Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely Meditationswould give it the title: 'New documents of the shabby jargon oftoday'; for, if it is any comfort to him, David Strauss may be comforted to be told that nowadays all the world writes as he does, andsome people write even worse than he, and that in the country of theblind the one-eyed man is king. Indeed, we concede to him a greatdeal when we concede to him one eye; we do so, however, because atleast Strauss does not write like the most infamous of all corruptersof German, the Hegelians and their deformed offspring. At least hewants to get back out of this swamp and he has partly succeeded,though he is as yet very far from being on firm land; it is still noticeablethat in his youth he stuttered Hegelian: something in himbecame dislocated at that time, some muscle got stretched; his earbecame dulled, like the ear of a boy brought up amid the beating ofdrums, so that thereafter he became deaf to the subtle and mightylaws of sound under whose rule every writer lives who has been strictlytrained to fo llow good models. He therewith lost as a stylist his bestpossessions and, if he is not to slip back into the Hegelian mud, iscondemned to live out his life on the I»arren and perilous quicksandsof newspaper style. Nonetheless he has succeeded in becomingfam ous fo r a couple of hours in our time, and perhaps there will be acouple of hours more when it will be remembered that he was oncefamous; but then night will come and he will be fo rgotten: andalready at this moment, as we inscribe his stylistic sins in the blackbook, twilight begins to fall on his fame. For he who has sinnedagainst the German language has profaned the mystery of all that isGerman: through all the confusion and changes of nations and customs,it alone has, as by a metaphysical magic, preserved itself andtherewith the German spirit. It alone also guarantees thefuture ofthis spirit, provided it does not itself perish at the hands of the present.'But Di meliora!* Away, pachyderms, away! This is the Gennanlanguage, in which men have spoken, in which great poets have sungand great thinkers written. Keep your paws off!' -[Nietzsche now gives some 70 examples of the kind of language in which Deralte und neue Glau be is written and subjects them to a scathing commentary.The fa ults exposed include grammatical errors of various kinds, offences againstgood usage, jumbled metaphors, impossible imagery and meaninglessness; andthe critique substantiates the charge that Strauss has lost all feelingfor Germanand any clear awareness of the meaning of the words he uses. To attempt totranslate Strauss's fa ulty sentences into English equivalents would be an enjoy-"Di meliora !: 0 ye good gods!54