the finger pointing?

“What is essential is invisible to the eye" 
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The various languages placed side by side show that with words it is never a question of truth, never a question of adequate expression; otherwise, there would not be so many languages. The “thing in itself” (which is precisely what the pure truth, apart from any of its consequences, would be) is likewise something quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least worth striving for. This creator only designates the relations of things to men, and for expressing these relations he lays hold of the boldest metaphors… It is this way with all of us concerning language; we believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things — metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities… A word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases — which means, purely and simply, cases which are never equal and thus altogether unequal. Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things. Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept “leaf” is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects. This awakens the idea that, in addition to the leaves, there exists in nature the “leaf”: the original model according to which all the leaves were perhaps woven, sketched, measured, colored, curled, and painted — but by incompetent hands, so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct, trustworthy, and faithful likeness of the original model… We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

from  Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche

art from  original watercolors for The Little Prince

 

the closing passage from 'Beyond Good and Evil'

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Alas! what are you, after all, my written and painted thoughts! 
Not long ago you were so variegated, young and malicious, 
so full of thorns and secret spices, that you made me sneeze
 and laugh--and now? You have already doffed your novelty,
 and some of you, I fear, are ready to become truths, 
so immortal do they look, so pathetically honest, 
so tedious! And was it ever otherwise?

What then do we write and paint, 
we mandarins with Chinese brush,
 we immortalisers of things 
which lend themselves to writing, 
what are we alone capable of painting? 

Alas, only that which is just about to fade and begins to lose its odour!
 Alas, only exhausted and departing storms and belated yellow sentiments!
 Alas, only birds strayed and fatigued by flight, which now let themselves
 be captured with the hand--with our hand! 

We immortalise what cannot live and fly much longer,
 things only which are exhausted and mellow!
 And it is only for your afternoon, you, my written and painted thoughts,
 for which alone I have colours, many colours, perhaps, 
many variegated softenings, and fifty yellows and browns and greens and reds;
-- but nobody will divine thereby how ye looked in your morning,
 you sudden sparks and marvels of my solitude, 
you, my old, beloved-- evil thoughts!




~ Friedrich Nietzsche

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