Human, All-Too-Human: A Book for Free Spirits, Part 2
Nietzsche · en
LITERATURE AND MORALITY MUTUALLY EXPLANATORY.—We can show from Greek
literature by what forces the Greek spirit developed, how it entered upon
different channels, and where it became enfeebled. All this also depicts
to us how Greek morality proceeded, and how all morality will proceed: how
it was at first a constraint and displayed cruelty, then became gradually
milder; how a pleasure in certain actions, in certain forms and
conventions arose, and from this again a propensity for solitary exercise,
for solitary possession; how the track becomes crowded and overcrowded
with competitors; how satiety enters in, new objects of struggle and
ambition are sought, and forgotten aims are awakened to life; how the
drama is repeated, and the spectators become altogether weary of looking
on, because the whole gamut seems to have been run through—and then comes
a stoppage, an expiration, and the rivulets are lost in the sand. The end,
or at any rate _an_ end, has come.
115.
WHAT LANDSCAPES GIVE PERMANENT DELIGHT.—Such and such a landscape has
features eminently suited for painting, but I cannot find the formula for
it; it remains beyond my grasp as a whole. I notice that all landscapes
which please me permanently have a simple geometrical scheme of lines
underneath all their complexity. Without such a mathematical substratum no
scenery becomes artistically pleasing. Perhaps this rule may be applied
symbolically to human beings.
116.
READING ALOUD.—The ability to read aloud involves of necessity the ability
to declaim. Everywhere we must apply pale tints, but we must determine the
degree of pallor in close relation to the richly and deeply coloured
background, that always hovers before our eyes and acts as our guide—in
other words, in accordance with the way in which we should _declaim_ the
same passages. That is why we must be able to declaim.
117.
THE DRAMATIC SENSE.—He who has not the four subtler senses of art tries to
understand everything with the fifth sense, which is the coarsest of
all—the dramatic sense.
118.