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"Approaching Thunder Storm," Martin Johnson Heade (1859)
There's a lot of articulation about how Nietzsche rocks and not too much about why too much service to Shelley can rot your will. Is this last bit so completely self-evident? If not,
O cease! must hate and death return?
Cease! must men kill and die?
Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn
Of bitter prophecy!
The world is weary of the past--
O might it die or rest at last!
-- in other words, the angel of Shelley walks backward into the tar pits while calling to stop the world (I want to get off) of harsh knowledge, conflict, time. This is the sentimental pursuit of the "oceanic feeling," which despite its overt denial of death is actually its worship as the return of the real. The cessation of desire is death: one can pray the world's satisfaction, one's own or (most often) the simultaneous extinction of both. ("You and the lion die as one.") The narcotic error of hyphenate "buddhists" and other sterile grafts. As this is fundamentally a "feeling," science, properly applied, is a cure. There are of course other routes to the real, and in the meantime we want and keep on wanting, painful though it may be, until we stop. And:
The English language is fallen into disrepute and impotence. But the wood pulp period of brain and paper will soon pass. Unless England is destroyed altogether by the vermin that are gnawing at her entrails, unless the speech of the greatest minds on earth since the Fall of Rome is rotted through by the cancer of senseless slang, venal vulgarity, alien abominations, the weapon of Shelley will wing its way through the centuries, and enable mind to inform mind by virtue of subtle cadences, harmonies and hammer-strokes. That is, above all, the problem of the day, now that the "hard facts" of materialism are thawing into a gossamer dew. It is becoming impossible to write sober science in prose: the subtleties of Nature demand rhythm to respond to, and to record, their own. By Wisdom, that is, by the Word, He created the worlds; and the Wonder-World of today has been created by the Word of the Winged Serpent, whom the men of his own day took to be Satan, him whose centenary we celebrate under his pseudonym of Percy Bysshe Shelley.
So much the serpent, but who, specifically, are death's other devotees in this day and age?
September 9 2005, 16:56:29 UTC 6 years ago
Shelley... the problem?
When Nietzsche posits a coming confrontation between Shelley and Nietzsche, I investigated the latter - but not the former. Thanks for looking at why Shelley is part of the problem - and what he and his work represents.September 9 2005, 19:27:08 UTC 6 years ago
"How wonderful is Death, Death and his brother Sleep"
Thanks for reading; it couldn't have happened without your arguments for FN. I hadn't put much effort into the problem with Percy either, but this morning I caught that stanza elsewhere and everything clicked into place. What an object lesson he is.HOW wonderful is Death,
Death, and his brother Sleep!
One, pale as yonder waning moon
With lips of lurid blue;
The other, rosy as the morn
When throned on ocean's wave
It blushes o'er the world;
Yet both so passing wonderful!
September 9 2005, 17:17:19 UTC 6 years ago
See also : http://www.ericfrancis.com/planetwa
Let me think about it some more. Or maybe not today.
September 9 2005, 19:37:51 UTC 6 years ago
I hate insurance companies, deliberately playing on human pessimism. It's like a craps table where they encourage you to bet DON'T COME in order to boost the house edge. Meanwhile, the underwriters are betting for you to live a long, healthy life, and they're rewarded if you succeed. I'm all for finding solutions for widows & orphans, but there are better ways.
The advert brigade are definitely part of the Shelleyan problem: as long as we have the beautiful surface (the brand experience), who needs the truth? Sell the sizzle and you can throw the steak away. I hate them too.
September 10 2005, 06:08:55 UTC 6 years ago
The Sons of Nicodemus
The IRS and my own industry...September 14 2005, 21:05:51 UTC 6 years ago
Death & Taxes...
...is there a difference? The thing that squicks me is the depressive prayer for death ("might it die and rest at last!") that people like Shelley indulge in.September 15 2005, 00:21:52 UTC 6 years ago
Re: Death & Taxes...
Nihilism at it's finest... so to speak. Submitting to the ally is silly, of course, and usually a sign of indulgence.September 15 2005, 01:40:22 UTC 6 years ago
Sleep When I'm Dead
Blue suicide to submit to the ally, red delusion to deny it. Let's continue to guard ourselves from both indulgences.September 15 2005, 01:46:59 UTC 6 years ago
Re: Sleep When I'm Dead
The fabled "white" states?Deleted comment
September 15 2005, 02:00:03 UTC 6 years ago
Primarily?
We ship paper invoices to Fort Worth, but SBC Texas is based in Amarillo...September 15 2005, 01:57:55 UTC 6 years ago
RGB / RWB
White states, green lights. What scale does the ally counsel you to squint at?September 15 2005, 02:10:44 UTC 6 years ago
Re: RGB / RWB
Oooh... Gatsby or Xenosaga?Gatsby is like the King in the province.
Xenosaga is like the King at war.
September 15 2005, 02:12:03 UTC 6 years ago
Re: RGB / RWB
There we go!September 15 2005, 02:24:43 UTC 6 years ago
Re: RGB / RWB
Hey, Neil Gaiman just pointed out this article about Dhalgren in which the point is made that NO is a TAZ!