Om Namah Shivaya

Om Namah Shivaya

I'll be grateful if you...

Sep 30, 2011

DESIGN STREET: Top Architects of the year

Finally, I am rolling out top ten architects from across world for the last decade (2001 – 2010) based on the Laureates of Pritzker Prize, in this section of 'Design Street'. For many months, I was trying to find the most suitable way to decide and feature at my blog decade’s top architect of the year, when I stumbled upon "The Pritzker Architecture Prize" considered to be Architecture's Noble Prize. I was impressed with the ‘purpose’ and the jury members who decide this award every year.

But before I go further, let me give you a little brief about the most prestigious award as considered by many in the Architectural Field.

This international prize, which is awarded each year to a living architect for significant achievement, was established by the Pritzker family of Chicago through their Hyatt Foundation in 1979. Often referred to as “architecture’s Nobel” and “the profession’s highest honor,” it is granted annually.

Purpose
To honor a living architect whose built work demonstrate a combination of those qualities of talent, vision, and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.


Many of the procedures and rewards of the Pritzker Prize are modeled after the Nobel Prize. Laureates of the Pritzker Architecture Prize receive a $100,000 grant, a formal citation certificate, and since 1987, a bronze medallion. Prior to that year, a limited edition Henry Moore sculpture was presented to each Laureate. The award is conferred on the laureate at a ceremony held at an architecturally significant site throughout the world.

Text and Image Curtsey: Pritzker Prize website.

Now back to the top architects of the decade, given in the choronical order of the year they have received the Pritzker Prize.


Allianz Arena, Munich, Germany 
Herzog & de Meuron Architekten, is a Swiss architecture firm, founded and headquartered in Basel, Switzerland in 1978. The careers of founders and senior partners Jacques Herzog (born 19 April 1950), and Pierre de Meuron (born 8 May 1950), closely paralleled one another, with both attending the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich. They are perhaps best known for their conversion of the giant Bankside Power Station in London to the new home of the Tate Modern. Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron have been visiting professors at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design since 1994 and professors at ETH Zürich since 1999.

In 2001, Herzog & de Meuron were awarded the Pritzker Prize, the highest of honours in architecture. Jury chairman J. Carter Brown commented, "One is hard put to think of any architects in history that have addressed the integument of architecture with greater imagination and virtuosity." This was in reference to HdM's innovative use of exterior materials and treatments, such as silkscreened glass. Architecture critic and Pritzker juror Ada Louise Huxtable summarized HdM's approach concisely: "They refine the traditions of modernism to elemental simplicity, while transforming materials and surfaces through the exploration of new treatments and techniques. In 2006, the New York Times Magazine called them "one of the most admired architecture firms in the world."




Glenn Marcus Murcutt AO (born 25 July 1936) is a British-born Australian architect and winner of the 2002 Pritzker Prize and 2009 AIA Gold Medal.

Murcutt's motto, 'touch the earth lightly', convinces him to design his works to fit into the Australian landscape features. His works are highly economical and multi-functional. Murcutt also pays attention to the environment such as wind direction, water movement, temperature and light surrounding his sites before he designs the building itself. Materials such as glass, stone, timber and steel are often included in his works.

Testament to his influence internationally was the award of the 2002 Pritzker Prize one of the highest distinctions in architecture. In the words of the Pritzker jury: "In an age obsessed with celebrity, the glitz of our 'starchitects', backed by large staffs and copious public relations support, dominate the headlines. As a total contrast, Murcutt works in a one-person office on the other side of the world ... yet has a waiting list of clients, so intent is he to give each project his personal best. He is an innovative architectural technician who is capable of turning his sensitivity to the environment and to locality into forthright, totally honest, non-showy works of art."



Sydney Opera House
Jørn Oberg UtzonAC (9 April 1918 – 29 November 2008) was a Danish architect, most notable for designing the Sydney Opera House in Australia. When it was declared a World Heritage Site on 28 June 2007, Utzon became only the second person to have received such recognition for one of his works during his lifetime. Other outstanding works include Bagsværd Church near Copenhagen and the National Assembly Building in Kuwait. He also made important contributions to housing design, especially with his Kingo Houses near Helsingør.

Utzon had a Nordic sense of concern for nature which, in his design, emphasized the synthesis of form, material and function for social values. His fascination with the architectural legacies of the ancient Mayas, the Islamic world, China and Japan enhanced his vision. This developed into what Utzon later referred to as Additive Architecture, comparing his approach to the growth patterns of nature. A design can grow like a tree, he explained: "If it grows naturally, the architecture will look after itself."




BMW Leipzig
Zaha HadidCBE (born 31 October 1950) is an Iraqi-British architect.

A winner of many international competitions, theoretically influential and groundbreaking, a number of Hadid's winning designs were initially never built: notably, The Peak Club in Hong Kong (1983) and the Cardiff Bay Opera House in Wales (1994). In 2002 Hadid won the international design competition to design Singapore's one-north master plan. In 2005, her design won the competition for the new city casino of Basel, Switzerland. In 2004 Hadid became the first female recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, architecture's equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Previously, she had been awarded a CBE for services to architecture. She is a member of the editorial board of the Encyclopædia Britannica. In 2006, Hadid was honored with a retrospective spanning her entire work at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. In that year she also received an Honorary Degree from the American University of Beirut.

In 2008, she ranked 69th on the Forbes list of "The World's 100 Most Powerful Women"



Diamond Ranch High School in Pomona, California (1999)
Thom Mayne (b. January 19, 1944, in Waterbury, Connecticut) is a Los Angeles-based architect. Educated at University of Southern California (1969) and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 1978, Mayne helped found the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in 1972, where he is a trustee. Since then he has held teaching positions at SCI-Arc, the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona) and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He is principal of Morphosis an architectural firm in Santa Monica, California. Mayne received the Pritzker Architecture Prize in March 2005.

Morphosis’s design philosophy arises from an interest in producing work with a meaning that can be understood by absorbing the culture for which it was made.

Morphosis has grown into prominent design practice, with completed projects worldwide. Under the Design Excellence program of the United States government's General Service Administration, Thom Mayne has become a primary architect for federal projects. Recent commissions include: graduate housing at the University of Toronto; the San Francisco Federal Building; the University of Cincinnati Student Recreation Center; the Science Center School in Los Angeles, Diamond Ranch High School in Pomona, California; and the Wayne L. Morse United States Courthouse inEugene, Oregon.



Patriarch Plaza, São Paulo (2002)
Paulo Mendes da Rocha (born October 25, 1928 in Vitória) is a Brazilian architect, honored with the Mies van der Rohe Prize (2000) and the Pritzker Prize(2006). Paulo attended the Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie College of Architecture, graduating in 1954. Working almost exclusively in Brazil, Mendes da Rocha has been producing buildings since 1957, many of them built in concrete, a method some call "Brazilian Brutalism" arguably allowing buildings to be constructed cheaply and quickly. He has contributed many notable cultural buildings to São Paulo and is widely credited as enhancing and revitalizing the city.



Madrid-Barajas Airport terminal 4
Richard George Rogers, Baron Rogers of Riverside CH Kt FRIBA FCSD (born 23 July 1933) is a British architect noted for his modernist and functionalist designs.

Rogers is perhaps best known for his work on the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Lloyd's building and Millennium Dome both in London, and the European Court of Human Rights building in Strasbourg. He is a winner of the RIBA Gold Medal, the Thomas Jefferson Medal, the RIBA Stirling Prize, the Minerva Medal and Pritzker Prize.

Rogers has continued to create controversial and iconic works. Perhaps the most famous of these, the Millennium Dome, was designed by the Rogers practice in conjunction with engineering firm Buro Happold and completed in 1999. It was the subject of fierce political and public debate over the cost and contents of the exhibition it contained, although the building itself cost only £43 million.



Torre Aigües de Barcelona (Agbar), Barcelona
Jean Nouvel (born August 12, 1945) is a French architect. Nouvel studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was a founding member of Mars 1976 and Syndicat de l'Architecture. He has obtained a number of prestigious distinctions over the course of his career, including the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (technically, the prize was awarded for the Institut du Monde Arabe which Nouvel designed), the Wolf Prize in Arts in 2005 and the Pritzker Prize in 2008. A number of museums and architectural centres have presented retrospectives of his work.

Nouvel was awarded the Pritzker Prize, architecture's highest honour, in 2008, for his work on more than 200 projects, among them, in the words of The New York Times, the "exotically louvered" Arab World Institute, the bullet-shaped and "candy-colored" Torre Agbar in Barcelona, the "muscular" Guthrie Theater with its cantilevered bridge in Minneapolis, and in Paris, the "defiant, mysterious and wildly eccentric" Musée du quai Branly (2006) and the Philharmonie de Paris (a "trip into the unknown" c. 2012).



Thermal Baths at Vals, Switzerland
Peter Zumthor (born 26 April 1943) is a Swiss architect and winner of the 2009 Pritzker Prize.
Zumthor founded his own firm in 1979. His practice grew quickly and he accepted more international projects.

His best known projects are the Kunsthaus Bregenz (1997), a shimmering glass and concrete cube that overlooks Lake Constance (Bodensee) in Austria; the cave-like thermal baths in Vals, Switzerland (1999); the Swiss Pavilion for Expo 2000 in Hannover, an all-timber structure intended to be recycled after the event; the Kolumba (2007), in Cologne; and the Bruder Klaus Field Chapel, on a farm near Wachendorf.

In 1998, Zumthor received the Carlsberg Architecture Prize for his designs of the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Bregenz, Austria and the Thermal Baths at Vals, Switzerland. He won the Mies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture in 1999. Recently, he was awarded Praemium Imperiale in (2008) and the Pritzker Architecture Prize (2009)

Zumthor says,“To me, buildings can have a beautiful silence that I associate with attributes such as composure, self-evidence, durability, presence, and integrity, and with warmth and sensuousness as well; a building that is being itself, being a building, not representing anything, just being. ...”



Christian Dior building, Omotesandō
SANAA (Sejima and Nishizawa and Associates) is an architectural firm. It was founded in 1995 by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa. In 2010, Sejima and Nishizawa were awarded the Pritzker Prize, architecture's highest honor.

In 1995, Kazuyo Sejima (born in 1956) and Ryue Nishizawa (born in 1966) founded SANAA. Examples of their, groundbreaking work include, among others, the Rolex Learning Center in Lausanne, Switzerland; the Toledo Museum of Art's Glass Pavilion in Toledo, Ohio; the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, NY: the Serpentine Pavilion in London; the Christian Dior Building in Omotesando in Tokyo; and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa. The latter won the Golden Lion in 2004 for the most significant work in the Ninth International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale.

______________________________
Text and Image curtsey: Wikipedia

Hope you have enjoyed the journey on the Design Street... I look forward to your comments... and views...

Please also hit the ‘Join this Site’ button on the top right corner so that you will know when I post on this blog... which is not very frequent though... J

___________
नमः शिवाय
Om Namah Shivaya

PREV                                               HOME                                        NEXT
EAMES – A LEGENDARY DESIGNER

Sep 23, 2011

TALKING POINT: On the death Anniversary (23rd Sept) of An Amazing Poet - Pablo Neruda


Today, 23rd September is death anniversary of an amazing poet Pablo Neruda - In 1971 Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language." Neruda always wrote in green ink as it was his personal color of hope. The poetry below is the most fitting tribute to this great writer...

Oh Earth, wait for me
__________________
From: ‘Memorial de Isla Negra’

Turn me oh sun
towards my native destiny,
rain from the ancient forest,
return to me the fragrance and the swords
that fall from the sky,
the solitary peace of field and rock,
the moisture at the margins of the river,
the scent of the larch,
the wind, alive like a heart
beating among the remote flock
of the great araucaria.

Earth, return to me your pure gifts
the towers of silence that rose
from the solemnity of their roots:
I want to return to being what I have not been,
learn to return from such depths
that amongst all the things of nature
I could live or not live: no matter
to be one more stone, the dark stone,
the pure stone that is carried by the river.

__________________________________
Pablo Neruda
(July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973)

"A poet", Neruda stated in his Stockholm speech of acceptance of the Nobel Prize, "is at the same time a force for solidarity and for solitude."

Poetry text and translation from http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Spanish/Neruda.htm#_Toc12957989

Here is one of his interesting and beautiful verse called "Body of a Woman". This verse as one of the writer said, is an introductory text to the poetry of desire.





Body of a woman
_________________
Body of a woman, white hills, white thighs,
You look like a world, lying in surrender
My rough peasant's body digs in you
And makes the son leap from the depth of the earth

I was alone like a tunnel. The birds fled from me,
And night swamped me with its crushing invasion.
To survive myself I forged you like a weapon,
Like an arrow in my bow, a stone in my sling

...

Body of my woman, I will persist in your grace.
My thirst, my boundless desire, my shifting road!
Dark river-beds where the eternal thirst flows
And weariness follows, and the infinite ache.
________________
Pablo Neruda
Translated by W S Merwin

The image is from the walls of the famous sun temple "Konark" on the shores of Puri - India.


Text and Image Source WikiPedia
_________________
नमः शिवाय
Om Namah Shivaya

Sep 21, 2011

TALKING POINT: Leonard Cohen to mark his Birthday today

Today, 21st September is Leonard Cohen's birthday. An amazing song writer and what a lovely voice. Interestingly he is a Jew who practices Zen Buddhism, having spent several years in Buddhist Monastery, as well as carries a persona associated with mysticism. 

I have loved his songs "Hallelujah" and this one song below was inspired by the Kol Nidre service on Yom Kippur eve, which begins, "May it therefore be Your will, Lord our God,...






"If It Be Your Will"
_______________
If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will
If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing

If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well

And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will

If it be your will.
______________

Leonard Norman Cohen
(born 21 September 1934)


Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships. Famously reclusive, having once spent several years in a Zen Buddhist monastery, and possessing a persona frequently associated with mystique, he is extremely well regarded by critics for his literary accomplishments, for the richness of his lyrics, and for producing an output of work of high artistic quality over a five-decade career.
Over 2,000 renditions of Cohen's songs have been recorded. Cohen has been inducted into both the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame and is also a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation's highest civilian honour. While giving the speech at Cohen's induction into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 10 March 2008, Lou Reed described Cohen as belonging to the "highest and most influential echelon of songwriters."

Currently he is working on a new album which will possibly be released in late 2011.
__________

Text and Image Source: Wikipedia

Below is the other beautiful song that I love HALLELUJAH at YouTube...




WISH HIM A GREAT DAY TODAY AND MAY HIS NEW ALBUM MAKES IT TO THE TOP AGAIN...
__________
नमः शिवाय 
Om Namah Shivaya

Sep 20, 2011

WHISPERS: Mannequin and the life gone by...


Sharing some of my Haiku and my verse on Poetic Form "Object" below... Hope you will all like it...


She sits alone
Skipping stones in the moonlight
Each - a memory lost
___

She knows me so well
That she loves asking
What’s wrong with you?
___

Hanging on to her whispers
I woke up to find
She has left her promises behind
___


Mannequin - A Life Gone By

A mannequin
Hangs in my old office room
On an old rusty stand
One arm and a good figure
No Blouse on top
Feel like something is missing
In her life too

Her feet hang in the air
Like the ground under her feet
Has fallen away too
I look hard for her face
Instead just old worn out paint
Smiling or dreaming
Does she has nightmares too

She does not even have a face
Then how can she dream
Let alone play with nightmares
In her emptiness
But does one really need a face
To dream

But sometimes, I do see her smile
Not where it should be,
But in the space
Above the emptiness of head
Like an apparition looking at me
Calling me to come to my own senses

I have dreams, not in her head
But of my own
Living in the contrasts of living
Let the thoughts categorise it
As dead as opposite to un-dead

And I hear her say, “ Don’t play the game
Of the contrasts
But feel the evenness of depth.
In the restlessness of mind
Plunge in its depth
Unattached to life

See the life Gone By...”

___________
नमः शिवाय
Om Namah Shivaya

Submitted to Poetry Picnic WK 5 theme Poetic Form "Object" that I am hosting this week. Please click here to add your own and read some great talented poets....

Sep 15, 2011

WHISPERS: In memories.... way of the soul


“Way of the Soul”
Today, 15th Sept, is the day, when Alfred Tennyson’s very close friend Arthur Hallam died in Vienna (at the age of 22) in year 1833. Arthur Hallam was also engaged to marry Tennyson’s sister Emily at that time. This affected both of them greatly and Tennyson was too upset to attend Hallam’s funeral and he never forgot his closest friend. The poem, part of which is posted in the last part of the post, “In Memoriam A H H” begins at Hallam’s funeral as starting point and Tennyson’s another sister Cecilia’s marriage as its end. Though, as Tennyson himself wrote about this poem, “It is rather the cry of the whole of human race than mine. In the poem, altogether private grief swells out into thought of, and hope for, the whole world.”

But before you get to read some parts of that amazing poem, I am sharing few of my latest Haiku and my longer verse “In Memories”
__________

Lady With Rose by Greta Freist c. 1937
Photo from my wanderings in Museums of Vienna

With words, I have buried love
Deep in my soul
Pain flowers forth
__

I serve my past
Memories on table
For the last supper
__
I write with my blood
Spirits of my verse
Cleanse me


In Memories
_________

Sweetness
Fills my soul
Like the soft breeze
That caressed her

The sunshine
Walks a bridge across forever
I flow along the river,
As it flows along with me -eternally

The path is long
From night to dawn
Walk along with me a little bit more,
A little bit long

Sunrise
Fills my soul
Like the sunset that empties
- into the sea of living

Memories
Flow within
A muddy river that empties
-perpetually in the sea

O life, O beautiful life
Be the sea - Pure and calm
Receiving, cleansing, holding
All that memories, that ‘now’ gave
This ‘now’ gives
_____________
नमः शिवाय
Om Namah Shivaya

This has been submitted to Poetry Picnic Week 4 and at Jingle Poetry which I am hosting this week, click on to add your own verse and read some great poetry from talented people from across the globe
_______________

Coming back to Alfred Tennyson’s poem “IN MEMORIAM A H H” Originally the Poem was titled “Way of the Soul” and somehow I like it more hence started this post with the Original title of one of the most powerful poetry I have found.

The poem was also a great favourite of 
Queen Victoria, who found it a source of solace after the death of Prince Albert in 1861: "Next to the Bible, In Memoriam is my comfort." In 1862, Victoria requested a meeting with Tennyson because she was so impressed by the poem.

Lord Tennyson and family

From “In Memoriam A H H”
_____________________
I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel:
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the soul within.

But for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic excercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.

In words, like weeds, I’will wrap me o’er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold;
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given outline and no more.
______________________
Alfred Tennyson @ 1849

Text Source and Image source for “In Memoriam A H H” Part : Wikipedia click to read more about it.
____________
Hope you have liked this post and I look forward to your comments....
नमः शिवाय
Om Namah Shivaya
PREV                                          HOME                                 NEXT
Nature and life

Sep 13, 2011

FEATURE : Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Nietzsche


For me, to start reading a book, is always driven by the way the book reaches me. I usually not read the books that are talked about, discussed in parties or are on top of the charts. I end up reading a book, if it comes to me on its own... like a divine grace; then only I know that I am ready for the book. As for me each book has a spirit that has something, to connect with me, to add to my inner self, to make ‘be’ what I have to be. I had heard about this famous book since my school days, people talked about the ideas in our discussion in college days and some even thrashed its “God is Dead” idea to its threadbare soul, but never thought of reading it. Then the other day, I was searching for a particular book, in poetry section of Landmark – The book shop and it was there on the top of the shelf and I felt the desire to pick it up. And below is the result...

Its a very interesting and engrossing book which talks about the man and his emotions... in the words of Zarathustra; some times teaching, some times scolding, some times just feeling sad the way the man has belittled himself... He, is in the book, talks about the higher man... which to my thought is not very different than the commonly perceived ‘God’... and that is the irony I find in this book. I have loved reading this book and below I have posted some of the interesting thoughts from the book that has captured my imagination and I could relate with.... But before that, as usual let me give you a brief about the book and Nietzsche’s biography.

Brief Note

The book
Cover to the first edition of the first part.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (German: Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen) is a philosophical novel by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, composed in four parts between 1883 and 1885. Much of the work deals with ideas such as the "eternal recurrence of the same", the parable on the "death of God", and the "prophecy" of the Übermensch, which were first introduced in The Gay Science.  

Described by Nietzsche himself as "the deepest ever written," the book is a dense and esoteric treatise on philosophy and morality, featuring as protagonist a fictionalized prophet descending from his mountain retreat to mankind, Zarathustra. A central irony of the text is that Nietzsche mimics the style of the Bible in order to present ideas which fundamentally oppose Christian and Jewish morality and tradition.
Text and Image source: Wikipedia

The Author
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist. He wrote critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy and science, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony and aphorism.
Nietzsche's influence remains substantial within and beyond philosophy, notably in existentialismnihilism and postmodernism. His style and radical questioning of the value and objectivity of truth have resulted in much commentary and interpretation, mostly in the continental tradition. His key ideas include the death of Godperspectivism, the Übermensch, the eternal recurrence, and the will to power. Central to his philosophy is the idea of "life-affirmation", which involves an honest questioning of all doctrines that drain life's expansive energies, however socially prevalent those views might be.

Nietzsche began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. At the age of 24 he was appointed to the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel (the youngest individual to have held this position), but resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life. In 1889 he became mentally ill, possibly due to atypical general paresis attributed to tertiary syphilis. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897, then under the care of his sister until his death in 1900.

Text and Image source: Wikipedia

Some of the thoughts from the book that has touched me deeply... 
Peter Gast would "correct" Nietzsche's writings even after
the philosopher's breakdown and did so
without his approval—an action severely criticized
by contemporary Nietzsche scholars.

Zarathustra’s Prologue
One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure. 
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: 
Must one first batter their ears that they may learn to hear with their eyes?
A little poison now and then: that makes for pleasant dreams. 
One no longer becomes poor or rich; both are too burdensome. 
How can I help it, if power likes to walk on crooked legs? 

The Despisers of the Body
"I," say you, and are proud of that word.  But the greater thing - in which you are unwilling to believe - is your body with its great intelligence; which does not say "I," but performs it. 

The Pale Criminal 
I am a railing alongside the torrent; whoever is able to grasp me may grasp me!  Your crutch, however, I am not.  

Reading and Writing
Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his blood.  Write with blood, and you will find that blood is spirit. 
In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak, but for that route you must have long legs. 
Courageous, unconcerned, scornful, coercive - so wisdom wishes us; she is a woman, and ever loves only a warrior. 
We are all of us fine asses and assesses of burden.  What have we in common with the rose bud, which trembles because a drop of dew has formed upon it?  It is true we love life; not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving.  There is always some madness in love.  But there is always, also, some method in madness. 

The Tree on the Hill
"If I wished to shake this tree with my hands, I should not be able to do so.  But the wind, which we see not, troubles and bends it as it wishes.  We are sore bent and troubled by invisible hands”
Zarathustra answered: "Why are you frightened on that account?  - But it is the same with man as with the tree.  The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthward, downward, into the dark and deep - into the evil”

War and Warriors
By our best enemies we do not want to be spared, nor by those either whom we love from the very heart. 
I say to you: it is the good war which hallows every cause.  War and courage have done more great things than charity.  Not your sympathy, but your bravery has hitherto saved the victims.

The New Idol
Creators were they who created peoples, and hung a faith and a love over them: thus they served life.  

The house Nietzsche stayed in while in Turin
(background, right), as seen from
across Piazza Carlo Alberto,
where he is said to have had his breakdown.
To the left is the rear façade of the Palazzo Carignano.
The Flies in the Market-Place
Resemble again the tree which you love, the broad branched one - silently and attentively it overhangs the sea. 
In the world even the best things are worthless without those who represent them: those representers, the people call great men.  Little do the people understand what is great - that is to say, the creating agency.  But they have a taste for all representers and actors of great things

Chastity
Do I counsel you to chastity?  Chastity is a virtue with some, but with many it is almost a vice.

The Friend
In your friend one shall have your best enemy.  You shall be closest to him with your heart when you oppose him.  You would go naked before your friend?  It is in honour of your friend that you show yourself to him as you are? 
O my friend, man is something that has to be surpassed.  In conjecture and keeping silence shall the friend be a master:
Are you a slave?  Then you cannot be a friend.  Are you a tyrant?  Then you cannot have friends.  Far too long has there been a slave and a tyrant concealed in woman.  On that account woman is not yet capable of friendship: she knows only love.  In woman's love there is injustice and blindness to all she does not love.  And even in woman's conscious love, there is still always surprise and lightning and night, along with the light.
As yet woman is not capable of friendship.  But tell me, you men, who of you are capable of friendship?

Love of One's Neighbour
Thus says the fool: "Association with men ruins the character, especially when one has none”.

The Way of the Creator
Today you still suffer from the multitude, you individual; today you still have your courage undimmed, and your hopes.  But one day will solitude weary you; one day will your pride yield and your courage fail.  You will one day cry: "I am alone”!  One day will you see no longer your loftiness, and see too closely your lowliness; your sublimity itself will frighten you, like a phantom.  You will one day cry: "Everything is false”!  There are feelings which seek to kill the solitary man; if they do not succeed, then they must themselves die!  But Are you capable of it - to be a murderer?

Old and Young Women
Everything in woman is a riddle, and everything in woman has one solution - it is called pregnancy.  Man is for woman a means: the end is always the child.  But what is woman for man?  The true man wants two different things: danger and play.  Therefore wants he woman, as the most dangerous plaything.

Marriage and Children
Marriage: so call I the will of the two to create one that is greater than those who created it.  The reverence for one another, as those exercising such a will, call I marriage.  Let this be the significance and the truth of your marriage.

Lou SaloméPaul Ree
and Friedrich Nietzsche (1882)
The Bestowing Virtue
When your heart overflows broad and full like the river, a blessing and a danger to the lowlanders: there is the origin of your virtue.  When you are exalted above praise and blame, and your will would command all things, as a loving your will: there is the origin of your virtue.

The Child with the Mirror
Too long have I longed and looked into the distance.  Too long has solitude possessed me: thus have I forgotten how to keep silence.

On the Blissful Islands
But that I may reveal my heart entirely to you, my friends: if there were gods, how could I endure not to be a God!  Therefore there are no Gods.  Yes, I have drawn the conclusion; now, however, does it draw me.  - God is a supposition: but who could drink all the bitterness of this supposition without dying? 
Creating - that is the great salvation from suffering, and life's alleviation.  But for the creator to appear, suffering itself is needed, and much transformation.  Yes, much bitter dying must there be in your life, you creators!

The Compassionate 
If, however, you have a suffering friend, then be a resting place for his suffering; like a hard bed, however, a camp bed: thus will you serve him best.  And if a friend does you wrong, then say: "I forgive you what you have done to me; that you have done it to yourself, however - how could I forgive that”!  Thus speaks all great love: it overcomes even forgiveness and pity.  
Thus spoke the devil to me, once on a time: "Even God has his Hell: it is his love for man”.  And lately, did I hear him say these words: "God is dead: God has died of his pity for man”.  So be warned again pity: 

Self-Overcoming 
It is not the river that is your danger and the end of your good and evil, you wise ones: but that Will itself, the Will to Power - the un-exhausted, procreating life will.
To be silent is worse; all suppressed truths become poisonous. 

The Sublime Men
When power becomes gracious and descends into the visible - I call such condescension, beauty. 
Truly, I have often laughed at the weaklings, who think themselves good because they have crippled paws!

The Wanderer  
love is the danger of the solitary , love to anything, if it only live!  Laughable, truly, is my folly and my modesty in love!  - Thus spoke Zarathustra

Before Sunrise 
And all my wandering and mountain climbing: a necessity was it merely, and a makeshift of the unhandy one: - to fly only, wants my entire will, to fly into you!
 And "he who cannot bless shall learn to curse”!  - this clear teaching dropped to me from the clear heaven; this star stands in my heaven even in dark nights. 
 "In everything there is one thing impossible - rationality”!

The Nietzsche Archives in Weimar, Germany.
Virtue That Makes Small
For only he who is man enough, will - save the woman in woman.
I am Zarathustra the godless, who says: "Who is more godless than I, that I may enjoy his teaching”? 
You ever become smaller, you small people!  You crumble away, you comfortable ones!  You will yet perish - - By your many small virtues, by your many small omissions, and by your many small submissions!  Too tender, too yielding: so is your soil!  But for a tree to become great, it seeks to twine hard roots around hard rocks!  Also what you omit weaves at the web of all the human future; even your nothing is a cobweb, and a spider that lives on the blood of the future.

Passing By
This precept, however, give I to you, in parting, you fool: Where one can no longer love, there should one - pass bye!  

The Three Evil Things
These will I put on the scales.  Voluptuousness, passion for power, and selfishness: these three things have hitherto been be cursed, and have been in worst and falsest repute - these three things will I weigh humanly well. 
Voluptuousness: to free hearts, a thing innocent and free, the garden happiness of the earth, all the future's thanks overflow to the present.  
Voluptuousness: only to the withered a sweet poison; to the lion willed, however, the great cordial, and the reverently saved wine of wines.  
Voluptuousness: the great symbolic happiness of a higher happiness and highest hope.  For to many is marriage promised, and more than marriage - To many that are more unknown to each other than man and woman: - and who has fully understood how unknown to each other are man and woman!

The Spirit of Gravity
And we - we bear loyally what is apportioned to us, on hard shoulders, over rugged mountains!  And when we sweat, then do people say to us: "Yes, life is hard to bear”!  But man himself only is hard to bear!  The reason is that he carries too many extraneous things on his shoulders.  Like the camel he kneels down, and lets himself be well laden.  Especially the strong load bearing man in whom reverence resides.  Too many extraneous heavy words and worth’s does he load upon himself - then seems life to him a desert!
This however is my teaching: he who wishes one day to fly, must first learn standing and walking and running and climbing and dancing: - one does not fly into flying!

The Old and New Law-Tables
One should not wish to enjoy where one does not contribute to the enjoyment.  And one should not wish to enjoy!  For enjoyment and innocence are the most bashful things.  Neither like to be sought for.  One should have them - but one should rather seek for guilt and pain!  
"That is just divinity, that there are Gods, but no God”!
To your children shall you make amends for being the children of your fathers: all the past shall you thus redeem! 
On that account want I the honest men to say to one another: "We love each other: let us see to it that we maintain our love!  Or shall our pledging be blundering”?
Not only to propagate yourselves onwards but upwards - thereto, O my brothers, may the garden of marriage help you!
The good - they have always been the beginning of the end.

The Convalescent
To each soul belongs another world; to each soul is every other soul a back world.  Among the most alike does semblance deceive most delightfully: for the smallest gap is most difficult to bridge over.  For me - how could there be an outside of me?  There is no outside!  But this we forget on hearing tones; how delightful it is that we forget!  Have not names and tones been given to things that man may refresh himself with them?  It is a beautiful folly, speaking; there with dances man over everything.  How lovely is all speech and all falsehoods of tones!  With tones dances our love on variegated rainbows

The Higher Man
And truly, I love you, because you know not today how to live, you higher men!  For thus do you live - best!
He has heart who knows fear, but masters it; who sees the abyss, but with pride.
My wisdom has accumulated long like a cloud, it becomes stiller and darker.  So does all wisdom which shall one day bear lightning.
If you would go up high, then use your own legs!  Do not get yourselves carried aloft; do not seat yourselves on other people's backs and heads!
Where your entire love is, namely, with your child, there is also your entire virtue!
Be not virtuous beyond your powers!  And seek nothing from yourselves that is improbable! 
All good things approach their goal on a crooked path.  Like cats they curve their backs, they purr inwardly with their approaching happiness - all good things laugh.  His step betrays whether a person already walks on his own path: Just see me walk!  He, however, who comes near to his goal, dances.
____________
नमः शिवाय
Om Namah Shivaya

PREV                                               HOME                                     NEXT
The Secret Path                                            The Prophet - Kahlil Gibran
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...