The Joyful Wisdom ("La Gaya Scienza"): Complete Works, Volume TenNietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
PhilosophyPhilosophy
The Joyful Wisdom ("La Gaya Scienza"): Complete Works, Volume Ten
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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