14
PARTISAN REVIEW
ing of the experience of pitying and being pitied. Nor did Niewche
here invert "the tradition."
As
he himself insisted, his critique of pity
is
in the tradition of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Spinoza, La
Roch~
foucauld, and Kant. Surely, many of those who make much of tra–
dition do not really know it well at all, and "the tradition"
is,
more
often than not, an honorific name for the critic's own prejudices or,
to
be
more polite, values. And belief in "the tradition" is so popular
partly because it makes a virtue of security from deep and disturbing
experiences.
Dante's
Vita Nuova
is sufficient testimony that he did not seek
such security. We have few comparable records of self-exposure
in
both senses-meaning
first
of all, exposure to profound distraction.
In
this
experience and in the act of creation in which it issues, the
received order is always "violently disturbed" and "the unsayable
uttered." In this respect, the work of Nietzsche and Rilke is at one
with that of other great philosophers and poets, and they are closer
to Dante than are the traditionalists. Tradition is what comes after–
wards.
II
Let us return to Heller for another major criticism:
"Neither Rilke nor NieWche praises the praiseworthy. They praise.
They do not believe the believable. They believe. And it is their
praising and believing itself that becomes praiseworthy and believable
in the act of worship. Theirs is a
religio intransitiva.
Future anthropol–
ogists may see in it the distinctive religious achievement of modern
Europe, the theological equivalent of
I'art pour I'art."
This is a seductive interpretation, almost equally close to some
Thomists and to Jaspers' reading of Nietzsche, but it is utterly unfair
to both Nietzsche and Rilke. Their intense celebration of intensity
may occasionally appear in this light, and the attitude Heller de–
scribes is certainly not entirely imaginary. In fact, this outlook has
been given expression in one of the finest works of recent German
prose, Hermann Hesse's
Klingsors letzter Sommer,
in which Klingsor
says: "The sensuous
is
not worth one hair more than the spirit–
as little as the other way around. It is all one, it is all equally good.
Whether you embrace a woman or make a poem is the same.
If
