The Joyful Wisdom 2

The Joyful Wisdom 2

It will be surmised that I should not like to take leave ungratefully of

that period of severe sickness, the advantage of which is not even yet

exhausted in me: for I am sufficiently conscious of what I have in

advance of the spiritually robust generally, in my changeful state of

health. A philosopher who has made the tour of many states of health,

and always makes it anew, has also gone through just as many

philosophies: he really _cannot_ do otherwise than transform his

condition on every occasion into the most ingenious posture and

position,—this art of transfiguration _is_ just philosophy. We

philosophers are not at liberty to separate soul and body, as the people

separate them; and we are still less at liberty to separate soul and

spirit. We are not thinking frogs, we are not objectifying and

registering apparatuses with cold entrails,—our thoughts must be

continually born to us out of our pain, and we must, motherlike, share

with them all that we have in us of blood, heart, ardour, joy, passion,

pang, conscience, fate and fatality. Life—that means for us to transform

constantly into light and flame all that we are, and also all that we

meet with; we _cannot_ possibly do otherwise. And as regards sickness,

should we not be almost tempted to ask whether we could in general

dispense with it? It is great pain only which is the ultimate

emancipator of the spirit; for it is the teacher of the _strong

suspicion_ which makes an X out of every U[1], a true, correct X,

_i.e._, the ante-penultimate letter.... It is great pain only, the long

slow pain which takes time, by which we are burned as it were with green

wood, that compels us philosophers to descend into our ultimate depths,

and divest ourselves of all trust, all good-nature, veiling, gentleness,

and averageness, wherein we have perhaps formerly installed our

humanity. I doubt whether such pain "improves" us; but I know that it

_deepens_ us. Be it that we learn to confront it with our pride, our

scorn, our strength of will, doing like the Indian who, however sorely

tortured, revenges himself on his tormentor with his bitter tongue; be

it that we withdraw from the pain into the oriental nothingness—it is

called Nirvana,—into mute, benumbed, deaf self-surrender,

self-forgetfulness, and self-effacement: one emerges from such long,

dangerous exercises in self-mastery as another being, with several

additional notes of interrogation, and above all, with the _will_ to

question more than ever, more profoundly, more strictly, more sternly,

more wickedly, more quietly than has ever been questioned hitherto.

Confidence in life is gone: life itself has become a _problem_.—Let it

not be imagined that one has necessarily become a hypochondriac thereby!

Even love of life is still possible—only one loves differently. It is

the love of a woman of whom one is doubtful.... The charm, however, of

all that is problematic, the delight in the X, is too great in those

more spiritual and more spiritualised men, not to spread itself again

and again like a clear glow over all the trouble of the problematic,

over all the danger of uncertainty, and even over the jealousy of the

lover. We know a new happiness....

 

 

4.

 

Finally, (that the most essential may not remain unsaid), one comes back

out of such abysses, out of such severe sickness, and out of the

sickness of strong suspicion—_new-born_, with the skin cast; more

sensitive, more wicked, with a finer taste for joy, with a more delicate

tongue for all good things, with a merrier disposition, with a second

and more dangerous innocence in joy; more childish at the same time, and

a hundred times more refined than ever before. Oh, how repugnant to us

now is pleasure, coarse, dull, drab pleasure, as the pleasure-seekers,

our "cultured" classes, our rich and ruling classes, usually understand

it! How malignantly we now listen to the great holiday-hubbub with which

"cultured people" and city-men at present allow themselves to be forced

to "spiritual enjoyment" by art, books, and music, with the help of

spirituous liquors! How the theatrical cry of passion now pains our ear,

how strange to our taste has all the romantic riot and sensuous bustle

which the cultured populace love become (together with their aspirations

after the exalted, the elevated, and the intricate)! No, if we

convalescents need an art at all, it is _another_ art—a mocking, light,

volatile, divinely serene, divinely ingenious art, which blazes up like

a clear flame, into a cloudless heaven! Above all, an art for artists,

only for artists! We at last know better what is first of all necessary

_for it_—namely, cheerfulness, _every_ kind of cheerfulness, my friends!

also as artists:—I should like to prove it. We now know something too

well, we men of knowledge: oh, how well we are now learning to forget

and _not_ know, as artists! And as to our future, we are not likely to

be found again in the tracks of those Egyptian youths who at night make

the temples unsafe, embrace statues, and would fain unveil, uncover, and

put in clear light, everything which for good reasons is kept

concealed.[2] No, we have got disgusted with this bad taste, this will

to truth, to "truth at all costs," this youthful madness in the love of

truth: we are now too experienced, too serious, too joyful, too singed,

too profound for that.... We no longer believe that truth remains truth

when the veil is withdrawn from it: we have lived long enough to believe

this. At present we regard it as a matter of propriety not to be anxious

either to see everything naked, or to be present at everything, or to

understand and "know" everything. "Is it true that the good God is

everywhere present?" asked a little girl of her mother: "I think that is

indecent":—a hint to philosophers! One should have more reverence for

the _shamefacedness_ with which nature has concealed herself behind

enigmas and motley uncertainties. Perhaps truth is a woman who has

reasons for not showing her reasons? Perhaps her name is Baubo, to speak

in Greek?... Oh, those Greeks! They knew how _to live_: for that purpose

it is necessary to keep bravely to the surface, the fold and the skin;

to worship appearance, to believe in forms, tones, and words, in the

whole Olympus of appearance! Those Greeks were superficial—_from

profundity_! And are we not coming back precisely to this point, we

dare-devils of the spirit, who have scaled the highest and most

dangerous peak of contemporary thought, and have looked around us from

it, have _looked down_ from it? Are we not precisely in this

respect—Greeks? Worshippers of forms, of tones, and of words? And

precisely on that account—artists?

 

RUTA, near GENOA

 

_Autumn, 1886._

 

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Footnote 1:

 

This means literally to put the numeral X instead of the numeral V

(formerly U); hence it means to double a number unfairly, to

exaggerate, humbug, cheat.—TR.

 

Footnote 2:

 

An allusion to Schiller's poem: "The Veiled Image of Sais."—TR.

 

 

 

 

JEST, RUSE AND REVENGE.

 

A PRELUDE IN RHYME.

 

 

1.

 

_Invitation._

 

Venture, comrades, I implore you,

On the fare I set before you,

You will like it more to-morrow,

Better still the following day:

If yet more you're then requiring,

Old success I'll find inspiring,

And fresh courage thence will borrow

Novel dainties to display.

 

 

2.

 

_My Good Luck._

 

Weary of Seeking had I grown,

So taught myself the way to Find:

Back by the storm I once was blown,

But follow now, where drives the wind.

 

 

3.

 

_Undismayed._

 

Where you're standing, dig, dig out:

Down below's the Well:

Let them that walk in darkness shout:

"Down below—there's Hell!"

 

 

4.

 

_Dialogue._

 

_A._ Was I ill? and is it ended?

Pray, by what physician tended?

I recall no pain endured!

_B._ Now I know your trouble's ended:

He that can forget, is cured.

 

 

5.