Edward Lucas White’s novel of Rome, Andivius Hedulio, is a moving-picture scenario printed in book form. It is a large and attractive skeleton, wearing a little more flesh than skeletons in good society have been in the habit of wearing, even in New York.
The most brilliant author’s introductions I know are those Nietzsche, Poet of Philosophy, has written for books of his epoch-making thinking. No one has been able to throw surer, more far-reaching noose over the problematical future. His Jenseits v. Gut u. Böse he called philosophy of the future. That is daring. It may be true. It is conceivable at least, a world in which good and evil, as we understand them, may not be standardized. Life cast huge shadows for Nietzsche, like childhood’s flickering fireplace-shadows, on the wall. His philosophy is these stalking shadows, terrifying sometimes, astonishing and always superhuman, these shadows of men who live.
Truth does not stand still and let us build clean, white, picket fences around it, and label it Exhibit A. It changes, takes new forms, under new suns. There is nothing fixed, eternal, except the pitiful drama of man, and the hopeless hope in his heart. It may be real; at the same time, it is unstable as the sea.
It would not be easy to be happy, even keep sane, and look upon existence with the scorn with which Nietzsche viewed it. A bitter, laughing tongue with deadly penetrating power, was his. As the French Revolution cleared the air for different social, economical living, the philosophy of Nietzsche (by surprising power to destroy), helps clear the atmosphere for less prejudiced thinking.
Nietzsche is the mischievous boy in school of the old philosophers. He insists upon knocking down with hard, well-made paper balls, the idols they set up. He is brilliant phrase maker. He transforms the heavy, slightly ponderous German tongue to frothiness of French. He stands behind it with up-lifted whip, cruelly lashing it to fresh agilities. His word acrobatics are worth considering. Yet he is seldom pleased with the result. He can not, like little people, rejoice in what he himself has done. The outlines of words as they are do not suit him. He shades them. He sets them differently. He cuts off edges. He insists they no longer falsify his thought. No written statement suits him. He wishes it a little different. The exactitude of his thinking is superb. It is difficult for words, whose sense boundaries are not exact, to express it.
Wonderful, lightening clear, shining, far, problematical glimpses he flashes forth. In certain, to him inconsequential asides, he is Prophet of Hebraic height. It is in words like these, of great thinkers, with prodigious power of self-projection, that living men gain idea of the civilizations that are on the way.
There are few more distinguished literary critics than Nietzsche. His seeing is revealing. He has few superiors in sympathetic appreciation of the printed word in hands of a master. He has fine ear for music of the sentence, too. No subtlety, no fineness, is lost. What he says about Petronius makes me long to read him again after the years. It fills me with zest, with pleasure. “Wer endlich dürfte gar eine deutsche Übersetzung des Petronius wagen der mehr als irgend ein grosser Musiker bisher der Meister des presto gewesen ist, in Erfindung, Einfallen, Worten:—was liegt zuletzt an allen Sumpfen der kranken, schlimmen Welt, auch der Alten Welt, wenn man wie er, die Füsse eines Windes hat, den Zug und Athen, den Befreienden Hohn eines Windes, der alles gesund macht indem er alles laufen macht!” Nietzsche wants to know who would dare make a translation into German of this book by Petronius, who more than any other of the great musicians, was master of the presto! What magnificent things Nietzsche writes about him! He insists he had the swift feet of the wind, and the wind’s breath, which clears and makes clean, with a scorn that sets free, and so forth. Here I found again that Feast of Trimalchion I stumbled through dully in school days, and later read with zest, while glorious visions of Rome brought from Latin poets, likewise from etchings of Piranesi, crowded my memory as I read.
Nietzsche makes the same statement Hardy makes. There is no writing today for the ear. There are no architects of the sonorous sentence, sculptured phrase, hinting at vast resources, wherein a multitude of minds could swarm and find safety; no sentence of mighty curve, powerful sweep. Cicero wrote such sentences. So did Demosthenes. Speech is crumbling. The rock is fretting itself back again to sand. It is no longer strong enough to contend with the forces of creation, chaos, the desolating forces so rapidly destroying the old, it is suitable now for petty writers, the little men, and the wilful winds. A force of disintegration is at work. That is why the little men with swollen ego are able to handle it, then feel proud.
Nietzsche impresses me as an artist gone wrong rather than philosopher sang pur. He makes reasoning conform to eye-delight in noble line, distinguished color. He feels, he enjoys first, thinks afterward. Sometimes he impresses me as an artist who did not have courage to try his artist’s wings, who felt, feared, perhaps, they were feeble. So he fell back upon brilliant, learned, fault-finding. He became the distinguished spier-out of men’s weaknesses. It is not easy for Nietzsche to see without passion. To see with passion is not of the philosopher. His seeing is bound too closely to the emotions of self. His hatreds, his envies, play commanding part. His hatred, for example, for Darwin, John Stuart Mill, Spencer, Locke, Carlyle, and so forth, and so forth. And his envy of Wagner and the Songs of Schumann. A strange combination of opposites for a man of his gifts!