DAYBREAK | SLOW READING | FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

|| < : PROFOUND SLOW READING AS MEDITATION : > ||

A book like this , a problem like this , is in no hurry ; we both , I just as much as my book , are friends of lento .

It is not for nothing that I have been a philologist , perhaps I am a philologist still , that is to say , A TEACHER OF SLOW READING :— in the end I also write slowly .

Nowadays it is not only my habit , it is also to my taste — a malicious taste , perhaps ? — no longer to write anything which does not reduce to despair every sort of person who is " in a hurry " .

For philology is that venerable art which demands of its votaries one thing above all : to go aside , to take time , to become still , to become slow — it is a goldsmith's art and connoisseurship of the WORD which has nothing but delicate , cautious work to do and achieves nothing if it does not achieve it lento .

But precisely for this reason it is more necessary than ever today , by precisely this means does it entice and enchant us the most , in the midst of an age of " work " , that is to say , of hurry , of indecent and perspiring haste , which wants to " get everything done " at once , including every old or new book :— this art does not so easily get anything done , it teaches to read WELL , that is to say , to read slowly , deeply , looking cautiously before and aft , with reservations , with doors left open , with delicate eyes and fingers .

My patient friends , this book desires for itself only perfect readers and philologists : LEARN to read me well !

SOURCE | SATYAVEDISM.ORG