1 19 On Ottilia and the Demonic, in relation to the concept of the U11ge/1e11res
! "monstrous" · Tnms. I, cf. Emrich, /Jit .\'.vmlm/llt, p. 2 1 7. On hern1111,hrodit iMm in general, !ICC ihid, pp. 1 7 1 (1.
The Figure of Socrates
177
1 20 Bertram, Nietzsche, ch. 20 {"Sokrates"). This is not the place to enter into a lengthy discussion of this point, but it seems to me that Bertram's position on the relationship between Nietzsche and Socrates has not be� surpassed by the more recent work on the subject.
1 2 1 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, §340, vol. 3, p. 569 Colli/Montinari =
trans. Walter Kaufmann, New York 1974 {hereafter Kaufmann 1 974), p. 272.
1 22 Nietzsche, T'll1ilight of the Idols, The Problem of Socrates, §8, vol. 6, p. 7 1
Colli/Montinari = PN, p. 477.
1 23 Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, §13, vol. I, p. 91 Colli/Montinari = p. 89
Kaufmann.
1 24 Plato, Symposium, 223c.
1 25 C.F. Meyer, Das Ende des Festes, in Gedichte, vol. 4: Da mit Sokrates die Freunde tranken
Und die Haupter auf die Polster sanken
Kam cin Jungling, kann ich mich entsinnen,
Mit zwei schlanken Floterbliiserinnen.
Aus dem Kelchen schiltten wir die Neigcn,
Die gcsprichsmilden Lippen schweigcn,
Um d ie welken Kranze zieht ein Singcn . . .
Still! Des Todes Sclummerfloten klingen!
[Conrad Ferdinand Meyer { 1 825-98) was one of Switzerland's greatest poets and novelists. - Trans.]
1 26 Friedrich Holderlin, Der Rhein:
Nur hat ein jeder sein Mass.
Denn schwer ist zu tragcn /Das Unglilk, aber schwerer das Glilk Ein Weiser abcr vcrmocht es/Vom Mittag bis in die Mittemacht, Und bis dcr Morgen erglinzte,
Beim Gastmahl helle zu bleibcn.
=Friedrich Ho"/derli,,, Poems and Fragments, trans. M. Hamburger, London 1966, p. 421.
1 27 "The most attractive book i n Greek literature,'' said Nietzsche in his Posthumoul Fragments, July 1 879, 41 , 2, vol. 8, p. 584 Colli/Montinari.
1 28 Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human, A Book for Fru Spirits,
§86, vol. 2, pp. 59 1 -2 Colli/Montinari = p. 332 Hollingdale.
1 29 Xenophon, Symposium, 2, 1 6.
1 30
"Warum huldigest du, heiliger Sokrates,
Diesem Jilnglinge stets? kennest du Grassers nicht?
Warum sichet mit Liebe,
Wie auf Gotter, dein Aug' auf ihn?"
"Wer das Tiefste gcdacht, liebt das Lebendigste Hohc Jugend versteht, wcr in die Welt geblikt
Und c11 nc:igen die Weisen
01\ 11m l•:nde zu Schtlncm sich."
1 78
Figures
1 3 1
wiihrend dem Menschen nichts Frohlicheres und Besseres zu Theil werden kann, als einem jener Siegreichen nahe zu sein, die, weil sie das Tiefite gedad1t, gerade das ltbendigstt lieben milssen und als Weise am Ende zum SchOnen neigen . . . Sie bewegen sich und leben wirklich . . . weshalb es uns in ihrer Nahe wirklich einmal menschlich und nati.irlich zu Muthe ist and wir wie Goethe ausrufen m0chten: "Was ist doch ein Lebendiges fur ein herrliches k0stliches Ding! wie abgemessen zu seinem Zustande, wie wahr, wie seiendl"
Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, 3, Schopenhauer as Educator, 2, vol. I, p. 349
Colli/Montinari = p. 1 36 Hollingdale and Stern. [The quotation is taken from Goethe's ltalienische Reise, October 9, 1 786. - Trans.].
1 32 Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, §14- 1 5, vol. 1, pp. 96; 102 Colli/Montinari =
pp. 93-8 Kaufmann. Socrates' dream, in which the gods order him to devote himself to music, is re'-'OUnted in Plato's Phaedo, 60-1 .
1 33 Plato, Phaedo, 1 1 8a.
1 34 Nieu.sche, The Gay Science, §340, vol. 3, pp. 569-70 Colli/Montinari = p. 272
Kaufmann 1 974.
1 35 Bertram, Nietzsche, p. 341 .
1 36 Nietzsche, TJPilight of the Idols. The Problem of Socrates, § 1 2, vol. 6, p. 73, Colli/Montinari = PN, p. 479.
1 37 Cf. Helen 1-1. Bacon, "Socrates Crowned,'' The Virginia Qparterly RevitJP 35
( 1 959), pp. 41 5-30.
1 38 Plato, Symposium, 1 7Se.
1 39 Ibid, 2 1 2e. Cf. Gould, Platonic Love, p. 40.
140 Ibid, 213e.
141 Ibid, 222d.
142 Ibid, 223d.
1 43 Ibid, 196e.
144 Ibid, 1 76c, 220a, 223d .
1 45 Ibid, 223d.
1 46 Ibid, 1 74d, 220c.
1 47 Nietzsche, Em Homo, §6, vol. 6, pp. 307-8 Colli/ Montinari = pp. 268-9
Kaufmann and Hollingdale.
·
1 48 ["Come, Holy Spirit." Otherwise known as the "Golden Sequence,"
this Whitsun sequence is now commonly '-'Onsidered the work of Stephen Langton (ca. 1 1 50- 1 228), Archbishop of Canterbury and opponent of King John.
- Trans.)
1 49 Hamann, Sokratische Denkwiirdigkeiten, pp. 1 49ff = pp. 141 ff O'Flaherty.
I SO ["Bend what is stubborn, warm what is cold, straighten what is crooked." -
Trans.]
1 5 1 Bertram, Nietzsche, pp. 345-6.
1 52 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §295, vol. S, p. 237 Colli/ Montinari =
pp. 2 1 8-1 9 Kaufmann .
6
Marcus Aurelius
1 The Meditations as a Spiritual Exercise
The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius - a better translation of the Greek title would be Exhortalions lo Himself were first published in the West by
-
the Zurich humanist Andreas Gesner, in 1 558-9. Since their first appearance, the Meditations have continued to fascinate readers. Not all of these readers, however - and this includes many historians as well - have always understood what Marcus Aurelius intended to accomplish by writing this book. The seventeenth-century English editors and translators Meric Casaubon and Thomas Gataker still had an intimate sense for ancient realities, and were well aware of the nature of the work with which they were dealing. The Meditations, they realized, were a collection of hypomnemata (commentaria in Latin): notes written on a daily basis for the author's personal use.
Many authors allude to the existence of this literary genre in antiquity.
Since they were not intended for publication, however, such writings were destined to disappear. We owe the preservation of Marcus' Meditations to some happy set of circumstances, quite possibly to the piety of one of the members of the emperor's immediate entourage.
Most historians, however, have anachronistically projected the literary prejudices of their own epoch back upon the Meditations. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when systematic treatises were considered the perfect form of philosophical production, it was generally thought that the Meditations should be brought into relation with the composition of some such treatise. Scholars consequently imagined that the Meditations were the extracts or disjecta membra of such a hypothetical opus, or perhaps a series of notes written with a view to its publication.
In the nineteenth century, characterized as it was by romanticism, it was widely rccogni:r.ed that the Meditations were a collection of hypomnemata or per1mnul notc11. Frrquently, however, as in Renan's great study Marcm
1 80
Figures
Aurelius or the End of the Ancient World, 1 it was maintained that Marcus had written "a personal diary of his inner states."
In the twentieth century, the age of psychology, psychoanalysis, and suspicion, the very fact of having written this personal diary has been interpreted as the symptom of a psychological malaise. It has become a clichC