Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely MeditationsWe begrudge no one the edification he acquires for himself in thesilence of his room or in the new heavenly kingdom arranged for thepurpose; but of all possible forms of edification the Straussian is oneof the strangest; for he edifies himself at a little sacrificial fire intowhich he casually casts the sublimest works of the German nation inorder to perfume his idols with the smoke they produce. Let usimagine for a moment that the 'Eroica', the 'Pastoral' and the Ninthhad chanced to get into the hands of our priest of the muses and thatit had then depended upon him to keep Beethoven's image spotlessthrough the removal of such 'problematical productions' who candoubt that he would have burned them? And that is how theStrausses of our day in fact proceed: they want to know of an artistonly that by which he is suited for their domestic service, and can seeno alternative but using him as perfume or burning him. This, ofcourse, they should be at liberty to do: the only strange thing about itis that public opinion in aesthetic matters is so insipid, uncertain andeasily misled that it beholds such an exhibition of the sorriest philistinismwithout protest, that it lacks, indeediJ any feeling for the comicalityof a scene in which an unaesthetic magistrate sits in judgmenton Beethoven. And as for Mozart, there ought truly to apply to himwhat Aristotle said of Plato: 'the bad man is not permitted even topraise him'. Here, however, all shame has been lost, on the part ofthe public as much as on that of the Master; not only is he permittedto cross himself before the greatest and purest products of the Germangenius as though he had beheld something godless and indecent,but his candid confessions of sins are received with delight,especially as he confesses not sins he himself has committed, butthose supposedly committed by our great spirits. 'Ah, if only ourMaster really was always right!' his admiring readers sometimesthink in an access of doubt; he himself, however, stands there, smilingand certain, perorating, damning and blessing, doffing his hat tohimself, and capable at any moment of saying what the duchessDelafone said to Madame de Stael: 'I have to admit, my dear friend,that 1 know of nobody who is always right except me.'6To the worm a corpse is a pleasant thought, and to everything livinga worm is a dreadful one. The worm's idea of Heaven is a fat carcass,the philosophy professor's is grubbing about in the entrails ofSchopenhauer, and as long as there are rats there will also be a rat24