Joséphin Péladan

Kneippetherapie - Illustration in einem 1894 erschienenen Buch

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Querela dos universais - R. Chartier

"A história é a descrição do individual através dos universais": a afirmação de Paul Veyne designa claramente uma das tensões mais importantes com a qual se defronta o conhecimento histórico, habituado a manejar, como se elas fossem evidentes, categorias aparentemente estáveis e invariáveis. Os objetos históricos, quaisquer que sejam, não são "objetos naturais" em que apenas variariam as modalidades históricas de existência. Não existem objetos históricos fora das práticas, móveis, que os constituem, e por isso não há zonas de discurso ou de realidade definidas de uma vez por todas, delimitadas de maneira fixa e detectáveis em cada situação histórica: "as coisas não são mais do que as objetivações de práticas determinadas, cujas determinações é necessário trazer à luz do dia"  É apenas ao identificar as partilhas, as exclusões, as relações que constituem os objetos em estudo, que a história poderá pensá-los, não como figuras circunstanciadas de uma categoria supostamente universal, mas, pelo contrario, como "constelações individuais ou mesmo particulares".

Nordau, greatgrandfather of the coxas

This distinction between charity and sharing cannot be maintained in earnest. Every gift that a man receives from some other man without work, without reciprocal service, is an alms, and as such is deeply immoral. The sick, the old, the weak, those who cannot work, must be supported and tended by their fellow-creatures ; it is their duty, and it is also their natural impulse. But to give to men capable of working is under all circumstances a sin and a self-deception. If men capable of work find no work, this is obviously attributable to some defect in the economical structure of society; and it is the duty of each individual to assist earnestly in removing this defect, but not to facilitate its continuance by pacifying for awhile the victim of the defective circumstances by a gift. Charity has in
this case merely the aim of deadening the conscience of the donor, and furnishing him with an excuse why he should shirk his duty of curing recognised evils in the constitution of society. Should, however, the capable man be averse to labour, then charity spoils him completely, and kills in him entirely any inclination to put his powers into action, which alone keeps the organism healthy and moral. Thus alms, extended to an able-bodied man, degrades both the donor and the recipient, and operates like poison on the feeling of duty and the morality of both. (Seite 156)

Bats and ready-mades [Nordau]

Like bats in old towers, they are niched in the proud monument of civilLzation, which they have found ready-made, but they themselves can construct nothing more, nor prevent any deterioration. They live, like parasites, on labour which past generations have, accumulated for them; and when the heritage is once consumed, they are condemned to die of hunger. (p. 540)

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n 1 gorjeio, trinado, chilro. 2 riso silencioso. 3 excitação, tremor (de nervosismo). vt+vi 1 cantar, gorjear, chilrear, pipilar, estridular. 2 rir em surdina. 3 falar rápido e alto sobre coisas sem importância devido ao fato de estar nervoso.

"[...] it is the language of nurses to babies, who do not care to make sense, but only to twitter to the child in tones which give him pleasure" [Nordau about Verlaine's poetry].

Nordau and the symbolists - Dada siegt!

The Symbolists, so far as they are honestly degenerate and imbecile, can think only in a mystical, i.e., in a confused way. The unknown is to them more powerful than the known ; the activity of the organic nerves preponderates over that of the cerebral cortex ; their emotions overrule their ideas. When persons of this kind have poetic and artistic instincts, they naturally want to give expression to their own mental state. They cannot make use of definite words of clear import, for their own consciousness holds no clearly-defined univocal ideas which could be embodied in such words. They choose, therefore, vague equivocal words, because these best conform to their ambiguous and equivocal ideas. The more indefinite, the more obscure a word is, so much the better does it suit the purpose of the imbecile and it is notorious that among the insane this habit goes so far that, to express their ideas, which have become quite formless, they invent new words, which are no longer merely obscure, but devoid of all meaning. We have already seen that, for the typical degenerate, reality has no significance. On this point I will only remind the reader of the previously cited utterances of D. G. Rossetti, Morice, etc. Clear speech serves the purpose of communication of the actual. It has, therefore, no value in the eyes of a degenerate subject. He prizes that language alone which does not force him to follow the speaker attentively, but allows him to indulge without restraint in the meanderings of his own reveries, just as his own language does not aim at the communication of definite thought, but is only intended to give a pale reflection of the twilight of his own ideas. That is what M. Mallarme means when he says: ' To name an object means to suppress three quarters of the pleasure. . . . Our dream should be to suggest the object.'. (p. 118)