Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

2Untimely Meditationsand affected vivacity which have so excited some readers they cannow mention Strauss only in concert with Lessing, can be found onpage 8: 'I am well aware that what 1 propose to discuss in the followingpages is known just as well by countless other people and by some itis known better. Some of them have already spoken out. Should 1therefore keep silent? 1 do not believe so. For we all supplement oneanother. If another knows many things better than I, perhaps 1 knowa few things better than he; and 1 have a viewpoint on many thingsdifferent from the viewpoint of others. So out with it, let me displaymy colours, that it may be seen whether or not they are genuine.' Tobe sure, Strauss's style usually maintains a mean between this freeand-easyquick-march and the fu nereal crawl of the first example:but between two vices there does not always dwell virtue; all toooften what dwells there is weakness, lameness and impotence. 1 wasvery disappointed, in fact, when 1 looked through Strauss's book insearch of more subtle and wittier traits and expressions; since 1 hadfound nothing praiseworthy in the confessor 1 actually established aheading under which to list such passages,eso that 1 might at least beable to say something in praise of Strauss the writer. 1 searched andsearched but could list nothing. On the other hand, a second listwith the heading 'Solecisms, confused similes, obscure abbreviations,tastelessness and affectation' became so full 1 can venture toreproduce here only a modest selection of the examples 1assembled. Perhaps it will reveal precisely what it is that evokes in thecontemporary German his belief that Strauss is a great stylist: forhere we find curiosities of expression which in the arid dust anddesert of the book as a whole offer if not pleasant at any rate painfullystimulating surprises: on encountering such passages we notice, toemploy a Straussian metaphor, that at least we are not yet dead bythe way we react to these jabs. For the rest of the book displays a totallack of anything whatever offensive, that is to say productive, such aswould now be reckoned a positive quality in the classic prose-writer.Extreme sobriety and aridity, a truly starving sobriety, nowadaysawakens in the educated masses the unnatural feeling that preciselythese are the signs of flourishing health, so that here there apply thewords of the author of the Dialogus de Oratibus: 'illam ipsam quam iactantsanitatem non firmitate sed ieiunio consequuntur' . * With instinctiveunanimity, they hate allfirmitas because it bears witness to a healthinessquite different from theirs, and seek to throw suspicion on*illam ipsam quam iactant sanitatem non firmitate sed ieiunio consequuntur: even theirhealth, which they parade, they obtain not through strength but through fasting(Tacitus)