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by Anthony M. Ludovici The New English Weekly 30, 1946–7, pp. 49–50 - p. 49 - His very gait, measured and dignified, proclaimed that he felt himself on parade during this consecrated hour, and he strongly deprecated the tearing, bustling and pointlessly hurrying antics of the crowds about him. It was as if he bore in his breast a crystal vessel full to the brim with the spirit of serenity, and to spill a drop was to him an act of sacrilege. His profession was medicine, but he was as unlike the popular idea of a doctor as can be imagined, and always assured me that, had it not been for his patients, he would have been the happiest of medical men. He was for a time Police Surgeon of the British Museum District of West Central London, but I gathered that the work was most distasteful to him. When I first met him in the late summer of 1908, he struck me as being the most handsome Jew I had ever come across, and I soon found that his great popularity with women bore out his repeated contention that "women listen with their eyes". Truth to tell, however, there was modesty in this implicit rationalization of his attractiveness to women, because as a conversationalist he was always extremely entertaining and often witty. His features were exceptionally finely chiselled and free from any of that heaviness of lips, nose and eyelids which so often characterizes the Jew. The broad Schmisse running along his left cheekbone to his ear and temple revealed him as a man of Academic training, whilst his well-shaped hands, of which he was justly proud, were an indication of his good breeding. His manner was cordial and engaging. He knew what to say to put strangers of all sorts at their ease, and his wide erudition quickly corrected the impression many might at first receive that he was no more than a dandified wag. His Stammtisch at the old Vienna Café, opposite Mudie's, was always well attended. Old habitués would come there day after day to enjoy his company, and it was usually at this table that new friendships were formed. He had the appearance of opulence and, at the time of which I am speaking, he was in fact, as things then were, comfortably off. He could afford to be He knew the literature of four European countries, and his discerning taste made him a stimulating and instructive guide and critic. He admired most those writers who had blazed the trail for the second renaissance of classical antiquity which Nietzsche had brought to full flower, and he rendered an invaluable service to the English reading public of the day by compelling attention to a whole school of Continental writers who, though familiar to the Nietzsche student, were almost unknown in this country before the turn of the century. He was one of A. R. Orage's earliest associates in the "New Age" days, and was responsible for discovering many a new contributor, at a time when Arnold Bennett, Squire and other authors, now celebrated, were constantly writing for that journal. Among the English authors whom he particularly favoured and liked to quote were Samuel Butler, George Gissing (especially The Whirlpool), Blake, Byron and Disraeli, and his French idol was, of course, Stendhal. He had much more than the average cultivated German's knowledge of Goethe, Heine and Schiller, and was never at a loss for an apt quotation from any of them, or, for that matter, from such classical authors as Horace and Tacitus. But the passion of his life was the study and popularization of the writings of Nietzsche, and in this work he rendered a signal service to English letters and to the spread of serious culture from one country to another. His initial outlay in financing the authorized English translation of Nietzsche's complete works must have been substantial, and his industry as editor of the series was certainly inexhaustible. He may ultimately have recovered much of the money he invested in this venture, for some of the volumes sold exceedingly well; but, as far as I was aware, he never counted on this return, and would have been content with the achievement of having given the country of his adoption the chance of benefitting from the wisdom of his master. Nevertheless, he was not what, at the time, we of the Nietzsche circle in London regarded as a "whole-hogger" Nietzschean. He always firmly rejected the doctrine of the eternal recurrence, thought it incompatible with Nietzsche's hortatory pronouncements of his new and positive values and, in his heart of hearts, was inclined to regard it as fantastic. In his appreciation of the works, he inclined to set the Nietzsche of the third period slightly below that of the middle period, though to this middle period he added enough of the third and latest phase to include the ZARATHUSTRA. Again, in regard to this, he rather shunned the more mystical sections of Part IV, and confessed himself unable to afford me any help with them when I was preparing my commentary. But he was too devoted a disciple to allow these difficulties and doubts to appear in his public utterances on Nietzsche, just as he also consistently eschewed any reference to his master's heavy obligations to such of his predecessors as Felix Dahn, Heine (especially in respect of the attack on Christianity), Karl Gutzkow, Wilhelm Jordan, etc. Dr Oscar Levy died in his eightieth year, and a good half of his life had been spent in England. He is likely to be remembered quite as much as the devoted admirer and English impresario of the iconoclastic and brilliant innovator, Friedrich Nietzsche, as the discerning intermediary or middleman between nations, who familiarizes them with each other's culture, reveals treasures obscured by fashion alone and hardly ever by inferior worth, and thereby enriches the intellectual life of a continent. Personally I acknowledge a very deep indebtedness to him, and although we had our differences about many an aspect of Nietzscheism, I think that, as regards the fundamentals of Nietzsche's teaching — those features of it, that is to say, which are really his own innovations — we were always entirely agreed. But it is those very features which, as Oscar Levy well knew, constitute the real difficulty to the reader who comes fresh to the works, and many who wished to attempt the approach, Levy, in spite of his zeal as an impresario and for compassionate reasons alone, often gently turned away. Needless to say, many such were women whom, in his chivalry, he wished to spare the pain of it all. |
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