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Achilles and Homer.—It is always like the case of Achilles and Homer,—the one has the experiences and sensations, the other describes them. A genuine author only puts into words the feelings and adventures of others, he is an artist, and divines much from the little he has experienced. Artists are by no means creatures of great passion; but they frequently represent themselves as such with the unconscious feeling that their depicted passion will be better believed in if their own life gives credence to their experience in these affairs. They need only let themselves go, not control themselves, and give free play to their anger and their desires, and every one will immediately cry out, "How passionate he is!" But the deeply stirring passion that consumes and often destroys the individual is another matter: those who have really experienced it do not describe it in dramas, harmonies or romances. Artists are frequently unbridled individuals, in so far as they are not artists, but that is a different thing.
Achilles and Homer.—It is always like the case of Achilles and Homer,—the one has the experiences and sensations, the other describes them. A genuine author only puts into words the feelings and adventures of others, he is an artist, and divines much from the little he has experienced. Artists are by no means creatures of great passion; but they frequently represent themselves as such with the unconscious feeling that their depicted passion will be better believed in if their own life gives credence to their experience in these affairs. They need only let themselves go, not control themselves, and give free play to their anger and their desires, and every one will immediately cry out, "How passionate he is!" But the deeply stirring passion that consumes and often destroys the individual is another matter: those who have really experienced it do not describe it in dramas, harmonies or romances. Artists are frequently unbridled individuals, in so far as they are not artists, but that is a different thing.
Approximate author period: c. 1872 AD · industrial
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- Author or tradition
- Friedrich Nietzsche
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- Approximate author period: c. 1872 AD · industrial
author lifetime midpoint (1844–1900); not quotation composition date
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken. - Recorded source
- Human, All-Too-Human, Part 1 (1909 English edition) (1909 AD)
Part1, complete printed aphorism 211; Helen Zimmern translation; Edinburgh and London: T.N. Foulis,1909
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Author of Human, All-Too-Human, here represented by complete numbered passages in Helen Zimmern’s 1909 and Paul V. Cohn’s 1913 English editions. Catalogue lifetime 1844–1900; historical philosophical arguments and dated viewpoints require context, rather than treating every sentence as general advice.
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