(028) Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil”, One Paragraph at a Time
I’ve struggled immensely in all my attempts to read and comprehend Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil”. These blog posts are my attempt to better understand this material. I encourage any corrections or criticisms in the comments.
Chapter Two: The Free Spirit
28. What is most difficult to render from one language into another is the TEMPO of its style, which has its basis in the character of the race, or to speak more physiologically, in the average TEMPO of the assimilation of its nutriment.
The most difficult thing to translate from one language into another is the tempo of its style. A thing to be read in one language may carry with it cultural connotations without which the overall character of the thing written may suffer from.
There are honestly meant translations, which, as involuntary vulgarizations, are almost falsifications of the original, merely because its lively and merry TEMPO (which overleaps and obviates all dangers in word and expression) could not also be rendered.
Even the most honest translation of a piece of writing can become an “involuntary vulgarization” that removes meaning that is intended to come through like percussion.
Nietzsche goes on to mention that such translations bypass the dangerous elements of word and expression.
A German is almost incapacitated for PRESTO in his language; consequently also, as may be reasonably inferred, for many of the most delightful and daring NUANCES of free, free-spirited thought. And just as the buffoon and satyr are foreign to him in body and conscience, so Aristophanes and Petronius are untranslatable for him.
The German language doesn’t contain any sort of analog for a word like PRESTO. The delightful and daring nuances of free, free-spirited thought would fall lost on a German reading German translations of Greek and Roman texts like Aristophanes and Petronius.
Everything ponderous, viscous, and pompously clumsy, all long-winded and wearying species of style, are developed in profuse variety among Germans — pardon me for stating the fact that even Goethe’s prose, in its mixture of stiffness and elegance, is no exception, as a reflection of the “good old time” to which it belongs, and as an expression of German taste at a time when there was still a “German taste,” which was a rococo-taste in moribus et artibus. `
Neitszche takes aim at the German style of prose, which is “viscous, pompously clumsy”. He doesn’t even take exception with German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832 AD), whose stiff yet elegant prose harkens to a “good old time”, when “German taste” was seen as “rococo-taste (Late Baroque) in moribus et artibus (ways and means)”.
Lessing is an exception, owing to his histrionic nature, which understood much, and was versed in many things; he who was not the translator of Bayle to no purpose, who took refuge willingly in the shadow of Diderot and Voltaire, and still more willingly among the Roman comedy-writers — Lessing loved also free-spiritism in the TEMPO, and flight out of Germany.
Nietzsche’s only exceptional German was Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (177–1781 AD), who was a philosopher who employed a more theatrical style, which embraced the kind of “free-spiritism” found in French philosophers like Pierre Bayle (1647–1706 AD), Denis Diderot (1713–1784 AD), and Voltaire (1694–1778 AD). Lessing embraced the Roman comedy-writers and loved the free-spirit in the TEMPO.
But how could the German language, even in the prose of Lessing, imitate the TEMPO of Machiavelli, who in his “Principe” makes us breathe the dry, fine air of Florence, and cannot help presenting the most serious events in a boisterous allegrissimo, perhaps not without a malicious artistic sense of the contrast he ventures to present — long, heavy, difficult, dangerous thoughts, and a TEMPO of the gallop, and of the best, wantonest humour?
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527 AD), the iconic Italian philosopher of the Renaissance, in his treatise “The Prince”, is described by Nietzsche as having the ability to perfectly capture the realistic essence of Florence, and, with his malicious artistic sense, create contrast by breathing boisterous life into even the most “long, heavy, difficult, dangerous thoughts”.
Finally, who would venture on a German translation of Petronius, who, more than any great musician hitherto, was a master of PRESTO in invention, ideas, and words? What matter in the end about the swamps of the sick, evil world, or of the “ancient world,” when like him, one has the feet of a wind, the rush, the breath, the emancipating scorn of a wind, which makes everything healthy, by making everything RUN!
Nietzsche portrays Petronius (27–66 AD), a Roman courtier during the reign of the controversial Emperor Nero (54–68 AD), as being superior even to musicians in his ability to utilize “PRESTO in invention, ideas and words”.
And with regard to Aristophanes — that transfiguring, complementary genius, for whose sake one PARDONS all Hellenism for having existed, provided one has understood in its full profundity ALL that there requires pardon and transfiguration; there is nothing that has caused me to meditate more on PLATO’S secrecy and sphinx-like nature, than the happily preserved petit fait that under the pillow of his death-bed there was found no “Bible,” nor anything Egyptian, Pythagorean, or Platonic — but a book of Aristophanes. How could even Plato have endured life — a Greek life which he repudiated — without an Aristophanes!
Nietzsche regards Aristophanes (446–386 BC) the comedy playwright from ancient Athens as a “transfiguring, complementary genius”. Nietzche goes on to describe that Aristophanes caused him to meditate on Plato’s (428–348 BC) secrecy and sphinx-like nature. Indeed, Nietzsche’s reading of Plato runs deep with questions of his motives, unconscious or otherwise. It would seem that Nietzsche appreciates Aristophanes precisely because he helps place into view the ideas that Plato was perhaps harboring all along, whether consciously or unconsciously.
A much deeper reading of the relationship between Aristophanes and Plato seems necessary to understand what Nietzsche is getting at here, as well as Nietzsche’s perspective on the whole of Hellenistic philosophy.
