Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

David Strauss; the confessor and the writertheologian. Then, 'this unity of the writer and the man, of the headand the heart'. The latter quality distinguishes every great writer, andsometimes even the little writer, for a narrow mind gets onfabulously well with a narrow heart. And the former quality, universality,is in itself no distinction at all, especially as in Lessing's case itwas a mere necessity. What is, rather, to be marvelled at in theseLessing enthusiasts is precisely that they fail to notice this consumingnecessity which pursued Lessing throughout his life and forcedupon him his 'universality'; that they fail to realize that such a man isconsumed too quickly, like a flame, and are not indignant that thistender, ardent being was darkened, tormented and suffocated by thevulgar narrowness and poverty of his whole environment, andespecially that of his learned contemporaries; that they fail tounderstand, indeed, that this admired universality is something thatought to evoke, not admiration, but a profound feeling of pity.'Commiserate with the extraordinary man', Goethe cries to us, 'thathe lived in so miserable' an age he had constantly to exert himselfpolemically.'* How, my dear philistines, can you think of Lessingwithout a feeling of shame: he who perished of your stupidity, inconflict with your ludicrous totems and idols, through the wretchedstate of your theatres, your scholars, your theologians, without evenonce being able to venture that eternal flight for which he had comeinto the world. And what do you feel when you rememberWinckelmann, who, to free his sight of your grotesque absurdities,went begging for help to the Jesuits and whose shameful conversiondishonours not him but you? Do you even dare to speak the name ofSchiller and not blush? Look at this picture! The flashing eyes thatgaze contemptuously out over your heads, the deathly flushedcheeks - do these say nothing to you? Here was a glorious, divine toywhich you broke. And if this curtailed and mortally harassed life hadbeen deprived of Goethe's friendship it would have been your partto extinguish it even sooner! None of your great geniuses has everreceived any assistance from you, and do you now want to make it adogma that none ever shall receive any? To each of them you werethat 'resistance of the obtuse world' which Goethe names in hisepilogue to Schiller's Glocke; to each of them you showed annoyanceand lack of understanding, or envious narrow-mindedness, ormalice and egoism: it was in spite of you they created their works,against you they directed their attacks, and it was thanks to you they"'Goethe to Eckermann, 7 February 1827.21