To This Degree: The Boiling Up of the Sea, This poem found some of its origins in Nietzsche Options

[RonPrice]

TO THIS DEGREE


Take a close look at the lives of all the great, fruitful, inventive spirits....you will always encounter...to a certain degree the three ascetic ideals: poverty, chastity and humility. But they are not so regarded as ideals, they are simply seen as the most appropriate and natural conditions for their best existence, their fairest fruitfulness. -F. Nietzsche in Nietzsche: Life As Literature, Alexander Nehamas, Harvard UP, London, 1985, p. 116.

Yes, a certain degree Frederick,
the boiling up of the sea of thoughts,
the nerves and arteries stiring into life
with that will to struggle, the very soul
of life, unflagging efforts in at least one
direction, some natural sense
of human dignity and honour emerging,
growing out of life in the midst
of this fleeting and inconstant,
fast-fading morning wind;
and a ceaseless endeavour in the direction
of excellent human qualities far, far,
from that desire which reduces to ashes
a lifetime harvest of reason,
close to those means which attract
the hearts of men: to this degree Frederick.

Ron Price
28 December 1996