individualism and anarchy in literature: friedrich nietzsche and his philosophy

INDIVIDUALISM AND ANARCHY IN LITERATURE:FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AND HIS PHILOSOPHY

EDOUARD SCHUR1

Translated by Alla Zayenchik and Nir Buchler

It has been said, and with great acuity, too, that for the past 100 years literaturehas evolved from individualism to socialism. If by individualism, we mean thevision of life that an individual develops without giving much thought to societyas a whole, and by socialism, a doctrine that subordinates or sacrifices the indi-vidual to the society around him, we can therefore understand how the first half ofthe century is characterized by a powerful development of individualism in all itsforms, while the second half is distinguished by the gradual invasion of socialpreoccupations.

Even so, considering the literary movement of the last 25 years, it can be seenthat the overall trend of the new generation has been the abdication of socialismin proportion to the growth of individualism, even reaching a hyperacute stage oflibertarian anarchism. This generation does not proclaim with Rousseau the divineright of feelings and passion, nor with Goethe, the human right of developingharmoniously all the faculties.

Today, it is all about individual revolt, the individual revolt against all thatexists, a declared war on the past as a whole, on the very principles of morals,religious feelings, philosophy, and society. The intensive cult of the self and theproclamation of the absolute sovereignty of the individual have become generalmental habits and literary fashions. And if we look deeply enough, we can see thatthe terrorist attacks that we have witnessed are not necessarily caused by socialinequality and the suffering of certain classes, but by the disintegration of thephilosophical thought that, heretofore, has led our society. To cure this evil, we see

1 Edouard Schur (18411929) was one of the first Wagnerians in France. He met Wagner in 1865 inMunich and his article published in La Revue des Deux Mondes in 1869 marked the beginnings ofWagnerism in France. He briefly met Nietzsche in Bayreuth in 1876, an encounter he describes in hisarticle in this volume.

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novelists and moralist of the opposite camp denying the individual any indepen-dence, requiring his total abdication for the sake of charity and the social good.

But actually these two opposed conceptions can only find their synthesis in asuperior idea that applies to the essence of the individual, as well as the essence ofsociety. Until now, these two fought other enemies. Now they fight each other.Better equipped, more vigorous than ever, they are grappling with each other insuch fierce struggle that one wonderswill it be a leveling socialism or theuniversal anarchy that shall win?

Which brings us to our subject, Nietzsche. Not until now in contemporaryliterature has there been a more convinced individualist than Nietzsche. He standsat the opposite pole from Tolstoy. If Tolstoy claims the full immolation of theindividual to society, his antagonist claims that society is here only for the strongindividual. Nietzsche personifies individualism in its last excesses, but with anenergy and grandeur that elevate it high above the prosaic self. His individualismresembles in no way the modern Narcissus that looks smiling into his ironicallymirrored face to say, Do as I and you will find happiness; there is no otherwisdom. Nietzsche had all the shortcomings of pride, but also its principalfeature: contempt for popularity. He sought the truth on steep and dangerouspaths. He lived the torture of a mental disease that he exacerbated with unremittingwork. He knew the intoxication of solitude and drank its bitterness to the dregs. Heswore to himself that he would find The overman in himself by denying the souland God and by passing over humanity. With this challenge he put his life at riskand left behind his reason. His case can inspire in us a kind of admiration and pitythat we feel for great criminals and for extraordinary misfortunes. It is the domi-nant malady of the young generations. Since he had a beautiful mind and the soulof an artist, it assumes a tragic beauty which gives to his persona both a symbolicvalue and a warning. He didnt live outside of himself, and all his life was thetragedy of his thinking, says his best biographer, Mme. Lou-Andreas Salome.This interior tragedy, of which he was at the same time hero, executioner, andvictim, where all his thoughts became living characters and sometimes frighteningspectra, could perhaps be thought of as the intellectual pride and suffering of amystical atheist. By narrating it, we will have an occasion to study one of the mostdisquieting moral diseases of our fin de sicle.

There are in life certain souls of abrupt changes that, taken aback by violenthatred against their objects of worship, burn all of what they adored and adorewhat they have burnt. In such cases, the overturned idol is only an occasion thatallows the bursting out of the true nature of the man and the springing out fromhim of an angel or the devil. One of the turning points in Nietzsches intimate lifewas his break with Richard Wagner. After that, his disease of pride evolved ingigantic proportions and drove him not only toward a fierce form of atheism, butto the point of intellectual suicide. In this study, I will insist on this central point

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of his evolution in order to find the key of his being and the secret of hisphilosophy. But before speaking of it, a few words about his beginnings.

Frederick Nietzsche was born on October 15, l844, in the small town in Saxony.His father was a Protestant pastor and came from a noble Polish family (theNietzki). He showed at an early stage his various contradictory predispositions: asubtlety of perception and an excessive sensitivity, combined with a stubborn willand a passion for music and poetry. With a meticulous analytical taste and love ofthe dialectic bordering on sophism, and capable of fanatical infatuation, he alsohad the reputation of being a taciturn in deaf revolt. There laid within him agenius, an artist, and a philosopher. But these characters could never get along,and as none wanted to surrender to the other, they fatally wounded each other.Nietzsche studied at Bonn. In l865, at the age of 21, he was appointed professorof Greek philology at the University of Basel.

He received from his professors a wealth of knowledge and the demeaning artof purely negative critique. But university education did not instill upon him anyguiding thoughts. The intellectual burdens of the second half of the 19th centurywere particularly apparent to him, for he could see the human spirit threatened inits liberty and dignity by its own creations, that is, by the excessive pretensions ofthe natural sciences, and certainly by the development of industry. This includedthe banal intelligence and diminished characters of its bureaucracy and military,along with its elegant and often beautiful customs obliterated by the surging waveof democracy. The modern world did not smile upon this refined nature, with hisaristocratic stance and transcendent ideal. At this period he read Schopenhauerand the pessimistic idealism of the philosopher from Frankfurt took over his mind.For Schopenhauer, life itself was negative in its essence. Tied to his unconsciousnature, man proceeds with a blind instinct and ceaseless, aimless desires. The onlyrefuge lay in thought and in art. Buddha declared that the only remedy for theagony of life was the annihilation by asceticism and absolute abstinence, throughcareful analysis, of the worthlessness of things, and a detached portrait of the madstruggle of the will. Wasnt that a delightful task? Schopenhauer contented himselfwith rejoicing in philosophy and art.

This philosophy responded to Nietzsches intimate needs. He sheathed himselfin this armor to protect himself against the outside world and set off on his pathlike the knight of Albrecht Drer who armed himself from head to toe, impen-etrable, between death and the devil. But he was still searching for his ideal. Hewas inextricably attracted to ancient Greece, always yearning for it. That whichhe was seekingah!it was more than the ingeniousness of marble, thedazzle of beauty, and the rapture of harmonious songs. It was the enigma ofthe Sphinx, the secret of man and of life. He suspected that in the midst ofbloody chaos and the eternal failures of history, on the Hellenic shores of greatGreece, a noble ideal had once come to life, not solely of philosophy, but of the

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philosophical life. At one moment he believed to have noted it in the enigmaticfigures of the Ionian school, in Thales, and, above all, in the powerful figure ofHeraclites. But those shadows faded quickly, while the great Pythagoras passedbefore him without divulging the secret of numbers, of soul, and of the cosmos.However, he was not discouraged as he left the Germanic countries and moderntimes. As he approached the land of gods, of heroes, and of wise men, hewas in high hopes, heavily caught up in the shield of Kant and the sword ofSchopenhauer. Sitting directly on the Acropolis, he looked toward Bacchustheatre. Believing as he did that tragedy, the focal point of Greek art, offered upall the secrets of Eleusis and Delphi, he nevertheless saw, as he approached it, thatit was nothing more than the most appalling ruin of them all. How to recoverthe vision of those fabulous heroes stirring within the framework of this sculpturallandscape, the divine choir personifying the voices of the tragic mystery? Herewas a mystery akin to the cadaver whose soul had fled.

It was at this exact moment that he met Richard Wagner. All those who weresurrounded by the great artist knew of his enveloping power. There was in him aTitan and a magician. Similarly, his work displayed a marvelous synthesis of art;he seemed to unite them in his person with the special gift of the playwright whosees and presents everything in movement and in action. When he damnedhimself, it was as if his tumultuous conversation was crossed by the lightening ofhis creation and the beam of his indomitable will. It was for Nietzsche a stunningrevelation. It is the power of genius that transforms the universe for those whoapproach it. The enthusiasm of the novice was unreserved. At this moment heforgot himself; he gave himself completely as the disciple gives himself to hismaster. The following years were certainly the happiest of his life.

In Wagners work Greek tragedy itself returns to life. Didnt Schopenhauer saythat music is the revealer of the soul of things and their direct expression? Thathas never been truer than in Wagners drama, where the dominant motifs and theharmonious infinite game translate the interior movements of the characters andlet their hearts beat beneath our very eyes. In this meaningful role that music holdsin the Wagnerian drama, a beam should shine on the role of the chorus in a tragedy.Despite the gap which separates Greek theatre from the modern, Nietzschethought, not without reason, that in one, like the other, the tragic feeling emanatesfrom the same source, and this source gushes from the deepest obscurity of man,the fundamental law of being, the mystery of life and death.

From this ferment of ideas came Nietzsches first book, The Birth of Tragedy,which was published in l872. We find there the main qualities of the thinker andthe writer. We also feel the heavy influence of his first mentors, Schopenhauer andWagner. The masterpiece of Greek art is presented as the combined work ofApollo, god of individuality, source of dreams and of poetry, and Dionysus, godof creation and universal destruction, source of drunkenness and music. According

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to Nietzsche, the essential pleasure of tragedy consists in intoxicating ourselveswith the grandeur of individualism and the force of universal life, which squandersit after giving it life. It must lead us through terror and pity to the ravishingDionysus, where, abandoning our own life, we participate in a way in the inde-structible power of the being of beings, the creating force of the unique being.This book, rich in new perceptions, ripe with deep emotion and content, causeda scandal in the university. It betrayed, to the eyes of objective science, a shockingenthusiasm. Having bold ideas and passionate sentimentswas that allowedwhen one was a professor of philology? What was most displeasing to the schoolPuritans was to see one of their own interpret Greek tragedy, with the help ofRichard Wagner, who was still strongly frowned upon. No one gave Nietzsche alegitimate criticism that could be addressed, however. If there was one weak pointin his essay, which was in itself remarkable, it was the fact that he didnt shed lighton Greek tragedy through the mysteries of Eleusis, but rather through his confu-sion of the fragmented Dionysus of terrestrial life with the Liberator of celestiallife, and plunging into the elements for the mystical union of the regenerated andresuscitated being with the divine spirit. But the opponents of Nietzsche thoughtonly of the criticism of his texts and the dignity of science. Their protests and theirrefutation added to the birth of his glory.

In the following years Nietzsche occupied himself solely with developing theprinciples exposed in his essay on tragedy. He was not yet the extravagantindividualist, the violent anarchist of thought that he later became. In philosophyhe remained the faithful disciple of Schopenhauer. He did not believe in God or inthe human soul, but he admitted a sort of world soul, a transcendent reality thatmanifested itself through the hierarchy of powers and ideas in nature, as well ashumanity. In the name of philosophy he declared war on positivist science thatheeded only the appearance of things and pretended to impose rules on life. In thename of conscience and intuition, he declared war against the abuses and tyrannyof history.

We want to serve history, he said eloquently, as long as it serves life. The essential thing is notknowledge, the mere sum of science and facts, but the material force of a man, of a people, of acivilization, their original ability to grow, to assimilate the past and the stranger, to heal theirwounds, to replace their lost energy, recreate the broken forms from within. Without law we becomea chaotic mix, disparate and non-assimilated, whose variety hinders our organic personality. Webecome the passive theatre of someones thoughts. History in this context becomes a disease.

Therefore, it is not history, but art that expresses true life. It recognizes all thatnature has willed and tried; it achieves its imperfect outlines. That is why theworld is only justified as aesthetic phenomenon. At last Nietzsche proclaimed thesovereignty of genius, giving homage to Wagner and elevating him into a supremecult. Because he alone, the sublime warrior, manifested the transcendent truth.


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He was the announcer and the sole revealer. He was the first born, except fortime, a messenger of the eternal. Calling Wagner the savior of Germanic culture,the restorer of Dionysian and Apollonian art which he had dreamed himself, hegave his dramatic and musical genius the following definition: Wagners dramafollows its rigorous march like an implacable destiny, and the music submits to itwith a cruel resolution, even though the fiery soul of this music wants to escapeand seek freedom. Above all, in these melodies and the passionate struggles overthe torment of contradictions, lies an all-powerful intelligence which perpetuallycreates peace and war. Wagner was never more Wagner than when the difficultiesincreased tenfold, so that he could reign over his grand ensemble with the joy ofa legislator. It pleased him to dominate the high-spirited and rebellious masses, toregroup them in simple rhythms, to impose a sole will upon the troubling diversityof varied desire and ambitions.

Ten years later, in a famous pamphlet, the same Nietzsche who once acclaimedWagners talent as a dramatist, calls him the prince of decadence and the corrupterof modern music. What happened? Nietzsche has remained silent on this topic. Hecontents himself with the following declaration in his preface: The greatestexperience of my life made me a healer. Wagner simply belongs to my diseases.Poor Nietzsche! One doesnt arrive at healing Wagners wounds so easily, not aftersubjecting him to all that his most illustrious disciple subjected him to. Certainlyhe had succeeded in accomplishing this feat. But rest assured that in curinghimself of his master, he did not destroy him, nor triumph like those doctors whorid a patient of his illness by killing him. In any case, Nietzsches case is no lessinteresting than Wagners. If the latter addresses the crux of the aesthetic problemand the future of art in its integrity, the former confines himself to the mostsensitive subject of the philosophical and religious problems of our time. Hemakes us see the naked depth of the contemporary soul, even more dangerous thanthat which hides beneath a skillfully woven literary mask.

I met Nietzsche at Bayreuth in l876, at the premiere of The Ring. If thesememorable scenic performances marked henceforth a climax in the history ofdramatic art, they were also possibly the secret of Nietzsches new evolution. Atleast, it appeared to me that he then accomplished his first malicious deeds, whichpushed him onto this path.

While chatting with him, I was struck by the superiority of his wit and hisforeignness and strange physiognomy. Large forehead, crew cut, prominent Slaviccheekbones. The heavy mustache, the coarseness of his features, gave him the airof a cavalry officer, but one with a certain shyness mixed with cockiness. Themusical voice, the slow speech, denoted his status as an artist. His prudent andmeditative comportment was that of a philosopher. Nothing was more deceitfulthan the apparent calm of his expression. The focused eye betrayed the painfullabor of thought. At the same time, it was the eye of the sharp observer and

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visionary fanatic. This double character gives him the air of being both troubledand troubling, even more so because he is always concentrated on something inparticular. In the moments of submergence, this gaze exuded the sweetness of adream, only to become hostile once again. Nietzsches entire manner of being hadthis distant air, this discreet veiled disdain, which often characterizes intellectualaristocrats. Madame Salome, who judges a man with a singular penetration, says,His eyes appeared to be the guardians of mute treasures. Their gaze was turnedwithin; they reflected his interior impressions; they gazed far into the unexploredregions of the human soul. In an animated conversation these eyes could seem likeflashing lightening, but in somber times, solitude spoke through them in a men-acing, lugubrious expression, like an unknown depth.

During the general performances and the three premieres of the tetralogy,Nietzsche appeared sad. He was already suffering the beginnings of this cerebralmalady with which he was struck later, but he also suffered from a deep andinexpressible melancholy. In the presence of Richard Wagner he was timid,annoyed, and almost always silent. Wagner, thrown into a colossal enterprise,where he had to manage 35 main charactersgods and deities, giants, dwarfs,men and women, heroes and Walkyries, not to mention choirs, stage machineryand orchestrawas taking joy in his role as the young Wotan and the legitimatetriumph of having created this world and set it all in motion despite his 63 years.In the short hours of rest which were allowed him after his Herculean workload,he let loose with a fantastic gaiety, an exuberant humor that was the froth ofgenius. Forced to let his soul and his thoughts pass through this being of flesh andblood, and to maintain an equilibrium between self-love, the morals, and thefrivolous passions of his troupe of actors and actresses, he became an actorhimself. A subtle charmer and tamer of souls, he always accomplished his goalswith a mixture of violence and cajolery, of wild anger and sincere tenderness,without ever losing sight of his goal. Living in this storm that he organized himselfwith his director, he could give only fleeting attention to his disciples and admir-ers. Before the artistic marvels that he accomplished each day we all shared thefeeling of astonishment of Mime, in the face of Siegfried, who re-forged the swordthat was broken by his father, after having reduced it to iron fillings melted downin the crucible. Was Nietzsches pride suffering from this inferiority? Was hisacute sensitivity hurt by the familiar crudeness of his master? Did his sharp moralconscience rise up against the inevitable contrasts between human nature and thegenius of the great man? Did he not want to admit that the creator of such vastness,who organized an aesthetic miracle considered impossible by the entire world,could consider his best friends only as instruments of his work, above all, when hehas accomplished it in full battle against winds and floods? In his first contact withWagner, Nietzsche established himself as an equal with his master. He dedicatedhis first book to the sublime fighter of the avant garde. Perhaps he thought of the


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reform of Germany as a school of philosophy, aesthetic, and morality, whereSchopenhauer would be the venerated elder, Wagner the artist and the propeller,but he himself, Nietzsche, the prophet and the supreme legislator. CertainlyWalhalla spun out of Bayreuth with his impetuous and sovereign Wotan, not at allresembling the dream of the Schopenhauerian tradition. The author of The Birth ofTragedy disappeared like everybody else in the glorification of the master. Themaster at first mocked him a little, but was then seriously indignant and affectedby seeing his disciple so morose, not understanding why. To Nietzsche he seemedto scream at him like Loge, the demon of fire, from the top of the rainbow that ledto the palace of the immortals. Why these complaints? Rejoice at the sum of yournew gods! Nietzsche thus participated without much enthusiasm in the grandiosescenes of Walkyrie, Siegfried and of Twilight of the Gods, which he had expectedto bring him joy. When we left together, no critique, not a word of blame escapedhim, but he had the resigned sadness of a disappointed man. I remember theexpression of languor and cynicism with which he spoke of the next work of themaster and said, He told me he wanted to reread the universal history beforewriting his poem, Parsifal! This was said with the smile and intonation of anironic indulgence, whose hidden meaning could have been, Look at the illusionsof poets and musicians, who believe theyre entering the universe with their ghoststories, but dont put anyone there but themselves. Considering that Nietzschewas pagan and antireligious down to the roots of his being, from that moment heturned against Wagner for propagating a Christian mystery. He didnt understandthat in his master, as in every real creator, the poet was independent of all abstractphilosophy and only obeyed his private emotions; that this Christian element thatwe can already see in Tnnhauser and Lohengrin came from the deepest sourcesof his rich nature, and so the homage to Christ by the glorification of the Grail, farfrom being a simple fantasy of the artist, was possibly the most sincere and mostserious act of his life. But for Nietzsche, being a Christian, in whichever way, evenif it is part of the symbolism of a great artist with the independence of a free andpersonal faith, meant an act of hypocrisy or cowardice. The publication of thepoem, Parsifal, didnt take place until two years later. At the same time Nietzschepublished a book where he broke with his past. An irreparable break followedbetween the two men. But cool relations had preceded the rupture, and I ampersuaded that the wounded ego of the disciple was the primary, yet secret, cause.

Nietzsches new book was a collection of aphorisms and random segments withthe bizarre title, Human, All too Human. It didnt take great insight to recognize therepercussions of the personal disillusionment of the writer. Wagner was notmentioned once, but there were a lot of questions about the vanity of genius, of art,and of things in general. Disgust and skepticism succeeded the noble enthusiasm ofpreceding works. Most surprising, once more came the complete about-facefor the philosopher. Nothing found favor in his eyes. He always supported the

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opposing view to Wagners theories. He trampled upon his most cherished ideas.Madame Salome said that Nietzsche needed to free himself from Wagner to be-come completely himself. Yes, surely this was so, but the injustice and lack ofgratitude toward the man to whom he owed the greatest revelation of his life showedthat he was far from free of him. Furthermore, he committed a very serious crime;he went to war with his own ideal. Like a man who believed he had been duped, hefought with violence and fury against all the ancient idols, art, poetry, metaphysics,genius, love, human sympathy, morality, man, humanity. He denounced everythingthat crossed his path; he did not leave anything standing. With this he placed himselfin the role of the ascetic hero in the name of truth, and he genuinely believed it,except that in fact he was nothing more than a destroyer made desperate by thesubtle poison of intellectual arrogance. This passion, even more pernicious than allthe errors of the senses that can consume life and the soul and its source, must havepushed him from sophism to sophism to the most appalling of all castigations.

If he had only jeered at the humans, the formidable nemesis, this infallible logicof things, the ricochet would have hit him less harshly. But, by this iconoclasticrage, he picked on the holiest of things, the generating ideas of life. He mademountains crumble before what he called himself the mothers path! In the placeof the true eternals he no longer wanted to admit the reality and the logicalsuccession of facts. He no longer believed in the institution that perceived thesetruths, but only in the dialectic that discerned this series. It was the positivistdoctrine pushed to its last stage, which made the world an undefined chain ofcauses and effect, without primordial cause or any final goal. Logically, it erasedmetaphysics. This sentiment was a source of error. In the place of Dionysus,symbol of inspiration and ecstasy, he put Socrates, not the veritable Socrates whowas far from denying intuition, but a Socrates of his own fashion who representedthe scientific man. Notice here that this scientific man, according to Nietzsche,deprived of intuition and therefore wisdom, is absent at the center of all science.The renegade idealist attacked art and poetry afterwards, like the disloyal workersof dangerous monsters. The Greek poets themselves, whom he had so admired, arenow no more than actors and skillful liars who disguise reality. Those whom hehad called the inspired, the seers of Dionysian truth were now insulted for beingdrunk with feeling. Enthusiasm was now compared to the brandy that enervatesand wipes out entire races of savages. As for the genius, see how he speaks of himas Oh, the discounted glory of genius! See how its crown is easily lifted and itsadmiration turned into a habit! We always kneel in front of force. An old slavecustom! In the past he had seen in the genius a sort of miracle, and even a goalof humanity, but now he sees him as nothing more than a product of heredity.When it comes to morality, Nietzsches judgments are even more negative thanthose he made about aesthetics and philosophy. He supports the positivist theoryof his friend, Ree, derived from Hobbes, according to which all moral phenomena


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are rooted in egoism and self-interest. He categorically refuses to understandall the acts of spontaneous empathy, of well thought-out empathy, of socialconstruct, which are forms of self-denial, affirmations of universal law and thesolidarity of love. Human vanity becomes for this resplendence of the soul athing in itself. After which, transcendent, the doer of these brilliant atheist deedscries out, proud of his victory, Fiat Veritas! Pereat vita! Let there be truth andmay life perish! Sophism and that supreme blunder, pride, prevail, as though thetruth isnt the soul of life and life the proof of truth!

The one who reproaches the masters to whom he owes his initiation does not gounpunished, nor do those who curse their gods. From that moment Nietzscheenters a desert which he will never leave, filling the ardent dreams of his pride, thetroublesome phantoms of his guilty conscience. He confesses his fear to himself,When I was on the road by myself, I tremble: Shortly after, I became ill. I wasmore than ill, I was weary of my incessant illusions on everything that could stillexcite us, we, modern men. Sometimes his path frightens him and his worktorments him. The following monologue, a captivating truth, gives us the mainfoundation for the radically nonreligious pathological study of the self, a path thatwe will follow. In this study we find the seed of disorganization, the dispersion ofthe conscience into many opposing selves that want to destroy one another. Firstthe voice of the atheist who wakes up alone and shivers, Where did God go? Imgoing to tell you! We killed him. You and I! All of us are murderers! And here,despite himself, the soul of the atheist hears the voice of the deep conscience. Itmumbles in a low voice, as though it were afraid of its own words, Havent weheard anything yet from the gravediggers who buried God? Dont we smell thedivine putrefaction? The Gods are decomposing! God is dead! God is dead! Andwe killed him! How are we to be consoled, murderers among murderers? Thestrongest and most powerful things that man ever possessed bled beneath ourknives! What water can wash us clean? Listen now to the subtle demonicargument which responds to the voice of the conscience and suffocates it, to finishin a satanic outburst of joy, Isnt the grandeur of this action too great for us?Shouldnt we become gods ourselves, revealing ourselves afterwards? There hasnever been so great an action, and all those to come after will belong to us becauseof this very deed, so that we await a history superior to all the histories that havepassed.

But this joy isnt unfettered, nor this triumph without work. Since then, accord-ing to his close friend, his life was always wrapped in deep solitude, from whichhis interior thoughts sprang. It was not the blessed solitude that merges with theman and the soul and all things through divine love, but the solitude characterizedby bitterness, by shame, and by grasping demons. His feminine confessor saysthat beneath his clear and well-reasoned philosophic diction there was an unfatho-mable abyss of emotion, passion, and suffering. Thus, he could have described

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himself as hiding underneath of cloak of light. A cloak of light or of shadow,depending on the day. The cloak is not enough for him; he needs a mask, too. Inhis black pessimism, he believes that all men conceal themselves and take on aborrowed identity. In all that a man allows to be seen of himself, we can ask,What is this meant to hide? What is he trying to hide from our gaze? Whatprejudice does he wish to arouse? And furthermore, how far does it go? And inwhat way is the disguise itself mistaken? Deep down, Nietzsche was full ofsincerity, too passionate to avoid constantly betraying himself, too poetic not toexpress himself, even despise himself. He was engraving masks under the pretextof fleeing the foolishness and nastiness of men. In Beyond Good and Evil hewrites, Traveler, who are you? Have a rest. Me, resting? You are curious! Whatsthe use of rest? Rather, give mewhat? One more mask, another mask. Noticein this preoccupation the feverish worry of this Ahasver of thought who has nomore brothers, nor home, nor country, who doesnt find rest anywhere; who makesa new system daily and demolishes it the next day like a poorly constructed hut tolook for new shelter, and who needs a mask and a cloak to hide from others, andabove all, to hide from himself.

Now it extends around him, always larger and more livid, the Moorish desertbeneath the low clouds, without the sun and without trees. The lonely thinkerconsequently presents himself to us with a new face. He has become the Wandererand his shadow. He slowly makes his way, defiant and circumspect. He is going,he is always going, looking for the light of a desire, becoming bitter and morestubborn as the obscurity thickens around him. He wants to conquer the virilepride and the supreme independence. He thinks he can emancipate himself byerasing these three ideas, God, the soul and love, and he does not realize that hehas erased the organic principles of the universe and society. He does not under-stand that he has closed to himself the source of spiritual intelligence, energy, andlife. He doesnt understand that he has dedicated himself to the most fatal slavery,to that inferior and personal self which Pascal calls the detestable self. Thetraveler without guide and without star becomes the prey of his own shadow,which leads him through the dusk to the wonder of waterfalls and ravines. In aburst of exasperated optimism he believes that through suppressing metaphysicaland religious feelings and ridding himself once and for all of all the illusions anddeceptive dreams which intoxicate the masses, he can prevail. And here, in themist of the moor we find all kinds of ghostly forms. Some are under the perceptionof the multiple self, held by their guiding principle. They are their masksexternalized, that come to life. The others are the images of his secret dreams, ofhis desires, repressed by his reason, which, despite him, take form and incarnatethemselves. He says that this larva has no reality, that it is the figment of his sick,overzealous imagination. But these forms, which have acquired their own life,independent of his will, he finds disconcerting and irritating. Soon they will show


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him their real faces, and their monstrous sides. While waiting, still veiled, theymake gestures with their hands, they bow down their heads, and he, fascinated,drugged despite himself, follows them without knowing where. He has momentsof weakness, tenderness, when he seems to repent for his blasphemy againstpoetry and the ideal. So his mind involuntarily flies off toward unknown worlds[. . .] But it is not there in the lost light, in the black clouds which weigh heavilyon the pale cursed moor, that the traveler in his gloomy odyssey finds his shortmoments of respite. And the moment he looks at his black shadow, it whispers tohim, Didnt you promise to put an end to all those fantasies? Destroy, destroy theabsurd dream of the sky. Search for your own kingdom, where you shall be yourown master, and mock the others!

And so the traveler turns around, frantic, looking behind him for a beam of lightto guide him. He shivers. The ghosts again! But by this time they are two greatshadows all too familiar to him, those of the repudiated masters, Schopenhauerand Wagner. There are the two men of genius to whom he owes his entireeducation as a thinker and an artist. In his fierce pride, in his hallucinatorynightmares, he now calls them the gruff philosopher and the dangerous magi-cian. And when the two shadows rise up behind him, harsh and tall, he asks,What do you want from me? Its been a long time since I have slain you, youdamned specters! And they replied, We are only the shadows of the masters.Youcarry their seal in your flesh; thats why we follow you. No one kills phantoms; weare the guests of your surroundings. So he gives them one lash of his whip andcontinues on his way through the sands, the moor, and the mountains. But at eachstage he will find them again, and they will tell him by their gestures and looks,We are herego no further.

One day another voice, coming from a very distant unknown sphere, tells him,When man renounces the divine, his shadow brings him to the abyss. Doubtlesson that day Nietzsche concocted the idea for his Zarathustra. Far from changinghis path, he responded to the salutary warnings with a triumphal defiance and withthe most audacious apotheosis of self that any writer or poet has ever imagined.

From l876 to l883 Nietzsche voluntarily associated himself with the narrowestform of positivism as a punishment and exercise. But the moment had to comewhen, bored with this constraint, he would break down the doors of his prison. Hisindependent and imaginative nature was repulsed by the instinct of pure rational-ism, but it reacted more violently against any religious or social idea. He threwhimself (and was deceived) into absolute determinism. Now he suffered tremen-dously; he choked on it. In his Gay Science, which is a sad science, he made thisconfession, All my travels and the mountains Ive climbed have been nothingmore than the last resort of the powerless man. My entire being wants to fly, justto fly. This eagle then attempted the flight toward the knowledge of lost things.Not wanting to recognize that the only truly free act was the ascent of man to the

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recognized universal order, he declared one beautiful day that liberty springs uplike a miracle from the sovereign will of the strong man. Thus, the new Lucifer, hebelieved, would create his own happiness, justice and sky and would becomeoverman. With that reasoning, he rejected the doctrine of the sovereignty of purereason, which he had adopted just a short while ago, and intuition as the supremetribunal of the mind. On the other hand, he divinized instinct. This paradox is thestarting point of Nietzsches last phase. Zarathustra is the manifestation and thegospel of this supposed revelation.

Another note on the outside circumstances that accompanied the genesis of thisstrange work: Forced by his health to renounce teaching, more and more misan-thropic, intolerant of all but his closest friends, Nietzsche got into the habit ofspending his winters in Genoa and his summers at Engadin. About the superb portof Genoa he writes that he loved being in the center of such abundance, gazingover the far seas. Thats when he believed he saw the aurora of a new world risefrom the veiled horizon. But it was surely the shadow of the tall Alps which hefelt come over him. In more than one landscape, he said, we are moved by adelicious shiver. Its the most pleasant duplication. The nature of Engandin is theparent of my own. We are not shocked by each other, we trust each other. Thishigh Alpine valley snuggled without fear under the terror of the eternal shows,where Italy and Finland rub against each other, this land full of the silvery shadesof nature and of myself. Because at the heart of these little unmoving lakes,solitude itself looks me in the eyes. That is where he lived his dream, where hedared to perform his last audacious acts. No more black pessimism, but a relent-less joy. No more suffocating positivism, but the freedom of mind for all hisfantasies.

Buried forever were the old illusions of God, of being, of humanity, of theheavens, of the supernatural; they had collapsed haphazardly, these false gods inthe crepuscule of the idols. Meanwhile, the strong man, the intellectual man,forging his ideal, is humanity taking control, without anything above him, withoutany law but his own, disregarding the weak and the stupid and inviting all thestrong men to do as he did; that is the concept of this Zarathustra by whichNietzsche pretends to reveal to his contemporaries and to posterity the Super-man that he discovered. Never was a more beautiful style used for a moremurderous idea of the truth and the eternal human ideal. It is an ample andrhythmic prose, a language composed of large building blocks, like the walls ofthe Cyclopes, with words like powerful granite alliterations. Beneath these strongfoundations, the seeds of poetry, a virgin forest of images, are working, whilefurther underneath we find a volcanic thought that breaks through the soil like lavaduring an eruption, always ready to devour all to which it gave birth. Like thebellows of the forge, it emerges from Isaiahs angry verses, interrupted by sataniclaughter, by the railing Titan conquered by a god.


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At 30 years old, Zarathustra withdrew to the mountains. He lived in a cave for10 years with no one to keep him company save his two pets, an eagle and a snake,symbols of pride and prudence, which brought him his food. For 10 years he foundjoy in his own mind, without regret or lassitude, living in true happiness. Buthaving found himself too rich in his wisdom, he decided to return to the land ofmen, to share his treasure with them. On his way down, he met an old hermitwhose prayer sounded like a monotonous growl to the ear of the prophet.Zarathustra passed before him with a disdainful smile and said to himself, Wouldit be possible that this old saint in his faith still doesnt know that God has died?In the next city, he found a crowd assembled at the marketplace. They werewaiting for the arrival of a tightrope walker. While they waited, the prophetannounced to them the good news:

I teach you the superman. Man is something that should be overcome. What have you done toovercome him?

All creatures hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and do you want to be the ebb ofthis great tide, and return to the animals rather than overcome man?

What is the ape to men? A laughing stock or a painful embarrassment. And just so shall man be tothe Superman: a laughing stock or a painful embarrassment.

You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes,and even now man is more of an ape than any ape.

The superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the superman shall be the meaning ofthe earth.

I entreat you my brothers, remain true to the earth, and do no believe those who speak to you ofsuperterrestrial hopes! They are poisoners, whether they know it or not.

They are despisers of life, atrophying and self-poisoned men, of whom the earth is weary: so letthem be gone!

Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy, but God died, and thereupon theseblasphemers died too. To blaspheme the earth is now the most dreadful offence, and to esteem thebowels of the Inscrutable more highly than the meaning of the earth.

The gospel of modern atheism has never been formulated with more assuredcynicism than in this first prediction of Zarathustra. And it never contained somany flagrant contradictions. Should we be shocked if the flabbergasted crowd didnot understand any of the saying of the Superman who descended from themonkey, who only believed in earth and wanted to elevate himself above it, whodenied the divinity manifested by the universe and proclaimed himself God? Butthus spoke Zarathustra. We must all bow down.

Soon after, a great light illuminated the mind of the prophet as he meditated inthe forest. What did it matter to him what that herd thought? What did they do forhim, the acrobats and corpses? It was the living he was after, real friends, the

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creators of his species, strong and free men. He would go back to his mountain, hewould go back to his cave where his eagle and snake awaited him. There he wouldcall upon his disciples and teach his doctrine. The sermon on the mountaindelivered by Zarathustra begins with a parable entitled The Three Metamorphoses,Man must become camel, lion and child. The camel is humble and patient,carries heavy loads, climbs the highest mountains, and drinks the dirtiest waterand feeds on dry grass. Thus, the mind conquers the treasures which it needs forits work. One beautiful day, in the heart of the desert, he becomes a lion. He wantsto seize his preyliberty, struggle with his god and kill the great dragon.Maybe you believe that this dragon is the old sin of the theologists, or one of themany temptations of St. Anthony. In fact, this would be too old school. The greatdragon is called, You must, but the lion of might answers, I want. He lovesduty as the most sacred of things, but he must destroy this love in order to be free.Why does he have to become a child now? Childhood is innocence, forgetfulness,the beginning, a game, a wheel that turns and turns. For the game of creation,there must be a saintly affirmation. Spirit desire will, and the who has lost hisworld looks for a new one. This parable would be profound and true if the camelsought the hidden truth of everything instead of arbitrarily assembling factsaccording to his egoistic vision; if the lion attacked the monsters of ignorance,prejudice and habit instead of obsessing over the idea of duty and used it to denyuniversal order; if the beautiful child, under the guise of ignorance and joyfulness,was the child of free love and spontaneity that forgets himself because he iscapable of sacrifice and creates because he loves. Here we see very clearlyNietzsches usual method, consisting of dressing up a sophism with an originaland poignant image, a way of seducing the simple and false minds or the puredilettantesso numerous todaywho take pleasure in images, admire move-ment, and ridicule ideas.

The following chapters develop at length the gospel of individualism andanarchy. After having proclaimed the absolute liberty of the individual, Zarathus-tra declares war on his enemies. War on those who pretend to be good and just,who he considers lazy and cowardly. War against the so-called virtuous who arereally hypocrites! Above all, war against the preachers of heaven. They are inZarathustras eyes the madmen or Tartuffes of the most refined kind. On the otherhand, he proclaims holy and sacred the physical body which he names a pluralitywith meaning, peace on earth, the flock led by a shepherd. Nietzsche ignores thatthe body is in fact sacred because it is made in the image of the soul in its diversefaculties and is, furthermore, the instrument of the mind, and not a simple assem-bly of atoms. He does not realize that by taking away the mind and the soul fromman, he deprives him of his main guiding principle, thus stripping him of divineessence and human substance. La Rochefoucault has marvelously shown howskilled man is at deceiving himself due to his deceitfulness. In the case of


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Nietzsche, he would have admired how man excels at ruining himself due hisarrogance. Here is a prophet who preaches the Superman and takes away the forcethat could elevate him above himself. He strongly believes that by placing the souland the mind above and beyond the body, we must then admit that God is the causeand the goal, the divine and the universal order. Regardless of the name that hegives to this unfathomable power, it goes beyond man in all its immensity. This iswhat he would not admit at any cost. And thus he is led the apology of the bodyand the appeal to instinct. But the instinct that he invokes will take revenge. Theuprooting of the hierarchy is the curse of the perverse intellectual who has killedhis moral sensitivity and destroyed his center of gravity. The instinct erected as aguide leads the intellectual to madness. Not only will the anti-psychological andanti-organic teachings of Zarathustra give birth to anarchy around him, the war ofall against all will shake his own conscience and cause a war in his own brain,heart and senses. It will be the disintegration and the collapse. A just nemesis! Hewho works for life, receives it! And so the worker for death is seized by it.

Meanwhile, the new sermon of the mountain continues, bitter and incisive, itstopsy-turvy gospel. The steel arrows fly, fettered by roses, the paradoxes plumedby rare thoughts. Zarathustra presents humility as the virtue of the slave, like therag of the hypocrite. He himself is the example of unrestrained arrogance thatknows no limits. The wise men and prophets of the past were all saintly imbecilesor ceremonial pedants. Their doctrine sank because of its heavy spirit. They hadto stumble and fall. Zarathustra alone takes on everything with the subtle agility ofa dancer; he alone has wings; he alone has found truth atop his mountain.

In the drunkenness of his discovery, his mind sparkles like the foam of a youngwine. A light and pure air, the danger very close, and the mind full of joyouscruelty: All this goes well together. I want to be surrounded by malignant spiritsbecause I am courageous. The courage that chases phantoms creates its owndemons. Courage wants to laugh.I feel as though I am no longer with you; thiscloud that I see lying at my feet, this darkness and this heaviness at which I laugh,this is your stormy cloud [. . .] The one who climbs to the high mountains laughsat all the tragedies and all the serious funerals of life. Carefree, ironic, violent, thuswe arrive at wisdom. She is a woman and does not like warriors. Amidst thegrapple of pride, beautiful thoughts shine here and there, like maxims of goldabove marble doors:

Of all writings I love only that which is written with blood. Write with blood:and you will discover that blood is spirit.Once spirit was God, then it becameman, and now it is even becoming mob [. . .] And the modern state too is treatedin harsh terms: It was creators who created peoples and hung a faith and a loveover them: thus they served life. It is destroyers who set snares for many and callit the state: they hang a sword and a hundred desires over them. In his acriddiatribes, Zarathustra mans the whip of satire with a youthful violence, and thats

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how he employs his real power. Here for instance, a sketch of the ambitiouspoliticians, speculators, and journalists: Just look at these superfluous people!They steal for themselves the work of inventors and the treasures of the wise: Theycall their theft cultureand they turn everything to sickness and calamity. Justlook at these superfluous people! They are always ill, they vomit their bile and callit a newspaper. They devour one another and cannot even digest themselves. Justlook at these superfluous people! They acquire wealth and make themselvespoorer with it. They desire power and especially the lever of power, plenty ofmoneythese impotent people! See them clamber, these nimble apes! Theyclamber over one another and so scuffle into the mud and the abyss.

So unmerciful is Zarathustra to the imitators of this kind, that he classifies themas theatrical exhibitionists and acrobats and doesnt hesitate to borrow many ofSchopenhauers ideas, notably those on women and love. Little does this gruffphilosopher believe in idealism, in intuition, in the divine sense of the womanwho is superior in the spiritual order, in this divine something that the Germanictribes once attributed to her, according to Tacitus. The woman is above all a cat,a bird, and at best, a nanny. He judges the social liberation that women havebegun in America and are now pursuing in Europe to be ridiculous and dishon-orable to men. He cannot even consider her as an intellectual companion of man,the confidante of his idea and the soul of his will. Everything about woman is ariddle, and everything about woman has one solution: It is called pregnancy. Forthe woman, the man is a means: The end is always the child. But what is thewoman for man? The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reasonhe wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything. Man should be trained for warand woman for the recreation of the warrior: All else is folly [. . .] The manshappiness is: I will. The womans happiness is: He will. And woman has to obeyand find a depth to her surface. Womans nature is surface, a changeable, stormyfilm upon shallow waters. But a mans nature is deep, its torrent roars in subter-ranean caves: Woman senses its power but does not comprehend it.

What will these strong men do now? You solitaries of today, you who haveseceded from society, you shall one day be a people: from you, who have chosenout yourselves, shall a chosen people springand from this chosen people, thesuperman. All the gods are dead. Now we want the Superman to live! Let this beour last will one day at the great noontide! Here are proud words and vastperspectives. Far be it from us to want to suppress them. And are they really sounfeasible? It is always the beautiful hopes that inspire great actions. And if manonly has a few years to struggle with destiny, humanity has before itself endlesscenturies. The preparation of an elite by the voluntary selection of the best ispossibly the future of the human race. But did Zarathustra establish in his groupthe necessary conditions for this accomplishment? First of all, he marginalizeswomen, or at least reduces them to the physical role of motherhood, refusing


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them the more important role of the creator of the psychic and sensible orders. Inmisunderstanding this crucial element, Zarathustra erases the matrix in whichgenius incubates in a divine mystery. And by proclaiming himself the onlyprophet and the only inventor of truth, he further suppresses any link between thepast and the present, and cuts the magnetic chain that, from generation togeneration, unites nations to nations, wise men to wise men, and geniuses togeniuses. By declaring that good and evil are the arbitrary acts of strong men, hedestroys the very notion of truth. He destroys the possibility of having any seriousdisciples, since they would have the right to revolt against him in the name of hisown principles. They would only be imitating their master, who wants no master,not even God.

Zarathustra denies all founding principles. Now, he could very well have geniusand power, but he can only produce other arrogant and more ineffective thanhimself. He speaks of his disciples, but we have never seen them; they are mutedshadows, ghosts of his thoughts. And so they do not suffice and he has to look forothers. But where will he find them? One night he dreams of a child giving him amirror. He looks in it and sees, with horror, a hideous grimace, the face of ascornful demon laughing. I understand the dreams omen, says the prophet,awakening. This vicious face represents the caricature that my enemies andslanderers make of my doctrine. But the dream can be interpreted differently.Perhaps this demonic face and laugh could be the last admonition of conscience,interpreted in the following way: Take heed, this is what you will become if youcontinue on your path! But Zarathustra is not capable of feeling remorse. Hesprang up, like a seer and a singer whom the spirit has moved. A dawninghappiness lit up his face like the dawns. He springs out of his cave and sings ahymn in honor of the fortunate islands that he will conquer:

My impatient love overflows in torrents down towards morning and evening. My soul streams intothe valleys out of silent mountains and storms of grief.

I have desired and gazed into the distance too long. I have belonged to solitude too long: thus I haveforgotten how to be silent.

I have become nothing but speech and the tumbling of a brook from high rocks: I want to hurl mywords down into the valleys.

And let my stream of love plunge into impassable and pathless places! How should a stream not findits way to the sea at last!

There is surely a lake in me, a secluded, self-sufficing lake; but my stream of love draws it downwith itto the sea!

I go new ways, a new speech has come to me; like all creators, I have grown weary of the oldtongues. My spirit no longer wants to walk on worn-out soles.

All speech runs too slowly for meI leap into your chariot, storm! And even you I will whip onwith my venom!

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I want to sail across broad seas like a cry and a shout of joy, until I find the blissful islands wheremy friends are waiting.

And my enemies with them! How I now love anyone to whom I can simply speak! My enemies tooare part of my happiness.

And when I want to mount my wildest horse, it is my spear that best helps me on to it; it is anever-ready servant to my foot.

The spear which I throw at my enemies! How I thank my enemies that at last I can throw it!

The tension of my cloud has been too great: between laughter-peals of lightning I want to cast hailshowers into the depths.

Mightily then my breast will heave, mightily it will blow its storm away over the mountains: andso it will win relief.

Truly, my happiness and my freedom come like a storm! But my enemies shall think the evil oneis raging over their heads.

Yes, you too, my friends, will be terrified by my wild wisdom; and perhaps you will flee from ittogether with my enemies [. . .]My wild wisdom became pregnant upon lonely mountains; upon rough rocks she bore her young,her youngest.

Now she runs madly through the cruel desert and seeks and seeks for the soft grasslandmy old,wild wisdom!

This piece gives us an idea of Nietzsches powerful lyricism. His prose has thecharacteristics of an ode, a gushing foam, the roar of an Alpine torrent. Noticethe strangeness of this love which ends in shame and imprecation. Notice also theanalogy of this impetuous departure, with Wotans turbulent calvacade in TheWalkyrie and Siegfried. Here, Zarathustra, the chain breaker, does not break withthe one he had formerly worshipped, for Wagners shadow lies across his mountain.The disciple, fleeing the master, stole a piece of his mask, a scrap of his magic cloak.

We seem to be in the Fortunate Islands, at least I suppose this is so, based on thebrazen headlands, the crowns of greenery, the azure gulfs, the dark seas where thesetting sun casts its liquid gold. Because the thoughts of the prophet cleave the air,we see this landscape only from a birds-eye view, between two lyrical scents, asif by the gap in the clouds. Will he at least show us his group, his disciples, hisideal city? But every day we hear the monologue of the solitary prophet, and nowthese new dialogues are even more violent, bitterer against the society that he hasjust left. His rage is addressed to the scum of the literary world, that is poisoningall the sources; and to the preachers of equality, whom he calls, the tarantulas ofshame and desire; and to the famed wise men who are only venerated becausethey cater to the superstition of the crowd; they are cattle who allow themselves tobe harnessed to the carriage of the people, or little donkeys to that of the politi-cians. His rage is also directed to the philosophers who work with their heads


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high, with a sublime air, but whose demeanor is that of a poorly trained fawn, ora wild boar crouching in his hideout.

He couldnt tolerate the learned men [. . .] The poets are treated even worse.

They know very little and learn badly, that is why they are force to lie. They falsify their wine andmake an indescribable poison in their cellar. And since they know little, they love impoverishedminds, especially when they are young women [. . .] A little voluptuousness and a little tedium: thatis all their best ideas have ever amounted to. And in that way they would like to show themselvesreconcilers: But to me they remain mediators and meddlers, and mediocre and unclean men. IndeedI cast my net in their sea and hoped to catch a fish; but I always drew out an old gods head. Thusthe sea gave a stone to the hungry man. And they themselves may originate from the sea. To be sure,one finds pearls in them: them they themselves are all the more like hard shell-fish. And instead ofthe soul I often found in them salty slime. They learned vanity, too, from the sea: Is the sea not thepeacock of peacocks? Truly, their spirit itself is the peacock of peacocks and a sea of vanity! Thepoets spirit wants spectators, even if they are only buffaloes!

Nietzsche excels in intellectual satire, which denounces down to the blood theminds shortcomings. But extreme by nature, he goes overboard, and we feel inhim more hatred than indignation. Perhaps he attains a summit in the genre in hissatire of cultured people, who, being nothing by themselves, wear on the out-of-date frocks of the past. Throughout the entire chapter Of the Land of Culture, Isee very clearly the end of a world, but I do not see the dawn of a new one. Oh,Zarathustra, prophet, you who are merciless toward the past, merciless toward thepresent, you who have closed your ears to the cries of human suffering, and who,one would say, have never set foot in a hospital, a coal mine or the hovels of thepoor; you who have suffocated the divine voice of your own heart, you who dontbelieve in celestial powers and want to be the Superman, you who bury the sourcesof love and who nevertheless are called, the singer of joy and the dancer of life,are you so sure of yourself? There is darkness around you in the small valleys ofyour fortunate island. When you spend the night with your mute disciples in theshadowy clearings of the forests, the young girls with beautiful ankles who aredancing in the grass suddenly stop their laughter and flee, despite your amicablesalutations. Your gaze frightens them. You yourself tremble before the invadingdusk, and alone with your soul, you retreat before the darkness that thickens in thedepths.

During one of your journeys on the sea, as the sun was setting, you saw a blackisland covered in tombs, emerge in the splendor of the dusk, and you recognizedthe tombs of the dreams which were dear to you in your youth. But you can sayas much as you like about your unmoving will, your will that breaks the rocks issitting on the tombs like eternal youth.You are not relieved. Those dreams that youcontinue to mourn, despite all, those dreams that nothing can bring back, theyrenot how you imagine your enemies, it is you who have killed them with the arrows

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of your pride. Your nemesis threw itself on you and overwhelmed you. You willwant to love again, but you cant love anymore.

One night the prophet abruptly ran away like a thief, and leaving the FortunateIslands, embarked on a journey back to the continent. He needed to be alone inhis cave to discuss things with his eagle and his serpent. Having returned to hismountain, Zarathustra was haunted, despite himself, by the idea of God. He feltit suspended over his head like an sword of Damocles. But he denied it furiously.A good number of wise men have thought the following: Since I have a souland a mind, and there are many more of them, there must be an infinite sourceof love and intelligence from which we come and to where we shall return. Letsworship God. The new prophet says: If there is a God, how would I tolerate notbeing one? Therefore, there is no God. This is the paroxysm of the proudatheist. The absence of universal law seems necessary to him for human liberty.I placed this heavenly joy on man like an azure bell, by teaching that there isno eternal will in individual will. The supreme reason is that which is mostimpossible. And he calls it the heavenly spider that grasps the world in itsweb. And he rejoices that the sky is instead a stage for random accidents. Thetrue prayer is a spontaneous metaphysical exercise, the respiration and inhalationthrough which the soul communicates with its divine source. Here is whatZarasthustra doesnt want to admit. For him it is the last act of cowardice. Bentknees and folded hands make him twitch. Damned are these cowardly devilsthat are inside of you, who moan and fold their hands and yearn to adore. Prayeris disgraceful! To those who speak of blasphemy, the prophet laughinglyresponds, Yes, I am Zarathustra. The man without God, and from me will beborn Superman.

After thus discrediting the old commandments in this way, he spreads the news.This news can be summarized in two ideas, the idea of life and that of morality.For Zarathustra the point of life is the desire for power. Men and animals pretendto love, but join others only to crush them. The slave submits to his master to takeaway his power and to exercise it on his inferiors. The desire to rule is in the depthsof the soul and the goal of life. From this concept of life comes that of morality,that is, the idea of power substituted for the idea of good and evil. Since the lawsof morality have gone through many variations in different societies and times,Nietzsche concludes that the good is relative, arbitrary, individual and withoutsubstance. He does not see that the good is nothing more than harmony betweenman and society. We can dispute as to the means, but the idea remains the same.The good conceived as harmony is a positive thing because it gives birth to life.The perception of evil as nothing more than conflict, is a negative thing and has noreality in itself. For Nietzsche, the good is merely the will of the strong imposedon the weak. Do as you please, but know to desire, that is his morality. For him,evil has as much reality as the good, in fact, he usually prefers evil because it is


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more vital. I do not let your timorousness spoil my pleasure at the sight of thewicked. I am happy to see the marvels the hot sun hatches: tigers and palm treesand rattle-snakes. Among men too, there is a fine brood of the hot sun and muchthat is marvelous in the wicked. Indeed, as your wisest man did not seem so verywise to me, so I found that human wickedness, too, did not live up to its reputation.Truly, there is still a future, even for evil, and the hottest South has not yet beendiscovered by mankind. Your wild cats must become tigers and your poison-toadsand lizards must become crocodiles and dragons.2

Meanwhile, poisoned by sophistry, drenched in pride, Zarathustra falls deeperand deeper under the bronze fist of his nemesis. Despite his superb impertinence,the terror of the eternal and the infinite weighs down on him. This terror finallytakes the shape of a hallucination. He himself calls this nightmare the enigma orthe specter of proud solitude [. . .]

There is a powerful nemesis and an impeccable logic in Nietzsches work. Theidea of the divine, or of an original creator, and a final end, anterior and posterior,to the visible world, superior to time and space, imposes itself on reason withoutbeing able to embrace it. But the intuition and the mind see in God their source andthe reason for all things. The soul goes back to him in an act of love and timelessgoodness that is at the same time an affirmation of itself and acquisition of all thespiritual knowledge. By denying, due to his arrogance, God, the soul and thedivine love, Zarathustra shut down in himself the superior sphere of the con-science, where man has found, until now, his refuge and his sanctuary. By thisvoluntary denial, both hateful and obstinate, he mutilated his own nature. Havingdestroyed in himself the paradise of the soul and the Olympia of the pure idea, hecondemns himself to turn for all eternity in the elemental world, la bufferainfernal che mai non resta, and dives into the hell that he has created. Heblasphemously pushes aside the veiled angel of spiritual eternity, but the blacksnake of material eternity bites and strangles him.

From this point, Zarathustra thoughts grows blurry. His internal harmony isdestroyed; henceforth he no longer perceives the harmony of the universe. Hewanted to topple the hierarchy of forces in the world; but the hierarchy of histhought collapses instead, and he loses his reason. Delirium takes over him and theabyss consumes him. He pushes on in horror with his madness. But until the end,pride will give him hope. He will persuade himself that his own dissolution willturn out to be The Superman. The end of the poem carries with it the visiblesigns of madness and hallucination. Zarathustra gathers at the fringes of hiskingdom a group of superior men who represent the most distinguished of current

2 Schur virtually always modifies Nietzsches texts to suit his own arguments. The passage justquoted, in the Hollingdale translation, ends with: Your wild cats must have become tigers [. . .],which has an entirely different meaning than Schurs quote [ed.].

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society. Among them are two kings disgusted by their position, an unemployedpope, a shoddy magician and a few other eccentric characters. He invites them allto a banquet in his cave. This rustic meal, seasoned with the caustic maxims of themaster, seems to be both a parody of Platos banquet and Christs final supper.There we savor a lamb brought by the eagle to remind us that the weak are onlygood to be eaten. The prophet, having stepped out for some air, returns to findhis guests in prayer before a donkey, which they praise in lieu of another god.Zarathustra then understands that these supposedly superior men, despite all, stillneed to adore something and divinize someone, even a donkey. They are despi-cable and unworthy of his attention. He needs the strong men who fear none andwould not bend their wills. At this instant Zarathustra sees a magnificent lion lyingat his feet. This formidable creature is laughing. While terrible to others, he isgentle with his master and amicably licks his hands. His stands up and roars. Allthe terrified guests immediately scramble and run down the mountain in fullspeed. The prophet understands that his pity for the superior men had been hislasts sin. But he declares the his true children will come and shine like the risingsun.

Such is the conclusion of this famous poem and the anarchic gospel ofNietzsche. Complete madness was just about to break over him. What is reallytragic and striking in the story of this man is that the peak of his imaginary herowas the sign of his own defeat. The face of Zarathustra, the ghost that grew out ofhimself, was the last hallucination through which he wanted to flee from theunavoidable abyss, but an abyss which now opened even more widely. Justconsider the interior drama which plays out in the poem. Can one not see the faceof the man wearing the mask of the hero, but with the despair dormant beneath theapparent triumph? Then we read his next to last writing entitled: Dithyramb ofDionysus. This entire confession shows the hidden pains behind Nietzschesfanatical, and how the most daring thinkers can end in darkness if they extinguishthe light of sympathy in their own hearts.

In this study, I have shown the extraordinary qualities of Nietzsche so that theextent of his fall could be compared to the heights reached by his mind.

A writer of the first order, a penetrating moralist, a deep thinker, a satiricalgenius, and a powerful poet of his time, his marvelous talents were destined to bethe great reformer of thought for his generation. But it all drowned in the excessof self and the furious madness of atheism. Even so, here is the man that a greatnumber of our youths have adopted as a model and whom superficial minds quotedaily as the prophet of the future. Even if they are willing to accept his conclu-sions, they should at least learn by his example where certain intellectual practicescan lead. The history of the moral ideas of our times will doubtlessly see inNietzsche the great tragedy of a man who had the courage to follow his ideas tothe end, and who gave, by his spiritual suicide, the most impressive proof of his


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error. As for Zarathustra, he deserves to remain in literature as a unique monu-ment, for he shows us the depths of the soul of the atheist. We can only pity thosewho look for a philosophy there. It is a magnificent tomb sculpted in marble, butit is a tomb that containsnothingness.

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