The downstairs neighbors are having
a bad day. Last night they had
a bad night. Yesterday, at least
during those parts of the day
when I was at home, they were
having a bad day. The night before
last, etc.
I try not to listen. (I want
to listen!) I try not to press
my ear against the floor and I
am almost always successful.
It hardly matters. This old
building is built like a honeycomb,
sound traveling well up and down
the cells. (They’re shouting now
below me—I want to listen!)
Even without pressing my ear
against the hardwood floor,
I can hear “Fuck!” and “I
told you!” and “Don’t” and
“Help me, you never help me,
I have to do all the fucking”
and then it trails off and
then the dogs bark. Yes, they
have dogs, two of them. They
bark. Sometimes they even howl.
“Fuck” is the word easiest
to hear in this honeycomb. It’s
like the punch of a fist.
“Christianity robbed us of the harvest of the culture of the ancient world, it later went on to rob us of the harvest of the culture of Islam. The wonderful Moorish cultural world of Spain, more closely related to us at bottom, speaking more directly to our senses and taste, than Greece and Rome, was trampled down (—I do not say by what kind of feet—): why? because it was noble, because it owed its origin to manly instincts, because it said Yes to life even in the rare and exquisite treasures of Moorish life!… Later on, the Crusaders fought against something they would have done better to lie down in the dust before—a culture compared with which even our nineteenth century may well think itself very impoverished and very ‘late.’—They wanted booty, to be sure: the Orient was rich…. But let us not be prejudiced! The Crusades—higher piracy, that is all! German knighthood, Viking Knighthood at bottom, was there in its element: the Church knew only too well what German knighthood can be had for…. The German knights, always the ‘Switzers’ of the Church, always in the service of all the bad instincts of the Church—but well paid…. That it is precisely with the aid of German swords, German blood and courage, that the Church has carried on its deadly war against everything noble on earth! A host of painful questions arises at this point. The German aristocracy is virtually missing in the history of higher culture: one can guess the reason…. Christianity, alcohol—the two great means of corruption.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ (trans. Hollingdale; emphases and ellipses in original)