Céline - To hell with reality ! I want to die in music, not in reason or in prose.
People don't deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them.
To hell with them !
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Beyond Good and Evil - Nietzsche - Supposing that Truth is a womanâwhat then? Is
there not ground for suspecting that all philosophers, in so
far as they have been dogmatists, have failed to understand
womenâthat the terrible seriousness and clumsy
importunity with which they have usually paid their
addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly
methods for winning a woman? Certainly she has never
allowed herself to be won; and at present every kind of
dogma stands with sad and discouraged demeanorâIF, indeed,
it stands at all! For there are scoffers who maintain that it
has fallen, that all dogma lies on the groundânay more,
that it is at its last gasp. But to speak seriously, there are
good grounds for hoping that all dogmatizing in
philosophy, whatever solemn, whatever conclusive and
decided airs it has assumed, may have been only a noble
puerilism and tyronism; and probably the time is at hand
when it will be once and again understood WHAT has
actually sufficed for the basis of such imposing and
absolute philosophical edifices as the dogmatists have
hitherto reared: perhaps some popular superstition of
immemorial time : perhaps some play upon words, a
deception on the part of grammar, or an audacious
generalization of very restricted, very personal, very
humanâall-too-human facts. The philosophy of the
dogmatists, it is to be hoped, was only a promise for
thousands of years afterwards, as was astrology in still
earlier times, in the service of which probably more
labour, gold, acuteness, and patience have been spent than
on any actual science hitherto: we owe to it, and to its
âsuper- terrestrialâ pretensions in Asia and Egypt, the grand
style of architecture. It seems that in order to inscribe
themselves upon the heart of humanity with everlasting
claims, all great things have first to wander about the earth
as enormous and awe-inspiring caricatures..
1. The Will to Truth, which is to tempt us to many a
hazardous enterprise, the famous Truthfulness of which all
philosophers have hitherto spoken with respect, what
questions has this Will to Truth not laid before us! What
strange, perplexing, questionable questions! It is already a
long story; yet it seems as if it were hardly commenced. Is
it any wonder if we at last grow distrustful, lose patience,
and turn impatiently away? That this Sphinx teaches us at
last to ask questions ourselves? WHO is it really that puts
questions to us here? WHAT really is this âWill to Truthâ
in us? In fact we made a long halt at the question as to the
origin of this Willâuntil at last we came to an absolute
standstill before a yet more fundamental question. We
inquired about the VALUE of this Will. Granted that we
want the truth: WHY NOT RATHER untruth? And
uncertainty? Even ignorance? The problem of the value of
truth presented itself before usâor was it we who
presented ourselves before the problem? Which of us is
the Oedipus here? Which the Sphinx? It would seem to
be a rendezvous of questions and notes of interrogation.
And could it be believed that it at last seems to us as if the
problem had never been propounded before, as if we were
the first to discern it, get a sight of it, and RISK
RAISING it? For there is risk in raising it, perhaps there is
no greater risk.
24. O sancta simplicitiatas! In what strange
simplification and falsification man lives! One can never
cease wondering when once one has got eyes for
beholding this marvel! How we have made everything
around us clear and free and easy and simple! how we
have been able to give our senses a passport to everything
superficial, our thoughts a godlike desire for wanton
pranks and wrong inferences!âhow from the beginning,
we have contrived to retain our ignorance in order to
enjoy an almost inconceivable freedom, thoughtlessness,
imprudence, heartiness, and gaietyâin order to enjoy life!
And only on this solidified, granitelike foundation of
ignorance could knowledge rear itself hitherto, the will to
knowledge on the foundation of a far more powerful will,
the will to ignorance, to the uncertain, to the untrue! Not
as its opposite, butâas its refinement! It is to be hoped,
indeed, that LANGUAGE, here as elsewhere, will not get
over its awkwardness, and that it will continue to talk of
opposites where there are only degrees and many
refinements of gradation; it is equally to be hoped that the
incarnated Tartuffery of morals, which now belongs to our
unconquerable âflesh and blood,â will turn the words
round in the mouths of us discerning ones. Here and there
we understand it, and laugh at the way in which precisely
the best knowledge seeks most to retain us in this
SIMPLIFIED, thoroughly artificial, suitably imagined, and
suitably falsified world: at the way in which, whether it
will or not, it loves error, because, as living itself, it loves
life!
25. After such a cheerful commencement, a serious
word would fain be heard; it appeals to the most serious
minds. Take care, ye philosophers and friends of
knowledge, and beware of martyrdom! Of suffering âfor
the truthâs sakeâ! even in your own defense! It spoils all the
innocence and fine neutrality of your conscience; it makes
you headstrong against objections and red rags; it stupefies,
animalizes, and brutalizes, when in the struggle with
danger, slander, suspicion, expulsion, and even worse
consequences of enmity, ye have at last to play your last
card as protectors of truth upon earthâas though âthe
Truthâ were such an innocent and incompetent creature as
to require protectors! and you of all people, ye knights of
the sorrowful countenance, Messrs Loafers and Cobwebspinners
of the spirit! Finally, ye know sufficiently well
that it cannot be of any consequence if YE just carry your
point; ye know that hitherto no philosopher has carried
his point, and that there might be a more laudable
truthfulness in every little interrogative mark which you
place after your special words and favourite doctrines (and
occasionally after yourselves) than in all the solemn
pantomime and trumping games before accusers and lawcourts!
Rather go out of the way! Flee into concealment!
And have your masks and your ruses, that ye may be
mistaken for what you are, or somewhat feared! And pray,
donât forget the garden, the garden with golden trelliswork!
And have people around you who are as a gardenâ
or as music on the waters at eventide, when already the
day becomes a memory. Choose the GOOD solitude, the
free, wanton, lightsome solitude, which also gives you the
right still to remain good in any sense whatsoever! How
poisonous, how crafty, how bad, does every long war
make one, which cannot be waged openly by means of
force! How PERSONAL does a long fear make one, a
long watching of enemies, of possible enemies! These
pariahs of society, these long-pursued, badly-persecuted
onesâalso the compulsory recluses, the Spinozas or
Giordano Brunosâalways become in the end, even under
the most intellectual masquerade, and perhaps without
being themselves aware of it, refined vengeance-seekers
and poison-Brewers (just lay bare the foundation of
Spinozaâs ethics and theology!), not to speak of the
stupidity of moral indignation, which is the unfailing sign
in a philosopher that the sense of philosophical humour
has left him. The martyrdom of the philosopher, his
âsacrifice for the sake of truth,â forces into the light
whatever of the agitator and actor lurks in him; and if one
has hitherto contemplated him only with artistic curiosity,
with regard to many a philosopher it is easy to understand
the dangerous desire to see him also in his deterioration
(deteriorated into a âmartyr,â into a stage-and- tribunebawler).
Only, that it is necessary with such a desire to be
clear WHAT spectacle one will see in any caseâmerely a
satyric play, merely an epilogue farce, merely the
continued proof that the long, real tragedy IS AT AN
END, supposing that every philosophy has been a long
tragedy in its origin.
26. Every select man strives instinctively for a citadel
and a privacy, where he is FREE from the crowd, the
many, the majorityâ where he may forget âmen who are
the rule,â as their exception;â exclusive only of the case
in which he is pushed straight to such men by a still
stronger instinct, as a discerner in the great and exceptional
sense. Whoever, in intercourse with men, does not
occasionally glisten in all the green and grey colours of
distress, owing to disgust, satiety, sympathy, gloominess,
and solitariness, is assuredly not a man of elevated tastes;
supposing, however, that he does not voluntarily take all
this burden and disgust upon himself, that he persistently
avoids it, and remains, as I said, quietly and proudly
hidden in his citadel, one thing is then certain: he was not
made, he was not predestined for knowledge. For as such,
he would one day have to say to himself: âThe devil take
my good taste! but âthe ruleâ is more interesting than the
exceptionâthan myself, the exception!â And he would go
DOWN, and above all, he would go âinside.â The long
and serious study of the AVERAGE manâand
consequently much disguise, self-overcoming, familiarity,
and bad intercourse (all intercourse is bad intercourse
except with oneâs equals):âthat constitutes a necessary
part of the life-history of every philosopher; perhaps the
most disagreeable, odious, and disappointing part. If he is
fortunate, however, as a favourite child of knowledge
should be, he will meet with suitable auxiliaries who will
shorten and lighten his task; I mean so- called cynics, those
who simply recognize the animal, the commonplace and
âthe ruleâ in themselves, and at the same time have so
much spirituality and ticklishness as to make them talk of
themselves and their like BEFORE WITNESSESâ
sometimes they wallow, even in books, as on their own
dung-hill. Cynicism is the only form in which base souls
approach what is called honesty; and the higher man must
open his ears to all the coarser or finer cynicism, and
congratulate himself when the clown becomes shameless
right before him, or the scientific satyr speaks out. There
are even cases where enchantment mixes with the
disgustâ namely, where by a freak of nature, genius is
bound to some such indiscreet billy-goat and ape, as in the
case of the Abbe Galiani, the profoundest, acutest, and
perhaps also filthiest man of his centuryâhe was far
profounder than Voltaire, and consequently also, a good
deal more silent. It happens more frequently, as has been
hinted, that a scientific head is placed on an apeâs body, a
fine exceptional understanding in a base soul, an
occurrence by no means rare, especially among doctors
and moral physiologists. And whenever anyone speaks
without bitterness, or rather quite innocently, of man as a
belly with two requirements, and a head with one;
whenever any one sees, seeks, and WANTS to see only
hunger, sexual instinct, and vanity as the real and only
motives of human actions; in short, when any one speaks
âbadlyââand not even âillââof man, then ought the lover
of knowledge to hearken attentively and diligently; he
ought, in general, to have an open ear wherever there is
talk without indignation. For the indignant man, and he
who perpetually tears and lacerates himself with his own
teeth (or, in place of himself, the world, God, or society),
may indeed, morally speaking, stand higher than the
laughing and self- satisfied satyr, but in every other sense
he is the more ordinary, more indifferent, and less
instructive case. And no one is such a LIAR as the
indignant man.
59. Whoever has seen deeply into the world has
doubtless divined what wisdom there is in the fact that
men are superficial. It is their preservative instinct which
teaches them to be flighty, lightsome, and false. Here and
there one finds a passionate and exaggerated adoration of
âpure formsâ in philosophers as well as in artists: it is not to
be doubted that whoever has NEED of the cult of the
superficial to that extent, has at one time or another made
an unlucky dive BENEATH it. Perhaps there is even an
order of rank with respect to those burnt children, the
born artists who find the enjoyment of life only in trying
to FALSIFY its image (as if taking wearisome revenge on
it), one might guess to what degree life has disgusted
them, by the extent to which they wish to see its image
falsified, attenuated, ultrified, and deified,âone might
reckon the homines religiosi among the artists, as their
HIGHEST rank. It is the profound, suspicious fear of an
incurable pessimism which compels wh
