Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely Meditations1.1raisins out of a tough cake;' that without thrills and extreme situationsnothing on the stage can make any real effect; and that Schilleremerged from Kant as from a hydropathic establishment. All this iscertainly new and striking, even if it does not strike us very pleas andy;and, as surely as it is new, just as surely it will never grow old, for itwas never young: it came into the world already old. What ideas thenew-style blessed come across in their aesthetic Heaven! And whyhave they not forgotten at any rate some of them, especially whenthey are as unaesthetic and earthly-ephemeral and bear the stamp ofstupidity as visibly as, for example, some of the opinions ofGervinus! But it almost seems as though the modest greatness of aStrauss and the immodest minimality of a Gervinus can get ontogether only too well: and so hail to all these blessed ones, and hailto us unblessed ones as well, if this undoubted judge of art goes onteaching his acquired enthusiasm and his coach-horse gallop, ofwhich honest Grillparzer has spoken with all due clarity, and allHeaven resounds with the hoofbeats'of this galloping enthusiasm!Things would at least be a bit livelier than tihey are at present, whenthe creeping carpet-slippered enthusiasm of our heavenly leaderand the lukewarm eloquence of his mouth in the long run onlyweary and disgust us. I would like to know how a Hallelujah wouldsound in the mouth of Strauss: I imagine one would have to listenvery closely or it would sound like a polite apology or a whisperedcompliment. I can relate an instructive and appalling example ofthis. Strauss took grave exception to references by one of his opponentsto his bowing and scraping before Lessing- the unfortunateman had misunderstood him -; Strauss, to be sure, asserted that theman must be a numbskull not to recognize that the simple words hehad used of Lessing in section got had come straight from thewarmth of his heart. Now, I have no doubt at all as to the existence ofthis warmth; on the contrary, I have always felt that this warmth ofapproval of Lessing on the part of Strauss had something suspectabout it; I find the same suspect approval of Lessing raised to steamheatin Gervinus; indeed, none of the great German writers is ingeneral so popular with the litde German writers as Lessing is; andyet they deserve no thanks for it: for what is it in Lessing that reallywins their approval? First, his universality: he is a critic and a poet,an archaeologist and a philosopher, a theorist of drama and a*Goethe's novel Wilhelm Mei.sters Wa ruleryahre (182 1-9), which contains inset stories.t'section 90' refers to The Old Faith and the New.20