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Dear Kasper 1) I am not an academic 2) Translations of the German are found in what I wrote, if you take the trouble to look. 3) As to the word "posturing", you may recall a little proverb about glass houses - which doesn't absolve me, of course: I plead guilty to thinking it a good thing to present what was really written as well as the equivalent in the vernacular. I had to omit the Chinese ideograms, unfortunately. emjay kasper salonen wrote: > are we supposed to understand german MJ? what kind of academic > posturing is > that > > On 31/10/06, MJ Walker <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > >> >> Nothing will last forever, I hope, least of all words, words, words: >> "Denn alles, was entsteht,/ Ist wert, dass es zugrunde geht." (*Faust*) >> Of course, Mephisto goes on: Drum besser wär's, dass nichts entstünde. >> This appears to contradict Nietzsche's "Denn alle Lust will Ewigkeit, >> will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit." But N. (who relativises the first part of >> the Goethe quote in *Also sprach Zarathustra*) does not say the objects >> of pleasure/joy/desire must be eternal, it is the joy/desire itself that >> requires eternity, perhaps as an aspect of itself? No finite object can >> ever be adequate to Lust. Mephisto, like Plato, is distrustful of >> Becoming; the first part of his statement is true: all that comes into >> existence is entitled to vanish in the abyss of oblivion; the second >> part is only true for those who resent transience. Their secret nihilism >> is to say with Meph that it were better that nothing ever came into >> existence, if transience is true . >> >> Anxious words, unwilling to pass away, like streetscapes >> and fountains, like visitors from outer space entrenched on some border >> fondling sunset glow before abruptly releasing a bolt of brocade beauty: >> the void is no more than a flower! - Zhang Zao: "The Infinite" >> >> >> emjay >> Roger Day wrote: >> >> > When manufactured diamond becomes cheap enough, I think it will be >> > used as a storage medium. Diamond will last virtually forever, if kept >> > correctly. >> >> >> -- >> >> M.J. Walker: http://walkoff.wordpress.com/ >> >> Got to look at it at sunset when it's PINK >> My guidebook said. Good advice about anything I suppose. >> >> Kenneth Koch >> > -- M.J. Walker: http://walkoff.wordpress.com/ Got to look at it at sunset when it's PINK My guidebook said. Good advice about anything I suppose. Kenneth Koch