>Just a comment on the ongoing discussion involving the painting analogy (which
>perhaps fatally inserts a thread of Plato into the Heraclitean weave which
>George's signature quotation refers us to):
>
>George wrote,
>
>> . . .In our study of the ancients we may
>>come to an epiphany, which can be compared to the moment of a finished work
>>of art. Once we reach an epiphany, or once we finish a work of art, that is
>>not the end of it, but only the beginning. In both cases, we have "gone
>>under," below the surface of tradition and deeper than we thought reality
>>could go, and we want more. More importantly, we now know there is more. We
>>"go under" to deeper depths of life that hide below "mere appearance." In
>>other words, we start a new painting, only in this one we have "a yes, a
>>no, a straight line, a goal."
>>
>>George
>>~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>>A man's maturity--consists in having found again the seriousness one had as
>>a child, at play" ~ Nietzsche
>
>"Going-under" in _The Gay Science_, in _Zarathustra_, in _The Will to Power_ &
>elsewhere in Nietzsche, esp re the overman/superman and ER is quite often
>the verb "untergehen" which means to sink, be wrecked, to founder, go to ruin,
>perish, be lost or annihilated, become extinct, and not "going-under" or even
>"undergoing" This is important both in terms of "creation"/affirmation,
and in
>terms of the "surface" which is to be allowed to veil the deeper depths. see
>"Nietzsche Contra Wagner" at the end of _The Portable Nietzsche_ where he says
>(this is from memory--I'm at work & away from my books)
>
>"Oh those Greeks! They had the courage to stop at the surface. . . adorers of
>appearances,. . . tones!"
>
>Does this perhaps tuns the thread again slightly to a discussion of music,
>tempo, rhythm...? a crucial element in _The Birth of Tragedy_, and the notion
>of ER.
>
"Oh, those Greeks! They knew how to live. What is required for that is to
stop courageously at the surface, the fold, the skin, to adore appearance,
to believe in forms, tones, words, in the whole Olympus of appearance. Those
Greeks were superficial--_out of profundity_." (Nietzsche Contra Wagner,
"Epilogue," 2.)
This, of course, leads rapidly off into "deep water," woman as truth, but
relative to which depth is a fundamental illusion, etc....
Part of the point of the "painting" quote, I think, is that the surface of
the painting (a multiform of paintings) possesses its own autonomy that is
not reflective of a deeper, but unseen, plan. Rather, the painting itself,
as "appearance," is all. To be "Greek" here, in the sense intoned by
Nietzsche above, would be to stop courageously at the surface of the
painting, at the stroke of the brush, itself, its unfolding.
Steve C.
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