“Despair” by H.P. Lovecraft

Dan Schultz - Wanderer

O’er the midnight moorlands crying,

Thro’ the cypress forests sighing,

In the night-wind madly flying,

     Hellish forms with streaming hair;

In the barren branches creaking,

By the stagnant swamp-pools speaking,

Past the shore-cliffs ever shrieking;

     Damn’d daemons of despair.

Once, I think I half remember,

Ere the grey skies of November

Quench’d my youth’s aspiring ember,

     Liv’d there such a thing as bliss;

Skies that now are dark were beaming,

Gold and azure, splendid seeming

Till I learn’d it all was dreaming—

     Deadly drowsiness of Dis.

But the stream of Time, swift flowing,

Brings the torment of half-knowing—

Dimly rushing, blindly going

     Past the never-trodden lea;

And the voyager, repining,

Sees the wicked death-fires shining,

Hears the wicked petrel’s whining

     As he helpless drifts to sea.

Evil wings in ether beating;

Vultures at the spirit eating;

Things unseen forever fleeting

     Black against the leering sky.

Ghastly shades of bygone gladness,

Clawing fiends of future sadness,

Mingle in a cloud of madness

     Ever on the soul to lie.

Thus the living, lone and sobbing,

In the throes of anguish throbbing,

With the loathsome Furies robbing

     Night and noon of peace and rest.

But beyond the groans and grating

Of abhorrent Life, is waiting

Sweet Oblivion, culminating

     All the years of fruitless quest.

(From Eldritch Tales: A Miscellany of the Macabre by H.P. Lovecraft, pp.38-39 Publisher: Orion Publishing Group)

Adolf Hitler’s first architect, professor Paul Ludwig Troost

Nazi Party Fuhrer (Leader) Adolf Hitler had decided quite early on to proclaim Munich the “city of the Movement” after he became Chancellor of the German Reich. He also decided that it would be the capital of German art as well, and so it became during the 12 years of the Third Reich.

The Party had been born in this Bavarian city in the south of Germany. An early Party headquarters had been located during 1920-22 in a modest building on the Sternackerbrau, and during 1922 until the breakup of the Party by Bavarian authorities on Nov. 11, 1923 the headquarters was located at Corneliusstrasse (Street) 12.

Following the official reorganization of the Party on Feb. 27, 1925 after Hitler was released from Landsberg Prison for his leadership of the failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch (Revolt), the new location was at Thierstrasse 15 in the building of the Eher Verlag publishing house that was to print Hitler’s first book, Mein Kampf (My Battle.) Six months later, Hitler moved it yet again, this time to Schellingstrasse 50.

Then, in 1928, the Party bought the old, spacious, patrician Barlow Palace at Briennerstrasse 45, purchased with funds donated by Rhineland industrialists Fritz Thyssen and Emil Kirdorf. The three-story, neo-classical building was renovated and renamed the Braunhaus (Brown House) after the brown color of the Nazi Party leadership cadre and SA Stormtrooper uniforms.

Braunhaus (Brown House)

A swastika banner flew from the rooftop and Nazi eagles flanked the main doorway; there was a spacious garden in the rear, similar to the one (but smaller) of the Berlin Reich Chancellery in which Hitler’s charred body would be buried on Apr. 30, 1945.

Both Hitler and the head of his SS bodyguard, Josef “Sepp” Dietrich, lived there, and the Fuhrer also maintained an apartment on Prinzregentstrasse (Prince Regent St.) during 1929-45. It was there that his niece Geli Raubal died in 1931, and that he allegedly made love to her successor as mistress, Eva Braun Hitler.

Party propagandist Dr. Josef Goebbels—fretting over the construction costs---called it “The damned Party house---it will break our necks,” as he noted in his diary.

According to Peter Adam, “The flamboyance” of the plans “for a party not yet in power indeed bordered on the absurd. There was much earnest wood paneling on walls and ceiling…A large hall of honor displayed the ‘blood banners’ of the Nazi movement. A vast staircase led to Hitler’s office, with its portrait of Frederick the Great over a large desk. There were also pictures of Prussian battles…A Senate chamber was constructed, decorated with a generous sprinkling of swastikas, 60 chairs in red leather, with swastikas on their backs for 60 Senators around a vast conference table---a tangible exercise in empty rhetoric, since Hitler never intended to have a Senate.”

Later, he would have a Cabinet Room built in the New German Reich Chancellery in Berlin with similar furnishings and décor in 1939. The reason that neither were ever used was simple: the Fuhrer had no intention of bring voted out of office by his Party leaders as fellow Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was on July 25, 1943.

Professor Troost with Hitler

It was at the Brown House on June 30, 1934 that Hitler conducted the interrogations of arrested SA leaders as part of the Nazi “Blood Purge” of the rebellious Storm Troops.

The man who designed the renovations and then carried them out---as well as for the later Fuhrerbau (Leader Building) and the House of German Art---was Professor Paul Ludwig Troost ( 1878-1934), the Fuhrer’s first architect. According to Albert Speer---the successor to Troost and Hitler’s second architect---the worshipful Fuhrer referred to Troost as “The Professor” and made daily visits to his walk-up studio to monitor his plans. Noted Speer in his 1970 book, Memoirs: Inside the Third Reich, “Troost, conscious of his standing, never came to meet Hitler on the stairs, nor even accompanied him when he left.” Hitler would copy this technique later as Chancellor when he received guests at The Berghof, his chalet in the Bavarian Alps. To be met and then escorted out by the Fuhrer was by then considered a great honor.

Professor Troost was born Aug. 17, 1878 at Wuppertal-Eberfeld in Westphalia, and made his reputation by designing the fittings of the German passenger liner Europa (Europe.) The Fuhrer, who was in reality a student of Troost’s work, was delighted with what had been done on the Brown House, particularly as he had worked along with Herr Professor in designing the architectural drawings and other plans. Moreover, Troost had joined the Party while Hitler was a jailed convict and, like his pupil, was also a foe of modernism in art.

Ehrentempel am Koniglichen Platz, Honor Temples

His next assignment for Hitler was the two Temples of Honor in Munich for the Party martyrs of the aborted Beer Hall Putsch, and here their steel coffins, emblazoned with eagles and swastikas, were displayed outdoors above ground under an open roof through which the sky could be seen. They were the focal points of the annual commemoration each November that was one of the highlights of the Nazi calendar year of Party celebrations. They were inside the Feldherrnhalle (Hall of the Generals.)

After that came the new Fuhrerbau, an expanded version of the smaller Brown House. From one of its balconies Fuhrer and Duce (Leader) would salute the crowds when Mussolini came to town. It was here that the famous Four Power Munich Pact was signed on Sept. 30, 1938 by Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Republican France and Great Britain that dismembered Czechoslovakia in Hitler’s favor, and gave the Third Reich the former Czech Sudetenland. Today the building is part of Munich University---minus the swastika and giant eagle once mounted on the frontage. The meeting rooms can still be seen, much as they were in Nazi times.

Fuhrerbau - Fuehrer and Duce saluting the crowds

Professor Troost’s final commission from Hitler was the House of German Art that boasted a high Greek-style portico 185 meters long. Critics scorned it as “The Athens Train Station” and “The Munich Art Terminal.” The “Herr Professor,” however, was destined not to live to see his last work finished.

On Oct. 15, 1933, Hitler dedicated the cornerstone of the new building with a fine silver hammer designed specifically for the occasion by Troost himself. The hammer broke. Later Hitler told Speer, “When that hammer shattered, I knew at once it was an evil omen. Something is going to happen, I thought…The architect was destined to die.”

Dr. Goebbels made a joke of it: “When the Fuhrer strikes, he strikes mightily,” but it was no laughing matter. Within a very few days, Professor Troost was hospitalized with angina pectoris, and he died of pneumonia at age 66 on Jan. 21, 1934.

From his jail cell at Spandau Prison in Berlin on March 26, 1966, Speer noted in his secret diary, “I would never have become Hitler’s architect but for the death of Troost, whose designs he so admired…” Dr. Goebbels’ State Secretary, Walther Funk, told him “Congratulations! Now you’re the first!” Speer was but 28 years old and launched upon a meteoric career that would see him become one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany, serving two decades in prison as a convicted war criminal and then becoming the best-selling author of a trio of books on his experiences.

The influence of the late Professor was carried on by his wife, Frau Gerdy Troost, an interior designer who also worked on the Fuhrerbau. She told American author John Toland that Speer never met her husband as he claimed, but only came to his studio after his death. She carried on her husband’s work. She and Hitler thereafter had a remarkably open, candid relationship, and the Fuhrer accepted certain criticisms from her that he wouldn’t take from the male members of his entourage.

Frau Troost at Museum with the Führer

She was present for the July 18, 1937 grand opening of the House of German Art, for which color film was shot that is now available on video cassette under the title of “Good Morning, Mr. Hitler” from International Historic Films. She had completed the designs for the building in her husband’s stead, and on the morning of its debut, the Fuhrer and his aides reviewed an honor guard of German Regular Police drawn up out front. Dressed all in white, the female Dr. Troost accompanied Hitler as they toured the new Nazi artistic showpiece.

An ambitious exhibition of German art had been scheduled for the opening. Frau Troost had been one of the judges in selecting which pieces were to be shown. The judges made their selection according to artistic standards and thus many modern paintings were thus chosen, much to Hitler’s declared chagrin when he saw them.

The two had had a violent argument over this just before the opening day, with Dr. Troost standing her ground on the selections she and other judges had made. Noted Speer, “Pointing to a pile of rejected paintings, she said, ‘These are gray. They have already been refused by our grandmothers.’ The colors had all faded into a dull brown. Hitler pointed to a huge painting of a man on a hill playing a violin. Why was that refused ? ‘It’s impossible,’ she retorted. ‘Too sweet for our exhibition.’”

The argument grew more heated, with the Fuhrer’s entourage hanging back, but Hitler never raised his voice; he just grew more stilted and formal in his replies to her. Finally, Frau Troost exploded, “And since you can’t approve our selection, I resign this moment as a member of the jury!” Few had or would ever talk to Adolf Hitler like that!

He bade her a cool farewell, and then appointed his longtime court photographer Heinrich Hoffmann in her place. Hoffmann then made the “appropriate” selections of Nazi-approved artworks to be displayed.

The House of German Art

The Museum opened with a massive parade through the streets of Munich, all of it captured for posterity on “Good Morning, Mr. Hitler.” The Fuhrer didn’t hold a grudge against the widow of the man he had admired so much, for he had also come to like and respect the female Dr. Troost as well. He again shortly visited her studio as if nothing had happened, proving once more that Hitler was willing to be argued with when he respected the person doing it. This continued, moreover, right to the last days of the war, as Speer recalled in Memoirs.

Over the years, the Fuhrer would continue to confide in her, even going so far as to deny any foreknowledge of the Goebbels-orchestrated Kristallnacht (Crystal Night) pogrom against the Jews in November 1938, asserting to her, “It is terrible! They have destroyed everything for me like elephants in a china shop…and much worse. I had the great hope that I was about to come to an understanding with France, and now that!” Was he only play-acting ? Perhaps we’ll never know for sure.

Even though she had taken over her late husband’s personal commissions, Dr. Troost did not get his special task of overseeing the responsibility for the new Munich. Neither did this pass to Speer, but instead to his great rival, Hermann Giesler. Initially, a trio of German cities were selected by Hitler for gigantic Nazi buildings that were never finished: Munich, Nuremberg and Berlin, and eventually there were added 27 others. The outbreak of the war and the subsequent destruction wreaked by Allied wartime bomber raids ended these architectural dreams for good.

The late Professor Troost had begun the plans for the new Party Congress buildings at Nuremberg later made famous in the films of the recently-deceased director Leni Riefenstahl, but it was to be Speer and his associates who carried them out on the “Nation’s pilgrimage site,” although they were never completed in full.

Hugo Bruckmann

It was Hitler’s early mentors the Bruckmanns who had introduced him to the Troosts, and he was at first heavily influenced by their work before he had fully developed his own style, even though he had been drawing buildings for his new Germany from the Twenties. According to Speer, these drawings of Hitler’s reflected the neo-baroque style of Vienna’s Ringstrasse, a city he left in anger before the First World War as a dejected artist and to which he returned as a triumphant conqueror in March 1938.

“I first learned what architecture is from Troost,” Hitler declared to Speer. “When I had some money, I bought one piece of furniture after another from him…I always gave thanks to fate for appearing to me in the guise of Frau Bruckmann and leading the master to me.”

He called those who disapproved of the building of the Brown House “philistines” who thought it was all a waste of money, but from there he hatched his plans for the political takeover of Weimar Republican Germany. At Troost’s Fuhrerbau, Hitler would achieve one of his greatest “bloodless” triumphs of the so-called “Flower Wars,” designated thus because the people of the countries threw floral bouquets in place of bullets fired in anger.

Adolf Hitler at the grave of Paul Troost

In the autumn of 1933, the Reich Chancellor wanted the male Dr. Troost to redesign his private apartment in the Berlin Chancellery, but fate and death intervened; again, Speer got the commission instead. Before Troost’s sudden death, Speer was viewed as just an associate: “He was a famous man. I was nothing.” Unexpectedly, during an inspection trip, Hitler invited him to lunch to evaluate him more, and then came the fateful shattering of the silver hammer. It sounded both Troost’s death knell and heralded Speer’s rise.

The most recent coverage of Nazi architecture is author Frederic Spotts’ magnificent new work Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics (2003.)

© 2017 International Historic Films, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

**This blog doesn't necessarily agree with everything written in this article and it's published for informative reasons.

Τhe era of the downfall of the soul

“Like an all-devouring conflagration, ‘progress’ scours the Earth, and the place that has fallen to its flames, will flourish nevermore, so long as man still survives. The animal- and plant-species cannot renew themselves, man’s innate warmth of heart has gone, the inner springs that once nurtured the flourishing songs and sacred festivals are blocked, and there remains only a wretched and cold working day and the hollow show of noisy 'entertainment.’ There can be no doubt: we are living in the era of the downfall of the soul.” 

Ludwig Klages, Man and Earth, 1913

Into the Depths of Night

Benitses Cemetery, August 2020

"How can those who live in the light of day possibly comprehend the depths of night?" 

Friedrich Nietzsche

The Spirits of wood and stream grew silent...

Merlin to Morgana Le Fay - Excalibur (1981)

The Inevitable Decline Of The Faustian West

The plunder of Rome by the Visigoths of Alaric 

By Ferdinand Bardamu 

Systematic cultural analysis by analogy, the essence of Spenglerian historical morphology, reveals the universal laws of growth and decline governing the cycles of history. It is dependent on the idea that cultures are like biological organisms; after their genesis, they sustain a period of growth until they achieve maturity, before finally succumbing to old age and death.

On their way to oblivion, cultures become megalopolitan civilizations, their hordes of soulless bugmen ruled by the dictatorship of Money and its political weapons, the democratic governments and state-owned medias of Western countries. These institutions rely on consumerism to pacify and control their citizens. Spenglerian morphology replaces a traditional Eurocentric and teleological view of history with a pessimistic, but organic and teleological view of culture. Since all cultures bear within themselves the logic of their own becoming, or “destiny,” the extinction of the Faustian West is an historical inevitability. Even without the threat of non-white immigration, Western culture would still be in a state of irreversible decline. The 20th century has produced no art and literature on par with da Vinci and Shakespeare, nor has it produced scientists of the same caliber as Galileo and Newton. Not only has art and literature degenerated in quality, but rate of scientific innovation has declined since its peak in 1873, the high point of the “golden age of invention.” All of the main inventions we rely on today have been in place since the 1950s.

Everywhere around us the Faustian West is crumbling. Its downfall is because of an unquenchable thirst for limitless 3-dimensional space. This requires the overcoming of all physical limitations, achieved by an increasing dependence on abstraction. It is this over-reliance on abstraction that severs Faustian man’s connection with the soil. This means that in place of the peasant’s blut und boden will be found a deracinated cosmopolitanism. The quest for limitless space even affects the survival of the subspecies. Womens’ liberation gives free rein to the hypergamous mating instinct in the name of an abstract liberty, an unsustainable state of affairs that results in sub-replacement fertility and eventual large-scale depopulation of Western countries. The decline of the Faustian West will eventually bring down all of humanity. Liberalism, multiculturalism and feminism, when exported to the ends of the earth, will cause immense destruction because they seek to “free” man from the tyranny of his biology. The white man’s fate is like that of Icarus, who came crashing to the ground after having soared great heights.

The decline of Western culture may be a cause of sadness for some. After all, its great cultural achievements in art, literature, philosophy and the sciences will disappear along with it, never again to be enjoyed by posterity. However, there are alternatives to accepting the inevitable with a spirit of passive resignation. Nietzsche’s amor fati may serve as the most effective response to Spenglerian cultural pessimism:

My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary—but love it.

By embracing his own fate without ressentiment, the pro-white activist comes to terms with it. In Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence, amor fati is achieved when one relishes the thought of living the same moments of one’s life an infinite number of times. On this view, the decline of the West is not a cause for mourning, but something to be eagerly embraced.

Nietzsche said: “What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.” Through amor fati, the hardships of the present age are embraced, but this also makes them obstacles that must be resisted and overcome. The more destructive the neoliberal policies, the more efficacious they become as agents of health. This means that white nationalists engaged in resistance are bound to emerge from the contest far stronger and healthier than ever before. Through struggle, race-conscious whites experience Western decadence and nihilism firsthand; if they are introspective, they gain a deeper insight into why the Western cultural malaise of the 19th century has devolved into the social and cultural pathologies that plague Western civilization.

Although Spenglerian laws of morphological development are immutable, there may be a faint glimmer of hope at the end of each culture’s life cycle. Civilizational collapse may serve as a useful winnowing fork, separating the wheat from the chaff, the healthy from the sick, the strong from the weak. If so, we may expect only the healthiest and strongest whites to survive the death of the West, but even if Western whites go extinct because of feminism and mass immigration, there will always be whites who categorically reject Western xenophilia, ethnomasochism and pathological altruism. Slavs have been conditioned to favor in-group loyalty after centuries of interethnic and interracial wars fought against Mongol hordes and Saracen invaders. This has made them fiercely nationalistic and ethnocentric. Exposure to non-white tyranny has immunized the white populations of the East to the mind-numbing clichés of globalist propaganda. If the Western branch of the white race disappears, we must place our hope in the Eastern branch, who may become the seedbed of another great culture, a New Beginning for a much stronger and healthier race.

https://www.eurocanadian.ca/

Bealphares - (Un)rest in Darkness (Aug 25th, 2020)

Yes, It is a Dark Dream,

and coldful hatred hidden behind it...

I'm still dreaming,

i've been getting stronger,

because of this dream for centuries...

My nocturnal vision I realise in your world,

when the killes sun tries to hide...

We are still fighting gods are with us!

I'm Dreaming.

Dream about power of the white race,

Dream about superiority of the master on the icy thrones.

The Black Forest welcomes me

as a wolf hungry for the blood...

He welcomes me to dream in him

Weaves me up by the silver's moon dream.

The Legend of Saint George and the Dragon

St. George and the Dragon. Raphael 

St. George is a Christianised representation of the mythic sun-horse that reflects the inter-changeability of the hero and the horse. Another example is the ancient Celtic mare goddess known as Epona. Therefore, as a saint George is a patron of “…soldiers and sailors, the protector of rocky and dangerous coasts.” (Brown, 1950). In another aspect a descendant of the seafarers horse (Clarke, ). St. George is a representation of the Thracian ‘Rider God’ depicted in Hero-reliefs as a fight between a hero and a boar. The image has a religio-mythic significance of a hunting god that is “…principally honoured as a chthonic divinity.” (Kazarow, 1938). The Hero is presented as a powerful nature divinity, an ancestral image of the hunter-rider-hero.

Tradition places the birth of St. George at Lydda on the coast of Palestine not far from Phoenicia. The two locations where the activities of St. George centre are firstly those of Lydda or Ludd in Palestine where he was martyred, and secondly in Libya where he killed the dragon. The Phoenician version of the legend is derived from the hero and dragon in the myth of Perseus and Andromeda. In their turn the Phoenicians took the ancient story with them to Carthage and thence to Gades, the ancient Roman colony of Cadiz. It is most likely that the myth, the legend, became attached to the saint, each representing “…the powers of light destroying the powers of darkness.” (Brown, 1950), with the dragon that threatened Andromeda coming out of the sea.

In folklore St. George is closely connected with the ‘hero’ although he “…appears to be almost as mythical as the monster he disposed of…” (Leach, 1955). Two reliefs from Moesia show him protecting two horses accompanied by Epona. The Thracians, who were later absorbed by invading Slavs, had their beliefs absorbed by the Slavs as they overran the Balkans. There developed a mutual influence of Thracian and Christian beliefs. It is noteworthy that in Thracian beliefs the quake, or ‘Kraken wakes’, is a symbol of the soul not that of a dragon.

The cult of St. George is of greater antiquity than that of St. George himself, and one of “…those saints whose history is almost entirely a matter of mythology of folklore.” (Heath-Stubbs, 1984). The legend of St. George centres about a soldier martyred by Diocletian for refusal to denounce his Christian faith. The offender was a Roman soldier who tore down Diocletian’s edicts of his intention to persecute the Christians. This historical incident refers not to but to George but to Nestor. The dragon is the mythic element, a “…typical specimen of the maiden-eating variety.” (Leach, 1955). There is some identification with George of Cappadocia, the Arian Bishop of Alexandria who died in 362 and a nameless hero executed for destroying the edicts of Diocletian. George of Cappadocia was a corrupt and unattractive individual, put in prison for his crimes, and thence released by a pagan mob and torn to pieces (Heath-Stubbs, 1984).

The question therefore arises concerning the existence of a cult of an entirely fictitious saint. In the legend the hero, St. George, was tormented and then executed seven times in succession, whereupon on each occasion he was resurrected to life by St. Michael. to life. St. George was worshipped widely from the 3^rd century onwards in the Near East, though it “…seems doubtful whether there ever was an historical St. George.” (Leach, 1955), who was adopted as England’s patron saint only at the time of the crusades.

The popularity of St. George of England has nothing to do with Richard the Lion Heart ((1157-199), but originates in the 15^th century (Morris, 2009). The cult of St. George did originate in the eastern Mediterranean during the 4^th century AD , being transferred to England at a later date. It was during the 13^th century, during the reign of Henry III, that interest in royal and aristocratic circles became centred on St. George. Indeed, it seems that the belief in St. George, who was known to the Anglo-Saxons as an early Christian martyr, was transferred to England only in the middle ages.

Sources used:

Brown, T. (1950). Turtullian and Horse-Cults in Britain. Folklore LXI (1).

Clarke, C. P. S. (1927). Everyman’s Book of Saints.

Davidson, H. R. E. (1984). The Hero in Tradition and Folklore. UCL. London.

Heath-Stubbs, J. (1984). The Hero as Saint: St. George. In: Davidson (1984).

Kazarow, G. (1938). The Thracian Rider and St. George. Antiquity, 47, September.

Morris, M. (2009). Slaying Myths: St. George and the Dragon. History Today, 59.

Williams, M. E. (1936). Whence came St George? Bulletin de la Societe Royale d’Archeologie d’Alexandrie.

Leach, E. R. (1955). St. George and the Dragon. In: Myth or Legend. G. Bell & Sons. London.

https://ericwedwards.wordpress.com/

A Courageous Hero For Peace

"I have been boiling mad for years over the "war crimes trials," which I think were despicable and contemptible and smack more of ancient Rome's barbarism than of a so-called civilized country. Our country's hands are not free of blood and crime, in spite of our vaunted "democracy" and "noble aspirations," etc., etc., ad nauseum.

... It is outrageous that a man serving his country in all honesty and patriotism should be considered a "criminal" by a country which has its own share of criminals, and not honest and patriotic ones, either...."

Taylor Caldwell

The wreckage of Hess's Messerschmitt Bf 110

"My coming to England in this way is, as I realize, so unusual that nobody will easily understand it. I was confronted by a very hard decision. I do not think I could have arrived at my final choice unless I had continually kept before my eyes the vision of an endless line of children's coffins with weeping mothers behind them, both English and German, and another line of coffins of mothers with mourning children."

Rudolf Hess (June 10, 1941)

Heidegger on Nietzsche & Art

"We shall now attempt a first characterization of Nietzsche's total conception of the essence of art. We will do this by exhibiting a sequence of five statements on art which provide weighty evidence.

Why is art of decisive importance for the task of grounding the principle of the new valuation? The immediate answer is found in number 797 of The Will to Power, which really ought to stand in the position of number 794: The phenomenon 'artist' is still the most perspicuous -." At first we will read no further, but consider only this statement. "The most perspicuoius," that is, what for us is most accessible in its essence, is the phenomenon "artist" - the being of an artist. With this being, the artist, Being lights up for us most immediantly and brightly. Why? Nietzsche does not explicitly say why; yet we can easily discover the reason. To be an artist is to be able to bring something forth. But to bring forth means to establish in Being something that does not yet exist. It is as though in bringing-forth we dwelled upon the coming to be of beings and could see there with utter clarity their essence. Because it is a matter of illuminating will to power as the basic character of beings, the task must begin where what is in question shows itself most brightly. For all clarifying must proceed from what is clear to what is obscure, not the other way around.

Being an artist is a way of life. What does Nietzsche say about life in general? He calls life "the form of Being most familiar to us" (WM, 689). For him "Being" itself serves only "as a generalization of the concept 'life' (breathing), 'being besouled,' willing, effecting,' 'becoming,'" (WM, 581). "Being - we have no other way to express it than as 'living.' How then can something dead 'be'?" (WM, 582). "If the innermost essence of Being is will to power. . . " (WM, 693).

With these somewhat formula-like references we have already taken measure of the framework within which the "artist phenomenon" is to be conceived, the framework that is to be maintained throughout the coming considerations. We repeat: the being of an artist is the most perspicuous mode of life. Life is for us the most familiar form of Being. The innermost essence of Being is will to power. In the being of the artist we encounter the most perspicuous and most familiar mode of will to power. Since it is a matter of illuminating the Being of beings, meditation on art has in this regard decisive priority.

However, here Nietzsche speaks only of the "artist phenomenon," not about art. Although it is difficult to say what art "as such" is, and how it is, still it is clear that works of art too belong to the reality of art, and furthermore so do those who, as we say, "experience" such works. The artist is but one of those things that together make up the actuality of art as a whole. Certainly, but this is precisely what is decisive in Nietzsche's conception of art, that he sees it in its essential entirety in terms of the artist, this he does consciously and in explicit opposition to that conception of art which represents it in terms of those who "enjoy" and "experience" it.

This is a guiding principle of Nietzsche's teaching on art: art must be grasped in terms of creators and producers, not recipients. Nietzsche expresses it unequivocally in the following words (WM, 811): "Our aesthetics heretofore has been a woman's aesthetics, inasmuch as only the recipients of art have formulated their experiences of 'what is beautiful.' In all philosophy to date the artist is missing. . ." Philosophy of art means "aesthetics" for Nietzsche too - but masculine aesthetics, not feminine aesthetics. The question of art is the question of the artist as the productive, creative one; his experiences of what is beautiful must provide the standard.

We now go back to number 797: "The phenomenon 'artist' is still the most perspicuous - ." If we take the assertion in the guiding context of the question of will to power, with a view to the essence of art, then we derive at once two essential statements about art:

1. Art is the most perspicuous and familiar configuration of will to power;

2. Art must be grasped in terms of the artist.

And now let us read further (WM, 797): ". . .from that position to scan the basic instincts of power, of nature, etc.! Also of religion and morals!" Here Nietzsche says explicitly that with a view toward the essence of the artist and other configurations of will to power also - nature, religion, morals, and we might add, society and individual, knowledge, science, and philosophy - are to be observed. These kinds of beings hence correspond in a certain way to the being of the artist, to artistic creativity, and to being created. The remaining beings, which the artist does not expressly bring forth, have the mode of Being that corresponds to what the artist creates, the work of art. Evidence for such a thought we find in the aphorism immediantly preceding (WM, 796): "The work of art, where it appears without artist, e.g., as body, as organization (the Prussian officer corps, the Jesuit order). To what extendt the artist is only a preliminary stage. The world as a work of art that gives birth to itself - ." Here the concept of art and of the work of art is obviously extended to every ability to bring forth and to everything that is essentially brought forth. To a certain extent that also corresponds to a usage that was common until the outset of the nineteenth century. Up to that time art meant every kind of ability to bring forth. Craftsmen, statesmen, and educators, as men who brought something forth, were artists. Nature too was an artist, a female artist. At that time art did not mean the current, narrow concept, as applied to "fine art," which brings forth something beautiful in its work.

However, Nietzsche now interprets that earlier, extended usage of art, in which fine art is only one type among others, in such a way that all bringing-forth is conceived as corresponding to fine art and to the artist devoted to it. "The artist is only a preliminary stage" means the artist in the narrower sense, one who brings forth works of fine art. On that basis we can exhibit a third statement about art:

3. According to the expanded concept of artist, art is the basic occurance of all beings; to the extent that they are, beings are self-creating, created.

But we know that will to power is essentially a creating and destroying. That the basic occurrence of beings is "art" suggests nothing else than that it is will to power.

Long before Nietzsche grasps the essence of art explicitly as a configuration of will to power, in his very first writing, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, he sees art as the basic character of beings. Thus we can understand why during the time of this work on The Will to Power Nietzsche returns to the position he maintained on art in The Birth of Tragedy. An observation that is pertinent here is taken up into The Will to Power (WM, 853, Section IV). The final paragraph of the section reads: [b]"Already in the Forward (i.e., to the book The Birth of Tragedy, where Richard Wagner is invited, as it were, to a dialogue, this confession of faith, this artists' gospel, appears: 'art as the proper task of life, art as its metaphysical activity. . .'" "Life" is not only meant in the narrow sense of human life but is identified with "world" in the Schopenhauerian sense. The statement is reminiscent of Schopenhauer, but it is already speaking against him.

Art, thought in the broadest sense as the creative, constitutes the basic character of beings. Accordingly, art in the narrower sense is that activity in which creation emerges for itself and becomes more perspicuous; it is not merely one configuration of will to power among others but the supreme configuration. Will to power becomes genuinely visible in terms of art and as art. But will to power is the ground upon which all valuation in the future is to stand. It is the principle of the new valuation, as opposed the prior one which was dominated by religion, morality, and philosophy. If will to power therefore finds its supreme configuration in art, the positing of the new relation of will to power must proceed from art. Since the new valuation is a revaluation of the prior one, however, opposition and upheaval arise from art. That is averred in The Will to Power, no. 794:

Our religion, morality, and philosophy are decadence-forms of humanity

-- The countermovement: art

According to Nietzsche's interpretation the very first principle of morality, of Christian religion, and of the philosophy determined by Plato reads as follows: This world is worth nothing; there must be a "better" world than this one, enmeshed as it is in sensuality; there must be a "true world" beyond, a supersensuous world; the world of the senses is but a world of appearances.

In such a manner this world and this life are at bottom negated. If a "yes" apparently is uttered to the world, it is ultimately only in order to deny the world all the more decisively. But Nietzsche says that the "true world" of morality is a world of lies, that the true, the supersensuous, is an error. The sensuous world - which in Platoism means the world of semblance and errancy, the realm of error - is the true world. But the sensuous, the most semblant, is the very element of art. So it is art that affirms what the supposition of the ostensibly true world denies. Nietzsche therefore says (WM, 853, section II): "Art as the single superior counterforce against all will to negation of life, art as the anti-Christian, anti-Buddhist, anti-Nihilist par excellence." With that we attain a fourth statement about the essence of art:

4. Art is the distinctive countermovement to nihilism.

The artistic creates and gives form. If the artistic constitutes metaphysical activity pure and simple, then every deed, especially the highest deed and thus the think of philosophy too, must be determined by it. The concept of philosophy may no longer be defined according to the pattern of the teacher of morality who posits another world in opposition to this presumably worthless one. Against the nihilistic philosopher of morality (Schopenhauer hovers before Nietzsche as the most recent example of this type) must be deployed the philosopher who goes counter, who emerges from a countermovement, the "artist philsopher." Such a philosopher i an artist in that he gives form to beings as a whole, beginning there where they reveal themselves, i.e., in man. It is with this thought in mind that we are to read number 795 of The Will to Power:

The artist-philosopher. Higher concept of art. Whether a man can remove himself far enough from other men, in order to give them form? (-Preliminary exercises: 1. the one who gives himself form, the hermit; 2. the artist hitherto, as the insignificant perfecter of a piece of raw material.)

Art, particularly in the narrow sense, is yes-saying to the sensuous, to semblance, to what is not "the true world," as Nietzsche says succinctly, to what is not "the truth."

In art a decision is made about what truth is, and for Nietzsche that always means true beings, i.e., beings proper. This corresponds to the necessary connection between the guiding question and the grounding question of philosophy, on the one hand, and to the question of what truth is, on the other. Art is the will to semblance as the sensuous. But concerning such will Nietzsche says (XIV, 369): "The will to semblance, to illusion, to deception, to Becoming and change is deeper, more 'metaphysical," that the will to truth, to reality, to Being." The true is meant here in Plato's sense, as being in itself, the Ideas, the supersensuous. The will to the sensuous world and to its richness is for Nietzsche, on the contrary, the will to what "metaphysics" seeks. Hence the will to the sensuous is metaphysical. That metaphysical will is actual in art.

Nietzsche says (XIV, 368):

Very early in my life I took the question of the relation of art to truth seriously: even now I stand in holy dread in the face of this discordance. My first book was devoted to it. The Birth of Tragedy believes in art on the background of another belief - that it is not possible to live with truth, that the "will to truth" is already a symptom of degeneration.

This statement sounds perverse. But it loses its foreignness, though not its importance, as soon as we read it in the right way. "Will to truth" in the sense of Plato and Christianity, the will to supersensuousness, to our present world, precisely the one in which art is at home. Because this world is the genuinely real and only true world, Nietzsche can declare with respect to the relation of art and truth that "art is worth more than truth" (WM, 853, section IV) That is to say, the sensuous stands in a higher place and is more genuinely that the supersensuous.

In that regard Nietzsche says, "We have art in order not to perish from the truth" (WM, 822). Again "truth" means the "true world" of the supersensuous, which conceals in itself the danger that life may perish, "life" in Nietzsche's sense always meaning "life which is on the ascent." The supersensuous lures life away from invigorating sensuality, drains life's forces, weakens it. When we aim at the supersensuous, submission, capitualition, pity, mortification, and abasement become positive "virtues." "The simpletons of this world," the abject, the wretched, become "children of God." They are the true beings. It is the lowly ones who belong "up above" and who are to say what is "lofty," that is, what reaches their own height. For them all creative heightening and all pride in self-subsistent life amount to rebellion, delusion, and sin. But we have art so that we do not perish from such supersensuous "truth," so that the supersensuous does not vitiate life to the point of general debility and ultimate collapse. With regard to the essential relation of art and truth yet another statement about art, the final one in our series, results:

5. Art is worth more than "the truth."

Let us review the preceding statements:

1. Art is the most perspicuous and familiar configuration of will to power;

2. Art must be grasped in terms of the artist.

3. According to the expanded concept of artist, art is the basic occurance of all beings; to the extent that they are, beings are self-creating, created.

4. Art is the distinctive countermovement to nihilism.

At the instigation of the five statements on art, we should now recall an utterance of Nietzsche's on the same subject cited earlier ". . .we find it to be the greatest stimulans of life -" (WM, 808). Earlier the statement served only as an example of Nietzsche's procedure of reversal (in this case the reversal of Schopenhauer's sedative). Now we must grasp the statement in terms of its most proper context. One the basis of all the intervening material we can easily see that this definition of art as the stimulant of life means nothing else than that art is a configuration of will to power. For a 'stimulant' is what propels and advances, what lifts a thing beyond itself; it is increase of power and thus power pure and simple, which is to say, will to power. Hence we cannot merely appened to life the five previous statements the one about art as the greatest stimulant of life. On the contrary, it is Nietzsche's major statement on art. Those five statements enlarge upon it.

On the cursory view, we are already at the end of our task. We were to indicate art as a configuration of will to power. Such is Nietzsche's intention. But with a view to Nietzsche we are searching for something else. We are asking, first, what does this conception of art achieve for the essential definition of will to power and thereby for that of beings as a whole? We can come to know only if beforehand we ask, second, what is the significance of this interpretation for our knowledge of art and for our position with respect to it?"

Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, Volume 1: The Will to Power as Art (Pfullingen, 1961), pp. 69-76