{ "schema": "prokopton42-public-passage-v1", "id": "nietzsche.beyond_good_evil", "canonical_url": "https://prokopton42.com/en/works/nietzsche/beyond-good-evil/reference-b0029/", "language": "en", "title": "Beyond Good and Evil", "author": "Friedrich Nietzsche", "date": "1886", "summary": "Beyond Good and Evil must be read through its period, genre, and precise polemical target. Its striking formulations do not replace the movement of the text.", "learning": "To read Beyond Good and Evil, name the attacked value, recover its target and period, then test a counter-perspective without turning provocation into dogma.", "long_summary": "In Beyond Good and Evil, canonical identity follows the eKGWB editorial block and preserves its source anchor. Critical German and AI-generated French and English remain distinct manifestations.\n\nThis reading requires following the polemic’s target, the adopted mask, and shifts between periods. An isolated aphorism is neither a complete system nor permission to crush another person.", "historical_context": "The corpus manifests do not yet establish the precise place and circumstances of composition. The images below document the author’s world or the text’s transmission. They do not claim to show the exact scene of writing.", "material_world_label": "World of 1989", "material_world": { "technology": "Personal computers, satellites, video, industrial robots, and expensive mobile phones exist, but the public Web does not yet.", "science": "Computing, genetics, climate science, cosmology, and medical imaging produce growing data and international collaboration.", "medicine": "CT, MRI, transplantation, vaccines, and intensive care advance; the AIDS epidemic exposes both medical capacity and its limits.", "transport": "Cars, high-speed rail, metros, aircraft, and containers globalize people and goods.", "agriculture": "Machinery, chemical inputs, breeding, and cold chains support high yields with increasingly debated social and environmental costs.", "communication": "Fixed telephones, fax, television, radio, and newspapers predominate. Email and computer networks remain mainly professional or academic.", "clothing": "Loose suits, jeans, trainers, women’s power suits, sportswear, and urban subcultures create highly varied silhouettes." }, "material_world_scenes": [ { "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/30-1989-ce/world-01.webp", "title": "Technology, science, and care", "description": "Personal computers, satellites, video, industrial robots, and expensive mobile phones exist, but the public Web does not yet. Computing, genetics, climate science, cosmology, and medical imaging produce growing data and international collaboration. CT, MRI, transplantation, vaccines, and intensive care advance; the AIDS epidemic exposes both medical capacity and its limits." }, { "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/30-1989-ce/world-02.webp", "title": "Travel and communication", "description": "Cars, high-speed rail, metros, aircraft, and containers globalize people and goods. Fixed telephones, fax, television, radio, and newspapers predominate. Email and computer networks remain mainly professional or academic." }, { "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/30-1989-ce/world-03.webp", "title": "Farming and food", "description": "Machinery, chemical inputs, breeding, and cold chains support high yields with increasingly debated social and environmental costs." }, { "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/30-1989-ce/world-04.webp", "title": "Clothing, women and men", "description": "Loose suits, jeans, trainers, women’s power suits, sportswear, and urban subcultures create highly varied silhouettes." } ], "intellectual_tradition": { "id": "modern-philosophy", "label": "Modern and contemporary philosophy" }, "period": { "id": "modern", "label": "Modern era" }, "languages": [ "de", "en", "fr" ], "manifestations": [ { "coverage": "complete", "file": "data/corpus/normalized/nietzsche/beyond_good_evil/representations/de.ndjson", "language": "de", "records": 302, "role": "digital_critical_original_language", "sha256": "95be2fa5290d0bdff94897e5aae7b50f49613fdf19c69f9ac118a4afdf907f50", "source_id": "nietzsche-source-ekgwb" }, { "coverage": "complete", "file": "data/corpus/normalized/nietzsche/beyond_good_evil/representations/ai-generated/en-gpt-5-6-sol-corpus-passage-translation-v1.ndjson", "generated_on": "2026-09-13", "language": "en", "model": "gpt-5.6-sol", "official_status": "non_official", "prompt_version": "corpus-passage-translation-v1", "provider": "codex_subscription", "records": 302, "role": "ai_generated_translation_non_official", "sha256": "53233ff2ce1a3f3dbbadb1e58e730c07d1eff3e4097bab270f5f5314fb5ed18b", "source_id": "prokopton42-codex-translation:gpt-5.6-sol:corpus-passage-translation-v1", "translation_type": "ai_generated_translation" }, { "coverage": "complete", "file": "data/corpus/normalized/nietzsche/beyond_good_evil/representations/ai-generated/fr-gpt-5-6-sol-corpus-passage-translation-v1.ndjson", "generated_on": "2026-09-13", "language": "fr", "model": "gpt-5.6-sol", "official_status": "non_official", "prompt_version": "corpus-passage-translation-v1", "provider": "codex_subscription", "records": 302, "role": "ai_generated_translation_non_official", "sha256": "a4f7cf297e803d70c10455823695d55ea1aa3875dc6a198044fbc76c02189259", "source_id": "prokopton42-codex-translation:gpt-5.6-sol:corpus-passage-translation-v1", "translation_type": "ai_generated_translation" } ], "concepts": [ { "id": "eternal_recurrence", "label": "Eternal recurrence" }, { "id": "family", "label": "Family" }, { "id": "genealogy_of_values", "label": "Genealogy of values" }, { "id": "perspectival_inquiry", "label": "Perspectival inquiry" }, { "id": "ressentiment", "label": "Ressentiment" }, { "id": "self_overcoming", "label": "Self-overcoming" }, { "id": "sin", "label": "Sin" }, { "id": "war_and_peace", "label": "War and peace" }, { "id": "will_to_power", "label": "Will to power" } ], "source_work_ids": [ "nietzsche.beyond_good_evil" ], "passages": 302, "word_count": 62008, "word_counts_by_language": { "de": 57513, "en": 62008, "fr": 65075 }, "editorial_status": "gpt_5_6_semantic_draft_v1", "structure": { "citation_scheme": "ekgwb-text-block-segment-v1", "kind": "native", "levels": [ { "key": "block", "label_fr": "Bloc critique", "label_en": "Critical block" }, { "key": "segment", "label_fr": "Segment", "label_en": "Segment" } ], "leaf_fr": "Bloc", "leaf_en": "Block" }, "canonical_passage_id": "passage:nietzsche.beyond_good_evil:b0029", "canonical_ref": "b0029", "canonical_parent_ref": null, "canonical_parent_id": null, "representations": [ { "language": "de", "text": "28. Was sich am schlechtesten aus einer Sprache in die andere übersetzen lässt, ist das tempo ihres Stils: als welcher im Charakter der Rasse seinen Grund hat, physiologischer gesprochen, im Durchschnitts-tempo ihres „Stoffwechsels“. Es giebt ehrlich gemeinte Übersetzungen, die beinahe Fälschungen sind, als unfreiwillige Vergemeinerungen des Originals, bloss weil sein tapferes und lustiges tempo nicht mit übersetzt werden konnte, welches über alles Gefährliche in Dingen und Worten wegspringt, weghilft. Der Deutsche ist beinahe des Presto in seiner Sprache unfähig: also, wie man billig schliessen darf, auch vieler der ergötzlichsten und verwegensten Nuances des freien, freigeisterischen Gedankens. So gut ihm der Buffo und der Satyr fremd ist, in Leib und Gewissen, so gut ist ihm Aristophanes und Petronius unübersetzbar. Alles Gravitätische, Schwerflüssige, Feierlich-Plumpe, alle langwierigen und langweiligen Gattungen des Stils sind bei den Deutschen in überreicher Mannichfaltigkeit entwickelt, — man vergebe mir die Thatsache, dass selbst Goethe’s Prosa, in ihrer Mischung von Steifheit und Zierlichkeit, keine Ausnahme macht, als ein Spiegelbild der „alten guten Zeit“, zu der sie gehört, und als Ausdruck des deutschen Geschmacks, zur Zeit, wo es noch einen „deutschen Geschmack“ gab: der ein Rokoko-Geschmack war, in moribus et artibus. Lessing macht eine Ausnahme, Dank seiner Schauspieler-Natur, die Vieles verstand und sich auf Vieles verstand: er, der nicht umsonst der Übersetzer Bayle’s war und sich gerne in die Nähe Diderot’s und Voltaire’s, noch lieber unter die römischen Lustspieldichter flüchtete: — Lessing liebte auch im tempo die Freigeisterei, die Flucht aus Deutschland. Aber wie vermöchte die deutsche Sprache, und sei es selbst in der Prosa eines Lessing, das tempo Macchiavell’s nachzuahmen, der, in seinem principe, die trockne feine Luft von Florenz athmen lässt und nicht umhin kann, die ernsteste Angelegenheit in einem unbändigen Allegrissimo vorzutragen: vielleicht nicht ohne ein boshaftes Artisten-Gefühl davon, welchen Gegensatz er wagt, — Gedanken, lang, schwer, hart, gefährlich, und ein tempo des Galopps und der allerbesten muthwilligsten Laune. Wer endlich dürfte gar eine deutsche Übersetzung des Petronius wagen, der, mehr als irgend ein grosser Musiker bisher, der Meister des presto gewesen ist, in Erfindungen, Einfällen, Worten: — was liegt zuletzt an allen Sümpfen der kranken, schlimmen Welt, auch der „alten Welt“, wenn man, wie er, die Füsse eines Windes hat, den Zug und Athem, den befreienden Hohn eines Windes, der Alles gesund macht, indem er Alles laufen macht! Und was Aristophanes angeht, jenen verklärenden, complementären Geist, um dessentwillen man dem ganzen Griechenthum verzeiht, dass es da war, gesetzt, dass man in aller Tiefe begriffen hat, was da Alles der Verzeihung, der Verklärung bedarf: — so wüsste ich nichts, was mich über Plato’s Verborgenheit und Sphinx-Natur mehr hat träumen lassen als jenes glücklich erhaltene petit fait: dass man unter dem Kopfkissen seines Sterbelagers keine „Bibel“ vorfand, nichts Ägyptisches, Pythagoreisches, Platonisches, — sondern den Aristophanes. Wie hätte auch ein Plato das Leben ausgehalten — ein griechisches Leben, zu dem er Nein sagte, — ohne einen Aristophanes! —", "source_id": "nietzsche-source-ekgwb", "translation_type": "digital_critical_original_language" }, { "language": "en", "text": "28. What is most difficult to translate from one language into another is the tempo of its style, which has its basis in the character of the race or, physiologically speaking, in the average tempo of its “metabolism.” There are honestly intended translations that are almost falsifications, involuntary vulgarizations of the original, simply because its bold and cheerful tempo could not also be translated, the tempo that leaps and helps its way over everything dangerous in things and words. The German is almost incapable of presto in his language and therefore, as one may reasonably conclude, also of many of the most delightful and daring nuances of free, free-spirited thought. Just as the buffo and the satyr are foreign to him, in body and conscience, so Aristophanes and Petronius are untranslatable for him. Everything ponderous, sluggish, solemnly clumsy, all protracted and tedious genres of style have been developed among the Germans in superabundant variety. Forgive me the fact that even Goethe’s prose, in its mixture of stiffness and delicacy, is no exception, as a reflection of the “good old days” to which it belongs and as an expression of German taste at a time when there was still a “German taste,” which was a Rococo taste, in moribus et artibus. Lessing is an exception, thanks to his actor’s nature, which understood many things and knew how to handle many things. He was not Bayle’s translator for nothing and gladly took refuge in the vicinity of Diderot and Voltaire, and still more gladly among the Roman comic poets. Lessing loved free-spiritedness in tempo as well, the flight out of Germany. But how could the German language, even in the prose of a Lessing, imitate the tempo of Machiavelli, who in his Principe lets one breathe the dry, fine air of Florence and cannot help presenting the most serious affair in an irrepressible allegrissimo, perhaps not without a malicious artist’s feeling for the contrast he is daring: thoughts long, heavy, hard, dangerous, and a galloping tempo of the very best, most mischievous good humor. Who, finally, would dare a German translation of Petronius, who, more than any great musician thus far, was a master of presto in inventions, ideas, and words? What, in the end, do all the swamps of the sick, wicked world matter, even those of the “ancient world,” when one has, as he did, the feet of a wind, the rush and breath, the liberating scorn of a wind that makes everything healthy by making everything run! And as for Aristophanes, that transfiguring, complementary spirit for whose sake one forgives all of Greek culture for having existed, provided one has grasped in all its depth just how much there requires forgiveness and transfiguration: I know nothing that has made me dream more about Plato’s hiddenness and sphinx nature than that happily preserved petit fait that beneath the pillow of his deathbed there was found no “Bible,” nothing Egyptian, Pythagorean, or Platonic, but Aristophanes. How could a Plato have endured life, a Greek life to which he said No, without an Aristophanes!", "translator": "Codex gpt-5.6-sol", "edition": "Prokopton42 non-official AI translation, 2026-09-13", "source_id": "prokopton42-codex-translation:gpt-5.6-sol:corpus-passage-translation-v1", "translation_type": "ai_generated_translation", "official_status": "non_official", "generation_model": "gpt-5.6-sol" }, { "language": "fr", "text": "28. Ce qui se laisse le plus mal traduire d’une langue dans une autre, c’est le tempo de son style, lequel a son fondement dans le caractère de la race ou, pour parler physiologiquement, dans le tempo moyen de son « métabolisme ». Il existe des traductions honnêtement conçues qui sont presque des falsifications, parce qu’elles vulgarisent involontairement l’original, simplement parce qu’il a été impossible de traduire aussi son tempo vaillant et joyeux, qui saute par-dessus tout ce qu’il y a de dangereux dans les choses et les mots, et aide à le franchir. L’Allemand est presque incapable du presto dans sa langue ; par conséquent, comme on peut raisonnablement le conclure, il est également incapable de beaucoup des nuances les plus réjouissantes et les plus téméraires de la pensée libre, de l’esprit libre. Autant le bouffon et le satyre lui sont étrangers, dans le corps et la conscience, autant Aristophane et Pétrone lui sont intraduisibles. Tout ce qui est grave, visqueusement pesant, solennellement balourd, toutes les espèces de style interminables et ennuyeuses se sont développées chez les Allemands avec une diversité surabondante. Que l’on me pardonne ce fait : même la prose de Goethe, dans son mélange de raideur et de grâce, ne fait pas exception, reflet du « bon vieux temps » auquel elle appartient et expression du goût allemand à l’époque où il existait encore un « goût allemand », lequel était un goût rococo, in moribus et artibus. Lessing fait exception, grâce à sa nature de comédien, qui comprenait beaucoup de choses et savait s’y prendre avec beaucoup de choses : lui qui ne fut pas en vain le traducteur de Bayle et qui aimait à se réfugier auprès de Diderot et de Voltaire, plus volontiers encore parmi les auteurs comiques romains. Dans le tempo aussi, Lessing aimait l’esprit libre, la fuite hors d’Allemagne. Mais comment la langue allemande, même dans la prose d’un Lessing, pourrait-elle imiter le tempo de Machiavel, qui, dans son Principe, fait respirer l’air sec et subtil de Florence et ne peut s’empêcher d’exposer l’affaire la plus grave dans un allegrissimo débridé, peut-être non sans le sentiment malicieux d’un artiste conscient du contraste qu’il ose : des pensées longues, lourdes, dures, dangereuses, et un tempo de galop, d’une humeur folâtre du meilleur aloi. Qui enfin oserait même entreprendre une traduction allemande de Pétrone, lui qui, plus qu’aucun grand musicien jusqu’à présent, fut le maître du presto dans les inventions, les idées, les mots ? Que nous importent en fin de compte tous les marécages du monde malade et mauvais, même du « monde antique », lorsque, comme lui, on possède les pieds du vent, son élan et son souffle, le sarcasme libérateur d’un vent qui assainit tout en faisant tout courir ! Et quant à Aristophane, cet esprit transfigurateur et complémentaire grâce auquel on pardonne à toute la civilisation grecque d’avoir existé, à supposer que l’on ait compris dans toute sa profondeur tout ce qui, en elle, a besoin de pardon et de transfiguration, je ne connais rien qui m’ait davantage fait rêver sur le caractère secret et sphinxial de Platon que ce petit fait heureusement conservé : sous l’oreiller de son lit de mort, on ne trouva aucune « Bible », rien d’égyptien, de pythagoricien ni de platonicien, mais Aristophane. Comment un Platon aurait-il d’ailleurs supporté la vie, une vie grecque à laquelle il disait non, sans un Aristophane !", "translator": "Codex gpt-5.6-sol", "edition": "Prokopton42 non-official AI translation, 2026-09-13", "source_id": "prokopton42-codex-translation:gpt-5.6-sol:corpus-passage-translation-v1", "translation_type": "ai_generated_translation", "official_status": "non_official", "generation_model": "gpt-5.6-sol" } ], "content_checksum": "895783e5afcdbcd085c0b213f37b4c79f18d7c1716aeea68d46dbe2abe63b7c4" }