Volume Ii Part 46 (2/2)

AUTHORS' COPIOUSNESS.-The last quality that a good author acquires is copiousness: whoever has it to begin with will never become a good author.

The n.o.blest racehorses are lean until they are permitted to rest from their victories.

142.

WHEEZING HEROES.-Poets and artists who suffer from a narrow chest of the emotions generally make their heroes wheeze. They do not know what easy breathing means.

143.

THE SHORT-SIGHTED.(22)-The short-sighted are the deadly foes of all authors who let themselves go. These authors should know the wrath with which these people shut the book in which they observe that its creator needs fifty pages to express five ideas. And the cause of their wrath is that they have endangered what remains of their vision almost without compensation. A short-sighted person said, ”All authors let themselves go.” ”Even the Holy Ghost?” ”Even the Holy Ghost.” But he had a right to, for he wrote for those who had lost their sight altogether.

144.

THE STYLE OF IMMORTALITY.-Thucydides and Tacitus both imagined immortal life for their works when they executed them. That might be guessed (if not known otherwise) from their style. The one thought to give permanence to his ideas by salting them, the other by boiling them down; and neither, it seems, made a miscalculation.

145.

AGAINST IMAGES AND SIMILES.-By images and similes we convince, but we do not prove. That is why science has such a horror of images and similes.

Science does not want to convince or make plausible, and rather seeks to provoke cold distrust by its mode of expression, by the bareness of its walls. For distrust is the touchstone for the gold of certainty.

146.

CAUTION.-In Germany, he who lacks thorough knowledge should beware of writing. The good German does not say in that case ”he is ignorant,” but ”he is of doubtful character.”-This hasty conclusion, by the way, does great credit to the Germans.

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