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April 21, 2008
seekers
The cultural philistine denies, secretes, stops his ears, averts his eyes, he is a negative being even in his hatred and hostility. The person he hates most of all, however, is him who treats him as a philistine and tells him what he is: a hindrance to the strong and creative, a labyrinth for all who doubt and go astray, a swamp to the feet of the weary, a fetter to all who would pursue lofty goals, a poisonous mist to new buds, a parching desert to the German spirit seeking and thirsting for new life. For it seeks, this German spirit! And you hate it because it seeks and refuses to believe you when you say you have already found what it is seeking. There has filed past us a whole line of great heroic figures whose every movement, every feature, whose questioning voice, whose burning eye, betrayed but one thing: that they were seekers, and that what they were seeking with such perseverance was precisely that which the cultural philistine fancied he already possessed: a genuine, original German culture. Is there a ground, they seemed to ask, so pure, so untouched, of such virginal holiness, that the German spirit may raise its house upon this ground and upon no other? Questioning thus, they made their way through the wilderness and thrones of wretched and meager ages, and as seekers they passed from our sight: so that one of them, speaking for all, could say in his old age; ‘I have toiled continually for half a century and allowed myself no rest, but have continually striven and sought and worked as well and as hard as I could.’
Nietzsche - David Strauss, the confessor and the writer
Posted by amin at April 21, 2008 9:46 PM