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Monday, May 22, 2006
It’s like those poor kids on the milk cartons
Do you have a lost quote in need of finding? Some fraction of a Nietzschean aphorism you could cite in your paper, if only it were made whole; some bon hemi-demi-semi-mot, sitting there in the candy box of your mind, like a half-eaten bon-bon? Like one of those perfectly round beings Aristophanes speaks of so movingly in Symposium, sadly sliced down the middle, vainly seeking the rest of themselves ever after? If you will. Let’s help each other. Me first. I need a quote from André Gide. A rather sniffy critique of Shakespeare’s style: ‘one can learn neither right reason nor correct style from this ? stuff.’ My impression is that later Gide was more reconciled to the stuff in question, so even if you find him saying something different after W.W II it won’t follow that I’m wrong. But I haven’t a clue where to look. I’m pretty sure I just picked it up second-hand somewhere. Why do I need it? Because I do. That’s why.
What’s your example of a stupid quote you can’t remember/find/properly attribute/source?
UPDATE: And no one tell me google told you there’s a version of the quote, unsourced, on an old post at some blog called ‘John & Belle’. I know about that.
Comments
I guess this is an invitation to repeat my question from J&B here. Did Nietzsche ever say, of the Transcendental Deduction,
“Understand it? I fear understanding it.”
Oh yeah, I didn’t remember to respond to that. The answer is: doesn’t ring a bell. But he discusses something similar in “Schopenhauer as Educator”. He quotes Heinrich von Kleist talking about Kant and how Kant has brought him to despair. I’ll track it down tomorrow, if that would help. (Best I can do.)
A related phenomenon: being unable to find a quotation from a book you’ve read, perhaps even being unable to remember precisely which book, but being utterly convinced that it is on the right-hand page (or the left-hand).
What is the only thing that the gods can teach men? It’s mentioned at least twice in The Recognitions, but (little wonder) I can never seem to track it down, even though I’m sure that one of the occurences is on the top third of the left-hand page. (You see, my page-place memory is more finely grained than is Adam’s.)
Something about the bull and the horns, I suspect.
Yes, please. It’s been bothering me for years, and knowing what the line is a corruption of would scratch the itch.
Adam and Ben, of course you are familiar with that frame from Gorey’s “The Unstrung Harp” - where the author is vainly seeking for the half-remembered quote and remembers what color the cover was and which side of the page it was on. If you are not familiar, I’ll track it down for you. I know exactly where it is.
The Nietzsche passage goes like so (in the Hollingdale), p. 140 of Untimely Meditations:
“It seems to me, indeed, that Kant has had a living and life-transforming influence on only a few men. One can read everywhere, I know, that since this quiet scholar produced his work a revolution has taken place in every domain of the spirit; but I cannot believe it. For I cannot see it in those men who would themselves have to be revolutionized before revolution could take place in any whole domain whatever. If Kant ever should begin to exercise any wide influence we shall be aware of it in the form of a gnawing and disintegrating scepticism and relativism; and only in the most active and noble spirits who haven never been able to exist in a state of doubt would there appear instead that undermining and despair of all truth such as Heinrich von Kleist for example experience as the effect of the Kantian philosophy.”
Then follows the Kleist quote about how, because Kant teaches that what must appear to be truth really must only appear to be, “my one great aim has failed me and I have no other.”
@Adam/Ben:
This happens to me sometimes, but more often (and more frustratingly) I can remember only the line breaks in a certain quotation. I’ll be absolutely sure that on word is at the end of a line, say, but, of course, I’m never able to find it, since that sort of information is ultimately far less useful than the page location variety.
Thanks for looking that up. I guess I have to give up on the line that I cited as having any authenticity at all. It seems too memorable to be real and widely forgotten.
The Gide quote might well be in Shakespeare Goes to Paris : How the Bard Conquered France, by John Pemble, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1852854529/sr=8-1/qid=1148410516/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-1960838-2450522?_encoding=UTF8
but Amazon hasn’t got “Search inside the book” set up for it.
Ok, gang—gotta help me out here. I swear I heard at least two people (one of whom was Elizabeth Anscombe) tell me the following Wittgenstein remark:
“If you tell me you have been in bad places, I cannot disagree with you--but if you claim that your wisdom got you there, then I know that you’re a fraud.”
Bonus unfound Wittgenstein remark:
“Do not be too proud to seem a fool--you just might be one.”
Finally, anyone on this Valery remark?
“If you live differently than you think, be careful: sooner or later you will think as you live.”
Joel,
The worst places remark is here. You can also find it on p. 294 of Monk’s biography of Wittgenstein. He said it of Russell’s views in Marriage and Morals.
Thanks, Mike. Also, thanks Grant. I’ll check out the Pemble.
ou can also find it on p. 294 of Monk’s biography of Wittgenstein. He said it o thanks you