Fatum Chaim

Due to the worsening quality of the discourse on this website, I wrote an article about the recent, growing Trans-Atlantic strains, tariffs, Venezuela, Iran, etc. It is part opinion piece and analysis. Link to the Substack post is in the first reply.

I posted Oswald Spengler’s private collection of sketches, hitherto unreleased. The link to the article is in the first reply to this post.

I translated Oswald Spengler’s private diary, published—posthumously—in German under the title ‘Eis heauton’. I added context via my own notes, as is usual for my texts. “Since I am almost always alone - most of all in company - I instinctively think of a listener who is discerning and critical and for whom I have respect. It is for him that this is told here.” ~ Oswald Spengler The link to the article is in the first reply to this post.

Been there so many times I lost count. The basement was supposed to hold the busts of still living great Germans, who upon their death would be carried, in the pomp of a great procedure up to their final resting place. It was supposed to mimic ancient Egyptian architecture, unfortunately, it was never completed. The ceiling of the Walhalla is where my profile banner is from.

“To me this whole intellectual present appears like an ugly December landscape: dirt, snow, haze, cold, a few crows sulking on bare branches. I envy the unassuming folk who today fancy themselves art and literature in concerts, theater, journals, exhibitions. Such things have long since ceased to exist.” ~ Oswald Spengler, Eis Heauton - his soon-to-be-translated diary

“To see myself sub specie aeternitatis—very small, questionable. Misunderstood. Incomprehensible. I could have become a painter, a musician.” ~ Oswald Spengler, Eis Heauton - his soon-to-be-translated diary

There are two inscriptions:

“I have a small building lot, men of Athens, and a fig-tree is growing in it, from which many of my fellow citizens have already hanged themselves. Accordingly, as I intend to build a house there, I wanted to give public notice to that effect, in order that all of you who desire to do so may hang yourselves before the fig-tree is cut down.” ~ Timon

Plutarch, The Parallel Lives: The Life of Antony, on Timon of Athens. Very funny.

“To the rational-social residues belongs also the talk of collectivism, the romantic glorification of the herd-feeling, of mass-thinking-as-feeling, of the will from below.” ~ Oswald Spengler, Eis Heauton - his soon-to-be translated diary