DIE SCHERE #14: Notes

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DIE SCHERE #14: Notes
This text is about the beginnings of a historical change. To emphasize their 
near-imperceptibility the metaphor of music is used here: those beginnings are 
composed of many voices tuned to each other. Accordingly, to perceive the essence 
of the beginnings of a historical change is an act of intuition like perceiving 
the key of a musical chord as soon as it is struck. The metaphors of conception 
and labour pains now serve to inculcate the immediacy of that intuitive 
perception. By using a passive construction ("wird... im Kern erfaßt") EJ avoids 
saying who might be capable of such powers of perception and who thus can grasp 
that a historical change is about to take place, long before the further 
"musical" development of history has an effect on people's decisions. No, at the 
moment when that music starts it is not yet music but a mere signal which is not 
even subject to the mathematical (and thus measurable) laws of music. It is a 
signal that has a prophetic content which cannot be perceived by the ear. By 
being a beginning of something, developing toward something else, also by 
involving a prophecy, the phenomenon EJ addresses here is after all something 
other than music –– because music as such (i.e. contrary to a melody or a 
symphony) is pure motion without any trace of thing-ness (1), pure motion that 
has not specific direction and thus no destination. 
I find this text difficult to understand mainly because of that passive 
construction mentioned above. Who is it who, in EJ's opinion, is capable of 
grasping those very first chords of a historical change? EJ does not just say 
here that the beginnings of a historical change are nearly imperceptible and thus 
difficult to make out. Rather, he seems to imply that it takes a prophet or a 
divinely inspired visionary to be able to see the seeds of time as soon as they 
are sown. Or does EJ even insinuate that he believes to have himself such 
extraordinary powers? 

(1) Music as "reine, vom Dinglichen befreite Bewegung": an idea close to the 
thinking of Eduard von Hanslick, from whose treatise VOM MUSIKALISCH-SCHÖNEN 
(1854) this quotation might be taken.