
“The light teaches you to convert life into a festive promenade.”
“Head,” p. 107
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “Is It Possible to Write a Poem”
Essay 2, Section 6
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
Source: On the Genealogy of Morals/Ecce Homo
“The light teaches you to convert life into a festive promenade.”
“Head,” p. 107
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “Is It Possible to Write a Poem”
“On the Festival of Britain, "We are consciously and deliberately determined to make history."”
"Scope of 1951 Festival". The Times: p. 3a. 9 June 1949.
In the three rhetorical questions that end this quote, Pieper alludes to the Nazis' elaborately stage-managed "festivals", in particular the Nuremberg Rally, the subject of Leni Riefenstahl's classic propaganda documentary, Triumph of the Will.
Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), Leisure, the Basis of Culture, pp. 51–52
Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), Leisure, the Basis of Culture, p. 53
“The proto-historic religious festivities”
Vom Schmetterling zur Doppelaxt, p. 22-23.
Vom Schmetterling zur Doppelaxt (1990)
Context: The proto-historic religious festivities [of the Maternal Megalith Culture] were strongly sexual in nature. They commonly culminated in what today is referred to as group sex and is socially regarded as extremely negative nowadays. In fact, the inherent potential of sexuality is to decrease social conflict, for indeed sexual activity not only gratifies, it pacifies as well. Our biological anthropological heritage disposes humanity to far more diverse varieties of sexual behaviours than our modern repressive culture permits or deems 'socially acceptable'. Abhorring them as unmentionable immoralities, white colonial masters often gladly took to using all the sexual customs of many autochtonous peoples as excuses to oppress and severely decimate the tribes in question, even doing so with a perfect peace of conscience. Islam's campaigners in the Orient, pioneers of Confucianism in China, and Caucasian Christians used their best endeavours to destroy root and branch of all surviving sexual rites they came across; that which had priorly been sacred practice became re-defined as sinful lewdness and perversion. These religious processes yielded widespread absence of such customs even in many primitive cultures by the modern period. Similar proto-historic customs [of the Maternal Megalith Culture] were wiped out in a comparable fashion [by Indo-Europeans], with structurally similar yet not identical reasonings given, for all patriarchal ethnics regard orgiastic indulgences as corruptive to their social fabric.
Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), Leisure, the Basis of Culture, pp. 50–51
“The greatness of a culture can be found in its festivals”
page 75
Dark Rooms (2002)
Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), Leisure, the Basis of Culture, pp. 33–34
The Kerenyi quote is from Karl Kerenyi, Die antike Religion (Amsterdam, 1940), p. 66.