Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely Meditationshave: while any art which, because contemporary, is not yet monumental,seems to them unnecessary, unattractive and lacking in theauthority conferred by history. On the other hand, their instincts tellthem that art can be slain by art: the monumental is never to berepeated, and to make sure it is not they invoke the authority whichthe monumental derives from the past. They are connoisseurs of artbecause they would like to do away with art altogether; they pose asphysicians, while their basic intent is to mix poisons; they developtheir taste and tongue as they do so as to employ this spoiled taste asan explanation of why they so resolutely reject all the nourishingartistic food that is offered them. For they do not desire to see newgreatness emerge: their means of preventing it is to say 'Behold,greatness already exists!' In reality, they are as little concerned aboutthis greatness that already exists as they are about that which isemerging: their lives are evidence of this. Monumental history is themasquerade costume in which their hatred of the great and powerfulof their own age is disguised as satiated admiration for the great andpowerful of past ages, and muffled in which they invert the realmeaning of that mode of regarding history into its opposite; whetherthey are aware of it or not, they act as though their motto were: let thedead bury the living.Each of the three species of history which exist belongs to a certainsoil and a certain climate and only to that: in any other it grows into adevastating weed. If the man who wants to do something great hasneed of the past at all, he appropriates it by means of monumentalhistory; "he, on the other hand, who likes to persist in the fam iliar and" the revered of old, tends the past as an antiquarian historian; andonly he who is oppressed by a present need, and who wants to throwoff this burden at any cost, has need of critical history, that is to say ahistory that judges and condemns. Much mischiefis caused throughthe thoughtless transplantation of these plants: the critic withoutneed, the antiquary without piety, the man who recognizes greatnessbut cannot himself do great things, are such plants, estranged fromtheir mother soil and degenerated into weeds.3History thus belongs in the second place to him who preserves andreveres - to him who looks back to whence he has come, to where hecame into being, with love and loyalty; with this piety he as it weregives thanks for his existence. By tending with care that which has72