Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers/Kultur and Things
KULTUR, AND THINGS
DO you know, Kultur isn't the same thing at all as culture… fancy!
When we took it up—Kultur, I mean—yes, we took it up in quite a serious way the other evening—our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know—and threshed it out thoroughly—we hadn't the slightest idea that it would lead us straight to Nietzsche and—and, well, all those people like that, if you get what I mean. Though, of course, as the man who spoke to us—he was the loveliest person!—spoke in German, we may have missed some of the finer shades.
Oh, yes, I had German in high school… really, I was quite proficient… although, of course, it's such a guttural kind of language—don't you think?—that one wonders how they ever sing it. And then, the verbs!… but I had Latin verbs about the same time, you know… and really, isn't it surprising how some of those foreign languages seem to run to verbs, if you get what I mean?
It seems it was the Germans who invented the Superman… and I suppose we must be grateful to them for that, no matter what they may have done with him after they invented him….
I used to be quite taken with the Superman, you know…. Really, I didn't recognize how dangerous he might become….
I didn't know he was German at all when we took him up….
Have you read anything about the Blond Beast?
I felt rather attracted toward him for a long time myself… until lately…. But the attraction passed…. I'm not brunette, you know, at all…. Likely that's why I lost interest in him….
Aren't affinities between people of different complexion simply wonderful!
It makes one wonder if the Eugenists can be right after all!
Fothergil Finch says that's where the Eugenists fall down…. He says they don't take account of Affinities at all.
Sometimes one finds it very puzzling—doesn't one?—the way these modern causes and movements seem to contradict one another!
But if one is in tune with the Cosmic All these little inconsistencies don't matter.
The Cosmic All!… what would we do without it? How do you suppose people ever got along a generation or two ago before the Cosmos and all that sort of thing was discovered?
I've often thought of it… and of what life must have been like in those days! As Emerson… or was it Emerson?… says in one of his poems: "Better a year of Europe than a cycle of Cathay!"
That's what Fothy Finch says he always feels about Brooklyn… though I will say this for Brooklyn—the first girl I saw with courage enough to wear one of those ankle watches on the street lived in Brooklyn.
But don't you think Brooklyn people are rather like that… go to the latest things in dress, you know, in an extreme sort of way, so that people won't suspect they live in Brooklyn?