de hute, are strongly to
be depreciated. Nothing should be eaten between meals. Coffee should
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be given up. Coffee makes one gloomy. Tea is beneficial
only in the morning. It should be taken in small quantities,
but very strong. It may be very harmful and interspose
you for the whole day if it is taken for
the least bit too weak. Everybody has his own standard
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in this matter, often between the narrowest and most delicate limits.
In an inerviating climate, tea d is not a good
beverage with which to start the day. An hour before
taking it, an excellent thing is to drink a cup
of thick cocoa freed from oil remain seated as little
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as possible. Put no trust in any thought that is
not borne in the open to the accompaniment of free
bodily motion, nor in one in which even the muscles
do not celebrate a feast. All prejudices take their origin
in the intestines. A sedentary life, as I have already said, elsewhere,
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is the real sin against the Holy Spirit. Two to
the question of nutrition, that of locality and climate is
next of kin. Nobody is so constituted as to be
able to live everywhere and anywhere, And he who has
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greatest duties to perform, which lay claim to all his strength,
has in this respect a very limited choice. The influence
of climate upon the bodily functions, affecting their acceleration or retardation,
extends so far that a blunder in the choice of
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locality and climate is able not only to alienate a
man from his actual duty, but also to withhold it
from him altogether, so that he never even comes face
to face with it. Animal vigor never acquires enough strength
in him in order to reach that pitch of artistic
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freedom which makes his own soul whisper to him. I
alone can do that. Ever so slight, a tendency to
laziness in the intestines. Once it has become a habit
is quite sufficient to make something mediocre, something German, out
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of a genius. The climate of Germany alone is enough
to discourage the strongest and most heroically disposed intestines. The
temper of the body's functions is closely bound up with
the agility or the clumsiness of the spirit's feet. Spirit
itself is indeed only a form of these organic functions.
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Let anybody make a list of the places in which
men of great intellect have been found and are still found.
Where wit, subtlety, and malice constitute happiness, where genius is
almost necessarily at home. All of them rejoice in exceptionally
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dry air. Paris, Provence, Florence, Jerusalem, Athyn. These names prove something, namely,
that genius is conditioned by dry air, by a pure sky,
that is to say, by rapid organic functions, by the
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constant and ever present possibility of procuring for on self
great and even enormous quantities of strength. I have a
certain case in mind in which a man of remarkable
intellect and independent spirit became a narrow, craven specialist and
a grumpy old crank simply owing to a lack of
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subtlety in his instincts for climate, and I myself might
have been an example of the same thing if illness
had not compelled me to reason and to reflect upon
reason realistically. Now that I have learned, through long practice
to read the effects of climate and meteor prological influences
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from my own body as though from a very delicate
and reliable instrument, and that I am able to calculate
the change in degrees of atmospheric moisture by means of
physiological observations upon myself, even on so short a journey
as that from Turin to Milan, I think with horror
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of the ghastly fact that my whole life, until the
last ten years, the most perilous years, has always been
spent in the wrong and what to me ought to
have been the most forbidden places Naumburg, Forta, Turingia in general, Leipzig, bala, Venice,
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so many ill starred places for a constitution like mine.
If I cannot recall one single happy reminiscence of my
my childhood and youth, it is nonsense to suppose that
so called moral causes could account for this, as for instance,
the incontestible fact that I lacked companions that could have
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satisfied me. For this fact is the same today as
ever it was, and it does not prevent me from
being cheerful and brave. But it was ignorance in physiological
matters that confounded idealism that was the real curse on
my life. This was the superfluous and foolish element in
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my existence, something from which nothing could spring, and for
which there can be no settlement and no compensation. As
the outcome of this idealism, I regard all the blunders,
the great aberrations of instinct, the modern spaceecialization which drew
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me aside from the task of my life, as for instance,
the fact that I became a philologist, why not at
least a medical man, or anything else which might have
opened my eyes. My days at Balah, the whole of
my intellectual routine, including my daily time table, was an
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absolutely senseless abuse of extraordinary powers, without the slightest compensation
for the strength that I spent without even a thought
of what I was squandering and how its place might
be filled. I lacked all subtlety in egotism, all the
fostering care of an imperative instinct. I was in a
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state in which one is ready to regard one's self
as anybody's equal, a state of disinterestedness, a forgetting of
one's distance from others, something in short, for which I
can never forgive myself. When I had well nigh reached
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the end of my tether, simply because I had almost
reached my end, I began to reflect upon the fundamental
absurdity of my life idealism. It was illness that first
brought me to reason three. After the choice of nutrition,
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the choice of climate and locality. For the third matter
concerning which one must not, on any account make a
blunder is the choice of the manner in which one
recuperates one's strength. Here, again, according to the extent to
which the spirit is sui generis, the limits of which
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he can allow himself. In other words, the limits of
that which is official to him become more and more
confined as far as I in particular am concerned. Reading
in general belongs to my means of recuperation. Consequently, it
belongs to that which rids me of myself, to that
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which enables me to wander in strange sciences and strange
souls to that in fact, about which I am no
longer in earnest. Indeed, it is while reading that I
recovered from my earnestness. During the time that I am
deeply absorbed in my work, no books are found within
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my reach. It would never occur to me to allow
anyone to speak or even think in my presence, for
that is what reading would mean. Has anyone ever actually
noticed that, during the period of profound tension, to which
the state of pre condemns not only the mind, but also,
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at bottom the whole organism, accident and every kind of
external stimulus acts too acutely and strikes too deep accident
an external stimuli must as far as possible, be avoided.
A sort of walling of one's self in is one
of the primary instinctive precautions of spiritual pregnancy. Shall I
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allow a strange thought to steal secretly over the wall,
For that is what reading would mean. The periods of
work and fruitfulness are followed by periods of recuperation. Come hither, ye, delightful, intellectual,
intelligent books. Shall I read German books? I must go
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back six months to catch myself with a book in
my hand. What was it? An excellent study by Victor
Brouschard upon the Greek skeptics, in which my la Tertiana
was used to advantage translator's footnote. Nietzsche, as is well known,
devoted much time, when a student at Leipzig, to the
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study of three Greek philosophers, Theogenis, Diogenes, Laertius and Democritus.
This study first bore fruit in the case of a
paper Zurgeschichte der tiordignier shin Spruchschmlog, which was subsequently published
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by the most influential journal of classical philology in Germany. Later, however,
it enabled Nietzsche to enter for the prize offered by
the University of Leipzig for an essay De Fontibus Dionigius Leerti.
He was successful in gaining the prize, and the treatise
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was afterwards published in the Raneschez Museum and is still
quoted as an authority. It is to this essay, written
when he was twenty three years of age, that he
here refers and translator's note. The skeptics the only honorable
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types among that double faced and sometimes sequintable faced throng.
The philosophers. Otherwise, I almost always take refuge in the
same books. Altogether. The number is small. They are books
which are precisely my proper fare. It is not perhaps
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in my nature to read much and of all sorts
a library makes me ill. Neither is it my nature
to love much or many kinds of things. Suspicion or
even hostility towards new books is much more akin to
my instinctive feeling then toleration, lager de cerres and other
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forms of neighbor love. It is to a small number
of old French authors that I always return again and again.
I believe only in French culture, and regard everything else
in Europe which calls itself culture as a misunderstanding. I
do not even take the German kind into consideration. The
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few instances of higher culture with which I have met
in Germany were all French in their origin. The most
striking example of this was Madame Cosima Wagner, by far
the most decisive voice in matters of taste that I
have ever heard. If I do not read, but literally
love Pascal as the most instinctive sacrifice to Christianity, killing
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himself inch by inch, first bodily, then spiritually according to
the terrible consistency of this most appalling of inhuman cruelty.
If I have something of Montaigneur's mischievousness in my soul,
and who knows, perhaps also in my body, if my
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artist's tastes endeavor to defend the name of Molieri, Coronelli
and Rancceine, and not without bitterness against such a wild
genius as Shakespeare, all this does not prevent me from
regarding even the latter day Frenchmen also as charming companions.
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I can think of absolutely no century in history in
which are net full of more inquisitive and at the
same time more subtle psychologists could be drawn up together
than in Paris of the present day. Let me mention
a few at random, for the number is by no
means small. Paul Borges, Pierre L'tti, hip Mail, hack Anatole France,
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Jule la Match, or to point to one of strong race,
a genuine Latin, of whom I am particularly fond guide
to Mount Passant between ourselves, I preferred this generation even
to its masters, all of whom were corrupted by German philosophy,
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obtained for instance by Hegel, who he has to thank
for his misunderstanding of great men and great periods. Wherever
Germany extends her sway, she ruins culture. It was the
war which first saved the spirit of France. Stendhaul is
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one of the happiest accidents of my life. For everything
that marks an epoch in it has been brought to
me by accident, and never by means of a recommendation.
He is quite priceless with his psychologist's arm, quick at
forestalling and anticipating, with his grasp of facts, which is
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reminiscent of the same art in the greatest of all
masters of fact Exon guid Napoliemne. And last but not least,
as an honest atheist, a specimen which is both rare
and difficult to discover in France. All honor to prosper
marry me. Maybe I am even envious of Standal. He
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robbed me of the best atheistic joke which I, of
all people, could have perpetrated. God's only excuse is that
he does not exist. I myself have said somewhere, what
has been the greatest rejection to life? Hitherto God? Four?
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It was Heinrich Heine who gave me the most perfect
idea of what a lyrical poet could be in vain do.
I searched through all the kingdoms of antiquity or of
modern times for anything to resemble his sweet and passionate music.
He possessed that divine wickedness without which perfection itself becomes
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unthinkable to me. I estimate the value of men of
races according to the extent to which they are unable
to conceive of a God who has not a dash
of the satir in him, and with what mastery he
wields his native tongue. One day it will be said
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of hine and me that we were by far the
greatest artists of the German language that have ever existed,
and that we left all the efforts that mere Germans
made in this language and in chalm curable distance behind us.
I must be profoundly related to Byron's Manfried. Of all
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the dark abysses in this work, I found the counterparts
in my own soul. At the age of thirteen, I
was ripe for this book. Words fail me. I have
only a look for those who dare to utter the
name of Faust. In the presence of Manfried. The Germans
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are incapable of conceiving anything sublime. For the proof of this,
look at Schumann. Out of anger, for this mawkish Saxon,
I once deliberately composed a counter overture to Manfred, of
which Hans von Bullau declared he had never seen the
like before on paper. Such compositions amounted to a violation
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of uturp. When I cast about me for my highest
formula of Shakespeare, I can invariably find but this one
that he conceived the type of Caesar. Such things a
man cannot guess. Either he is a thing or he
is not. The great poet draws his creations only from
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out of his own reality. This is so to such
an extent that often, after a lapse of time, he
can no longer endure his own work. After casting a
glance between the pages of my Zarathustra, I pace my
room to and fro for half an hour at a time,
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unable to overcome an insufferable fit of tears. I know
of no more heart rending reading than Shakespeare. How a
man must have suffered to be so much in need
of playing the clown? Is Hamlet understood? It is not
doubt but certitude that drives one mad, But In order
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to feel this, one must be profound, one must be
an abyss and philosopher. We all fear the truth and
to make a confession. I feel instinctively certain and convinced
that Lord Bacon is the originator the self torture of
this most sinister kind of literature. What do I care
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about the miserable gabble of American moddlers and blockheads. But
the power for the greatest realism in vision is not
only compatible with the greatest realism indeeds with a monstrous
indeeds with crime, it actually presupposes the latter. We do
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not know half enough about Lord Bacon, the first realist
in all the highest acceptation of this word. To be
sure of everything he did, everything he willed, and everything
he experienced in his inmost soul. Let the critics go
to hell. Suppose I had christened my Zarathustra with a
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name not my own. Let us say, with Richard Wagner's name.
The acumen of two thousand years would not have sufficed
to guess that the author of human all to human
was the visionary of Zarathustra. Five. As I am here
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speaking of the recreations of my life, I feel I
must express a word or two of gratitude for that
which has refreshed me by far the most heartily and
most profoundly. This, without the slightest doubt, was my intimate
relationship with Richard Wagner. All my other relationships with men
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I treat quite lightly. But I would not have the
day I spent at Tribushen, those days of confidence, of cheerfulness,
of sublime flashes, and of profound moments blotted from my
life at any price. I know not what Wagner may
have been for others, but no cloud ever darkened hour sky,
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and this brings me back again to France. I have
no arguments against Wagnerites and hoc genus omni who believe
that they do honor to Wagner by believing him to
be like themselves. For such people I have only a
contemptuous curl of my lip, with a nature like mine
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which is so strange to everything Teutonic that even the
presence of a German retards my digestion. My first meeting
with Wagner was the first moment in my life in
which I breathed freely. I felt him. I honored him
as a foreigner, as the opposite and the incarnate contradiction
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of all German virtues. We who as children breathed the
marshy atmosphere of the fifties unnecessarily pessimists in regard to
the concept German. We cannot be anything else than revolutionariests.
We can assent to no state of affairs which allows
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the canting bigot to be at the top. I care
not a jot where this canting bigot acts in different
colours today, whether he dresses in scarlet or dons a
uniform of a Husser translator's footnote, the favorite uniform of
the German Emperor William the second, and translator's note very well.
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Then Wagner was a revolutionary. He fled from the Germans
as an artist. A man has no home in you
use Europe, save in Paris. That subtlety of all the
five senses which Wagner's art presupposes, those fingers that can
detect slight gradations, psychological morbidities, all these things can only
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be found in Paris. Nowhere else can you meet with
this passion for questions of form, this earnestness in matters
of mis as sen which is the Parisian earnestness par
excellence in Germany. No one has any idea of the
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tremendous ambition that fills the heart of a Parisian artist.
The German is a good fellow. Wagner was by no
means a good fellow. But I have already said quite
enough on the subject of Wagner's real nature see Beyond
Good and Evil Aphorism two six'. Nine and about those
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to whom he is most closely. Related he is one
of the Late French, romanticists that, high soaring and heaven
aspiring band of artists Like delacroix And, BerliOS who in
their inmost natures are sick and, incurable and who are
all fanatics of expression and virtuosos through and, Through who
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in sooth was the first intelligent follower Of, Wagner Charles,
baudelaire the very man who first understood De, lacroix that
typical decadence in whom a whole generation of artists saw their.
Reflection he was perhaps the last of them. Two what
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is it THAT i have never Forgiven wagner the fact
that he condescended to The, germans that he became A german,
imperialist Wherever germany, spreads she ruins the. Culture Six taking
everything into, CONSIDERATION i could never have survived my youth
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Without wagnerian, music FOR i was condemned to the society Of.
Germans if a man wished to get rid of a
feeling of insufferable, oppression he has to take To. Hashish,
WELL i had to take To. Wagner wagner is the
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counter poison to everything Essentially. German the fact that he
is a poison, TOO i do not deny from the
moment That tristan was arranged for the, piano all honor to,
You hair Von. BULOW i was A. Wagnerite wagner's previous
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works seemed beneath. Me they were too, commonplace Too. German
but to this DAY i am still seeking for a
work which would be a match To tristan in dangerous
fascination and possess the same gruesome and dulce at quality of.
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INFINITY i. Seek among all the arts In, vain all
the quaint features Of leonardo Da vinci's work lose their
charm at the sound of the first. Bar In, tristan
this work, is without Question wagner's nunplus ultra after its.
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Creation the composition of the Master singers and of The
ring was a relaxation to him to become more. Healthy,
this in a nature Like, wagner's amounts to going. Backwards
the curiosity of the psychologist is so great in me
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THAT i regard it as quite a special privilege to
have lived at the right, time and to have lived
precisely Among. Germans in order to be ripe for this,
work the world must indeed be empty for him who
has never been unhealthy enough for this infernal. Voluptuousness it is,
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allowable it is even imperative to employ a mystic formula
for this. PURPOSE i SUPPOSE i know better than any
one the prodigious feats of Which wagner was, capable the
fifty worlds of strange exstasies to which no one else
had wings to. Soar and AS i am alive to
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day and strong enough to turn even the most suspicious
and most dangerous things to my own, advantage and thus
to grow, STRONGER i Declare wagner to have been the
greatest benefactor of my. Life the bond which unites us
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is the fact that we have suffered greater agony even
at each other's hands than most men are able to bear,
nowadays and this will always keep our names associated in
the minds of. Men. Four just As wagner is merely
a misunderstanding Among, germans so in truth AM i and
(39:27):
ever will. Be ye lack two centuries of psychological and artistic,
discipline my dear, countrymen but ye can never recover the time.
Lost seven to the most exceptional of my, READERS i
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should like to say just one word about WHAT i
really exact from. Music it must be cheerful and yet,
profound like An october afternoon. Noon it must be, original
exuberant and, tender and like a dainty soft woman in
(40:08):
roguishness and. GRACE i shall never admit that A german
can understand what music. Is those musicians who are Called,
german the greatest and most famous, foremost are all, foreigners Either, Slavs, Croats,
(40:29):
italians Dutch men Or jews or Else Like Heinrich, Schultz
bark And, handle they Are germans of a strong race
which is now. Extinct for my own, PART i have
still enough of the pole left in me to let
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all other music. Go if ONLY i can Keep. Chopan
for three, REASONS i would Accept wagner's seagfree to, eat
and perhaps also one or two things Of, liszts who
excelled all other musicians in the noble tone of his.
Orchestration and finally everything that has been produced beyond The
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alps this side of The. Alps translator's. Note in the
later years of his, Life nietzsche practically Made italy his.
Home and translator's, NOTE i could not possibly dispense With
rossini as still less with my southern soul in, music
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the work of My venetian Maestro Pietro. Gasti and WHEN
i say beyond The, alps ALL i really mean Is.
Venice IF i try to find a new word for,
MUSIC i can never find any other Than. VENICE i
know not how to draw any distinction between and. MUSIC
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i do not know how to think either of joy
or of The south without a shudder of. Fear on
the BRIDGE i stood lately in gloomy, night came a
distant song in golden. Drops it rolled over the glittering
rim away, music, gondolas lights drunk swam far forth in the.
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GLOOM a stringed instrument my soul sang imperceptibly MOVED a gondola,
song by, stealth gleaming for gaudy, blessedness hearkened any there. Too.
Eight in all these, things in the choice of, food, place,
(42:54):
climate and, recreation the instinct of self preservation is, dominant
and this instinct manifests itself with the least ambiguity when
it acts as an instinct of defense to close one's
eyes to, much to seal one's ears to, much to
(43:14):
keep certain things at a. Distance this is the first
principle of, prudence the first proof of the fact that
a man is not an accident but a. Necessity the
popular word for this instinct of defense is. TASTE a
man's imperative command is not only to say no in
(43:38):
cases where yes would be a sign of, disinterestedness but
also to say no as seldom as. Possible one must
part with all that which compels one to repeat no
with ever greater. Frequency the rationale of this principle is
(43:59):
that all discharges of defensive, forces however slight they may,
be involve enormous and absolutely superfluous losses when they become
regular and. Habitual our greatest expenditure of strength is made
up of those small and most frequent discharges of. It
(44:21):
the act of keeping things, off of holding them at a,
distance amounts to a discharge of. Strength do not deceive
yourselves on this, point and an expenditure of energy directed
at purely negative. Ends simply by being compelled to keep
constantly on his, guard a man may grow so weak
(44:44):
as to be unable any longer to defend. Himself SUPPOSE
i were to step out of my, house and instead
of the quiet and aristocratic city Of, TURIN i was
to find A german provincial. Town my instinct would have
to brace itself together in order to repel all that
(45:04):
which would pour in upon it from this crushed down
and cowardly. World or SUPPOSE i was to find a
Large german, city that structure of vice in which nothing,
grows but where every single, thing whether good or, bad
is squeezed in from. Outside in such, circumstances SHOULD i
(45:30):
not be compelled to become a. Hedgehog but to have
prickles amounts to a squandering of. Strength they even constitute
a twofold, luxury when if only we choose to do,
so we could dispense with them and open our hands.
Instead another form of prudence and self defense consists in
(45:57):
trying to react as seldom as, possible and to keep
one's self aloof from those circumstances and conditions wherein one
would be, condemned as it, were to suspend one's liberty
and one's initiative and become a mere reacting. Medium as
an example of, THIS i pointed the intercourse with. Books the,
(46:22):
scholar who in sooth does little else than handle books
with the philologist of average, attainments the number may amount
to two hundred a, day ultimately forgets entirely and completely
the capacity of thinking for. Himself when he has not
(46:42):
a book between his, fingers he cannot. Think when he,
thinks he responds to a stimulus a thought he has. Read,
finally all he does is to. React the scholar exhausts
his whole strength in saying either yes or or no
to matter which has already been thought, out or in criticizing.
(47:05):
It he is no longer capable of thought on his own.
Account in, him the instinct of self defense has, Decayed
otherwise he would defend himself against. Books the scholar is a.
Decadent with my own EYES i have seen, gifted richly
endowed and free spirited natures already read to ruins at
(47:30):
thirty and mere wax vestas that have to be rubbed
before they can give off any sparks or. Thoughts two
set too early in the, morning at the break of,
day in all the fullness and dawn of one's, strength
and to read a. Book THIS i call positively. Vicious.
(47:56):
Nine at this POINT i can no longer evade a
direct answer to the question how one becomes what one?
Is and in giving IT i shall have to touch
upon that masterpiece in art of self, preservation which is.
(48:16):
Selfishness granted that one's life, task the determination and the
fate of one's life, task greatly exceeds the average measure
of such, things nothing more dangerous could be conceived than
to come face to face with one's self by the
side of this life. Task the fact that one becomes
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what one is presupposes that one has not the remotest
suspicion of what one. Is from this, standpoint even the
blunders of one's life have their own meaning and, value
the temporary deviations and, aberrations the moments of hesitation and of,
(49:02):
modesty the earnestness wasted upon duties which lie outside the
actual life. Task in these, matters great, wisdom perhaps even
the highest, wisdom comes into activity in these circumstances in
which nous giertepsum would be the sure road to. Ruin forgetting,
(49:26):
oneself misunderstanding, oneself belittling, oneself narrowing, oneself and making oneself
mediocre amount to reason itself expressed. Morally to love one's,
neighbor and to live for others and for other things
(49:47):
may be the means of protection employed to maintain the
highest kind of. Egotism this is the exceptional case in WHICH,
i contrary to my principle and, conviction take the side
of the altruistic, instincts for here they are concerned in
(50:07):
subserving selfishness and self discipline the whole surface of, Consciousness
for consciousness is a surface must be kept free from
any one of the great. Imperatives, beware even of every striking,
word of every striking, attitude there are also many risks
(50:31):
which the instinct runs of understanding itself too. Soon, meanwhile
the organizing, idea which is destined to become, master grows
and continues to grow into the depths it begins to.
Command it leads you slowly back from your deviations and.
(50:54):
Aberrations it prepares individual qualities and capacities which one day
will make themselves felt as indispensable to the whole of your.
Task step by step it cultivates all the serviceable faculties
before it even whispers a word concerning the dominant, task the,
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goal the, object and the meaning of. It all looked
at from this, standpoint my life is simply. Amazing for
the task of transvaluing. Values more capacities were, Needful perhaps
then could well be found side by side in one.
Individual above all antagonistic, capacities which had to be free
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from the mutual strife and destruction which they, involve an
order of rank among, capacities, distance the art of separating
without creating, hostility to refrain from confounding, things to keep
from reconciling, things to possess enormous, multifariousness and yet to
(52:07):
be the reverse of. Chaos all this was the first.
Condition the long secret, work and the artistic mastery of my.
Instinct its superior, guardianship manifested itself with such exceeding strength
that not once DID i ever dream of what was
(52:28):
growing within, me until suddenly all my capacities were, ripe
and one day burst forth in all the perfection of
their highest. BLOOM i cannot remember ever having exerted. MYSELF
i can point to no trace of struggle in my.
LIFE i am the reverse of a heroic nature to will,
(52:53):
something to strive after, something to have an, aim or
a desire in my. MIND i know none of these
things from. Experience even at this, MOMENT i look out
upon my, future a broad, future as upon a calm.
Sea no sigh of longing makes a ripple on its.
(53:16):
SURFACE i have not the slightest wish that anything should
be otherwise than it. IS i myself would not be.
Otherwise but in this MATTER i have always been the.
SAME i have never had a. DESIRE a man who
after his four and fortieth year can say that he
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has never bothered himself about, honors, women or, money not
that they did not come his. Way it was thus
THAT i became one day a university. PROFESSOR i never
had the remotest idea of such a, thing FOR i
was scarcely four and twenty years of. Aileach in the
(54:01):
same way two years, PREVIOUSLY i had one day become a.
Philologist in the sense that my first philological, work my
start in every way was expressly obtained by my Master
ritschau for publication in His Rhini Chez. Museum translator's note
(54:23):
see note on page thirty seven and translator's note narrator's.
Note this refers to the footnote In APHORISM iii and narrator's.
Note richel AND i say it in All reverence was
the only genial scholar THAT i have ever. Met he
(54:45):
possessed that pleasant kind of depravity which distinguishes Us, thuringians
and which makes even A german. Sympathetic even in the
pursuit of, truth we prefer to avail ourselves of roundabout.
Ways in saying, THIS i do not mean to underestimate
in any way My thuringian, brother the Intelligent leopold von Rank.
(55:11):
Ten you may be wondering WHY i should actually have
related all these trivial, and according to traditional, accounts insignificant
details to. You such action can but tell against me,
more particularly IF i am fated to figure in great
(55:32):
causes to this are replied that these trivial matters, diet, locality,
climate and one's mode of, recreation the whole causistry of self,
love are inconceivably more important than all that which has
hitherto been held in high. Esteem it is precisely in
(55:57):
this quarter that we must begin to learn. Afresh all
those things which mankind has valued with such earnestness heretofore
are not even. Real they are mere creations of, fancy
or more strictly, speaking, lies born of the evil instincts
(56:18):
of diseased and in the deepest, sense noxious. Natures all
the Concepts, god, soul, virtue, sin beyond, truth eternal, life
but the greatness of human, nature its, divinity were sought
(56:40):
for in. Them all questions of, politics of social, order
of education have been falsified root and, branch owing to
the fact that the most noxious men have been taken
for great, men and that people were taught to despise
the small, things or rather the fundamental things of. Life
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IF i now choose to compare myself with those creatures
who have hitherto been honored as the first among, men
the difference becomes. OBVIOUS i do not reckon the so
called first, men even as human. Beings for, me they
are the excrements of, mankind the products of, disease and
(57:29):
of the instincts of. Revenge they are so many monsters
laden with. Rottenness so many hopeless incurables who avenge themselves on.
LIFE i wish to be the opposite of these. People
it is my privilege to have the very sharpest discernment
(57:51):
for every sign of healthy. Instincts there is no such
thing as a morbidray in. Me even in times of serious,
ILLNESS i have never grown. Morbid you might seek in
vain for a trace of fanaticism in my. Nature no
one can point to any moment of my life in
(58:13):
WHICH i have assumed either an arrogant or a pathetic.
Attitude pathetic attitudes are not in keeping with. Greatness he
who needs attitudes is. False beware of all picturesque. Men
life was, easy in fact easiest to me in those
(58:35):
periods when it exacted the heaviest duties from. Me whatever
could have seen me during the seventy days of this,
autumn when without INTERRUPTION i did a host of things
of the highest, rank things that no man can do,
nowadays with a sense of responsibility for all the ages
(58:57):
yet to, come would have noticed no sign of tension
in my, condition but rather a state of overflowing freshness
and good. Cheer never HAVE i eaten with more pleasant.
Sensations never has my sleep been. BETTER i know of
no other manner of dealing with great tasks than as.
(59:20):
Play this is a sign of, greatness is an essential.
Prequisite the slightest, constraint the somber, main any hard accent
in the. Voice all these things are objections to a,
Man but how much more to his. Work one must
(59:42):
not have. Nerves even to suffer from solitude is an.
Objection the only THING i have always suffered from is the.
Multitude translator's. Note The german words are in in some
kite and feel sam. Kite the latter was coined By.
(01:00:04):
Nietzsche The english words multitude should therefore be understood as
signifying multifarious instincts and, gifts, which In nietzsche strove for
ascendency and caused him more suffering than any. Solitude complexity
of this sort held in check by a dominant, instinct
(01:00:27):
as A nietzsche's, case is of course the only possible
basis for an artistic. Nature end translator's. Note at an
absurdly tender. Age in, fact WHEN i was seven years,
OLD i already knew that no human speech would ever reach.
Me did any one ever see me sad on that.
(01:00:48):
Account at PRESENT i still possess the same affability towards.
EVERYBODY i am even full of consideration for the. Lowest
in all, this there is not an atom of haughtiness
or of secret. Contempt he WHOM i am despised soon
guesses that he is despised by. Me the very fact
(01:01:12):
of my existence is enough to rouse indignation in all
those who have polluted blood in their. Veins my formula
for greatness in man is amor, fatty the fact that
a man wishes nothing to be, different either in front
of him or behind, him or for all. Eternity not
(01:01:36):
only must the necessary be, borne and on no account.
Concealed all idealism is faltered in the face of, necessity
but it must also be. Loved and of WHY i
am so. Clever