Star, American Nietzsche

“If Nietzsche’s image reached its nadir during the Second World War, when Hitler presented Mussolini with a bound edition of his works and the historian Crane Brinton wrote a book asserting he would have been “a good Nazi,” a resurrection was soon to come. The German émigré and Princeton professor Walter Kaufmann almost single-handedly revived his standing with his many translations and forceful reminder that Nietzsche hated anti-Semites and German nationalists as well as woolly-headed romantics. Kaufmann’s Nietzsche was a late flower of the Enlightenment, a tough-minded rationalist with the courage to face the Darwinian revelation that there is no purpose to nature or to our existence. The true task of the overman was to overcome himself, not others, and to do so by sculpturing his impulses and thoughts and inheritances into a willed unity that could be called “style.”

(...)

For Bloom and other students of Leo Strauss, however, Nietzsche was not just the disease, he was also the diagnostician and possibly the cure. More brilliantly than anyone, Nietzsche understood the peril of modern nihilism and the need to cultivate robust souls who would strive to achieve excellence without authoritative religious belief.

(...)

If Nietzsche was terrible, was he also beneficial? In a 1985 book “Nietzsche: Life as Literature,” the Princeton philosopher Alexander Nehamas argued that Nietzsche’s perspectivism does not imply that all beliefs are equally valid but that “one’s beliefs are not, and need not be, true for everyone.” On this reading, to fully accept a set of beliefs is to accept the values and way of life that are bound up with it, and since there is no single way of life that is right for everyone, there may be no set of beliefs that is fit for everyone. At its best, American individualism is not about the aggrandizement of the self or the acquiescent assumption that everybody simply has a right to think what they want. Rather, it stresses that our convictions are our own, and should be held as seriously as any other possessions. Or, as Nietzsche imagined philosophers would one day say, “ ‘My judgment is my judgment’: no one else is easily entitled to it.”

 Alexander Star, book review of American Nietzsche - a History of an Icon and His Ideas, 2011, in The New York Times, Jan 15, 2012.

Gibson, Distrust That Particular Flavor

In “Distrust That Particular Flavor,” Gibson pulls off a dazzling trick. Instead of predicting the future, he finds the future all around him, mashed up with the past, and reveals our own domain to us as a science-fictional marvel. Gibson’s writing enters the bloodstream like a drug, producing a mild hallucinogenic effect that lasts for hours. In one essay (originally a talk he gave in 2008) he introduces us to “Martian jet lag,” an actual sleep disorder suffered by people whose jobs require them to stay in sync with the Red Planet: it’s “what you get when you operate one of those little RadioShack wagon/probes from a comfortable seat back at an air base in California.” (...)

Such is the power of his prose that when I glanced up from the pages of this book and surveyed the street-side around me, I felt as if I were wearing Gibson-glasses. Cars lumbered past like ponderous elephants of rusty steel, not so different from the cars of 30 years ago, and seemed not to belong in the same world as the tattooed kid punching code into his laptop nearby. Under the spell of this book, I suddenly understood my surroundings not as a discrete contemporary tableau but as a hodgepodge of 1910, 1980, 2011 and 2020. “The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet” — this quote is often attributed to Gibson, though no one seems to be able to pin down when or if he actually said it.

Pagan Kennedy, book Review of Distrust that particular flavor by William Gibson, in The New York Times, Jan. 15 2012.

  William Gibson é o autor do livro de ficção científica NEURO-MANCER (1984) editado em Portugal pela Gradiva com o título NEUROMANTE (2004), livro que popularizou o termo ciberespaço. A recensão refere-se ao seu recentemente editado primeiro livro de ensaios.

Berthe Morisot, Little Girl at Mesnil

 

"Pelletier opened a book on the work of Berthe Morisot, the first woman impressionist, but soon he felt like hurling it against the wall. "

Roberto Bolaño, 2666 , Loc. 1049-50.

BASF abandona a ideia de vender transgénicos na Europa

"BASF, the German chemical group, has abandoned efforts to sell genetically modified products in Europe, including its Amflora potato, because of overwhelming opposition to the technology, the company said Monday. “There is still a lack of acceptance for this technology in many parts of Europe — from the majority of consumers, farmers and politicians,” said Stefan Marcinowski, a board member with responsibilities for plant biotechnology. “Therefore, it does not make business sense to continue investing in products exclusively for cultivation in this market.” The company has instead decided to focus on “attractive markets” in the Americas and in Asia, he said. The withdrawal of the potato leaves a type of corn produced by Monsanto as the only biotech crop grown in Europe. A total of 140 jobs will be cut in Europe from the company’s plant science unit, which was responsible for developing the Amflora potato, mainly for use in the paper industry, BASF said. Many of those jobs will be moved to the company’s new plant science headquarters near Raleigh, North Carolina, and other sites in Berlin and Belgium" (...)


James Kaner in The New York Times; Jan 17, 2012.

LIfe

"You realize later on that you’re being graded and sifted by this totally arbitrary system that rarely if ever takes into account your whole character, or “Well, he might not be very good in class, but he knows more about drawing.” They never took into account that hey, you might be bored because you know that already.

 Loc. 732-34.

People really do want to touch each other, to the heart. That’s why you have music. If you can’t say it, sing it. Listen to the songs of the period. Heavily pointed and romantic, and trying to say things that they couldn’t say in prose or even on paper.

Loc. 827-29 

“Since my baby left me”—it was just the sound. It was the last trigger. That was the first rock and roll I heard. It was a totally different way of delivering a song, a totally different sound, stripped down, burnt, no bullshit, no violins and ladies’ choruses and schmaltz, totally different. It was bare, right to the roots that you had a feeling were there but hadn’t yet heard. I’ve got to take my hat off to Elvis for that. The silence is your canvas, that’s your frame, that’s what you work on; don’t try and deafen it out. That’s what “Heartbreak Hotel” did to me. It was the first time I’d heard something so stark. Then I had to go back to what this cat had done before. Luckily I caught his name. The Radio Luxembourg signal came back in. “That was Elvis Presley, with ‘Heartbreak Hotel.’ ” Shit!

Loc. 856-62

I firmly believe if you want to be a guitar player, you better start on acoustic and then graduate to electric. Don’t think you’re going to be Townshend or Hendrix just because you can go wee wee wah wah, and all the electronic tricks of the trade. First you’ve got to know that fucker. And you go to bed with it. If there’s no babe around, you sleep with it. She’s just the right shape."

Loc. 1026-28

Keith Richards and James Fox (Contributor), Life, kindle.

"In every community there is a class of people profoundly dangerous to the rest. I don't mean the criminals. For them we have punitive sanctions. I mean the leaders. Invariably the most dangerous people seek the power. While in the parlors of indignation the right-thinking citizen brings his heart to a boil." (p. 51)

Saul Bellow, Herzog. 

A brancura de Moby Dick

"A brancura tem a capacidade de fazer um terror sem nome transbordar "arrastando-o até aos limites extremos". A questão é saber por que razão a brancura em si mesma (...) é tão terrível e assustadora. O assustador na brancura não é um qualquer significado ou conotação que possa ter. É isso sim, o facto de parecer tão cheia de significado e, apesar disso, precisamente em virtude de poder assumir uma tão radical gama de significados, não ser nada semelhante a um significado. É antes, explica ele, "uma vazio mudo repleto de significado".

Para percebermos esta ideia temos de pensar numa brancura como aquela que podemos obter na chamada "luz branca". Enquanto cor, a percepção da brancura é evocada pela luz que estimula, a um nível quase igual, todos os três tipos de células da retina sensíveis à luz. Assim, neste sentido, o branco é a cor que resulta de juntar todas as cores. Mas a luz branca é ela mesma invisível ou destituída de cor - não podemos ver a luz branca, mas é ela que nos permite ver tudo o resto; é, nas palavras de Melville, a "visível ausência da cor". (...)

Tentarmos olhar para a brancura em si, tentarmos concentrar-nos na luz branca que atinge "directamente a matéria", é como tentarmos ver as práticas de fundo tal como são em si mesmas. Mas nada podemos dizer sobre o fundo em sim mesmo; só podemos dizer como é quando toca uma túlipa ou uma rosa. Apenas se revela na medida em que nos permite ver qualquer outra coisa.

Este sentido da brancura como pano de fundo, o facto de estar presente na nossa experiência mas somente através daquilo que nos permite ver, aplica-se à baleia de forma espantosa. Vimos já que o cachalote não tem rosto. Acontece, além do mais, que até mesmo as suas costas não podem ser vistas com clareza. À semelhança das práticas de fundo de uma cultura, a cauda parece simultaneamente familiar e plena de significado, e ao mesmo tempo impossível de descrever."

Um mundo iluminado, de H. Dreyfus e S. D. Kelly (190-192)

Satanás e o amor em Dante

"O Satanás de Dante é tão auto-suficiente que não se sente impelido a fazer coisa alguma. está quase totalmente imobilizado no gelo. Tudo quanto consegue fazer é bater as asas e, na verdade é graças a esse movimento que o Inferno se mantém gelado.

(145)

Dante considerava que devemos intensificar o nosso amor e empenharmo-nos naquilo que nos atrai com devoção total, e então, se isso não nos satisfizer, o que seguramente acontecerá, podemos aprender com os nossos erros até acabarmos por encontrar alguém, ou alguma coisa, digno de paixão e compromisso absoluto. A última coisa a fazer é refrear o desejo. O livre-arbítrio permite treinar os desejos e orientá-los na direcção correcta"

Um mundo iluminado, de H. Dreyfus e S. D. Kelly (147)

Sanford Clark

Por sugestão de Keith Richards and James Fox (Contributor), Life, Little Brown and Company, 2010, p.75.

(Para ver melhor, abrir imagem num novo separador ou janela)

O ar do limbo está cheio de suspiros

"Dos nove círculos do Inferno, o menos rigoroso é, de longe, o primeiro, chamado Limbo, reservado aos pagãos virtuosos e às crianças por baptizar. (...) O ar do limbo está cheio de suspiros, pois os pagãos virtuosos sentem a ausência de alguma coisa que não conseguem perceber nem articular. No mundo cristão de Dante, existir enquanto ser humano em qualquer época é ter sido criado por Deus para sentir a necessidade de completude que só Ele torna possível. Mas o universo de Deus só oferece essa completude a quem entra na relação correcta com ele mediante a entrega ao sentimento cristão de amor ágape. O problema é que ninguém sabia disso até Jesus aparecer e o revelar, por isso as almas nobres do Limbo perderam a sua oportunidade."

Um mundo iluminado, de H. Dreyfus e S. D. Kelly (142)

As duas tradições

"A nossa é uma cultura de conflito única, produto de duas tradições poderosas e opostas. Outras culturas têm igualmente tradições múltiplas: a China, por exemplo, tem o budismo e o confucionismo. Mas estas tradições habitualmente complementam-se ou ignoram-se. Nenhuma cultura senão a nossa possui duas tradições tão abrangentes e ao mesmo tempo tão opostas. A descoberta grega de um acesso desprendido e espiritual a uma verdade universal e intemporal, contradiz o compromisso hebraico para com um Deus intervencionista e histórico. Um dos lados considera essencial a nossa capacidade de pensar; o outro tem o mesmo apreço pelo nosso sentido do sagrado. Para os herdeiros monoteístas desta tradição em conflito era muito natural tentar unir os seus dois modos de vida fundamentais."

Um mundo iluminado, de H. Dreyfus e S. D. Kelly (130)

O herói, George Grosz, c. 1936

Por sugestão de: "A parte sobre os críticos", do livro 2666 de Roberto Bolaño.