| >> |
04/15/09(Wed)08:15 No.30004412 
File :1239797738.jpg-(26 KB, 435x444, schopenh.jpg)
 It
is only the man whose intellect is clouded by his sexual instinct that
could give that stunted, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and
short-legged race the name of the fair sex; for the entire beauty of
the sex is based on this instinct. One would be more justified in
calling them the unaesthetic sex than the beautiful. Neither for music,
nor for poetry, nor for fine art have they any real or true sense and
susceptibility, and it is mere mockery on their part, in their desire
to please, if they affect any such thing.
This makes them
incapable of taking a purely objective interest in anything, and the
reason for it is, I fancy, as follows. A man strives to get direct
mastery over things either by understanding them or by compulsion. But
a woman is always and everywhere driven to indirect mastery, namely
through a man; all her direct mastery being limited to him alone.
Therefore it lies in woman’s nature to look upon everything only as a
means for winning man, and her interest in anything else is always a
simulated one, a mere roundabout way to gain her ends, consisting of
coquetry and pretence. Hence Rousseau said, Les femmes, en général,
n'aiment aucun art, ne se connoissent à aucun et n'ont aucun génie
(Lettre à d'Alembert, note xx.). Every one who can see through a sham
must have found this to be the case. One need only watch the way they
behave at a concert, the opera, or the play; the childish simplicity,
for instance, with which they keep on chattering during the finest
passages in the greatest masterpieces. If it is true that the Greeks
forbade women to go to the play, they acted in a right way; for they
would at any rate be able to hear something. In our day it would be
more appropriate to substitute taceat mulier in theatro for taceat
mulier in ecclesia; and this might perhaps be put up in big letters on
the curtain. |
