Sweet Pains

Henri Bremond, A Literary History of Religious Thought in France: From the Wars of Religion down to our Times, tr. K. L. Montgomery (Macmillan, 1928), vol. I., Devout Humanism, ch. XIV., Towards «Pure Love», pp. 298-99 (with the footnote of the author at p. 299):

The ancients, he [i.e., Charles de Saint-Paul] writes, 

gave Love wings to signify that it elevates and uplifts the spirit above the crouching and servile temper of those coarse souls who are insensible to its influence. His torch . . . shows that it kindles in souls many happy flashes and much excellent knowledge unknown to all who do not know him as he is; the daintiness of wooing instilled by him witnesses that nought is so refining as pure love. Love is represented as young, not because it is rash or to blame for any want of consideration . . . but rather to demonstrate that true and perfect love is immortal. His bow and arrows are typical . . . of the mighty effects of love on the spirits, impressions for which «wounds» is a misnomer . . . (for) they are accompanied with such sweetness of delight and pleasant pains that none who has experienced them but would ever prefer them to the soundness of perfect insensibility.1

1. Tableau de la Madeleine [Tableau de la Magdelaine en l'estat de parfaite amante de Jesus. Où se voient les exercices par lesquels on peut arriver à la gloire d'un semblable estat] (1628), pp. 12-17. This strange monk is moved and ravished by all things. «The organ,» he cries, «this admirable instrument, on which music appears as though upon a triumphal chariot» (p. 47). In another place he describes sucklings at their mothers' breasts. «It happens . . . that quite suddenly the humours (which the milk) sends to their brains cause their little eyes to close, putting them into a sweet languor, during which they do not let go the breast, but remain attached to it without other action than a slow and almost unconscious movement of their lips, with which they imperceptibly mouth the mother's bosom.» (p. 192.) 

Education And Killing Originality

Émile Faguet, The Cult of Incopmetence, tr. Beatrice Barstow (New York, 1914), ch. XI., Attempted Remedies, pp. 185-187:

The precocious development of early talent and originality is the thing which strangely terrifies these examination-maniacs. They have a horror of the man who teaches himself. They have a horror of any one who ventures to think for himself and to enquire for himself at twenty-five years of age. They want, like an old hen, to mother the young mind as long as possible. They will not let it find its own feet, till very late, and till, as the scoffer might well say, its limbs are absolutely atrophied. I do not say that they are wrong. The man who has taught himself is apt to be a vain, conceited fellow who takes pleasure in thinking for himself, and has an absolute delight in despising the thoughts of others. It is, however, no less the fact, that it is among these self-taught men that we find those vigorous spirits who venture boldly beyond the domain of human science and extend its frontier. The question then is which is best, to favour all these troublesome self-taught people in the hope of finding some good ones among them, or by crossing and worrying them to run the risk of destroying the good as well as the bad. I am myself strongly in favour of the first of these alternatives. It is better to let all go their own way, even though pretenders to originality come to grief, a thing that matters very little. Minds that are truly original will develop themselves and find room for the expansion of all their powers.

But here,—take note how the democratic spirit comes in everywhere—the question of numbers is raised. Ten times more numerous, I am told, are the pretenders to originality whom we save from themselves by discipline than the true geniuses whose wings we clip.

I reply that, in matters intellectual, questions of figures do not count. An original spirit strangled is a loss which is not compensated by the rescue of ten fools from worse excesses of folly. An original spirit left free to be himself is worth more than ten fools whose folly is partially restrained.

Nietzsche has well said: «Modern education consists in smothering the exceptional in favour of the normal. It consists in directing the mind away from the exceptional into the channel of the average.» This ought not to be. I do not say that education should do the opposite of all this. Oh no, far from that. It is not the business of education to look for exceptional genius, or to help in its creation. Exceptional genius is born of itself and it has no need of such assistance. But even less is it the business of education to regard the exceptional with terror, and to take every means possible, even the most barbarous and most detailed, to prevent it as long as possible from coming to the light.

Education ought to draw all that it can out of mediocrity, and to respect originality as much as it can. It ought never to attempt to turn mediocrity into originality, nor to reduce originality to the level of mediocrity.

Rerum Fragor

Gur Zak, Petrarch's Humanism and the Care of the Self (Cambridge, 2010), Intro., pp. 1-4:

. . . here was the palace of Evander, there the shrine of Carmentis, here the cave of Cacus, there the nursing she-wolf and the fig tree of Rumina with the more apt surname of Romulus.

Starting thus with the description of the mythical origins of the city, Petrarch then continues his journey in space and time, advancing mostly linearly through the ages of Roman history, from these mythical origins through the glory of the Empire and early Christianity to the time of Constantine. He then concludes this short chronicle, lamenting not only that what is left from the glory of Rome is mere ruins but also that the significance of the ruins is mostly forgotten: “For today who are more ignorant about Roman affairs than the Roman citizens?” Ignorance, he adds, that is in turn complemented by the “flight and exile” (fugam exiliumque) of the many virtues that flourished in bygone times.

Promising to return to this complaint at another time, Petrarch then brings the discussion back to himself and invites Giovanni to recall how they used to stop at the baths of Diocletian, weary of the long excursion, and to enjoy there the “healthy air, the unimpeded view, silence and desired solitude.” Alone at the baths, the noises of the outside world ceased to bother them—“we did not discuss business at all, nor household problems nor public affairs”—and with the “fragments of the ruins” (ruinarum fragmenta) still in front of their eyes they turned their gaze to higher matters, discussing history and moral philosophy, the arts and their authors and principles. . . . 

Mutata sunt omnia—everything is changed—Petrarch declares, including his own talent, experience, and mood. The words he spoke at that perfect moment of solitude are therefore forever lost: time passed, leading him away from the moment of presence he enjoyed at the baths, and has taken with it also the words he used at that time. The description of the ruins of Rome thus becomes a metaphor of Petrarch’s own self: like the glorious city, he himself is subjected to the ravages of time, constantly changing, leaving behind only fragments—scattered memories and words retained in the minds of the two interlocutors that cannot, as he insists, invoke the past in full. The subjection to the passage of time, Petrarch therefore implies, is a subjection to a constant sense of absence and loss.

But time is not the only cause of the poet’s sense of fragmentation and loss. Society has a part in this experience as well: it was the perfect solitude of the baths, detached from the cares of the world, that allowed him to step, as it were, out of time, and freely reflect on higher matters, and it is the “din of business matters” (rerum fragor) that is now impeding his spirit from retrieving the state of mind he then enjoyed. The diachronic fragmentation is thus accompanied in the letter by the synchronic dismemberment imposed by society. As Petrarch declares near the end of the letter, it is only in solitude that he “belongs to himself” (Ibi enim, non alibi, meus sum).

The reference to solitude as the one state in which Petrarch can feel that he fully belongs to himself suggests that the sense of fragmentation and flux in the letter is accompanied by a feeling of exile. Just as Rome is exiled from her own golden age—the time to which the ruins allude—and to which she might return if she would only begin to “know herself,” so Petrarch is exiled from the state of wholeness that he might regain by returning to solitude. The experiences of exile and fragmentation, as this letter exhibits, are intrinsically intertwined in Petrarch’s mind: it is the loss of a mythical state of presence and bliss, according to him, that is responsible for his current sense of disintegration and flux.

Significantly, for Petrarch the return to the safe haven of solitude, to himself, is characterized above all by writing—his ability to write what he truly wishes: “only there and not elsewhere I belong to myself. There lies my pen which at present rebels everywhere I go and refuses my orders, because I am preoccupied with burdensome matters. Thus, while it is constantly busy when I have plenty of leisure, it prefers to have leisure when I have much to do, and almost like a wicked and insolent servant, it seems to convert the fervor of the master into its own desire for rest.” His return from exile to himself, Petrarch therefore implies here, is above all a return to his vocation as a writer

How Things Get Spoiled: Vermoralisierung

Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, 2nd essay, §7 (tr. Horace B. Samuel):

. . . it should be shown specifically that, at the time when mankind was not yet ashamed of its cruelty, life in the world was brighter than it is nowadays when there are pessimists. The darkening of the heavens over man has always increased in proportion to the growth of man's shame before man. The tired pessimistic outlook, the mistrust of the riddle of life, the icy negation of disgusted ennui, all those are not the signs of the most evil age of the human race: much rather do they come first to the light of day, as the swamp-flowers, which they are, when the swamp to which they belong, comes into existence—I mean the diseased refinement and moralisation, thanks to which the "animal man" has at last learnt to be ashamed of all his instincts. On the road to angelhood (not to use in this context a harder word) man has developed that dyspeptic stomach and coated tongue, which have made not only the joy and innocence of the animal repulsive to him, but also life itself:—so that sometimes he stands with stopped nostrils before his own self, and, like Pope Innocent the Third, makes a black list of his own horrors («unclean generation, loathsome nutrition when in the maternal body, badness of the matter out of which man develops, awful stench, secretion of saliva, urine, and excrement»).1 Nowadays, when suffering is always trotted out as the first argument against existence, as its most sinister query, it is well to remember the times when men judged on converse principles because they could not dispense with the infliction of suffering, and saw therein a magic of the first order, a veritable bait of seduction to life.

1.  A reference to Cardinal Lotario dei Segni's De Miseria Condicionis Humane (1194-5).

Philosophy: A Rare Plant

Friedrich Nietzsche, Wille zur Macht, §420 (tr. A. M. Ludovici):

I do not wish to convert anybody to philosophy: it is both necessary and perhaps desirable that the philosopher should be a rare plant. Nothing is more repugnant to me than the scholarly praise of philosophy which is to be found in Seneca and Cicero. Philosophy has not much in common with virtue. I trust I may be allowed to say that even the scientific man is a fundamentally different person from the philosopher. What I most desire is, that the genuine notion "philosopher" should not completely perish in Germany. There are so many incomplete creatures in Germany already who would fain conceal their ineptitude beneath such noble names.

Growing Older And Lonelier

Friedrich Nietzsche, a Letter to Herr Ob. Reg. R. Krug, November 16, 1880 (tr. A. Ludovici): 

With what wistful eyes you will look back upon your life to-day. We grow older and therefore lonelier; the love that leaves us is precisely that love which was lavished upon us like an unconscious necessity not owing to our particular qualities, but often in spite of them. The curtain falls on our past when our mother dies; it is then for the first time that our childhood and youth become nothing more than a memory. And then the same process extends; the friends of our youth, our teachers, our ideals of those days, all die, and every day we grow more lonely, and ever colder breezes blow about us. . . .

Alone Am I

Christine de Pisan or Cristina da Pizzano (± 1363 – ± 1431), Ballade XI. (translation found in William A. Nitze's and E. Preston Dargan's book, A History of French Literature, 1922):

        Alone am I, alone I wish to be,
        Alone my sweetest friend hath left me here,
        Alone am I, in my sole company,
        Alone in sorrow bent, and without cheer.
        Alone am I in langurous disgrace,
        Alone far more than wanderer from God's grace,
        Alone, without a friend, the world I face. . . .

        Seulete sui et, seulete vueil estre,
        Seulete m'a mon douz ami laissiée;
        Seulete sui, sanz compaignon ne maistre,
        Seulete sui, dolente et courrouciée,
        Seulete sui, en langueur mesaisiée,
        Seulete sui, olus que nulle esgarée,
        Seulete sui, sanz ami demourée. . . .

The Road Through The Dialogues

Albinus, The Introduction of Albinus to the Dialogues of Plato, tr. George Burges, ch. 8 (found in: The Works of Plato, Bohn's Classical Library, 1908, vol. VI., pp. 319-20):

He then, who is, according to nature, well born, and according to age is in the season for philosophizing, and according to a predilection, for the sake of exercising himself, is proceeding to reasoning, and he, who, according to a habit, has been previously initiated in instruction, and has been drawn aside from political circumstances, will begin from the Alcibiades [of Plato] to be well-turned by the inclination of intellect, and to know of what thing it is needful to make for himself a care, and, as it were by a beautiful pattern, to see who is the philosopher and what is his pursuit, and upon what suppositions his discourse is carried on. (Such a person) must enter upon the Phædo next in order; for in it (Plato) states who is the philosopher, and what is his pursuit; and upon the supposition of the soul being immortal he goes through the discourse relating to it. After this it would be requisite to enter upon the Republic. For, commencing with the earliest instruction, he delineates the whole of education, by making use of which a person would arrive at the possession of virtue. But since it is requisite for us to be versed in the knowledge of things divine, so as to be able, by possessing virtue, to be assimilated to them, we shall enter upon the Timæus; for by entering upon this account relating to Nature, and on the so-called theology, and the arrangement of the Universe, we shall clearly have a recollection of things divine.

. . . For as it is necessary to become a spectator of his own soul and of things divine, and of the gods themselves, and to obtain the most beautiful mind, he must cleanse out the false opinions of his conceptions. For not even have physicians deemed the body capable of enjoying the food brought to it, unless a person shall have previously cast out what was in it in the way of an obstacle. But after the cleansing out, it is requisite to excite and call forth the sentiments, imparted by nature, and to cleanse out these too, and to exhibit them pure, as principles. In addition to this, through the soul being thus previously prepared, it is necessary to introduce into it its peculiar doctrines, according to which it may be perfected; now these relate to physics, and theology, and morality, and statesmanship. . . .

Absolute Self-Abnegation

Oscar Browning, A Short History of Education, edt. W. H. Payne, 1897, p. 55:

Pestalozzi [Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi], on the other hand, was completely and entirely devoted to education. His greatest merit is that he set an example of absolute self-abnegation; that he lived with his pupils, played, starved, and suffered with them; and clung to their minds and hearts with an affectionate sympathy which revealed to him every minute difference of character and disposition.

 

Pestalozzi with the Orphans in Stans, 1879, done by Konrad Grob, Öffentliche Kunstsammlung.

Confidence, Lack Of Confidence, Pride, And Vanity

Johann Georg Zimmermann, Essay on National Pride, to Which are added Memoirs of the Author's Life and Writings, tr. Samuel Hull Wilcocke (London, 1797), ch. XVII., pp. 221-24:

This confidence in one's own resources begets that aspiring sentiment of superiority, without which a man cannot attempt any noble deed; deprived of this confidence, the bravest man sinks into a state of dulness and inactivity, by which his soul is fettered and debased as in a narrow prison, where it should seem to be endowed with power only to endure, where the heavy load of calamity wholly presses down the heart, where every duty is a burden, the least labour dreaded, and every future prospect gloomy and cheerless. Every path to fame and honour is inaccessible to him, and his spirit lies motionless and dejected, like the hardy polar navigator, who finds himself hemmed in and surrounded on every side by a vast continent of ice. He arrives at nothing, for he aspires to nothing; and he aspires not, because he is diffident of his faculties. For this reason, we often see people of much lower merit, the foremost in the road to fortune, only because their character is more enterprising and undaunted.

It is from this same degrading and too low opinion of ourselves, that one man becomes the slave of another. I see, with heartfelt sorrow, men of merit fall into the extremest self-contempt, with regard to great men, on whom, perhaps, sometimes their fortune depends; but who do not even require this abasement.

[...] From this same too humiliating opinion of themselves, men become the slaves of their passions and unfaithful to the purposes of their creation. More confidence in their own powers would prove to them, that it is possible to be virtuous amidsl temptation, and that they may rise from the fascinating couch of luxury and pleasure triumphant over both. Were the Ascetics endowed with this confidence, they need not use such exertions to destroy the match at which love takes fire.

We become unfaithful to the purposes of our creation when we do not possess those solid principles which hardens us against suffering. Every man of understanding is of no use to society, if, in a joyless retirement of the world, he has not learned to bear with all that can wound the finer sentiments, dissipate or oppose the softness of humanity, and pierce the tenderness of heart arising from it. He ceases to exert his faculties, when he daily sees people around him, who do not know that their understanding and taste may be improved and sharpened, by a thousand things whose names they are even ignorant of; and, who of coursc heartily hate the commanding influence of understanding and taste. He snatches at momentary joys, and unnerves all the powers of his soul, to be admitted into their society. He opposes the opinions of no man, let them be ever so absurd. He pretends not to correct any prejudice or error, determined, as Tristram Shandy very justly says to his mule, «never to argue a point with any one of that family as long as he lives.»

P. 227:

. . . Confidence in one's self produces the power even of resisting time; an emulation of one's self, to surpass, by new deeds, our former ones, and to eclipse, by greater merits, those which are already acknowledged to belong to us; persevering in our career of fortune, till we overtake the fickle goddess. But the greatest minds are those who, convinced of the vicissitude of human affairs, are never over-bearing in prosperity, nor cast down in adverfity.

Hence it appears, that a noble self-esteem actually gives us the power to exalt ourselves above the weakness of human nature, to exert our talents in praise-worthy enterprises, never to yield to the spirit of slavery, never to be slaves of vice, to obey the dictates of our conscience, to smile under misfortune, and to rely upon seeing better days.

P. 229:

I heard my son once, in his fifth year, ask his mother, who pressed him to her maternal bosom, while she explained to him Plutarch's lives, «Will my life, too, be written?» Every child, nobly born, however poor his parents may be, will desire to be great; when his heart is completely touched with the genius or virtues of great men, the same virtues will germinate in his young mind, and he will burn with impatience to fill, with regard to posterity, the same post of honour which those eminent men have filled before him with such distinguished splendour. This desire of emulation will frequently burst into tears, which every father ought to reward by the fondest embraces.

Pp. 249-50:

The defects of great minds flow from their pride, when this degenerates into vanity. Dazzled by the flattery of their admirers, these demi-gods shut their ears as much to truth as the weakest princes; intoxicated with the sense of their real advantages, they do not comprehend that these are not every where current for them. Whoever always seeks applause, will always be liable to meet with mortification in the extreme, and, in fact, will seldom escape it. He will, at last, nearly look upon himself as the only being of consequence in the world, and all its other inhabitants either as his admirers or his enviers; but one of the ancients says exceedingly well: «If thou wilt not be just and righteous without the ostentation of thy justice and righteousness, thou wilt often be so with shame and derision.» The secret of the most subtle vanity is, on the other hand, nothing else than the art of making one's self prized, without either appearing to be vain or self-conceited. Cicero1 was ignorant of this art, or he would not have attracted the hatred of the Romans as he did, by the ever-recurring praise of himself and his actions; it was the text of all his orations, and never failed to offend his hearers, because he seemed to esteem his services every thing, and those of other men as nothing.

Pride is always misplaced when it cannot command respect. . . .

Pp. 251-2:

Nothing upon earth is perfect; virtue even has its vulnerable points, the sun its spots, and a conscientious prude, who has passed the ordeal of grace, may fall. We must not always judge of men who are thought great, by their writings or their words; we must also view their every action; we must study them in their lives, in their families, and in their houses, if we would rightly know them. The old and rigid Cato had a concubine as well as the philosophical emperor Marcus Antoninus, and many a modern philosopher whom I know. The greatest men are always connected with the rest of mankind by some foible or other; and yet there are few of them who are so candid as Antigonus, who, on Hermodotus saluting him as a deity and the child of the sun, told him very judiciously «to ask the servant who emptied his close-stool his opinion upon this subject.» 

The greatest talents assume a hateful appearance, when they are accompanied by arrogance or break out in contempt of others. Contempt in an arrogant man consists in the affection with which he shews, without reserve, his sense of the real or imaginary inferiority of another. Contempt in a proud man consists in the sense of the real inferiority of another, which he exposes when it ought to be exposed, and conceals where it ought to be concealed. This sense is inseparable from the noblest minds, and is ever just in itself, for it is impossible that any one can mistake a cat for an elephant, or a gnat for a mountain, but it is exceedingly offensive when it discovers defects where they ought not to be observed.

1. Regarding this reproach towards Cicero, vide this previous post: Ignoring One's Own Instructions.

Nature, The Greeks' Spirit, Their Art, And What Sets Them Apart

John Addington Symonds, Studies on the Greek Poets, vol. II. (New York: 1880), ch. XXIII., The Genius of Greek Art, pp. 370-372:

Nature is thus the first, chief element by which we are enabled to conceive the spirit of the Greeks. The key to their mythology is here. Here is the secret of their sympathies, the well-spring of their deepest thoughts, the primitive potentiality of all they have achieved in art. What is Apollo but the magic of the sun whose soul is light? What is Aphrodite but the love-charm of the sea? What is Pan but the mystery of nature, the felt and hidden want pervading all? What, again, are those elder, dimly discovered deities, the Titans and the brood of Time, but forces of the world as yet beyond the touch and ken of human sensibilities? But nature alone cannot inform us what that spirit was. For though the Greeks grew up in scenes which we may visit, they gazed on them with Greek eyes, eyes different from ours, and dwelt upon them with Greek minds, minds how unlike our own! Unconsciously, in their long and unsophisticated infancy, the Greeks absorbed and assimilated to their own substance that loveliness which it is left for us only to admire. Between them and ourselves—even face to face with mountain, sky, and sea, unaltered by the lapse of years—flow the rivers of Death and Lethe and New Birth, and the mists of thirty centuries of human life are woven like a veil. To pierce that veil, to learn even after the most partial fashion how they transmuted the splendors of the world into æsthetic forms, is a work which involves the further interrogation of their sculpture and their literature.

The motives of that portion of Greek sculpture which bring us close to the incidents of Greek life are very simple. A young man binding a fillet round his head; a boy drawing a thorn from his foot; a girl who has been wounded in the breast raising her arm to show where the sword smote her; an athlete bending every sinew to discharge the quoit; a line of level-gazing youths on prancing horses, some faring forward with straight eyes, one turning, with bridle-hand held tightly, to encourage his companion, another with loose mantle in the act to mount, others thrown back to rein upon their haunches chafing steeds; a procession of draped maidens bearing urns; a maiden, draped from neck to ankle, holding in both hands a lustral vase—such are the sculptured signs by which we read the placid physical fulfilment of Greek life. That the serenity of satisfied existence is an end in itself, and that death in the plenitude of vigor is desirable, the reliefs of Pheidias and the Æginetan marbles teach us. In these simple but consummate works of art the beauty of pure health, physical enjoyment, temperance, mental vigor, and heroic daring mingle and create one splendor of a human being sensitive to all influences and vital in every faculty. Excess can nowhere be discovered. Compare with these forms for a moment the Genii painted by Michael Angelo upon the roof of the Sistine Chapel. Over them has passed the spirit with its throes: la maladie de la pensée is there. Of no Phœbus and no Pallas are they the servants; but ministers of prophets and sibyls, angels of God fulfilling his word, they incarnate the wrestlings and the judgments and the resurrections of the soul. Now take a banquet-scene from some Greek vase. Along the cushioned couch lie young men, naked, crowned with myrtles; in their laps are women, and at their sides broad jars of honeyed wine. A winged Eros hovers over them, and their lips are opened to sing a song of ancient love. Yet this is no forecast of Borgia revels in Rome, or of the French Regent's Parc aux Cerfs. When Autolycus entered the symposium of Xenophon, all tongues were stricken dumb; man gazed at man in wonder at his goodliness. When Charmides, heading the troop of wrestlers, joined Socrates in the palæstra, the soul of the philosopher was troubled; such beauty was for him a sacred, spirit-shaking thing. Simætha, in the Pharmaceutria of Theocritus, beheld the curls of youths on horseback like laburnum-flowers, and their bosoms whiter than the moon.

Nature And Man And The Soul

Friedrich Wilhelm von Schelling, On the Relation of the Plastic Arts to Nature (1807), tr. J. Elliot Cabot, (The German Classics: Masterpieces of German Literature, vol. V., 1913, p. 110 & 123-4):

Nature meets us everywhere, at first with reserve, and in form more or less severe. She is like that quiet and serious beauty, that excites not attention by noisy advertisement, nor attracts the vulgar gaze. [...]

But the beauty of the Soul in itself, joined to sensuous Grace, is the highest apotheosis of Nature. 

The spirit of Nature is only in appearance opposed to the Soul; essentially, it is the instrument of its revelation; it brings about indeed the antagonism that exists in all things, but only that the one essence may come forth, as the utmost benignity, and the reconciliation of all the forces. 

All other creatures are driven by the mere force of Nature, and through it maintain their individuality; in Man alone, as the central point, arises the soul, without which the world would be like the natural universe without the sun. 

The Soul in Man, therefore, is not the principle of individuality, but that whereby he raises himself above all egoism, whereby he becomes capable of self-sacrifice, of disinterested love, and (which is the highest) of the contemplation and knowledge of the Essence of things, and thus of Art. 

In him it is no longer concerned about Matter nor has it immediate concern with it, but with the spirit only as the life of things. Even while appearing in the body, it is yet free from the body, the consciousness of which hovers in the soul in the most beauteous shapes only as a light, undisturbing dream. It is no quality, no faculty, nor any-thing special of the sort; it knows not, but is Science; it is not good, but Goodness ; it is not beautiful, as body even may be, but Beauty itself. 

Hours Of Youth, Of beauty, And Of Magic

Malwida von Meysenbug, Memories of an Idealist, tr. Monte B. Gardiner (1999; A thesis submitted to the faculty of Brigham Young University), ch. 15, The Return, p. 60:

All around us, high, snow-covered Alp summits arose . . . A piercing, ice-cold air forced us to cover ourselves in cloaks and move quickly. The boys ran and jumped over large stones and clumps of ice; the tutor remained aloof, he had been angry with me for a long time, since I had moved about in circles from which he had been excluded because of his ignorance of the French language. So I walked alone, lost in observations and memories. I thought about everything I had just left with nostalgia. I compared the magical evenings of a week ago with this journey through the icy wasteland of barren nature. I glanced up to the white summits which shone brilliantly in the rays of a cold sun, and it seemed to me that I was seeing my own destiny sketched upon the ice with diamond-like writing. «The hours of youth, of beauty, of magic are only given to those who live for the ideal in order to bolster their courage and refresh their heart. But for the most part, their life is a struggle without end, a path that leads through desolate deserts, like the road you are traveling. Do you want to accept the challenge and not shun the sacrifice that it requires? Are you willing to repeatedly crucify your heart, which contains the eternally burning thirst for beauty?» 

In that moment, as I imagined reading this writing in an unmistakable hand, the boys hurried over and brought me a bouquet of violets which they had picked from the sparse green growing amidst the ice. Then they leapt away to look for more. The sight of these flowers which characterized my thoughts so perfectly moved me deeply, and I involuntarily knelt on the rocks and cried: «Yes, I accept the challenge; I will walk the solitary path without wavering which those who seek the truth pursue, and I will be thankful for the few flowers which I find along the way.»

Meysenbug was a dear friend of Nietzsche's. He lived with her and Paul Rée in Sorrento, where they all read Voltaire together (alongside some others, like Mainländer and Diderot), and where Nietzsche started his Menschliches, Allzumenschliches. Meysenbug's Memoiren einer Idealistin was of three volumes, published anonymously. Nietzsche acquired the book in early 1876 and perused it thoroughly, and probably reread it in later years of his life (until 1888), and recommended it to his friends, like Rohde and Gersdorff. The above translation is the only available one in English, as far as I am concerned, and it claimes that it is a full translation. I came across Meysenbug only once before that I didn't even remember her; it was in William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience [1917], p. 395, under an excerpt taken from Amiel's Journal Intime. The excerpt of Meysenbug's reads thus:

I was alone upon the seashore as all these thoughts flowed over me, liberating and reconciling; and now again, as once before in distant days in the Alps of Dauphiné, I was impelled to kneel down, this time before the illimitable ocean, symbol of the Infinite. I felt that I prayed as I had never prayed before, and knew now what prayer really is: to return from the solitude of individuation into the consciousness of unity with all that is, to kneel down as one that passes away, and to rise up as one imperishable. Earth, heaven, and sea resounded as in one vast world-encircling harmony. It was as if the chorus of all the great who had ever lived were about me. I felt myself one with them, and it appeared as if I heard their greeting: ‘Thou too belongest to the company of those who overcome.’

The Saddest Fate

Anonymous, The Saddest Fate:

To touch a broken lute,To strike a jangled string,To strive with tones forever muteThe dear old tunes to sing—What sadder fate could any heart befall?
Alas! dear child, never to sing at all.

To sigh for pleasures flown.To weep for withered flowers,To count the blessings we have known,Lost with the vanished hours—What sadder fate could any heart befall?
Alas! dear child, ne'er to have known them all.

To dream of love and rest,To know the dream has past,To bear within an aching breastOnly a void at last—What sadder fate could any heart befall?
Alas! dear child, ne'er to have loved at all.

To trust an unknown good,To hope, but all in vain,Over a far-off bliss to brood,Only to find it pain—What sadder fate could any soul befall?
Alas! dear child, never to hope at all.

Lover Bismarck

Otto von Bismarck, Love Letters, Schönhausen, October 10, 1850 (Masterpieces of German Literature, vol. x., pp. 70-71):

It is still impossible for me to acquiesce in the notion that we are to be separated all winter, and I am sick at heart whenever I think of it; only now do I truly feel how very, very much you and the babies are part of myself, and how you fill my being. That probably explains why it is that I appear cold to all except you, even to mother; if God should impose on me the terrible affliction of losing you, I feel, so far as my feelings can at this moment grasp and realize such a wilderness of desolation, that I would then cling so to your parents that mother would have to complain of being persecuted with love. But away with all imaginary misery; there is enough in reality. Let us now earnestly thank the Lord that we are all together, even though separated by three hundred and fifty miles, and let us experience the sweetness of knowing that we love each other very much, and can tell each other so. To me it is always like ingratitude to God that we choose to live apart so long, and are not together while He makes it possible for us . . .

Between Age And Youth

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Aphorisms, 1892, tr. Mrs. Annis Lee Wister (Masterpieces of German Literature, vol. 13, p. 434):

In youth we learn; in age we understand.

The Dogmatic And The One With Open Vistas

Friedrich Nietzsche, Unpublished Fragments (Spring 1885-Spring 1886), tr. Adrian Del Caro (Stanford University Press, 2020), §34[25], p. 6:

Such dogmatic people as Dante and Plato are the most distant and perhaps for that reason the most alluring: who live in a house of knowledge that is carpentered and held together by faith. The first in his own, the other in the Christian-patristic. 

There is an entirely different strength and mobility to maintaining oneself in an incomplete system, with free, open vistas, than in a dogmatic world. Leonardo da Vinci stands higher than Michelangelo, Michelangelo higher than Raphael. 

To Live In Obscurity (Especially In An Age Of Spectacles)

Abraham Cowley, Essays, Of Obscurity:

Bene qui latuit, bene vixit, He has lived well, who has lain well hidden. Which, if it be a truth, the world, I’ll swear, is sufficiently deceived. For my part, I think it is, and that the pleasantest condition of life, is in incognito. What a brave privilege is it to be free from all contentions, from all envying or being envied, from receiving and from paying all kind of ceremonies? It is in my mind a very delightful pastime, for two good and agreeable friends to travel up and down together in places where they are by nobody known, nor know anybody. It was the case of Æneas and his Achates, when they walked invisibly about the fields and streets of Carthage, Venus herself

        A veil of thickened air around them cast,  
        That none might know, or see them as they passed.

. . . If we engage into a large acquaintance and various familiarities, we set open our gates to the invaders of most of our time: we expose our life to a Quotidian Ague of frigid impertinences, which would make a wise man tremble to think of. . . . Upon the whole matter, I account a person who has a moderate mind and fortune, and lives in the conversation of two or three agreeable friends, with little commerce in the world besides; who is esteemed well enough by his few neighbours that know him, and is truly irreproachable by anybody; and so after a healthful quiet life, before the great inconveniences of old age, goes more silently out of it than he came in (for I would not have him so much as cry in the exit); this innocent deceiver of the word, as Horace calls him, this Muta Persona, I take to have been more happy in his part, than the greatest actors that fill the stage with show and noise, nay, even than Augustus himself, who asked with his last breath, whether he had not played his farce very well.

Lente Sed Attente

George Wither, A Collection of Emblems, Ancient and Modern, Illvstr. XIX., Bk. 1:

Experience proves, that Men who trust upon

Their Nat'rall parts, too much, oft lose the Day,

And, faile in that which els they might have done,

By vainely trifling pretious Time away.

It also shewes, that many Men have sought

With so much Rashnesse, those things they desir'd,

That they have brought most likely Hopes to nought;

And, in the middle of their Courses, tir'd.

And, not a few, are found who so much wrong

Gods Gratiousnesse, as if their thinkings were,

That (seeing he deferres his Iudgements long)

His Vengeance, he, for ever, would forbeare:

But, such as these may see wherein they faile,

And, what would fitter be for them to doe,

If they would contemplate the slow-pac'd Snaile;

Or, this our Hieroglyphicke looke into:

For, thence we learne, that Perseverance brings

Large Workes to end, though slowly they creepe on;

And, that Continuance perfects many things,

Which seeme, at first, unlikely to be done.

It warnes, likewise, that some Affaires require

More Heed then Haste: And that the Course we take,

Should suite as well our Strength, as our Desire;

Else (as our Proverbe saith) Haste, Waste may make.

And, in a Mysticke-sense, it seemes to preach

Repentance and Amendment, unto those

Who live, as if they liv'd beyond Gods reach;

Because, he long deferres deserved Blowes:

For, though Iust-Vengeance moveth like a Snaile,

And slowly comes; her comming will not faile.

 

The emblem is originally by Gabriel Rollenhagen (1583-1619), whose emblem books are gems to forever cherish. 

The Laughing And Weeping Animal

William Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Comic Writers, Lecture I.:

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be. We weep at what thwarts or exceeds our desires in serious matters: we laugh at what only disappoints our expectations in trifles. We shed tears from sympathy with real and necessary distress; as we burst into laughter from want of sympathy with that which is unreasonable and unnecessary, the absurdity of which provokes our spleen or mirth, rather than any serious reflections on it.

To explain the nature of laughter and tears, is to account for the condition of human life; for it is in a manner compounded of these two! It is a tragedy or a comedy—sad or merry, as it happens. The crimes and misfortunes that are inseparable from it, shock and wound the mind when they once seize upon it, and when the pressure can no longer be borne, seek relief in tears: the follies and absurdities that men commit, or the odd accidents that befal them, afford us amusement from the very rejection of these false claims upon our sympathy, and end in laughter. If every thing that went wrong, if every vanity or weakness in another gave us a sensible pang, it would be hard indeed: but as long as the disagreeableness of the consequences of a sudden disaster is kept out of sight by the immediate oddity of the circumstances, and the absurdity or unaccountableness of a foolish action is the most striking thing in it, the ludicrous prevails over the pathetic, and we receive pleasure instead of pain from the farce of life which is played before us, and which discomposes our gravity as often as it fails to move our anger or our pity!