Re: JANUARY 1, 2005 - NANAE IS DEAD

[Moris]

deeply into womanliness. It is only too likely that the efforts to
emancipate women will result not in giving her real freedom, in letting
her reach free-will, but merely in enlarging the range of her caprices.
. . .

A woman who had really given up her sexual self, who wished to be at
peace would be no longer "woman." She would have ceased to be "woman,"
she would have received the inward and spiritual sign as well as the
outward form of regeneration.

Can such a thing be?

There is no absolute woman, but even to say "yes" to the above question
is like giving one's assent to a miracle. Emancipation will not make
woman happier; it will not ensure her salvation, and it is a long road
which leads to God. No being in the transition stage between freedom and
slavery can be happy. But will woman choose to abandon slavery in order
to become unhappy? The question is not merely if it is possible for
woman to become moral. It is this: is it possible for woman really to
wish to realize the problem of existence, the conception of guilt? Can
she really desire freedom? This can happen only by her being penetrated
by an ideal, brought to the guiding star. It can happen only if the
categorical imperative were to become active in woman; only if woman can
place herself in relation to the moral idea, the idea of hum

[Greg Samson]

in a moment! No, I know woman - from her weak side, that is to
say, I know her. I shrink from no terror, I shrink from no means to make
sure about what I have learned; for I am a madman, a madman one must be
to understand her, and if one has not been one before, one will become a
madman once one understands her. The robber has his hiding place by the
noisy highroad, and the ant lion has his funnel in the loose sand, and
the pirate his haunts by the roaring sea: likewise have I my fashion
shop in the very midst of the teeming streets, seductive, irresistible
to woman as is the Venusberg to men. There, in a fashion shop, one
learns to know woman in a practical way and without any theoretical ado.

Now, if fashion meant nothing than that woman in the heat of her desire
threw off all her clothing - why, that would at least mean something.
But this is not the case, fashion is not plain sensuality, not tolerated
debauchery, but an illicit trade in indecency authorized as proper. And,
just as in heathen Prussia the marriageable girl wore a bell whose
ringing served as a signal to the men, likewise is a woman's existence
in fashion a continual bell ringing, not for debauchees but for
lickerish voluptuaries. People hold Fortune to b