Monday, April 27, 2009

Xasthur - All Reflections Drained

"Nothing is beautiful, except man alone: all aesthetics rests upon this naïveté, which is its first truth. Let us immediately add the second: nothing is ugly except the degenerating man — and with this the realm of aesthetic judgment is circumscribed. Physiologically, everything ugly weakens and saddens man. It reminds him of decay, danger, impotence; it actually deprives him of strength. One can measure the effect of the ugly with a dynamometer. Wherever man is depressed at all, he senses the proximity of something "ugly." His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride — all fall with the ugly and rise with the beautiful. In both cases we draw an inference: the premises for it are piled up in the greatest abundance in instinct. The ugly is understood as a sign and symptom of degeneration: whatever reminds us in the least of degeneration causes in us the judgment of "ugly." Every suggestion of exhaustion, of heaviness, of age, of weariness; every kind of lack of freedom, such as cramps, such as paralysis; and above all, the smell, the color, the form of dissolution, of decomposition — even in the ultimate attenuation into a symbol — all evoke the same reaction, the value judgment, "ugly." A hatred is aroused — but whom does man hate then? There is no doubt: the decline of his type. Here he hates out of the deepest instinct of the species; in this hatred there is a shudder, caution, depth, farsightedness — it is the deepest hatred there is. It is because of this that art is deep."

F.W. Nietzsche - Twilight of the Idols (1895)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Malefic seems to be losing me. I yearn for a return to The Funeral of Being.

Unknown said...

valter, äkki saad blogi theme'i natuke muuta? seda võimatu lugeda nii et silme eest virvendama ei hakkaks...loodan see pole taotuslikult nii.

aga all reflectionsist niipalju et atmot on rohkem kui kunagi varem mis on väga hea ja saund eriti hea lofi (cd pealt versiooni kuulasin mitte kassett). tekstisämplid võiks olematta olla. kohati lurker of chalice atmo nagu oleks - eriti aurora of denial'is.

steve said...

I thought thi was you writing this - I haven't read Freddie for years! Great stuff. Quality blog too.