Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

David Strauss, the confessor and the writercribed most forcefully by Schopenhauer. 'If this goes on', he oncesaid, 'in the year 1900 the German classics will no longer be comprehensible,since the only language understood will be the shabbyjargon of our noble "present" the basic character of which isimpotence.' Already, indeed, German linguistic arbiters and grammarianswriting in the most recent journals give the impression thatour classics can no longer be valid to us as stylistic models becausethey employ a large number of words, locutions and syntacticalfigures which we have lost: for which reason it might seem appropriateto collect together the masterpieces of our present literarycelebrities fo r the purpose of imitating their vocabulary andphraseology, as has in fact been done by Sander in his concise pocketdictionary of infamous language. Here the repellent stylistic monsterGutzkow appears as a classic: and it seems that we have ingeneral to accustom ourselves to a whole new and surprising host of'classics', among whom the first, or one of the first, is David Strauss ­whom we cannot describe in any way other than we have alreadydescribed him: as a worthless stylist.Now, it is extremely characteristic of the pseudo-culture of thecultural philistine that he should even appropriate the concept of theclassic and the model writer he who exhibits his strength only inwarding off a real, artistically vigorous cultural style and throughsteadfastness in warding off arrives at a homogeneity of expressionwhich almost resembles a unity of style. How is it possible that, giventhe limitless experimentation with language everyone is permittedto indulge in, certain individual authors nonetheless discover auniversally agreeable tone of voice? What is it really that is here souniversally agreeable? Above all a negative quality: the absence ofanything offensive - but anything truly productive is offensive. - For thegreater part of what the German of today reads undoubtedly comprisesthe newspapers and the magazines that go with them: thelanguage here employed, a ceaseless drip of the same locutions andthe same words, imprints itself on his ear, and since he usually readsthis literature at times when his wearied mind is in any case littlecapable of resistance, his ear for language gradually comes to feel athome in this everyday German and is pained when it notices itsabsence. The manufacturers of these newspapers, however, are, aswould be expected from their whole way of life, the most accustomedto the slime of this newspaper language: they have in the strictestsense of the word lost all taste, and the most their tongue can stillsavour with any ki nd of pleasure is the totally corrupt and ca-49