
Day 2188, thin wire.
Daily picture, Poetry


Third Treatise: What Do Ascetic Ideals Mean?
5. What then do ascetic ideals mean? In the case of an artist, as we have grasped by now: absolutely nothing! … Or so many things that it is as good as absolutely nothing! … Let us first of all eliminate artists: they are far from standing independently enough in the world and against the world for their valuations and the changes in these to deserve interest in themselves! In all ages they have been valets of a morality or philosophy or religion; quite apart from the fact that, unfortunately, they have often enough been the all-too-pliant courtiers of their disciples and patrons, and flatterers with a good nose for old or newly rising powers. At the very least they always need a protective armor, a backing, a previously established authority: artists never stand by themselves, standing alone goes against their deepest instincts…
You can read the rest here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52319/52319-h/52319-h.htm





A picture taken before the bomb fell
slightly damaged

Growing
at least flowers do it
but I don’t know towards what

91. Before we begin to probe the festering mass now called “civilization,” let us prepare ourselves with all the spirit of forbearance which the case allows, that we need not add any unnecessary pangs to the already exhausted and dying patient.
92.” I know,” says B., ” that you do not admit analogies as proof, but is there not some indication of the Divine Law in the large fishes eating up the little ones, and in spiders spinning webs to entrap flies?

Neither Victims nor executioners
…For my part, I am fairly sure that I have made the choice. And, having chosen, I think that I must speak out, that I must state that I will never again be one of those, whoever they be, who compromise with murder, and that I must take the consequences of such a decision. The thing is done, and that is as far as I can go at present…. However, I want to make clear the spirit in which this article is written.
We are asked to love or to hate such and such a country and such and such a people. But some of us feel too strongly our common humanity to make such a choice. Those who really love the Russian people, in gratitude for what they have never ceased to be–that world leaven which Tolstoy and Gorky





And if someone goes through fire for his teaching – what does this prove? Indeed, it means more when one’s own teaching comes out of one’s own fire!
