Nietzsche on Classics and Classicists

Where do we see the effect of classical antiquity? Not in language, not in the imitation of this or that, and surely not in the absurdity displayed by the French. Our museums are crammed; I always feel nauseated when I see statues--pure and naked in the Greek manner--confronted with this mindless Philistinism which wants to swallow everything.

i wonder whether nietzsche saw portents of continental things to come in his dreams. what would he have seen the in the department of french absurdity? derrida? lyotard? foucault?

Nietzsche on Classics and Classicists

*please note that the nietzsche entry for 9 february has been removed by necessity due to a scribal error on my part. you see, my photocopy had cut off the bottom of a page, thereby eliding the end of one excerpt and the beginning of the next, which caused me to believe i was looking at one excerpt when, in fact, i was looking at parts of two. the next two entries, then, will be the two that i inadvertantly combined. as separate entities, they will, i'm sure you'll agree, make much more sense.

Origin of the classicist. When a great work of art makes its appearance, it always finds a corresponding spectator who not only experiences its influence but wants to immortalize it. The same applies to a great state, to everything, in short, which raises mankind. In the same way classicists want to immortalize the influence of the classics, which they can only do as imitative artists. Not as men who model their lives on the classics?

i wonder if his jab at classicists as 'imitative artists' is at all related to his dislike of aristotelian poetic theory.

Some Rules for the Tragic Poet

contra Nietzsche, i actually find some of aristotle's observations stimulating, such as the following:

As far as possible, too, the dramatic poet should carry out the appropriate gestures as he composes his speeches, for of writers with equal abilities those who can actually make themselves feel the relevant emotions will be the most convincing--agitation or rage will be most vividly reproduced by one who is himself agitated or in a passion. Hence poetry is the product either of a man of great natural ability or of one not wholly sane; the one is highly responsive, the other possessed.

(Tr. T.S. Dorsch)

Nietzsche on Classics and Classicists

The desire for some sort of certainty in aesthetics led to Aristotle-worship. It will gradually be seen, I think, that he knew nothing about art, and that what we admire in him is merely an echo of clever Athenian conversation.

More Jones

since i'm still going through some of a.h.m. jones's the later roman empire, you get to, too. today we will learn that the arabs used greek as their administrative language for a fair chunk of time.

In Syria and Egypt Greek does not seem to have outlived the end of Roman rule by more than about a century. It was maintained by the Arabs as their administrative language until the middle of the eighth century, but when the caliphs ordered the use of Arabic in the government offices it quickly died out.

Nietzsche on Classics and Classicists

The shades in Homer's Hades--what sort of existence are they really modelled on? I think it must be a portrait of the classicist. Surely it is better to be the "lowest serf on earth" than to have such a bloodless recollection of the past--of things great and small.

The Postmodern (De)generator

i'd never used our link on the left to the postmodern generator before, but i just did, and i must say--it's quite fun(ny)!

wait--maybe i should put some scare-quotes in there:

i'd never 'used' our 'link' on the left to the postmodern 'generator' before, but i just did, and i must 'say'--it's quite fun(ny)!

for example, see
this from an 'essay' titled 'surrealism in the works of spelling':

1. Spelling and dialectic pretextual theory
"Class is part of the futility of reality," says Foucault. The characteristic theme of von Junz's[1] essay on posttextual nationalism is not appropriation, as neosemanticist nihilism suggests, but preappropriation.

It could be said that surrealism states that narrativity, paradoxically, has significance, given that sexuality is interchangeable with language. The primary theme of the works of Stone is the genre, and some would say the collapse, of material society.

Therefore, the subject is interpolated into a postcapitalist paradigm of discourse that includes culture as a whole. Derrida promotes the use of dialectic pretextual theory to read reality.

and
this one talks about 'postpatriarchial constructivism'.

or this one:

"Sexual identity is unattainable," says Sartre; however, according to Dahmus[1] , it is not so much sexual identity that is unattainable, but rather the genre, and subsequent stasis, of sexual identity. The characteristic theme of the works of Madonna is the role of the artist as poet. In a sense, Sontag uses the term 'subdialectic narrative' to denote not demodernism per se, but predemodernism.

Nietzsche on Classics and Classicists

Very little can be gotten by sheer violence of industry, if the mind is obtuse. In the case of Homer, numerous classicists think that violence achieves results. The classics speak to us when they feel like doing so; not when we do.

After this, I'm off for a spittle bath

i thought this was going to be the most bizarre thing i read yesterday:

Theodoret personally met an aged Marcionite who had all his life washed his face in his own spittle to avoid using water, the creation of the demiurge.

but then i read the next four sentences:

Augustine records from personal knowledge the practices of the Abelonii, a sect which survived to his own day in a village of his own city of Hippo. They held that marriage and continence were obligatory on all believers. Each couple adopted a boy and girl, who on the death of both foster parents, succeeded to the family farm and in turn adopted a boy and a girl. There was never any difficulty, Augustine tells us, in maintaining the sect, as neighbouring villages were always ready to provide children to be adopted in the certainty of ultimately acquiring a farm.

(a.h.m. jones, LRE 953)

The Poetics of Confusion

right now i wish that aristotle were more intelligible.

then again, i suppose that if some speaker of an alien tongue tried to read my notes 2300-odd years from now, he wouldn't fare much better. and the fruits of his labor would be much less, well, fruitful.

Nietzsche on Classics and Classicists

When classicists discuss their discipline, they don't get down to the root of the matter: they don't adduce classical scholarship itself as a problem. Bad conscience? Or simple inadvertance?