Classics and the Western Canon discussion

Chapter 8 focuses on peoples and nationalities, beginning with a paradoxical characterization of the German people as both heavy and capricious, but also honest and unashamed. What is the import of the conversation between two old "patriots" in 241? What is the role of the statesman, if there is one, in Nietzsche's worldview, and what does the "spiritual flattening" of a people mean?

Nietzsche appears to make some rather sweeping generalizations about various races. He is critical of Germans, complimentary of the Jews, and he famously despises Englishmen. He says in 248 that there are two types of genius: "one which above all begets and wants to beget, and another which prefers being fertilized and giving birth." The Greeks and the French are evidently of the feminine type, while the Jews and the Romans are "fertilizers." I wouldn't hold him to these generalizations unequivocally, but does it make sense to compare the races in this way?

Nietzsche is clearly opposed to nationalism, or "nationalistic nerve fever," though he admits that at one time he himself suffered from this "infection." (251) Examples of this are "anti-French stupidity" as well as the anti-Polish and the anti-Jewish varieties, with Christian-romantic, Wagnerian, and Teutonic inspired nationalism thrown in for good measure. Curiously, what he appreciates in the Jews is their "resolute faith that need not be ashamed before 'modern ideas'." He admires their strength in adversity and resistance to change, and suggests that the "officers from the March Brandenburg" might be enriched by entering into relations with them. At this point he says

But here it is proper to break off my cheerful Germanomania and holiday oratory; for I am beginning to touch on what is serious for me, the "European problem' as I understand it, the cultivation of a new caste that will rule Europe.

Is this a joke?

After this he goes on his tirade against the "profound normality" of the English (252-253), followed by an appreciation of the French in which he identifies three points of ancient cultural superiority that charactize them. The chapter ends with the observation that "Europe wants to become one." (This presumably excludes the English, though I might look for the Irish to sneak in the back door.)

How are Nietzsche's thought on nationalism, race, and the "new synthesis" of Europe to be understood?

A lot about music (it begins and ends with notes about Wagner), but this is a point which 'no one can doubt,' but is not often made:

(I can't clip from my e-book of Zimmern, so I am using Kaufmann):

Finally, we should not forget that the English with their profound normality have once before caused an over-all depression of the European spirit: what people call “modern ideas” or “the ideas of the eighteenth century” or also “French ideas”—that, in other words, against which the German spirit has risen with a profound disgust—was of English origin; there is no doubt of that. The French have merely been apes and mimes of these ideas; also their best soldiers; unfortunately, their first and most thoroughgoing victims as well: for over this damnable Anglomania of “modern ideas” the âme française has in the end become so thin and emaciated that today one recalls her sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, her profound and passionate strength, and her inventive nobility almost with disbelief. Yet we must hang on to this proposition of historical fairness with our very teeth, defending it against momentary appearances: European noblesse—of feeling, of taste, of manners, taking the word, in short, in every higher sense—is the work and invention of France; European vulgarity, the plebeianism of modern ideas, that of England.

Once again I am reminded of Dostoevsky's Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, that irascible travelogue-takedown of everything on which Europeans (and notably the English) pride themselves. A comparison of Nietzsche's critique with Dostoevsky's would probably be instructive, though not something I have time or means to attempt here.

Does this make sense to anyone?

|240|I have heard, once again for the first time – Richard Wagner's overture...

Once again, but for the first time?

Where are we, in Joyce’s nighttown (aka Circe) where time is all messed up?

Lia wrote: "Does this make sense to anyone?

|240|I have heard, once again for the first time – Richard Wagner's overture...

Once again, but for the first time? ..."

Yo, Lia! If the Nietzsche estate had gotten a nickel for every time a hack wrote "hear it again for the first time," East Germany could have bought West Germany, eh?

e.g.

Songs like “It’s Too Late, ”Natural Woman” and the title song are iconic. They’re the songs we’ve heard hundreds of times and the ones King has performed even more. Whether we heard them as adolescents, as young adults or sung by our children as they come on the oldies radio station, we’ve heard these songs so much that they almost dissolve into our psyche. We sing along without a thought; we forget the feelings that went into their creation.

Jukebox musicals have the ability to re-establish that power and to refresh that memory. So next time you hear “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow,” don’t just mindlessly sing along. Hear the vulnerability, the doubt, the hope, the love that King and Goffin originally put into the song. Hear it again for the first time.

https://www.boulderweekly.com/enterta...

Well, okay, fine. What I’m saying is, maybe he’s nudging us towards something that’s not strictly logical, rational, cognitive etc. Like ... I don’t know, eternal recurrence or something.

Also, this

...a certain German powerfulness and overfullness of soul which is not afraid to hide itself among the refinements of decay – which perhaps feels itself most at ease there; a true, genuine token of the German soul, which is at once young and aged, over-mellow and still too rich in future. This kind of music best expresses what I consider true of the Germans: they are of the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow – they have as yet no today.

They have day before yesterday and tomorrow, but no today, what is that supposed to mean? Is he destabilizing time? Or destabilizing the temporality of contemporary Germans? Why would he do that?

So, some of us were geeking out over Nietzsche’s word play, and linking that to Ovid in another thread.

Speaking of Ovidian wordplays

|247| . A period is, in the sense in which the ancients understood it, above all a physiological whole, inasmuch as it is composed by a single breath. Periods such as appear with Demosthenes or Cicero, rising twice and sinking twice and all within a single breath: these are delights for men of antiquity, who knew from their own schooling how to value the virtue in them, the rarity and difficulty of the delivery of such a period – we have really no right to the grand period, we moderns, we who are short of breath in every sense!

Breath, breath, breath. Didn’t Ovid (the guy who wrote scandalous poems on “cultivation” and “sophistication,” addressed to women, no less...) wordplay (pun) “breath” (as soul, spirit) as well?

Edit: Found my notes:

Ovid specifically characterizes [Metamorphoses] as a continuous work (Met. 1.2–4 coeptis adspirate meis primaque ab origine mundi / ad mea perpetuum deducite tempora carmen, ‘breathe favorably upon my beginnings, and from the world’s first origin, lead on a continuous song to my times’

So, are we moderns lacking in “breath” in every sense — including “spirit?”

Lia wrote: "Well, okay, fine. What I’m saying is, maybe he’s nudging us towards something that’s not strictly logical, rational, cognitive etc. Like ... I don’t know, eternal recurrence or something."

I listened to the overture at Nietzsche's instigation and I found it rather, well, Wagnerian. Not to my taste exactly, but I think he wants us to hear it as new and strange, something different. There's a reason why pop music radio stations, if they still exist, play the same songs over and over again. The familiarity is what makes them popular, comfortable. Formulaic stories, superhero movies, genre fiction -- same deal. Not that they're all bad (just most of them) but that kind of predictability and comfort is what Nietzsche wants us to run screaming from.

Our eye finds it more comfortable to respond to a given stimulus by reproducing once more an image that it has produced many times before, instead of registering what is different and new in an impression. The latter would require more strength, more "morality." Hearing something new is embarrassing and difficult for the ear; foreign music we do not hear well... 192.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nhcT...

No fair. This group is full of people who can read German, or fully trained in music. And I’m just this plebian struggling to stay afloat. Hmph.

(J/k, I appreciate that, Thomas. I really struggle to understand the stuff N is saying about interlude, and taste, and music, and all that. I’m glad someone can give me a “digest.”)

Lia wrote: "I’m glad someone can give me a “digest.”"

The soul is a stomach, right?

Lia wrote: "They have day before yesterday and tomorrow, but no today, what is that supposed to mean?..."

I took this to mean that as a people, the Germans looked toward the past for inspiration, and imagined a future built on a purified or modified conception of it. But the present is lying fallow, so to speak--there is no innovation, no evolution. No tension, perhaps, at least no immediate tension, because of this self-satisfaction with the (glorious) imagined past. So the imagined future can never come to fruition because there isn't the dissatisfaction from which new creativity can emerge.

Or maybe he means that if you've got one foot in yesterday and one foot in tomorrow, you're crapping all over today.

So... is a belch a breath? How about a burp?

BTW, I saw this at the library: source: THE POLITICS OF SACRIFICE IN EARLY GREEK MYTH AND POETRY

The burp Blurb:

Through close readings of the Theogony, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the Homeric Hymn to Hermes and the Odyssey in conjunction with evidence from material culture, it demonstrates how sacrifice narratives in early Greek hexameter poetry are intimately connected to a mythic-poetic discourse referred to as the “politics of the belly.” This mythic-poetic discourse presents sacrifice as a site of symbolic conflict between the male stomach and female womb for both mortals and immortals...

Sacrifice ... politics of the belly ... didn’t Nietzsche say something about hecatombs of men? Oh boy...

Thomas, could N. have meant THIS prelude?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8vjI...

"At once ponderous and capricious... like the GERMANS!!"

Bryan wrote: "if you've got one foot in yesterday and one foot in tomorrow, you're crapping all over today..."

🤔

Nice visual!

* * * T H R E A D D R I F T * * *

Did I mention I went to the library? And I saw this:
source: Homeric Durability: Telling Time in the "Iliad"

The “not yet” of Homer’s Iliad and the future-perfect of his narrative appears nowhere more clearly than in Achilles’ κλέος ἄφθιτον ‘unwithered fame’ which functions as the very poetic project of the Iliad itself

Maybe there’s something tragic or sublime about being caught between two extremely monumental epochs.

Do you think this ... crapping all over “today” ... has anything to do with the “Interlude” we covered a few weeks ago? https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

That is, I want to ask, do you think the form, the design, the arrangement of Nietzsche’s text, the sudden intrusion of an “interlude” that is stylistically different from the rest of the text — do you think all that is somehow related to what he is saying here? (Not that I know what he’s saying here. I’m struggling to get the Christmas music earworm out of my head, I can’t seem to “hear” anything else right now.)

Also, didn’t an ass intrude while Nietzsche was lecturing us about past philosophers?

Cphe wrote: "Curiously, what he appreciates in the Jews is their "resolute faith that need not be ashamed before 'modern ideas'." He admires their strength in adversity and resistance to change, and suggests th..."

Cphe,

I think that suggestion was, as we say today, master trolling. It was never going to happen, although it does indicate N.'s "ideal": a Prussian elite with Jewish sensibilities. Uebermenschlich indeed.

Cphe wrote: "What's master trolling?"

He was making an outrageous suggestion with the aim of making both Jews and Prussian officers mad.

He has "trolled" a few times. For instance, the suggestion that German souls result from the overlay of so many races.

Just deliberately provocative.. like someone in a comments section who goes against the prevailing mood.

I guess the problem is that we don’t know, can’t know, for sure if he’s trolling.

I didn’t think he was insincere about that. He seems to think hybridity is the new virtue, the few good things we moderns have (hence we can finally appreciate someone like Shakespeare, supposedly the Greek masters would have scorned him.)

As for his remarks about the Jews — he wants his free spirits to be able to, willing to, stand alone, except for a few good friends, and even then, without overstaying, without being entrapped by excessive hospitality. The Jewish diaspora is a pretty good predecessor — resisting “modern ideas” (which Nietzsche seems to think is mostly vile), not assimilating, constantly traveling, moving on, without calling any place “home”. Obviously whatever Nietzsche envisions is not the contents of Judaism, but I think it’s possible that he’s sincere about praising their ability to stand on their own against the majority.

Also, not having “today” (Germans) is the temporal version of being spacially dislocated (Jews), no? They’re both destabilized, both lacked something that most people rely on for stable identity, thus, they are both “becoming.”

To use some more cant of the day, he is praising the Jewish anti-fragility. What's the one thing Nietzsche said that everyone knows? No, not God is dead.. I mean "Whatever does not kill us makes us stronger." The Jews took the medieval disabilities and.. thrived.

Cphe wrote: "I'm no doubt wrong but it seemed to me that he was knocking countries /people for the very things that made them who they were, their identity"

I think he’s knocking nationalism, not the actual qualities developed through adaptation to region and culture and climate and history etc etc.

Remember Nietzsche identifies with “We Good Europeans” — the qualities are useful contribution to becoming “good Europeans,” nationalism is what slows down that becoming, but slowing it down deepens and intensifies the engagement and the drive.

Cphe wrote: "A nation without permanence, country. "

Or a “supra-national, nomadic type”

Cphe wrote: "Can't imagine being without that sense of identity, permanence."

I bet it hurts indescribably. I bet that constant stress of instability makes them stronger, able to adapt anywhere.

Cphe wrote: "I get the concept of troll, just never heard of master trolling previously."

Have you heard of master baiting? Same thing.

Whoops. Couldn't help it. Perfect setup.

It appears we're back in middle school. Eternal recurrence, I suppose.

we were once young, we are now becoming even younger

Glad the mod approves!

Halt neuen Freunden deine Thüren offen!
Die alten lass! Lass die Erinnerung!
Warst einst du jung, jetzt—bist du besser jung!

Hold thy door open to new friends.
Let the old ones go. Leave remembering.
Thou wert once young, now- art thou BETTER young.

(more literal than elegant)

← (Super impressed)

Is that your own translation, Chris?

Is “Leave remembering” as ambiguous in German as it is in English? I.e. can you read it as instruction for his former friends to perform the act of remembering as they leave? (As opposed to telling readers to leave behind their memories, which is how I read it before I saw yours.)

Lia wrote: "← (Super impressed)

Is that your own translation, Chris?

Is “Leave remembering” as ambiguous in German as it is in English? I.e. can you read it as instruction for his former friends to perform ..."

No, it is not the same ambiguity. "Leave (off) Remembering." "Let remembering go," (as you let the old friends go).

I tried reading the poem with less disrespect when you said it gave you chills.

(Maybe we should leave off Fatherland and strive towards the appropriate thread? 😬)

I find the poem overwhelming, but only in relation to the rest of the text, the insane amount of allusions to other texts, the fact that it is yet another “musical” (more like Greek poetic convention) reference (“apode”), AND the fact that the “new friend” who shows up is ... well, spoiler! Read on to find out!

That is, it’s not that I have the ability to appreciate his linguistic genius or musicality or whatever, I’m mostly impressed with how all the loose pieces from the 9 sections + Prelude fall into place.