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| The Memorial (Unitarian) Church on Emmanuel Road, Cambridge |
I spent most of today inside at my desk catching up with various bits of correspondence, beginning to write a short address for a wedding taking place the week after next and meeting with the Chairman of the congregation. But during my lunch break I took half an hour out to stroll around the park (Christ's Pieces) in the beautiful winter sunshine. The light turned out to be perfect for taking a well-lit shot of the church and also the neighbouring buildings designed by Charles Humphrey (click on a photo if you want to enlarge it). Amazingly the busy road was mercifully free of traffic and stopped vehicles.
By the time I got back into my study the low sun was streaming into my study and so I also took the two photos below before I began to turn my attention back to the admin. But, before doing that, for a few minutes more, I luxuriated happily in the warmth of the sun. It was something which, naturally enough for me, reminded me of what is perhaps my favourite passage of Nietzsche's found in his 1886 preface to “Human, All-Too Human” (1879):
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| The mantelpiece in my study |
“A
step further in convalescence: and the free spirit again draws near to
life—slowly, to be sure, almost reluctantly, almost mistrustfully. It
again grows warmer around him, yellower, as it were; feeling and feeling
for others acquire depth, warm breezes of all kinds blow across him. It
seems to him as if his eyes are only now open to what is close at hand.
He is astonished and sits silent: where had he been? These close and
closest things: how changed they seemed! what bloom and magic they have
acquired! He looks back gratefully—grateful to his wandering, to his
hardness and self-alienation, to his viewing of far distances and
bird-like flights in cold heights. What a good thing he had not always
stayed “at home,” stayed “under his own roof” like a delicate apathetic
loafer! He had been beside himself: no doubt of that. Only now does he
see himself—and what surprises he experiences as he does so! What
unprecedented shudders! What happiness even in the weariness, the old
sickness, the relapses of the convalescent! How he loves to sit sadly
still, to spin out patience, to lie in the sun! Who understands as he
does the happiness that comes in winter, the spots of sunlight on the
wall! They are the most grateful animals in the world, also the most
modest, these convalescents and lizards again half turned towards
life:—there are some among them who allow no day to pass without hanging
a little song of praise on the hem of its departing robe. And, speaking
seriously, it is a radical cure for all pessimism (the well-known
disease of old idealists and falsehood-mongers) to become ill after the
manner of these free spirits, to remain ill a good while, and then grow
well (I mean “better”) for a still longer period. It is wisdom,
practical wisdom, to prescribe even health for oneself for a long time
only in small doses” (
Friedrich Nietzsche: “Human, All-Too Human” trans. R. J. Hollingdale, CUP 1996, pp. 8-9).
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| Some of the bookshelves in my study |
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