14 Apr Beyond good and evil (FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE)
Because solitude is a virtue for us
To live with immense and proud composure; always beyond –.
To freely have or not have your affects, your pros and cons, to condescend to them for a few hours; to seat yourself on them like you would on a horse or often like you would on an ass: – since you need to know how to use your stupidity as well as you know how to use your fire. To keep your three hundred foregrounds, and your dark glasses too: because there are times when nobody can look into our eyes, or even less into our “grounds.” And to choose for company that mischievous and cheerful vice, politeness. And to keep control over your four virtues: courage, insight, sympathy, solitude. Because solitude is a virtue for us, since it is a sublime inclination and impulse to cleanliness which shows that contact between people (“society”) inevitably makes things unclean.
Somewhere, sometime, every community makes people – “base.”
Thrown into a noisy, vulgar age
“But what happened to you?”
– “I don’t know,” he said hesitantly; “maybe the harpies flew over the table at me.”
– Every once in a while these days, a mild, moderate, restrained person will fly into a sudden fury, smash dishes, knock over tables, scream, throw fits, insult everyone – and finally go off, ashamed, furious at himself, – but where? And why?
To starve far away?
To choke on his memory?
– The danger will always be considerable for someone with the desires of a high and discriminating soul, who rarely finds his table set and his food ready: today, however, the danger will be extraordinary. Thrown into a noisy, vulgar age and not wanting to eat out of a single one of its bowls, he can easily die of hunger and thirst, or, if he finally “digs in” anyway, he can be destroyed – by sudden nausea.
– We have probably all sat at tables where we did not belong; and the most spiritual among us (who are also the most difficult to feed), are familiar with that dangerous dyspepsia that comes from a sudden insight into and disappointment over our food and dining companions, – the after-dinner nausea.
Beyond good and evil
Friedrich Nietzsche
