Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

David Strauss, the confessor and the writersents itself is, in all seriousness, instructive: let no one who has fallenvictim to the confessional book let it go without having read theexcursus 'on our great poets' or that 'on our great composers'. Herethere extends the rainbow of the new guild, and he who cannot takejoy in it 'is beyond all help', is, as Strauss says on another occasionbut could also say here, 'not yet ripe for our viewpoint'. For we are,remember, in the Heaven of Heavens. The enthusiastic peripateticsets about leading us around, and apologizes if, carried away by thepleasure he takes in all these wonderful things, he talks a little toomuch. 'If I perchance grow more loquacious than is thoughtappropriate to the occasion', he tells us, 'I ask the reader'sindulgence: out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh. Lethim be assured, however, that what he is now going to read is notdrawn from earlier writings and inserted here, but written for thepresent purpose and the present place' (p. 296). This confessionmomentarily staggers us. of what interest can it be to us whether ornot these charming little chapters are newly written! If only it were amatter of writing! Between ourselves, I wish they had been written 25years ago: fo r then I would know why the ideas in them seem to meso pallid and why the odour of mouldering antiques adheres tothem. But that something written in 1872 should smell mouldy in1872 arouses my suspicions. Suppose someone fell asleep whilereading these chapters and imbibing their odour- what would he belikely to dream about? A friend of mine gave me the answer, for ithappened to him. He dreamed of a waxworks show: the classicauthors stood there, delicately imitated in wax and gems. Theymoved their arms and eyes and a screw inside them squeaked as theydid so. He then saw something uncanny, a formless figure draped inribbons and gilt paper with a label hanging from its mouth and'Lessing' written on it; my friend said he stepped closer and learnedthe worst: it was the Homeric chimera, Strauss in front, Gervinusbehind, in the middle chimera - in summa, Lessing. This discoverywrung from him a scream of fear, he awoke and read no further.Why, Master, did you ever write such mouldy little chapters!We do, to be sure, learn a few novelties from them: for example,that Gervinus has taught us how and why Goethe possessed no talentfor the drama, that in the second part of Faust he has produced only aschematic allegory; that Wallenstein is a Macbeth who is at the sametime Hamlet;* that the Straussian reader plucks out the stories fromthe Wanderjahre in the way illbred children pluck the almonds andnil:: 1 I: :1*111 Schiller's three-pan drama H'(/l1l'11sll'ill.19