something arbitrarily barbaric and ceremonious, a flirring of learned and venerable conceits and witticisms; something German in the best and worst sense of the word, something in the German style, manifold, formless, and inexhaustible; a certain German potency and super-plenitude of soul, which is not afraid to hide itself under the RAFFINEMENTS of decadence — which, perhaps, feels itself most at ease there; a real, genuine token of the German soul, which is at the same time young and aged, too ripe and yet still too rich in futurity.

This kind of music expresses best what I think of the Germans: they belong to the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow — THEY HAVE AS YET NO TODAY.

241. We “good Europeans,” we also have hours when we allow ourselves a