Welcome Caribbean Rhythms, episode 93, I remind you Mishima book Sun and Steel, a story of a maybe sickly boy but with aesthetic sensibility, and he overcame as a writer and an intellectual but he overcame the labyrinth of words that intellectuals are very likely, often they get trapped in, to the point where logocentrism, or this terrible not just tendency for words but actually un-visual cretinism. Maybe even something would be diagnosable. If psychiatry were still interested in neuroses that make an organism or a society unable to survive in a state of nature, then the logocentrism of our age, the result of rule by midwits, intellectuals and clerks so-called, but this logocentrism which confuses words for reality to point of medical cretinism, it would have to be classified as disease

and when propagated in the minds of stupid people and the mass miseducations of the many, which includes the midwits who populate media and academia. But this logocentrism, or world casuistry, would have to be classified as a contagious mass hysteria, and against this tendency to delude yourself with words and empty syllogisms and vague abstractions, I have recommended from time to time the path Mishima took of Sun and Steel in which he, to say, re-physicalized himself through bodybuilding in his case, but I would imagine you could also do this through boxing and other similar martial art, as long as you do not overemphasize the moral or spiritual aspects of it, but the immediate physical ones, where he retrained his nervous system away from the diseased neurosis of

being trapped in words. He drove himself and retrained himself back into the imminence and fullness of sensing, of perceiving reason in reality, physical reality. So you may know, if you read articles about me, they always remark that I post beautiful physiques on Twitter or this, but they rarely understand why I do this, and I explain it in the book of course, but in part it is to short-circuit around this labyrinth of self-delusion web of modern mind-sickness and to impress on sensitive viewers the manifest unfolding of species in the physical world, which appears in perception by a different path, not one of logic or moral reasoning, but something direct physical perception. And further, of course, it is necessary to train the physique for the same reason that

the ancient Greeks did, and for the reason Mishima himself imparted it also, and he encouraged it for his Shield Society student right-wing group as preparation for physical conflict. But beyond this, I post frequently also artworks or good classical music or photographs of animal or other beautiful things, and in this sense, I am alike to other reactionary accounts who are our friends like Wrath of Non or many of the architecture or city planning posters. And you may remember in last show I talked briefly how the French candidate Eric Zemur, he also talked about importance of return to beautiful architecture, this major part actually of modern political awakening against an old and decrepit establishment that pushes ugliness on the world.

But these architecture thinkers who are moving away from modern architecture, which they They consider not only ugly, but connected to this ugliness is an inhuman, an alienating from a natural way of life, or as I would put it, is a way of life that, what is natural way of life. It's something that's not only pleasant, but it's pleasant because it can allow for full development of powers of a human organism. And finally, also the possibility for discharge of these powers, which might be the quickest formula I can find for what means great joy and this natural life, and to this you can contrast the brutalist modern architecture, which is the point of departure for many of our friends. It's this realization that this architecture you find in most modern cities, the architecture

of Le Corbusier, the Soviet-type concrete box, often with no or little windows. Now, you may have heard they are trying to build Santa Barbara dormitory for students that most rooms will have no windows and it will be open plan, this kind of hive, cockroach hive living. But this type of Soviet type box and the types of city planning that go along with it where it is done by, you know, on one side of the city you have industry or the work quarters and in another sector you have the residential housing, and in another you have the parks and the recreation and so forth. This type of modernist type city planning, most naively and brutally it's displayed in Soviet work towns. So if you go to Soviet Russian Arctic, still there are Soviet holdover cities, and you

have let's say a city built by a communist party around the mining of nickel or whatnot in and you find just this type of city planning which is more like a giant work camp, you know one that does not have barbed wire around it but it's very much arranged like concentration camp. Unworld concentration camp is what such cities are and this is totally unlike traditional town which grow organically or even when they were planned as often they were planned in in ancient Greece by a new city founder who later became a hero and worshipped as a god in later generations. But whenever they founded such, they didn't separate the aspects of life in these physical ways. Here you have this quarter and there you have that.

But the center of town was either the fortress or the temple or the marketplace in Agora where there was a famous phrase, men win themselves renowned in the marketplace. They won this fame how? By giving good counsel, both in formal assemblies and in many informal talks and chats went on there between groups of friends where citizens gathered to talk about their city and decisions and their future and so forth and that type of thing is impossible physically in a modern brutalist Soviet work camp type town which reflects the architectural ideology of people like Le Corbusier, which is designed to brutalize the individual, to make him feel powerless, insignificant, anonymous before the crushing presence of the state.

And now, by the way, these lockdowns you see in pandemics, the only thing I can think of historically like that are oriental cities where it was customary for the ruler to close down this or that section of the city at night. They would lock them down, but in a Western context, this would have been taken a sign of slavery, never accepted. But once I've told you about such Soviet concentration camp towns, tell me how, for example, Atlanta is different, or any number of other American cities that may be less obviously or less naively displayed in this way, but still you have the dormitory district and then people commute to the work district and so forth, and the downtown is empty during the weekend, and there is really no public arena.

And if you as a citizen go to complain to the supposedly public assembly, you are now called a domestic terrorist. And as America has to deal with the great benefits of diversity on top of this, which these diversity benefits, this arguably led to this arrangement more than the invention of the car or the slaver ideology of Corbusier did. Diversity, I mean, is the cause of this, at least in America, I'm saying now, where white people, which is to say the American citizen, the Americaner, they were ethnically cleansed from city cores, most of which have become no-go zones, yes, they recovered some of them, but most inner cities are no-go zones, and it led to this commuting arrangement. And I think if you have ever commuted, you know the hell that commuting is if you have

to do it every day, especially polls, I remember one, shows that men are willing, women to whatever, are willing to take 25 to 30 percent pay cut to forego one hour of commute. And that's how painful it is. It's essentially a second job on top of the first. But this is just maybe for different reasons. But this is a remake of Soviet or Chinese work Camp City. And it's already itself a kind of pod life because places organized this way have, it's hard to have again any common life or consciousness. It's not a city really, it's not a city existence, it's literally not a political existence. And it's hard for people to make associations outside of their powerless individual selves when their day-to-day lives are organized like this.

One of my favorite factoids by the way, not direct related, but Mohamed Atta, one of the The 9-11, well, he was actually supposedly the organizer, but he was an architecture student and he was very upset by what had happened to his hometown of Aleppo in Syria and how it had become a kind of sprawling slum, because in traditional Islam, the city organization with the mosque at the center and this type of communal life, very important to them, and he was very much moved especially by, I think I mentioned this in the book, It's one of my favorite factoids. Of course, Mohamed Atta, not a good model, you know, but give you idea of importance of architecture and urban planning to spiritual and political life.

So you take modern American city, which is not a slum yet, it's not Nairobi yet, though it probably will be in next century. But still, it's very hard to organize communal life, and I know there are exceptions. People go to church, the churches are very large often and they're arranged around the tastes of women and homosexuals, or they go to various school meetings right now if this is possible. But it's only actually as a result of this kind of unstrung and dissipated existence that you can have when you see now conservatives who act astonished at somebody like Rittenhouse at his actions. Right, you have all these supposedly conservative pundits. They can't believe that Rittenhouse, they find it completely strange what he did, whereas

even in recent times in the West, it would have been astonishing not to act in the way Rittenhouse did in defense of his city, and it wouldn't have been one Rittenhouse, it It would have been 50 and the law would have been on their side. This show is not about the case, by the way, because we all have maybe overload of Rittenhouse trials this week. I already discussed Rittenhouse actually last year when this all happened and it was risky to defend him. Very few were doing it, but I came out very strong for him and how I consider him the best of America, frontier settler type. So I don't want to dwell on this show about it. I may mention something briefly, but I will just tell you now, when you see what happened

on this trial with the judge and the jury, you can see they are acting purely out of fear. But this is actually an entire explanation for woke so-called revolution. It's not the foundation of any new religion. The number of, I don't even want to say true believers, the numbers of believers at all are tiny, maybe 1% of population or under. But for various political reasons, our side cannot organize because we have bad leadership and so forth, and so people like the judge and jury, they are not delaying this verdict or possibly giving a bad one, we will see soon, but they're not doing this because they believe in woke ideology but because they're afraid and because the other side is making credible threats of violence, and you do not see even one so-called repoop politician come

out to defend them. A normal case would be that entire leadership of party on our side would come to defense of such people or defense of people who are being canceled or boycotted and so forth. But that doesn't happen, whereas the left doesn't really as such – I guess this This is the only point I'm trying to make about this. The left does not really have the numbers to, you see, they just act on fear because of a minority of Rosenbaum-like lumpenpro violent criminals that they can mobilize to threaten people with physical violence. But otherwise, let's say a company comes under pressure because it advertises on Tucker or this. If they simply ignored that pressure, they wouldn't lose any business, they wouldn't

be financially hit by it. It's all purely out of fear. Same with Zuckerface and with Jack from Twitter. Everyone acts out of fear and no one on our side or even on the, you could say, the left liberal side, the non-woke liberals, none of them dare to organize to defend themselves. Very strange. I really think it's all caused by cowardice. If some of them would, I mean prominent people, I'm not saying my small audience on this show, but if prominent, let's say leadership of Republican Party and some companies stood up to them, it would be very easy to defeat. There is no actually spiritually woke religious movement. But I don't want this to dwell on Rittenhouse's thing and on other politics on this show, you see.

So this show, you can say about art or some art philosophy, connection matters. Some reading I did for my own pleasure this past week, which I describe for you, but I begin this way on connection of architecture to urban planning, to problem of beauty, physical beauty in life because I want to show through one or two examples in this opening segment like I just did on urban planning and so forth the importance of aesthetic considerations for life or hint ultimately at what means aesthetic interpretation of the world as opposed to let's say an ideological or moral interpretation and in a quick formula you can think of the ancient Greeks are an aesthetic interpretation of life and ancient Hebrew is a moral interpretation.

Because this imparts my purpose in a book I wrote to resurrect what means aesthetic interpretation of world, the ancient Greek conception, the Greeks who were profound in their superficiality, in refusing actually to go beyond the apparent surface of things, who saw the depth in the surface, and you may have heard from Nietzsche or others they found a glorification of existence in the aesthetic, in other words, in what appears on the surface to the senses. It is most needful to bring this above all back to prominence in mind over the word, over supposed rationality, over logocentrism, over ethics, and many other things which obfuscate obvious reality and cover it up with a lot of garbage over the years. So I want on this show briefly to hint to you yet again what all this means aesthetic

interpretation of the world. Why beauty important in life and why this connection is important to mimic, to imitate the ancient Greeks. So on next segment I will discuss for you a classic that states just this. It is called Reflections on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture by Joachim Winkelmann, who is often called the first art critic, and he wrote a short essay. This was written in 1755, and is actually extremely important for the following two centuries of thinking on art, on life, and even on politic and spiritual matter in Germany and the world. write a short essay on the beautiful in arts, end up being very important even for political, spiritual, moral matter. I won't tell you brief on this show why, I will be right back.

Taste, which is becoming more prevalent throughout the world, had its origins under the skies of Greece. Every invention of foreign nations which was brought to Greece was, as it were, only a first seed that assumed new form and character here. We are told that Minerva chose this land, with its mild seasons, above all others, for the Greeks in the knowledge that it would be productive of genius." And of course it's a quote, it's not about our world because good taste is not becoming more prevalent throughout our world. So begins Winkelmann's famous essay on Greek arts and on the advantages of imitating a a Greek art above, say, just attempting to imitate nature directly, which he does recommend to do, but he recommends only, maybe not even for the advanced artists, but only for the

oldest and most accomplished ones at the apex of their careers. But all others should begin and continue imitating Greek art. And this was written again in 1755, and I tell you on this segment because it says the truth about many things, and was also very important for almost all subsequent thinking on art, art history, but also on philosophy, and I say even on politics. Now who was Winkelmann? This is mostly unimportant, I don't like to give a biography here, he's just a scholar, but he grew up poor, son of, well you know, it's sometimes said working class, but he He was born in 1717 and this 18th century is not really proper to talk working class. He was the son of a craftsman, a cobbler, but he was very smart but grew up very poor and he was purely through intelligence.

He did very well in school, studied 18 hour a day differential equation and he was able to continue academic studies after focusing eventually on Greek and had career course typical of, let's say, a great scholar of time who would be dependent on a patron. So he was supported first by local nobility, who gave him access to library and other collections in Dresden. This is a city in Germany which was said to be the new Athens of Europe, a storehouse of sacred art and treasures, actually, and much knowledge and scholarship. This is before our values and the liberal democracy world order, you know, gratuitously reduced it to ashes during World War II. You know, the city was totally destroyed, firebombing and all the justifications you

hear about this being an important transportation hub, you know, you never accept that kind of reasoning from Nazis about a war crime like this if they had done this to London. So why do you accept it here? This had no military reasoning. The destruction of the city was done simply out of Anglo-Judaic rage against superior German culture, because this city was one of the points of rebirth of Hellenic culture in modern world. And Winkelmann very much come out of Dresden art, philosophy, culture, world, helped also to cultivate it further. But so anyway, he was supported by local noble and later after a publication of these essays that I briefly discuss on this show, he went to Rome, first on a stipend by King of Poland

who funded him again based just on strength of this essay, but later other patrons and also eventually Catholic Church, he became Catholic or pretended to be. So in Rome, he wrote his life's work, which is a history of art, which I will not much discuss on this show, but is based on similar ideas as his essay. He became, you can say this, he became inspiration and godfather and founder of a school in Rome where many scholars and artists and archaeologists, other researchers, but also European young aristocrats doing their tour, grand tour in Europe so-called, the same tour that backpackers do now, was very popular for aristocrats to do at that time and into the 19th century. And so many came to follow in his footsteps, you know, they followed to his path.

He was founder of a neoclassical movement in the arts because let's say he's writing this 1755 and this is end of Baroque style, the Rococo period, which is extremely stylized, very ornamented, you can say unnatural, with some strong oriental flourishes and influences, the Rococo style, but you can think maybe it's like art nouveau of time with emphasis on showing extreme emotion, dramatic passion, sense of movement and energy, but very elaborate ornamentation. And Winkelmann, in part inspired by some new archaeological discoveries of Roman antiquity that more and more were coming out in the 18th century, he reacts against all this, the rococo excess and the flourish, and he wants to return to classical Greek principles

and form, to sobriety, to glorification of simple natural beauty of the human body and so forth. So just like you may imagine Renaissance, right, okay, so in this sense he's a man of immense influence because he affects, in part just with this one essay, he affects the tastes and aspirations of at least one generation, maybe more. I mean, imagine founding an entire artistic and aesthetic movement, and I'd say he copied antiquity way similar to American founders. They did it in politics, but they soon after this, after 1760, 1770s or so, they tried to copy Roman forms in their own political creation. And let me remind you, this may be of Machiavelli, who remarks that the artists of his time imitated and took inspiration from ancient arts and science, but not yet from ancient political

life. He complains about this. And he, I mean Machiavelli, he says he will feel this need, and he will resurrect also an ancient politics. Now this is some hundreds of years before, and in that intervening time, other fashions and ideas took hold. But now you have again in the 1700s new rebirth, you could say, of classicism and focus on ancient Greek, and Winkelmann didn't intend to do this, and I don't mean to suggest that American Revolution was related to Winkelmann's work in anything other than, you know, this was the spirit of the time, the sedulation actually of Rome, maybe even more than Greece, became a special fashion at this point in the 18th century. But I think Winkelmann's influence on political life in Europe was profound, but it didn't

take hold through political treaties the way American founders explicitly did. It went through a different circuitous and spiritual direction. Now that I briefly tell you his life and the significance of his work in history, I want to return to his essay. So yes, the quote I read at the beginning of this segment, he's alluding there when When he talked about the climate of Greece and how it produced genius, he's alluding to Plato's Timaeus, it's a Plato's dialogue Timaeus, the same way he talked about Atlantis and so forth. And in this Timaeus it is said that the goddess Athena gave this particular land blessings in climate, he means Attica, he gave it blessed seasons so that the land may bring forth men of genius.

And it's interesting he uses here the same word as for bringing forth plants and trees, literally to carry, but it has various meanings. And the word for genius he uses here is not suppose or the wise, he uses, he says pronimotatoi, the superlative of pronimos, which it often refers, it's translated as practical intelligence, but this more, you can think of the intelligence of a Napoleon as opposed to egghead, the theorist and so forth. And this is very interesting if you read that passage of the Timaeus, Plato's dialogue, and by the way you should of course read Winkelmann's essay and just carry through when he makes some offhand casual allusion to this work of art or that classical quotation. Don't be intimidated that it's showing off because actually Winkelmann is good stylist

and unlike modern scholar he writes mostly in clear classical accessible way so you know just when you read it first time, just flow through all those references, you look them up later on second reading. But if you look at this passage that he alludes to from Plato's Timaeus, it is, Plato continued that Athena chose this land because she was warlike and wise, or rather this quality practical cunning intelligence of, you know, Napoleon-like intelligence as I call it, because she was warlike and genius, and she wanted this land to bring forth many men who were most warlike and most genius. Isn't this nice? This is from Plato's Timaeus, but there is essay by Nietzsche who I have mentioned this essay on the show, The Greek State. It's an early

essay that is often called fascist, but where Nietzsche goes very deep into this connection I mentioned just now, he makes the case that the state itself exists as a eugenic project for precisely this purpose, that it exists because of war, and that its purpose is to be organized for war and to breed men of genius skilled at leading war, that the life of war presupposes, in other words, the genius, and cultivates the genius, literally. And through a series of striking insights, Nietzsche also explains how such a state must necessarily be a local nationalist particular state. Maybe not nationalist in a 19th century ethno-nationalist way, but a closed particular state, that it cannot be a commercial entity or a borderless international financial region.

And he goes into some striking statements, which I posted on an account before, but maybe Maybe I cover it exclusively on future show, but I need to show how international finance, in his own time, has an interest in stopping wars, in stopping actually the precondition for war, meaning in lessening nationalism and in manipulating political instincts to promote its own borderless pursuit of profit, and that it is for this reason that international homeless money hermit finance will promote leftism, feminism, anarchism, liberalism, The dissolution of the state, the dissolution of the political instinct, and of the preconditions for war organization, which is the cauldron, you know, out of which the state as state is born.

But by so doing, when this is all unstrung and replaced by rational, apolitical, liberal, human rights individualism, the preconditions also of high cultures themselves are eventually wiped out, lost. It's a wonderful, striking essay and actually Nietzsche never abandoned his insights here. He developed them further and politically, perhaps, he reformed them to support the idea of a pan-European empire that would span the globe with a European military case ruling based on these same principles, a eugenic case. But in this same essay, Nietzsche points out Plato was entirely concerned only with this This matter that Vinckelmann mentions in the beginning of his essay, and that appeared in Plato's Timaeus, but also in other of Plato's work, namely what a condition can bring forth

the production of men of genius. It's just that Nietzsche disagrees somewhat with Plato's definition of genius. And so I don't mean, by the way, to say that Nietzsche was following Vinckelmann here every single way because they disagree in some crucial matters which I will mention toward the end of this show. I instead need to say like so many others Nietzsche is in dialogue both with Winkelmann and Plato but it's obviously true you can see how far and interesting this dialogue between great thinkers is and of course in this case also how momentous because in the case of Nietzsche he did very much have direct effect on political life, on all the major rightist factions in Europe politic after 1900, at least all of them followed Nietzsche. But let's return anyway to Winkelmann's essay.

So a few pages later, he has a series of paragraphs where he explains more about why Greek was so well situated both by nature and culture, which in Winkelmann's view are continuous. And this is very important, I talk soon. But the Greek were well situated to discover beautiful things, and in particular the beauty of the correct human form, as opposed to other peoples who were not well situated to do this, by implication also as opposed to us, to the modern. So I will read to you from Winkelmann Essay again, it's a longer quotation, but maybe some of you not have time to read this week, you will like this quotation anyway. I'm quoting Winkelmann now. The most beautiful body of one of us would probably no more resemble the most beautiful

Greek body than Iphiclos resembled his brother Hercules. The first development of the Greeks was influenced by a mild and clear sky, but the practice of physical exercises from an early age gave this development its noble forms. Consider for example a young Spartan conceived by a hero and heroine and never confined in swaddling clothes, sleeping on the ground from the seventh year on and trained from infancy in wrestling and swimming. Compare this Spartan with a young Sybarite, this means a luxury lover, of our time and then decide which of the two would be chosen by the artist as a model for the young Theseus, Achilles or even Bacchus. Not from the latter, it would be a thesius fed on roses, while from the former, meaning

from the ancient Spartan model, would come a thesius fed on flesh, to borrow the terms used by a Greek painter to characterize the two different conceptions of this hero. The grand games, the athletic games, gave every Greek use a strong incentive for physical exercise, and the laws demanded a ten-month preparation period for the Olympic Games in Alice at the very place where they were held. The highest prizes were not always won by adults, but often by youths, as told in Pindar's Odes. To resemble the godlike Diagoras was the fondest wish of every young man. Behold the swift Indian who pursues a deer on foot! How briskly his juices must flow, how flexible and quick his nerves and muscles must be, how light the whole structure of his body!

Thus did Homer portray his heroes and his Achilles he chiefly noted as being swift of foot. These exercises gave the bodies of the Greeks the strong and manly contours which the masters then imparted to their statues without any exaggeration or excess. The young Spartans had to appear naked every 10 days before the ephors, rulers of Sparta, who would impose a stricter diet upon those showing signs of fat. He does not say this, but the ephors, if you showed signs of fat at the 10-day checkup of naked Jacob, they would also beat you. They would beat you. They would bullicide the fats. Maybe this would stop pandemic hysteria in West now. I don't know. I continue to read. Indeed, one of the rules of Pythagoras was a warning against any corpulence.

For the same reason, perhaps, young Greeks in the earliest times aspiring to compete in a wrestling contest were confined to a diet of cereal and milk during their training period. I have to interject here, he is not completely right about this. If you go actually to various cultures, this mix of cereal, of starch and dairy, is a fattening... This is something used in fattening rituals, whether in Africa or if you go to Polynesia, they use coconut milks and taro root, I believe, or other starch root. This is more a fattening formula. The young Athenians followed the example of Alcibiades, who in his youth refused to blow the flute for fear of distorting his face. Accordingly, all clothing of the Greeks was so designed that it put not the slightest constraint upon formative nature.

The development of beautiful form would not have permitted the different types and shapes of our present-day clothing, which binds and confines, especially at the neck, the hips, and the thighs." I get interject here. I think both Schopenhauer and Rousseau talk about just this. Did they take direct from Winkelmann? I don't know. I think probably they did. And it reminded me of another tangent I could go on. Winkelmann, as I told you, grew up very poor man from poor family. Rousseau also, he grew up orphaned poor man. He has poverty in his youth. But you can see that even in 1700s, men of genius, they could be born to a cobbler and they could achieve great renown. he and Rousseau did and this man founded, Winkelmann founded artistic intellectual movement

that lasted a long time but he was recognized very quickly even in his youth by patrons, by aristocratic patrons. Just I'm saying this to remind you when anyone tries to say that before 1950s the world was the benighted place where somebody of merit could not advance, not quite the case. I think, perhaps, Winkelmann would be far more likely to be neglected in our times than in his. But I continue now reading from his essay. Among the Greeks, the pharisei, the women itself, knew no anxious compulsions of dress. Young Spartan women were such light and short garments that they were called hip bearers. We also know that the Greeks took great pains to conceive beautiful children. Do you hear this? It is very important to conceive beautiful children. He talked about eugenics, quillette.

I do not know, I am peasant, I don't know how to pronounce this name, quillette, but it's like the magazine, the clear lemon, the anal monster, she has this magazine quillette, okay, but quillette in his callipaideia does not show as many ways to that end as were customary among the Greeks. So you see, Winkelmann is eugenics-pilled. is alluding to this very important Greek society, after about 850 BC or so, eugenic really came into its own in aristocratic Greek society. This is what Winkelmann is alluding to here, and I have talked these things before, I may have future shown it, but I continue reading. They even went so far as to try to change blue eyes into black. That is a bit of an ambiguous statement, I will talk later. But beauty contests were organized to further their purpose.

In other words, beauty contests existed for eugenic purposes. These were held in Elis, the city Elis, like Elis Island, you know. And the prizes consisted of weapons, which were then hung in the Temple of Minerva, again Athena, the patron saint of eugenic breeding for war and genius. I go back to reading now. There could be no dearth of competent and learned judges for these contests since, as Aristotle reports, the Greeks trained their children in the art of drawing chiefly because they believed that this would heighten their skills in observing and judging physical beauty." See, so, anyway, I must keep reading a little bit more. The handsome lineage of the, okay, so then he talked about various modern people.

I will skip over a spot where Winkelmann talked about various modern tribal peoples that are very beautiful. the Caucasian Georgians and the Kabardians in Crimea, but so he continues Those illnesses which destroy so much beauty and impair the noblest forms were still unknown to the Greeks in the writings of Greek physicians There is no hint of smallpox and in none of the descriptions of the Greeks carried out to the finest detail in Homer Is there any mention of distinguishing marks such as those of smallpox the venereal diseases and their daughter the English malady? I think he means syphilis had not yet wreaked their havoc on the beauty of the Greeks. Moreover, everything that was instilled and taught from birth to adulthood about the culture of their bodies and the preservation,

development and refinement of this culture through nature and art was done to enhance the natural beauty of the ancient Greeks. Do you hear the way he uses the word culture? This is actually the meaning original and real meaning of word culture. It's the cultivation of nature what I just read for you now everything that was instilled and taught from birth to adulthood about the culture of their bodies and the preservation Development and the refinement of this culture through nature and art thus we can say that in all probability their physical beauty Excelled ours by far the most perfect creations of nature would on the other hand have become only only partially and imperfectly known to the artists in a country where nature was hindered

by rigid laws, as in Egypt, the reputed home of the arts and sciences. In Greece, however, where people dedicated themselves to joy and pleasure from childhood on and where there was no such social decorum as ours to restrict the freedom of their customs, the beauty of nature could reveal itself unveiled as the great teacher of artists. The school for artists, or the gymnasium, where people practice naked, where young people otherwise closed for the sake of public modesty, performed their physical exercises in the nude. All right, end quote. I've read to you enough, but I think you understand why, what I remind you of. I think this is very good, no? This remind you maybe a handsome Thursday, but you can see, I mean here, supreme importance

of biological eugenic breeding, which is what make this nature and culture into a continuous ascent, and I will be right back to tell you more on this. I just read for you from Winkelmann's essay encouraging artists to model themselves on the Greeks, in particular on how the first full apprehension of beauty was possible only under Greek skies, in part because of climate, but ultimately is because an ecological argument, because the climate is in some as yet undecided way suitable to the people brought forth over time and vice versa, whether by natural or sexual selection or by some other mysterious means, but ultimately it is the eugenic practice of the Greeks that allowed for the production of physical beauty, which is the condition for this flowering of the natural arts.

It may remind you of a passage I read on another episode, which I don't want to repeat, but where Nietzsche runs with this idea and explains over how many generations the Greeks had to discipline themselves for the production of beautiful visages and bodies. Well, look, actually I will read it to you because it is so important for this show and I repeat the Winkelmann idea in an unusual way. So I will read for you, this is from Twilight of the Idols from Nietzsche. Good things are exceedingly costly, and in all cases the law obtains that he who possesses them is different from the person from him who is acquiring them. Everything good is an inheritance. That which is not inherited is imperfect, but it is simply a beginning.

In Athens, at the time of Cicero, who expresses his surprise at the fact, the men and youths were by far superior in beauty to the women. But what hard work and exertions the male sex had for centuries imposed upon itself in the service of beauty, we must not be mistaken in regard to the method employed here. The mere discipline of feelings and thoughts is little better than nil. It is in this that the great error of German culture, which is quite illusory, lies. The body must be persuaded first. The strict maintenance of a distinguished and tasteful demeanor, the obligation of frequenting only those who do not let themselves go, is amply sufficient to render one distinguished and tasteful. In two or three generations everything has already taken deep root.

The fate of a people and of humanity is decided according to whether they begin culture at the right place, not at the soul. As the fatal superstition of the priests and half-priests would have it. The right place is the body, demeanor, diet, physiology. The rest follows as the night from the day. That is why the Greeks remain the first event in culture. They knew and they did what was needful." Well, you see how far Nietzsche takes Winkelmann's insight that I read for you on the previous segment, and in what direction he turns them, which then leads to quite naughty conclusions in the parlance of our times. But the physical, biological preconditions of all great feats start to dawn on European men through this strain of the German Hellenic revival that brings physiology and the body

back, I don't want to say too much here, but this inevitably has certain conclusions I mean and so you will note I don't really do book reports for you, I don't like that, this is short essay by Winkelmann that you can read yourself, I don't like to do summary, but to go on tangents of what this text of Winkelmann reminds me, this is how I like to read, to go on tangent, and here is another, okay but actually so I will tell you a little brief what is else in this essay so you don't think I'm being coy and this, but so this This essay by Winkelmann, the first sections, they make striking case, this is Winkelmann essay now that I'm talking on this show, but he make case for why is important for artists to emulate the Greeks and not nature.

And the reasoning for this in part you already can deduce from what I've read, but basically he says that the Greeks were able to synthesize disparate perceptions of nature and to discover the most complete beauty in nature and even to go beyond it, to discover the idea, to discover nature's intention and perfect it even when it was not there in real life. So in some sense he's saying, let's put it in Schopenhauerian terms, the Greek artists revealed the ideas of the particular objects they observed more completely than you could find in nature now with your untrained eye. And in large part also this was because nature was to them available in a fullness that it's It's not available to you. And he even hints at times that the climate, for example, of the North Europe is not as

good for seeing contours and things distinctly because the atmosphere is thicker and more humid and mist and so on, and the light comes differently. He has some nice things to say about Dutch painting, but also some not nice things. He implies there's a kind of unnaturality about them and their landscapes and so forth. But although Winkelmann does not fully come out and say it, what he means is, especially if you use the human body or the physique as an example, where Polyclators, the famous sculptor of the ancient world, he made famous statues like the Doryphoros, the Spear-Bearer, or the Diadumenos. These are famous statues that I've liked to post. You can look them up. They depict real gods. Some say these statues could be made to come to life by wizards.

I can't go into that, but in any case, this sculptor Polykleitos, he discovered the correct mathematical proportions of the human body, right? He's famous for this. The idea of the human physique, it's a perfect archetype you can say, but he was only able to do this because of the availability of natural material that I mentioned just now and before, which isn't available today to an artist or anyone else really to observe, at least not in the frequency, in the number and fullness and variety of perfection that would allow for such a synthesis, for the, let's say, the discovery of the ideal form, and similar too with other natural objects. So this Winkelmann reason why artists need to copy the Greeks and not nature, at least

not in their youth, he allows for artists like Bernini or other masters in their old age to have the right to copy nature itself, but this only after long training at imitating the Greeks had given them the eye to actually see the truth in nature. And this is what's left unsaid, because if you live in a corrupted world where nature has been obfuscated, not only in your own mind by barbaric notions and opinions and traditions and so forth, but where these have over time perverted nature itself so that most of the forms you see around you, especially of the people, but not only, but the forms you actually see, they are distorted or stunted from what they should or could be. And as I say in my book, it's maybe that you are observing a lion broken in prison

as opposed to a lion in its natural state. So if you take your bearings by what you see around you in prison, you would be misled, whereas nature in the time of the Greeks was blessed, it was free to develop its power and manifested its fullness of power so you should take lessons from them, from people who had observed that, or something like that. Now in the rest of this essay there are disparate observations, very interesting, I leave to you to read. He makes his sections on painting, on ornamentation, on the techniques of sculpture, advice for how to be a connoisseur and to appreciate certain arts and many such things, and there is a long aside he goes into where he's trying to find out, for example, why Greek

Sculptures always look self-assured in composition, the right amount of material is used, whereas modern sculptors, they often miss the marks, they are less sure of themselves, they either leave too much stone or marble or other material, or they cut too deeply, leading as he says when they cut too deeply to an emaciated look in the final product in the sculpture. And so he tries to explain why the exception in modern times, Michelangelo, who in his His opinion preserved the ancient Greek perfection of sculpture most completely, but only for muscular physiques, he points out, whereas Michelangelo did not succeed so well at rendering women and children. His women and children are not quite right. But Winklemann has this long aside on the great difficulties a sculptor has in fashioning

his intended objects from stone and copying from his model. And he goes into autistic spergoloid detail about why, for example, wax is superior to clay to use because, for example, clay contracts in different ways, the different parts of the sculpture that have different densities contracts at different rates. So the final product, the final model will not be rendered in clay, will not really be the right proportions after it dries and so on. So he tries to explain how Michelangelo solved this problem with a kind of water method. I don't want to go into it. It doesn't matter if he's right or wrong. By the way, scholars say that Winkelmann made this up, that Michelangelo did not work this way. But it doesn't matter if Michelangelo actually used the method for sculpture that Winkelmann

describes in this essay in detail. You can nevertheless learn much from this. At least you will understand the great difficulties artists and sculptors have to go through. And I don't know, I just, I enjoy this kind of autistic technical commentary on methods and so on. I could go all day reading this, you know. My favorite painter, Giorgio de Chirico, if you look at his paintings from 1910 to 1920, this is called his metaphysical period and the foundation of the so-called metaphysical school, which in turn is the beginning of the surrealist movement. It doesn't matter what it's the beginning of, of, I just love these paintings that de Chirico did from 1910 to 1920 or so, and you could feel a great religious immediate intensity in these images.

But then after that, de Chirico, he goes in a different direction, he becomes obsessed with materials and with just this kind of technical almost engineering type detail in the production of art, which his later paintings you can say they suffer because of this, there's less intensity to them, they become very stylized, he becomes a spur, much concerned with technique and so forth. And I intended on this show to talk to you about one of my other favorite artists, a Renaissance painter called Paolo Uccello who was obsessed with technique, with rendering perspective and so forth, but I think since this show quite long already let me divide it into two sections and I will talk Uccello on the next show. So this one we will just say just about Winkelmann and other related matters.

But there's a bit of all this in this essay, all very enjoyable, this thinking about technique and I enjoy this detail very much, but the ending of Winkelmann's essay I do not quite like. He goes on a long praise of the need for allegory in art and in painting and visual art. I mean, I don't agree with this. I think allegory or historical context and so forth, actually, it mixes literary art with visual, which Winkelmann himself recognizes. He says the artist becomes a poet, but that's not good. I think that takes away from the visual aspect. In other words, no, I think the artist, the visual artist, should be able to express his idea entirely visual means native to his art and not have recourse to allegory or illusion,

which is an intellectualization or abstraction that you register that kind of thinking in a very different way from the innate perception of forms you see visually in art. So in other words, let me give you an example. If you show thieves at the table, if you're an artist and you paint thieves at the table in the basement arguing over booty, or you show pirates arguing over loot, but on the other hand you show politicians or kings in a great draught room, and it's actually the same natural idea expressed, and you should not have to have access to historical information or some kind of intellectualized allegory for the artist's idea to impress itself on you. I think that's actually, if you need that to understand the painting, that's a failure on the artist's part.

But this is my disagreement with Winkelmann. On the other hand, that's the end of the essay, whereas the peak of this Winkelmann essay is the center, the famous section on the noble simplicity and quiet grandeur of the Greek spirit. And he is the one who coined this famous phrase, I think, noble simplicity and quiet grandeur, which he enjoys the artist to emulate and the connoisseur to admire. And again, why he means this, he opposes this to the extreme emotive Rococo Baroque style during which this essay, I have no idea what that sound was, I think I'm being attacked by a Russian Havana race. If it happens again, I may have to stop show and restart. I do not know what that, that's frightening to me. There was possibly a bird making that noise.

But again, Winkelmann lived during Rococo Baroque, end of Baroque period. When he says he was written, he didn't like this. It's extreme emotive, high passion, and so forth. Winkelmann talked of young artists who, when they want to make a name for themselves, they seek the most dramatic, grimacing, passionate poses. And he doesn't use this one, but he don't cringe, this overexpression of emotion. And he means in part also performative emotion. He doesn't like this. It was common in the art of his time. He wants above all instead to emphasize the serenity and the calm poise expressed in ancient Greek art. He wants you to copy this, this kind of restraint. And actually he mentions the Socratic philosophy as the intellectual counterpart to this type of visual art.

And he calls this writing, the Socratic writing, the writing of the best period of the Greeks. And he says that its hallmark is also this noble simplicity and quiet grandeur. And on this he's wrong. I think actually Socratic schools were actually the minority position of their time. Many people now also exaggerate in the other directions. They think that Socrates, Plato, Aristotle were the spirit of the Greeks, but actually they were not. They were the opposition school, you could say. minority position and they were un-Greek and actually anti-Greek. They were the woke school of the time. I'm exaggerating of course, but they were the reformed school, whereas the Sophists and Thucydides and Tragedians before that, like Aeschylus, who Winkelmann seems a little

bit not to like Aeschylus and maybe misunderstands him, I would say from, I do not presume to judge Winkelmann, he's great genius, I am Russia peasant, but let us say Nietzsche might say that Winkelmann misunderstands Aeschylus or this older kind of Greek literature, the pre-Socratic kind, but this was actually the majority aristocratic taste in the Greek hallmark, not Socrates. Socrates and so forth, Euripides and this was un-Greek. So in this, as in a few other things, Winkelmann may be wrong, but in this section, Noble Simplicity and quiet grandeur. It's such an important section, not only because it's inspiration of neoclassicism in art and also literature, but if you want to go beyond this, consider

that for Winkelmann, the highest expression of noble is simplicity and quiet grandeur. Excuse me, the use of an array on me. But for Winkelmann, this dignified serenity, its highest expression in modern world, in modern art, is in Raphael the painter, who Winkelmann makes much of that he went and he had students study directly the Greeks and so forth in the original setting, and he says that in the look in the eye of the Madonna and of a certain female saint and certain painting, he praises very much Raphael for having closely studied Greek and resurrected this spirit in that painting. Now it is interesting when you look at the great extension and transfiguration of such insights as this, how this becomes later in other philosophers and thinkers.

So you look at Schopenhauer on just what I told you now, on Raphael, and on the gaze in particular of Madonna, exactly what Winkelmann talked about, or in this case Saint Cecilia. And I will read for you from Schopenhauer his quite amazing passage, so you can see just how much farther Schopenhauer takes this. So I'm reading from Schopenhauer now from The World as Will and Representation. Yet we have to distinguish very carefully between those pictures whose subject is the historical or mythological one of Judaism and Christianity, and those in which the real, which is to say the ethical spirit of Christianity, is revealed for perception by the presentations of persons full of this spirit. These presentations are in fact the highest and most admirable achievements of the art

of painting, and only the greatest masters of this art succeeded in producing them, in particular Raphael and Correggio, the latter especially in his earlier pictures. Paintings of this kind are not really to be numbered among the historical, for often they do not depict any event or action, but are mere groups of saints with the savior himself, often still a child with his mother, angels, and so forth. In their countenances, especially in their eyes, we see the expression, the reflection of the most perfect knowledge, that knowledge namely which is not directed to particular things but which has fully grasped the ideas and hence the whole inner nature of the world and of life. This knowledge in them, reacting on the will, does not, like that other knowledge, furnish

motives for the will, but on the contrary has become a quieter of all willing. From this has resulted perfect resignation, which is the innermost spirit of Christianity as of Indian wisdom, the giving up of all willing, turning back, abolition of the will and with it of the whole inner being of this world, and hence salvation. Therefore those eternally praiseworthy masters of art express the highest wisdom perceptibly in their works. Here is the summit of all art that has followed the will in its adequate objectivity, namely in the ideas, through all the grades, from the lowest where it is affected and its nature is unfolded by causes, then where it is similarly affected by stimuli and finally by motives.

And now art ends by presenting the free self-abolition of the will through the one great quieter that dawns on it from the most perfect knowledge of its own nature. But an amazing, I think that amazing part, amazing passage from Schopenhauer, that's from world as will and representation. So you see that as time goes on, the mostly artistic or aesthetic insights of Winkelmann in this essay, they take more and more significant philosophical and profound meaning as they are extended by others who take them as starting point, in this case, it's even the foundation or at least the reflection of a pessimistic new religion of renunciation, Schopenhauer's, which in turn Schopenhauer extremely important for art and letter himself. Tolstoy, for example,

Schopenhauerian, Joseph Conrad, Schopenhauerian. And actually this is then the point that Winkelmann's famous essay I talk here was never merely aesthetic appreciation or art history, but But in going for the first time in modernity quite deep into the sting of aesthetic he opens discussion, a resurrection of very ancient unusual view, not just of art but of life in the world. Welcome back to Show Caribbean Rhythms, episode 93. Winkelmann is a great aesthetic mind, but his limitation also, and I think Nietzsche understands this limitation of Winkelmann is that Winkelmann is rather gay, you see. I guess this has to be said, briefly addressed. Now, if you read any life of Winkelmann now in an article or something about him, it's going to be all about how he's gay. In the

same way as for the last 10 or 15 years, you can pick up the New York Beta Times and they will have some article about some mediocre artist who's really a vehicle for money laundering and for the intellectual pretensions of diddlers like Clement Greenberg I believe his name is or others of that type that Tom Wolfe exposes, how in the modern world you do not have people like Winkelmann inspiring great aesthetic and artistic movements, no, you have these world-shopping intellectuals who found essentially money laundering movement in the arts. But I discussed this before, maybe I will have yet another show on painting, but in In any case, you can pick up New York Times, they usually have some portrait of an artist

and it's not just going to be how he happens to be gay, but it's going to be all about how such and such artist is gay and how he's great because he's gay. So gay, gay, gay. This obsession you will get, you get the sense these people are trying to tell you that if Winkelmann or Tchaikovsky were allowed to walk hand in hand or get gay married, maybe these people are right. then Winkelmann could have been like Andrew Sullivan or like one of the artists they profile or like a journalist, which is obviously much greater and better than what they were. But look, the modern over-emphasis on the virtues of legislation of sodomy aside and how putler is Satan for not letting this be taught in kindergartens. But all this political clamor aside, I do think in case of Winkelmann it's fair at least

to mention that he was a sort of homo, an invert in the, you know, the 19th century way or this, he was maybe the best of what a gay can be, I think. Consider also maybe Oscar Wilde or the English aesthete Walter Pater, although in this last case Walter Pater or Pater, I don't know how to pronounce the English name, but in this last case it's very hard to know where dividing line is between homosexuality and just this kind of arch English aesthete type is. Or you can consider Proust, who I've mentioned before, and note that unlike other reactionaries, I'm not saying these men are good homos because they have to be repressed and all this. I'm not saying homos have to be repressed, but these types are good rather because they're

all great minds, they're great appreciators of beauty in a big way, the world can be thankful for them, they existed to promote the arts and the refinement of culture in various directions, And unlike the modern gay, they mostly glorify manliness and they appreciate it, even as it is somewhat foreign to them. But they are friendly and even worshipful of it. So in that sense I say someone like Winkelmann, so far as his homosexuality is relevant, you can think he's the best of the gay. But in the same sense, he also has the limitation of the gay, which is alienation from the feminine. A radical turning away from the meaning of a woman, you know. With such types they are unable to face or represent it in their thoughts.

They cannot face the terror of the feminine, which is part of their virtue, because they have then this extreme appreciation of artificial plastic arts. But it's also a limitation. So on this note, Klages, Ludwig Klages, has some relevant lines about the aesthetic sensibility of the homo. He's not very nice to them. Maybe I should read you some. It's not an entirely pleasant attack, but I will read you what Klages has to say about the gay man of culture, the gay aesthetic. The homosexual character, this is from Klages now I'm reading. Clark is a great Nietzschean early 20th century vitalist philosopher, completely censored. His books are untranslated into English mostly. There's a silence about him, like about almost nobody else and I was very flattered actually

when my book came out that Swedish friends said the philosophy expressed in my own book is very similar to Clark's and I'd never really read Clark's before when I wrote the book. So why was it similar? Because we both have same sources, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and so forth. But he says this, on the subject, he says this about the homosexual estate. I'm reading from Claggis now. The homosexual character, peripheral qualities, lack of conviction, self-flattery, closer to the center. His personality is more selfish than that of any woman. In general, the homosexual has no sense of facts, even closer to the center, the most peculiar form of megalomania. He even believes that he understands love while he sneers at love between men and women

as merely a mask behind which lurks the breathing impulse. He sees himself as the center of the world, the world that he believes would collapse where his own surroundings to collapse. His house, his garden and his crowd are for him the whole world. He cannot turn his gaze from his favorite playroom, which explains why his horizon is limited to himself and his highly talented associates. Psychologically, his incapacity for abstract thought is consistent with his persistent identification with the feminine character. Alone, he manifests a propensity to confuse his own little world with the real one. Another way of expressing our view. In general, he doesn't believe in the external world at all, but in a world which is part of himself and so to speak, his private property.

In the presence of his fellow man, the homosexual presents himself as a sort of patron. He wants to be everyone's father, ruler and general authority figure. He even values this relationship as a form of erotic satisfaction. Favorite hobbies, boys and Platonism. The salient secondary qualities are sensitivity, ability to sense a change in the weather, a taste for politics, a knowledge of the ways of man, and an inability to commune directly with nature. He prefers aestheticism, culture, art, poetry, and philosophy. Although he has a predilection for trees, animals, and parks, etc., he has no feeling whatsoever for elemental nature. A tentative explanation, his whole being radiates exhaustion and disarray.

He always stands on the outside, not in the sense of Judaism, but more in the manner of the paranoiac, who, although having some sort of vitality, has no involvement with the universal stream of life. That is why in fact his inability to love leaves him receptive only to what is lovely in life. Thus, he experiences every deeper association with another person as just one more variety of self-love, as if you are merely encountering a side of his own personality. He requires these fresh counterfeit connections with persons and things so that he might enhance his own self-love, the smugness of every homosexual. While Jewish exclusiveness leads to life envy and a drive to disintegration, the homosexual is led by a drive to contradiction.

Just as the homosexual carries within him his own little world, his overall horizon presents a closed circle. He substitutes his finite world for the infinity of the real world. These compulsions once ruled the Rome of the Caesars as they still rule the Rome of the Popes. What a nice joke. Do you like this? You know, it's not very nice. He says they appreciate lovely things but just that for this reason they are alienated from the sublime, from elemental nature. They are unable to deal with and to represent the titanic forces of nature. They are always living in a kind of artificial garden of the spirit. This is me talking now, not Klages, but he's saying the homo is cocooned, a garden inside a garden.

And this inability in particular to face the tonic nature of reality, which Panglia also recognizes this shortcoming, it's not really a shortcoming, it's a limitation, a peculiarity of the gay, although Paglia herself is very pro-gay, but she praises the ability of the gay to appreciate the plastic arts. But for this very reason, the turning away from the woman, the turning away from the tonic and the elemental is really the cause of the gay's inability to write poetry. So you think on history, there are many gay plastic artists and aesthetes and connoisseurs forth, but there are very few to know gay poets, and same reason that women do not make good poets, except for the Les Boyd Dickinson, supposedly.

Right, so in this same way, you know, I think Winkelmann misses an entire side of Greek life which Nietzsche, however, understood. Nietzsche was so enamored of woman that he even compares the elusive truth to a woman, and he talks about how, basically, philosophers are spiritual incels and fencels and disdained by the universal feminine, but she was so obsessed with the love of women and so terrorized by women and terrorized by horrid, chthonic, Maynard obsessions, you see. I think Nietzsche was. He was a satyr, a satyr. I believe Nietzsche had gigantic cock. He do satyr dance, he was found, and I don't want to talk about this, but I think Nietzsche wish for Mena to tear him limb apart from limb. But he saw this chthonic Dionysian dimension, and he even saw not just this dimension of

Greek spirit but as the particular source, the characteristic source of Greek spirit, what made Greek spirit unusual and great. Where somebody like Winkelmann or Goethe who followed Winkelmann in this serene conception of Greek classicism, they miss this orgiastic source of all Greek spirit, of all Greek life, art, and thought. So that at the very end of Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche explains this very, it's a striking passage, I will read for you, I will read for you now this striking passage of Nietzsche from the end of Twilight of the Idols. Okay, I'm reading Nietzsche now, okay. First he dismisses some stupid thinker on ancient Greece who misunderstands ancient Greek rituals and so forth, who has a rosy-coloured view of Greek life.

He dismisses them, so okay, so after dismissing some people he looked down on, he continues like this, now I'm reading Nietzsche. We are very differently affected when we examine the notion Hellenic as Winkelmann and Goethe conceives it, and I find it incompatible with that element out of which Dionysian art springs. I speak of orgiasm. In reality, I do not doubt that Goethe could have completely excluded any such thing from the potentialities of the Greek soul. Consequently Goethe did not understand the Greeks. Consequently Winkelmann did not understand the Greeks. I added this last phrase, but he means it, Goethe as the greater vinkelmann. They both shared, I'm interjecting here, they both shared this serene conception, quiet grandeur, noble simplicity, etc. that I told you.

So he's saying they did not understand the Greeks because they missed the other elements. I continue now. For it is only in the Dionysian, and by the way Goethe was not a homo, but that's different, okay so I continue now, I'm reading Nietzsche. So for it is only in the Dionysian mysteries and the psychology of the Dionysian state that the fundamental fact of the Hellenic Instinct, its will to life, is expressed. What did the Hellene secure himself with these mysteries? Eternal life, the eternal recurrence of life. The future promised and hallowed in the past. The triumphant yay to life despite death and change. Real life conceived as the collective prolongation of life through procreation through the mysteries of sexuality.

To the Greeks, the symbol of sex was the most venerated of symbols, the really deep significance of all the piety of antiquity. All the details of the act of procreation, pregnancy and birth gave rise to the loftiest and most solemn feelings. In the doctrine of mysteries, pain was pronounced holy, the pains of childbirth sanctified pain in general. All becoming and all growth, everything that guarantees the future involves pain. In order that there may be eternal joy in creating, in order that the will to life may say yea to itself in all eternity, the pains of childbirth must also be eternal. All this is what the word Dionysus signifies. I know of no higher symbolism than this Greek symbolism, this symbolism of the Dionysian phenomenon.

In it the profoundest instinct of life, the instinct that guarantees the future of life and life eternal, is understood religiously. The road to life itself, procreation, is pronounced holy. I'm finishing end quote now, you see. So this, what you think it is, this show has been on Winkelmann, on this very aesthetic conception of life that you could say Winkelmann inaugurate, but as Nietzsche say, he misses this other secret path, this secret root of Greek life. And what I just read for you, you must think of also in terms of blood and eugenics. Because that is what mystery of sexuality and procreation leads to in the end. In any case, this very profound thing, I may not be allowed to comment much more on this. They have threatened to cut my tongue out.

I will continue much more on this next show. Until next time, Brap out.