the communistic, reacted on each other with all the freedom of unfettered Nature, forever fresh-begetting and ever giving birth anew. These are the so-called prehistoric times, the times when Speech, and Myth, and Art were really born. Then, too, the thing we call Genius was unknown: no one man was a Genius, since all men were it. Only in times like ours, does one know or name these ‘Geniuses’; the sole name that we can find for those artistic forces which withdraw themselves from the drillground of the State and ruling Dogma, or from the sluggard bolstering-up of tottering forms of Art, to open out new pathways and fill them with their innate life. Yet if we look a little closer, we shall find that these new openings are in no wise arbitrary and private paths, but continuations of a long-since-hewn main causeway; down which, before and with these solitary units, a joint and many-membered force of diverse individualities has poured itself, whose conscious or unconscious instinct has urged it to the abrogation of those forms by fashioning newer moulds of Life and Art. Here, then, we see again a common force, which includes within its coefficients that individual force we have erstwhile foolishly dismissed with the appellation ‘Genius,’ and, according to our modern notions thereof, utterly annuls it. By all means, that associate, communistic force is only brought into play through the medium of the individual force; for it is, in truth, naught other than the force of sheer human individuality in general.“ [559W-{6-8/51} A Communication To My Friends: PW Vol. I, p. 288-289]
[560W-{6-8/51} A Communication To My Friends: PW Vol. I, p. 290]
[P. 290] {FEUER} “The fair sea-wife Wachilde had born a son to good King Viking: the three Norns came to greet the child, and dower it with gifts. The first Norn gave it strength of body, the second wisdom; and the grateful father bade them take their seat beside his throne. But the third bestowed upon the child ‘the ne’er contented mind that ever broods the New.’ Viking, aghast at such a gift, refused the youngest Norn his thanks; indignant, she recalled her gift, to punish his ingratitude. The son grew up to strength and mighty stature; and whate’er there was to know, he mastered it betimes. But never did he feel the spur to change or venture; with every turning of his life he was content, and found his home in all. He never loved, and neither did he hate: but since he lit by chance upon a wife, he too begat a son, and sent him to take schooling from the Dwarves, that he might learn what’s fit; -- this son was that Wieland whom Want was once to teach to forge himself his wings. (…)
{FEUER}That one rejected gift: ‘the ne’er contented mind, that ever broods the New,’ the youngest Norn holds out to all of us when we are born, and through it alone might we each one day, become a ‘Genius:’ but now, in our craze for education, ‘tis Chance alone that brings this gift within our grasp, -- the accident of not becoming educated (erzogen). Secure against the refusal of a father who died beside my cradle, perchance the Norn, so often chased away, stole gently to it, and there bestowed on me her gift; which never left poor untrained me, and made Life and Art and mine own self my only, quite anarchic, educators.“ [560W-{6-8/51} A Communication To My Friends: PW Vol. I, p. 290]
[561W-{6-8/51} A Communication To My Friends: PW Vol. I, p. 306]
[P. 306] {FEUER} “I cannot conceive the spirit of Music as aught but Love.” [561W-{6-8/51} A Communication To My Friends: PW Vol. I, p. 306]
