It always makes me nervous when Nietzsche starts talking about things like writing with blood because, well, it doesn’t sound like a healthy writing practice. But what he says about readers and writing for readers makes me think.
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From Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra (tr. R.J. Hollingdale):
Of all that is written I love only that which is written with blood. Write with blood: and you will discover that blood is spirit.
It is not easy to understand the blood of another: I hate the reading idler.
He who knows the reader does nothing further for the reader. Another century of readers–and spirit itself with stink.
That everyone is allowed to learn to read will in the long run ruin not only writing but thinking, too.
Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.
He who writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read, he wants to be learned by heart.
I don’t think we have to write for readers just because people know how to read. LIteracy improves the lives of readers and writers, and most of us are both. Who but Nietzsche would take that away?