Lars Iyer's Blog, page 39

Bad books. - A book ought to long for pen, ink and writin...

Bad books. - A book ought to long for pen, ink and writing-desk: but as a rule pen, ink and writing desk long for a book. That is why books are nowadays of so little account.

Impossible company. - The ship of your thoughts moves too deep for you to be able to sail it on the waters of these decent, friendly, amicable people. There are too many shallows and sandbanks there: you would have to turn and twist and would be in constant embarrassment, and soon they too would be in embarrassment - over your embarrassment, whose cause they cannot divine.

Revenge for empty nets. - One should beware of anyone who is filled with the embitterment of the fisherman who after a hard day's work returns home in the evening with empty nets.

There are no educators. - As a thinker one should speak only of self-education[...] - One day, when one has long since been educated as the world understands it, one discovers oneself: here begins the task of the thinker; now the time has come to call on him for assistance - not as an educator but as one who has educated himself and who thus knows how it is done.

Against the shortsighted. - Do you think this work must be fragmentary because I give it to you (and have to give it to you) in fragments?

Quiet fruitfulness. - The born aristocrats of the spirit are not too zealous: their creations appear and fall from the tree on a quiet autumn evening unprecipitately, in due time, not quickly pushed aside by something new. The desire to create continually is vulgar and betrays jealousy, envy, ambition. If one is something one really does not need to make anything - and one nonetheless does very much. There exists above the 'productive man' a yet higher species.

The best author. - The best author will be he who is ashamed to become a writer.

Thinkers as stylists. - Most thinkers write badly because they communicate to us not only their thoughts but also the thinking of their thoughts.

Nietzsche, from Human All Too Human

Art dangerous to the artist. - When art seizes violently ...

Art dangerous to the artist. - When art seizes violently on an individual it draws him back to the conceptions of those ages in which art florished most mightily, and then it effects a retrogression in him. The artist acquires increasing reverence for sudden excitations, believes in gods and demons, instils a soul into nature, hates the sciences, becomes changeable of mood as were the men of antiquity and longs for an overthrowing of everything unfavourable to art, and he does this with all the vehemence and unreasonableness of a child. The artist is in himself already a retarded being, inasmuch as he has halted at games that pertain to youth and childhood: to this there is now added  his gradual retrogression to earlier times. Thus there at last arises a violent antagonism between him and men of his period, of his own age, and his end is gloomy; just as, according to the tales told in antiquity, Homer and Aeschylus at last lived and died in melancholia.

From Nietzsche's Human All Too Human

Belief in inspiration. - Artists have an interest in the ...

Belief in inspiration. - Artists have an interest in the existence of a belief in the sudden occurrence of ideas, in so-called inspirations; as though the idea of a work of art, a poem, the basic proposition of a philosophy flashed down from heaven like a ray of divine grace. In reality, the imagination of a good artist or thinker is productive continually, of good, mediocre and bad things, but his power of judgement, sharpened and practised to the highest degree, rejects, selects, knots together; as we can now see from Beethoven's notebooks how the most glorious melodies were put together gradually and as it were culled out of many beginnings. He who selects less rigorously and likes to give himself up to his imitative memory can, under the right circumstances, become a greater improviser; but artistic improvisation is something very inferior in relation to the serious and carefully fashioned artistic idea. All great artists have been great workers, inexhaustible not only in invention but also in rejecting, sifting, transforming, ordering.

from Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human

As a child I once fell illFrom fear and hunger. I'd pic...

As a child I once fell ill

From fear and hunger. I'd pick

Hard skin from my lips, and lick them;

I still remember the cool, salty taste.

And all the time I'd walk and walk and walk,

Sit on the stairs in the hall to warm up,

Walk light-headed [As if led by the rat-catcher's pipe 

Towards the river, sit down

On the stairs to warm up; and shiver every which way.

And mother stands and beckons, she seems 

So close - but I can't reach her:

I start towards her then she's seven steps away,

Beckons me to come, I start again - and she's seven 

Steps away, and beckons me.]

                                        I felt too hot,

Undid my top buttong and lay down - 

Then trumpets blared out, lights beat

On my eyelids, [horses were galloping,]

Mother flying above the roadway, she beckoned me to come - 

And flew away...

                        And now I dream

Of a white hospital, and apple trees,

[A white sheet at my chin

A white doctor looking down at me

A white nurse standing at my feet,

Her wings stirring. And there they stayed.

But mother came and beckoned me to come - 

And flew away ...]

Arsenni Tarkovsky, 'As a child I once fell ill', as read in his son's Nostalghia. Omitted lines in square brackets.

Koen Schouwenburg reviews Wittgenstein Jr in Tzum. (In Du...

Koen Schouwenburg reviews Wittgenstein Jr in Tzum. (In Dutch)

Wittgenstein Jr by the Morning News for its Grand Tournam...

Wittgenstein Jr by the Morning News for its Grand Tournament of Books.

Abū Nuwās asked Khalaf for permission to compose poetry, ...

Abū Nuwās asked Khalaf for permission to compose poetry, and Khalaf said: ‘I refuse to let you make a poem until you memorize a thousand passages of ancient poetry, including chants, odes, and occasional lines’. So Abū Nuwās disappeared; and after a good long while, he came back and said, ‘I’ve done it’.

‘Recite them’, said Khalaf.

So Abū Nuwās began, and got through the bulk of the verses over a period of several days. Then he asked again for permission to compose poetry. Said Khalaf, ‘I refuse, unless you forget all one thousand lines as completely as if you had never learned them’.

‘That’s too difficult’, said Abū Nuwās. ‘I’ve memorized them quite thoroughly!’

‘I refuse to let you compose until you forget them’, said Khalaf.

So Abū Nuwās disappeared into a monastery and remained in solitude for a period of time until he forgot the lines. He went back to Khalaf and said, ‘I’ve forgotten them so thoroughly that it’s as if I never memorized anything at all’.

Khalaf then said, ‘Now go compose!’

Ibn Manẓūr, in Tales of Abū Nuwās, via Heller-Roazen’s Echolalias.

Wittgenstein Jr mentioned by Stephen Mitchelmore in his y...

Wittgenstein Jr mentioned by Stephen Mitchelmore in his year-in-reading overview.

Wittgenstein Jr on the long longlist of the Folio Prize.

Wittgenstein Jr on the long longlist of the Folio Prize.

Here's some footage of me reading from Wittgenstein Jr at...

Here's some footage of me reading from Wittgenstein Jr at the Newcastle Centre for Literary Arts on November 6th this year.