Bards of Passion and of Mirth, Ye have left your souls on earth! Have ye souls in heaven too, Double-lived in regions new? Yes, and those of heaven commune With the spheres of sun and moon; With the noise of fountains wond’rous, And the parle of voices thund’rous; With the whisper of heaven’s trees And one another, in soft ease Seated on Elysian lawns Brows’d by none but Dian’s fawns Underneath large blue-bells tented, Where the daisies are rose-scented, And the rose herself has got Perfume which on earth is not; Where the nightingale doth sing Not a senseless, tranced thing, But divine melodious truth; Philosophic numbers smooth; Tales and golden histories Of heaven and its mysteries. Thus ye live on high, and then On the earth ye live again; And the souls ye left behind you Teach us, here, the way to find you, Where your other souls are joying, Never slumber’d, never cloying. Here, your earth-born souls still speak To mortals, of their little week; Of their sorrows and delights; Of their passions and their spites; Of their glory and their shame; What doth strengthen and what maim. Thus ye teach us, every day, Wisdom, though fled far away. Bards of Passion and of Mirth, Ye have left your souls on earth! Ye have souls in heaven too, Double-lived in regions new!
How such a strange smile forms, through expressions of agony. How such gleeful wrath bellows, through lighting strikes of anxiety, Such smiles, smirks, laughter, coquettish batting lashes, tickling fury, Mocking one into action against all tempests, against all rabid truth.
An awful burst of energy suddenly finds its escape, Tottering along the cliffsides of inevitability, Teeth bare in bliss, trudging through the grey willows, Beasts let loose, gnashing, ripping, tearing, terrorizing, charging, But still the hot breath of cold blood billows, The mad embrace of unfurled belief.
What break on the waves the lighting strike illuminates! Burning with unrecognized glory, lost memories, unseen virtue, Bards unheard within the confines of one’s impossible love.
Then look up brother, up, towards the great atavism of life, Look up to the icy glimmering mountain cap, A light pillar cut through the gloom of comedy, Ships crashing, splintering, under powerless ideals, Ceaseless treasures.
Stifling brooding mind, uncertain of its eyes, Suffocating doubt, purging oneself from existence, Great power over deserts, swamps, and placid lakes.
Look up, up, toward the promise of endings, A light pillar cut through the gloom of knowledge, A cool jutting conifer cutting into the void of life, Sculpting the effigy of triumph.
Look up! Look up to that hateful heaven, Look up to the seraphic screeching Valkyrie, Look up I say! Up! A Star has erupted! Your smiling soaring wraith is let loose on the world!
The wings of Time are black and white, Pied with morning and with night. Mountain tall and ocean deep Trembling balance duly keep. In changing moon, in tidal wave, Glows the feud of Want and Have. Gauge of more and less through space Electric star and pencil plays. The lonely Earth amid the balls That hurry through the eternal halls, A makeweight flying to the void, Supplemental asteroid, Or compensatory spark, Shoots across the neutral Dark.
Man's the elm, and Wealth the vine; Stanch and strong the tendrils twine: Though the frail ringlets thee deceive, None from its stock that vine can reave. Fear not, then, thou child infirm, There's no god dare wrong a worm. Laurel crowns cleave to deserts, And power to him who power exerts; Hast not thy share? On winged feet, Lo! it rushes thee to meet; And all that Nature made thy own, Floating in air or pent in stone, Will rive the hills and swim the sea, And, like thy shadow, follow thee.
Man's sensations and power to act must go together. Man can know nothing that he cannot somehow weave into action. If he fails to do this in one form or another, it is through limitations he has placed on himself. Man cannot suffer for lack of "more worlds to conquer," because his power to conquer worlds is the product of his own 'past life and his own past needs. To weave knowledge into action is the antidote for ennui. To plan, to hope, to do, to accomplish the full measure of our powers, whatever they may be, is to turn away from Nirvana to real life. A useful man, a helpful man, an active man in any sense, even though his activity be misdirected or harmful, is always a hopeful man. The feeling that "the only reality in life is pain," is the sign not of philosophical acuteness but of bodily under-vitalization. The nervous system is too feeble for the body it has to move. To act is to make the environment your servant. Its pressure is no longer pain but joy. The concessions which life has made to time and space are the source of life's glory and power.
The function of the nervous system is to carry from the environment to the brain the impressions of truth, that action may be true and safe. Pain and pleasure are both incidental to sound action. The one drives, the other coaxes us toward the path of wisdom. If pain is in excess of joy in our experience, it is because we have wandered from the path of normal activity. By right-doing, we mean that action which makes for "abundance of life," and abundance of life means fullness of joy. "Though life be sad, yet there's joy in the living it" was the word of the ancient Greeks, "who ever with a frolic welcome took the Thunder and the Sunshine." The life of man is dynamic, not static; not a condition but a movement. "Not enjoyment and not sorrow" is its end or justification. It is a rush of forces, an evolution towards greater activities and higher adjustment, the growth of a stability which shall be ever more unstable. This onward motion is recognized in the pessimistic philosophy of Von Hartmann, as a movement towards ever greater possibilities of pain. With him life is "the supreme blunder of the blind unconscious force" which created man and developed him as the prey of ever-increasing suffering.
But the power to enjoy has grown in like degree, and both joy and pain are subordinated to the power to act. The human will, the power to do, is the real end of the stress and struggle of the ages. However limited its individual action, the will finds its place among the gigantic factors in the evolution of life. It is not the present, but the ultimate, which is truth. Not the unstable and temporary fact but the boundless clashing forces which endlessly throw truths to the surface.
The bane of impulse comes to overtake you, Brandishing the spear extracted from St. Teresa. Zephyrus comes to disrobe you, Exposed to all violence of yourself. The Dionysian charioteer comes to sweep you up, And cast you forth into whiteness.
The nymph possesses your wisdom, Furiously ravaging your trembling feet, Dancing beyond the Chromatism of Time. No celebration among this possession, Wisdom made insatiable, ravenous, The sojourn of the heart, rumbling in its agony.
The fluttering, tittering, quaking of this heart, The convulsion of life, harbinger of death, destroyer of doubt, But no such joy, no such perception, no new truth, The rapture of reason rips apart the mind, Thrashing its pieces of truth into a blinding oneness.
Helpless against the stinging ice cold, Lavishing the inner spirit, with invigorating quivers, That glimmering spear now thrusts into your heart, Dionysus and the Cherub laugh, As the seed is planted again.
The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the only prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in which we rest as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-soul, within which every man's particular being is contained and made one with all other; that common heart of which all sincere conversation is the worship, to which all right action is submission; that overpowering reality which confutes our tricks and talents, and constrains every one to pass for what he is, and to speak from his character and not from his tongue, and which evermore tends to pass into our thought and hand and become wisdom and virtue and power and beauty. We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul. Only by the vision of that Wisdom can the horoscope of the ages be read, and by falling back on our better thoughts, by yielding to the spirit of prophecy which is innate in every man, we can know what it saith. Every man's words who speaks from that life must sound vain to those who do not dwell in the same thought on their own part. I dare not speak for it. My words do not carry its august sense; they fall short and cold. Only itself can inspire whom it will, and behold! their speech shall be lyrical, and sweet, and universal as the rising of the wind. Yet I desire, even by profane words, if I may not use sacred, to indicate the heaven of this deity and to report what hints I have collected of the transcendent simplicity and energy of the Highest Law.
All goes to show that the soul in man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light; is not the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect and the will; is the background of our being, in which they lie,—an immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed.
The soul looketh steadily forwards, creating a world before her, leaving worlds behind her. She has no dates, nor rites, nor persons, nor specialties nor men. The soul knows only the soul; the web of events is the flowing robe in which she is clothed.
The soul's advances are not made by gradation, such as can be represented by motion in a straight line, but rather by ascension of state, such as can be represented by metamorphosis,—from the egg to the worm, from the worm to the fly.
The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose. Foolish people ask you, when you have spoken what they do not wish to hear, 'How do you know it is truth, and not an error of your own?' We know truth when we see it, from opinion, as we know when we are awake that we are awake.
O, believe, as thou livest, that every sound that is spoken over the round world, which thou oughtest to hear, will vibrate on thine ear! Every proverb, every book, every byword that belongs to thee for aid or comfort, shall surely come home through open or winding passages. Every friend whom not thy fantastic will but the great and tender heart in thee craveth, shall lock thee in his embrace. And this because the heart in thee is the heart of all; not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection is there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls uninterruptedly an endless circulation through all men, as the water of the globe is all one sea, and, truly seen, its tide is one. ---The Over Soul
Is there such a thing as a strong pessimism? An intellectual preference for the hard, horrific, evil, problematic aspects of existence which stems from well-being, from overflowing health, from an abundance of existence? Might it even be possible to suffer from this overabundance? A tempting courage of the most intense gaze, which yearns for the fearful, as for the enemy, the worthy enemy, on whom it can test its strength? From whom it wants to learn what 'fear' is?
Health is life. That is, health determines and makes all value and meaning of life possible, because such things can only come about in an ordered physical state which favors life. The creation of meaning, which is embrace of life, must be the embrace of death as well. The embrace of all dichotomies and antinomies. Nihilism only attempts to affirm the oneness of its single extreme, blind to all else it professes to see.
Deconstruction is easier than construction. Negation, denial, uncertainty, is easier to cultivate than affirmation, positivity, certainty. Impotence is easier than omnipotence. Ignorance more universal than omniscience.
what is easier: to build a thesis or to destroy all thesis? Is it to be an artists or to critique art? Is it easier to create or to destroy? Is it harder to build probability or to undermine it by presenting possibility? Is it more difficult to construct a theory concerning existence or to seed doubt and skepticism towards all theories? Is it harder to affirm or to deny? What is harder to create and maintain: order or chaos?
Order, ordering is hard work - it requires struggle, and war... Nil is easy...all it requires is time...and time measure change, and change is inevitable.
The artistically sensitive man responds to the reality of the dream in the same way as the philosopher responds to the reality of existence; he pays close attention and derives pleasure from it: for out of these images he interrupts life for himself, in these events he trains himself for life. He experiences not only the agreeable and friendly images with that universal understanding: but also the serious, the gloomy, the sad, the dark aspects of life, the sudden inhibitions, the teasing of chance, the fearful expectations. In short the whole 'divine comedy' of life, including the Inferno, passes before him, not only as a game of shadows--since he participates in the life and suffering of these scenes.
No optimism in affirming life. No rosy illusions, or romantic naivete. In fact, the strength, the courage, the awareness, to deal with the reality that it is infused with death, enhancing its joy.
With joy I hasten towards death - if it comes before I shall have had an opportunity to show all my artistic capacities it will still come too early for me despite my hard fate and I shall probably wish it had come later - but even then I am satisfied, will it not free me from my state of endless suffering? Come when thou will I shall meet thee bravely.
Nature stretches out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness. Nothing divine dies. All good is eternally reproductive. The beauty of nature reforms itself in the mind, and not for barren contemplation, but for new creation.
No lamenting here, for the old man and his memories, The young man in affrighted urgency, For the desperate loneliness, Seeking a mad sensation in reverie.
No anxiety here, For the deep echo of mortality, For the feeling of uncertainty, Endless, cruel vast dark sea.
No melancholy here, peering into the abyss, Quiet suffering, brooding in absent bliss, Longing for what will not be missed, What never lurked in moonlit mist.
Only the surge of blood rushing to the heart, Flushing the face, Tearing loneliness apart.
Only the waves of such a sea, Smashing into self-eternity, A ship cast into sudden gale, thrust out of its sailess stale, Into proper death to all avail.
Only the face of life, piercing through that pitch dark night, the horror of love, the grandeur of hate, creating all that one can create.
I saw the scarlet bird perched, Like a plump mad rose bud, Into its deep hue I searched, For what the world was made of.
It jolted its head to and fro, Nothing escapes what it knows, This great sage of power, Standing mightily atop its ancient tower.
It thrusts into the air, A wisping spirit here nor there, Grace aspiring to perfection, Movements exact in all directions.
I perceived no weakness, No fear, no meekness, only genius, I ventured, “You do not suffer or wail, You only conquer, and avail Art’ thou the great wisdom behind the veil?”
It retorts, “I am Being as it were, No sage or raconteur, My wisdom is not zeal nor does it heal, My power is that which I do not wield.”
With that it fluttered sharply away, Spiriting into a new day, Such enveloping reticence cloaked me, I could only be.
The Beauty that threatens life, Makes the greatness of man a blight, The greatness which ascended its stages, Echoing through the ages, Grew overabundant and rich, Overflowing into a miniscule niche, Into his empty cathedrals, Where he bewailed his madrigals, Into the recesses of reason, A barren island with no seasons.
Blake knew, When Man cast his power askew, The chasm of truth which he drew, The Absolute which was to remake his power anew.
A bottom dwelling oracle he became, His beastly countenance remained the same, His greatness now only in name, Rapt in the gloom of the Absolute one, Afraid to gaze up to the sun, The terror of the sun, Left all his splendor undone.
There is a good principle that created light, order and man, and a bad principle that created chaos, darkness and woman.
A healthy virile mind doesn't play semantical games, nor mince words with those of subversive desperate pseudo-intellectualism. A strong life-affirming spirit observes what is, and what is not.
Power, I.e. life, does not ascend to any ideal of itself. The overman was simply Nietzsche's romanticism based on inspiration. The degrees of power, are only its struggles. One only has to look at nature to see that power is nothing more than prepetual struggle without attainment. Surviving these struggles is akin to being tempered like hot steel. The outcomes, however, can either be more brittleness or more resiliency, based on how that power is purposed, which means, how it is understood. Many suffer, never understanding why. Escaping the inebriation of romanticism is the key.
