Latest / The Philosophy Insights Collection / 04 - Why I Write Such Excellent Books, Part 2 - Ecce Homo - Friedrich Nietzsche

Transcript

04 - Why I Write Such Excellent Books, Part 2 - Ecce Homo - Friedrich Nietzsche · The Philosophy Insights Collection

0:00
Why I write such excellent books. Part two Human, All Too Human?
0:09
One Human, All Too Human, with its two sequels, is a memorial
0:16
of a crisis. It is called a book for free spirits. Almost every
0:22
sentence in it is the expression of a triumph. By means of it,
0:27
I purged myself of everything in me which was foreign to my nature. Idealism
0:34
is foreign to me. The title of the book means, where ye see
0:39
ideal things, I see human alas all too human things. I know men
0:47
better. The word free spirit in this book must not be understood as anything
0:54
else than a spirit that has become free, that has once more taken possession
1:00
of itself. My tone, the pitch of my voice, has completely changed.
1:07
The book will be thought clever, cool, and at times both hard
1:11
and scornful. A certain spirituality of noble tastes seems to be ever struggling to
1:19
dominate a passionate torrent at its feet. In this respect, there is some
1:26
sense in the fact that it was the one hundredth anniversary of Voltaire's death that
1:32
served, so to speak, as an excuse for the publication of the book
1:37
as early as eighteen seventy eight. For Voltaire as the opposite of everyone who
1:45
wrote after him, was above all a grandee of the intellect, precisely what
1:49
I am. Also the name of Voltaire on one of my writings. That
1:56
was verily a step forwards in my direction. Looking into this book a little
2:02
more closely, you perceive a pitiless spirit who knows all the secret hiding places
2:08
in which ideals are wont to skulk, where they find their dungeons, and,
2:15
as it were, their last refuge. With a torch in my hand,
2:19
the light of which is not by any means a flickering one, I
2:23
illuminate this nether world with beams that cut like blades. It is war,
2:30
but war without powder, and smoke without warlike attitudes, without pathos, and
2:38
contorted limbs. All these things would still be idealism. One error after another
2:44
is quietly laid upon ice. The ideal is not refuted. It freezes.
2:51
Here. For instance, Genius freezes around the corner, the Saint freezes under
2:58
a thick icicle, the hero freezes, and in the end, faith itself
3:04
freezes. So called conviction and also pity are considerably cooled, and almost everywhere
3:13
the thing in itself is freezing to death. Two. This book was begun
3:23
during the first musical festival at by Right, A feeling of profound strangeness towards
3:29
everything that surrounded me. There is one of its first conditions. He who
3:35
has any notion of the visions which even at that time had flitted across my
3:40
path, we'll be able to guess what I felt. When one day I
3:46
came to my senses in by Right. It was just as if I had
3:51
been dreaming. Where on earth was I? I recognized nothing that I saw.
3:58
I scarcely recognized Wagner. It was in vain that I called up reminiscences
4:04
Tribschen, the remote island of Bliss. Not the shadow of a resemblance.
4:12
The incomparable days devoted to the laying of the first stone, the small group
4:17
of initiates who celebrated them, and who were far from lacking fingers for the
4:24
handling of delicate things, not the shadow of a resemblance. What had happened,
4:30
Wagner had been translated into German. The Wagnerite had become master of Wagner
4:38
German art, the German master German beer. We who know only too well
4:45
the kind of refined artists and cosmopolitanism in taste to which alone Wagner's art can
4:51
appeal, were besides ourselves at the sight of Wagner bedecked with German virtues.
4:59
I think I know the Wagner write. I have experienced three generations of them,
5:04
from Brendel of blessed Memory, who confounded Wagner with Hegel, to the
5:11
idealists of by the Right Gazette, who confounded Wagner with themselves. I have
5:16
been the recipient of every kind of confession about Wagner, from beautiful souls my
5:25
kingdom for just one intelligent word in very truth, a blood curdling company,
5:31
Nol Pole and Cole and others of their kidney to infinity. Translator's footnote.
5:42
Knol and a Poll were both writers on music. Coal, however, which
5:47
literally means cabbage is slang expression denoting superior nonsense. And translator's note, there
5:56
was not a single abortion that was lacking among them. No, not even
6:00
the antisemite poor Wagner, into whose hands had he fallen if only he had
6:06
gone into a herd of swine. But among Germans some day for the edification
6:13
of posterity, one ought really to have a genuine Bayroutien stuffed, or better
6:18
still preserved in spirit. For it is precisely spirit that is lacking in this
6:25
quarter. With this inscription at the foot of the jar a sample of the
6:30
spirit whereon the German Empire was founded. But enough, in the middle of
6:36
festivities, I suddenly packed my trunk and left the place for a few weeks.
6:42
Despite the fact that a charming Parisian lady sought to comfort me, I
6:46
excused myself to Wagner simply by means of a fatalistic telegram in a little spot
6:54
called Klingenbrung, deeply buried in the recesses of the Boumwald, I carried my
7:00
melancholy and my contempt for Germans about with me like an illness, and from
7:06
time to time, under the general title of the plowshare, I wrote a
7:12
sentence or two down in my note books, nothing but severe psychological stuff,
7:18
which it is possible may have found its way into human all too human.
7:27
Three. That which had taken place in me then was not only a brooch
7:33
with Wagner. I was suffering from a general aberration of my instincts, of
7:39
which had mere isolated blunder. Whether it were Wagner or my professorship at Balah
7:46
was nothing more than a symptom. I was seized with a fit of impatience
7:50
with myself. I saw that it was high time that I should turn my
7:56
thoughts upon my own lot. In a thrice, I realized with appalling clearness,
8:03
how much time had already been squandered, how futile and how senseless my
8:09
whole existence as a philologist appeared by the side of my life task. I
8:13
was ashamed of this false modesty. Ten years were behind me, during which,
8:20
to tell a truth, the nourishment of my spirit had been at a
8:24
standstill, during which I had added not a single useful fragment to my knowledge,
8:30
and had forgotten countless things in the pursuit of a hotch potch of dry
8:35
as dust scholarship to crawl with meticulous care and short sighted eyes through old Greek
8:43
metricans, that is what I had come to. Moved to pity. I
8:48
saw myself, quite thin, quite emaciated. Realities were only too plainly absent
8:56
from my stock of knowledge, and what the ideal it is were worth the
9:00
devil alone, you are positively burning. Thirst overcame me, and from that
9:05
time forward I had done literally nothing else than study psychology, medicine and natural
9:13
science. I even returned to the actual study of history only when my life
9:18
task compelled me to. It was at that time, too, that I
9:24
first divined the relation between the instinctively repulsive occupation, a so called vocation,
9:31
which is the last thing to which one is called, and that need of
9:37
lulling a feeling of emptiness and hunger by means of an art which is an
9:41
narcotic by means of Wagner's art. For instance, after looking carefully about me,
9:48
I have discovered that a large number of young men are all in the
9:52
same state of distress. One kind of unnatural practice perforce leads to another.
10:00
In Germany, or rather to avoid all ambiguity in the Empire, only too
10:07
many are condemned to determine their choice too soon and then to pine away beneath
10:13
a burden that they can no longer throw off. Translator's footnote. Needless to
10:18
say, nietzsure distinguishes between Bismarcki in Germany and that other Germany, Austria,
10:26
Switzerland and the Baltic provinces where the German language is also spoken, and of
10:31
translator's note, such creatures crave for Wagner as for an Opate, They are
10:39
thus able to forget themselves, to be rid of themselves for a moment.
10:43
What am I saying? For five or six hours? Four? At this
10:50
time my instincts turn resolutely against any further yielding or following on my part,
10:56
and any further misunderstanding of myself. Every kind of life, the most unfavorable
11:03
circumstances, illness, poverty, anything seemed to me preferable to that undignified selfishness
11:11
into which I had fallen in the first place, thanks to my ignorance and
11:16
youth, and in which I had afterwards remained owing to laziness, the so
11:22
called sense of duty. At this juncture there came to my help in a
11:26
way that I cannot sufficiently admire, and precisely at the right time that evil
11:33
heritage which I derive from my father's side of the family, and which at
11:39
bottom is no more than a predisposition to die young. Illness slowly liberated me
11:46
from the toils. It spared me any sort of sudden breach, any sort
11:52
of violent and offensive step. At that time I lost not a particle of
11:58
the good will of others, but rather added to my store illness likewise gave
12:03
me the right completely to reverse my mode of life. It not only allowed,
12:09
it actually commanded me to forget. It bestowed upon me in the necessity
12:16
of lying still, of having leisure, of waiting, and of exercising patience.
12:24
But all this means thinking the state of my eyes alone put an end
12:30
to all book wormishness, or in plain English philology. I was thus delivered
12:37
from books. For years I ceased from reading. And this was the greatest
12:43
boon I ever conferred upon myself, that nethermost self, which was, as
12:48
it were, entombed, and which had grown dumb because it had been forced
12:54
to listen perpetually to other selves. For that is what reading means. Slowly
13:01
awakened. At first, it was shy and doubtful, but at last it
13:05
spoke again. Never have I rejoiced more over my condition than during the sickest
13:13
and most painful moments of my life. You have only to examine the dawn
13:20
of Day, or perhaps the Wanderer and his Shadow Translator's footnote, Human All
13:26
to Human Part two in this edition end translator's footnote in order to understand what
13:33
this returned to myself actually meant. In itself. It was the highest kind
13:41
of recovery. My cure was simply the result of it. Five human all
13:52
to human. This monument of a course of vigorous self discipline, by means
13:58
of which I put an abrupt end to all the superior Buncombe idealism, beautiful
14:05
feelings and other effeminisis that had percolated into my being, was written principally in
14:13
Sorrento. It was finished and given definitive shape during a winter at Bala,
14:20
under conditions far less favorable than those in Sorrento. Truth to tell, it
14:28
was Peter Gast, at that time, a student at the University of Bala
14:33
and a devoted friend of mine, who was responsible for the book. With
14:37
my head wrapped in bandages and extremely painful, I dictated while he wrote and
14:43
corrected as he went along. To be accurate. He was the real composer,
14:48
whereas I was only the author. When the completed book ultimately reached me,
14:56
to the great surprise of the serious invalid I then was I sent,
15:01
among others, two copies to buy right thanks to a miraculous flash of intelligence
15:07
on the part of chance, there reached me precisely at the same time a
15:13
splendid copy of the past of our text with the following inscription from Wagner's pen
15:20
to his dear friend Friedrischnietzsche from Richard Wagner, Ecclesiastical Counselor. At this crossing
15:28
of the two books, I seemed to hear an ominous note. Did not
15:33
sound as if two swords had crossed At all events. We both felt this
15:39
was so, for each of us remained silent. At about this time the
15:45
first Bayreuth pamphlets appeared, and then I understood the move on my part,
15:50
for which it was high time incredible. Wagner had become pious six attitude to
16:00
myself at that time eighteen seventy six, and the unearthly certitude with which I
16:07
grasped my life task and all its world historical consequences, is well revealed throughout
16:14
the book, but more particularly in one very significant passage. Despite the fact
16:21
that with my instinctive cunning, I once more circumvented the use of the little
16:26
word. I not, however, this time, in order to shed world
16:32
historic glory on the names of Schopenhauer and Wagner, but that on another of
16:37
my friends, the excellent doctor Paul Ree fortunately much too acute a creature to
16:42
be deceived. Others were less subtle. Among my readers, I have a
16:48
number of hopeless people, the typical German professor, for instance, who can
16:53
always be recognized from the fact that, judging from the passage in question,
17:00
he feels compelled to regard the whole books as sort of superior realism. As
17:06
a matter of fact, it contradicts five or six of my friend's utterances.
17:11
Only read the Introduction to the Genealogy of Morals on this question. The passage
17:18
above referred to reads, what, after all, is the principal axiom to
17:23
which the boldest and coldest thinker, the author of the book on the Origin
17:30
of Moral Sensations Read Nietzsche, the first moralist, has attained by means of
17:37
his incisive and decisive analysis of human actions. The moral man, he says,
17:45
is no nearer to the intelligible metaphysical world than the physical man, for
17:51
there is no intelligible world. This theory hardened and sharpened under the hammer blow
17:59
of his life. Historical knowledge read the transvaluation of all values may some time
18:06
or other, perhaps in some future period eighteen ninety serve as the acts which
18:11
is applied to the root of the metaphysical need of man. Whether more as
18:17
a blessing than a curse to the general welfare, it is not easy to
18:22
say. But in any case, as a theory with the most important consequences,
18:27
at once fruitful and terrible, and looking into the world with that Janus
18:33
face which all great knowledge possesses. Translates footnote Human All to Human, Volume
18:41
one, Aphorism, thirty seven, end translator's footnote the dawn of day.
18:52
Thoughts about morality as a prejudice one with this book, I open my campaign
19:00
against morality, not that it is at all redolent of powder. You will
19:06
find quite another and much nicer smells in it, provided that you have any
19:11
keenness in your nostrils. There is nothing either of light or of heavy artillery
19:19
in his composition. And if its general end be a negative one, its
19:26
means are not so, means out of which the end follows like a logical
19:32
conclusion, not like a cannon shot. And if the reader takes leave of
19:37
this book with the feeling of timid caution in regard to everything which has hitherto
19:42
been honored and even worshiped under the name of morality, it does not alter
19:48
the fact that there is not one negative word, not one attack, and
19:53
not one single piece of malice in the whole work. On the contrary,
20:00
it lies in the sunshine, smooth and happy, like a marine animal basking
20:06
in the sun between two rocks. For after all, I was this marine
20:11
animal. Almost every sentence in the book was thought out, or rather caught
20:17
among that medley of rocks, in the neighborhood of Genoa, where I lived
20:22
quite alone, and exchange secrets with the ocean. Even to this day,
20:27
when by chance I happened to turn over the leaves of this book, almost
20:32
every sentence seems to me like a hook, by means of which I draw
20:37
something incomparable out of the depths. Its whole skin quivers with delicate shudders of
20:44
recollection. This book is conspicuous for no little art in gently catching things which
20:52
whisk rapidly and silently away, moments of which I call godlike lizards, not
20:59
with a cruelty of that young Greek god who simply transfercs the poor little beast,
21:04
but nevertheless with something pointed with a pen. There are so many dawns
21:12
which have not yet shed their light. This Indian maxim is written over the
21:18
doorway of this book, Where does its author seek that new morning, that
21:25
delicate read as yet undiscovered, with which another day ah, The whole series
21:30
of days, a whole world of new days, will begin in the transvaluation
21:37
of all values, in an emancipation from all moral values, in a saying
21:41
of Yea, and in an attitude of trust to all that which hitherto has
21:48
been forbidden, despised, and damned. This yea saying book projects its light,
21:56
its love, its tenderness over all evil things. It restores to them
22:02
their soul, their clear conscience, and their superior right and privilege to exist
22:07
on earth. Morality is not assailed. It simply ceases to be considered.
22:15
This book closes with a word or It is the only book which closes with
22:21
an or two. My life task is to prepare for humanity one supreme moment
22:33
in which it can come to its senses, a great noon, in which
22:37
it will turn its gaze backwards and forwards, in which it will step from
22:41
under the yoke of accidents and of priests, and for the first time set
22:47
the questions of the why and wherefore of humanity as a whole. This life
22:53
task naturally follows out of the conviction that mankind does not get on the right
23:00
road of its own accord, that it is by no means divinely ruled,
23:06
but rather that it is precisely under the cover of its most holy valuations,
23:11
that the instinct ob negation of corruption out of degeneration, have held such a
23:18
seductive sway. The question concerning the origin of moral valuations is therefore a matter
23:26
of the highest importance to me, because it determines the future of mankind.
23:33
The demand made upon us to believe that everything is really in the best hands,
23:38
that a certain book, the Bible, gives us the definite and comforting
23:44
assurance that there is a providence that wisely rules the fate of man, when
23:51
translated back into reality, amounts simply to this, namely, the will to
23:56
stifle the truth which maintains the reverse of all this, which is that hitherto
24:02
man has been in the worst possible hands, and that he has been governed
24:08
by the physiologically botched, the men of cunning and burning revengefulness, and the
24:15
so called saints, those slanderers of the world and traducers of humanity. The
24:23
definite proof of the fact that the priest, including the priest in disguise the
24:30
philosopher, has become master not only within a certain limited religious community, but
24:36
everywhere, And that the morality of decadence, the will to nonentity, has
24:41
become morality per se, is to be found in this, that altruism is
24:48
now an absolute value, and egotism is regarded with hostility everywhere. He who
24:55
disagrees with me on this point are regarded as infected. All the world disagrees
25:00
with me. To a psychologist alike, antagonism between values omits of no doubt.
25:07
If the most insignificant organ within the body neglects, however slightly, to
25:14
assert with absolute certainty its self preservative powers, its recuperative claims, and its
25:22
egotism, the whole system degenerates. The psychologist insists upon the removal of degenerated
25:30
parts. He denies all fellow feelings for such parts, and has not the
25:34
smallest feeling of pity for them. But the desire of the priest is precisely
25:41
the degeneration of the whole of mankind. Hence his preservation of that which is
25:48
degenerate. This is what his dominion costs humanity. What meaning have those lying
25:55
concepts whose handmaids of morality, soul, space, free will, God,
26:02
if that aim is not the physiological ruin of mankind, when earnestness is diverted
26:10
from the instincts that aim at self preservation and an increase if bodily energy,
26:15
i e. At an increase of life, When anemia is raised to an
26:22
ideal, and the contempt of the body is construed as the salvation of the
26:27
soul. What is all this if it is not a recipe for decadence,
26:34
loss of ballast, resistance offered to natural instincts, selflessness. In fact,
26:42
this is what has hitherto been known as morality. With the dawn of day,
26:51
I first engaged in a struggle against the morality of self renunciation, joyful
27:02
wisdom, Lagayachiensa one dawn of day is a yea saying book, profound but
27:11
clear and kindly. The same applies once more, and in the highest degree
27:18
to Lagayachiensa, in almost every sentence of this book. Profundity and playfulness go
27:26
gently hand in hand. A verse which expresses my gratitude for the most wonderful
27:32
month of January which I have ever lived. The whole book is a gift
27:37
sufficiently reveals the abyssmal depths from which wisdom has here become joyful Thou, who,
27:45
with cleaving fiery lances the stream of my soul from its ice doth free,
27:52
till with a rush and a roar it advances to enter with glorious hoping,
27:57
the sea brighter to see, and purer ever free in the bonds of
28:03
thy sweet constraints, so it praises thy wondrous endeavor. January, Thou beauteous
28:10
saint. Translator's note translated for Joyful Wisdom by Paul V. Cohen and translator's
28:18
note, Who can here be in any doubt as to what glorious hoping means?
28:23
Here when he has realized the diamond beauty of the first of Zarathustra's words
28:30
as they appear in the glow of light are the close of the fourth book,
28:37
or when he reads the granite sentences at the end of the third book,
28:41
wherein a fate for all times is first given a formula. The songs
28:47
of Prince Free as a Bird, which for the most part were written in
28:51
sicily, remind me quite forcibly of that provincial notion of Gaya Scienza, of
28:59
that union of singer, knight and free Spirit, which distinguishes that wonderfully early
29:06
culture of the Pavensals from all ambiguous cultures. The last poem of all,
29:14
to the Mistral, is an exuberant dance song in which, if you please,
29:19
the new Spirit dances freely upon the corpse of morality. Is a perfect
29:26
Pavan salism. Thus spake Zarathustra, a book for all and none one.
29:41
I now wish to relate the history of Zarathustra. The fundamental idea of the
29:47
work, the eternal recurrence, the highest formula of a yay saying to life
29:53
that can ever be attained, was first conceived in the month of August eighte
30:00
teen eighty one. I made a note of the idea on a sheet of
30:03
paper with the PostScript six thousand feet beyond man and time. That day I
30:11
happened to be wandering through the woods alongside the lake of silver Plana, and
30:17
I halted, not far from Surli, beside a huge rock that towered aloft
30:22
like a pyramid. It was then that the thought struck me. Looking back
30:29
now, I find that exactly two months before this inspiration I had an omen
30:33
of its coming in the form of a sudden and decisive change in my tastes,
30:38
more particularly in music. The whole of Zarathustra might perhaps be classified under
30:47
the rubric music. At all events, the essential condition of its production was
30:53
a second birth within me of the art of hearing. In Recrao, a
31:00
small mountain resort near Vicenza, where I spent the spring of eighteen eighty one,
31:07
I and my friend Maestro Peter Gast, who was also one who had
31:11
been born again, discovered that the Phoenix music hovered over us in lighter and
31:18
brighter plumage than it had ever worn before. If therefore, I now calculated
31:26
from that day forward the sudden production of the book and the most unlikely circumstances.
31:33
In February eighteen eighty three, the last part out of which I quoted
31:37
a few lines in my preface, was written precisely in the Hallowed hour.
31:42
When Richard Wagner gave up the ghost in Venice, I come to the conclusion
31:48
that the period of gestation covered eighteen months. This period of exactly eighteen months
31:56
might suggest, at least to Buddhists, that I am in reality a female
32:00
elephants. The interval was devoted to the Gaya Scienza, which contains hundreds of
32:08
indications of the proximity of something unparalleled. For after all, it shows the
32:15
beginning of Zarathustra, since it presents Zarathustra's fundamental thought in the last aphorism.
32:24
But one of the fourth book to this interval also belongs that hymn to Life
32:31
for a mixed choir and orchestra, the score of which was published in Leipzig
32:37
two years ago by E. V. Fritsch, and which gave perhaps no
32:44
slight indication of my spiritual state during this year in which the essentially Yea saying
32:52
Pathos, which I call the tragic Pathos, completely filled me heart and limb.
33:00
One day people will sing it to my memory. The text, let
33:05
it be well understood, as there is some misunderstanding abroad on this point,
33:09
is not by me. It was the astounding inspiration of a young Russian lady,
33:16
Miss lou von Salomey, with whom I was then on friendly terms.
33:22
He who is in any way able to make sense of the last words of
33:27
the poem will divine why I preferred and admired it. There is greatness in
33:32
them. Pain is not regarded as an objection to existence, and if thou
33:39
hast noblest left to crown me. Lead on thou hast thy sorrow. Still
33:47
may be that my music is also great. In this passage, the last
33:52
note of the oboe by the bye is c sharp. Not see the latter
33:57
is a misprint. During the following winter, I was living on that charming,
34:01
peaceful Gulf of Rapallo, not far from Genoa, which cuts inland between
34:07
Chaivari and Cape Porto Fino. My health was not very good. The winter
34:14
was cold and exceptionally rainy, and the small albago in which I lived was
34:20
so close to the water that at night my sleep was disturbed if the sea
34:24
was rough. These circumstances were surely the very reverse of favorable. And yet
34:31
in spite of it all, and as if in proof of my belief that
34:37
everything decisive comes to life in defiance of every obstacle, it was precisely during
34:44
this winter, and in the midst of these unfavorable circumstances, that my Zarathustra
34:50
originated. In the morning I used to start out in a southerly direction up
34:55
the glorious road to Tsali, which rises up through a of pines and gives
35:01
one a view far out to sea. In the afternoon, or as often
35:07
as my health allowed, I walked round the whole bay from Saint Margherita to
35:12
beyond Porta Fino. This spot affected me all the more deeply because it was
35:17
so dearly loved by the Emperor Frederick the Third. In the autumn of eighteen
35:22
eighty six, I chanced to be there again when he was revisiting this small,
35:29
forgotten world of happiness for the last time. It was on these two
35:35
roads that all Zarathustra came to me. Above all Zarathustra himself as a type,
35:43
I ought rather to say that it was on these walks that he waylaid
35:47
me two. In order to understand this type, you must first be quite
35:58
clear concerning its fundamental physiological condition. This condition is what I call great healthiness.
36:07
In regard to this idea, I cannot make my meaning more plain or
36:13
more personal than I have already done. In one of the last aphorisms,
36:17
number three hundred and eighty two of the fifth book of the gay Jasienza,
36:24
we knew nameless and unfathomable creatures, so reads the passage. We first things
36:31
of a future still unproved. We who have a new end in view,
36:37
also require new means to that end, that is to say, a new
36:42
healthiness, a stronger, keener, tougher, bolder, and merrier healthiness than
36:49
any that has existed. Heretofore, he who longs to feel in his own
36:53
soul the whole range of values and aims that have prevailed on earth until his,
37:00
and to sail around all the coasts of this ideal Mediterranean. See who
37:07
from the adventures of his own inmost experience, would fain know how it feels
37:12
to be a conqueror and a discoverer of the ideal, As also how it
37:17
is with the artist, the saint, the legislator, the sage, the
37:23
scholar, the man of piety, and the godlike anchorite of your Such a
37:30
man requires one thing above all for his purpose, and that is great healthiness,
37:38
such healthiness as he not only possesses, but also constantly acquires, and
37:44
must acquire, because he is continually sacrificing it again, and is compelled to
37:50
sacrifice it. And now, therefore, after having been long on the way,
37:58
we argonauts of the idea, whose pluck is greater than prudence would allow,
38:02
and who are often shipwrecked and bruised. But as I have said,
38:07
healthier than people would like to admit, dangerously healthy, and forever recovering our
38:14
health. It would seem as if we had before us, as a reward
38:19
for all our toils a country still undiscovered, the horizon of which no one
38:24
has yet seen, a beyond to every country and every refuge of the ideal
38:30
that man has ever known, a world so overflowing with beauty, strangeness,
38:37
doubt, terror, and divinity, that both our curiosity and our lust of
38:44
possession are frantic with eagerness. Alas how, in the face of such vistas,
38:51
and with such burning desire in our conscience and consciousness, could we still
38:57
be content with the man of the present day. This is bad, indeed,
39:04
But that we should regard his worthiest aims and hopes with ill concealed amusement,
39:09
or perhaps give them no thought at all, is inevitable. Another ideal
39:15
now leads us on, a wonderful, seductive ideal full of danger, the
39:22
pursuit of which we should be loath to urge upon anyone, because we are
39:27
not so ready to acknowledge anyone's right to it. The ideal of a spirit
39:34
who plays ingeniously, that is to say, involuntarily and as the outcome of
39:40
superabundant energy and power, with everything that hitherto has been called wholly good,
39:49
inviolable, and divine, to whom even the loftiest thing that the people have
39:55
with reason made their measure of value, would be no better than a danger,
40:01
a decay, and an abasement, or at least a relaxation and temporary
40:08
forgetfulness of self, the ideal of humanly superhuman well being and goodwill, which
40:15
often enough will seem inhuman as when, for instance, it stands beside all
40:22
past earnestness on earth and all past solemnities. In hearing speech tone look morality
40:31
and duty as their most lifelike, an unconscious parody, but with which nevertheless
40:39
great earnestness, perhaps alone begins. The first note of interrogation is affixed,
40:47
the fate of the soul changes, the hour hand moves, and tragedy begins.
40:59
Three. Has anyone, at the end of the nineteenth century any distinct
41:05
notion of what poets of a strong age understood by the word inspiration, If
41:12
not, I will describe it. If one had the smallest vestige of superstition
41:19
left in one, it would hardly be possible completely to set aside the idea
41:24
that one is the mere incarnation, mouthpiece, or medium of an almighty power.
41:31
The idea of revelation, in the sense that something which profoundly convulses and
41:37
upsets one becomes suddenly visible and audible with indescribable certainty and accuracy, describes the
41:45
simple fact one hears, one does not seek, one takes, one does
41:52
not ask. Who gives a thought suddenly flashes up like lightning. It comes
41:59
within a necessity, without faltering. I have never had any choice in the
42:04
matter. There is an ecstasy so great that the immense strain of it is
42:09
sometimes relaxed by a flood of tears, during which one's steps now involuntarily rush
42:16
and anon involuntarily lag. There is the feeling that one is utterly out of
42:22
hand with the very distinct consciousness of an endless number of fine thrills and titillations
42:30
to sending to one's very toes. There is a depth of happiness in which
42:37
the most painful and gloomy paths do not act as antitheses to the rest,
42:45
but are produced and required as necessary shades of color. In such an overflow
42:52
of light, there is an instinct for rhythmic relations which embraces a whole world
43:00
forms length. The need of a wide embracing rhythm is almost the measure of
43:07
the force of an inspiration, a sort of counterpart to its pressure and tension.
43:15
Everything happens quite involuntarily, as if in a tempestuous outburst of freedom,
43:22
of absoluteness, of power and divinity. The involuntary nature of the figures and
43:30
similism is the most remarkable thing. One loses all perception of what is imagery
43:37
and metaphor. Everything seems to present itself as the readiest, the truest,
43:45
and simplest means of expression. It actually seems to use one of Zarathustra's own
43:52
phrases, as if all things came to one and offered themselves as similis.
44:00
Here do all things come caressingly to thy discourse and flatter THEE, For they
44:07
would fain ride upon thy, back on every simile. Thou ridest here unto
44:12
every truth, Here fly open, unto THEE, all the speech and word
44:17
shrines of the world. Here would all existence become speech. Here would all
44:24
becoming learn of THEE how to speak. This is my experience of inspiration.
44:32
I do not doubt, but that I should have to go back thousands of
44:37
years before I could find another who could say to me it is mine also
44:49
four For a few weeks afterwards, I lay an invalid in Genoa. Then
44:57
followed a melancholy spring in Rome, where I only just managed to live.
45:04
And this was no easy matter. This city, which is absolutely unsuited to
45:09
the poet author of Zarathustra, and for the choice of which I was not
45:15
responsible, made me inordinately miserable. I tried to leave it. I wanted
45:22
to go to Aquilla, the opposite of Rome in every respect, and actually
45:28
found it in a spirit of hostility towards that city, just as I also
45:32
shall found a city some day as a memento of an atheist and a genuine
45:38
enemy of the Church, a person very closely related to me, the Great
45:44
Hohenstaufen, the Emperor Frederick the Second. But fate lay behind it all I
45:51
had to return again to Rome. In the end, I was obliged to
45:55
be satisfied with the Piazza Barberini. After I had exerted myself in Vain to
46:01
find an anti Christian quarter. I fear that on one occasion, to avoid
46:07
bad smells as much as possible. I actually inquired at the Palazzo del Curinali
46:14
whether they could not provide a quiet room for a philosopher in a chamber high
46:20
above the piazza I just mentioned, from which one obtained a general view of
46:25
Rome and could hear the fountains splashing far below. The loneliest of all songs,
46:31
as composed the Night Song. About this time I was obsessed by an
46:37
unspeakably sad melody, the refrain of which I recognized in the words dead through
46:45
immortality. In the summer, finding myself once more in the sacred place where
46:52
the first thought of Zarathustra flashed like a light across my mind, I conceived
46:59
the second part ten days sufficed. Neither for the second, the first,
47:06
nor the third parts have ever required a day longer. In the ensuing winter,
47:13
beneath the halkon sky of Nice, which then for the first time poured
47:17
its light into my life, I found the third Zarathustra and came to the
47:24
end of my task, the whole having occupied me scarcely a year. Many
47:31
hidden corners and heights in the country round about Nice are hallowed for me by
47:37
moments that I can never forget that decisive chapter entitled Old and New Tables,
47:45
was composed during the arduous ascent from the station to Etza, that wonderful Moorish
47:52
village in the rocks. During those moments when my creative energy flowed most plentiful,
48:00
my muscular activity was always greatest. The body is inspired. Let us
48:06
waive the question of soul. I might often have been seen dancing in those
48:12
days, and could then walk for seven or eight hours on end over the
48:15
hills without a suggestion or fatigue. I slept well and laughed a good deal.
48:22
I was perfectly robust and patient. Five. With the exception of these
48:31
periods of industry lasting ten days, the years I spent during the production of
48:37
Zarathustra and thereafter were for me years of unparalleled distress. A man pays dearly
48:46
for being immortal. To this end, he must die many times over during
48:52
his life. There is such a thing as what I call the rancor of
48:57
greatness. Everything great, whether a work or a deed, once it is
49:01
completed, turns immediately against its author. The very fact that he is its
49:08
author makes him weak. At this time, he can no longer endure his
49:14
deed. He can no longer look it full in the face. To have
49:19
something at on's back which one could never have willed, something to which the
49:23
knot of human destiny is attached, and to be forced henceforth to bear it
49:30
on one's shoulders, Why it almost crushes one the rancor of greatness. A
49:38
somewhat different experience is the uncanny silence that reigns about one. Solitude has seven
49:45
skins, which nothing can penetrate. One goes among men, one greets friends,
49:52
but these things are only new deserts. The looks of those one meets
49:59
no longer bears greeting at the best when encounters a sort of revolt. This
50:06
feeling of revolt I suffered in varying degrees of intensity at the hands of almost
50:10
everyone who came near me. It would seem that nothing inflects a deeper wound
50:17
than suddenly to make one's distance felt. Those noble natures are scarce, who
50:24
know not how to live unless they can revere. A third thing is the
50:30
absurd susceptibility of the skin to small pinpricks, a kind of helplessness in the
50:37
presence of all small things. This seems to me a necessary outcome of the
50:43
appalling expenditure of all defensive forces, which is a first condition of every creative
50:51
act, of every act which proceeds from the most intimate, most secret,
50:57
and most concealed recesses of a man's being. The small defensive forces are thus,
51:05
as it were, suspended, and no fresh energy reaches them. I
51:09
even think it probable that one does not digest so well, that one is
51:15
less willing to move, and that one is much too open to sensations of
51:21
coldness and suspicion. Four. In a large number of cases, suspicion is
51:28
merely a blunder in etiology. On one occasion when I felt like this,
51:34
I became conscious of the proximity of a herd of cows, some time before
51:39
I could possibly have seen it with my eyes, simply owing to a return
51:45
in me of milder and more humane sentiments, They communicated warmth to me.
51:59
Six. This work stands alone. Do not let us mention the poets in
52:05
the same breath. Nothing perhaps, has ever been produced out of such a
52:09
superabundance of strength. My concept Deunesian here became the highest deed. Compared with
52:20
it, everything that other men have done seems poor and limited. The fact
52:25
that a girt or a shakspeare would not for an instant have known how to
52:30
take breath in this atmosphere of passion and of the heights. The fact that
52:37
by the side of Zarathustra, Dante is no more than a believer, and
52:44
not one who first creates the truth, that is to say, not a
52:49
world ruling spirit a fate. The fact that the poets of the Veda were
52:55
priests and not even fit to unfasten zarathia Ustra's sandal. All this is the
53:01
least of things, and gives no idea of the distance of the azure solitude
53:08
in which this work dwells. Zarathustra as an eternal right to say, I
53:16
draw around me circles and holy boundaries. Ever fewer are they that mount with
53:23
me to ever loftier heights. I build me a mountain range of ever holier
53:30
mountains. If all the spirit and goodness of every great soul were collected together,
53:37
the whole could not create a single one of Zarathustra's discourses. The ladder
53:45
upon which he rises and ascends is of boundless length. He has seen further,
53:52
he has willed further, and gone further than any other man. There
53:59
is contradiction in every word he utters, this most yea saying of all spirits.
54:05
Through him, all contradictions are bound up into a new unity. The
54:10
loftiest and the basest powers of human nature, the sweetest, the lightest,
54:17
and the most terrible, rushed forth from out One's spring with everlasting certainty.
54:25
Until his coming, no one knew what was height or depth, and still
54:30
less what was truth. There is not a single passage in this revelation of
54:37
truth which had already been anticipated and divined by even the greatest among men.
54:45
Before Zarathustra, there was no wisdom, no probing of the soul, no
54:50
art of speech. In his book, the most familiar and most vulgar thing
54:57
utters unheard of words. The sentence quivers with passion. Eloquence has become music.
55:07
Forks of lightning are hurled towards futures of which no one has ever dreamed
55:13
before. The most powerful use of parables that has yet existed is poor beside
55:20
it and mere child's play compared with this return of language to the nature of
55:25
imagery. See how Zarathustra goes down from the mountain and speaks the kindest words
55:32
to everyone. See with what delicate fingers he touches his very adversaries, the
55:39
priests, and how he suffers with them from themselves. Here at every moment,
55:45
man is overcome, and the concept superman becomes the greatest reality. Out
55:52
of sight, almost far away beneath him lies all that which heretofore has been
56:00
called great in man, the haliconic brightness, the light feet, the presence
56:07
of wickedness and exuberance throughout, and all that is the essence of the type
56:15
Zarathustra was never dreamt of before as the prequisite of greatness. In precisely these
56:22
limits of space, and in this accessibility to opposites, Zarathustra feels himself the
56:30
highest of all living things. And when you hear how he defines this highest,
56:37
you will give up trying to find his equal. The soul which hath
56:44
the longest ladder and can step down deepest, the vastest soul that can run
56:51
and stray and row furthest in its own domain, the most necessary soul that
56:58
out of desireeth itself into chance, The stable soul that plungeth into becoming,
57:06
The possessing soul that must needs taste of willing and longing, the soul that
57:13
flareth from itself, an overtaketh itself in the widest circle, the wisest soul,
57:21
that folly exhorteth most sweetly, the most self loving soul in whom all
57:28
things have their rise, their ebb and flow. But this is the very
57:35
idea of dionysis. Another consideration leads to this idea. The psychological problem presented
57:44
by the type of Zarathustra is, how can he who, in an unprecedented
57:50
manner says no and acts no in regard to all that which has been affirmed
57:57
hitherto remained never less a yea saying spirit. How can he who bears the
58:05
heaviest destiny on his shoulders, and whose very life task is a fatality,
58:12
yet be the brightest and the most transcendental of spirits. For Zarathustra is a
58:17
dancer. How can he who has the hardest and the most terrible grasp of
58:23
reality, and who has thought the most abysmal thoughts nevertheless avoid conceiving these things
58:32
as objections to existence, or even as objections to the eternal recurrence of existence.
58:40
How is it that, on the contrary, he finds reasons for being
58:45
himself the eternal affirmation of all things, the tremendous and unlimited saying of yea
58:53
and Amen into every abyss do I bear the benediction of my to life.
59:01
But this once more is precisely the idea of Dionysus. Seven. What language
59:15
will such a spirit speak when he speaks unto his soul? The language of
59:21
the diaphram. I am the inventor of the diaphram. Hearken unto the manner
59:29
in which Zarathustras speaks to his soul before sunrise Part three forty eight, before
59:37
my time, such emerald joys and divine tenderness had found no tongue. Even
59:44
the profoundest melancholy of such a Dionysus takes shape as a diaphram. As an
59:52
example of this, I take the night song, the immortal plaint of one
59:58
who, thanks to his superabundance of light and power, thanks to the Sun
1:00:04
within him, is condemned never to love. It is night, now do
1:00:12
all gushing springs raise their voices, And my soul too is a gushing spring.
1:00:20
Tis night now only do all lovers burst into song, And my soul
1:00:27
too is the song of a lover. Something unquenched and unquenchable is within me
1:00:34
that would raise its voice. A craving for love is within me, which
1:00:39
itself speaketh the language of love. Light? Am I would that I were
1:00:45
night? But this is my loneliness, that I am brigot with light.
1:00:52
Alas, why am I not dark? And like under the night? How
1:01:00
joyfully would I then suck the breasts of light? And even you would I
1:01:06
bless ye, twinkling starlets and glow worms on high, and be blest in
1:01:12
the gifts of your light. But in mine own light? Do I live
1:01:17
ever? Back into myself? Do I drink the flames I send forth?
1:01:23
I know not the happiness of the hand stretched forth to grasp and oft?
1:01:30
Have I dreamt that stealing must be more blessed than taking? Wretched? Am
1:01:36
I that my hand may never rest from giving? An envious fate is mine?
1:01:44
That I see expectant eyes and knights made bright with longing. Oh the
1:01:50
wretchedness of all them that give, Oh the clouds that cover the face of
1:01:55
my sun, that craving for desire, that burning hunger at the end of
1:02:02
the feast. They take what I give them, But do I touch their
1:02:07
soul? A gulf is there TwixT giving and taking, And the smallest gulf
1:02:15
is the last to be bridged. An appetite is borne from out my beauty.
1:02:22
Would that I might do harm to them that I fill with light?
1:02:27
Would that I might rob them of the gifts I have given? Thus do
1:02:32
I thirst for wickedness to withdraw my hand when their hand is already stretched forth?
1:02:40
Like the water fall that wavers, wavers even in its fall. Thus
1:02:45
do I thirst for wickedness for such vengeance? Doth my fullness yearn to such
1:02:53
tricks? Doth my loneliness give birth? My joy in giving died with the
1:03:00
deed, but its very fullness. Did my virtue grow weary of itself?
1:03:07
He who giveth risketh to lose his shame, He that is ever distributing,
1:03:13
groweth callous in hand and heart. Therefrom my eyes no longer melt into tears
1:03:22
at the sight of the supply and shame. My hand hath become too hard
1:03:28
to feel the quivering of laden hands. Whither have you fled the tears of
1:03:35
mine eyes and the bloom of my heart? Oh, the solitude of all
1:03:39
givers, O the silence of all beacons. Many are the suns that circle
1:03:46
in barren space to all that is dark? Do they speak with their light
1:03:52
to me alone? Are they silent? Alas this is the hatred of light
1:03:59
for them which shineth pitiless, It runneth its course unfair in its inmost heart,
1:04:09
to that which shineth cold towards suns. Thus doth every sun go its
1:04:15
way like a tempest? Do the suns fly over their course? For such
1:04:20
is their way, their own unswerving will? Do they follow? That is
1:04:27
their coldness? Alas it is ye alone, ye creatures of gloom, Ye
1:04:33
spirits of the night, that take your warmth from that which shineth. Ye
1:04:40
alone, suck your milk and comfort from the udders of light. Alas about
1:04:45
me there is ice. My hand burneth itself against ice. Alas within me
1:04:54
is a thirst. The thirsteth for your thirst. It is night, oh
1:05:00
to me that I must needs be light and thirst after darkness and loneliness.
1:05:08
It is night now. Doth my longing burst forth like a spring for speech?
1:05:15
Do I long? It is night? Now? Do all gushing springs
1:05:19
raise their voices? And my soul too is a gushing spring. It is
1:05:27
night now only do all lovers burst into song? And my soul too is
1:05:34
the song of a lover. Eight Such things have never been written, never
1:05:43
been felt, never been suffered. Only a god, only Dionysus suffers in
1:05:49
this way. The reply to such a diaphragm on the sound solitude in light
1:05:56
would be Ariadne, who knows by who Ariadne is. To all such riddles,
1:06:04
no one heretofore, had ever found an answer. I doubt even whether
1:06:12
anyone had ever seen a riddle. Here one day, Zarathustra severely determines his
1:06:19
life task, and it is also mine. Let no one misunderstand its meaning.
1:06:28
It is a yea saying, to the point of justifying, to the
1:06:31
point of redeeming, even all that is past. I walk among men as
1:06:39
among fragments of the future, of that future which I see, And all
1:06:45
my creativeness and effort is but this, that I may be able to think
1:06:50
and recast all these fragments and riddles and dismal accidents into one piece. And
1:06:59
how could I bear to be a man if man were not also a poet,
1:07:04
a riddle reader, and a redeemer of chance to redeem all the past
1:07:10
and transform every it was into Thus would I have it that alone would be
1:07:17
my salvation. In another passage, he defines, as strictly as possible,
1:07:25
what to him alone man can be not a subject for love, nor yet
1:07:32
for pity. Zarathustra became muster even of his loathing of man. Man is
1:07:40
to him a thing unshaped, raw material, an ugly stone that needs a
1:07:45
sculptor's chisel, no longer to will, no longer to value, no longer
1:07:54
to create. Oh that this great weariness may never be mine. Even in
1:08:01
the lust of knowledge, I feel only the joy of my will to beget
1:08:08
and to grow. And if there be innocence in my knowledge, it is
1:08:13
because my procreative will is in it. Away from God and gods do this
1:08:18
will allure me? What would there be to create if there were gods?
1:08:26
But to man? Doth it ever drive me anew? My burning creative will
1:08:32
Thus driveth it the hammer to the stone. Alas, ye, men,
1:08:39
within the stone that sleepeth an image for me, the image of all my
1:08:44
dreams. Alas that it should have to sleep in the hardest and ugliest stone.
1:08:50
Now rageth my hammer ruthlessly against its prism. From the stone, the
1:08:57
fragments fly. What's that? To me? I will finish it? For
1:09:01
a shadow came unto me. The stillest and lightest thing on earth once came
1:09:06
unto me. The beauty of the Superman came unto me as a shadow.
1:09:13
Alas, my brethren, what are the gods to me? Now? Let
1:09:20
me call attention to one last point of view. The line in italics is
1:09:26
my pretext for this remark narrator's note. The line reads narrageth my hammer ruthlessly
1:09:35
against its prison and narrator's note. A Deunesian life task needs the hardness of
1:09:45
the hammer, and one of its first essentials is, without doubt, the
1:09:49
joy even of destruction, the command harden yourselves, and the deep conviction that
1:09:59
all creators a heart. Is the really distinctive sign of a Deunesian nature,
1:10:10
and of why I write such excellent books. Part two