in Nietzsche Studien XVII (1988)
In what follows I shall attempt to discover Nietzsche’s fundamental and most nearly metaphysical thought.
Nietzsche has surely not made it easy, for on the one hand he is whole, and on the other he is parts, very many fine parts, so fine, so sparkling and brilliant, that they may obscure the whole. That he is a whole is the strong claim he himself makes in Ecce Homo. His wisdom is one, his cleverness is one, the reason why he writes such good books is one, and the reason why he is a destiny is one. Moreover, the “why” in these four parts is one and the same. Yet, to present or point to this unity Nietzsche, so to say, divides himself into four parts. Moreover, Ecce Homo is only one—there are four others that belong to the years before his 44th year on earth, in which he hugged a horse in Turin and ceased writing. The vastness of his works is increased by something even more remarkable than their number. Nietzsche says that he writes in a sentence what others write in a book, and then he continues, “no, what they do not write.” Nietzsche was right. One memorizes a sentence of his in an instant and chews on it for life. (His only fellows in this respect are Pascal and Lincoln.) When one realizes that every one of Nietzsche’s books is made up of such sentences, several thousand of them, one begins to understand how vast his work is. To understand six of his sentences would be an achievement that would earn a day of joyful repose.
We are faced then with a massive difficulty in reading Nietzsche. He insists on his unity in Ecce Homo. Indeed, we feel this unity everywhere. Nothing he wrote after he became who he was could pass unrecognized through a blind review. Everything is recognizably “by Nietzsche” and no one else. And yet his unity or wholeness is both hard to see and easy to ignore. Each sentence or paragraph is so brilliant that like a star of our own, a sun, it makes all other stars invisible and it is so provoking that we halt in thought and take a walk before reading further. Freud said true, and for once frankly, when he remarked that one cannot read Nietzsche without having so many thoughts one stops reading. How then might one read Nietzsche whole?
It seems to me that one might begin by noticing that although Nietzsche praises solitude more than any other thinker, no thinker has written so much about reading as Nietzsche, indeed so much that shows a concern for his reader, both negatively, to avoid misinterpreters, scoundrels and busybodies, and positively to raise a few readers to his level. Nietzsche’s concern with reading has much to do with the precarious fate, as he rightly saw it, of writing in an age of universal literacy. Against the sea of mediocrity he foresaw, he took arms by speaking of reading explicitly as no previous thinker did. What Plato, Tacitus, Montaigne and Machiavelli knew but saw no reason to mention, Nietzsche says in public. Nietzsche is the first man ever to say in public that the best minds are dead. The connection between this fact and reading is clear: barring rare accident such as may happen perhaps once in a thousand years, our only access to the greatest minds is through reading. It is a sign of both Nietzsche’s anxiety and his charity that he, a great mind, wasted his time, as no previous great mind did, in instructing us in reading.
What does Nietzsche teach us? Very, very many things. No book of his, except some of his youthful one, is without explicit instructions on reading. We select one from many:
As this passage shows, discussion of reading is for him almost always instruction in how to read him and as such it leads to Zarathustra.
The passage I have quoted is from the first and still far-and-away the best book on Nietzsche ever written, Ecce Homo. In it he tells us that the peak of his work and his life accord with each other. Because of Zarathustra, his life is blessed. His books before Zarathustra lead to it, his books after it are meant to lead others to it. Zarathustra is the peak. Not The Birth of Tragedy, the darling of Comparative Literature departments, not Human All Too Human, his French book, not The Dawn, his personal favorite, not the deep, bright and gracious Frolicsome Science, nor his squint at modernity, Beyond Good and Evil, which those who prefer Plato to him prefer, not Toward the Genealogy of Morals, the favorite of all those who believe wisdom comes alone through argument, and certainly not the favorite of all busybodies from Elizabeth on, the Nachlass or leftovers that Nietzsche never lived to perfect or destroy, not any of these but Zarathustra, is the peak of his work. Also spricht Nietzsche in Ecce Homo.
Nietzsche also tells us, in Ecce Homo, that the understanding of a mere six sentences from Zarathustra would raise us above modernity. In what follows I shall attempt to understand a single sentence from it. If I am correct, there is no more important sentence in all Zarathustra and hence all Nietzsche’s work. Yet, even if I interpret it right, I will, according to Nietzsche, have five more sentences to go. Well, let us begin.
Throughout most of Zarathustra Zarathustra is a teacher who, in Nietzsche’s words (Beyond Good and Evil, #63), “takes everything seriously only in relation to his students–even himself.” Indeed the whole of Zarathustra is the story of how this most teacherly of men discovers that the most important thing to be learned cannot be taught.
Towards the end of Zarathustra III Zarathustra heads home. Upon arriving he seems to take pleasure as never before. His contentment does not last long. When he tries to summon his most abysmal thought, it floors h im. Gradually, as he lies insensate for seven days and nights, he convalesces. His waiting animals express their solicitude, offer him the world as a garden and urge him to become the teacher of the eternal return of the same, a doctrine they hold blithely. Zarathustra does not and refuses all their entreaties, gifts and advice, including their suggestion of how he should die. He is not their student and will be no one’s teacher. Then they leave him, politely, alone. From now to the end of Zarathustra III Zarathustra lies quietly prone with his eyes closed. What Nietzsche regarded as the highest peak in his greatest range is then shrouded in solitude. Since all that transpires hinges upon the understanding of a single sentence, I shall concentrate on it. This sentence appears in “Das andere Tanzlied.” Or rather does not appear! What does Zarathustra say in Life’s ear? He whispers it and does not tell us what it was. It remains a secret between Zarathustra and Life, something she knows, he guesses, something that startles her, makes her deny that it can be known, something that makes them weep together and makes Zarathustra say that then Life was dearer to him than ever his Wisdom was. Nietzsche tells us enough to make us want very much to know what Zarathustra whispered in Life’s ear, through her tresses. Does he tell us enough so that we can find out, as well as want to? Perhaps. Perhaps not. The only way to know is to try and find out. Let us begin.
At least three guesses suggest themselves. The first is “you are barren.” Certainly this is something never or seldom said of Life. Zarathustra has found out her secret and she is astonished. He has guessed what no one guessed, let alone knew. As we know and she just guessed, Zarathustra is leaving Life. He is leaving her for Eternity, the only woman from who he has ever wanted children. Life is barren or, if not barren, nevertheless does not want children. In either case Zarathustra’s leaving Life would be a confession “Life is no good.” If so, then Zarathustra’s farewell to Life would resemble that of Socrates, as interpreted by Nietzsche: “life is no good.” 2
The second guess is this: that Zarathustra whispers either “you are leaving me” or “you want to leave me” to Life. Certainly this might surprise her. She has just asserted that she knows he is thinking of leaving her. He turns the tables on her. Although she was thinking of leaving him, she did not want to be left by him. She wanted to be the one leaving. And perhaps his whispered guess shames her as much as its accuracy astonishes her. And perhaps she is nonetheless relieved. Now their parting can be open, equal, and free of the fear of being the one left. Perhaps this relief makes it possible for them to be tender, even as never before or not for a long time, to each other. This second guess has very much in its favor that death can be equally well described as life leaving us or us leaving life, indeed most accurately as us and life leaving each other.
The third guess is this, that Zarathustra whispers to Life “I shall return.” This would account for the emphasis Life puts upon knowing in her reply: “You know that, O Zarathustra? That no one knows.” She is right. Can any one know he will return? They can only say “I want to return” or “I want you once more.” We can will but not know the future. Willing it, however, makes quite a difference. Zarathustra loves Life and so as he declares, “I shall return,” he delights in coming closer to her, close enough to whisper through her tresses. “I shall return,” he says. “No one knows that,” she replies, and Zarathustra does not deny it. No wonder they both weep. And no wonder he says she was dearer to him then than she had ever been, even dearer than his wisdom. Both of them know that no one knows if he will return to Life. Zarathustra’s avowal that he will is all the more tender and endearing for being brave. He takes leave of Life blessing her but not clinging to her, the way the great Odysseus left Nausikaa (cf. Beyond Good and Evil, #96).
Which guess is right? All three seem to finish Zarathustra’s sentence perfectly well and all three have it in them to astonish Life, but the first, “you are barren”, is hard to fit with the tenderness with which Zarathustra whispers in Life’s ear, indeed with the adoring description of her tresses. And if Life’s secret is that she is barren and Zarathustra is leaving her to seek a child by Eternity, would both of them weep? Would Zarathustra weep and later say that Life was dearer than ever his Wisdom was? It seems hard to imagine.
What about the second guess, “You are leaving me”? Could Zarathustra say this to Life while adoring her tresses? Strange as it may seem, I think it possible. He might take pleasure in having guessed her secret and loving her for her secretive nature, for her disguising her thoughts about leaving by attributing the same to him. I can imagine a tenderness arising from complete knowledge, from a guess so accurate that at last the elusive Life is known, a knower’s tenderness for the thing long unknown now known, and because long unknown dearer than ever one’s Wisdom was. Things sought, long sought for, are dearer than things, such as one’s Wisdom, that one has. There is, however, one feature of the context that the second guess does not quite fit: whatever Zarathustra whispers must be such as to cause Life to deny that any one can know it. What would it mean for Life to deny that Zarathustra or any one can know that Life is thinking of leaving them? Life may often think of leaving us. Every serious illness is such a thought. And when we are very old, surely Life thinks of leaving us. And we know it. Why did Goethe gather his powers and finish Faust when he did? It seems then that only the third guess can be right. Only “I shall return” as an affirmation of love at parting can accord with Zarathustra’s adoration of Life’s tresses, their weeping together, her dearness to him, and with her denial that such a thing can be known by anyone.
Although Zarathustra loves Life, he is ready to leave Life. He avows his love by assuring her “I shall return.” As he does so he draws nearer to her than ever before. Indeed he adores her. She, however, wonders about his assurance. Indeed, she suddenly cares more for him than for herself. Does he know he is claiming to know what cannot be known? Although she wonders if he is trying to comfort her, she hopes even more that he knows he is doing so. For his sake then she challenges him: “no one knows that.” He in return is silent. His “I shall return” was said to comfort her and it is no more than a conjecture. Indeed, it is probably less. Zarathustra has no reason to think he will return. He may, for the future like the night is unknowable, but he has no reason to think so. He simply does not know. However, what his “I shall return” lacks in certainty, it makes up for in love. Only if Zarathustra does not know the future does his love have worth. If Zarathustra were certain, like his animals, that he would return, his love of Life would be easy and his farewell to her a sham. But, as Zarathustra long ago told the tight-rope walker, the soul dies even before the body. The deep Midnight will say the same in a minute: Woe is deep. The final impediment to Zarathustra’s self redemption is not then nausea at petty men, or ill will against the fixity of the past; it is rancor at mortality. That we come “einmal und nicht mehr” is the truly abysmal thought of Zarathustra. Death is for keeps and Zarathustra knows it. So instead of trying to comfort Life again Zarathustra is silent. He and Life look at each other and then at the green meadow. Together they enjoy the cool of the evening. Then together they weep. Zarathustra leaves Life weeping but not clinging or complaining. His weeping farewell is almost immediately followed by a rapturous blessing of his life and a rapturous loving of Eternity. How, we wonder, are Zarathustra’s weeping and his rapture connected? How are Life, which Zarathustra is now prepared to leave, and Eternity, which he is about to woo, connected?
Had the first guess “you are barren” been right we would have been compelled to say that for Zarathustra Eternity is something far superior to Life because Eternity is a mother and Life is not. And had the second guess “You are leaving me” been right we would have been compelled to say that for Zarathustra Eternity is something far superior to Life because Eternity does not leave us and Life does. As it is, since only the third guess fits, we must say something else. Although Eternity can bear children and does not leave us, she cannot be “far superior” to Life. He who loves life wants children; he who leaves Life blessing it affirms Eternity. We only weep at a farewell to something good. And only something good can make us desire that it continue eternally. For Zarathustra Life is mortal Life and yet Eternity is not Eternal Life. By saying both “yes” and “farewell” to mortal Life, by both blessing and weeping over her, Zarathustra shows that the Eternity he then turns to is not something opposed to Life, something resting above or outside Becoming. It is not an afterlife and not an eternal return of oneself. Eternity for Zarathustra is the Being of Becoming. If you like mortal Life and your own mortal Life enough to say “once more” to it, then you must say “once more” to all mortal Life and all mortal lives, past and future. You say “once more” to all previous lives by perfecting your own life and you say “once more” to your own life by willing a child. For Zarathustra wanting a child is the proper way to say “once more” to life. In children Life, mortal Life, may continue sempiternally. Not one’s own mortal life but mortal Life. Zarathustra’s weeping is not a sign of disappointment with life, it is a sign of satisfaction. And his wish to have children by Eternity is a sign of his joy. Each of the “seven Seals” links his satisfaction with his life (if ever I . . .) with his joy with Eternity (. . . then I must love Eternity). Zarathustra’s love of Eternity is a fulfilling without being a cancellation of his love of mortal Life. If the “Seven Seals” perfect the love of Life into the Love of Eternity, they also perfect the love of Wisdom. Previously Zarathustra had always failed to unite his love of Life and his love of Wisdom. Although they were similar, they were not identical. Indeed, there was rivalry and jealously between these women. Now that seems to cease. Of course what is fulfilled or perfected by the love of Eternity must in some sense have been imperfect and unfulfilled. Zarathustra must have always suspected as much, for he never said “I love you” to either Life or Wisdom. This he only says to Eternity, over and over and over, seven times. In the face of woe Zarathustra declares his joy. In the face of Nothing he loves the Being of Becoming.
How then are Life, Wisdom and Eternity understood by Zarathustra? Briefly speaking, Life and Wisdom are mistresses, while Eternity is a Wife. Towards both Life and Wisdom, Zarathustra behaves as a swain. He pursues them. They are fascinating, alluring, pleasing, playful. Yet they are not the same. Life is far more elusive. Although in a sense we possess our life (our being alive), we do not do so securely. Life is a mistress or beloved that might leave any time. We love life far more than she loves us. At least we want her to stay far more than she is willing to assure us that she will stay. This is perhaps even part of her charm. We would not love her so passionately if we could command her or were assured of her devotion. The love of Life as Zarathustra experiences it is not bliss. It is mixed with insecurity. It is a courtship that cannot end. Life cannot be wed. And Life, although it sounds strange, is not a mother. What does this mean? What does Zarathustra tell us or allows us to learn about our relation to life? Perhaps this: that although we would not be at all without life, we are not life. Life is body, there is no soul without body, yet we are more our souls than our bodies. We love life, there is no other possibility, the dead neither love nor despise. For life to despise life, to say “life is no good” is absurd. Yet life is not quite enough to satisfy us (consider the Nietzsche who lived on after 4 January 1889). We are more nearly our wisdom than we are our bodies or our being alive. (Nietzsche was the wisdom that fled him in January 1889 far more than the small-eared, large-mustachioed, 140 lb. body left behind.) We love life but it is necessary to remember the whip. As Life herself tells Zarathustra, wherever she went she found obeying and commanding. Each of us must command life (being alive) or we will be commanded by it. Sick persons are commanded by their bodies, healthy persons command theirs. Convalescence is the transition from slavery to mastery. In his relation to Life until now Zarathustra has been more commanded than commanding (recall his disposition toward Life in the first Dancing Song). Now as the chapter heading says, he is a convalescent and in “Das andere Tanzlied” he remembers the whip.
It should be noticed that Zarathustra’s relation to Life is devoid of enjoyment. Zarathustra never “enjoys Life.” He never sits in the sun, walks beside a stream, or quenches his thirst from a spring. His relation to Life is serious, earnest and passionate. And yet he is ready to leave Life. Although he always remains Life’s advocate and lover, he takes leave of her. How can this be? To understand it, we must turn to Wisdom.
Who is this wisdom? Like Life, Wisdom is a woman. This means above all that Wisdom is not the opposite of Life. Death is the opposite of Life. From beginning to end, Zarathustra, the advocate of Life, defends Life against those who despise her in the name of Wisdom and defends Wisdom from those who understood her as death. Wisdom is much closer to Life than to death. Both are women, and yet they are not identical. Indeed, they are rivals for Zarathustra’s affections and loyalty. How then do they differ? It seems in this way: Wisdom is far more one’s own than Life. Our Wisdom is so much the consequence of our activity that Zarathustra even speaks of his Wisdom. He seems to regard this activity as a willing or as a creating, the creating of something new, perhaps something unsharable, something solitary and utterly peculiar to oneself. Indeed, very nearly oneself. Zarathustra is very devoted to his Wisdom. For the sake of Wisdom Zarathustra would cut into Life. Although Zarathustra is not an ascetic out of hatred for life, he is an ascetic. It is no wonder Zarathustra does not enjoy life. He is always thinking of wisdom. He seldom relaxes. Although Zarathustra describes his Wisdom in terms that remind of Life, his Wisdom is different. Life is, for example, jealous of Wisdom, but Wisdom is never jealous of Life. In the “Die stillste Stunde” Wisdom simply calls Zarathustra away from his students, to solitude, to home, to herself. The highest moments of wisdom in Zarathustra are solitary moments and the very highest are ones in which Zarathustra is not only solitary but closes his eyes to the visible world. Wisdom is something like conscience or self-consciousness, as Life never is. Wisdom calls Zarathustra as Life does not. Wisdom then only appears to be more one’s own than Life. Both are elusive. The one because she may leave you anytime, the other because she may never come, or never be reached. When Zarathustra speaks of his Wisdom to Life in Part II, he confesses that he has never seen her, except through veils and then not for sure. He has seen Life. Zarathustra loves Wisdom although he has never known her. And is not sure he has seen her. This passage recaptures the original meaning of Socratic philosophy. Philosophy is the love of something you are not sure exists. Zarathustra speaks honestly to Life. He cannot know Wisdom. He is on the way to wisdom. She is up ahead of him and then only maybe. He loves what he may never know and what may be unknowable. What makes Wisdom “his” is not possession or creation but affection. And daring. Yet there must be something missing in this affection, for although Zarathustra never needs to take leave of Wisdom (as he does Life), Zarathustra will say that the only woman he ever wanted a child by is Eternity. We turn then to Eternity.
Who is Eternity? Like Life and like Wisdom, she is a woman. She cannot be then the opposite of Life. She cannot be death. Eternity is, like the other women, something lovable. How can Eternity be lovable? Is she lovable because deathless? No, that cannot be. There is no such thing as a deathless woman. Eternity is perishable **. (Is Wisdom, also a woman, also perishable? We shall see.) The turning of Zarathustra then from Life to Eternity, his leaving the one woman and declaring no less than seven times his love for the other cannot be a betrayal or a conversion or desperate leap. Zarathustra is not sick of Life. He does not hate her whom he once loved and he has not betrayed her. Nay, the structure of every one of “Die sieben Siegel” says that if Zarathustra is and was something in life, if he did this, or thought that, then how could he not declare his love of Eternity. In this way affirmation of Life requires affirmation of Eternity and affirmation of Eternity springs from affirmation of life. Indeed, requires it. The relation is so tight that the two are interdependent, inseparable and one. Loving Eternity does however require being ready to leave Life. To cling to Life, to wine and struggle, would not be to affirm Life. And yet Zarathustra parting from Life is not stiff upper lip or Stoic. It is represented as something not altogether sad and courageous. Indeed, it is represented as a preference. Zarathustra leaves Life for Eternity. The reason seems to be children. Only Eternity can bear children or, at least, is the woman from whom Zarathustra wants children. Although Eternity must, so to say, include all past children, all fragments and mistakes, what Zarathustra emphasizes is the future, the children he wants to have with her. Although then the affirmation of Life would not be full or genuine without including all past life, it finds its expression in deed as well as feeling in the begetting of children, future children. The deed that most fully expresses affirmation of life, readiness to leave life, and affirmation of the only Eternity we can love, is the begetting of a child: “Was that Life, why then ‘once more’.” In “Die sieben Siegel” Zarathustra says “once more” in this manner seven times with Eternity.
To understand Eternity it seems we must understand children. Long ago in “Von den drei Verwandlungen” Zarathustra spoke of the child, about how the Lion must become the child, the “I will” must become the “I say yes.” The child is innocence and creating and innovation. A little later Zarathustra told the old Woman that woman wants a child from a man. Now Zarathustra wants a child from Eternity. Is he now a child as well? The only way adults can become children is by having them. Their beginning is the parents’ beginning (as parents for one thing). As the child plays with the stream, the parent remembers playing by the stream, and sometimes joins in. What are the children Zarathustra wants from Eternity? What do they mean? Perhaps it will help if we compare these children Zarathustra wants with the one other being he has treated as a child, namely his soul, in “Von der grossen Sehnsucht.” Two things are striking. Although his soul is not begotten by Zarathustra (say upon Life), he brings up and educates it. He also seems to be solely in charge of it. Moreover, it is not very separate from him. Could it ever say something, even a single sentence, that might surprise him? A child by Eternity is something different. It would be begotten, have two parents, and be quite a bit separate from either. What does that mean? One feels somehow that Zarathustra has no earthly woman in mind. (Perhaps the most critical remark on women Nietzsche ever put in print was Zarathustra’s “I have never met a woman I wanted a child from except you, O Eternity.”) Perhaps Zarathustra means books? Might they not be considered as the begetting of a child with eternity. Might they not be a “once more” to Life. They exist beyond the author, may be read by persons he never met, and since exists beyond the author’s lifetime, it may be read by persons who never could have met him. Especially if written or in some way begotten (in the manner Socrates begot books through Plato) by Zarathustra, they would surely be affirmations of Life. Or would the children sought by Zarathustra have to be like himself, persons, indeed Übermenschen? Is Nietzsche, for example, the first son of Zarathustra? And does Zarathustra beget books through him? Is a child someone who carries on your work as well as resembles you? Or might a child by Zarathustra and Eternity turn out an idiot, a hopeless mistake, a last man? We want to know, but must, I think, acknowledge that we may not be able to. Perhaps the fourth book of Zarathustra will tell us; although Zarathustra’s children do not appear there, they are said to be coming soon; so at least we know that Eternity received Zarathustra and conceived, indeed more than once. We want to know more and yet our inability to say more now is itself perhaps instructive. Children are not something you can know as much about as you want to before they come, indeed before they become what they are meant to be. Saying “once more” to Life by begetting a child is not like saying “once more” to Mozart. You don’t know who you’ll get. You might get a Nietzsche. You might get an Elizabeth Nietzsche. Saying yes to Life with a child is indeed saying yes to the whole of life. By comparison less comprehensive is saying yes to Life with a book. Certainly it is less risky. When you write a book and you are, say, a Nietzsche, there is no chance the book will be an Elizabeth Nietzsche, rather than a Nietzsche. Such an author as Nietzsche is totally responsible for his books, although not for their use or their abuse, say by an Elizabeth. No father is nearly as responsible for his child as an author for his book. Children have wills of their own. They have it in them, unlike books, to grow up and write books, books that their parents could not perhaps themselves write or even imagine them writing. It is probable then that the children Zarathustra wants by Eternity are children, not books. Certain it is, in any case, that Zarathustra wants to marry Eternity for he speaks of lusting after “dem hochzeitlichen Ring der Ringe!” He wants to wed Eternity, as he has never wanted to wed Life or Wisdom. For Zarathustra, as for most grandmothers, wedding, marriage and children go together.
Although we never witness the wedding of Zarathustra and Eternity (in the ‘sieben Siegel” we hear only his wish for it), we know it must have taken place and that Zarathustra in Zarathustra IV is married, because in it we hear that his children are on the way. The way then that Zarathustra expresses his love of Eternity at the end of Zarathustra III makes us await part IV, makes us, like him, await children.
We seem in turning to Eternity to have left Wisdom out. What is Wisdom’s relation to Eternity? In turning to Eternity Zarathustra leaves Life but what about Wisdom? Does Zarathustra leave Wisdom? He cannot. He has never really been with Wisdom, although he has loved her. He cannot leave someone he has never been with. Wisdom, as we said, is up ahead of him. Wisdom draws him on. He has never seen her. Does he ever see her or reach her? Perhaps the “sieben Siegel” are Zarathustra’s wisdom. Perhaps in them the lover of Wisdom becomes her. Or perhaps in them the lover of wisdom becomes wise. Perhaps wisdom is like a woman as you love and pursue it, but becomes simply a state of “being wise” when you find it. However, if the “sieben Siegel” are Zarathustra become wise, then there is something strange about being wise, for Zarathustra certainly remains a lover in the “sieben Siegel.” Must we say this then, that being wise or reaching Wisdom is loving Eternity as Zarathustra does? Or should we say that loving Eternity is a step towards Wisdom perhaps even the decisive step or the highest step possible for man, it is nonetheless not Wisdom. If so, then Zarathustra remains a philosopher, a lover of Wisdom, in the “sieben Siegel” at the high point of Zarathustra. If so, then there remains something above Zarathustra, something unreached, perhaps unreachable, but in any case desirable. We shall have to see in Zarathustra IV.
All that we have said by way of interpretation since we came upon the question: what does Zarathustra whisper in Life’s ear? has been premised upon our conjecture that what Zarathustra says is “I shall return.” We hope that the interpretation has supported the conjecture. Yet everything in the interpretation rests upon the conjecture itself. If the conjecture is wrong, the interpretation falls. Is the conjecture wrong? It does seem the best of the three considered. It also seems to accord with the interpretation that follows. But this might only mean that the conjecture is the best of the three. What about some fourth conjecture? Or a fifth? And a sixth” Perhaps a man in Paraguay on a rainy day thirty years ago came up with a far better conjecture which, of course, led to a far more satisfying interpretation, but he loved solitude and never shared it. Or perhaps such a superior conjecture followed by a superior interpretation will be the work of someone sixteen hundred years in the future. But wait—we have imagined a superior conjecture and a superior interpretation flowing from it. What reason have we to believe that it would be final? That Nietzsche, so to say, would rise from his grave and say, “you got it”?
Such a vision ought to make us reflect again on the fact that Nietzsche could very well have revealed what Zarathustra whispers in Life’s ear. Not only did he not, but he did so so as to make us conjecture or guess. He gave us a riddle, one that comes just before a vision, indeed linked with it so that we cannot understand either without understanding the other. Each is a locked box which contains the only key to the other. Why? We can only answer that he wanted us to conjecture or guess. Indeed to go on guessing. Most riddles have an answer and when its given one says “oh yes.” With this one there is no sure one. One just goes on guessing or affirming one’s guess or rather having guessed, one remains uncertain whether there might not be a superior answer. Why did Nietzsche arrange it this way? In one place Nietzsche says “we” would rather guess than prove. Proving goes with certainty; with “knowing.” He prefers guessing. We can only conclude that Nietzsche wished to arrange it so that the interpretation of the very highest moment in Zarathustra and therefore the highest moment in all his works remains in some important degree conjectural, conjectural for the reader. Nietzsche has arranged it so that the very effort to understand his highest wisdom, or highest point in his search for it, requires a strength of mind that is an analogue as well as part of the strength of soul that allows Zarathustra to conjecture “I shall return” and by so doing love the Life he is leaving and the Eternity he is wooing and impregnating seven times. However, in noticing that the eternal guessing Nietzsche imposes upon us accords with the third of our conjectures, we have not shown this conjecture to be either certain or any closer to certainty. Nor would Nietzsche wish us to be. What is unteachable is best whispered or sung.
Nietzsche’s most metaphysical thought is, then, his most poetical thought. Current philosophical opinion would have it that there is little relation between poetry and metaphysics or, if a relation, a hostile or opposing one. “The more metaphysical, the less poetic; witness Kant.” To neutralize this opinion one might cite Parmenides’ metaphysical verse, Lucretius’ poetic teaching, or Plato’s imitative dialogues. Yet Zarathustra is far more poetic than these. Zarathustra is not merely in verse and not merely imitative; it is passionate or, as Nietzsche says, “tragic.” “The more poetic, the more philosophic; the more tragic, the more truly metaphysical,” Nietzsche seems to say. This should not surprise us. In his first work, The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche called for a tragic Socrates. In Zarathustra he became such a Socrates. In resolving the theoretical conflict between life and truth, Nietzsche understood himself to have resolved the ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy or, as he understood it, between tragedy and metaphysics.
1 All quotations from Nietzsche’s German are from the Montinari/Colli Kritische Studienausgabe (DTV/de Gruyter, 1980); all translations are from Walter Kaufmann. This essay was delivered as an invited address to the annual meeting of the Nietzsche Society in St. Louis (l983). I am grateful to the Society and its Chairman, Harold Alderman, for the invitation and the subsequent discussion. Before that, it was both inspired and aided by Karen McDermott, for which I am enduringly grateful. Time to write it was provided by the generosity of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
2 Twilight of the Idols, “The Problem of Socrates,” #1.
Endnotes
1. All quotations from Nietzsche come from the KSA; all abbreviations of Nietzsche’s titles follow its usage. This essay, a portion of my commentary on Zarathustra , was delivered, as an invited address, to the Nietzsche Society in St. Louis (October, 1983), at a farewell soirée at the Familie Assmann in Heidelberg (August, 1983), and, in its German version, to the Philosophisches Seminar der Universität Braunschweig (July, 1984). For these enabling occasions, many thanks to my good hosts, Harold Alderman, Jan and Aleida Assmann, and Prof. and Mrs. Heribert Boeder. In the beginning, it was prompted and encouraged by Karen McDermott, for which I am enduringly grateful. A seminar I taught at Heidelberg was a pleasure and a help, especially the participation of Paul Mundell and Robin Cackett. Support there from Hans-Georg Gadamer and Reiner Wiehl was indispensable. Later it was delivered under near-Eternity skies in Austin, Texas, at the University (April, 1985). Time to write it was provided by the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, whose generosity is the most intelligently administered I know or know of.
2. Minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society , trans. M. Nunberg (New York: International Universities Press, 1974), Vol. II, (meeting of 28 October 1908 on Ecce Homo ), p. 32.
3. Like his animals, or like Heidegger, whose inquiry into “die ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen” stops with them (p. 318, Vol. I), and does not go further, with Zarathustra, into “Von der grossen Sehnsucht,” “Das andere Tanzleid,” and “Die sieben Siegel.” Still Heidegger’s two volume Nietzsche (Pfullingen: Neske, 1961) is the greatest confrontation Nietzsche has been treated to; see the Review of Metaphysics (March, 1984), pp. 637-639 for further thoughts. Harold Alderman’s serious look at Zarathustra, Nietzsche’s Gift (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1977) devotes only a couple of summarizing pages to these episodes; likewise, K.-H. Volkmann-Schluck’s instructive “Die Stufen der Selbstüberwindung des Lebens: (Erläuterungen zum 3 Teil von Nietzsches Zarathustra)” in Nietzsche Studien 2 (1973), pp. 137-156.
4. Rilke, Duino Elegien, IX, lines 13-17.
5. Gadamer’s sensitive remarks on this passage, in his brief, sure footed, walk through the whole book, “Das Drama Zarathustras” (Nietzsche Studien 14, 1-15), make one hope that one day the notes to his lecture course given during the war in Leipzig will be found, or failing that, that the notes of a good student will.
6. There is nothing more Nietzschean (if also Platonic) in Allan Bloom’s Nietzschean book, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987) than the author’s sad astonishment at the fact that his students do not say “I love you” in their “relationships,” do not desire a union more enduring than graduation, and do not weep at parting or long for eternity.
7. On “Von alten und jungen Weiblein” see my “Woman, Nietzsche, and Nature,” Maieutics, II (Winter, 1981), pp. 27-42.
8. Or perhaps a man from Canada, such as Laurence Lampert, whose commentary on Zarathustra (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987) will, so he tells me, differ from my interpretation of this episode.
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