Human, All Too Human Volume Ii Part 11

122.

GOOD MEMORY.-Many a man fails to become a thinker for the sole reason that his memory is too good.

123.

AROUSING INSTEAD OF APPEASING HUNGER.-Great artists fancy that they have taken full possession of a soul. In reality, and often to their painful disappointment, that soul has only been made more capacious and insatiable, so that a dozen greater artists could plunge into its depths without filling it up.

124.

ARTISTS' ANXIETY.-The anxiety lest people may not believe that their figures are _alive_ can mislead many artists of declining taste to portray these figures so that they appear as if mad. From the same anxiety, on the other hand, Greek artists of the earliest ages gave even dead and sorely wounded men that smile which they knew as the most vivid sign of life-careless of the actual forms bestowed by nature on life at its last gasp.

125.

THE CIRCLE MUST BE COMPLETED.-He who follows a philosophy or a genre of art to the end of its career and beyond, understands from inner experience why the masters and disciples who come after have so often turned, with a depreciatory gesture, into a new groove. The circle must be described-but the individual, even the greatest, sits firm on his point of the circ.u.mference, with an inexorable look of obstinacy, as if the circle ought never to be completed.

126.

THE OLDER ART AND THE SOUL OF THE PRESENT.-Since every art becomes more and more adapted to the expression of spiritual states, of the more lively, delicate, energetic, and pa.s.sionate states, the later masters, spoilt by these means of expression, do not feel at their ease in the presence of the old-time works of art. They feel as if the ancients had merely been lacking in the means of making their souls speak clearly, also perhaps in some necessary technical preliminaries. They think that they must render some a.s.sistance in this quarter, for they believe in the similarity or even unity of all souls. In truth, however, measure, symmetry, a contempt for graciousness and charm, an unconscious severity and morning chilliness, an evasion of pa.s.sion, as if pa.s.sion meant the death of art-such are the const.i.tuents of sentiment and morality in all old masters, who selected and arranged their means of expression not at random but in a necessary connection with their morality. Knowing this, are we to deny those that come after the right to animate the older works with their soul? No, for these works can only survive through our giving them our soul, and our blood alone enables them to speak to _us_. The real "historic" discourse would talk ghostly speech to ghosts. We honour the great artists less by that barren timidity that allows every word, every note to remain intact than by energetic endeavours to aid them continually to a new life.-True, if Beethoven were suddenly to come to life and hear one of his works performed with that modern animation and nervous refinement that bring glory to our masters of execution, he would probably be silent for a long while, uncertain whether he should raise his hand to curse or to bless, but perhaps say at last: "Well, well! That is neither I nor not-I, but a third thing-it seems to me, too, something right, if not just _the_ right thing. But you must know yourselves what to do, as in any case it is you who have to listen. As our Schiller says, 'the living man is right.' So have it your own way, and let me go down again."

127.

AGAINST THE DISPARAGERS OF BREVITY.-A brief dictum may be the fruit and harvest of long reflection. The reader, however, who is a novice in this field and has never considered the case in point, sees something embryonic in all brief dicta, not without a reproachful hint to the author, requesting him not to serve up such raw and ill-prepared food.

128.

AGAINST THE SHORT-SIGHTED.-Do you think it is piece-work because it is (and must be) offered you in pieces?

129.

READERS OF APHORISMS.-The worst readers of aphorisms are the friends of the author, if they make a point of referring the general to the particular instance to which the aphorism owes its origin. This namby-pamby att.i.tude brings all the author's trouble to naught, and instead of a philosophic lesson and a philosophic frame of mind, they deservedly gain nothing but the satisfaction of a vulgar curiosity.

130.

READERS' INSULTS.-The reader offers a two-fold insult to the author by praising his second book at the expense of his first (or _vice versa_) and by expecting the author to be grateful to him on that account.

131.

THE EXCITING ELEMENT IN THE HISTORY OF ART.-We fall into a state of terrible tension when we follow the history of an art-as, for example, that of Greek oratory-and, pa.s.sing from master to master, observe their increasing precautions to obey the old and the new laws and all these self-imposed limitations. We see that the bow _must_ snap, and that the so-called "loose" composition, with the wonderful means of expression smothered and concealed (in this particular case the florid style of Asianism), was once necessary and almost _beneficial_.

132.

TO THE GREAT IN ART.-That enthusiasm for some object which you, O great man, introduce into this world causes the intelligence of the many to be stunted. The knowledge of this fact spells humiliation. But the enthusiast wears his hump with pride and pleasure, and you have the consolation of feeling that you have increased the world's happiness.

133.

CONSCIENCELESS aeSTHETES.-The real fanatics of an artistic school are perhaps those utterly inartistic natures that are not even grounded in the elements of artistic study and creation, but are impressed with the strongest of all the elementary influences of an art. For them there is no aesthetic conscience-hence nothing to hold them back from fanaticism.