Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely Meditationscovered any paradox in him, though here and there a Ilttle error; forwhat are paradoxes but assertions which carry no convictionbecause their author himself is not really convinced of them andmakes them only so as to glitter and seduce and in general cut afigure. Schopenhauer never wants to cut a figure: fo r he writes forhimself and no one wants to be deceived, least of all a philosopherwho has made it a rule for himself: deceive no one, not even yoursel flNot even with the pleasant sociable deception which almost everyconversation entails and which writers imitate almost unconsciously;even less with the conscious deception of the orator and by the artificialmeans of rhetoric. Schopenhauer, on the contrary, speaks withhimself: or, if one feels obliged to imagine an auditor, one shouldthink of a son being instructed by his father. It is an honest, calm,good natured discourse before an auditor who listens to it with love.We are lacking such writers. The speaker's powerful sense of well..:.being embraces us immediately he begins to speak; we fe el as we doon entering the high forest, we take a deep breath and acquire thatsense of wellbeing ourselves. We feel thatjlere we shall always find abracing air; here there is a certain inimitable unaffectedness andnaturalness such as is possessed by men who are within themselvesmasters of their own house, and a very rich house at that: in contrastto those writers who surprise themselves most when they for oncesay something sensible and whose style therefore acquires somethingrestless and unnatural. Schopenhauer's- voice reminds us justas little of the scholar whose limbs are naturally stiff and whose chestis narrow and who therefore goes about with awkward embarrass-. ment or a strutting gait; while on the other hand Schopenhauer'srough and somewhat bear-like soul teaches us not so much to feelthe absence of the suppleness and courtly charm of good Frenchwriters as to disdain it, and no one will discover in him that imitated,as it were silver-plated pseudo- Frenchness in which German writersso much indulge. Schopenhauer's way of expressing himselfreminds me here and there a little of Goethe, but otherwise he recallsno German model at all. For he understands how to express the profound with simplicity, the moving without rhetoric, the strictlyscientific without pedantry: and from what German could he havelearned this? He is also free of the over-subtle, over-supple and - if Imay be allowed to say so - not very German style that characterizesLessing: which is a great merit in him, for Lessing is the most seductiveof all German writers of prose. And, to say without more ado thehighest thing I can say in regard to his style, I cannot do better than134