The Joyful Wisdom ("La Gaya Scienza")Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
PhilosophyPhilosophy
The Joyful Wisdom ("La Gaya Scienza")
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
Philosophy
_Architecture for Thinkers._—An insight is needed (and that probably
very soon) as to what is specially lacking in our great cities—namely,
quiet, spacious, and widely extended places for reflection, places with
long, lofty colonnades for bad weather, or for too sunny days, where no
noise of wagons or of shouters would penetrate, and where a more refined
propriety would prohibit loud praying even to the priest: buildings and
situations which as a whole would express the sublimity of
self-communion and seclusion from the world. The time is past when the
Church possessed the monopoly of reflection, when the _vita
contemplativa_ had always in the first place to be the _vita religiosa_:
and everything that the Church has built expresses this thought. I know
not how we could content ourselves with their structures, even if they
should be divested of their ecclesiastical purposes: these structures
speak a far too pathetic and too biassed speech, as houses of God and
places of splendour for supernatural intercourse, for us godless ones to
be able to think _our thoughts_ in them. We want to have _ourselves_
translated into stone and plant, we want to go for a walk in _ourselves_
when we wander in these halls and gardens.
281.
_Knowing how to Find the End._—Masters of the first rank are recognised
by knowing in a perfect manner how to find the end, in the whole as well
as in the part; be it the end of a melody or of a thought, be it the
fifth act of a tragedy or of a state affair. The masters of the second
degree always become restless towards the end, and seldom dip down into
the sea with such proud, quiet equilibrium as, for example, the
mountain-ridge at _Porto fino_—where the Bay of Genoa sings its melody
to an end.
282.
_The Gait._—There are mannerisms of the intellect by which even great
minds betray that they originate from the populace, or from the
semi-populace:—it is principally the gait and step of their thoughts
which betray them; they cannot _walk_. It was thus that even Napoleon,
to his profound chagrin, could not walk "legitimately" and in princely
fashion on occasions when it was necessary to do so properly, as in
great coronation processions and on similar occasions: even there he was
always just the leader of a column—proud and brusque at the same time,
and very self-conscious of it all.—It is something laughable to see
those writers who make the folding robes of their periods rustle around
them: they want to cover their _feet_.
283.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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