Human, All-Too-Human: A Book For Free Spirits; Part II

Socrates. – If all goes well, the time will come when, in order to advance themselves on the path of moral reason, men will rather take up the Memorabilia of Socrates than the Bible, and when Montaigne and Horace will be used as pioneers and guides for the understanding of Socrates, the simplest and most enduring of interpretative sages. In him converge the roads of the most different philosophic modes of life, which are in truth the modes of the different temperaments, crystallised by reason and habit and all ultimately directed towards the delight in life and in self. The apparent conclusion is that the most peculiar thing about Socrates was his share in all the temperaments. Socrates excels the founder of Christianity by virtue of his merry style of seriousness and by that wisdom of sheer roguish pranks which constitutes the best state of soul in a man. Moreover, he had a superior intelligence.

87

Learning to Write Well. – The age of good speaking is over, because the age of city-state culture is over. The limit allowed by Aristotle to the great city – in which the town-crier must be able to make himself heard by the whole assembled community – troubles us as little as do any city-communities, us who even wish to be understood beyond the boundaries of nations. Therefore every one who is of a good European turn of mind must learn to write well, and to write better and better. He cannot help himself, he must learn that: even if he was born in Germany, where bad writing is looked upon as a national privilege. Better writing means better thinking; always to discover matter more worthy of communication; to be able to communicate it properly; to be translateable into the tongues of neighbouring nations; to make oneself comprehensible to foreigners who learn our language; to work with the view of making all that is good common property, and of giving free access everywhere to the free; finally, to pave the way for that still remote state of things, when the great task shall come for good Europeans – guidance and guardianship of the universal world-culture. – Whoever preaches the opposite doctrine of not troubling about good writing and good reading (both virtues grow together and decline together) is really showing the peoples a way of becoming more and more national. He is intensifying the malady of this century, and is a foe to good Europeans, a foe to free spirits.

88

The Theory of the Best Style. – The theory of the best style may at one time be the theory of finding the expression by which we transfer every mood of ours to the reader and the listener. At another, it may be the theory of finding expressions for the more desirable human moods, the communication and transference of which one desires most – for the mood of a man moved from the depth of his heart, intellectually cheerful, bright, and sincere, who has conquered his passions. This will be the theory of the best style, a theory that corresponds to the good man.

89

Paying Attention to Movement. – The movement of the sentences shows whether the author be tired. Individual expressions may nevertheless be still strong and good, because they were invented earlier and for their own sake, when the thought first flashed across the author's mind. This is frequently the case with Goethe, who too often dictated when he was tired.

90

“Already” and “Still.” —A. German prose is still very young. Goethe declares that Wieland is its father.

B. So young and already so ugly!

C. But, so far as I am aware, Bishop Ulfilas already wrote German prose, which must therefore be fifteen hundred years old.

B. So old and still so ugly!

91

Original German. – German prose, which is really not fashioned on any pattern and must be considered an original creation of German taste, should give the eager advocate of a future original German culture an indication of how real German dress, German society, German furniture, German meals would look without the imitation of models. – Some one who had long reflected on these vistas finally cried in great horror, “But, Heaven help us, perhaps we already have that original culture – only we don't like to talk about it!”

92

Forbidden Books. – One should never read anything written by those arrogant wiseacres and puzzle-brains who have the detestable vice of logical paradox. They apply logical formulæ just where everything is really improvised at random and built in the air. (“Therefore” with them means, “You idiot of a reader, this ‘therefore’ does not exist for you, but only for me.” The answer to this is: “You idiot of a writer, then why do you write?”)

93

Displaying One's Wit. – Every one who wishes to display his wit thereby proclaims that he has also a plentiful lack of wit. That vice which clever Frenchmen have of adding a touch of dédain to their best ideas arises from a desire to be considered richer than they really are. They wish to be carelessly generous, as if weary of continual spending from overfull treasuries.

94

French and German Literature. – The misfortune of the French and German literature of the last hundred years is that the Germans ran away too early from the French school, and the French, later on, went too early to the German school.

95

Our Prose. – None of the present-day cultured nations has so bad a prose as the German. When clever, blasé Frenchmen say, “There is no German prose,” we ought really not to be angry, for this criticism is more polite than we deserve. If we look for reasons, we come at last to the strange phenomenon that the German knows only improvised prose and has no conception of any other. He simply cannot understand the Italian, who says that prose is as much harder than poetry as the representation of naked beauty is harder to the sculptor than that of draped beauty. Verse, images, rhythm, and rhyme need honest effort – that even the German realises, and he is not inclined to set a very high value on extempore poetry. But the notion of working at a page of prose as at a statue sounds to him like a tale from fairyland.

96

The Grand Style. – The grand style comes into being when the beautiful wins a victory over the monstrous.

97

Dodging. – We do not realise, in the case of distinguished minds, wherein lies the excellence of their expression, their turn of phrase, until we can say what word every mediocre writer would inevitably have hit upon in expressing the same idea. All great artists, in steering their car, show themselves prone to dodge and leave the track, but never to fall over.

98

Something like Bread. – Bread neutralises and takes out the taste of other food, and is therefore necessary to every long meal. In all works of art there must be something like bread, in order that they may produce divers effects. If these effects followed one another without occasional pauses and intervals, they would soon make us weary and provoke disgust – in fact, a long meal of art would then be impossible.

99

Jean Paul. – Jean Paul knew a great deal, but had no science; understood all manner of tricks of art, but had no art; found almost everything enjoyable, but had no taste; possessed feeling and seriousness, but in dispensing them poured over them a nauseous sauce of tears; had even wit, but, unfortunately for his ardent desire for it, far too little – whence he drives the reader to despair by his very lack of wit. In short, he was the bright, rank-smelling weed that shot up overnight in the fair pleasaunces of Schiller and Goethe. He was a good, comfortable man, and yet a destiny, a destiny in a dressing-gown.[20 - It is interesting to compare this judgment with Carlyle's praise of Jean Paul. The dressing-gown is an allusion to Jean Paul's favourite costume. – Tr.]

100

Palate for Opposites. – In order to enjoy a work of the past as its contemporaries enjoyed it, one must have a palate for the prevailing taste of the age which it attacked.

101

Spirits-of-Wine Authors. – Many writers are neither spirit nor wine, but spirits of wine. They can flare up, and then they give warmth.

102

The Interpretative Sense. – The sense of taste, as the true interpretative sense, often talks the other senses over to its point of view and imposes upon them its laws and customs. At table one can receive disclosures about the most subtle secrets of the arts; it suffices to observe what tastes good and when and after what and how long it tastes good.

103

Lessing. – Lessing had a genuine French talent, and, as writer, went most assiduously to the French school. He knows well how to arrange and display his wares in his shop-window. Without this true art his thoughts, like the objects of them, would have remained rather in the dark, nor would the general loss be great. His art, however, has taught many (especially the last generation of German scholars) and has given enjoyment to a countless number. It is true his disciples had no need to learn from him, as they often did, his unpleasant tone with its mingling of petulance and candour. – Opinion is now unanimous on Lessing as “lyric poet,” and will some day be unanimous on Lessing as “dramatic poet.”

104

Undesirable Readers. – How an author is vexed by those stolid, awkward readers who always fall at every place where they stumble, and always hurt themselves when they fall!

105

Poets' Thoughts. – Real thoughts of real poets always go about with a veil on, like Egyptian women; only the deep eye of thought looks out freely through the veil. – Poets' thoughts are as a rule not of such value as is supposed. We have to pay for the veil and for our own curiosity into the bargain.

106

Write Simply and Usefully. – Transitions, details, colour in depicting the passions – we make a present of all these to the author because we bring them with us and set them down to the credit of his book, provided he makes us some compensation.

107

Wieland. – Wieland wrote German better than any one else, and had the genuine adequacies and inadequacies of the master. His translations of the letters of Cicero and Lucian are the best in the language. His ideas, however, add nothing to our store of thought. We can endure his cheerful moralities as little as his cheerful immoralities, for both are very closely connected. The men who enjoyed them were at bottom better men than we are, but also a good deal heavier. They needed an author of this sort. The Germans did not need Goethe, and therefore cannot make proper use of him. We have only to consider the best of our statesmen and artists in this light. None of them had or could have had Goethe as their teacher.

108

Rare Festivals. – Pithy conciseness, repose, and maturity – where you find these qualities in an author, cry halt and celebrate a great festival in the desert. It will be long before you have such a treat again.

109

The Treasure of German Prose. – Apart from Goethe's writings and especially Goethe's conversations with Eckermann (the best German book in existence), what German prose literature remains that is worth reading over and over again? Lichtenberg's Aphorisms, the first book of Jung-Stilling's Story of My Life, Adalbert Stifter's St. Martin's Summer and Gottfried Keller's People of Seldwyla– and there, for the time being, it comes to an end.