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1988
ANMA LIBRI
DEPARTMENT OF FRENCH AND ITALIAN, STANFORD UNIVERSITY
<!:> 1988 by ANMA Libri & Co.
P.O. Box 876, Saratoga, Calif. 95071 .
All rights reserved.
ISBN 0-915838-99-0
LC 87-7 1804
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Introduction
'
PART I: T OPICS IN NIETZSCHE S LATER THOUGHT
Giorgio Agamben , The Eternal Return and the Paradox

of Passion 9
Gianni Vattimo, Nietzsche and Heidegger 19
Michel Serres, Corruption-The Antichrist: A Chemistry
of Sensations and Ideas 31
Rene Girard, Nietzsche and Contradiction 53
Louis Marin, Transfiguration in Raphael, Stendhal,
and Nietzsche 67
David E. Wellbery, Nietzsche - Art - Postmodern ism:
A Reply to Jiirgen Habermas 77
PART II: THE COLLAPSE, SEXUALITY, THE BODY,
THE HORSE
Anacleto Verrecchia, Nietzsche's Breakdown in Turin' 105

Mazzino Montinari, Nietzsche and Wagner
One Hundred Years Ago: 1 980 Addendum 113
A vita! Ronell, Hitting the Streets: Ecce Fama 119
Barbara Spackman, Nietzsche, D'Annunzio,
and the Scene of Convalescence 141
David L. Miller, Nietzsche's Horse and Other Tracings
of the Gods 159
PART III: THE TURINESE WRITINGS: MADNESS,
THE END, DIVINITY, SELF
Giorgio Colli, The Posthumous Fragments from the

Beginning of 1 888 to January 1889 175
Thomas Harrison, Have I Been Understood? The Eternal
Nowhere of Nietzschean Existence 181
Jean-Luc Nancy , Dei Pararysis Progressiva 1 99
Milad Doueihi, Nietzsche, Dio a Torino 209
Robert P. Harrison, Beyond the End: Nietzsche in Turin 2 19
David Farrell Krell, Consultations with the Paternal Shadow:
Gasche, Derrida, and Klossowski on Ecce Homo 229
PART IV: THE ITALIAN HERITAGE
Jeffrey Schnapp, N ietzsche s Italian Style: Gabriele

' 247
D'Annunzio
Gabriele D'Annunzio, The Beast Who Wills 265
Thomas Sheehan, Diventare Dio: J ulius Evola
and the Metaphysics of Fascism 279
Claudio Magris, Things Near and Far: Nietzsche
and the Great Triestine Generation
of the Early Twentieth Century 293
A ngus Fletcher, Music, Visconti, Mann, Nietzsche:
Death in Venice 301
A. Thomas Norris, Nietzsche and Vico on Irony
and Cultural Dissolution 313
Beverly Allen , Nietzsche's Italian Decline: The Poets 333
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
At the origin of this publication lies the Nietzsche in Italy conference

hosted by the Department of French and Italian of Stanford Univer
sity. It took place on April 1 8- 1 9, 1986, and over half of these papers
were first read there. (The exceptions are the contributions of Colli ,
Krell, Magris , Miller, Montinari, Norris, Serres, Verrecchia, and
Vattimo, which were either solicited especially for this volume or which
have not yet appeared in English translation .) The possibility of this
amplified collection is in large ·part due to the generous support of
the Career Development Committee of the College of Humanities
at the University of Utah. Very warm thanks to all those who have
been involved, including each contributor, their publishers , and
especially Jeffrey Schnapp, Robert Harrison, Alphonse Juilland, John
Freccero , Daniela Dixon, Nadia Margolis , and Norman Council .
INTRODUCTION
Nietzsche in Italy: the reciprocal commerce between his work and

that of the peninsula (Raphael, Vico , Leopardi, D'Annunzio ,
Marinetti, Campana, Evola, Visconti-the list could be extended in
definitely); readings and uses of Nietzsche in contemporary Italian
philosophy and literature; Nietzsche's final five works, written in Italy
in 1888; his breakdown, its possible causes and relation to his
philosophy as a whole; the nature of Nietzsche's experience in his
"proven place" south of Provence, especially Genova, Como, Sorrento,
.and, of course, Torino, where he collapsed at the turn of the year
1 889. The topic Nietzsche in Italy has generated a wide variety of
responses and treatments from these twenty-three contributors. What
has emerged is a double record of Nietzsche's effect on Italy and of
Italy on Nietzsche, of Italy, in other words, as subsoil and germi
nation of Nietzschean seed. The conjunction of these moments-the
"third face" of this Doppelgangerische relation - is visibly documented in
Nietzsche's final presence and work in Torino, in 1888, on the margin
of sanity. The many unanswered questions of this borderline ex
perience and writing are taken up by six of the twenty-three con
tributors, the double relation by the remaining seventeen. And yet,
so many intersections and ramifications cross these essays that it has
been impossible to taxonomize them. What follows is a four-part
grouping governed almost exclusively by considerations of family
resemblance and narrative continuity.
The collection is launched by two of Italy's leading philosophers ,
GIORGIO AGAMBEN and GIANNI VATTIMO. Tracing the word Gleich in
the Nietzschean formula die ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen (the eternal
1
2 Nietzsche in Italy
recurrence of the same) to its original meaning of likeness, Agamben

proposes a new interpretation of the will to power as self-affection,
or as the primal passion of Western metaphysics. Vattimo accounts
for contemporary European hermeneutics and deconstruction as a
"correction" of Heideggerian ontology by Nietzschean nihilism. Calling
Nietzsche back to his pre-Pasteurian age, MICHEL SERRES diagnoses
the philosopher's polemic against Christianity as symptomatic of a
very current, pre-antibiotic, microbic phobia . Cheese, not hygiene,
is the formula for health . RENE GIRARD speaks of a microbe within
Nietzsche himself, in the form of a compulsion toward Christianity
which the philosopher was unable to confess to in writing. Comment
ing on a fragment in which Nietzsche admits to his love for Parsifal,
Girard claims that scholars will never understand the philosopher until
they face up to contradiction as the condition of the very possibility
of his literary activity. This may be the kind of contradiction which
DAVID WELLBERY finds Jurgen Habermas to ignore in his critique of
Nietzschean aesthetics . For Wellbery , Nietzschean artistic symboliza

tion does not involve a defense of myth, primitivity, or taste, but rather
an asemantic, self-productive inscription of physiographical forces.
The essay of LOUIS MARIN measures the transfigurational thrust of these
forces against the work of two artists the philosopher greatly admired,
Stendhal and Raphael .
Part II moves from topics within Nietzsche's thought to topics
behind, beneath, or beside that thought. In pages from a much longer
study, ANACLETO VERRECCHIA weighs the legitimacy of those second
hand reports to the effect that Nietzsche's madness suddenly erupted
on the occasion of a coachman beating his horse. His verdict: much
was hidden by Franz Overbeck, Elizabeth Forster-Nietzsche, and the
others responsible for this Dostoevskian tale . . MAZZINO MONTINARI
reports on a letter from one of Nietzsche's physicians which divulges
yet other unassimilated information. As it turns out, the letter clarifies
not only the real reason for Nietzsche's break with Wagner but also
the conflicting legends of Nietzsche's syphilis and/or sexual abstinence.
Here too there is a verdict: it is unlikely that Nietzsche suffered from
either. AVITAL RONELL performs a reading of psycho-literary tropes
in Nietzsche's experience, including the horse, his chronically
triangular erotic relationships, his "chatter" and fame. In a study of
convalescence in Nietzsche, D'Annunzio , Huysmans, and Baudelaire ,
BARBARA SPACKMAN joins Wellbery and Colli in attempting to make
sense of Nietzsche's declared obsession in his last year of sanity - the

Introduction 3
body. DAVID MILLER tests the horse and other Zarathustrian animals
against Heidegger, the Stoics, and the Cartesian mach£nae an£matae
tradition.
Part III examines whether Nietzsche's final conceits and projects
from September 1888 to January 1889 bear any necessary and logical
relation to his work as a whole. GIO RGIO COLLI characterizes Nietzsche's
final tum to the body as the consequence of an exasperation with theory
and as a quest for new mystical wisdom. My own essay suggests that
Nietzsche's conflicting self-representations in these elated months
dramatize a fundamental ontology of existential transcendence which
has informed his philosophy all along.In what issues in a literal reading
of the statement "God is dead," JEAN-LUC NANCY links paralysis
progress£va- Nietzsche's diagnosed malady- to the philosopher's self
presentation as God. God has become paralyzed, and subjectivity
obliterated. Applying the same conceit of self-divinity to parables which
Nietzsche offers "theologically speaking," MILAD DOUEIHI proposes an
understanding of Nietzschean destiny as a hermeneutics of reading
and re-writing. ROBERT HARRISON uses the regenerative figures in Nietz
sche's final writings - -the phoenix, the Crucified, his delusions of at
tending his own funeral- to search out a topology of Nietzschean
philosophy beyond "the end," whether understood in the Heideggerian
sense of the end of metaphysics or in the sense of radical finitude.
In a variant standardized by the Colli-Montinari edition of Nietz
sche's works (the famous third section of the first chapter of Ecce Homo),
DAVID KRELL discerns an ambiguous filial agon which, when compared
to other Nietzschean statements and dreams, marks out a place for

the paternal in distinction to the views of Derrida, Klossowski, and
Gasche .
On Nietzsche and his Italian heritage, Part IV opens with JEFFREY
'
scHNAPP s analysis of the stylistic transformation of Nietzsche through
his first Italian reception in Gabriele D'Annunzio. Schnapp's is also

the first translation-edition of the earliest Italian article on Nietzsche,
D'Annunzio's "The Beast W.ho Wills" of 1 892 , which finally appears
in its entirety . The question of the early influence of Nietzsche on
Italian letters is also the occasion for THOMAS SHEEHAN's philosophical
study of the immanent relation between Nietzsche andjulius Evola,
or between appropriative will to power and fascistic metaphysics. Even
Heidegger, writes Sheehan, is unable to help us with the task that
still lies before us - the rethinking of the notion of property . CLAUDIO
MAGRIS outlines the responses to Nietzsche of Saba, Svevo, Slataper,
Michelstaedter, and other Triestine writers at the beginning of the

century. ANGUS FLETCHER offers a critical reading of Nietzsche's role
in the complex exchange between Visconti and Mann in the movie
Death in Venice. Another exchange, this time between irony and cultural
decadence, is recounted in THOMAS NORRrs's study of Vico and Nietz
sche. Finally, the collection ends with a glance at those others who
admire Nietzsche in Italy today, n amely , the poets. Here BEVERLY
ALLEN takes a stance no less decisive than others taken throughout
this volume as she defends the "French Nietzsche" of feminine, erotic

poets against the "Heideggerian Nietzsche" of their more malicious,
theoretical counterparts.
T. H .
Salt LakeCity
1 November 198 7
Part I
Topics in Nietzsche's
Later Thought
Giorgio Agamben
THE ETERNAL RETURN

AND THE PARADOX OF PASSION
In a notebook of uncertain date (though no later than 1916) Dino

Campana, perhaps the greatest Italian poet of our century, observes:
"In the whirlwind of eternal return the image instantly dies."1 This
is without doubt a reference to Nietzsche, who was already mentioned
several times in the preceding fragments. But why does the poet
cast the image into the whirlwind of eternal return? Could there be
in Nietzsche's conception of the eternal return something tha.t cor
responds to the image, even if it is not formally worked out? And
why the instant death of the image in the eternal return?
To answer these questions I will first seek the subject itself of the
eternal return - what it is that returns eternally in the eternal return:
that is, thesame. The eternal return is, in fact, in Nietzsche's words,
the "ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen ," the eternal return of the same.
Let us pause a moment on the term Gleich . The word is formed
from the prefix ge- (which indicates something collective, a gathering
· together) and Leich, which der�ves from the Middle High German lich,
the Gothic leik, and finally from a theme lig, which means appearance,
figure, likeness, and, in modern German, Leiche, corpse, cadaver.
Gleich thus signifies what has the same lig, the same figure. It is this
theme lig that we find in the suffix Lich with which so many adjectives
in German are formed (weiblich orginally means "having the figure
1 Dino Campana, Opere e contributi (Florence: Vallecchi, 1973) 444.
9
of a woman'') and even in the adjective solch (the philosophical ex

pression, als solch, as such, signifies with respect to its figure, its
proper form). In English there is an exact corresponding term: like, as
in likeness, to liken, and to like, and in the suffix of a great number
ofadjectives. In this sense, the etemalretumoftheGleichcould be trans
lated literally and with no violence as "the eternal return of the like."
There is, then, i n the eternal return, something akin to image, t o
likeness, and i n this sense Campana's statement i s perfectly justified.
The idea of the eternal return is primarily an idea of the like, something
in the order of a total image, or, to use Benjamin's words, a dialec
tical image. And only in this context, perhaps, does the eternal return
take on its essential significance.
Etymologists have been unable to explain how Leich came to have

its meaning of corpse, which is the meaning the word has in present
day German (and also in the obsolete English term lich , as in lichgate,
gateway of a churchyard). Actually, even here the semantic evolu
tion is perfectly coherent. A corpse is that which has, par excellence,
the same image, the same likeness. This is so true that the Romans
identified the dead person with the image; the deceased was the im
ago par excellence, and, vice versa, the imago was primarily the image
of the dead person (the imagines being the wax masks of ancestors kept
by Roman patricians in the atrium of their houses). According to a
system of beliefs which characterizes the funeral rites of many peoples,
the first effect of death is that it transforms the dead person into a ghost
(the Larya of the Latins, the eidolon or fasma of the Greeks), that is
to say, a vague and menacing being who lingers on in the world of
the living and returns to the places frequented by the deceased per
son. The purpose of funeral rites is precisely to transform this threaten
ing and uncomfortable presence, which is none other than the image
of the deceased, his likeness that returns obsessively, into an
ancestor-still an image, but one that is benevolent and at a comfor
table distance from the world of the living.
These are the images that inhabit for eternity the pagan Hades.
A classical philologist, Nietzsche was familiar with this underworld
of shades that Homer describes in a famous passage of the Odyssey
and Polygnotus depicted in an equally famous Delphi fresco that has
survived in Pausanias's description. It is precisely in these pagan depic
tions of hell that we meet for the first time something similar to the
eternal return: the punishment of the Dainaids, eternally drawing
Agamben: The Eternal Return 11
water in a broken pitcher, or of Sisyphus, eternally rolling uphill a

stone destined to roll down again, and of Ocnus, the rope-plaiter eter
nally busy in the futile task of twisting a rope which an ass immediately
eats. (It is probably due to this last infernal figure-'- with whom Nietz
sche was familiar from Bachofen's Grabensymbolik2 - that we owe the
presence of an ass in Also sprach Zarathustra) .
The hell of the ancients appears in this perspective as a hell of the
imagination: that images could be endless, that likeness could be in
delible, was for them the very idea of hell.
But even in Christian theology one finds a connection between the

theme of eternal life and the image. The Fathers of the Church, who
were the first to reflect on the question of the resurrection, soon came
up against the problem of the risen body's substance and form. Was
the body to rise again as it had been at the moment of death or as
it had been during youth? If the dead person had lost a limb five years
before death, was he to rise again whole or maimed? If he had died
bald, was he necessarily to rise hairless? Or supposing the departed
had been a cannibal, feeding on human flesh which had become, as
it were, the flesh of his flesh: to whom exactly did the devoured flesh
belong? Was the risen body to contain all the flesh which had belonged
to the living body or only that part of it which had constituted the
corpse? However absurd the ramifications, the basic question - that
of the identity between the body deceased and the body resurrected
was extremely serious, for on it depended the very possibility of salva
tion. Thus the problem of resurrection implied a problem of
epistemology - how to recognize the individuality and identity of the
person resurrected. (In this sense, the eternal return of the like poses
an analogous problem, and this explains, among other things,
Zarathustra's disgust at the eternal return when he realizes that this
also means the eternal return of the "little man" and of everything
nauseating on earth; a disgust which also recalls that of the young
Socrates in Plato's Parmenides when faced with the eternity of the ideas
of hair, dirt, and mud.)
We owe to Origen, the greatest Christian philosopher of the third
century, a solution to this problem, in which the theme of salvation
is linked to that of the image, and both are linked to the theme of
eternal return. Faced with the implicit paradoxes of a strictly material
2 For the myth of Ocnus see "Myth, Religion and Mother Right," inJ .J. Bachofen,
Selected Writings (Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1973) 5 1-65.

conception of the resurrection (the resurrection of the corpse or, at

least, of a certain quantity of matter), Origen affirms that what resur
rects is not the matter of the body but its eidos, its image, which re
mains unchanged throughout all its material transformations. On the
other hand, precisely because Origen still considered the eidos a
material principle, albeit a spiritual and, literally, subtle matter, i t
was possible for the resurrected t o fall again and t o occupy a coarser
body until the moment of apocatastasis, or final resurrection, in which
the subtle matter of the eidos would be totally consumed. Yet even
at this point the process could start over, in which case the imag e
was virtually ineradicable. WhateverOrigen was postulating-the eter
nal image or its ultimate consumption in the apocatastasis - it is clear
that any conception of the redemption of what has been must necessari
ly come to grips with the gnoseological problem of the image.
Whenever we are dealing with the past and its redemption, we are
also dealing with an image, since only eidos allows for the knowledge
and identification of what has been. Thus the problem of redemp
tion always implies an economy of images, a tafainomena sozein, a saving
of appearances, to use the Platonic definition of science.
In his 1939 course on Nietzsche, "The Will to Power as

Knowledge,"3 Heidegger brings to light the meaning of the will to
power from an epistemological point of view. As is well known, Nietz
sche departs from a critique of Kant's theory of knowledge, particularly
from the distinction between appearance and thing-in-itself. In a frag
ment from 1888, the apparent world is presented as an inevitable effect
of that perspectivism inseparable from life and beyond which no real
world is conceivable:
Perspective vision establishes the nature of appearance. As if any world
would be left over once perspective is abstracted from it. That would
suppress all relativity. Whatever else it may involve, every vital center
has its own perspective - its specific evaluation, its means of acting and
resisting. The apparent world is thus reduced to a specific mode of act
ing on the world, working outwards from a center. But there is no other
mode of action, and the world is no more than a word for the complex
interplay of these actions. Here we have no right to speak of
appearance. 4
' Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche (Pfullingen: Neske, 1951) 1 : 473-658 .
4 The fragment is 567 of Wille zur Macht (Leipzig, 19 1 1) . It corresponds to 1 4 (p.
1 84) of the new critical edition by Colli and Montinari, Werke, kritische Gesamtausgabe,
8: 3 (Berlin, New York: Walter De Gruyter, 1972) .
Precisely because perspective coincides with the will to power itself,

Kant's attempt to eliminate perspectivism is doomed to fail: "Wisdo:µi,''
writes Nietzsche, "as an attempt to overcome the perspective character
of evaluation, that is will to pow.er: a principle hostile to life, destruc
tive, and symptomatic of a weakening of the capacity of
appropriation."5 On the other hand, "a world in a state of becom
ing," Nietzsche writes, "cannot be known . Only insofar as the know
ing intellect finds a ready-made world of pure and fixed appearance . . .
only thus can there exist knowledge, a reciprocal calculation of previous
errors."6
Any conception of a Gleichheit, of a world that is both real and
recognizable, of a thing-in-itself, is thus the result of a necessary er
ror. In one of his fragments, �ietzsche actually goes so far as to define
the thing-in-itself as a Grun dphiinomen, a fundamental appearance. 7
He is therefore able to write that "the will to likeness is the will to
power ,''8 as elsewhere he had stated that the will to power is the will
to Schein, to appearance and becoming. Nietzsche is here clearly go
ing beyond a contrast between phenomenon and noumenon, art and
truth , and rather positing a complete interdependence of the two con
cepts, and their mutual destruction in the light of th_e fundamental
perspectivism inherent in every life .
ln a late fragment, entided Recapitulation , both becoming and be
ing are defined as "falsification":
Recapitulation: imposing on becoming the character of being: this is

the supreme will to power [elsewhere Nietzsche speaks of an Abbild,
an image of eternity which must be stamped on life ] . A double falsifica
tion: starting from the senses and from the spirit, to maintain a world
of being, of enduring, of Gleichwertig, of equivalence. That everything
returns: this is the extreme point of contact between a world of becom
ing and a world of being. 9
Let us dwell a while on this fragment. This most certainly does
not mean that the world of becoming is the original datum on which
the will to power stamps its character, the Abbild, of being. If it were
so , Nietzsche would be committing precisely the mistake for which
5 Friedrich Nietzsche, Umwertung all.er Werte, ed. Friedrich Wiirzbach (Munich: DTV,
1 969) 109 .
6 Umwertung 88.
7 Umwertung 110.
8 Umwertung 88.
9 The fragment is 6 1 7 of Wille zur Macht.

1 4 Nietzsche in Italy
he reproaches Kant, namely, of believing it possible to free oneself

from the perspective vision of the will to power. An interpretation
of this kind - which Heidegger also seems to subscribe to at times
is precluded by even another fragment in which Nietzsche clearly
affirms: "In the beginning was not Chaos, and then a stable and har
monious circular movement of all forces; rather, all is eternal and
not-become (ungewordenes) . ... The circle did not come to be, it is the
Urgesetz, the original law. "10
Only in this way can the double falsification of which Nietzsche
speaks take on its true meaning. We are not dealing here with a
falsification that is operated on becoming, which is the original datum
of the senses; whereby it is transformed into something stable. The
falsification is more subtle than that, and more difficult to get the better
of, in that it predates datum and is itself the Urgesetz, the original law.
In this sense, it has nothing to falsify; there is no preexisting being
whose image needs to be impressed on becoming. Rather, being is
born only as a result of this impressing. But neither is there a becom
ing, an original datum which the impressing transforms into being,
since this would transcend perspectivism.
The paradox that Nietzsche invites us to consider is that of an Ab
bild, an image which precedes both what it is the image of, and what
it is impressed upon: a like, a likeness which anticipates both terms
being compared, being likened. Not only, therefore, does the thought
of eternal return contain a like, an image, but this like, this image,
is the Original, preceding both being and becoming, both the sub
ject and the object. But how can an image precede that of which it
is an image? How can we conceive of a likeness, an omoiosis, which
precedes that to which it bears resemblance? How can the impres
sion be more primordial than the subject which bears it?
Let us try to define the paradox which Nietzsche is trying to develop

here. The image in question is not an image of nothing. It is per
fectly self-referential. The Wille zur Macht is a Wille zur Gleichheit, a
will to likeness, to a pure likening involving neither subject nor
object - an image of itself, the impression of itself on itself, pure self
Thus what the vicious circle of eternal return brings back
ajfection .
eternally is not a vitium, a defect or lack, but a virtus, a dynamis and
infinite potency: a potentia which, devoid of both subject and object,
works upon itself, tends toward itself, and thus unites in itself both
10 Umwertung 342-43.
meanings o f the Aristotelian dynamts: potentia passiva, passivity, recep

tivity, and potentia activa, tension towards action , spontaneity. If it is
true, however, as Heidegger suggests, that Nietzsche is the philosopher
of absolute subjectivity, then the paradox ofpotentia that he puts before
us here is the same as that expounded from the very beginning of
Western philosophy, namely the bottomless foundation of pure sub
jectivity in pure self-affection.
In the Altpreussische Monatschrijt from 1 882- 1 884, Nietzsche would
have been able to read the fragments of Kant's posthumous work,
p artially edited by Reicke and Arnold . He would no doubt have felt
some surprise in seeing that the favorite target of much of his criticism ,
the thinker who rigidly separated the thing-in-itself from the
phenomenon, had, in the monotonous, near-obsessive notes that make
up the Opus Postumum, come to formulate the same paradox that had
tormented him during the years in which he was working on hi.s
Umwertung alter Werte, and that there was thus a subterranean link
connecting the two works. Kant, who in the first Critique had been
careful to keep receptivity and spontaneity intrinsically empty, attain
ing to an object only through their union in experience, here proffers
the idea of a "phenomenon of the phenomenon" (Erscheinung einer
Erscheinung) as total self-affection preceding all objects and thoughts ,
and in which the two Grundquellen, the two original sources of
knowledge, unite in a self-affection that predates and fotlnds all
experience .
Nietzsche could have read in the Opus Postumum a perfectly Nietz
schean definition of the thing-in-itself:
The thing-in-itself is not another object, but another relation of the

representation to the same object, by which this latter may be conceived
not analytically but synthetically, as the sum of intuitive represen
tations considered as phenomena, that is, the sum of those representa
tions containing a merely subjective foundation of the representation
in the unity of intuition. The ens rationis X is the position of self,
=
according to the identity principle, in which the subject is conceived

as affecting itself and thus, as far as .form goes, simply as a
phenomenon. 11
Here , as in the A bbild of Nietzsche's will to power , the subject.is
affected not by an object, but by itself. This subject thinks of nothing
other than its own pure receptivity as original self- affection and, in
11 E. Kant, Gesammelte Schriften (Berl in : Akademieausgabe, 1936-38) 2 2 : 26- 2 7 .
this way, gives itself to itself, suffers itself, undergoes passion , and thus,
and only thus, opens out to the world.
This paradox of potency - or, as we are now able to call it, of self
passion - is in truth even older than this and is inscribed at the very
origin of Western metaphysics. It is in precisely this way that Aristo
tle understands the dimension of pure subjectivity in his De Anima:
"The so-called nous of the soul," he writes,
does not identify in actuality with any of the entities before thinking
. . . and even when it has become in actuality each of the entities . . .
even then it remains to some extent in potentia . . . and can thus conceive
of itself, think itself. . . . But how can it think, if to think is to undergo
a certain passion? Since thought is potentially each one of the intellegibilia,
but in actuality is none of them before the act of thinking? It must
therefore be something like a writing tablet, on which nothing is ac
tually written . 1 2
This wax surface on which nothing is written, this inextinguishable
potency which unites in itself passivity and spontaneity, potentia and
act, dynamis and energeia, is by no means obvious. Some lines earlier,
Aristotle defines the crux of this self-passion in the following way:
Suffering is in no way simple; it is, on the one hand, a certain destruc
tion by its contrary and, on the other, a salvation (soteria) of what is
in potentia by that which is in act and which bears its resemblance, as
potency in relation to act. . . . And this is not a becoming other than itself,
but a giving to self and to act.13
Have we gone beyond this paradox of passion, this giving of self

to self, this epidosis eis auto which marks the dawning of all consciousness
and all subjectivity? Contemporary thought, in attempting to break
the circle of subjectivity and to loosen the knot tying potentia passiva
and potentia activa together, has privileged and pushed to an extreme
the pole of potentia passiva, of passivity. I am thinking here, to speak
only of French philosophy, of B ataille and his concept of ecstasy; of
Levinas and his idea of passivity; of Derrida, who , through his con
cept of gramma, has given new rigor to Aristotle's paradox of the
writing-tablet; and of Nancy's fascinating research into the trembling
of subjectivity. But I am also thinking of Heidegger, of his concept
of being-unto-death and of authentic resolution in Being and Time,
12 De Anima 429a-30a.
1 3 De A nima 417b.
Agamben: The Eternal Return 1 7
which led him to postulate a "passionate" dimension which precedes

all possibility and in which nothing has yet been given to Dasein . In
this way, contemporary philosophy has conceived the most extreme
form of subjectivity : pure under-going, absolute pathos, the tablet on
which nothing is written. But are we sure that it is not this very tablet
that Nietzsche was driving at in the eternal return of the Gleich and
in the will to power? Are we certain that we have got beyond a
p hilosophy of potency?
We are used to understanding the will to power only as potentia ac
tiva. But power, potentia , is first and foremost potentia passiva, passivi
ty and passion. What Nietzsche tried to do in the concept o( eternal
return is precisely to conceive the final identity of the two potentiae,
the will to power as a pure passion affecting itself.
Fifty years earlier, in an attempt to think through the same paradox,
Schelling ran up against the idea of an Immemorable: Unvordenkliches.
If we wish to conceive the potency of being, he writes , we are forced
to think of it as pure potentia , as a pure potency without being. But
this we can do only if the potentia is already, in itself and prior to itself,
a pure existent. "Insofar as it is mere potency of being, it would pass
over into being before all thought, or, as the German language puts
it so admirably, unvordenklich, that is to say, immemorably and
unthinkably."14 Pure passion, as the final coincidence of potentia passiva
and potentia activa, is in itself immemorable. The like, the image
perpetually returning, cannot be retained in the memory. Its eternal
return is its passion, in which, between the writing and its erasing,
there is, as Nietzsche says, keine Zeit, no time. In this sense , Cam
pana was right when he wrote that "within the whirlwind of eternal
return the image instantly dies." As an image of nothing, the like disap
pears in its own enduring, and is destroyed through its own salva
tion . But, to take up another expression of Campana, "that remem
brance which remembers nothing is the strongest of all remembrances."
1 4 Schelling, Philosophic der Offenbarung, in Sc hellings Werke, ed. K.F. K . Schelling (Stutt
gart, 1 856-6 1) 13: Lesson 10, passim.
Gianni Vattimo
NIETZSCHE AND HEIDEGGER
To raise once more the question of the relationship between Heidegger

and Nietzsche is not to engage in philological analysis of a topic already
amply investigated by both Nietzscheans and Heideggerians. Rather,
it is to discuss a problem which, at least in continental European
p hilosophy, constitutes a central theme or-in my opinion-the cen
tral theme of contemporary philosophical debate.
One could start with an uncontroversial fact: a great part of con
'
tinental philosophy of the last twenty-five years- to select a
chronological limit- has developed in relation to two issues: the mean
ing of Nietzsche's thought, the study and philological investigation
of which is renewed around the beginning of the Sixties, 1 and the
philosophy of the "second'' Heidegger, which also becomes an impor
tant issue toward the end of the Fifties .2 The fortune of the second
Heidegger and the Nietzsche renaissance are two philosophical events
that coincide more than chronologically. It is well-known that a domi
nant factor of the Nietzsche renaissance was precisely the publica
tion of Heidegger's two volumes on Nietzsche, collections of his univer
sity courses and other writings of the years 1935-46. 3 Heidegger's in-
1 These are the years in which the Colli and Montinari edition of Nietzsche's works
begins to be published, first in Italian (Milan: Adelphi, 1963ff.) .

2 Holzwege was published in 1950 (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann) , Vortriige und
A u fsiitze in 1954 (Pfullingen: Neske), Unterwegs zur Sprache in 1959 (Pfullingen: Neske) .
3 Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, 2 vols. (Pfullingen: Neske, 1961). The English edi
tion, translated by David Farell Krell and published by H arper & Row, New York ,
is organized as follows: Nietzsche 1: The Will to Power as Art ( 1979) , Nietzsche 4: Nihilism
( 1 982), Nietzsche 2: The Eternal Recu tTence ofthe Same ( 1 984), Nietzsche 3: Will to Power
as Knowledge and as Metaphysics ( 1987).
19
terest in Nietzsche is not simply one aspect among others in his recollec
tion of the history of metaphysics. Nietzsche is for him a counter com
parable in importance only to the Presocratics or maybe Holderlin .
Although the Nietzsche renaissance is also related to philological studies
independent of the interpretive issues raised by Heidegger (the work
of Colli and Montinari in the critical edition remains extrinsic to
Heideggerian discussions, even where it confronts the task of a
philosophical "commentary" on Nietzsche's works), it is largely inter
woven with the fortune of the philosophy of the second Heidegger.
Whoever reads Nietzsche cannot help coming to terms with
Heidegger's interpretation and thus encounters (it happened even to
me, precisely at the beginning of the Sixties) the necessity of retrac
ing his entire philosophical itinerary; for Nietzsche is not, as it was
once thought, just a historiographical "theme" of marginal concern
to Heidegger.
At the same time Heidegger scholars find themselves going back
to Nietzsche's texts precisely on account of the decisive importance
that Heidegger assigns to them in the history of metaphysics . There
thus develops in much recent European philosophy a to and fro move
ment between Heidegger and Nietzsche which- and this will be my
,
thesis - is not limited, as one might expect, to understanding Nietz
sche by means of the interpretive work of Heidegger. There is also
an opposite movement: far beyond the explicit theses proposed by
Heidegger in his interpretation of Nietzsche, the significance of
Heidegger's philosophy itself tends to be approached through
Nietzsche . One may thus speak not only of Heidegger as an inter
preter of Nietzsche but also of Nietzsche as an interpreter of Heideg
ger. In the status of interpreter and not only of interpreted text, Nietz
sche does not at all coincide with the image of him proposed by Heideg
ger's work. Thus arises a paradoxical , though very diffused, situa
tion , especially in Italy and France. Many Heideggerians read Nietz
sche in a Heideggerian perspective, but in one which does not ac
cept, or only partially accepts, the explicit claims of Heidegger about
Nietzsche. I would like to show that this is not the consequence of
an incomplete or fragmented knowledge of Heidegger on the part of
his interpreters, but rather this: that, to be faithful to Heidegger's
most authentic intentions, one must to some extent "betray" his reading
of Nietzsche.
Testimony to this thesis is the fact-which I do not intend to docu
ment here analytically - that in much contemporary Heideggerianism
Vattimo: Nietzsche and Heidegger 21
the name of Nietzsche does not stand as one o f the authors o f the
metaphysical tradition which we must try to overcome (as would be
the case with Descartes and Hegel). The name rather indicates a
thinker who , like Heidegger, i� already on a philosophical path that
has left metaphysics behind it. It is obvious that this "privileged" posi
tion of Nietzsche is partially predicted by Heidegger himself, who ,
seeing his predecessor as the last metaphysical thinker, the one in
whom the oblivion of being reaches its culmination , locates him also
at a turning point: "Where danger·grows,".in Holderlin's verse so often
cited by Heidegger, "there also grows the saving power." Yet without
doubt Heidegger considers Nietzsche to be very distant from himself
in the degree to which Nietzsche still belongs to the history of
metaphysics and theorizes being as will to power. Now, it is precise
ly this distance between Heidegger and Nietzsche which tends to disap
pear in much contemporary Heideggerian thinking.
This is the case even with an author like Hans-Georg Gadamer ,
in whose work the Heideggerian thematic of overcoming metaphysics
nevertheless has a very limited development. In a subtle and central
p�ssage of Truth and Method4 dealing with the significance of the
Heideggerian renovation of the question of being, Gadamer speaks
of Nietzsche as a precursor of Heidegger, in preference to Dilthey
and Husserl. Remaining within the context of"classical" interpreters
of Heidegger - those of the first Heideggerian generation - one may
reasonably hypothesize that even Karl Lowith thinks of Heidegger
and Nietzsche as substantially parallel , or as moved by the same in
tentions. It is notable that Li:iwith interprets the Heideggerian Kehre,
or turn, of the Thirties as an essentially political concession without
real theoretical reasons . But when he describes Nietzsche as one who
tries to recuperate a Greek vision of being at the apex of modernity,
and who fails in the attempt, is he not also describing , in theoretical
and not merely political terms, Heidegger's effort to overcome
metaphysics, an effort which strikes Li:iwith as unsuccessful? Li:iwith's
position is quite particular and does not completely enter the frame
of our discourse, for one cannot really describe him as a
Heideggerian - even if, in light of the hypothesis I have proposed ,
one might rethink this issue too. It is nevertheless true that the closeness
of Heidegger and Nietzsche is more or less presupposed by all con
temporary hermeneutics, that is, by that philosophy which presents
4 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, tr. Garrett Barden and John Cumming
(New York: Continuum, 1975) 228.
itself as a development of Heidegger's thought and which, on this

specific issue of the interpretation of Nietzsche, removes itself from
many of its master's conclusions.
I do not want to discuss here whether, and to what extent, authors
like Foucault, Derrida, and Rorty enter this hermeneutic frame. But
in all of them, more or less explicitly, one can trace a vision of Nietzsche
in which he is interpreted as essentially continuous with Heidegger,
much more so than Heidegger was disposed to admit. In fact, one
could describe Foucault's thinking as a culmination or "synthesis" of
Nietzsche and Heidegger, realized from a prevalently Nietzschean
point of view, which nevertheless leaves too little space to the on
tological intentions of Heidegger. To a certain extent one can say the
same of the image of Nietzsche and Heidegger in the work of Derrida
and his disciples (Sarah Kofman and Bernard Pautrat) , and even
earlier in Deleuze. The separation between Heidegger and Nietzsche
is never accentuated . Both , in different ways and degrees, are counted
among the thinkers who indicated a path of thought beyond
metaphysics .
Even the return to Nietzsche in Italian philosophy in the last decades
has occurred in relation to Heidegger. The problem of technology
has a central bearing here . Even and above all as "thinkers of
technology," Nietzsche and Heidegger have appeared to be in substan
tial agreement (I am thinking of the work of Massimo C acciari, but
also of Emanuele Severino, even if it is in polemic with Heidegger ,
considering as it does - with good reasons, as we will see further on -
both Nietzsche and Heidegger to belong to the same nihilistic
p erpective) .
The thinkers I have referred to here are examples of a fact which
seems to be generally visible in continental thought of recent years .
This thought develops on the basis of a privileged reference to Nietz
sche and Heidegger. And even when it presents itself as a develop
ment of Heidegger's philosophy, it does not "take seriously" all the
implications of the Heideggerian interpretation of Nietzsche. Rather ,
it sees between Heidegger and Nietzsche a continuity that contrasts
with the explicit interpretation of Nietzsche given by the works of
Heidegger. I propose to consider this paradox as a significant
theoretical problem, and will attempt to clarify why one may (and
in my opinion must) be Heideggerian without following Heidegger's
interpretation of Nietzsche. On the contrary, I will conclude that one
can follow the deepest intentions of Heidegger's thought only by
describing his relation with Nietzsche in terms that are different from
the ones in which he himself described it .
The shift that Heidegger effected on interpretations of Nietzsche ,
especially with his ample stud,es published in 1 96 1 , consisted in the
proposal to read Nietzsche in relation to Aristotle- that is, as a thinker
whose central theme was being, a metaphysical thinker and not simply
a moralist, "psychologist,'' or "critic of culture."5 On the basis of this
interpretive decision Heidegger gave preferential treatment to Nietz
sche's later writings, especially to the notes which were initially to serve
for the Will to Power, and tended to leave aside much of Nietzsche's
more "essayistic" production: works like Human, A l l Too Human,
Daybreak, and The Gay Science. These, together with aphoristic works
of the late period such as Beyond Good and Evil and Zarathustra's "poem,"
were the ones which had determined the prevailing conception of
Nietzsche during the first decades of the century, that conception which
Dilthey in his brief Essence of Philosophy ( 1 907) summarized by plac
ing Nietzsche next to "philosophical writers" like Carlyle, Emerson ,
Ruskin, Tolstoy, and Maeterlinck. Dilthey saw these figures as
emblematic of a situation in which philosophy, once the great epoch
of metaphysics was over, tended to become Lebensphilosophie- not in
that sense of "vitalistic metaphysics" which the word now has for us ,
but in the sense of a reflection on existence which no longer aims at
demonstrative cogency but rather assumes the characteristics _of sub
j ective expression , of poetry and literature . 6
Dilthey's description of Nietzsche is on many counts radically op
posed to Heidegger's . But on one fundamental point the two readers
agree. Both Dilthey and Heidegger consider the character of
N ietzsche's philosophy to be determined by its place at the end of
metaphysics . For Dilthey, then, this "final" or epigonic position
translates into the fact that what becomes dominant in Nietzsche is
a literary - though more amply we might say "essayistic" or "cultural
critical" - approach to philosophical problems. For Heidegger, on the
other hand, to see Nietzsche in relation to the history of metaphysics
means to seek his work above all for theses and statements on the
great themes of traditional metaphysics - being, God, freedom, the
5 Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche 1 : The Will to Power as Art 65ff.
6 See for instance, the chapter entitled "The Connecting Links Between Philosophy
and Religion, Prose and Poetry," in Wilhelm Dilthey, The Essence of Philosophy, tr.
Stephen A. Emery and William T. Emery (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1954) 27-33 .
subject, and so on . Here Dilthey appears to be more radical and

coherent than Heidegger. If Nietzsche is at the end of metaphysics ,
this means not only that he sees being and other metaphysical "ob
jects" in a different way than Plato and Descartes but also that the
shape of his thought is different. In other words, Dilthey sees more
clearly than Heidegger that Nietzsche's "metaphysics" must be sought
precisely in those pages which seemed to be most characteristic and
meaningful to his earliest readers, in his "psychological" and "cultural
critical" pages. Although this reading does not at all contradict Heideg
gerian theses , Heidegger did not develop it. In him there ever re
mains a hiatus between the truly metaphysical themes of Nietzsche
nihilism, will to power, eternal return, the overman, justice, accord
ing to the list of Leitworte which he traces in Nietzsche's work - and
Nietzsche's critique of morality, religion, the individual, etc.
Why does Heidegger not unify these two aspects of the final thinker
of metaphysics? A plausible motive might be sought in the diffidence
that Heidegger felt, with good reason, for the "philosophy of culture"
of neo-Kantian vein (such as that of Cassirer or Dilthey himself) and
for the Hegelian-Marxist "critique of ideology." But it is hard to re
main satisfied with this explanation, especially if one considers that ,
at least in a certain sense, what Dilthey says about Nietzsche can be
perfectly well applied to Heidegger's own style of thought . The
closeness of philosophy and literature, the articulation of philosophical
discourse in a rhythm more "edifying'' than demonstrated or scien
tific , and the identification of philosophy with a reflection on the history
of culture (which Heidegger equates with the history and destiny of
being) are all traits which Heidegger shares with Nietzsche. They are
those that Dilthey describes as belonging to Lebensphilosophie- even
if he considers this to involve a subjectivist and impressionist think
ing, in so far as Dilthey continues to cultivate the dream of a "rigorous"
philosophy as the heritage of the "critical," Kantian form of
metaphysics, conceived as a "transcendental psychology'' or a typology
of Weltanschauungen . But once this metaphysical dream is removed,
as it is in Heidegger, Nietzsche's Lebensphilosophie is not so distant from
the "thought of being'' which Heidegger takes upon himself.
I mean to say that if we consider the different way in which the
description of Nietzsche as the final thinker of metaphysics is ar
ticulated in Dilthey and Heidegger we find that Heidegger tends not
to see the tie between Nietzsche the metaphysiciari and Nietzsche the
"culture critic ," for this tie , once recognized, would oblige him to
recognize his own closeness to Nietzsche. This closeness is what con

temporary Heideggerianism perceives at length, even if it has not
turned it into an explicit theme of discussion.
What, indeed, does it mean *at Nietzsche's ontology is inextricably
tied to his genealogical reconsideration of the history of morals ,
religion , and the European conscience, that is , with his "archaeology
of knowledge"? This archaeology has nothing to do with a "critique
of ideology," that is, with a thinking that presumes to unmask the
"human, all too human" lies of metaphysics - of systems of values,
institutions, and artistic practices - in order finally to lead them back.
to an authentic foundation . Facing the erring of past culture and its
metaphysical pretensions , Nietzsche does not practice this still
metaphysical unmasking precisely insofar as he also unmasks the idea
o f truth, of a "foundation" on which one may finally "stand." Nietz
sche's archaeology celebrates instead, in the face of metaphysics ,
"festivals of memory,"7 retracing the history of such erring as the
"history of being." From Human, All Too Human on,8 Nietzsche is aware
that to unveil the "becoming'' and the interests that lie at the bottom
of whatever is presented as truth, value, and "eternal" beauty, does
not mean to abolish these things but to discover once and for all that
they are the only "substance" available to us, the only contexts within
which our experience of the world can acquire significance . This is
what he calls the "necessity of error," and which aphorism #54 of The
Gay Science defines as "the universality of dreaming and the mutual
comprehension of all dreamers . . . thus also the continuation of the dream."
The being of which metaphysics has always spoken is an "error" ; but
error - the symbolic forms produced by cultures in the course of
time - is the only being there is, and we are only insofar as we exist
in relation to all this.
Is the Heidegger who conceived of post-metaphysical thinking as
A n-denken, as rememoration and metaphysical retracing, so distant
from this Nietzsche of the "festivals of memory"? The two thinkers
are actually quite similar, linked by their conception of being not as
structure and Grund but as event. If Heidegger is unaware of this
closeness it is because he refuses to accept and articulate explicitly
the nihilistic implications of the meaning of being. As for Nietzsche,
7 Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Bookfor Free Spirits, tr. Marion Faber
(Lincoln: Univerisity of Nebraska Press, 1 984), aphorism 223 .
8 See the whole first section of Human, A ll Too Human, especially the concluding
aphorism 34.
26 Nietzsche in Jt,aly
for him , too , thinking is An-denken, and not representation or foun

dation, for there is no other being than the historico-destinational clear
ings in which types of historical human beings experience the world .
And the fact that these historico-destinational clearings are not
manifestations of an eternal structure but events does not condemn
them to abolition; on the contrary, it confers on them the dignity that
metaphysics conferred on stable and eternal being, as in Nietzsche's
"festivals of memory."
Between the two thinkers is thus established an intricate relation
ship, not on the level of philosophical historiography understood in
the historisch sense, but on the level of a geschichtlich reply to their ap
peal. Heidegger is determinant in attributing meaning to Nietzsche's
thought- a meaning which philosophical historiography, precisely on
the historisch level of the reconstruction of texts and their connections,
has difficulty determining, especially if one considers the almost ir
resolvable contradictions arising around concepts like the eterµal
return, will to power, Ubermensch, active and reactive nihilism , ari d
so on. Heidegger does not furnish instruments for reconciling these
contradictions, either on a logical level or on the "psychological" level
sometimes preferred by Nietzsche criticism (Nietzsche's "madness") .
However, he does furnish a frame within which all these ..concepts
acquire significance as aspects of the history of being in the epoch
of the end of metaphysics .
To give j ust one example: the almost unthinkable concept of the
eternal return of the same becomes much less inconceivable if one
sees it as a description of the "ahistorical" temporality of the technical
world, of the Ge-stell in which metaphysics accomplishes itself as a
total organization of the world, excluding historicity as unplanned
and undominated novelty. Whatever philological problems remain still
open and perhaps insoluble for the historiographical reconstruction
of Nietzsche's thought, the fact is that they become significant for us,
that is, capable of speaking productively in the actual philosophical
situation, only - or almost only- thanks to Heidegger. Concepts like
will to power, eternal return, and Ubermensch acquire significance as
ways in which being is given at the end of metaphysics, whereas they
appear full of insoluble contradictions if one considers them to be
metaphysical descriptions of a being given "out there ." On this level
of a still metaphysical descriptivity remains that interpretation of
Nietzsche limited to seeing his philosophy as an "unveiling'' of the
fact that being is will to power and consequently proposing a morali-
ty o f power and strife (the "fascist" reading o f Nietzsche, though there

are traces of a similar interpretation in Foucault) .
While Heidegger lends significance to Nietzsche as a philosopher
of the end of metaphysics, the analogy between the Nietzschean
"festivals of memory" and the Heideggerian An-denken also alerts us
to the fact that Nietzsche himselflends Heideggerian "being'' its authen
tic meaning. What, indeed, does it mean when Heidegger says that
being (if one can speak of it) is eventual? Does it perhaps mean no
more than what Reiner Schiirmann calls the "principle of anarchy"?9
According to Schiirmann this expression defines the outcome of
Heidegger's destruction of the history of metaphysics , in which he
reveals that everything which has presented itself in the history of
thought as arche, Grund, or foundation supporting and dominating a
culture (we may also think of Foucault's epistemaz) is nothing put "posi
tion" and event. What, however, is the result of this thesis? It might
be the pure and simple recognition that every arche is merely the result
of a play of forces, only will to power, in which case we return to
the "unmasking" Nietzsche that Heidegger would be taking literally.
If we try to avoid this conclusion, however, as Schiirmann seems to
do, then the risk is one of thinking that, once we have discovered that
archai are events, what becomes possible is another and alternative
access to being than that which has been practiced by metaphysics .
However, in this case, the overcoming of the metaphysical yoncep
tion of archai would lead to a type of negative or mystical theology
deluding itself with the possibility of somehow gathering being in its
difference and irreducibility with respect to the principles and foun
dations imagined by past philosophy. The risk is not entirely absent
from Schiirmann's work, seeming as it does to oscillate between a
Foucaultian outcome (the epistemai as pure effects of a play of forces)
and a "mystical" outcome . Of course, the latter is largely authorized
by Heidegger himself, in the degree to which, next to the "descrip
tion" of being in terms of event, in his texts there is also always an
aspiration to a situation in which being might once more speak to
u s "in person."10 Nevertheless, what is hidden here is a possible self
misunderstanding on Heidegger's part. If, going bryond its events (the
9 Reiner Schiirmann, Le Principe d'anarchie: Heidegger et la question de l'agir (Paris: Seuil,

1 982).
10 I am thinking of the concluding pages of the lecture, "Time and Being," in Mar
tin Heidegger, On Time and Being, tr. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row,
1972) 1-24.
archai which have dominated metaphysics time and again, je undje) ,

we are supposed to acceed in some way to being, even if not
foundationally - then the enterprise of overcoming metaphysics ends
in a new metaphysics, in a new "representation" or conception (Begrijf)
of being.
But the An-denken to which Heidegger has called our attention can
not be conceived as a rememoration which "recuperates" being as
something we can encounter face to face. Rememoration remembers
being as that which it can only remember and never re-present . This
is to say, as Heidegger often does, that the event of being is to be
understood not only in the subjective sense of the genitive (the archai
and epochs as events belonging to being, and not only as occurences
of entities) , but also , inseparably, in the objective sense (being as
nothing more than its events). This means that being is never thinkable
as some stable structure which metaphysics has simply forgotten and
which we must rediscover. This, thought through to the end, is what
I think must be called Heidegger's "nihilism ." The overcoming of
metaphysics can be realized only in the degree to which, as Heidegger
writes of Nietzschean nihilism, "nothing is left of being as such."11
The overcoming of metaphysics is not the overturning of the metaphysical obli
vion of being,· it is this very oblivion (nihilism) taken to its extreme consequences.
If he does not want to find himself thinking being as arche, Grund, or
stable structure, Heidegger cannot escape this conclusion.
If Heidegger confers meaning on Nietzsche by demonstrating that
the will to power is "the destiny of being'' (and not a pure play of forces
unmasked through a critique of ideology) , Nietzsche gives meaning
to Heidegger by clarifying that the destiny of being (thought
unmetaphysically) is nihilism. That is, being takes leave of its
metaphysical configuration not (simply) by revealing the archai as
masks, or events, but by giving itself in the form of that which is not
but has (always already) been , and which holds sway only as memory,
in a faded and weakened form. To this destiny of the weakening of
being - which dissolves the authoritative and essentially violent form
in which the "foundation" has always presented itself- belongs the
nexus, so important in the first and second Heidegger, between the
event of being and human mortality . The historico-destination
clearings in which things come to being are epochal and not "eternal,"
simply because the generations or "Daseins" through which and for
11 Nietzsche 4: Nihilism 200 .
which they come to light, are not eternal . To it belongs also the pro
cess of dissolution which Nietzsche describes in Twilight ef the Idols
in the chapter entitled "How the Real World at Last Became a
Fable" - the dissolution, that is, 'of the archai and the presumed ob
jectivities characteristic of the development of Western philosophy.
This being which "evaporates," as Nietzsche writes in a passage often
quoted by Heidegger, is not only a false image of being which should
be substituted by a more solid and truer one . It is precisely that being
which, after Nietzsche, in post-metaphysical thinking, can "unveil
itself' as not identifiable with the object , the arche, or foundation
but with the "mittance" to which thought corresponds through An
denken and "festivals of memory."
Translated by Thomas Harrison

Michel Serres
CORRUPTION - THE ANTICHRIST :

A CHEMISTRY OF S ENSATIONS AND IDEAS*
DEDICATIO N . All of the ideas that follow were graciously given me by an

imbecilic and loutish customs officer who, one morning on Pier 92 in
Manhattan, oversaw the disembarkment of passengers from a transatlantic
liner. He was watching over the cleanliness of the United States, from atop
a pile of garbage - and , in a stern voice , he asked me whether I was carry
ing any cheese. Let me offer him my thanks here; because of him, I finally
understood something of The Antichrist, which, as has yet to be pointed out,
deals solely with corruption.
Lexicon of The Antichrist: sickness, decay, feeble, puny, malformed,
depressive , corruption, unhealthy, dross, contagion, scalpel, blood ,
poison, infection, hemiplegia, morbidity, purgative, insalubrious,
degeneration, pallid , p ale, gaunt, senility, hygiene, bile ,
hyperaesthesia, the open air, spirits , dietetic, incurable, cleanliness ,
contamination , deterioration, worm, parasite , the infinitely small in
p ain, refuse, bad breath, venomous, pollution, excrement, sputum,
waste, implacable decomposition, filth, putting on gloves, malodorous ,
decline, germ , hard, pure, cold, glacial, insane, epidemic, neurosis ,
epilepsy, alimentary deficiency, cadaver, suffering, hysteria, rickets ,
stench, vermin, dissolvent, unclean, etiolation, alcohol , vampire and
anemia.
Such, as they say, is the frequency chain specific to the style of The
A ntichrist. But if, quantitatively, some of these words show up only
• We gratefully acknowledge permission by Les Editions de Minuit to publish the
following pages ( 1 73-93) from Michel Serres's Hermes JV: La distribution ( 1977).
31
two or three times, numerous occurrences of terms like decay, decom

position, contamination and corruption can be noted. For the last,
in fact, Nietzsche uses three vocables : Korruption , Verderbnis and Ver
dorbenheit. The chain is a network, centered on the dynamics of infec
tion or contagion.
It would be naive to see in this merely an array of sarcasms, even
if the language of abuse often derives its value from the lexicon of
putrefaction . No , the work is quite simply a handbook of medicine,
signed and written as such - and dated medicine at that, product of
a time when the old treatises on generation and corruption were fall
ing out of fashion, when the agents of infectious diseases (microbes ,
viruses , bacilli) were being discovered. It is a vade mecum of
microbiology. The benefits of hygiene, of clean hands and spotless
sheets, of the open air, pure mountain air, were being invented. From
that moment on, to clean meant to drive out possible pollutants, ex
pelling corruption at the level of its microscopic causes. Cleanliness
protects against the epidemic, the pandemic, the plague. Contamina
tion is generally communicated by vectors, certain of which are
parasites : the work thus becomes an abridgement of parasitology. In
the final assessment, all diseases - of the blood, the nervous system,
the bones or the digestive apparatus- are reduced to infectious
diseases. The physician first cleans, he then evacuates, cuts and severs
the gangrenous parts with a scalpel. Therapeutics becomes no more
than a struggle to the death against microbes. The age of Pasteur dates
this text; in accordance with article three of Nietzsche's law venomous
serpents are bred in all Pasteur Institutes .
Not religion, but biochemistry - and not a scientific biochemistry,
but a reactivation of the old language of corruption, generated by
the impact of new data. Knowledge here spreads out along well-beaten
paths, over a cultural formation centuries old; thus, rather than be
ing a virulent analysis of Christianity, it is a fantastic description of
the conduits and activity of virulent viruses . But the strategy used
against his enemy conceals this fact, and we perceive only the means
and weapons deployed. One can always more easily and more exact
ly see how a combattant wages war and what sort of a sabre he wields
than against whom the sword is pointed. Tell me your weapons and
I will tell you your combat. In this case, the sabre is a scalpel and
the battleground a suppuration. Death to microbes and death, perhaps,
to the treponema pallidum. An archaic medicine in the guise of new
therapeutics ; for the time is past when it was enough to anoint an
Serres: The Antichrist 33
open, soon to be infected, wound with oil and wine . The days of the
Good Samaritan in the parable are over. Nietzsche, as one would
expect, is opposed to unctuous pre-scriptions: he first lances the pus
and pierces the abscess, before administering the unguent. As it turns
out, the anointed one is Christ himself.
Abruptly, bacteriology turns into religion. As always, the combat
t ant is taken with his own weapons, which turn against him. What
is the meaning of this asepsis or antisepsis? What are cleanliness ,
hygiene, health . . if not an expulsion, a purification, the practice
.
of catharsis? The new physician, he of the new science, unexpectedly

returns to the standard procedures of the sacred: he drives out all that
is evil, malefic, sickly; he cleanses the ground with lustral waters, goes
up the mountain, expels the viral carriers, the vectors, new scapegoats
responsible for sickness and evil; he outlines an enclosed space - a
temp/um - in the sky, after beating the time of the eternal return. The
sabre that was a scalpel is now no more than a priestly baton: the
combattant becomes the twin , the double of his own enemy. He goes
through the same motions, says the same words, provides the same
arguments and carries the same weapon. The Antichrist, in medical
guise, is sacrificial . Before Christ by virtue of the archaic sacrifice;
face to face with Christ by its deliberate strategy. Let us look one
another in the face, he writes in the beginning. Nietzsche is a priest ,
a god, a founder of religion. He can sign himself as a Dionysus before
or an Antichrist opposite; he can well hesitate, for the distinction is
of no consequence.
The book, in short, is not a history of religions, nor a critical
genealogy, but simply a new catechism, perhaps one of the world's
most ancient, something like a Leviticus.
From its opening pages Human, All Too Human promises a Chemistry
of sensations and ideas. The form of the philosophical question has been
more or less constant for two thousand years: how can something arise
from its opposite? Reason from unreason , generosity from egoism,
sensation from death itself, truth from error, etc. I assume that the
question was first formulated by physicists, those presocratic physicists
of the Ionian coast. Metaphysics, in opposition to this physics, gets
rid of the opposition of things by positing the miracle of origin from
a nucleus, an essence, the thing-in-itself. Nietzsche puts forward an
historically based philosophy that borders closely on physical science,
the latest of all philosophical methods- the latest and thus, at the same
time, the most ancient. This rapprochement, which is not a new one
and not unique to Nietzsche, must be taken seriously. The discourse
of the new philosophy proceeds as follows: such oppositions are no
more than customary exaggerations due to popular or metaphysical
points of view; an error of reason is at the bottom of every opposi
tion . There are neither generous actions nor entirely disinterested
points of view: both are no more than sublimations in which the fun
damental element has almost evaporated and can be discovered only
through the closest observation.
Baldly put, Nietzsche wants us to pass from an old alchemy or an
outdated chemistry to the most recent method. The moist and the
dry are opposites: how can the one arise from the other, as is so often
observed? The effect of fire on air and earth is to dry them in turn ;
water acting on earth and air makes them moist . . . and once again
these actions are opposed . One can, of course , escape the cycle of
what is physically observable - pass from the things themselves to the
thing-in-itself, evoke phlogiston and the like as the essence of fire or
of other elements. There is in all that a kind of history: the passage
from an elemental physics, from a chemistry of opposites , to a meta
physics , stricto sensu . The abstract idea of nature as the essence of
worldly things offered a one-word summary of this metaphysics -
the thinghood of things, the class of things-in-themselves. Then along
came a new physics, the new philosophical method: it demonstrated ,
with Black, for example, that solids and liquids, liquids and gases ,
are opposites only from a popular point of view or by metaphysical
reasoning. An error of reason is at the bottom of every opposition.
The law of fire, on the contrary, reads: there is no "naturally" vaporous
gas, nor is there an essentially gaseous water vapor. They are both
volatilizations in which the fundamental element can be discovered by
careful observation - whence the law of sublimation, namely, direct
passage from one limit state to the limit at its farthest remove, from
solid to gas without passage through a liquid intermediary. This leap
from the material (and perhaps abject) base to an exquisite perfume
would seem to be the acme of opposition: a transmutation of form,
fragrance, color. Where once there were three states and two phases,
there are now only two states and one phase - and you see nothing
more , deceived as if by an illusion. But if you are attentive to the
phase, you immediately pick out the fact that, under another ap
pearance, the fundamental element remains the same . The law of
transmutation is a law of heat, of fire, of energy, of power. Sublimation
is a phase produced by power, the energizing power of fire, which

p roduces an entirely closed cycle: from solid to liquid, from liquid to
gas through an expenditure of power, from gas to liquid and finally
to solid through a return to the stock of this same power. Black's law
is that of the new physics: instructing a positivism of the three states
( metaphorical matter), it destructs the metaphysical idea of nature
and makes us yearn after perpetual motion. When Nietzsche promises
us a chemistry and then speaks immediately about sublimation, the
fundamental element, volatilization, phases, base matter, what is he
talking about if not a positive science? He says it in plain language:
what we are seeking, and what can be obtained only at the present
level of each of these sciences, is a chemistry of moral, aesthetic,
religious, psychological and intersubjective representations and sen
timents . Only a chemistry transmutes colors, states, odors .
The hardest evidence, forgive me for pointing this out, is that o f
a positivism; w e have learned t o detest this word. B y means o f these
same referential sciences, Comte had destroyed the thing-in-itself and
the idea of an invariant nature in favor of the workings of the phase
and a philosophy of history. The death of God at the end of theology,
the death of essence at the end of metaphysics . If one turns to the
human sciences the same operation reveals itself: just as physico
chemistry kills off the invariance of natural thinghoods and the alchemy
of opposites, so a chemistry of sensations and ideas kills off the substan
tification of the new object, man as aeterna veritas, invariant no matter
what the phase. The death of a god, the death of man (that is, of a
human nature) , proclaimed as early as the second paragraph, is also
the effect of a positivism on the new domains of knowledge . Hence
a "death by chemistry." By what hemlock, what bile , what poison?
Human, All Too Human, aphorism twenty. Degree one of culture

is marked by terrors, superstition, in short, religious ideas. Then ,
a passage to metaphysics, from which one liberates oneself by an in
tense effort. Next, access. to science. A retrograde movement is then
required in which one recognizes that humanity's greatest advances
came from there , that it was necessary to pass through there. The
track of the hippodrome turns upon itself. Three stages: the circle
drawn by the founder of positivism - along with the idea that Auguste
Comte taught but that those who followed him never retained (to such
a point that in this matter positivism now signifies the reverse of his
initial teaching) , namely, the idea that if one doesn't reactivate the
theological and metaphysical ground from which science arose then

one can understand nothing about science . Auguste's horsetrack turns
back on itself like that of the gelding Friedrich. It ties back into
fetishism. Science by itself, without the assumption of its substratum,
is not positivism but castration, misery, and blind obedience. In short,
the three university vows. Put differently, and more specifically, in
what sacred terror, what religious anguish, what dialecticized
metaphysics , is our biochemistry rooted? Our positive, efficacious ,
therapeutic biochemistry, our cathartic pharmacopoeia, born of an
old fetishism of the impure and the pure, the clean and the infected,
the aseptic and the purge.
We must keep in mind that it was Auguste Comte who translated
Black's law on metaphorical matter as the law of the three stages of
history's hippodrome. The theological stage is cloudy, like a gas; the
positive stage is stable, like a solid. Comte went in quest of the rock,
hardness - and expelled decomposition. Nietzsche also backed the rock
against sand and dust. The positive age , stone age, mistrustful of
sublimations, aware from whence they vaporize . Horror of gas dif
fused, of vapors impure .
Biochemistry begins with Pasteur. He constructed an entire science
in opposition to the prevailing school of heterogeny that taught what
is more commonly called spontaneous generation - the idea that life
is engendered from inert matter. The conflict would focus entirely
on such phenomena as decomposition, putrefaction, corruption and
fermentation: that is to say, on limit phenomena, those on the threshold
of the organic and the material worlds, of life and death. At these
limits, everything is played out in the infinitely small : is this
infinitesimal an atom or a micro-organism? Pouchet, Michelet wager
on the inert atom; Pasteur backs the microbe. We know what the
result was: the biochemist's work - based on the differentiation of scarcely
differentiated objects, symmetrical or antisymmetric crystals (enantiomorphs,
paratartrates . . . ) - will bear entirely upon all the vital phenomena at
this threshold, revealing everywhere the existence of microscopic
organisms . Science, to be sure- but the important thing today is to
show what the impact of this research was on the public. The world
was of a sudden filled with tiny noxious animals. The science of hygiene
dropped into a puritan society and, suddenly, exact experience
designated the impure; clouds of gnats hovered round the lion . It was
truly a collective madness; people imagined that the cities were polluted
(and they were, as we know, more so than today) , that the weight
Serres: The Antichrist 3 7
of these particles brought them down t o the flatlands in great quan

tities where they drifted and multiplied dangerously, becoming, on
the other hand, more scarce at a high altitude. The titanic struggle
between Pouchet and Pastl.'fur ended in experiments on the Mer de
Glace, in the Alps, and higher still in the Pyrenees on the Maladeta.
To be on high was healthy; the low was corrupted. The great
Nietzschean metaphor of high and low was not Zarathustra's alone.
The scholarly community went up the mountain en masse in an effort
at keeping their bodies pure and their hands clean - puritanism seized
by an experimental madness for health and sickness. Thus Michelet
who , having calculated the highest point in Europe (the Swiss
Engadine) , asserts in La montagne that one should live in Sils-Maria.
High , cold, pure places. Microbes are contracted at Genoa, at Genoa
where impurity takes the form of the treponema pallidum. Whence the
criminal error of sanitariums; consumptives were sent to the moun
tains where they suffocated for lack of oxygen, but at least they died
clean. The puritan phantasm of cleanliness had at last a scientific
pretext .
N ana the whore dies, decomposed . The Golden Fly and the
dungheap: infected by a like virus, her durable body disaggregates ,
rots and corrupts. The implacable worm has dissolved the marble .
A shadowy, invisible, innumerable population: atoms that make up
the marble, and others that unmake it. A corpse alive with millions
of helminths . You will return to dust, you are dust, born of dust .
The old terror returned- the plague of Athens, partition and putrefac
tion in the sun. Epicurus, Lucretius, Diderot: lions pitted against swell
ing clouds of the infinitesimal, pullulating, polluting. Insane anguish
at this multiplication in the proximity of the void. NO.vvo<;,
microscopically small: Nana dies of the virus, but she is the virus ,
whose unpredictable and ubiquitous circulation decomposes the body
politic. Cumbrous beast turned carcass by the whore virus; comely
beast turned carcass by the virus of this virus. The evil spreads , dirty
and small-invisible - everywhere.
Hence the fundamental question: what about cheese in all this?

'Gaseous' may refer to a lesion, a necrotic tissue . The old medicine
associates death with decay, degeneration with decomposition. Cheese
asserts the contrary by a strategy much subtler than vulgar reversals
or puritan dichotomies. Nurtured by the Mediterranean seed, true
cheese- the sort that a civilization which styles itself as clean, for all
that it is drowned in its own rubbish, forgets more and more - is the
acclimatization of decay. Milk delivered over to the hispid and hir
sute, to mire and filth, and thereby transmuted, transvalued into a
superior state . A lowly little fungus irrupts upon and maculates the
milk's whiteness. A culture - a culture broth - and from it the birth
of a culture . Segregating, driving out, and eliminating dirt leads to
the aseptic life, cordoned off from the circumambient filth . This filth
is the result of dichotomization- translucent bathrooms, dank streets
strewn with excrement. And the same holds true for the body: an
organism sheltered from miasmas is fragile and already diseased .
Nietzschean spaces, cities, bodies. We have completely misunderstood
the lesson of Pasteur and vaccination; hygiene is dangerous. With
p asteur Mithradates and his acclimatization to poison, cheese and
its noble corruption, become scientific. The dichotomy of filth and
spotlessness, taken up in the horror of pestilence and the high altitude
cure; the dichotomy of high and low: in short, partition itself is the
sickness. Hell is the separation of paradise and hell. Wisdom and scien
tific truth acclimatize the poisonous, the flaccid, the rotten, the cor
rupted, the malefic and the m alady itself, allowing these to work
themselves out in the underground of the invisible, in darkness, slime
and stench. Trusting in life, they draw from it this festive meal
health beyond asepsis, strength beyond coddling, cheese beyopd good
and evil. The abhorrence of cheese, of leavened bread, of fermented
wine: there you have decadence and disease , the dichotomous, ab
surd and archaic heritage of a badly understood science or a badly
read, or lost, religion . The horror- puritan, Victorian, ascetic ,
phantasmatic - of dirtying one's hands. Vomiting on the roots of the
tree . The breakdown of culture in all senses of the word (trenching,
gutting, cheesemaking, the sense of chemistry, and the global sense
of civilization) ; that is to say, pure abstraction, aseptic, intolerable ,
unhealthy. Only words are clean, only discourse i s not impure . At
this point, cheese takes its revenge, its services are needed: thyreo
thecium, the hairy shield of cheese; penicillin, scrapings from the sink.
Paradoxically, they kill microbes. The aseptic is not antiseptic and
the partitioning puritan is bested by these polluting agents. He must
have recourse to the old wisdom in which the dichotomy is crossed
out, reduced, denied almost, made circular. and in this way dominated.
If necrosis was truly caseous, it would have healed a long time ago ;
health, and life, are in the mould of cheese. New chemistry, old
agriculture. Primitive religions understood this feedback . . . . Cheese ,
a form of feedback. This idea, the practice of return-feeding, of semi

circular causalities, belongs among those imposing inventions of
science that cultures have always known about and yet which manage
to upset with one stroke of the pen the hundred and twenty libraries
of separation and anguish . The dichotomy is now no more than a
phantasm. It seemed, however, that Nietzsche had been the very first
to recognize this form, to apply it to the pseudo-separation of the gods,
to abhor Socrates and Plato (who, in turn, abhorred the stray hair ,
mire and filth) , and to aggrandize; it as the Eternal Return. If, without
recompense, The Antichrist reverts to dichotomies, it marks nonetheless
their breakdown.
Philosophies of substance, of bodies, of things and the world;

substantialisms or immediate materialisms, derived from agrarian
practices. This is familiar territory: gases , liquids, solids, and cycles
of transformation through hot and cold. There is air, water, fire ,
earth - and living beings are composed of these elements , born
therefrom, returned to them , part of the cycle. States of matter and
metamorphoses of states . As is often the case , as is always the case,
the picture is put in place, sorted into classes that are still reunited
in the same tableau by a law of reciprocal transformation. Hence this
certitude that there is nothing interstitial. Things are clean - since the
dichotomy, sharp and clear, leaves no residue.
And yet, the stray hair, the mire, the filth. Impossible to get an
idea of them, or to make them into Ideas. The intelligible world has
been laundered - in lustral waters, and at the hairdresser's . The Idea
can only be clean, each hair in place, cropped, mireless, filthless, pure
and purified: roughly translated this means that the sound apples must
be separated from the rotten. Filtered, differentiated, critiqued, and
cleaned. Pure Reason is pure, its hands are clean: a dyke holding
back the uncontrollable flood, the inundation of minute detail ,
epidemic and putrefaction.
This anguish is not restricted to idealists (as one now says in order
to designate varieties of realists): "The seeds of disease and death fly
about the air in great number; when, by chance, they are gathered
together, they corrupt the sky, and the atmosphere becomes diseased.
These malign powers of pestilence come from places outside this
world, like clouds and mist" (Lucretius, De rerum natura, VI. 1 095- 1 100.
C f. Marx, Capital, Book I , Section 4, Chapter XV: "In history, as
in nature, decay is the laboratory of life") . The serene terror of
40 Nietzsche in ltiJ.ly
Lucretius : the air is polluted, hence the plague of Athens. It is the

other world that is dirty and decayed; out of it comes death in throngs,
a pestilential cloud that will soon swarm over the Roman empire, ar
riving from another second world. When material states are no longer
anything more than appearances, when - by an inspired reversal
the absent interstitial proves the primary producer of these states, when
the rupturing, dissection, partition and dichotomization of bodies pro
ceeds no further than atoms, then bodies and their states can be no
more than aggregates or disaggregated. All that remains is a set of
primitive entities and the force of interaction. A necessary principle
for appearance, and last remains upon extinction, the atomic set is
residual to the function of this force; interaction provides the sufficien
cy. One must begin, then, with the rain of Epicurus : it rains, motes
of being fall eternally in infinite numbers, leeward of the fluctuating
wind of the declination. Inevitable , therefore, the clouds of corrup
tion , the aggregate's rupture, the pestiferous pandemic.
Declination herds atoms together. Some of these, the germ-seeds ,
break up the force of interaction - whence decomposition, a return
to the fall . Corruption is decadence: disrupting the force, bursting the
bonds , shattering the aggregate (with a hammer?), decomposing . . .
then, as in free fall, the atoms plummet.
"But living worms are seen to come into being from the stinking
muck, when the earth, sodden after a downpour of rain, decom
poses . . . . Pieces of wood , clods of earth, as if rotted by the rains ,
engender small worms" (Lucretius, De rerum natura, II. 872, 897 . Aristo
tle says exactly the same thing) . It is raining, just as at the world's
beginning- raining atoms upon the atomized, engendering the worm.
Atom, worm, and seminal germ. A substantialism of the brink, of
outer limits . Operations of rupturing. The atom is at the limit, the
adhering dichotomous sequences, the very edge of a series of rup
tures . The germ, at the furthermost limits of composition, reproduces
the incoherent set, disrupting interaction: a remainder produced by
a liminal division, or liminal division producing all remainders. First
or last fraction, the worm operates in the interstices - at the common
boundary of matter and the living, at the cut-off point, first atom by
the last. This fringe and this dissection must be retained: that is the
important thing for science and for myth , for reason and for anguish.
What is corruption if not rup ture? These two sets will occupy us here,
-
for what is the limit, if not death? The two will be said in one breath,
and by Lucretius himself. Serene knowledge asserts without pertur

bation the atom as last rupture, the germ as force breaker and decom
poser, and the worm following on the dissemination of things. But
anguish implies putrefaction and death, members ripped apart, vessels
scattered by the storm, the agora in Athens rotten with cadavers, ver
min crawling over those once loved. What frightened people about
Lucretius was not his materialism; it was this corruption that made
even him shudder. Seen close up, taken to heart, it is impossible to
bear, it strikes at our health, our' life, our waking force and our in
tegrity. We are once again decay- before , during, after. Dissolved,
scattered, dispersed; broken, utterly and to the very limit. A good
m any myths have come out of this, perhaps all of them. Not from
VJUX�, but from rpr5uu;. Has his poem ever been read as anything other
than words? He was so penetrated by it, and lived it to such a degree,
that h� zealously copied his predecessors: bodies are words, precise
ly, while phenomena are sentences and atoms letters. And this forms
the basis of physics, the catenated discourse of a comprehensible
nature. But that is not comforting, or hardly at all . A scattered
language and the dispersion of an intact body, letters dancing in clouds
haphazardly and the world in fragments, are one and the same sadness ,
one and the same death . I have no guarantee that this sentence will
end or that this word will join itself to others, that this tree will not
suddenly turn to ashes before my eyes. Primordial physics, original
anguish. The physician, the philologist. The gods were less terrify
ing to us then, I think. Listen to the secret: the one who can manipulate
this fundamental terror, this terror of corruption, athwart doomed
sentences , dancing words, decomposed bodies and the enclouded
universe , has laid hands upon the throne of the gods. The philosopher
who has found this crowning strategy is ready to kill a God to put
himself in His place.
The social hierarchy is a function of fear: platitude when a class
is already in power. It collects, and capitalizes , the largest possible
store of tools of enforcement- weapons and words - and thus
perpetuates its domination over those who fearlosing their life, through
hunger, violence and death, of losing their livelihood, their sexual
pleasure, their health. A matter of common knowledge, this business
of overthrowing and stability. The one who holds power keeps it for
as long as the fear he inspires is stronger than his own fear. By defini
tion, power must be the production of this disparity by the one who
wields it . The greatest terrors are induced by tormented despots. For

this reason, Hobbes, along with nearly everybody else, wrote that
fear is the basic human passion. And now whoever seeks out power
must invent a new fear. I emphasize new for the reason that the ratio
of forces , at any given moment, is most often in favor of the one who
is already in power: he can maximize as he pleases . Quantitatively,
the ratio favors him; hence the counter-tactic of qualitative variation .
In every successful revolution, this dialectic has been understood to
perfection. Capturing the enemy outside his own domain: the
stratagem is simplicity itself.
It is easy to determine who is in command, if you can establish
what it is that the oppressed fear above all else- at any given time and
place and for any given culture - and who or what is inducing this
anguish. This history of maximal or marginal fear ought to be writ
ten, a history concerned with the varieties of fear and those which
have, here and now, gained ascendancy over the others. This varie
ty points to the person on whom the transference of authority is to
be made, the one who, in the real or the imaginary (that is to say,
any given reality) , is said to be able to eradicate it. Fear of thunder
bolts or floods, fear of no longer being able to sleep or eat, fear of
hell and of damnation, fear of aging badly and going insane, fear of
being wounded, of bleeding . . . . Today, fear of getting sick. Long in
vestigation of the most finely spun cultural, literary and religious super
structures has led me to the idea that the fear of death has assumed
three principle forms in the course of western history: the first relates
to starvation, the second to sex, and the third to sickness. The term
'sick' is the adjectival intercept of all ills; sickness has turned into the
radical evil . The couple good-evil has rotated a quarter turn in rela
tion to the couple healthy-sick, and the only norm left is the normal.
You are afraid of being abnormal, afraid of getting sick, afraid of
being demented. You are no longer afraid of starving to death, of
being homeless, without covers or caresses . You are afraid of dying
from sickness, not from an accident but from sickness. What is
especially interesting here is the imaginary status of this fear, inasmuch
as there are no longer any, or hardly any, sicknesses. And yet you
say, I am sick, he is sick, society and civilization are sick. And so
it is that the real possessor of power- of moral, religious , cultural
power, of economic and political power- is a very distinct, well-defined
species of bourgeois : the physician, along with his retinue of phar
macists, psychiatrists , faith healers, bonesetters, psychoanalysts ,
philologists, etc. Indirect, marginal power: less visible than other types
but more efficacious and more real than many. He fattens on our ter
rors and creates the new gods. Evil is the virus, the microbe, bacteria,
pollen, all these invisibles of the air- and there are Zeuses command
ing new thunderbolts. The crusade against pollution disarms every
political gathering- a promising sign. The first evidence we have o f
this new state o f things are the writings o f Freud and Nietzsche .
Avoiding the swamp and its miasmas, he spoke from the moun
tain, he who overturned the old sermon on the mount wherein life's
values were themselves overturned. Our reading is frustrated -by the
passion for dichotomies, the atavistic Iranian passion for good and
evil, for health and sickness , for high and low, for hard solids and
loose dust, for anything in general and its contrary, the upside down
and the rightside up . The battle of the two mountains is too engag
ing from this side; it takes hold of the spectator, flatters him, keeping
him in suspense, like a contest of gladiators . The sword and the ham
mer. Witness the ending of the evangelical litany: Ye are the salt of
the earth . . . . Do not lose the savor of salt . . . . If the savor is lost, it
is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden
under foot . . . . Have salt in yourselves and live in peace one with
another. Salt is the operator of the transformation, of the transmuta
'
tion of rags to riches, calamity to consolation, hunger to satiety. Why?
Because it opposes fermentations, deteriorations , corruptions . It
preserves, it checks the plague of war. One must have salt to live in
peace. Nietzsche attacks Christianity on its own ground and the arena
of combat is not the space of reversals but that of disintegration, not
the dichotomy that eternally returns but the transvaluation of base
matter: how can the decomposition of a body give off a sweet smell?
Stercus suum bene olet- his are precisely the tidings of the New Testa
ment. The New Testament is the metamorphosis of organic elements .
The entire debate will turn upon a judgement of fermentation and
decomposition ; as it happens, the debate is closed - it was closed on
ly in the decade in which Nietzsche wrote his Antichrist. And that is
what is new.
This is my body, this is my blood. Bread and wine . Transubstan
tiated by the miracle of the Eucharist into the essentials of the living
body. Listen to the Antichrist : the foul blood of the theologians, the
body corrupted by the Pauline disease. Dionysian wine, dietetic bread.
Bread and wine are substances, matter- living or inert? No one is
entirely certain before the end of the nineteenth century, before the
chemistry of yeasts, before the biochemistry of fermentations. Before

the chemistry of salts , crystals, organic ferments. Before Pasteur
whose entire program, originating out of agriculture, develops on the original
ground of Christian ritual. Before Pasteur, nothing was settled, every
kind of phantasm could be indulged in: fermentation as good, decay
as evil. All one and the same thing, having two opposed products ,
such as life and death, birth and corruption , genealogy and decadence.
Pasteur puts a definitive end to the De generatione et corruptione debate .
Bread and wine are already transubstantiated substances. They have
fermented in the dough and boiled in the must. Ye are the salt of
the earth, the leaven of the bread; I am the vine, ye are the bran
ches. The salt without savor, the wasted yeast, the withered branch - to
be cast out . Before the miracle there was a first miracle . . . and they
are perhaps one and the same: it was necessary that the dough rise
and that the must ferment. The azymous bread of Jewish ritual is
unleavened. Panification, vinification are (pre)transubstantiations. Did
Christian ritual base itself upon a (pre)chemistry? Here, Nietzsche
grasps, blindly, something to this effect: the Christian is a yeast, a
micro-organism, a malefic virus that decomposes. The real battle lies
in this: fermentation or decay? And the problem is henceforth set
tled: thou art Peter and upon this rock . . . thou art Pasteur, pastor's son.
It seems to me that Nietzsche's is a correct reading. The canonized
transubstantiation is no more than one link in a chain of metamor
phoses. At the wedding in Cana, water is changed to wine- Feuerbach
missed the point of this entirely. Near the Samaritan's well, it is
transformed into a draught of immortality. The cycle returns: India,
and the Fertile Crescent, Scandinavia and Hellenism . . . the entire
cycle of fermented ambrosia and the feast of those who laugh
homerically at not having to die. This new wine, which must not be
poured into old bottles, is itself the blood, which must be drunk and
shared for eternal life . But, in the Passion of the Cross, with the thrust
of a spear, this blood is changed to gall and water; the centurion's
wine is only a vinegar sponge. Christ's presence transmutes liquids
water becomes wine and wine blood, and the blood a draught of im
mortality. His absence and his death turn fermentations to corrup
tions: I shall drain the cup to the dregs, the wine turns to vinegar,
the blood becomes gall. Water remains, all ends in water where all
began . The cycle loops back upon itself, a return to ordinary time .
Their children's children will have to begin again, since Emmaus and
to the end of time . It follows, then, that there exists a ferment from
which inert water takes on a new life, then a proper name, and final
ly promises eternity; when it is taken away, corruption sets in - vinegar
and dregs to the dying.
And if your brother asked you for bread and you gave him a stone
instead? From inert stone to fermented bread; if the corn of wheat
should die; ye are the leaven of the dough; facing Cana, the miracle
of the loaves, abounding like life itself. This bread becomes the glorious
body of eternity, dead now, missing from the sepulchre whose stone
has been rolled away. The messenger within, seated upon a rock. Thou
art Peter and on this rock, I shall build a Church whereat the bread,
the old stone of the wicked brother, will be the living body, baptized
with a proper name . Peter, the rock, and the Stone Banquet, John,
wine and blood. Don Juan or love. From stone to stone, the cycle
is closed and begins again in the Church . In the presence of Christ,
it rose into life . The stone seals the sepulchre .
The cup circulates around the table . I drink, thou drinkest , he
drinks, we each drink in turn. Wine to the point of drunkenness, to
the point of rupturing the principium individuationis. From that mo
ment, upon the explosion of the subject, I am you, you are me, we
are unanimous . I am not the one who asserts this, it is Plautus, who ,
as far as I know, was not a Christian. The cup circulates still and
the subjects have disappeared. I am you , but you, you are who? The
one beside me, the other, the one opposite, or yet another? We, but
who is "we"? Who is the subject? None other than the circulation.
None other than the object of this circulation. None other than the
cup that circulates and the very object that is drunk. The wine, ob
ject, is the subject. The blood of the body's circulation has become ,
for one moment, unanimous, the blood o f a new subject - eternal ,
doubtless, like the bonds uniting the group. Through circulation and
the rupture of the principium individuationis the object becomes sub
ject, the wine becomes blood, personality becomes unanimity, and
death immortality. Constitution of a unanimous body. The facts are
plain: John saw them, Nietzsche very nearly saw them, but he turn
ed back to Peter, and to the rock, the solid hard ligature of the Roman
empire. Peter contra John, one is obliged to choose, always.
Once the body has become unanimous and solid, Judas leaves the
feast and dies. He casts down the pieces of silver, the price of the
blood, the blood, the price of the body, the body- all scattered, in
bits and pieces, literally corrupted in petty cash. He is the old trickster
in disguise, gaining entrance by a ruse to the table of the Indo
European gods; the one to be driven away, the virus that converts wine
into vinegar, blood into gall, life into death, generation into corruption,
unanimity of the new subject into atomization of the malevolent suc
cessors, and, by his expulsion, atomization of the successors into social
consensus . Nietzsche did not fail to register the process: wine,
Dionysianism, the rupturing of the principium individuationis, hatred
for the one who atomizes into personal subjects. And hence the necessi
ty of driving out the corrupting virus, the virus of decadence, the virus
of decomposition. It changes its name as circumstances dictate :
Socrates, for whom the wine of Bacchus is transformed into hemlock;
and Christ, or rather Paul. Paul drools it, not spirits, but gall. Drool ,
gall, blood rotten with poison. The action is repetitive, repeating itself
in his work and repeating what the work treats. To preserve something
from infection and decay, from decadence and corruption, one must
drive out the virus- whence a Christianity cunningly propagating con
tamination, potently fractionating, a vector of infection. But as soon
as Nietzsche presents it in these terms he is defeated in his program :
he writes a holy book, a sacred text like any other. The antechrist: ante
has never, to my knowledge , meant "contrary to ," but, rather, "in
front of," "in face of " - repeating, as in a mirror, the action seen in
front, antisymmetrically. And there one finds again the usual
dichotomies and reversals of reversals - from one sacred to another,
and nothing more. The text begins: let us look one another in the
face. Question: who do I see facing me , in the mirror, when I look
at the Antichrist? An enantiomorphic crystal, as Pasteur would say?
We must, then, speak of chemistry and, more particularly, of
biochemistry, of biochemical therapeutics, to be precise. The operator
of corruption is the fundamental operator of The Antichrist. The issue
here is medical: there is a sickness, an incurable sickness, epidemic ,
spreading, assailing the vast majority, then society as a whole - the
plague at the heart of the imperium romanum, destroying it, pierre apres
pierre, until not a stone is left standing, mere dust. It works by cor
ruption, decay, dilapidation, contamination, degeneration, pollution ,
decomposition - by a luxuriant profusion of gangrene. Amid the night
and fog of ambiguities even granite wears away once the vermin has
penetrated . . . because there is a parasite , a pain infinitesimally small,
a mould, a worm in the venom, the poison, the mire , the drool, the
uncleanliness, the waste, the filth, the fetid odors and bad breath,
in short, the products of this corruption . A vermin or virus that all

of us have, always, in our body. That is the diagnosis, whence the
prognosis and the prescription: expulsion, the banishment of the
Christian-worm . It must be starved out, cast out into the desert. That
done, the next step is to maintain hygiene, cleanliness, diet, an im
pervious hardness. The pre-scription of a purge: a procedure that is
pharmaceutical, Hippocratic, pre-Pasteurian - one that is inherent
to medicine, to the psychopathology of obsessions with cleanliness . . .
to primitive religion. Whoever Has not dressed for the wedding is
beaten , starved, cast into the desert. The Antichrist is an Ante-Christ.
The Nietzschean physician comes before the revolution of Pasteur.
One is obliged to speak of chemistry and the biochemical phar
m acopoeia since the discourse is such a through and through pro
duct of this sphere. But the complete network of chemical reactions
has already crystallized in other spheres. Treatise ofHippocratic medicine,
treatise of the purgative: dated from the nineteenth century, by the
heterogeny of Pouchet, long-distance fear of miasmas, and the open
air cure. Nietzsche is of his time, sharing such pseudo-scientific follies
along with the rest of Europe. A treatise of medicine grossly defective
by virtue of its pre-Pasteurian phantasms - about which Pasteurian
science , at least in the social arena, could do nothing. Obsessional
phantasm of cleanliness, transmitted to us by a Victorian puritanism,
beyond and contrary to science. The Antichrist knows nothing, of an
tibodies; hence the aesthetic translation of the purgative, a tragedy of
catharsis. Not a treatise on tragedy, its origins or its rules, but a tragedy
in writing, functioning as a tragedy. Decomposition of the Roman
empire and decadence of Europe, the spectacle of corruption spreading
over humanity, designation of the worm that, as it multiplies ,
multiplies the gangrene, Paul, the priest, the Christian, advent of the
physician and expulsion of the type. Typology of vermin, topology
of expulsion, catharsis. It is tragedy and Nietzsche succeeds in writing
it in the vein of Aeschylus and Sophocles , on a western or Indo
European scale. Exclusion of the Chandala. A time will come, is fated
to come, when he will sign himself Dionysus . In the voyages toward
Iran , India and the Semitic civilizations , the course set by The Birth
of Tragedy is kept to , its range extended. From Hippocrates to
Sophocles, from the worm to the proper name of the type, from
medicine to tragedy, from purgative to catharsis, from Hellenism to
western humanity : through the invariance preserved by all operators,
upon the exacerbated revival of the terror of dirt, the obsession of the
invalid, the pre-Pasteurian phantasms of corruption. Fascism, be it

said in passing, will arise in Europe out of this obsession : loathing
for what is unclean, hatred for what is impure . Hence the resump
tion, through the stable invariance of these operators, of ancestral
operations common to all primitive religion: ritualized social conduct
of crisis and expulsion. (Rene Girard has dealt with this very well
and I will not elaborate on it here.) Hence this conclusion, unavoidable
by sheer weight of evidence: The Antichrist is not an antireligious
treatise, not even a treatise on the history of religions; it is a treatise
of religion, a religious treaty, a hierogony. It retraces the founding opera
tion of all religions in general: to sign oneself the Antichrist, or the
Crucified, or Dionysus crucified, is to use one and the same signature.
The invariant: before Christ, there is Dionysus , and so forth and so
on. Christ signifies the anointed, the sacred; Antichrist , before the
sacred. The Antichrist: the birth of the sacred before the birth of tragedy.
Resuming - by the reinscription of tragedy, the birth of tragedy;
by the resumption of biochemistry, the origin of life, the origin of
life's knowledge. And thus the declared program is carried out. We
are at the third stage, scientific knowledge. But the track turns upon
itself; we must understand how this knowledge came - from what con
cepts , what tragedy, what sacralizing operation. I say the virus and
it is a virus; I say that it must be passed through the fire and I seek
out a fire that can kill the worm. But this operation has, for millenia,
been performed on other terrains, on the same culture . The culture
broth is aptly named: primary soup of cultures . The vermin is the
invalid (positive stage); the invalid has been declared to be evil
(metaphysical stage); and the evil, malevolent one turns out to be
SOMEONE (religious stage) . Today: kill the worm. Yesterday: kill the
malevolent, the reactive, the resentful. Kill God. Chimythes.
In the classical age, scientific discourse passed over into philosophy,
without translation - in its results and its semantics. Only its syntax
is carried over now and no one sees anything more in it. A fine trick
has been played. That Descartes was a geometer and Leibniz an
algebrist is obvious to all but the blind; it is a little more difficult to
read the mechanics of Marx, the physics of Freud, and the chemistry
ofNietzsche . It can be apprehended at the level of the signifier: mass,
force, work and ratios, condensation and repression, and in this case
corruption. And yet . . . .
And yet, he maintains, I use corruption as a word free of moral
toxin. Moral ideologies are products, the products of a "reaction,"
"moralin," ''.judeocaine ." Fine filtering discloses and eliminates them.

What remains is the preparation, the primary mixture . The whole
process is chemical : on the one hand, the "pure" is the filtered,
evaporated; on the other, the· pure is that which is free of the prod
uct. Corruption is indeed a reaction , the fundamental reaction,
repeated countless times in the text - whence the dynamic valuation
of the operation, like a valuation in chemical thermodynamics . In
the course of this production energies are in play. Energies over time ,
that is to say, a power . . . and the idea of varying the power, lowering
or raising it, thereby mastering the reaction process. The optimal level
of power for the development of this process is low; that is why cor
ruption spreads so quickly, multiplies itself so dangerously. It thrives
on failing energy, on its dissipation, its entropic devaluation, its
decadence. And if science makes a law of this decline, one must then
overturn this science, produce an increase in power, will the vital
transvaluation of power and hence will the eternal return - that is,
perpetual motion of the second kind. At least in the seventeenth cen
tury, confronted with the inevitable fall, one gave thanks - the gravi
ty of perpetual motion of the first kind. But Nietzsche also says grace ,
for the second: an exception gained by chance, the superman as a
throw of the dice, a lucky throw, a throw on target. Rare islet of negen
tropy where power is raised and transvalued, surrounded by marsh
lands where it is lowered and devalued. Swamplands of reaction , of
corruption: there the sick man-animal , the Christian, is produced
naturally and spontaneously. The calculation of power and its varia
tions are the dynamic conditions of all chemistry. A decline in power
brings decadence and reaction. A rise in power must be willed; it is
neither natural nor inevitable. Thus, the will to power, and the in
version of necessity, the overturning of fatality. The eternal return
and the exclusion ofreason, of that feeble scientific reason that asserted
the contrary. Christianity is the abasement of power.
Try to produce the incorruptible, or the indecomposable, or the
infrangible. It requires a deviation, a distance in relation to the energies
at work in the reaction - one that avoids equalizing heat and conse
quently annulling power. The deviation of Hyperboreans. Stone, ice ,
the deep-frozen; in the cold place beyond death; the deafened man;
Peter in the garden: hence, the impossibility of all reaction. As north
and south, crystallization at the antipodes, at a maximum deviation
from decay. Deep-freezing prevents corruption , stops reactions, pro
tects against admixtures, prohibits the equivocal compromise, im-
mobilizes energies. The sirocco , the south wind, will unmake the
crystallized, frozen stone; it remobilizes power; the elements dance
haphazardly, go no matter where, without a yes , without a no, to the
labyrinth of perilous admixture- towards reaction, equalized energies,
decay.
The superman's goal: stone hard as ice . Christianity's goal: the reac
tion of corruption. Two chemical states in opposition : either the ad
mixture, or the deviation. Two thermodynamic states : either the abase
ment of power or its elevation, devaluation or transvaluation,
decadence or transmutation. Two initial results : either a prolifera
tion of vermin or the eternal return . The goal, in any case : to pro
duce, be it the sick or the healthy, but deliberately, free of the chance
factors involved in heat reactions. One then moves on to the applica
tion, that is, to preparations. In order to mount the reaction, Chris
tianity must first distill its poison, must distill whatever maliciousness
or evil it extracts from among the instincts of a superior type. Extrac
tion and distillation of elements in contradiction with a life of strength :
culpability, deception, seduction. The distillation, as is often the case,
is effected by sublimation . The element retained is exceptionally small,
almost nothing: nihilism . The microbe.
This element ferments as energy drops , swells up , _swelling as in
a fall . It is straightforward science: multiplication understood as a
rise in entropy - the decadent flux of pity. Through pity the loss of
force increases and multiplies. The very form of the phrase is reveal
ing: the increase of a negative quantum. By way of confirmation, the
amount thus lost is incommensurable - irrational ratios are, after all,
(ab)surd - with the quantum of the cause. Hence its power of
multiplication. At one go, all of the new sciences: thermodynamics
and the increase in entropy, the biochemistry of contagions, the biology
of selections. The second law of thermodynamiq versus Darwin, the stum
bling block of evolutionism. The chemistry of corrupting reactions
is ascribed, with all due exactitude, to conditioning physics on the
one hand and to conditioned biochemistry on the other. Through it,
and through the swelling multiplication of misery, the decisive op
position of the turn of the century takes shape: how to comprehend
that life differentiates when the second law dedijferentiates? That life increases
and power decreases . Etan and retombee, to use Bergson's terminology
in which there are, precisely, two sources. People began to dream that
the secret of the contradiction could well lie in biochemistry. To dream,
and to repeat the old language: might there not be a ferment o f fermen
tation, and a virus of corruption? Thus , the return of the old
medicaments, the search for a purgative to eliminate microbes, the
principles of sickness . Thu�, the return of the old phantasms: Aristo
tle's catharsis superimposed on the· knife of the surgeon lancinating
pus. Physics, chemistry, Darwinism, framed by Greek tragedy and
medical practice . The aphorism, at one blow, recovers the field of
discourse .
Evil is henceforth in the blood, multiplying itself and infecting the
organism . Christianity has distilled and then extracted the malefic
quasi nihil. The theologian has it in the blood; he is the vector of the
infection's infection, he poisons the world. Nana the Golden Fly has
the virus in her and she 'is the virus. First transmission : via heredity.
German philosophy has a Protestant pastor for grandfather. Not the
father, absent in passage, but the grandfather, as with Sartre . The
infection is transmitted genealogically, and from theologian to
philosopher, in whom it becomes universalized as a concept - gaunt,
pallid, pale . In universalizing itself it becomes cosmopolitan: from
the holy family to the universe as a whole, in the hollow of every private
virtue. The majority, half the earth. How it spreads and where it
spreads. Here is the parasite, and the parasitology. On this point,
reread La conquete de Plassans.
The microbe is anaerobic: in the nooks and crannies, amid the debris,
among the spiders, hidden in the dark places. Compare Buddhism ,
the positivist religion: it is aerobic, and thrives in the open air. Without
hypocrisy it has discovered the medical, therapeutic reality of things .
Dietetic even . Listen to Ecce Homo: the sin against the holy spirit is
ass-iduity. The impossibility of expunging uncleanliness, denominated
in its religious context; as sin, within its medical context of dietetic
hygiene. Conversely, Christianity prohibits the expulsion of filth - it
closes the public baths.
This evil must be designated and the transformations noted. The
rock becomes dust; and blood, likened to alcohol, becomes sludge ,
slobber, poison, venom . What makes these liquids dangerous are the
parasites , worms, germs, pains infinitesimally small. This is said at
once as metaphor and as positive discourse . Next, name the carrier,
the vector: the Jew, Paul, the priest, the Christian. To be expelled ,
to be banished, driven from the table, cast into the desert to starve .
"The site of execration upon which Christianity has brooded its basilisk
eggs will be completely razed, as being the place of sacrilege on this
earth . It will be the terror of posterity, a place for raising venomous
serpents."
We can turn to Mircea Eliade for the reversal of space; to Rene
Girard for the functioning of expulsion. For the serpent's resounding
echo we must turn to chemistry- to the Pasteur Institute.
From this, the rest can be deduced.
Translated by Chris Bongie
Rene Girard
NIETZSCHE AND CONTRADICTION
The various interpretations of Nietzsche, all primarily philosophical,

all have one thing in common: their anti-Wagnerianism, solidly but
tressed, it seems, by the solid anti-Wagnerianism of the late Nietz
sche. Wagner is the indispensable scapegoat of all liberal Nietzscheans ,
j ust as Nietzsche is the indispensable scapegoat of all Wagnerites .
Curiously, the Nazis are the only ones who can b e simultaneously
pro-Nietzsche and pro-Wagner.
In the book entitled Nietzsche contra Wagner, Nietzsche republishes,
with a few changes, many texts about Wagner that he wrote after
his break with the musician. One of these, first published in The Gay
Science (370 under the title "What is Romanticism?") reappears in
Nietzsche contra Wagner in an abbreviated version that is more directly
aimed at Wagner. Nietzsche first says that, in his younger years, he
approached the modem world full of hopes as well as illusions:
I interpreted Wagner's music as an expression of a Dionysian power
of the soul. . . It is plain what I misunderstood in, equally plain what
I read into , Wagner and Schopenhauer- myself.
Then he continues with a statement of the basic opposition between

the Dionysian and the Christian which is not explicitly named but
is obviously meant:
Every art, every philosophy, may he considered a remedy and aid in
the service of either growing or declining life: it always presupposes
suffering and sufferers . But there are two kinds of sufferers: first, those
53
who suffer from the oveifullness of life and want a Dionysian art as well
as a tragic insight and outlook on life - and then those who suffer from
the impoverishment of life and demand of art and philosophy, calm,
stillness, smooth seas, or, on the other hand , frenzy, convulsion and
anesthesia. Revenge against life itself- the most voluptuous kind of fren
zy for those so impoverished!
Wagner responds to this dual need of the latter no less than
Schopenhauer: they negate life, they slander it , hence they are my an
tipodes. He that is richest in the fullness of life, the Dionysian god and
man, can afford not only the sight of the terrible and the questionable,
but even the terrible deed and any luxury of destruction, decomposi
tion, and negation: in his case, what is evil, senseless and ugly seems ,
as it were, permissible, as it seems permissible in nature , because o f
an excess of procreating, restoring powers which can yet turn every
desert into luxurious farm land. Conversely, those who suffer most and
are poorest in life would need mildness, peacefulness, and goodness
most- what is today called humaneness - in thought as well as in deed,
and, if possible, a god that would be truly a god for the sick, a healer
and "savior" . . . 1
.
Nietzsche tells us that his passionate surrender to Wagner was a

legitimate misunderstanding. He mistook one type of suffering for
the other because, even though they are poles apart, antipodes, the
two types of sufferers , Wagner and himself, are also very close, .to
the point of being indistinguishable. It is understandable that a rather
naive young man would mistake the one for the other. We should
not conclude that there was any inclination, on his part, toward the
Christianity that already pervaded the art of Wagner in an underhand
ed fashion. The confusion was permissible and it would be wrong
to infer from it that Nietzsche ever sympathized with the Christian
aspects of Wagner.
Thus , in the text I have just read Nietzsche acknowledges the
presence of Christian elements in the early Wagner but he pretends
that they were more or less hidden. This is disingenuous, to say the
least.
Many Christian elements remain somewhat covert in Wagner . A
good example would be Brunehilde in The Valkyries . Instead of join
ing the collective murderers of Siegmund, as she must do, as she always
does, she tries to save Siegmund. Like Antigone, she threatens the
1 Friedrich Nietzsche, In The Portable Nietzsche, tr. Walter Kaufmann (New York:
Viking Press, 1967) 669-70.
Girard: Nietzsche and Contradiction 55
power of Wotan because she destroys the unanimity of the lethal cir
cle and she herself must become a victim. This is as quintessentially
Christian as the intervention of Elizabeth to save Tannhauser when
the knights form a violent circle around him .
But there are also many Christian elements in the early Wagner
that are quite explicit. You do not need very good eyes to see them
in Tannhauser, or in Lohengrin. Christian elements are everywhere in
Wagner, even from the beginning. Nietzsche is well aware of this fact
but he does not want to acknowledge it; to do so would be to em
phasize the significance of his past entanglement with a Wagner
already fascinated by Christian themes. Nietzsche is not quite truthful
in this version of his relationship with Wagner; yet there is another
version that is even more. deceptive.
In this second version, he goes even further in distorting Wagner's
e arly work. It is not enough for him to pretend that all Christian
elements in Wagner were only implicit before Parsifal; he does not
acknowledge their presence at all , and places the early Wagner squarely
on the side of Pagan tragedy in the Nietzschean sense, on his side ,
the so-called Dionysian side.
Why would Nietzsche do that sort of thing? He is not happy with
the interpretation of the Wagnerism that he gave in The Gay Science.
The idea that he might have mistaken Christian suffering in any form
for the tragic suffering that he espouses makes him look a little stupid,
or it undermines the sharpness of the difference between the two .
Perhaps he perceives the ambiguousness of the argument and thus
invents the myth of an early Wagner who is one hundred percent
D ionysian .
In order to lend some credibility to that thesis, Nietzsche must ex
aggerate the contrast between Parsifal and the early works; he must
persuade us and himself the Parsifal is not merely more Christian than
the previous works but that it is the only work of Wagner with Chris
t ian elements in it, the Christian work par excellence. Nietzsche wants
to exonerate himself from all blame in his relationship with Wagner.
He never made a mistake. He wants to justify, from his so-called
Dionysian standpoint, both his earlier admiration for and his later
hostility to Wagner.
-
Parsifal is made to play a crucial role in this demonstration . It is
the only work of Wagner that came after Nietzsche broke with his
former idol . Nietzsche exaggerates the discrepancy between this last
work and the earlier works. Nietzsche was appalled, he says, by the
abject surrender to Christianity that Parsifal constitutes . According

to this line of argument , Wagner made a complete about-face at the
very moment when Nietzsche was reinforcing his long standing and
unchanging opposition to everything Christian . It was natural and
sound for an already Dionysian Nietzsche to be attracted to a still
Dionysian Wagner and quite natural and sound once again for the
same Nietzsche to make a clean break with a Wagner betraying the
common ideal and surrendering supinely and disgustingly to Chris
tianity. Wagner is guilty of a form of apostasy. He abandoned his
former ideals.
The difference between these two versions of Nietzsche's critique
of Wagner is that according to the first, there is no genuine tragic,
pagan and Dionysian dimension even in the early Wagner. Accord
ing to the second, we are supposed to believe there had existed a genu
inely tragic and Dionysian Wagner after all, but that he had turned
around in Parsifal, which must be regarded as the artistic expres
sion of a conversion to the worst form of Christianity, Roman
Catholicism .
Here is a text that corresponds to that second line of argument.
It was first published in The Genealogy ofMorals. In Nietzsche contra Wagner
Nietzsche gives it a more virulent ending:
I should really wish that the Wagnerian Parsifal were intended as a
prank- as the epilogue and satyr play, as it were, with which the trage
dian Wagner wanted to say farewell in a fitting manner worthy of
himself- to us, to himself, and above all to tragedy . . . . After all Parsifal
is operetta material par excellence. Is Wagner's Parsifal his secretly
superior laughter at himself, the triumph of his ultimate artistic freedom ,
his artistic non plus ultra - Wagner able to laugh at himself ?
Clearly, one should wish that; for what would Parsifal amount to if
intended as a serious piece? Must we really see in it . . . "the abortion gone
mad of a hatred of knowledge, spirit, and sensuality''? A curse on the
senses and the spirit in a single hatred and breath? An apostasy and
reversion to sickly Christian and obscurantist ideals? And in the end
even a self-abnegation, a self-crossing-out on the part of an artist who
had previously aimed at the very opposite of this, striving with all the
power of his will (all his will to power) to achieve the highest spiritualiza
tion and sensualization in his art? And not only in his art, but also
in his life.
We should remember how enthusiastically Wagner once followed in
the footsteps of the philosopher Feuerbach . In the thirties and forties,
Feuerbach's slogan of "healthy sensuality" sounded to Wagner, as to

many other Germans . . . like the words of redemption . Had he learned
differently in the end? For it seems, at least , that he finally had the
will to teach differently. Did the hatred against life become dominant in
him, as in Flaubert? For Parsifal is a work of perfidy, of vindictiveness,
of a s�cret attempt to poison the presuppositions of life - a bad work.
The preaching of chastity remains an incitement to anti-nature. I despise
everyone who does not experience Parsifal as an attempted assassina
tion of basic ethics . (PN 674-75)
The Antichrist versus Parsifal. Dionysus versus the Crucifie d. The

two opposites are equivalent . As in a Hollywood movie , the ending
reveals what you truly are. Wagner sinks lower and lower while Nietz
sche constantly rises to new heights of self-liberation from Christianity.
This is the fairy tale view of Nietzsche contra Wagner, the view that
Nietzsche himself wanted us and himself to believe.
The hard nucleus of the anti-Wagnerian stance is Parsifal. Nietz
sche often says that Parsifal is the main reason he ended his friend
ship with Wagner. The instinctive hostility of Nietzsche to Parsifal
seems fundamental because, even if Nietzsche exaggerates its singulari
ty, Parsifal remains the most religious of all works by Wagner; it comes
closest to embodying what Nietzsche regards as intolerable in Wagner,
his complex and ambiguous affinity for Christian themes.
All the constantly quoted texts of Nietzsche on Parsifal are of the
s ame ilk as this one, all extremely contemptuous, even insulting. The
same is true of most unpublished fragments . They keep harping in
highly repetitive fashion upon the themes of the text I just read,
sometimes in an even more abusive language. They all condemn what
they call Wagner's sickening and senile surrender to the Christian God.
This emphasis on Parsifal is certainly strategic in part- if this work
is what Nietzsche says it is. H it is the only Christian work of Wagner ,
the younger Nietzsche can be absolved of any complicity with the
Christian inspiration of Wagner.
But this emphasis on Parsifal does not seem merely strategic. Nietz
sche is truly obsessed with this opera. At times, his arguments sound
rational and dispassionate but, at other times, his contempt becomes
so excessive that it sounds more like hatred. Any allusion to Parsifal
arouses the strongest feelings in him. The force of his indignation
is so convincing that it is taken at face value . It has become a com
monplace of Nietzschean criticism. All the admirers of Nietzsche can
identify with their idol and commune in the vilification of Parsifal

because it is a gesture of expulsion on which there is universal agree
ment . Even the Nazis can concur this time. If there is one work of
Wagner about which they have reservations, it must be Parsifal, of
course , and their reasons are those of Nietzsche and of all the Nietz
scheans: it is insufferably Christian.
The idea that this remarkable consensus is an illusion and that it
could be shattered must sound far-fetched at best . If I claim that it
can be done, I will probably be suspected myself of surrendering my
scholarly objectivity to my own religious prejudices.
The official Nietzschean party line on Wagner and above all on
Parsifal seems unchallengeable. I have always felt, personally, that it
can only be, at best, one half of the real story. A few years ago, I
interpreted the Wagner-Nietzsche relation in terms of mimetic rivalry. 2
I still believe in it . Wagner is the god that Nietzsche would like to
be. The history of the relationship corresponds marvelously to the
successive stages of the mimetic process. First, Wagner is the explicitly
acknowledged model, the openly worshipped divinity Nietzsche would
like to be . Later he becomes an obstacle and a rival without ceasing
to be a model .
The last Wagner is regarded as detestable and Nietzsche spends
a lot of time proving his point, too much time to be fully convincing.
Even in the most anti-Wagnerian texts, indirect signs abound that
Nietzsche's obsession cannot be the one-sided hostility which our avant
garde would not take at face value if Nietzsche were not its untouchable
idol. Wagner remains the mode that Nietzsche desperately wants to
repudiate .
The hostility to Wagner, his music, his ideas, his supposed Chris
tian conversion , is a most sincere passion, of course, but it is a pas
sion divided against itself. We hear only the voice that speaks against
Wagner in Nietzsche . But there is another voice that speaks in favor
of Wagner, and it must be speaking louder and louder at the end of
Nietzsche's life, since the official voice is becoming louder and louder ,
as in an unsuccessful effort to silence the pro-Wagnerian voice .
My thesis would be more convincing, no doubt, if l had something
from Nietzsche's own pen to back ·it up . In order to challenge the
universal consensus on this subject, something quite sensational is
required, some text that would reverse the habitual line on Parsifal.
2"Superman in the Underground: Strategies of Madness- Nietzsche, Wagner and

Dostoevsky," MLN 9 1 ( 1976) 1 1 61-85.
It seems most unlikely that such a text can be found. If it existed ,

our great scholars would take it into account and the theoreticians
would be more prudent in their treatment of Parsifal, of Wagner, and
of Dionysus versus the Crucified.
When I wrote my first essays on Nietzsche, I never looked for the
"smoking gun" as actively as I should have . I was not certain that
such a text had ever been written. Unlike Dostoevsky, Nietzsche never
succeeded in granting equal time to the other voice in himself. That
is probably the reason the philosopher in him lost his mind and never
became a novelist . Nietzsche is fundamentally what I would call a'
"romantic" writer, and writing for him is an instrument of repres
sion. He says himself that, for a long time, it was difficult for him
to distinguish in himselfwhat belonged to Wagner from what belonged
to Friedrich Nietzsche . Writing, to him, was a means of achieving
that distinction. Writing has a lot to do with the so-called will to power
and very little with the underground confession Nietzsche enjoyed
so much when he found it in Dostoevsky, but never practiced himself.
Before the Colli and Montinari edition, at a time when our knowl
edge of the late Nietzsche was based primarily on the now infamous
Will t,o Power, in other words on the excerpts manipulated and multilat
ed by the sister, I could find nothing, or next to nothing, in Nietzsche's
published works to support my case, nothing that could modify the
standard picture of Nietzsche's negative estimate of Parsifal, nothing
to contradict the firmness of the anti-Parsifal commitment .
Until recently, I found only some restrained praise of Parsifal's
prelude , which is not very meaningful since the prelude is exclusive
ly musical . The absence of a textual confirmation did nothing to shake
my conviction that Nietzsche adored Parsifal at least as much as he
hated it, the one and the other for the very same reason, for the Chris
tian content on which he heaped so much abuse. My conviction was
not weakened, but my argument was.
I am glad to report that I have found the "smoking gun." A few
days ago , for the purpose of the present lecture, I was looking for
something to write about in Volume XII of the new French edition,
the volume that contains the unpublished fragments written by Nietz
sche between the summer of '86 and the fall of '8 7 . 3 On page 200 ,
under the heading 5 (41 ) , I found the following, which I must translate
from the French and apologize for my poor English version twice
removed from the original .
3 Friedrich Nietzsche, Fragments posthumes: Automne 1885-1887 (Paris: Gallimard,
1 978) .
Prelude to Parsifal, the greatest gift I have received in a long time. The
power and rigor of the feeling. Indescribable ; I do not know anything
that apprehends Christianity at such a depth, and that generates com
passion so powerfully. I am completely transported and moved - no
painter ever managed to render as Wagner does a vision so indescribably
melancholy and tender.
His greatness in apprehending a dreadful certainty, from which
something like compassion emanates:
the greatest masterpiece of the sublime that I know, power and rigor
in apprehending a dreadful certainty, an indescribable expression of
greatness in the compassion towards it, whatever that means. No artist
has ever been able to express as magnificently as Wagner does such
a somber and melancholy vision. Not even Dante, not even Leonardo.
As if, after many years, someone finally addressed the problems that
truly concern me, not to echo once again the answers that I always
have ready at hand, but to provide the Christian answers, which have
been the answers of souls stronger than those produced by the last two
centuries. Yes, when this music is heard, we brush aside Protestant
ism as if it were a misunderstanding-
You will agree, I am sure, that this remarkable text contains

everything that I was looking for. It contradicts everything the late
Nietzsche ordinarily says regarding not only Parsifal and Wagner but,
above all the will to power, ressentiment and Christianity, everything
that seems unquestionable in the creed of the late Nietzsche . I hope
that whose who praise Nietzsche's talent for self-contradiction will be
eager to tackle that text . It is a good occasion for them to show that
they do not praise contradiction only in the abstract.
Of all the works of Wagner, I repeat, Parsifal is the one Nietzsche
most consistently and most vehemently despised. Not long before and
not long after writing this text, in the same series of fragments,
Nietzsche wrote about Parsifal and Christianity in full conformity with
his standard ideology. Parsifal is denounced as the final degradation
of Wagner, the shameful offspring of his senility.
This reversal of everything we heard in Nietzsche contra Wagner is
so neat, clean and perfect that it seems impossible for the same writer
to write this and to write as Nietzsche ordinarily does on the same
subjects; yet, at the same time, it is also impossible that it would not
be the same writer.
There are many things that connect the text I just read with its
countless Verneinungen in the published writings. Many music critics
try to make Parsifal more palatable to modern audiences by insisting
Girard: Nietzsche and Contradiction 6 1
on the weirdness o f its doctrine, b y saying i n fact, "You do not have

to worry; it's not really Catholic, it is not even really Christian ."
N ietzsche had known Wagner intimately, and he was extremely,
one might say hysterically, sensitive to what could be called the in
tense Catholic nostalgia that pervades not only Parsifal but many other
works. Not even Wagner's shrillest denunciations of Catholicism could
clear Wagner, in Nietzsche's eyes, of the suspicion that he was a traitor.
A traitor to what? A traitor to everything that Nietzsche claimed
Wagner as well as himself stood for in their long conversations at
Tribschen.
The only traitor to the Dionysian is Nietzsche himself, at least the
Nietzsche of this piece, traitor to his own system.
A few pages earlier, Nietzsche says: it took a lot of autodepassement,
I guess the German must be Selbstiiberwindung; it was a long and ar
duous road for me, Nietzsche means, to distinguish what was his ,
Wagner's, and what was mine, Friedrich Nietzsche's. Our unorthodox
text may be defined, from the standpoint of the previous one, as a
relapse into the former confusion. Nietzsche seems to write under the
compulsion of that confusion between Wagner and himself, as if sud
denly he had to imitate the last Wagner, as if he could make no
difference between himself and the author of Parsifal. . Like Wagner
himself, he is possessed by Parsifal.
Here, as elsewhere, when Nietzsche praises Parsifal, he praises the
prelude . If you are familiar with the ordinary imprecations against
Parsifal in and of Wagner, which are quite repetitious, an exception
is often made in favor of the prelude. Nietzsche always acknowledged
that he enjoyed the prelude. But habitually he goes no further. He
confesses that he likes the music insofar as it can be separated from
the words and the hateful message he heard in these words.
Two questions must be answered.
1 ) Why don't the Nietzscheans ever mention this text? The answer
is simple . They don't know it exists. Nietzsche's sister did not include
it in The Will to Power. Thanks to this absence, all Nietzscheans can
go on believing that, ambivalent as Nietzsche may be regarding
Richard Wagner, the man, he is unwavering in his contempt for
Parsifal and above all Christianity itself.
If his sister had published this piece in The Will to Power, it would
have been quite shocking. Many questions would have become
unavoidable that the Nietzscheans have always managed to avoid.
Was Nietzsche already a little insane when he wrote this piece, or
was he a little insane when he was writing the other way?
The sister's motivation is clear. Her purpose was to promote the

philosophy of her brother, not to undermine it. She had to eliminate
this piece. But she nevertheless published it . According to my new
French edition, she published it as a personal letter from her brother
to herself. This was a stroke of genius, really. She herself was not hostile
to Wagner , of course; she deplored the attitude of her brother. She
was eager, therefore, to publicize any favorable opinion that Nietzsche
might have entertained toward Wagner and his work. By presenting
it as a confidence to his dear sister, she made its contradiction with
everything else less conspicuous , and she also suggested various at
tractive interpretations for it. Wagner lovers could think that
Nietzsche's true sentiments were those he reserved for his sister. The
enemies of the sister could say the opposite, and claim that Nietzsche
must have been lying because he despised Elizabeth. In the near future,
I suppose, some orthodox Nietzschean may try to prove that this text
really is a letter to the sister and therefore should be entirely discounted
as an expression of what Nietzsche really thought .
Nietzsche's sister, I feel , has been quite useful to everybody, even
to the contemporary Nietzscheans who systematically minimize the
importance of the religious problematic of the late Nietzsche .
2) The second question I must try briefly to answer is what is the
meaning of all this? In a sense, of course , it is obvious . The ready
made answers of Nietzsche, the answers he always keeps at hand ,
are the ones we heard earlier, the ones that see Parsifal and Chris
tianity as a fruit of sickness and ressentiment, a product of what Deleuze
prefers to call the "reactive" will to power, an expression that is also
used by Nietzsche .
In our text, Nietzsche defines the Christian feeling par excellence as
a compassion which is always rejected elsewhere as an imposture and
a transparent disguise of ressentiment or the "reactive will to power."
The demystification that is otherwise so important to Nietzsche is
brushed aside as inconsequential, unable to reach down to the real
essence of Christianity, unable to undermine what Nietzsche calls here
the "dreadful certainty" that arouses this compassion.
Does this total change of heart mean that we cannot take Nietzsche
seriously, that he is madly spinning between equally irrelevant opin
ions and that everything must be reduced to his personal mimetic
rivalry with Wagner? Certainly not, or rather, we can see here how
different from a psychological or even a psychoanalytical reduction
the mimetic perspective really is.
When Nietzsche writes about Parsifal in his standard manner, and

then in this other incredible manner, he is well advanced on the road
to madness, no doubt; but the threat coincides with his greatest genius,
and this genius lies in what appears to us as contradiction , in the pen
dular movement between the two antithetical thoughts that we are
investigating.
The pro- and anti-Parsifal oscillation involves more than Nietzsche's
personal relationship to Wagner, it involves the number-one
N ietzschean question, which is the difference between the Dionysian
and the Christian. To me the question of the will to power, active ,
and reactive, is really subordinate to that question. And that ques
tion is ultimately a mimetic question, as is the rivalry with Wagner :
it is the mimetic question of religious origins.
In order to understand this question, we must read a final text ,
o n the background of the texts in which Nietzsche speaks explicitly
about the original drama of Dionysus versus the Crucified. It is the
s ame collective death and the last thing Nietzsche considers on this
identity.
There is no sacrificial religion without a drama at the center, and
the more closely you observe it, the more you discover that the features
common to the death of Dionysus and Jesus are also common to other
cults in the entire world. This identity is the reason Nietzsche can
resort to a single symbol, Dionysus , for countless mythologic�l cults.
To say that Dionysus stands for some kind of non-biblical monotheism ,
as Heidegger claims, is complete nonsense in my view. When XIXth
century anthropologists discovered all these cults with the same col
lective drama at the center, they felt entitled to draw some definitive
conclusions , even though they did not have the slightest idea why so
m any religious cults always seemed to originate in the same type of
drama. They saw that the facts are the same and, being positivists ,
they immediately assumed that all these religions were equivalent .
Every great book of anthropology of the age tries to demonstrate that
J udaism and Christianity are the same as any other religion with a
sacrificial origin. Nietzsche alone rejected the conclusion, while ac
cepting the factual insight. He knew that the "facts" were important
but that they meant nothing until they were interpreted.
Dionysus versus the Crucified: there you have the antithesis. It is not
a difference in regard to their martyrdom - it is a difference in the mean
ing of it. Life itself, its eternal fruitfulness and recurrence, creates tor
ment, destruction, the will to annihilation. In the other case, suffering-
The "Crucified as the innocent one" - counts as an objection to this life,

as a formula for its condemnation 4 .
In the case of Dionysus , the emphasis lies on the innocence of the

murderers and, secondarily, of the guilt of the victim , even of God
himself. In the case of Jesus, the emphasis lies on the innocence of the
victim and therefore on the guilt of his murderers .
Here once again we have the two types of suffering. The p agan
type affirms even the harshest suffering, as Nietzsche puts it, meaning
the cruelest violence, whereas the passion identifies with the victims
and denounces the other type of religion as a lie. Nietzsche saw clearly
that ] esus died not as a sacrificial victim of the Dionysian type, but
against all such sacrifices. That is why Nietzsche accused the whole
Christian presentation of being a hidden act of ressentiment: it reveals
the injustice of all religious sacrifice and the absurdity of all Dionysian
mobs the world over.
The passion is viewed as an objection to life or as a formula for
its condemnation because it rejects and indicts everything upon which
the old pagan religions were founded, and with them, in Nietzsche's
habitual estimation, all human societies worth their salt, the societies
in which "the strong and the victorious" were not prevented from en
joying the fruits of their superiority by the weak and the defeated .
The Christian passion is a slander on paganism. It sees the old
religious violence in a negative light and it makes its perpetrators feel
guilty for committing it, even for assenting to it. Since all human
culture is grounded in this collective violence , the whole human race
is declared guilty of the murder of God. Life itself is slandered because
it cannot organize and perpetuate itself without this type of violence .
The one thing common to all readings of Nietzsche , all varieties
of the Nietzschean cult, is that they systematically disregard the enor
mous scope of contradiction in Nietzsche's work, and its centrality.
Contrary to Heidegger, I do not regard the will to power per se as
the central thought of Nietzsche. The will to power acquires its
significance through the difference between Dionysus and the
Crucified, which is the difference between Nietzsche and Wagner,
and the plunge into madness is the final confusion of that difference ,
the shift from Dionysus versus the Crucified to Dionysus and the
Crucified. When this difference collapses, Nietzsche goes mad.
• Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vin
tage Books, 1968) 542-43.

This final confusion is not something that overcomes Nietzsche from

outside and has nothing to do with his previous intellectual life . The
presence of even one single pro-Parsifal and pro-compassion fragment
confirms that Nietzsche's intellectual life is like a pendulum that
oscillates madly not only between Wagner and Nietzsche but between
Dionysus and the Crucified . Between the two antipodes the oscilla
t ion is frantic throughout his whole career, even though Nietzsche
tries fiercely to suppress it , and his writings, being the instrument
of that suppression, almost always record a needle firmly planted at
the same extremity of the dial.
The function of the writer in Nietzsche is to convince himself and
us that the opposite opinions from the pro-Parsifal ones are the only
ones that enter his mind. The written record of even one single swing
to the other extremity of the dial is crucial to the interpretation of
Nietzsche. The madness is an integral part of the Nietzschean adven
ture; the thinker overturns the pendulum of his own thought in order
to prevent further oscillations and the intolerable suffering that ac
companies them . In order not to surrender to Wagner , or to Chris
tianity, Nietzsche upsets the entire applecart of his thought. The text
we have read throws light on the genesis of the final breakdown which
is not as unrelated to the intellectual and spiritual life of the writer
as most Nietzscheans would have us believe. This censorship of the
m adness in Nietzsche, or this idea that the madness is unrelated to
the essential Nietzsche , is part and parcel of the philosophical myth
that, in one form or another, has always dominated Nietzsche
interpretation.
Any future reading of Nietzsche, it seems to me , must be able to
account for the contradiction that we found in Nietzsche's judgment
of Parsifal. Rather than philosophical , I believe, future readings will ·
have to be tragic and religious , -not repetitive of the myths in which
Nietzsche himself did not believe, even though he launched them,
but more directly related to his tragic and religious interests .
Louis Marin
TRANSFIGURATION IN RAPHAEL ,
STENDHAL, AND NIETZSCHE
I have no other reason to speak on the topic of Nietzsche in Itafy than

that I had the occasion - or the fate, as Nietzsche would have put it- to
encounter an Italian painting after him. It happened that I read the
name of this Italian painting and recognized its image first in a text - a
text which, in spite of its several editions , always remains a text, a
text of another writer who , _to take up again Nietzsche's own words
written in Turin , "was one of the most beautiful accidents of my life,"1
that is to say, Stendhal. It is an Italian painting which I encountered
first as a name, not an image, in a text of Stendhal's which, unlike
Stendhal's other books, was never read by Nietzsche, for it was pub
lished in 1980, a text which was for Stendhal in Rome what Ecce Homo
was for Nietzsche in Turin: The Life of Henry Brulard ( Stendhal's
autobiography) . It is an Italian painting, more exactly a Roman paint
ing, whose presence and return Nietzsche nevertheless could have
acknowledged in Stendhal's work from his first book on, a painting
that Nietzsche, for his part, also mentions from his first book on, in
the fourth chapter of The Birth of Tragedy, when that painting sud
denly emerges as a dazzling name in a passage where it was not ex
pected to appear. This Italian painting is Raphael's Transfiguration:
a name before an image, but what a name!
1 Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche , tr. and ed. Walter
Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1 968) 700.
67
It appears to me that in this encounter, which was one of the most

beautiful and fortuitous, the most necessary and inevitable, in my
life it appears to me that Raphael's painting, for Nietzsche as well
-
as Stendhal, because of what Italy was for both and perhaps because
of its name - it appears to me that Raphael's painting marked, cum
grano salis, the text of the origin and the origin of the text, in an
originary text that is at once an image and its end, a name: the
Trans.figuration .
A paradigm of the naive work of art, an appearance of appearance,
Raphael's painting, in its representation and composition, returns in
Nietzsche's text precisely forty years after having already appeared
as absent, as the irresistible and fortuitous association of its name to
the number 50, on the sixteenth of October, 183 2 , at San Pietro in
Montorio on Mount Janicolo in Rome. In Stendhal's dream or reverie,
in this appearance of appearance, this apparition or illumination
through which, in the count or dfcompte of a life, by writing its birth
as its death, its origin as its end, the initial and final question of self
identification is introduced: "Who was I? Who am I?" The represen
tation of appearance in the reappearance of the painting of Raphael,
the immortal naif, comes back at Riva sul Garcia in the winter of the
year 1880. It comes back in Daybreak, but to let break out through
itself a new transfiguration, which Raphael could have envisioned- if
he were now alive- beyond the contemplation of the work n.ine years
earlier in The Birth of Tragedy . 2 If, in 1 83 2 , the same painting
mysteriously introduced to Stendhal the question of autobiographical
writing and perhaps triggered the drive to write per se- "I sometimes
find much pleasure in writing, that's all" it is the same painting that
-
explicitly opens his secret book in 1 840, that is, Les ldees italiennes sur
quelques tableaux citebres, in its confession of the inspiration for that drive:
"Here is no excuse for writing. I saw the Trans.figuration." The Italian
chronicle Breatrice Cenci ends with the burial of the body of the young,
beheaded parricide crowned with flowers underneath the same pain
ting in San Pietro in Montorio, in a grave that, in May, 1835 , Stendhal
searched in vain for the absent inscription, in the choir under the ab
sent painting of Raphael which is buried in the depths of the Vatican.
2 The passage in Daybreak (8) reads: " Transfiguration . -Those that suffer helplessly,
those that dream confusedly, those that are entranced by things supernatural - these
are the three divisions into which Raphael divided mankind. This is no longer how
we see the world - and Raphael too would no longer be able to see it as he did: he
would behold a new transfiguration ." -Ed.
Raphael: The Tranifiguration.
Vatican Museums.
And it is perhaps the new transfiguration of a resurrected Raphael

in Daybreak that is accomplished by the answer Nietzsche provided,
in Turin in 1 888, to the question provoked by the old Trans.figuration
in the reverie of the Consul of Civitavecchia: "Who was I? Who am
I? In reality, I would be embarassed to say."
Nietzsche, as you well know, reformulates this question without
end of the origin, or without origin of the end, as "How one becomes
what one is ." He answers it by giving it the name of Raphael's
Trans.figuration, the name it undoubtedly had in the eyes of Nietzsche
since 1 8 7 2 and The Birth of Tragedy, a name that is an answer found
in the last sentence of a text that has finally become a transfigured
body and dissected once and for all: Dionysus, a name which is also
an ultimate contradiction, Dionysus versus the Crucified. It is precisely
this contradiction that Raphael had represented in his last painting,

the Trans.figuration , the last painting by which everything begins for
both Stendhal and Nietzsche. And it is by the Trans.figuration of Raphael
that I would like to begin.
"Having confessed his sins and made penance, Raphael ended his
career on his very birthday, Holy Friday, at thirty-seven years old.
We can believe that his soul adorns Heaven the same way this pain
ting embellished earth : above his corpse , in his studio, they hung the
Trans.figuration that he had made for the Cardinal de' Medici. The vi
sion of this dead artist and his living work filled all those present with
a terrible grief. This painting was placed by the Cardinal at San Pietro
in Montorio above the grand altar and was always admired for the
quality of its execution . . . . With the death of this admirable artist it
is quite possible that painting itself died because when he closed his
eyes, she became blind." Thus Vasari concludes his life of Raphael,
that is to say, with a double transfiguration: the transfiguration of
the dead painter in his final painting, where painting itself reaches
its end by dying, where it culminates in blindness and vision, and
also the transfiguration of a life in its death, which repeats the origin
as its end in order to situate it in the tomb of a painting in expecta
tion of a resurrection. The painting itself and its subject would be
the representation , or to speak like Nietzsche, the analoges Gleichnis,
the analogical symbol and substitute, of this resurrection. Echoing
Vasari and Raphael, here are a few sentences from Ecce Homo that
might be put in the mouth of the painter, or better, in the mouth
of the appearance of appearance above the painter's dead body: "On
After Raphael: Modello for the Transfiguration.
Vienna, Albertina Museum.
this perfect day when everything is ripening and not only the grape
turns brown, the eye of the sun just fell upon my life: I looked back,
I looked forward, and never saw so many and such good things at
once. It was not for nothing that I buried my forty-fourth year to
day; I had the right to bury it; whatever was life in it has been saved,
is immortal" (Ecce Homo 677) . And Nietzsche added that Stendhalian
sentence, "and so I tell life to myself." It is precisely here that we must
begin : to look at Raphael's painting in this way.
The Transfiguration , a painting interrupted by Raphael's death and
perhaps taken up by Giulio Romano, is a painting also interrupted
and taken up again by Raphael himself. It is a painting of synco
pation: an interrupted body in the suspension of gestures, movements,
and self-consciousness. Spatial syntax is interrupted by spacings which
representation, being representation, takes up again and erases . It
is the syncopation of a plastic song, of a visual music where an end
is heard at the same time that a beginning takes place, in order to
produce for the eye an effect of rhythm, an intensification of presence
and absence . The painting preserves the trace or accent of this syn
copation, like the obscure bar that cuts it horizontally into two halves
and the diagonal gap separating the figures on the left from those on
the right. Nocturnal zigzagging marks the canvas twice .
But the Trans.figuration is not only the painting of a formal, plastic,
or compositional syncopation; it is also the painting of a narrative
or, rather, an iconographical syncopation that is dissimulated and
taken up by the title of the painting, which designates it obliquely,
like every syncopation. The Transfiguration , in turn, designates a well
known episode in Jesus's life. As you can see, only the upper part
of the painting is named by the title Transfiguration . This is the part
which Raphael decided to syncopate (we shall see at what price), which
he decided to link, in the musical sense of the term, through the local
and temporal unity of action, to the scene of the possessed son who ,
when Jesus was on Mount Tabor, was brought to the Apostles, who
in their lack of faith refused to cure him miraculously. It is this sup ris
ing syncopation of those two unrelated scenes in the Gospel that Sten
dhal points to with a kind of surprise: "The big disadvantage of the
painting, the difficulty that the followers of Raphael would not be
caught admitting, is that the lower part of the painting is too far away
from the upper part ." It is precisely this difficulty, which we have
named iconographical syncopation, that Raphael chose to confront,
into which he threw himself for his last painting.
Marin : Transfiguration 73
Let us take a look at the admirable preparatory drawing in order

to read the syncopation. In the middle of a crowd of angelic figures ,
the Celestial Father is just above his beloved Son under the vault of
his mantle . Firmly footed on earth, the Son stands at the summit of
the mountain . The Apostles are kneeling and Moses and Elijah are
barely discernible in the grisaille . Here again there are two orders,
that of the Father and that of the Son. The text of the transfiguration
ends: "A cloud came over which covered them with its shadow and
from it came forth a voice: 'This is my beloved Son. Listen and obey
him . ' " Raphael's drawing reveals the image of the celestial voice as
the voice identifying the Son.
The syncopation chosen by Raphael is now put into relief by the
drawing as the trace of an absence. God the Father is no longer visi
ble . Only the gaze of the Son, a gaze with no object in the painting,
designates Him outside the frame. It is as if, thanks to this sublime
flight to the very vanishing of all possible presentation, another father
would be able to enter the scene from below, the terrestial father
holding another son, the possessed one: another father, another son
surrounded by figures , the Apostles, the family separated by a terri
fying night, the diagonal gap of the syncopation.
If the whole lower part of the painting depicting the possessed son
seems to be substituted for the upper part of the drawing, a part ex
cluded from the painting, if an Apollonian gesture measures the uni
ty of the space represented and closed within exact limits, and if by
this gesture Raphael displays for the eye the strange inconsistency
of the mountain where the miracle took place, then - in order to reduce
the scandalousness of the invention, composition, and construction - it
becomes necessary that J esus's transfiguration be an ecstatic vision.
This vision is not one that would be had by the figures of the lower
part; it is our vision as spectators of the painting, the vision of dream,
the appearance of appearance.
We can now grasp what fascinates Nietzsche , the Nietzsche of The
Birth of Tragedy. It goes by the name of transfiguration, the well
established subject of Christian painting, the representation of a
miracle without an object, a miracle that remains separated once and
for all from human pain and suffering- pain and suffering that it
nevertheless had to make disappear- but whose syncopation is forever
redeemed in and by the painting that presents it to the spectator, in
and by the work of art that dared to display it by discovering its dou
ble scene.
"In his Transfiguration , the lower half of the picture . . . shows us the
reflection of suffering, primal and eternal, the sole ground of the world:
the 'mere appearance' here is the reflection of eternal contradiction,
the father of things. From this mere appearance arises, like ambrosial
vapor, a new visionary world of mere appearances , invisible to those
wrapped in the first appearance- a radiant floating in purest bliss ,
a serene contemplation beaming from wide-open eyes."3
In brief, Raphael, in his painting of the Transfiguration of Jesus on
Tabor, operated the transfiguration of the Christian subject into the
tragic myth.
"Art is not only an imitation of natural reality but a metaphysical
supplement of this reality which is placed next to it in order to sur
pass it. Inasmuch as it partakes in art, the tragic myth fully partakes
in this metaphysical transfiguration that constitutes pure art in
general ."
With the Transfiguration of Raphael, with his final painting and its
scandalous audacity, it is again Apollo who appears to Nietzsche,
Apollo in whom alone is accomplished deliverance through ap
pearance. The possessed son remains once more the mirror image
of the eternal originary pain . . . . Perhaps we have to wait for Daybreak,
or simply for the satyric chorus in The Birth of Tragedy, in order to
read that figure as the drunken and mad young companion of
Dionysus, the messenger of a wisdom springing from the depths of
Nature. Yes, we have to wait for Daybreak and perhaps even later,
if not too late, perhaps always too late, in order to understand ("Have
I been understood? Have I been understood well?") that God the
Celestial Father, whom Raphael had excluded from the representa
tion because of His luminous sublimity, returns from below, through
the shadow and the obscurity of the water, in the figure of the
disfigured son . Perhaps too late for us, we would perceive the new
transfiguration promised by Daybreak to the new Raphael and ac
complished in Nietzsche's Ecce Homo.
You will recall the admirable opening description of Rome in The
Life of Henry Brulard: "This morning, on the sixteenth of October, 1832,
I was in San Pietro in Montorio on Mount janicolo in Rome. It was
a magnificent sunny day. A light, barely noticeable sirocco breeze
made a few white clouds float. . . . I was happy to live." Between the
3 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Traged

y, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, tr. and ed.
Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1 968) 45.
Marin : Transfiguration 75
Memoirs ef a Tourist and the history of the City, appears the phantom
of the Eternal City, between the quest for the past in present ruin
or the return of the present through the writing of history from the
origin, a fantastic City in this locus of the Stendhalian text: here things
coexist in the space of the Memory-City instead of succeeding each
other. Everything is reserved, and to make them appear, one only
has to shift perspective. It is possible to grasp that fantasy in a fiction,
a fantasy which consists in writing one's life by beginning with this
inimaginable time, which is itself· a space which is not a place of suc
cessions but rather a time of metamorphoses and metaphors, where
everything is preserved in its annihilation , where everything returns
eternally if one accepts to write while dreaming. Inimaginable time,
a time of happiness where time-order disappears in becoming what
one is. Transparent, luminous space, morning space and not noon
space, the space of autumn, October, 183 2 . "Thus it is here," writes
Stendhal, "that the Transfiguration of Raphael was admired for two
and a half centuries." Raphael's painting is at once an emblem of Rome
and a figure of the subject, an emblem of that which the subject looks
at, and a figure of the eye that looks. But this emblematic and figural
image is invisible and absent in San Pietro . There is only its name.
The painting was here but is now there, "buried in the depths of the
Vatican, in the sad gallery of gray marble." Instead of and in place
of the subject is an invisible and absent painting, which is the syn
copation of this place and that one, of this time and that one, the syn
copation of happiness and despair, of life and death.
Raphael's painting does not provide an answer to the double ques
tion of the self-identification, "Who was I? Who am I?" Yet it is, in
itself, the place where the enunciation of this double question can oc
cur. Because it has this name, because it treats this subject and
displaces it by the supplement of a second son , Raphael's painting
would be the fiction typically and singularly modelling Stendhal's life .
By the same token, the contemplation of the painting gives rise to
the place of the "auto-bio-thanato-graphical" enunciation . But it also
offers the troubling image , the trembling im age of the essential enun
ciation, that of a life in its singular death. The same goes for Nietzsche,
but inversely. We read in Aubenque's Le Probleme de l'etre chez Aristote
this definition of essence: "The essence of a man is the transfigura
tion of a history into a legend, of a tragic because unforeseeable ex
istence into a fulfilled destiny, a transfiguration which can only be
accomplished at death."
Leaving Rome and Stendhal for Turin and Nietzsche, I would like
to read these four lines of Ecce Homo echoing the Aristotelian defini
tion of essence: "The good fortune of my existence, its uniqueness
perhaps, lies in its fatality; I am, to express it in the form of a riddle,
already dead as my father, while as my mother I am still living and
becoming old . This dual descent, as it were, both from the highest
and the lowest rung on the ladder of life, at the same time a decadent
and a beginning- this, if anything, explains that neutrality, that freedom
from all partiality in relation to the total problem of life, that perhaps
distinguishes me" (Ecce 678) . It seems that with this summit and this
bottom of the scale of life , Nietzsche describes the composition and
distribution of Raphael's Transfiguration .
Text of the origin, origin of the text, originary text-image, I said
at the beginning. Reading Nietzsche and Stendhal, it seems in effect
that in the work of Raphael, in its image and name, the origin is at
stake in a chiasmus of whose structure the painting is almost a figure,
a chiasmus whose branches both Nietzsche and Stendhal follow in
an inverse way but with the same objective . In this chiasmus the self
identification is at one and the same time the transfiguration of the
self: "To become what one is," for Stendhal as well as for Nietzsche,
involves self- achievement through self-creation, self-generation, that
is to say, first of all, transcendence of all filiation and all alliance.
Stendhal's reading of the painting emphasizes the presence of the
Mother in her incestuous look. The mother is the sign and the erotic
figure of the infinite gap separating the two sons, the transfigured and
the disfigured one . Nietzsche's reading of the same painting puts in
to relief the possessed son and Apollo , the divinization of the prin
cipium individuationis. It is Apollo who by a sublime gesture shows us
and I may add, who shows the possessed son - that this world of pain
is entirely necessary if through it the individual, that is, the pos
sessed son, gives birth to Apollo, the appearance of appearance, or the
transfigured son. He is transfigured (he, the disfigured) in order that,
immersed in that appearance of appearance, in his contemplation ,
he might find calm and rest.
To be one's own father in his death but also his contrary, certainly
not the mother (unspeakable horror), but a woman like Cosima
Wagner, Nietzsche explains in Ecce Homo . Stendhal would answer to
Nietzsche: "To be one's own mother and her contrary, certainly not
the Father, but men like Napoleon or Count Daru ." The Trans.figura
tion of Raphael is the space of this exchange between Nietzsche and
Stendhal.
D avid E. Wellbery
NIETZSCHE - ART - POSTMODERNISM :

A REPLY TO JURGEN HABERMAS
For Russell Berman
1 . Habermas on Nietzsche
"Return to Myth." What is meant by this phrase in the contemporary

context? Its evaluative force derives from its status as an illocutionary
amalgam, part accusation, part warning: 'Nietzsche's thought sinks
back into the mythic . Watch out!' Such is the obvious reading, pat
and incontrovertible, and it is clear that , on the level one might call
conscious intention, this is what H abermas meant . His essay is
emblazoned with the asseveration: "Nietzsche takes leave of
(verabschiedet- the word is underlined in Habermas's text) modernity."1
Nietzsche's thought , that is , seeks to return to the archaic.
However, a second reading of the slogan is also possible, and with
rather interesting results. Consider the figure of "return" onto which
accusation and warning are grafted, a strangely spatial and simplistic
notion really, when one recalls that its referent is something as com
plex, as certainly non-spatial, as the historical positionality of a body
of thought. This evident discrepancy suggests that the figure is serv
ing other functions than mere illumination. And indeed, does it not
1 Jurgen Habermas, Derphilosophische Diskurs derModeme. Zwiilf Vorlesungen (Frankfurt:
Subrkamp, 1985) 106. Subsequent references to this book will be given parenthetically
in the text. I have condensed Habermas's statement for the purposes of my exposi
tion. The reader can decide whether the paraphrase is just. The actual passage in
77
evoke a mythic topography? Isn't the tool that is here being used to
condemn the mythic itself of the nature of myth? - the myth, precisely,
of a sphere of the archaic, a jungle of undifferentiation , an island of
Circe where, enchanted, we become beasts again . Paradoxically, the
accusation levelled against the mythic itself relies on myth, evoking
what it banishes, preserving what it negates . Freud's term for such
semiotic moves was Verneinung. Habermas's reading of Nietzsche is
a massive denegation in the technical psychoanalytic sense.
For this reason it would be insufficient merely to collect the
philological howlers that dot Habermas's text. To cite, for instance ,
in a gesture of disproof Nietzsche's sentence : " . . . eine Ruckbildung, eine
Umkehr in irgendwelchem Sinn und Grade ist gar nicht moglich."
And to point out that this assertion is shortly followed by the state
ment: "Es hilft nichts : man muss vorwarts , will sagen Schrittfur Schritt
weiter in der decadence . . " (the Nietzschean equivalent of "il faut etre ab
.
solument moderne") . 2 The question is not the (lack of) accuracy

of the Habermasian reading, but rather the strategic operations it per
forms. Only at this level can we discover something interesting about
the otherwise tiresome postmodernism debate. For it is this debate
which is the immediate context of Habermas's critique of Nietzsche ;
question reads: "Mit Nietzsches Eintritt in den Diskurs der Moderne veriindert sich
die Argumentation von Grund auf. Erst war die Vernunft als versohnende
Selbsterkenntnis, dann als befreiende Aneignung, schliesslich alsentschadigende Erin
nerung konzipiert worden, damit sie als Aquivalent fiir die vereinigende Macht der
Religion auftreten und die Entzweiungen der Moderne aus deren eigenen Antriebs
kraften iiberwinden konne . Dreimal ist dieser Versuch, den Vernunftbegriff auf das
Programm einer in sich dialektischen Aufklarung zuzuschneiden, misslungen. In
dieser Konstellation hatte Nietzsche nur die Wahl, entweder die subjektzentrierte
Vernunft noch einmal einer immanenten Kritik zu unterziehen - oder aber das Pro
gramm im ganzen aufzugeben. Nietzsche entscheidet sich fiir die zweite Alternative
er verzichtet auf eine erneute Revision des Vernunftbegriffs und verabschiedet die
Dialektik der Aufkliirung." The thesis is reformulated later: " . . . es geht nun um eine
totale Abkehr von der nihilistisch entleerten Moderne. Mit Nietzsche verzichtet die
Kritik der Moderne zum ersten Mal auf die Einbehaltung ihres emanzipatorischen
Gehaltes" ( 1 1 7). Another version of this alleged regression appears in the following
formulation: Nietzsche beniitzt die Leiter der historischen Vernunft, um sie am Ende
wegzuwerfen und im Mythos, als dem Anderen der Verunft , Fuss zu fassen" ( 1 07) .
2 Friedrich Nietzsche, Samtliche Werke. Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Banden, ed. Giorgio
Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1980) VI ,

1 44. Subsequent references to this edition are indicated parenthetically within the
text, citing volume and page. It is interesting to note that the passage quoted here
carries the heading: "Den Konservativen ins Ohr gesagt."
Wellbery: Nietzsche- Art - Postmodernism 79
the text of Nietzsche is, according to the spatio-mechanical metaphor

of the essay's title , the "Drehscheibe" that casts thought off its right
track and into its aberrant postmodern phase.
The simple citation of Habermas's thesis : Nietzsche takes leave of
modernity, teaches us this about the postmodernism debate: that it
is not carried out in a process of hypothesis formation and falsifica
tion, of rational consensus-building in the Habermasian sense . For
this thesis , resting as it does on a mythic figure, cannot possibly be
disproven, and this because it is not an epistemic statement but rather
a symbolic statement in the precise sense that Dan Sperber has given
to that term. 3 The debate on postmodernism is a conflict waged on
the terrain of the symbolic ; a conflict also for symbolic orders in the
sense that the parties involyed want their own symbolic system to be
recognized, to predominate in shaping the culture's self-understanding.
Now, the symbolic system Habermas represents, and with which he
attempts to appropriate Nietzsche, is called Geschichtsphilosophie, a
discourse which has a specific genealogy beginning in the eighteenth
century, and which is anchored in a specific institutional situation of
the intellectual. I have argued elsewhere that this situation is that of
the university professor - especially the philosophy professor- in the
world of post-H umboldtian universal education, but I don't want to
insist on this institutional reading here. 4 My concern , rather, is the
question of the symbolic operations through which the Habermasian
discourse comes to terms with the Nietzschean text. 5 The move of Ver
neinung described above is one such operation ( denegations of this sort
can only take place in a symbolic world), and we shall have occasion
to examine another instance of this move in connection with the theme
"of art, specifically modern art." At this point, however, I want to
consider a second- and very powerful- symbolic operation that
characterizes Habermas's discourse, namely the type of narrativization
it employs.
To caution against a return to myth is necessarily to posit a nor
mative itinerary, an Odyssey of modernity, if you will, that steers clear
of the Circean sphere and brings thought back to its homeland. This
3 See Dan Sperber, Rethinking Symbolism, tr. Alice L. Morton (Cambridge : Cam
bridge University Press, 1 975).
4 "The Imagination of the University," forthcoming in Differentia.
5 I allude here to the critical use of these terms in Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, "La
Dissimulation. Nietzsche, la question de !'art et la 'litterature,'" in Nietzsche aujourdhui:
vol. II: Passion (Paris: Union Generale D'Editions, 1973) 9-36. Here p. 1 1 .
narrative structure juxtaposes two states and negotiates a passage

across the semantic border which separates them. We can call these
states the "pre-modern" and the "modern," the latter term designating
the post-Renaissance world of rationalization in Weber's sense, as op
posed to the traditionalist, religious-symbolic organization and
legitimation of social interaction that is the hallmark of the pre-modern.
Of course, this two-state model is complexly ramified in Habermas's
text, but I shall ignore its details here in order to focus on what seems
to me the decisive issue: the nature of the function - in the sense of
deep-structural verb or action-type - which the narrative deploys to
accomplish the transition between the two phases. This is the nar
rative figure of"emancipation": the transition to modernity is a "libera
tion" in which reason comes into - attains- its freedom . Hence the
importance of Kant, the first philosopher of modernity. In Kant,
reason gives itself its own laws- auto nomos- and this is nothing other
than the definition of freedom. The figure of emancipation organizes
a teleological narrative in which a protagonist - here: reason
appropriates that which was, from the beginning, inscribed within
it as its very nature: autonomy, the state of free subjecthood. The
significance of this structure becomes dear when we recall that, from
the projected thesis of 1 868 across the second Unzeitgemasse Betrachtung
to the articulation of the thought of eternal return, Nietzsche's work
undertakes a sustained critique of this teleological narrative symbolism.
For Nietzsche, teleology is telepathy: that is , the symbolic organization
of our physical, social and cultural corporeality - our pathein - in terms
of a goal which is constitutively distant, tele, a Ferne which is not without
a certain femininity, as Derrida has shown .6 From this point of view,
it is easy to see why Nietzsche is such a stumbling block, such a scan
dal, for Habermas, and this all the more so when we consider that
Nietzsche's work contains an explicit critique of the self-understanding
of the modern that Habermas's narrativization attempts to establish.
I refer to chapters 23-5 of the third treatise of the Genealogie der Moral.
The referent here is the same historical field as that which Haber
mas' s story construes: the transition from a traditionalist religious
organization of life to a rationalized form. The emblem for this tran
sition which Nietzsche cites is the Copernican revolution (turn or rever
sal) which figures both the emergence of modern science and its
philosophical codification in Kant. Nietzsche does not deny the massive
6 See Jacques Derrida, Eperons. Les styles de Nietzsche (Paris: Flammarion, 1 978).
Wellbery: Nietzsche -Art - Postmodernism 81
effects - the brute historical reality- of this change. What h e ques

tions, rather, is the appropriateness of a teleological narrativization
of this change in terms of the function "emancipation." For the tale
of the coming-to-itself of reason out of heteronomy he substitutes a
complex narrative figure involving reversal and negation, or self
negation.
N ein! Man komme mir nicht mit der Wissenschaft, wenn ich nach
dem natiirlichen Antagonisten des asketischen Ideals suche , . . . Ihr
V erhaltniss zum asketischen Id�al ist an sich durchaus nicht an
tagonistisch; sie stellt in der Hauptsache sogar eher noch die vorwarts
treibende Kraft in <lessen Ausgestaltung dar. Ihr Widerspruch und
Kampf bezieht sich, feiner gepriift , gar nicht auf das Ideal selbst ,
sondern nur auf <lessen Aussenwerke, Einkleidung, Maskenspiel , auf
<lessen zeitweilige Verhiirtung, Verholzung, Verdogmatisierung- sie
macht das Leben in ihm wieder frei, indem sie das Exoterische an ihm
verneint. ( V , 402)
The transition to modernity is here narrativized as a process

whereby a system of symbolic organization in a phase of decay
sclerosis, dogmatization, loss of legitimacy - preserves itself precisely
through a movement of self-negation . Far from annihilating the sym
bolic system, this self-negating reversal stabilizes and strengthens it.
Science does not emerge out of religion as out of its other, but rather
m aintains the principle of religious symbolism in and through an act
which negates the outworks , the particular symbolic masks of that
system. We are dealing here, in other words, with a model in which
the self-negation of a particular symbolic organization of life - the
ascetic ideal - results in an aggrandizement of the system's strength,
complexity, scope and refinement.
Das asketische Ideal wurde ganz und gar nicht in ihnen [ the so-called
"Siege" of science] besiegt, es wurde eher damit starker, namlich um
fasslicher, geistiger, verfanglicher gemacht , class immer wieder eine
Mauer, ein Aussenwerk, das sich an dasselbe angebaut hatte und seinen
Aspekt vergroberte , seitens der Wissenschaft schonungslos abgelost,
abgebrochen warden ist . (V , 403-404)
Nietzsche's alternative to the Enlightenment geschichtsphilosophische

concept of modernity as the end-state of a teleological process is the
model of an open-ended evolutionary series in which - to give the mat
ter a Luhmannian accentuation- systemic Komplexitiitssteigerung is
brought about through an operation of self-negation that the system

performs on itself.
This evolutionary conception links Nietzsche's critique of moder
nity with his critique of moralization. The modern perpetuates the
dominance of the ascetic ideal precisely to the degree that it redoubles
its foundational gesture: that gesture of self-negating reversal whereby
a decadent form of life maintains and transforms itself. It is precisely
this movement which Nietzsche discerns in the usurpation of the old
national god by the moral god of the Old Testament (VI, 1 93- 1 97)
or in the Socratic reorganization of discourse in terms of procedures
of rational justification (VI, 67-73); but the figure in whom this self
negating turn finds its most complete embodiment is the ascetic priest ,
and it is likewise here that we can most clearly see the basis of
Nietzsche's critique. This critique is directed at the logic of self-negation
itself, at the cutting of a wound, that implantation of a poison , with
which the ascetic priest maintains life over and against its decadent
tendencies . That is , the priest turns the will against itself, constitutes
will as the splitting of willing from itself, 7 an operation that rests on
the premise: "lieber will noch der Mensch das Nichts wollen, als nicht
wollen" (V, 4 1 2) . The moralizing turn of life against itself, in other
words, is plagued by an immanent nihilism: a will to a substantialized
"nothing" as a form of self-maintenance of the will . Thus, the
Copernican turn, which initiates our modernity, recapitulates the
negative reversal performed by the ascetic priest, intensifying and
rendering explicit the nihilism implicit in the ascetic ideal. "Seit Koper
nikus scheint der Mensch auf eine schiefe Ebene gerathen, - er rollt
immer schneller nunmehr aus dem Mittelpunkte weg- wohin? ins
Nichts? in's 'durchbohrende Gefiihl seines Nichts'? . . . Wohlan! dies eben
ware der gerade Weg- in's alte Ideal?" (V, 404)
Nietzsche's evolutionary model of modernity is indigestible for
Habermas and for this reason he has to transform Nietzsche's text
into a cariacature of itself and thereby cast it out, rej ect it, while
paradoxically preserving that which is negated . But the reason for
this indigestibility is not simply that Nietzsche offers an alternative
7 Cf. Nietzsche's formulation :," . . . wir stehen hier vor einer Zwiespaltigkeit, die sich
selbst zwiespaltig will . " (V, 363) . On this problem of the Spaltung see the impor
. .
tant essay by Werner Hamacher: "Das Versprechen der Auslegung. Uberlegungen

zum hermeneutischen lmperativ bei Kant und Nietzsche,'' in Sprache und Gleichnis.
FestschriftfurJacob Taubes, ed. N . Bolz and W. Hiibener (Wiirzburg, 1983) 252-273 .
The entire problem of constitutive self-negation, which I allude to in this paragraph ,
receives its most penetrating interpretation to date in Hamacher's essay.
to Habermas's teleological narrative symbolism; it is , rather, that

Nietzsche's analysis includes a critical account of the emergence of
that symbolism. Teleology is itself one of the products of the self
negating turn through which the ascetic ideal constitutes itself. This
organization of desire in terms of a distant goal, this interpretation of
life as on the way to a truth that beckons in the distance, is precisely
the achievement of the ascetic priest.
Das asketische Ideal hat ein Ziel, dasselbe ist allgemein genug, class
-
alle Interessen des menschlichen Daseins sonst , an ihm gemessen,

kleinlich und eng erscheinen ; es legt sich Zeiten, Volker, Menschen
unerbittlich auf dieses Eine Ziel hin aus , es lasst keine andere
Auslegung, kein anderes Ziel gelten , es verwirft, verneint, bejaht,
bestatigt allein im Sinne seiner Interpretation ( - und gab es je ein zu
Ende gedachteres System von Interpretation?); . . . es glaubt daran, class
Nichts auf Erden von Macht da ist, das nicht von ihm aus erst einen
Sinn, ein Daseins-Recht , einen Wert zu empfangen habe, als Werkzeug
zu seinem Werke, als Weg und Mittel, zu seinem Ziele, zu Einem Ziele . . . .
(V, 395-396)
"Randomness deprived of its innocence," - this is how Nietzsche
interprets the self-negating movement of moralization (VI, 1 94) . It ·
is likewise a formula for teleology, which recasts evolutionary series
as a necessary progress. And it is, finally, a formula for Enlighten
ment Geschichtsphilosophie, an eminently moralizing discourse , as
Kosellek has shown, which rests on the extirpation of Zufall. 8 It is
in this sense that the debate on postmodernism -the Nietzsche/Haber
m as debate, if you will - has as its crux the question of narrative.
Habermas's reading of Nietzsche is an attempt to shore up a crum
bling narrative symbolism. 9 And what threatens this symbolism is the
unforeseeable disseminating power of the event.
8 On the moralizing features of Geschichtsphilosophie see Reinhart Kosellek, Kritik und
Krise. Zur Pathogenese der biirger{ichen Welt (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1956). On the ex
tirpation of randomness in the eighteenth-century reconceptualization of history, see ,
by the same author, "Der Zufall als Motivationsrest in der Geschichtsschreibung,"
in Kosellek, Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Sernantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,
1 979) 1 58- 1 7 5 .
9 In this sense, Nietzsche's work represents a n important challenge fot contemporary
narrative theory insofar as the predominant model of narrative processes available

today- that of Greimas - exhibits a decidedly teleological character. An alternative
model is elaborated by Michel de Certeau in an extremely rich essay influenced by
Foucault, and in particular by Foucault's reading of Nietzsche. See Michel de Certeau,
The Practice of Everyday Life, tr. Steven F. Rendall (Berkeley: University of Califor
nia Press, 1 984) 77-90. See also the analysis of the extirpation of randomness and
To conclude this reading of Habermas, I want to return to the ques

tion of Verneinung which served as my point of departure and to lend
that notion greater specificity with regard to Habermas's overall posi
tion . For Nietzsche's departure from modernity, his rejection of its
grand narrative itinerary, is given an explanation by Habermas - a
pseudo-explanation , as we shall see - and the locus of this explana
tion is "modern art ." It is by virtue of his alliance with modernism
in the arts that Nietzsche succumbs to the temptation of the mythic:
Nietzsche inthronisiert ja den Geschmack. Aber er kann die

zuri.i.ckbehaltenen Massstabe des asthetischen Urteils nicht legitimieren,
weil er die asthetischen Erfahrungen ins Archaiische transponiert, weil
er das im Umgang mit moderner Kunst gescharfte kritische Vermogen
der Wertschatzung nicht als ein Moment der Vernunft anerkennt, das
wenigstens prozedural, im Verfahren argumentativer Begri.i.ndung, mit
objektivierender Erkenntnis und moralischer Einsicht noch zusam
menhiingt . Das Asthetische, als das Tor zum Dionysischen , wird
vielmehr zum Anderen der Vernunft hypostasiert. ( 1 19)
What is the function here of the notion modem art? The first point
to note is that the argument in which the notion appears relies en
tirely on a crude geneticism. Apparently one has experiences of
something called modern art and these spontaneously generate a body
of thought . This same geneticism appears in another statement, in
which the sponsoring experience is diluted to a vague contemporaneity:
"Aber Nietzsche war nicht nur der Schuler Schopenhauers, er war
Zeitgenosse Mallarmes und der Symbolisten , ein Verfechter des !'art
pour l'art' ( 1 1 6) . Nietzsche's work seems to be the product of a Zeitgeist.
Again, it is not a question of the philological inaccuracy of Haber
mas' claims ,10 but rather of the operations which these claims per
form. The simplistic geistesgeschichtliche method of interpretation serves
here merely as a device to introduce into the text a certain phantasm ,
and once again the phantasm appears in the context of a denegation.
Consider the metaphors : an initial spatialization according to which
the production of teleology as a ruse of power (state power) in the remarkable essay
by Louis Marin: "Writing History with the Sun King: The Traps of Narrative,"
in On Signs, ed. Marshall Blonsky (Baltimore: TheJohns Hopkins University Press,
1985) 267-88.
1 0 The inaccuracy is patent: Nietzsche explicitly repudiates l'art pour l'art. Cf. , for
example, XII, 300.
Nietzsche 'transposes' aesthetic experience into the archaic; then a per

mutation of this spatial metaphor whereby art becomes a "gate" that
opens onto the sphere of the Dionysian. In the very gesture with which
he rejects the longing for an �ndifferentiated archaic realm, for this
exotic Other of reason, this Mannian primal jungle where the shin
ing eyes of the tiger of violence beckon and threaten through the
bamboo- in the very gesture through which he repudiates this dream,
Habermas preserves it in the quasi-affirmation of its evocation .
H abermas denies in order to maintain what he denies. The denial
itself is prompted by a fascination for that which it casts away. To
put this another way: the category of the "archaic" is never explicated
by Habermas. It functions merely as an evocative figure calling forth
a vague Other, the speculcir counterpart to "reason ." The text per
forms the very hypostasis it condemns , constituting its own evaluative
position in and through this movement . 1 1
I do not wish to dwell on this figure of the "archaic" here; suffice
it to remark that Nietzsche's writings develop a far more detailed,
indeed, one must say rational, conception of precivilized life. The
p oint I want to bring out is rather that Habermas's "modernist" posi
tion, the position he assumes in the debate on "postmodernism ,"
depends on a certain view of "modern art." Just as Nietzsche is the
"turntable" to postmodernism , art is the gate to the archaic. "Die Kunst
offnet den Zutritt zum Dionysischen nur um den Preis der Extase
um den Preis der schmerzhaften Entdifferenzierung, der Entgrenzung
des Individuums, der Verschmelzung mit der amorphen Natur in
nen wie aussen" ( 1 1 7) . However little this statement tells us about
N ietzsche's view of art, it does tell us something about Habermas's
cloudy conception. As a reader of modern art, he bears some similarity
to Madame Bovary, who , Flaubert tells us , loved "lurid books full
of orgiastic scenes and bloody deeds. Often she would be seized by
terror, she would cry out."12 The Habermasian conception of"modern
art" is one which that art, from the beginning, exposes as naive.
1 1 The evaluational move we find here in Habermas corresponds exactly to Nietzsche's
description of the moralizing gesture of ressentiment. Moralization takes place through

the hypostasis of an Other: "die Sklaven-Moral bedarf, um zu entstehen, immer zuerst
e iner Gegen- und Aussenwelt . . . " (V, 271).
1 2 Nietzsche parodies the figure at VI, 128: " . . . das Litteratur-Weib, gebildet genug,
die Stimme der Natur zu verstehn, selbst wenn sie Latein redet und andrerseits eitel
und Gans genug, um im Geheimen auch noch franzosisch mit sich zu sprechen )e
me verrai, je me lirai, je m'extaserai etje dirai: Possible, que j'aie eu tant d'esprit?'. ..
"
Habermas' critique of Nietzsche relies on this ambivalent - at once

fascinated and abhorred- attitude toward modern art. It is an attitude
which is not untypical of a certain academic discourse on modernism. 13
From this perspective, it appears that what is at stake in the debate
on postmodernism is not merely the question of narrative legitima
tion discussed above , but equally the question of art: the question ,
that is, of a discourse on art which breaks with the bovarisme of
Habermas . In the second section of this paper I want to inquire into
the strategies of such a discourse.
2. Nietzsche's Critical Discourse
What is the structure, status and positionality of Nietzsche's discourse

on art? We can begin to answer this question by considering the view
on it that Habermas attributes to Nietzsche. The above cited passage
criticizing what Habermas calls Nietzsche's "enthroning of taste" en
tails the following presuppositions:
1) that the legitimacy of discourse on art rests on its agreement with
a set of procedural rules for discursive interaction which can themselves
be derived transcendentally through a reflection on the conditions of
possibility of felicitous communication;
2) that this same set of rules governs moral discourse and epistemic
discourse .
If these statements ring familiar, it is because they are redactions
of classical philosophical propositions: in Kantian terms : the
transcendental subject (the ancestor of Habermas's transcendental
pragmatics) is the ground of judgments of taste , morality, and theory;
in the terms of rationalist metaphysics : Reason is the unity of the
Beautiful, the Good, and the True. Habermas is correct in suggesting
that Nietzsche did not accept this proposition .
But Nietzsche's rejection o f the classical philosophical thesis does
not entail, as Habermas further suggests, that the discourse on art
disengages itself totally from the discourses of morality and knowledge .
Indeed, the briefest glance at Nietzsche's texts will reveal that the ques
tion of the aesthetic is for him intimately connected with the ques
tion of morality; and certainly a writer who claims that aesthetics is
a physiology does not segregate discourse on art from that of what
Habermas calls the "objectivizing sciences." Nietzsche rejects not the
13 See the critique of this discourse in Leo Bersani, "The Other Freud," Humanities
and Society, I : 1 ( 1 978) 1 5-24. It is from Bersani that I borrow the example of Madame
Bovary.
Wellbery: Nietzsche-Art - Postmodemism 87
relationality of the discourses on art , morals and science , but rather

the foundationalist account of this relationality, the notion that it con
sists in the fact that the three discourses can be normativized accord
ing to a single set of rules ,themselves without positionality: For
Nietzsche, aesthetic, moral, and scientific discourse exist in a rela
tionship of adjacency, a mobile relationality, if you will, in which
conflicts, agreements, adaptations and transformations intertwine .
N ietzsche's critical practice, far from purifying the discourse on art
by isolating it, complexifies that discourse by articulating a network
o f relationships between the domains of art, morals, and knowledge.
Much could be said regarding the question of whether the notion
of discursive plurality that Nietzsche posits is to be preferred to the
Habermasian view of discursive homogeneity. Certainly this is one
of the serious issues underlying the postmodemism debate. However,
I do not want to argue the case here: suffice it to cite a remark con
veyed to me by Friedrich Kittler to the effect that Habermas's con
cept of discourse does not allow one to say anything significant even
about as blatant discursive fact as the seating order at a conference
dinner . Instead , I want to see how this notion of discursive plurality
communicates with other aspects of Nietzsche's thought and writing.
In particular I am thinking of Nietzsche's use of the concept of taste .
H abermas, of course , misconstrues this notion altogether, for when
he criticizes Nietzsche for enthroning taste he has in mind a notion
of taste as a faculty for discerning aesthetic value . Nietzsche's con
cept of taste, however, is not formulated within classical faculty
p sychology, but rather within that intricate theoretical framework he
himself often called physiology, and which we might rename
Nietzsche's doctrine of the body.
To see how this doctrine is articulated with the question of discourse,
let us consider the relationship between, so to speak, a specific "act
of taste" and the aesthetic discourse that Nietzsche develops around
it . Such an "act" is recounted in the following fragment :
Die Energie der Gesundheit verrath sich bei Kranken in dem brusken
Widerstande gegen die krankmachenden Elemente . . . einer Reaktion des
Instinkts , z . B . gegen Musik bei mir- (XII, 389)
The music referred to here is, of course , that of Wagher and the
text itself can be said to constate the fact of a certain taste , or distaste,
which Der Fall Wagner at once enacts and analyzes. What I want to
focus on here is the beautiful word- much more unusual than its
English cognate - "briisk." This word designates neither a mechanical

nor a reflective movement, but rather a spontaneously produced
gesture the formation of which is inaccessible to conscious reflection.
The locus of this act is the body- a sick body, in which tendencies
of health and aggravated illness interact. Taste has its emergence not
within a psychological faculty of apprehension, but rather within the
complexly layered corporeal field. This does not mean that the
discourse on art becomes a subdivision of biology. Nietzsche's
"physiological refutation" of Wagner, as he called the text whose mythic
origin I am recounting here, conceives of the body not as a strictly
biological entity, but rather as what we might call, taking up a cen
tral metaphor of the Genealogie, "the inscribed body'' : the body shaped
and organized by layers of interpretations, the meeting place of various
and competing valuations. "Aber wir Alle haben , wider Wissen, wider
Willen, Werthe, Worte, Moralen entgegengesetzter Abkunft im
Leibe - wir sind, physiologisch betrachtet, falsch . . . " (VI, 53) . It is
this plurality of values, verbal constructs , and moralities within which
the act of taste emerges, and the discourse which analyzes this act
is therefore itself necessarily plural.
Precisely this implication of Nietzsche's corporeal concept of taste
becomes apparent if we take a step further in our fictional genesis
story of Der Fall Wagner and move from the initial brusque gesture
to a later stage of processing. One of the sketches for Der Fall Wagner
looks like this :
X - schmerzhaft-nachdenklich
1. Bizet's Musik- der Philosoph ironisch
2. SU.den, Heiterkeit, mau[rischer]
Tanz Liebe fremd-interessant
3. der "Erloser" - Schop[ enhauer]
4. der "Ring", Schopenhauer als
Erloser Wagners fremd-interessant
5. der decadent -grimmig! grimmig!
6. scherzhaft "Ahnen" "Umwerfen"
"Erheben" ironisch
7. "Hysterismus" "Stil" die kleinen
Kostbarkeiten fremd-interessant
8. "niederwerfende Wirkung" "der
V ictor Hugo der Sprache" "Talma''
"alla genovese" lobend-rasch
9. "Handlung" "Edda" "ewiger Gehalt"
"Madame Bovary" "kein Kind" ironisch
Wellbery: Nietzsche - Art - Postmodernism 89
10. "Litteratur" " Idee" "Hegel" ironisch-fremd

"deutscher J tingling" - was wir interessant
vermissen?
11. lobend, stark, thatsachlich "der
Schauspieler" huldigend
12. drei Formeln grtmmzg
zu 1 0) Wagner ist dunkel, verwickelt, siebenhautig . 8 das bleibt ernst
selbst bei Wagners "Contrapunkt" (XIII, 5 10)
The inner plurality of the act of taste is provisionally articulated
here in a highly dynamic scriptural montage that situates numbers ,
p unctuation marks, abbreviations , names , concepts and citations
within a spatio-temporal array. Within this network a set of "takes"
on the phenomenon "Wagner" is correlated with a system of what might
be called discursive attitudes or tonalities , the terms for which ( e . g . ,
lobend-rasch) bear similarity to musical directives . 1 4 These directives
reveal something very interesting about Nietzsche's texts generally :
t hat, in contrast to the philosophical discourse of, say, Habermas,
his writing does not seek to efface the markers of enunciation; on the
contrary, it foregrounds them and stresses their internal differences.
In other words, Nietzsche pluralizes the possibilities of subjectivity
by allowing the enunciating subject to take up a range of attitudinal
positions. His writing explodes the myth of attitudinal neutrality; the
myth of the "theoreticaL subject," which Habermas, among 'others ,
stylistically (or style-lessly)15 perpetuates.
But these discursive tonalities are not deployed randomly; their
ordering clearly exhibits the contours of a strategy. The spatializa
tion and temporalization of the act of taste in writing are inscribed
with - are the very inscription of- lines of battle . Consider the final
t urn, where a graphically accentuated huldigend rhetorically "sets up"
the antagonist and prepares thereby the triumphant return of a grim
m ig that carves out its threefold tablet of laws. The conflict legible
in such strategic deployments is precisely that conflict of"values, words
and moralities" within which the act of taste emerges. In this regard,
note especially the scriptural gesturality of #5 , where the attitudinal
m arker is doubled, assuming a position within the thematic sub-space
of the page so that only the narrow grapheme of a hyphen or dash
1 4 One might think of these "voice" markers in terms of Canetti's beautiful notion
of "acoustic masks," a notion especially attractive here because it allows us to think
of Nietzsche's own practice of writing in connection with his important theory of
the mask.
1 5 Derrida's analysis in Eperons stresses the plurality of styles in Nietzsche .
separates it from the antagonist-word "decadent." It is here that the

brusque gesture of resistance to the "krankmachenden Elementen'' (one
Nietzschean definition of decadence) takes on body as script . The
hyphen at once joins and opposes, it is weapon and apotropaic shield,
and as such it is the asemantic basis of a criticism which forms itself
as a labor of differentiation. It is no accident that Nietzsche himself
stressed the importance for aesthetics of a theory of punctuation. Later,
he will use the metaphor of a resolute surgical "Einschnitt" to
characterize his own critical practice in Der Fall Wagner as the bringing
to light of an inner valuational conflict. This cut, however, is already
operative in the hyphen's strike; it runs through the text itself. In its
interplay of citations , concepts, strategies, and punctuational mark
ings, the text is its own "Vivisektion" (VI, 53), or better: the vivisec
tion of the vast and plural intertext which is our modern corporeality.
The so-called "final" text of Der Fall Wagner (so-called because we
possess no rigorous criterion for textual finality) continues this graphic
labor and play of differentiation , carrying it into a labyrinth of valua
tional spaces. In addition to the enunciative and gestural features I
pointed to above, and in addition to a certain post-scriptural revi
sionism , which the fragment also anticipates , the developed essay is
characterized especially by a strategy of semantic intermittency, a
mobile perspectivism . Rather than unfolding, or pretending to un
fold, a single argumentative strand, the writing moves across a series
of different semantic registers, alluding to or briefly articulating them,
dropping them, reintroducing them, always in multiple combinations .
E ach lexie condenses a semantic juxtaposition i n which various
vocabularies or codes (what I am calling registers) interact with and
interpret one another. The following statement exemplifies this critical
stereophony in ways that indicate the evaluative richness of Nietz
sche's Wagner criticism : "Was fiir eine kluge Klapperschlange!" (VI,
16)
This act of classificational aggression locates Wagner in a quasi
emblematic bestiary, the signifying resources of which Nietzsche often
draws on. Whenever such emblematic animals appear in Nietzsche's
work, they knot together multiple strands of sense . The rattlesnake,
one might say, is a semantic hybrid of"hypnosis" and "poison," terms
which hook up with important registers in Nietzsche's argumenta
tion . "Hypnosis" is attached to a theory of cultural practices as the
production of hallucinatory effects, the organization of desire in terms
of certain commanding phantasms. In this way, the term reverberates
with that dimension of Nietzsche's critique which we might call his
mass psychology. Indeed, one can even argue with Russell Berman
Wellbery: Nietzsche-Art - Postmodernism 91
that Der Fall Wagner i s a critique o f fascist culture avant la lettre, an

argument which could be supported through a reading of the text' s
technical-medial terminology, for instance, the discussion of Wagner's
amplificational and magnificational practices. The formal characteristic
of the hallucinatory phanta�m which Nietzsche above all stresses is
that it produces the illusion of unity in a situation of fragmentation
and atomization. In the art of Wagner, the disintegration of political
institutions is compensated for by an hallucination which collects the
atomized elements into an imaginary totality. Benjamin will later call
this process, perhaps overhastily, the aesthetization of politics.
"Poison," the second marker of the rattlesnake, engages a ramified
semantics of disease essential to Nietzsche's analysis . In fact, the true
object of the essay is not Wagner the individual, but a species of organic
agitation , a syndrome or type of sickness . Thus, against the
biographism of the Dilthey school and Habermas, Nietzsche operates
a strategic displacement of the proper name, the marker of biographical
identity: "Ist Wagner iiberhaupt ein Mensch? Ist er nicht eher eine
Krankheit?" (VI, 21) The sickness in question, of course, is decadence,
a disease characterized by a poison-like spreading, an inner contagion.
What spreads in decadence is a certain disorganization, analogous ,
I think, to what information theorists call noise. Decadence designates
the disgregation of meaning structures, a break-down of overriding
m acro-forms of interpretation. It is, therefore , a semiotic category
that can be applied to various domains, which is the reason Nietzsche's
famous definition of decadence as a literary style flows into a descrip
tion of the destructuration of meaning in mass society:
W omit kennzeichnet sich jede litterarische decadence? Damit, class das
Leben nicht mehr im ganzen wohnt. Das Wort wird souveran und
springt aus dem Satz hinaus, der Satz greift iiber und verdunkelt den
Sinn der Seite, die Seite gewinnt Leben auf Unkosten des Ganzen
das Ganze ist kein Ganzes mehr. Aber das ist das Gleichnis fiir jeden
Stil der decadence: jedes Mal Anarchie der Atome, Disgregation des
Willens, "Freiheit des Individuums'', moralisch geredet, - zu einer
politischen Theorie erweitert "gleiche Rechte fiir Alle." (VI, 2 7)
The notion of decadence marks the specific cross-over between "hyp
nosis" and "poison." What characterizes decadence as a disease is that
it is self-aggravating, and this reflexive aggrandizement is linked to
susceptibility to temptation , to a seductive operation . Decadence is
at once organized and aggravated by virtue of its adherence to a
beckoning phantasm, and it is precisely such a phantasm that is pro
duced in the hallucinatory effects of Wagner's art. It is through this
phantasm that Wagner rules: that is, his art enacts within the cultural-
expressive domain the form of phantasmatically legitimated authori

ty that characterizes society as a whole . To say that Wagner is a
"Krankheit" is to say that his art is a phantasma-machine that has
as its function the organization of bodies.
Thus, the rattlesnake takes us back to our initial question regard
ing the status of Nietzsche's discourse on art. Wrapped in its coils
we discover precisely that theme of the body which has guided our
reading of the entire fictional genesis of Der Fall Wagner: the body as
the field within which the act of taste emerges , as the textual field
within which valuational conflicts are carried out, as a cultural form,
or body politic, shaped by practices of domination and representa
tion. Nietzsche's discourse, in other words, embodies, in a rich sense
of that term, the very patterns of strife it analyzes, - whence its
polyvalence and perspectival refraction. To accuse Nietzsche of "en
throning taste ," as Habermas does, drastically foreshortens the pur
port of his critical writing, for this writing is not at all governed by
a faculty of arbitration, as the regal metaphor implies . It is rather
an engagement with and analysis of what I would call the corporeal un
conscious. Nietzsche replaces the juridical standpoint of critical discourse
with a combination of enactment and interpretation that moves within
the complex network of energies and organizational forms that - "wider
Wissen, wider Willen" - we are . It seems unlikely that this model of
aesthetic discourse would generate a concept of art as a bath of im
mediacy, a merging with the amorphousness of nature, in the man
ner which Habermas suggests. And indeed, Nietzsche's sentence: "Alle
grosse Kunst beruht auf der Convention . . . " (XIII, 297) points toward
a very different line of theoretization. In the final section of this paper,
I want to take a closer look at the notion of art that emerges from
Nietzsche's later writings.
3. Nietzsche on Art
I begin by circling back to the rattlesnake of Der Fall Wagner, which

attaches to a semantic register as yet unmentioned. This tempter
snake , who presides over the Fall that Wagner eponymously is, cites
the serpent of Genesis 3 , whose seductive act and art engendered the
value opposition good vs. evil. In other words, the phenomenon that
here carries the name "Wagner" is being read against the Nietzschean
archetype of moralization. The most fully developed account of this
Typus, as I remarked in section I, unfolds across the third treatise
of the Genealogie, the vocabulary of which, not accidentally, reverberates
throughout the Wagner essay. For Nietzsche, Wagner's art represents
Wellbery : Nietzsche -A rt - Postmodernism 93
the occupation of the aesthetic by morality: not in the sense that it con
veys moral messages, however true this might be, but in the far more
interesting sense that, as a system of symbolism and phantasmatic
effects, it institutes the moral organization of desire. Wagner performs
upon the energies of art preci�ely that operation which the ascetic priest
carries out vis-a-vis the energies of life.
This return of the ascetic priest in Wagner, or rather Wagner's
repetition of what I would call the ascetic gesture, takes us to the nerve
of Nietzsche's theory of art. As I remarked earlier, the act performed
by the ascetic priest consists in a movement of reflexive negation, the
implanting of a poison, the inscription of a Nein which organizes the
energies of the body. It is therefore simultaneously a corporeal and
a symbolic event, or rather: it is the assumption of mastery over the
body by a particular form, or perhaps law, of symbolism. This general
definition - the hypothesis of my reading - raises a number of ques
tions that bear on aesthetic issues: How does the moralizing opera
tion manifest itself in the domain of art? Is this movement constitutive
of artistic symbolization or is there an alternative form of art - a non
ascetic form in which the process of symbolization escapes the law
of the Negative? What terms can be used to conceptualize such an
affirmative, call it Dionysian, art? These questions shall serve as the
itinerary for the remainder of my reading.
A general definition of moralization from the Genealogie offers itself
as a useful point of departure: "Die Sinnlosigkeit des Leidens , nicht
das Leiden, war der Fluch, der bisher uber der Menschheit
ausgebreitet iag, und das asketische Ideal bot ihr einen Sinn!" (V, 41 1)
Regretfully, I must leave aside here the tangle of issues this statement
contains : the notion of curse or destiny, the implications of the verb
b ieten , the question whether the syntagma asketisches Ideal isn't in fact
a pleonasm . For present purposes it suffices to remark that the ascetic
release from the curse spoken over life occurs when the sheer con
tingency of suffering is effaced in view of a meaning. This provides
a rather direct link to the Wagner essay, for it is precisely such an
act of meaning-endowment that frees Wagner to himself, that con
stitutes him as an artist . The narrative mise-en-scene of this Erlosung
occurs in chapter four, in a fictional account of the Ring's genesis .
The initial impetus of the work, Nietzsche asserts , was revolutionary
in character, a declaration of war against the "alten Vertragen," that
i s , against all the regulations on which the inherited world, the in
herited society, rests. Siegfried embodies this transgressive energy,
indeed his very origin is a violation of the primordial contract: "er
kommt aus Ehebruch , aus Blutschande zur Welt . . . " (VI, 20) . H e
follows only and always "the first impulse," he doesn't honor the old
divinities but on the contrary runs them through, and the aim of his
desire is "to emancipate woman" from the circle of untouchability in
which the father/god has enclosed her. Such is the starting point of
Nietzsche's narrative: a desire, a first impulse that reaches out for the
forbidden female object, an endeavor to celebrate the godless "Sakra
ment der freien Liebe ."
Following this exposition, an abrupt shift takes place. Siegfried is
replaced in the role of narrative subject by Wagner himself and the
scenic figuration is transferred to a navigational register. Now the
narrative crisis and its resolution can unfold:
Wagner's Schiff lief lange Zeit lustig auf dieser Bahn. Kein Zweifel,
Wagner suchte auf ihr sein hochstes Ziel. - Was geschah? Ein Ungliick.
Das Schiff fuhr auf ein Riff; Wagner sass fest . Das Riff war die
Schopenhauerische Philosophic; Wagner sass auf einer contraren Weltan
sicht fest . (VI , 20)
The path of Lust, of the "ersten Impuls," cannot be followed out
to its end. An accident befalls the ship, a contrariety emerges to hold
it in check: the sheer contingency of a reef and a catastrophe, which
is also Schopenhauer's philosophy. What will be the solution to this
desperate situation?
Er besann sich lange, seine Lage schien verzweifelt . . . Endlich dam
merte ihm .ein Ausweg: das Riff, an dern er scheiterte, wie? wenn er
es als Ziel, als Hinterabsicht, als eigentlichen Sinn seiner Reise inter
pretirte? Hier zu scheitern- das war auch ein Ziel . . . . Und er iibersetz
te den "Ring'' in's Schopenhauerische. Alles Iauft schief, Alles geht zu
Grunde, die neue Welt ist so schlimm wie die alte: - das Nichts, die
indische Circe winkt. . . . Wagner war erlost . . . Allen Ernstes , dies war eine
Erlosung. Die Wohltat, die Wagner Schopenhauern verdankt, ist
unerrnesslich. Erst der Philosoph der decadence gab dem Kiinstler der
decadence sich selbst- (VI, 20- 2 1 )
A desire and the obstacle that blocks it, a random oscillation of

pleasure and pain, a despair- this situation can be mastered only when
a certain interpretation is imposed, a meaning or Sinn, as Nietzsche
writes, which organizes the contingency of suffering. The very Nichts
upon which the ship had run aground is drawn into desire itself and
this inversion produces Wagner as an artistic subject, a subject who
no longer seeks the transgressive union of "free love" but rather is
guided by the ever beckoning, ever withdrawing Indian Circe, whom
the hyphen holds out in perpetual distance . A telos is instituted, a hid-
den intentionality erases the contingency of pain, and fulfillment is

. translated into the promise of a nothingness infinitely deferred . The
story Nietzsche tells is the story of narrativization itself; the moraliza
tion of art is accomplished when its energies are harnessed by the prin
ciple of narrative finality. I take, then, as the first result of my reading,
the following statement: within the domain of the aesthetic the opera
tion of moralization involves the dual components negation and nar
rativization; the process of artistic symbolization is organized through
the introjection of the negative and the imposition of teleology.
These logical mechanisms by no means exhaust Nietzsche's reading
of the moralizing operation. As the accents I have set in his parodistic
salvation narrative clearly indicate, the interpretation of Wagner
engages as well a pronounced thematics of sexuality. Nietzsche's posi
tion in this regard does not lend itself, for reasons Derrida has
elaborated, to summary formulation, but we can start to get a hold
on the issues involved by considering the strategic use of Bizet's Carmen
in the Wagner essay. The opera's central feature - the one Nietzsche
foregrounds through direct citation - is a concept of "Liebe" as the
"Todhass der Geschlechter . " Carmen enacts the tragi'c affirmation of sex
uality as differential strife. Wagner's work, by contrast, effaces the ten
sion and contention of sexual difference, harmonizes love, transforms
it into the longing for an ideal unity. The first level of Nietzsche's criti
que bears on the mendacity of this figure . The eradication of sexual
difference, call it the homo-sexualization of love , masks a desire to
possess; it operates a controlling economization of sexuality and is
therefore the very opposite of what it claims to be (i.e. "selfless") . But
Nietzsche's suspicion directs itself to a second facet of Wagnerian love
as well: the erasure of sexual difference eliminates the resistance to
death, the impetus to overcome death, which sexuality expresses . Love
acquires in Wagner a nihilistic orientation, becoming the desire for
a nothingness . The Todhass of eros in Bizet cedes place to the
Wagnerian Liebestod: "das Nichts, die indische Circe winkt. . . " (VI ,
20- 2 1 ) .
The moralization o f sexuality, then, consists first o f all in a regula
tion of desire's directionality: desire is turned toward a Nothing, the
dead irnage of the renounced body, which is simultaneously an im
age of death . But Nietzsche's interpretation penetrates further into
the structure of moralized desire. As I suggested above, Wagner's art
homo-sexualizes love , brings sexual difference within the dominion
of the One . If we ask what the figure for this oneness of sexuality
is , then the answer emerges very clearly from Nietzsche's text: moral
ized art - considered as a system of symbolism organizing sexual
energies - is a feminized art , an art constitutively structured around

a certain figuration of Woman. Hence the many references in Der
Fall Wagner to the female acolytes of the composer, the "Wagnerianerin
nen," in whom, Nietzsche suggests at one point, the real authorship
of Wagner's art resides. Hence the use of Goethe's figure for the ideal
ized, infinitely deferred feminine: "das Ewig-Weibliche"; hence the em
phasis on the hysterical as a component of the Wagnerian symp
tomology. For Nietzsche, Wagner could say with Flaubert (and Haber
m as) : "I am Madame Bovary," a name already featured in the early
sketch of the essay I discussed above. This insistence on the femi
nized character of Wagner's artistic symbolism, its submission to a
certain law of the feminine, comes most directly to expression in a
sentence from the epilogue, which only a superficial reading would
reduce to a slur: "denn Wagner war in alten Tagen durchaus feminini
generis - . . . " (VI, 5 1) .
The last citation, linking as it does the process of feminization to
the proper name, enables me to proceed a step further in my reading ,
for doesn't it imply that Wagner is castrated? The law of castration,
of course, is a central component in Nietzsche's interpretation of the
ascetic priest, and of moralization generally. Der Fall Wagner touches
on the question at several points, most prominently perhaps in the
following warning to youthful males who would be drawn into
Wagner's spell: "Ihr findet nirgends eine angenehmere Art, euren Geist
zu entnerven, eure Mannlichkeit unter einem Rosengebiische zu
vergessen . . . " (VI , 43) . This forgetting or loss of maleness beneath
the feminine rose figures castration through an allusion to the fifteenth
idyll of Theocritus, where the adjective "rosy armed" beautifully
modifies the young Adonis waiting on the couch for Aphrodite . It
is at this moment , of course , that the boar, emissary of the jealous
Ares, cuts his fatal slash into Adonis's thigh; the blood that spills from
the wound brings forth a bush of roses. The organization of desire
which Wagner's art institutes, his operatic miracle of the rose, obeys
the law of castration . This is why it is a feminized art , as we see from
the following passage :
Wagner hat das Weib erlost; das Weib hat ihm dafiir Bayreuth gebaut.
Ganz Opfer, ganz Hingebung: man hat Nichts, was man ihm nicht
geben wi.i.rde. Das Weib verarmt sich zu Gunsten des Meisters, es wird
ri.i.hrend, es steht nackt vor ihm. (VI, 44)
Standing naked before him, unprotected by any veil except that most
subtle one of nakedness itself, woman gives everything, that is: gives
Wellbery: Nietzsche -Art - Postmodemism 97
herself as nothing, as castrated, and thereby gets everything in return .

A specular exchange of sexual identity is set into motion, so mobile
in its alterations that, as the play of syntax and prono {ius in the sec
ond sentence reveals, it is impossible to tell who gives and who
receives. The figure of the castrated woman provides the bodily schema
of Wagner's art, the law of its semiosis . This Nietzsche makes en
tirely explicit: "Die Wagnerianerin- die anmiithigste Zweideutigkeit,
die es heute gibt: sie verkorpert die Sache Wagner's, - in ihrem Zeichen
siegt seine Sache . . . " (VI, 44-5). Wagner's Sache- his case and his
cause - is castration. This is one reason Nietzsche calls him, repeatedly
and anagrammatically, the Cagliostro of modernity. __
One final component remains to be set into place in the Nietzschean

model of a moralized aesthetic symbolism I am endeavoring to
reconstruct here. The phef1:omenon in question is implicit in the scene
of unveiling, or striptease� cited above. The moralization of art is
achieved in Wagner through a certain staging, the mise-en-scene of a
specific meaning-effect. It is for this reason that the essay refers again
and again to Wagner's practices of simulation: his operas are
hallucinatory instruments, Wagner himself is a magician , con-man
seducer, liar, charlatan , demagogue, hypnotist, hysteric. These terms
represent what we might think of as a transformational series, across
which a single theme unfolds its variations . That theme is transfor
mation itself: a mimeticism which allows the subject to project itself
into and convey an identity other than it is. No doubt this theme is
not single, no doubt it transforms itself along a chain of family
resemblances in Wittgenstein's sense; no doubt, in other words, the
theme of transformation cannot be contained by a concept or finite
code . For strategic purposes, however, it is possible to accord one
of the family members a certain prominence, and thus to focus a
reading. My privileged term thus far has been mimeticism, the simula
tion of another (which doesn't mean "false") identity; at the end of
the Wagner essay, Nietzsche himself privileges the related notion of
theatricality. Indeed, Wagner's significance in the history of art, the
structural transformation which his artistic production accomplishes ,
i s interpreted by Nietzsche precisely in theatrical terms as "die
Heraujkunft des Schauspielers in der Musilr. " (VI, 3 7) or, in a more struc
tural inflection, the "Herrschaft des Theaters iiber die Kiinste, iiber
die Kunst" (VI, 42) . Note the implication of the correctio in the sec
ond quotation: the structural dominance of the theater does not per
t ain merely to an empirical constellation of institutionalized art forms,
it penetrates into the principle of art, transforms the very notion of
what art is . To moralize art is for Nietzsche to theatricalize aesthetic

semiosis, to submit it to mimeticism, to a practice of identity
simulation.
As regards this theatrical component of moralization, there is, of
course, much to be said. It constitutes, for example, an important
stratum in Nietzsche's analysis of the ascetic priest, who institutes his
ideal and organizes the divergent and disgregational energies of the
crowd precisely through a performance , the enactment of his self
castigation . Such a theater of reflexive violence likewise characterizes
Wagner's art: "Wagner , der vielleicht das grosste Beispiel der
Selbstvergewaltigung abgiebt, das die Geschichte der Kunste hat . . . "
(VI , 39) . But I want to leave aside this thematic aspect of Wagnerian
theatricality- despite its obvious connection to the questions of castra
tion and negation - and restrict my remarks to another, and perhaps
more fundamental feature, which I call the phenomenological dimen
sion of staging. The theater is in fact a phenomenological machine,
a Schauspiel which presents (and presences) itself as the scene of im
mediate vision. Nietzsche's critique of theatricality, in other words ,
does not bear solely on its content, but also , and perhaps most in
tensely, on its pragmatic structure. The moralized art of Wagner is
theatrical precisely to the degree that it aims to achieve an effect on
its audience through the simulation of presence . The pragmatic up
talce of this feigned unveiling receives a double reading. The theatrical
effect is first of all the effect of meaning (Bedeutung) , not of a particular
meaning, but rather of meaning in general as infinite plenitude and
spiritual depth: "Wagner hatte Litteratur nothig, um alle Welt zu uber
reden, seirie Musik ernst zu nehmen, tief zu nehmen, 'weil sie
Unendliches bedeutt! . . " (VI, 36) . And it is simultaneously the effect
.
of truth, as in the abyssal sentence from Talma which Nietzsche cites

as the quintessence of theatrical psychology and morality : "was als
wahr wirken soil, darf nicht wahr sein" (VI , 3 1) . To theatricalize art
is to instrumentalize it, to render it a device for the simulation of truth
and meaning. The theatrical phenomenality, which in Wagner seizes
command over the aesthetic domain, has the status of a hermeneutic
aletheic apparition.
This three-tiered model of a moralized aesthetic symbolism, of art
under the dominion of morality, raises the question: is art thinkable
outside this constellation? That is: can we think a form of aesthetic
symbolization: a) which is not organized on the logical level by the
introjection of the negative and the supervenience of teleology? b)
which , on the level of sexual coding, does not obey the double law
Wellbery: Nietzsche-Art - Postmodernism 99
of feminization and castration? and c) which on the pragmatic level

does not involve the simulation of hermeneutic-aletheic effects? This,
it seems to me, is one of the m ajor questions posed by Nietzsche's
work to the contemporary theoretical discussion. It is of course ob
vious that Nietzsche's answer to this question is affirmative; the
fragments of the Turin years' repeatedly identify "art" - an art which
perhaps never existed, or wholly existed- as the Gegenbewegung of and
to moralization. But this affirmation - which is the affirmation of
affirmation itself- is troubled by the problem that inheres in all such
jasagende gestures, that they do not lend themselves to theoretical ar
ticulation. There is in Nietzsche's work no developed model of a non
moralized, a pre- , post- , or perhaps counter-moralized aesthetic
semiosis . We encounter, rather, scattered fragments, local outbursts
of affirmation which as quickly disappear, precisely: brusque gestures
toward a theory. I conclude, then, by repeating those gestures, by
setting certain indicators of a direction that inquiry might follow if
it is to think what Nietzsche wanted to think as aesthetic affirmation .
. A focal point will be the question of energy investment, of the
deployment in art of impulse, drive and desire. Clearly this is a cen
tral issue in the Wagner critique, which analyzes the mechanisms
through which Wagner's moralized art organizes the energies of the
body into a specifically shaped desire. Moralization is precisely this
organization, the binding of energies to a certain code. The fragments
devoted to the positive conception of art suggest that the energies set
into motion in affirmative aesthetic symbolization would not be bound
or fixed, but on the contrary would continuously spill over, thus
m anifesting themselves as excess. Nietzsche calls this state of heightened
energy mobility and overflow "das Mehr von Kraft" (XIII, 529) ,
whereby the nominalized comparative designates not an externally
imposed measurement, but rather an exceding of given measures and
containments . Transferred to an economic register, this notion of ex
cess appears as Uberreichtum, or its Latinate equivalent Exuberanz. This
category is especially interesting in that it allows us to locate one of
Nietzsche's decisive breaks with inherited aesthetic theory. From
Baumgarten's notion of aesthetic ubertas to contemporary hermeneutic
notions of an infinite Sinnpotential, art has been interpreted economically
as metaphysical wealth, an inexhaustible store or supply. Nietzsche's
fragments, however, point toward a notion of aesthetic richness which
overflows its own collection and capitalization, a notion of richness in
and through expenditure. The affirmation, which Nietzsche insists con
stitutes genuine art, would seem to derive from the superfluity and
mobility of corporeal energies that characterize the aesthetic Rausch.
This notion of mobile and superfluous energy, of an aesthetic eros ,

if you will, which is not fixed by the law of the negative, spills over
into the question of aesthetic semiosis. Just as in animals sexual ex
citement engenders "new materials, pigments, colors and forms" (XIII,
2 99) , so too in the human being the aesthetic condition or Rausch is
an intensified state of sign production: "Der aesthetische Zustand hat
einen Uberreichtum von Mittheilungsmitteln , zugleich mit einer ex
tremen Empfanglichkeit fii.r Reize und Zeichen . Es ist der Hohepunkt
der Mittheilsamkeit und Ubertragbarkeit zwischen lebenden Wesen ,
- er ist die Quelle der Sprachen" (XIII, 296) . The decisive point to
note here is that the process of symbolization Nietzsche envisages does
not culminate in a meaning, does not reach beyond itself to a presence
of which it would be the restoration or anticipation. Rather, eros seems
to abide within the process of semiotization itself: the artist loves ( liebt)
for their own sal<:e, Nietzsche remarks at one point, the means through
which Rausch makes itself known, and these means are merely the
semiotic differences - the "nuances" and "distinctions" - of sign pro
duction itself. This asemantic character of aesthetic semiosis has its
corollary on the ontological plane in the Nietzschean claim that art
is the production of semblances (Schein) with a good conscience, that
is , without the moralized insistence on the true .
These two points - the question of energy superfluity and of an
asemantic sign production - seem to me the central issues that a theory
of affirmative, or non-moralized art, would have to work out . And
it is in connection with these issues that Nietzsche's significance in
the postmodernism discussion is to be located. But there is a final ques
tion that emerges as soon as one begins to think in this direction: that
i s , what is the relationship between affirmative semiosis and the pro
cess of moralization? Why is the former susceptible to the latter? What
is their inner complicity? This is a question that appears in various
guises on the margins of Nietzsche's text, for example in the ques
tion: "Warum unterlag die vornehme Moral?" The artist, whose very
being is strength or a "Mehr von Kraft," is also , Nietzsche acknowl
edged, the most corruptible of beings. Could it be that affirmation is,
from the beginning, divided agai�st itself, that it has an inner pro
clivity toward negation? The greatest mystery surrounding the no
t ion of affirmative art is: why is this the case? What is this case and
casus which, in the text I have read here, carries the name of Wagner?
Part II
The Collapse) Sexuality)
the Body) the Horse
Anacleto Verrecchia
NIETZSCHE'S BREAKDOWN IN TURIN*
Only two or three of the num�rous newspaper and magazine articles

'
about Nietzsche's catastrophe in Turin merit attention . . . . The first,
which appeared in Nuova Antologia on September 1 6, 1 900, is
anonymous. Unfortunately, it has been impossible to determine who
wrote it . . . . After speaking with the Finos [Nietzsche's landlords in
Turin] , the anonymous journalist writes:
. . . The Fino couple noticed the first signs [of eccentric behavior on
Nietzsche's part] one day when the professor called them and wanted
to remove some insignificant oil paintings from his walls and everything
else that was hanging on them. His room "had to look like a temple."
A short while later, however, much more serious symptoms became
noticeable. One day he appeared before the Fino family in a state of
exceptional exuberance, announcing to them that it was a day of great
festivity, that the streets were lit up and the king and queen were com
ing to Turin to visit him in his room, which he had arranged as a temple!
It was then that the Finos began to worry about the mental health
of the professor, worries which increased when they saw that he
repeatedly gave them messages for the king and queen, some of which
were held back by the Finos, others by the post office itself. But a more
serious incident occurred shortly thereafter. One day when Mr. Fino
was walking along the nearby Via Po- one of the main streets of
• We gratefully acknowledge permission by Giulio Einaudi editore to reprint the

following pages from Anacleto Verrecchia's La catastrofe di Nietzsche a Torino (Torino:
Einaudi, 1 978).
In this book Verrecchia engages in a scrupulous hunt for documents - many
unknown and previously unpublished - pertaining to Nietzsche's sojourns in Turin
105
Turin- he saw a group of people drawing near and in their midst were
two municipal guards accompanying "the professor." As soon as Nietz
sche saw Fino he threw himself into his arms, and Fino easily obtained
his release from the guards, who said that they found that foreigner
outside the university gates, clinging tightly to the neck of a horse and
refusing to let it go.
It was then that the Finos persuaded the professor to take to his bed
and sought the assistance of a mental therapist, Professor Turina. But
as soon as Nietzsche suspected a doctor was involved, he rebelled, ex
claiming, "Pas malade! Pas malade!" The doctor had to be introduced
as a family friend before Nietzsche would let himself be treated.
In this first period of his illness, Nietzsche oscillated between mad
seizures and long intervals of lucidity. During the latter, he would pas
sionately play music. Sometimes he would beg Irene [David Fino's
daughter] to play Wagner for him - only Wagner. Other times he
himself would sit for long hours at the piano playing in Wagner's
memory, occasionally adding a subdued song. He would take his meals
at home, usually ordering a cutlet, which he rarely ate, and a bottle
of Barbera wine. But after the first glasses the wine went to his head
and his face would flu sh, so thenceforth they forbade him drink. At
that time, noticing that Nietzsche sent frequent messages to a certain
Professor Overbeck- as it seems- the Fino family thought of
telegraphing Overbeck on their own, to inform him of their tenant's
illnes�. A few days later Overbeck arrived and w.ent up to Nietzsche's
room. It was nightfall and the philosopher was lying in bed. As soon
as the two friends saw each other they embraced and wept. Nietzsche
wished to get up, sat at the piano and played Wagner.
Two days later, with Overbeck leading him back to his country,
Nietzsche left Turin forever, seen off by the Finos, the doctor, and the
German consul. A while later a letter from the family informed the Finos
that Professor Nietzsche had in large part lost his reason and was in
a nursing home.
The article is accurate in substance and contains facts that are ex
tremely important for reconstructing Nietzsche's catastrophe . . . .
Among other things it contains the first mention of Nietzsche em-
and his final breakdown. In the abridged passage that follows ("La tragedia vista
di qua e di la dalle Alpi," pp. 205-22 1), Verrecchia examines various accounts of
the famous episode of Nietzsche embracing a horse in Turin . Verrecchia's thesis is
that Nietzsche's madness was long in the making (visible to those around him weeks
before this episode, which probably took place before the end of December). The sudden
collapse theory was propagated by Nietzsche's sister Elizabeth and his friend Franz
Overbeck who, if anything, were irresponsive to Nietzsch's final "appeals" and needs.
Ellipses within brackets belong to Verrecchia's original text .
Verrecchia: Nietzsche's Breakdown 107
bracing a horse, about which Overbeck, Elizabeth, and Bernoulli don't

breathe a word . Why? It is not possible that, after talking to David
Fino, they were unaware of it. They speak only of Nietzsche collapsing
in the street, which squares with nothing in the Finos' reports to Italian
journalists. Thus here we raise the question: Did Nietzsche really fall
or was it Overbeck and Elizabeth who made him fall to lend credence
to the story of a sudden and unexpected outbreak of madness? There
is reason to believe the second hypothesis . Wanting to erase or, bet
ter, to cover up the most pronounced signs of madness, they may
have thought that a collapse would be less compromising than em
bracing a horse on a public boulevard.
The journalist Ugo Pavia also relies in part on the article in Nuova
Antologia . But he integrates it with other reports gathered from the
living voice of Ernest Fino, son of David. Let us listen: "We found
the last person in Turin who still remembers Nietzsche at Via Melano
20 . He is Ernest Fino . . . . The professor, who at first seemed misan -
thropic, little by little drew closer to the Finos. He showed a special
liking above all for Ernest's sister Irene."1 On the fiftieth anniver
• • .
sary of Nietzsche's death . . . speaking of his conversation with Ernest

Fino, who was still alive in 1950, Pavia adds: "Another time the young
man heard it said by his mother (who , struck by the professor's sing
ing, had looked through the keyhole) that Nietzsche was dancing nak
ed . One evening he had been to a cafe concert and had occasioned
by his loud remarks a row between the spectators and actors . . . "2
That Nietzsche used to dance naked, like those satyrs on Greek
vases, is confirmed even by Overbeck. Liebmann writes, "Afterwards,
among intimates, Overbeck also alluded to a spectacle he had witnessed
in Turin, 'which incarnated in a horrible manner the orgiastic idea
of sacred fury which lies at the basis of ancient tragedy.' Probably
it had to do with ecstatic dances with an erect phallus."3 Liebmann
here harkens back to Bernoulli, who says, "Overbeck told me per
sonally that his epistolary account of the type of orgiastic dances that
Nietzsche would perform when seized by the fury of madness was
considerably attenuated." In other words, Overbeck had not written
down everything he had seen in Turin to Gast because "his hand refused
to commit to paper the ultimate unspeakable details. Occasional
ly in very restricted company he would allude to it and once he gave
1 La Stampa, 22 January, 1932.

2 Ugo Pavia, "Le bizzarrie de! filosofo nei ricordi torinesi," Stampa Sera, 26 July, 1950.
3 Kurt Liebmann, Nietzsches Kampf und Untergang in Turin (Leipzig, 1934) 82 .
me a verbal account . It seems that Turin offered him a spectacle in

carnating in a horrible way the orgiastic idea of fury which lies at
the basis of ancient tragedy."4 Thus, as if mad writings were not
enough, Overbeck had to witness his poor friend completely mad even
in act. The impression must have been so atrocious that Overbeck
at first wished for Nietzsche's death, which would have been a bless
ing for everybody. . . .
And yet where and when did this act [of embracing the horse] on
the part of the man who wished to overthrow the Schopenhauerian
morality of compassion occur? On Via Po, say two sources that we
have cited above. Pavia even assigns it a date , on what grounds I
do not know: December 28. However, according to others who speak
of the episode as if they had been present , though without ever men -
tioning their sources , it happened in Piazza Carlo Alberto , in Piazza
San Carlo, in Piazza Carlina, or even on Via Accademia delle Scienze .
Let u s listen, for instance , to a certain A . Belmondo-Caccia, who
pretends to know much more about Nietzsche's sojourn in Turin than
others. In a syntactically gnarled article bearing an extravagant title,
he writes,
It may be useful to recall that a German professor with an overflowing
moustache and spectacles, worn to counteract a grave infirmity went ,
mad in Turin on January 3, 1889, on Via Accademia delle Scienze

while wandering alone among strangers who did not even know his
name, with his heart filled with pent-up tenderness . . . . Most singular
were the external signs of his not temporary mental alienation, which,
indeed, after manifesting itself publicly and in the city of his predilec
tion, held him immersed in complete and untormenting aboulia for an
uninterrupted period of more than ten years . [ . . ] Singular, then, were
.
the first external signs of his madness, perhaps noticeable to most of

his readers. He was passing a tumbrel overloaded with vegetables - it
was early in the morning- and hauled by a miserable and down-trodden
semblance of a worn-out nag. Poor Nietzsche threw himself around
its neck, weeping and kissing it and called it "Brother! [ . . ]" .
Here is an even daintier morsel of information:

It is also said that he, who never knew the delusions of love and whom
even today many, again unjustly, consider an implacable misogynist
how easy it would be to show the contrary ! - fell madly in love with
a shapely and young girl selling vegetables in Porta Palazzo .5
• Carl Albrecht Bernoulli, Franz Overbeck und Friedrich Nietzsche. Eine Freundschaft (Jena,
1908) II: 496, 2 5 1 .
5 A . Belmondo-Caccia, "Oasi spirituali di u n martire ," L a Stampa, 1 6 July, 1924.
The vegetable girl is all that was missing! I doubt that Nietzsche, so
anxious to avoid the mobs (see the notes in his journals) , ever went
into the chaos of Porta Palazzo where Lessing, a century earlier, had
made penetrating observations about the Turinese character. If at
all, he would have gone there in search of apples and oranges, not
of vegetable vending girls. Wasn't what Belmondo heard from an old
waitress in Ruta enough? Speaking of Nietzsche's stay in the Ligurian
town, the journalist adds,
An old cook who today still work� in the hotel gave me further details
about Nietzsche's stay in Ruta. As soon as the waitress, today an old
cook, but then young, of course, and not bad looking, it seems knocked
at the door, Nietzsche replied with a rude voice [ . . . J . "He didn't even
seem to realize that I was a woman!" the once young lady confessed
to me, almost with grief.
Enrico Thovez also deals with Nietzsche a number of times, but

without thorough research and also basing himself on the Nuova An
tologia article . Sometimes, he makes one believe that he had gone to
interview the landlords of the house on Via Carlo Alberto: "The Finos
remember that his dinner consisted of a cutlet and a bottle of Barbera.
But after the first glasses his head was ablaze , so they had to deny
him wine." But we are already aware of this detail. If anything, Thovez
embroiders on it independently, claiming that Nietzsche, "while
preaching abstension from alcohol . . . , indulged in it in practice,'' which
has yet to be proved. After he too speaks of the horse , he adds,
The newspapers from those days did not deal with the episode in the
least. I searched to find among the slightest announcements a line or
two: "An old German professor gone mad: a certain Friedrich Nietz
sche [ . . . J ." But I found nothing. Often the most momentous occurences
occur amidst indifference, until the future illuminates them. 6
Old? Thovez should have known how old Nietzsche was in 1 888 ,
seeing that he had read Nietzsche's writings, perhaps even in the
original . Even Thovez, in his juvenile diaries, had noted that the
autumn of 1888 , discussed in Ecce Homo, "was one of those Turinese
autumns marvelously filled with sweetness and splendor that seem
to be pervaded with unreality, diffusing dream throu gh the gray and
positive city."7 Who knows; more than once, walking through Valen-
6 Enrico Thovez, "L'anticristo e la sua camera am mobiliata La Stampa, 1 2 August,

,"
1 909.
7 Thovez, "L'anticristo."
1 1 0 Nietzsche in Italy
tine Park, Thovez may even have run across the Antichrist without
knowing who he was. Nor did the solitary and melancholy Thovez
know that he was being trailed by the police because of his ideas. The
prefect of Turin was indeed seeking information about him, as is clear
from an annotation in the private registers of the police office per
taining to 1 889 . 8
A s already mentioned, many sensational pieces about the madness
of Nietzsche appeared in Italian and Turinese newspapers . But when
not the fruit of pure fantasy they contain nothing new or of interest
for research. In the Gazetta del Popolo, for instance, there is an article
on April 1 2 , 1 906, which promises much and delivers nothing. The
title is "Nietzsche's Last Hours in Turin ," but the author then limits
himself to giving a summary of what Overbeck writes to Gast con
cerning his encounter with Nietzsche in Turin . In short, instead of
going to speak with David Fino, who was living in Turin and knew
more about it than anyone, these excellent journalists wrote commen
taries on news from abroad. Six years earlier another journalist ,
Gabriele Gabrielli, had written that Nietzsche "returned to Italy in
1889, but he was seized by apoplexy, and examining him, illustrious
doctors said that the strong doses of choral had cut into and destroyed
some parts of his brain ."9 This man apparently knew nothing and
was writing at random . Another example of scrupulous research is
offered by G. Deabate, who limits his work to a rewriting of the arti
cle of Nuova A ntologia, including its chronological errors . The only in
teresting thing is the confirmation that Overbeck was summoned by
Fino : "Soon , accompanied by professor Overbeck, whom the Finos
had summoned, Nietzsche left Turin forever."10
I will not cite other articles, for rather than shedding light on the
issue they only generate more confusion. The problem is that even
today people continue to write at random about Nietzsche's madness .
In an article entitled "Nietzsche's Horse," as if it were a matter of
Richard III or St . Martin, one reads,
In Turin , in Piazza Carlo Alberto , on the morning ofJanuary 3, 1 889,
Nietzsche leaves his hotel and sees a carriage driver violently thrashing
his horse . With a cry, Nietzsche crosses the square and throws his arms
8 Archives of the Stato di Torino, private registers of the Police Station, 1 889, dated
February 28, 1 889. Another bit of curiousity which I found in the private registers
of the Police Station of that year is a writing saying: "Fanfani, socialist : arrest him."
Who?
9 Guzzetta del Popolo della domenica , 14 October, 1 900 .
10 Gazzetta , 13 October, 1907 .
around the animal's neck. Then he loses consciousness and sinks to the
ground, still clutching the horse.
It would almost seem as if the author of the article had personally
witnessed the episode, in a position not only to hear the cry but also
to see Nietzsche running across the square. In almost identical words,
the same story has been repeated recently by a serious professor of
philosophy. A minor point: How could Nietzsche, who was nearly
blind, have seen the carriage driver and his whip across the huge piaz
za? But the greater mystery is another: "Then he loses consciousness
and sinks to the ground, still clutching the horse ." Perhaps the horse
and the carriage to which it was yoked fell to the ground as well? In
any event, in order to spare these two Nietzscheans such a fall, one
might entertain another hypothesis: the horse could have been a pony.
According to Gottfried Benn, on the other hand, Nietzsche embraced
not one horse but two horses . He, at least, has the excuse of being
a poet. . . .
Fortunately two grandchildren of David Fino are still alive in Turin .
They are Biance Fino in Majolino, daughter of Ernest, and Palmina
Perottelli, daughter of Giulia . After tracking them down through the
register's office, I went to find out what they knew. Mrs . Majolino ,
who was born in 1903 and lives on Via Bogino, remembers exactly
what her grandfather and father used to tell her about Nietzsche .
As far as the horse episode is concerned, Mrs. Majolino says that
her grandfather spoke of it often. And yet, decent Piemontese. as they
were , the Finos did not need that particular episode to understand
that Nietzsche was ill. They had noticed signs of strange behavior
well before his madness had clamorously manifested itself. "He was
very bizarre,'' the signora says, ''but also very austere and intimidating."
Nonetheless , he could also be very kind and sometimes offered can
dies to the Fino children . Giulia, above all, often observed him with
curiosity, for she found him strange. We have already mentioned that
in the house there were two pianos along which Nietzsche like to run
his fingers. According to the signora he had a "strange way of playing.
He mostly played chords, interspersed with long silences. He also
played in the darkness, but always intermittently.�' Once , intrigued
by the long pauses, Giulia wanted to see what on earth that strange
tenant might be doing. She quietly approached the door, but Nietz
sche heard her and, leaping around, cried, "Ugly beast!" It seems that
he was not very fond of Giulia, who was sixteen then; very fond, on
the other hand, of Irene. Indeed, he seemed to have true affection
for her. Mrs. Majolino said that she had heard it often repeated not
only by her father but also by her grandfather, and adds that she herself
remembers it well. Sometimes Irene and Nietzsche played piano for
four hands.
What seriously alarmed the Finos, aside from Nietzsche's ever in
creasing eccentricities, was another fact: They found cash torn up
in the wastepaper basket. Their tenant tore everything to pieces,
sometimes even his correspondence, about which he had always been
very possessive. When they wished to notify someone about Nietz
sche's madness, the Finos had trouble finding an address. They did
not know whom to turn to. At this point the signora confirms that it
was her grandfather who notified Overbeck by telegram . Meanwhile,
in the throes of madness, Nietzsche used to "howl," as the signora
expresses it in Turinese dialect, that is, he shouted in such a way as
to fill the whole house. "And he also did other things." To come back
to the horse episode, David Fino used to relate that people had gone
to call him and that he had accompanied Nietzsche home. As soon
as he saw Fino, Nietzsche exclaimed, "Caro signor Fino!" This was,
in fact, his usual way of greeting his landlord.
But there is another, as yet unknown episode. Nietzsche absolute
ly did not want to leave Turin and his house at Via C arlo Alberto .
He was very attached to his landlords, particularly David. When at
last the latter succeeded in convincing Nietzsche to depart for Basel ,
Nietzsche wanted "caro signor Fino" at all costs to make a gift of his
papalina, his nightcap, as a pledge that they would soon be seeing each
other again . With that strange cap on his head, which no one was
able to remove , and frequently turning to the house that had hosted
him, he took up his way towards his sad destiny.
Translated by Thomas and Robert Harrison

Mazzino Montinari
NIETZSCHE AND WAGNER

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO :
1 980 ADDENDUM *
ln fall 1 980, Piper of Munich published a book destined to be a land

m ark in Wagner studies : Martin Gregor-Dellin's Richard Wagner. Sein
Leben. Sein Werk. Seinjahrhundert. Gregor-Dellin confronts, among other
things, the question of the Nietzsche-Wagner relationship and does
so with the proper balance and necessary sensitivity. He also deals
with an episode pertaining to the rupture of that friendship . On the
occasion of Wagner's death (February 1 3 , 1 883), Nietzsche wrote to
Overbeck: "Wagner was the most complete person I have ever 'known,
and in this respect I have suffered a great privation for six years . But
between us there is something like a mortal offense; and the thing
could have become enormous had he lived longer" (February 22) .
Wagner and Nietzsche scholars have often asked themeselves what
this tiidliche Beleidi'gung (mortal offense) of which Nietzsche speaks in
his letter to Overbeck may have been .
Nietzsche's most recent biographer, Curt Paul Janz, establishes a
relation between this section of the letter to Overbeck and a section
of another letter that Nietzsche wrote to Peter Gast a few weeks later,
on April 2 1 , 1 883 : "Wagner is certainly not wanting in malign
discoveries; but what do you say to the fact that he exchanged letters
( even with my doctors) expressing his conviction that my altered way
.
of thinking was the consequence of excesses against nature , leaving
* We gratefully acknowledge Editori Riuniti for permission to reprint the following
p ages (26-29) from Mazzino Montinari's Su Nietzsche (Rome, 198 1 ) .
1 13
it to be understood that it involved pederasty?" In july, 1 88 3 , Nietz

sche wrote to Ida Overbeck to the same effect that a year earlier he
had received samples of an "inexpressible perfidy in vengeance" from
Wagner. Both Gregor-Dellin and Janz concur in relating these allu
sions to a correspondence between Bayreuth and Nietzsche's doctor
Otto Eiser in October, 1 8 7 7 , which Nietzsche would have come to
hear of in that fatal summer of 1 882 (after the performance of Par
sifal in Bayreuth) . Indeed, in October, 1 87 7 , Wagner had confiden
tially asked Eiser- through hisfamulus Hans von Wolzogen - for fur
ther information on the condition of Nietzsche's health . Eiser, who
was a Wagnerian, had immediately replied with a diagnosis accord
ing to which the violent headaches that Nietzsche suffered from were
due to an eye illness . At that point Wagner, with the preoccupied
solicitude of a friend, directly intervened to express a hypothesis to
Eiser which for some time had seemed to him to be a certainty: Nietz
sche's sickness was due , as in other cases he knew of young men with
great talent, to the practice of onanism . (That onanism led to blind
ness was at the time a conviction even of doctors .) Wagner ended
his letter expressing the hope that Eiser could, with necessary discre
tion, do something for his friend.
Janz is familiar only with this aspect of the Wagner-Eiser cor
respondence, which is the story made famous by Curt von
Westerhagen in 1956. Gregor-Dellin has the merit of having published
Eiser's original reply to Wagner, the decisive and hitherto unknown
parts of which we would like to cite here:
Speaking of his sex life, Nietzsche assured me not only that he had never
contracted syphilis, but also that he had never tried to satisfy states
of sexual excitement in an abnormal fashion. Nevertheless, I raised this
last point only in passing and therefore have no reason to give too much
weight to what Nietzsche said on that score . A stringent counter
argument [to the hypothesis of Nietzsche's onanism] seems to be the
fact that the patient [Nietzsche] referred to having contracted some blen
norrhoeas during his university studies and to having recently prac
ticed coitum in Italy [ Sorrento , October 1 876 - May 187 7] upon the
advice of a doctor. There is no reason to doubt the veracity of these
statements and they demonstrate that our patient is capable of satisfy
ing his sexual instinct normally, something which would be rather
unusual - even if not unthinkable - for someone who was given to
onanism at his age.
In the rest of the letter Eiser adduced other arguments which , ac
cording to him, rendered Wagner's hypothesis improbable, even if
Montinari: Nietzsche and Wagner 115
not definitively refuted: Nietzsche was absolutely determined to marry,

and that too would not have been normal for an "onanist." On the
other hand, the eye sickness (which, in Eiser's opinion, was not of
syphilitic origin) could only remotely be caused by onanism, which
m ight, nevertheless, better explain the headaches. Eiser's diagnosis
remained uncertain.
Immediately thereafter Wagner laid the brief correspondence to
rest with these words: "Not another word about our friend: I know
h e has the best possible protection in your affection. At this moment
I can do nothing to help him. If he finds himself in real difficulty,
then I will help him; in such a case what is mine would also be his."
With this testimony of Wagner's sincere attachment to Nietzsche (a
few months later, in 1 878, the friendship will end, as we know) the
epistolary episode concludes.
Janz and Gregor-Dellin maintain that in the summer of 1 882 Nietz
sche came to hear of gossip circulating on his account in Bayreuth .
The source of this gossip would have been the correspondence of which
yve have spoken . Janz supposes that it was Elizabeth who passed it
on to her brother (from which the confusion between onanism and
pederasty! ) . Gregor-Dellin notes that the possibility that Eiser himself
reported it to Nietzsche (already in 1878) cannot be excluded (the
sources for this idea are notes in Weimar, in the Goethe-Schiller Ar
chive) , but he is inclined to believe that it was an indiscretion com
mitted by Hans von Wolzogen (who, as we have seen, was aware
of the correspondence and had carried it out in part himself) . This in
discretion would have then been propagated in the summer of 1882
and thus would have reached Nietzsche's ears. In any case, both Janz
and Gregor-Dellin agree in claiming that when Nietzsche speaks of
a todliche Beleidigung, of a mortal offense between him and Wagner,
he is referring to that correspondence and to the slander which derived
from it.
However, a document unknown both to Janz and Gregor-Dellin
permits us to understand the "mortal offense" in a quite different way.
It is a letter from Nietzsche to M alwida von Meysenbug written at
the same time as the already cited letter to Overbeck and, like that
one, upon the occasion of Wagner's death . I cite the decisive section:
"It was hard, very hard, for six years to have to be the enemy of a
p erson who had been the object of such veneration and love as that
which I had had for Wagner; and then to have to keep quiet, even
as an adversary , out of respect that the man in his wtality deserved.
Wagner offended me in a mortal way- I wish you to know it! - I
felt his slow, slithering return to Christianity and the Church to be

a personal insult in my own regard: my entire youth and its aspira
tion seemed contaminated by the very fact that I had been able to
venerate a spirit capable of accomplished a p ass of that sort. To feel
all this so strongly- is forced upon me by goals and tasks of which
I do not speak."1 Without playing down the fact that, as demonstrated
by the letters to Gast and Ida Overbeck (cited at the beginning), Nietz
sche interpreted Wagner's intervention with Eiser as a perfidy (or the
gossip which followed it, whoever the propagators: Wagner, Cosima,
Elisabeth Nietzsche , Hans von Wolzogen , Eiser himself, etc. , etc . ) ,
it behooves m e to specify that when Nietzsche spoke of a "mortal
offense" he was referring not to Wagner's "perfidies" (which never
theless painfully wounded him) but rather to Wagner's "return to Chris
tianity." This is new evidence of the fact that psychologizing inter
pretations performed on the basis of not fully confirmed biographical
facts exist on a level inferior to that of the real problems of Nietz
sche. Otherwise said- beyond any human or personal affair- the cen
tral node of the Wagner-Nietzsche conflict lies precisely in that in
curable disagreement about Christianity of which Nietzsche speaks
not only in the letter to Malwida von Meysenbug that we have brought
to light, but also in numerous passages of his works and posthumous
fragments. The presumptuousness, the immodesty of the psychologiz
ing interpretations of Nietzsche, is ever punished by an objective
reading of the text . Such a reading is the least we can expect for a
thinker like Nietzsche.
A correction in the "biographical" data is made possible by the
passages from Eiser's letters published by Martin Gregor- Dellin (and
it is strange that he did not realize it) . It is known from the clinical
records on Nietzsche's sickness that, in the psychiatric ward, in answer
to the question put to him by the doctors, Nietzsche replied that he
had contracted a "specific'' infection twice in Leipzig ( 1 865-66) . In
my opinion one can therefore suppose that with this answer Nietz
sche was referring to the "blennorrhoeas" of Leipzig which he had
already mentioned to Eiser. This is all the more likely insofar as, as
has been observed already, it is certainly not possible to contract
syphilis twice, and also because Nietzsche, according to Eiser's report,
1 This letter, from the collection of Romain Rolland and recently acquired by the
Goethe-Schiller Archive in Weimar, was published for the first time in volume 3: 1
of the critical edition of Nietzsche's correspondence :Briefwechsel, kritische Gesamtausgabe,
ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1 97 5) .
Montinari: Nietzsche and Wagner 1 17
had assured him that "he had never contracted syphilis." Whether he
m ay have been sick without knowing it is then another question . Eiser's
report of the coitum Nietzsche practiced in Sorrento (apparently with
prostitutes) clarifies another biographical detail, namely that the
fatuous legend of the "saint," espoused by Forster-Nietzsche, but also
by such friends of Nietzsche as Erwin Rhode and Paul Deussen (the
latter wrote about Nietzsche: "mulierem nunquam attigit": he never
touched a woman) , reeks of hypocrisy and - mental cruelty. I beg the
reader's pardon for having once again concerned myself with a pseudo
problem , sickness, sexual relations , chastity, etc . , which should no
longer interest anyone.

A vita! Ronell
HITTING THE STREETS:

EGGE FAMA
A dozen false starts:

You're such a fool, I said ,
S pooking at shadows when
All day you were calm . . .
But he shuddered, stubborn
In his hors y posture,
S aying that I brought
Devils with me that he
Could hear gathering in all
The places behind him as I
d iverted his coherence
Whh my chatter and tack .
- Vicki Hearne, "Riding A Nervous
Horse," Nervous Horses
At the crossroads between a certain type of journalism and itself,

Walter Benjamin began an essay on Karl Kraus's torch with a quota
tion, "How noisy everything grows, Wie laut wird alles ." He begins
to engrave his final pseudonym and mask in a complex materiality
where rumor is co-constitutive with disease , where the temporality
of spreading cannot be assigned to the one over the other, in a kind
of alarm-text whose noises have not stopped becoming. 1 "In old engrav
ings," begins Benjamin, "there is a messenger who rushes toward us
screaming, his hair on end, brandishing a sheet of paper in his hands,
a sheet full of war and pestilence, of cry of murder and pain, of danger
of fire and flood, spreading everywhere the 'latest news"' (26 1 ) . News
in this sense, what Benjamin calls "in the sense the word has in
i Walter Benjamin, "Karl Kraus," in Reflect ions, tr. Edmund jephcott (New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch , 1 978).
119
Shakespeare," is the street-episteme of rumor. He does not merely

s ay "news" but something like "times": Zeitung. The time in this sense,
the temporality of this sense , resides within a notion of uncontrolled
spreading, carried by a tortured messenger whose speech is a crying
one, pointing to the subtitle of his horror, a kind of horror from above
to which his hair points . A punk messenger of old engravings who ,
set in motion , is a pointer; he blinks toward the direction of writing
which carries war and other cries, his screams being dictaphoned
somehow by the inserted cries of murder and pain, spreading
everywhere . This is not exactly the same cries as Heidegger's
Schreiben/Schrei, the crilecrit of Nietzsche but it's not altogether remote
either because whoever implants the instrument of messenger within
his bo dy, whoever turns himself into a running transmitter of a bran
dished sheet of paper, crying aloud, his hair on end - our end, as the
end of the antenna, pointing and blinking; whoever will have said
"I am the messenger" will have had to traverse the place where Ben
jamin stopped running, in Nietzsche, in Heidegger, in their rumorous
rapport to the end, be this the end of philosophy or of man tout court.
Perhaps some will be astonished by the fact that Nietzsche is situated
in the place reserved for "hack journalists" : "as one who blurred the
boundary between journalism and literature . . . betrayer of the
aphorism to the impression" (Benj amin 241) . This is precisely the type
of reading Heidegger tries to divert in his work on Nietzsche, one
that appears to be inextricable, however, from the Zeitung of rumor.
This quickly becomes clear in the rescue missions he performs on
behalf of Zarathustra, leading us from temptation (whose temptation
one feels tempted to ask?) thus: "The temptation to take the thought
of the eternal return merely as something obvious, to take it therefore
at bottom as either contemptible mumbling or fascinating chatter is
overcome."2 Or to stay with the cries of the messenger, with screams
whose vocal cords appear to be the hairs, in Was heisst Denken? Heideg
ger's attempt to construct a rumor control center goes in this direction :
But riddle upon riddle! What was once the scream "the wasteland
grows . . . ," now threatens to turn into chatter . The threat of this perver
sion is part of what gives us food for thought. The threat is that perhaps
the most thoughtful thought will today, and still more tomorrow, become
suddenly [uber Nacht] no more than a platitude, and as platitude spread
and circulate. This fashion of talking platitudes is at work in that endless
2 Martin Heidegger, "Tragedy, Stayr-Play, and Telling Silence in Nietzsche's Thought
o f Eternal Recurrence," Boundary 2, 9 . 3 (Spring 1981) 36.

Ronell: Hitting the Streets 121
profusion of books describing the state of the world today. They describe
what by its nature is indescribable, because it lends itself to being
thought about only in a thinking that is a kind of appeal, a call- and
therefore must at times become a scream. 3
Riddle upon riddle, Benjamin's messenger might be Nietzsche, "Nietz
sche, most quiet and shiest of men, knew of this necessity. He en
dured the agony of having to scream" ( Thinking 48) . From where does
the scream emanate within an understanding of post-Laokonian speech
acting? Does it arrive in that non-rhetorical moment that hesitates
between the fall (into chatter) and the lofty transagony of lucidity's
knowledge? And what renders Nietzsche, in Heidegger as in Ben
jamin, so vulnerable to falling at the border between small talking
and big thought? Can some sort of public opinion settle the issue,
for instance, the disputable sensus communis of Kant? Who negotiates
· what stays clear of idle chatter? And how to put a contract out on
that which threatens Nietzsche's commanding voice , the "threat of
this perversion?" Perhaps more imposingly, how can the thought of
the eternal return be taken for chatter? Is it not the case that the eter
nal return could be shown to be a rumor, launched by Nietzsche as
the thought of his thought but never articulated or demonstrated
philosophically, only pointed to by the innuendo of Zarathustra and
his animals, his readers?4 And what if Being were itself a rumor, the
murky rumbling of an unheard of ontology? The answers can be shown
· merely to reside within the form of these questions , whose construc
tions are only partially complete, hardly posed correctly or on reliably
firm ground. We are cruising the site mapped out by Benjamin's
"Destructive Character," a small passage through which he introduces
a certain rapport of rumor to suicide; we are at the intersection "be
tween the public and private zones that commingle demonically in
prattle ," as he puts it in another context.5 In other words- and we shall
speak only in other words- we want to address precisely that place
of circulation that would not be limited to a body whose remotest limbs
would be infused with writing's bloodlines, but which would be ex
tended to the circulation of a newspaper and most pressingly into street
3 Martin Heidegger, What Is Called Thinking?, tr. J. Glenn Gray (New York: Harper
and Row, 1 968) 49 .
4 A reading of the non-articulation of the eternal return has been promoted in the
writings of Bernard Pautrat .
5 Walter Benjamin, "The Destructive Character," in Reflections 301-03. The Ger
man text is in Gessammelte Schriften IV, 1 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1 980)
396-398.
circulation, whether that street be conceived in terms of a path, aporetic

or not, one-way or dead-end, cut off from itself or even the U-turn
where the troping methodos carries with it very specific sounds . There
is a circulation , therefore, an auto-mobility that was brought to a
screeching halt at the primary register of pure, that is to say, con
taminated noise. Benjamin will have begun his enigmatic essay on
Kraus and journalism, taking us through dense passages of Verkehr
(where prostitutions and language traffic) , starting up an enigma on
a modality ofJama, toward which we shall want to turn (I am already
setting the blinkers, the blinkers of the last man, das Man in the street):
"How noisy everything grows." And Heidegger gives us a sense of
noise as he starts his cars all along his roadways; there are so many
cars, autos that blink as emblems of a false semiotics, motorcycles
parked in the spaces provided by the German university, and a cer
tain origin of sound ascribable to the different registers of street noises
which permit us to hear, almost equiprimordially, the difference in
the noises produced by a Mercedes and an Adler or Volkswagen - as
usual, a difference between high and low gears, emissions from big
cars and talk, small talk, vehicles of the people. 6 On the way to Nietz
sche, then, a problematics of sonic transmission, a thinker's ear pierced
by gutter noises which , however, will become linked to the very
possibility of his oeuvre. A writing fundamentally attended by walk
ing against the wind of Gerede, by getting out of the car and walking
toward another set of transmission problems, another topography of
circulation: "it is attained chiefly by the cardiac strength of great
thoughts," writes Benjamin, "which drives the blood of language
through the capillaries of syntax into the remotest limbs" ("Kraus"
24 7) . As if one could jog across such a frontier without losing heart
or breaking down .
This draws us toward the double hermeneutics of Nietzsche's
predicament, double because his thinking ineluctably encounters the
intersecting marks of public and private discourse . The space where
internal , formal, private structures of a philosophical language con
trol, as Paul de Man would say, external, referential , public effects ,
has already been cleared by Nietzsche. Lest this drive u s into the arms
of adventurous misunderstanding, please remember that we have been
strengthened into a position, opened by Nietzsche, from which
misunderstanding has become a philosophically rigorous way toward
thinking.
6 The translation has led us astray. Heidegger actually writes of the difference be
tween a Mercedes and an Adler, translated as a bug in English.

Ronell: Hitting the Streets 1 23
I will whip into submission two unruly movements that have per
mitted us to talk about Nietzsche's madness, training our focus on
the fragile intersection where two names cross over into one another
because there were always two names harnessed by Nietzsche's
charioteer of inscription, the one phantomizing the other, doubling
for the other, or enfolding itself in the other's mask. These names
e mbraced the masks of our history: Dionysus and Apollo , Wagner
and Cosima, Socrates and Christ, Dionysus and the Crucified, Paul
Ree and Lou Salome. It appears that essentially two moments have
permitted us to repeat a stutter in the painful archives of Nietzsche's
madness - which was never only Nietzsche's madness, never only a
broken contract, or even a fulfilled promise, between Nietzsche and
himself, or Nietzsche and Wagner, or Nietzsche and Lou. But Nietz
sche's madness (I am using shorthand) was more often than not made
to enter a contractual agreement with third parties, such as the Third
Reich, as if the collapse of Nietzsche could provide a hermeneutic
clarity, a kind of luminous capitulation to the great politics of inani
ty. Nietzsche's madness , in Thomas Mann, was not so much out of
reason's grasp, but to the contrary, it could be read as an historical
explication of sorts, a fevered lucidity within which Nietzsche figured
as a minotaurized self, contained, interred and eloquent - a system
of symptoms participating in the collapse of German spirituality :
history's own case study, as it were. Thus it would be Nietzsche's un
thought that promotes a genuine thinking of convulsive fascism, for
example. As if Nietzsche's madness had a history, or could render
history historical, readable in terms of a general archeology of pain .
Yet only that which has no history, wrote Nietzsche, can be discovered
("Nothing is definable unless it has no history") .
The route I'd like to take is less grand; it is not even a side-street
in the royal road to the unconscious. To this end, I have asked the
gods to lend me their wing'd Pegasus, perhaps the first horse to in
vent the concept of a rider with conviction, that is to say, from the
bestial perspective where distinctions are held between Hegelian
masters and predators, sadism and cruelty. A strong figuration of
rumor, not distantly related to Hermes, Pegasus arises as lord of the
air, flying wherever he would, envied of all . Above all, the rider behind
this corpus is a mere blemish on the back of a body propelled
mysteriously through space. Pegasus, as non-possessible gift , comes
with a particular driver's license : it points one, like Bellerophon (whose
father was devoured by horses) , beyond the Chimaera's fiery breath ,
or, in this case, it will permit us to leap over the Gorgon sisters , the
terrible and unbearable gaping into the isle of madness from which
one might not recover. However, the serpented head already places
us face to face with Nietzsche's animals, if one considers the serpent
around Zarathustra's head, the mysterious embrace traced around
the neck of Nietzsche's anchorman, Zarathustra, who is destined to
announce that which is never said. The serpent offers the embrace,
forecasting how circle and ring are to be implicitly entwined in the
circling of the eagle and the winding of the snake . The embrace of
Turin, therefore, will be the first thing around which I coil my think
ing, asking very simply what it means for a Nietzsche to embrace
a horse , to wrap himself around the face of madness, collapsing in
the street at the command of a whip. What sort of inscription was
taking place when Nietzsche fell under the crack of a whip, a lash
destined for another? The first part of this reading, therefore , is to
be called:
A HORSE IS BEING BEATEN
"Nietzsche in Turin": We think we have understood. Nietzsche tells

us relatively little. He favors Piedmont cuisine, he writes ; and a glass
of water follows him through the streets like a dog. This may conjure
Mephistopheles or the dog of The Gay Science, whose title Nietzsche
has given as "la gaya scienza." In this Italianate work, Nietzsche writes
that "I have given a name to my pain and call it 'dog."'7 In the same
work, Nietzsche has written "Knowing how to end. - " He writes of the
bay of Genoa ending its melody, and of "Masters of the first rank,"
who are "revealed by the fact that in great as well as small matters
they know how to end perfectly, whether it is a matter of ending a
melody or a thought, or the fifth act of a tragedy or of an action of
state" (28 1 ) . The dog's howl will return, or has already returned to
Nietzsche as the proper name of a pain. In Turin it follows him
through the streets in the benevolent guise of a water glass; nonetheless ,
it follows him, pursues him through the streets. Assuming we know
where or what Turin is, then let's skip over to an easier question :
where is Italy, or more likely, what is Italy? Can we be certain of its
status as locality- a place of topographical prestige, Turin merely be
ing somewhere up a leg extended into the Mediterranean? I cannot
assume that we yet know the auratic pull of Italy in the phantasms
of German writers and thinkers, beginning perhaps with Goethe . Or
7Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, tr. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random
House, 1974) section 3 1 2 . Hereafter numerical references are to section numbers .
even, to narrow the focus, what is the Italy of Freud, or more close
to home still, the piazza to which Freud returns, as if under hypnosis,
guided he suggests by a kind of horseshoe magnetism , in the text of
the unheimlich, the being-not-at-home of the uncanny. You may recall
the pull of that piazza, where p ainted girls decorated the windows ,
and Freud could only return, uncannily, to the labyrinth. Return to
what? One could say that for Freud, Goethe, and Nietzsche, goin g
to Italy implied picking someone o r something u p o n some level o f
conscious o r unconscious articulation, cruising for what w e call lues,
a syphilitic infection; but we shall r'eturn to this when hitting the streets .
For we need to consider the rumor that Freud and Jung helped prop
agate concerning the etiology of Nietzsche's degeneration . They
helped spread the rumor, and one wonders how they knew, of the
origin of his spreading syphilitic infection . Freud, who shared Lou
with Nietzsche , traced down the ostensible lues or luetic pathology
to Nietzsche's having visited as we all know a bordello ; but, Freud
adds , a male bordello and, more precisely still, Nietzsche is said to
have contracted syphilis in a Genoese male brothel. We shall treat these
and other rumors of Nietzsche's susceptibility to infection in "Ecce
Fama," Jama being the proper name of rumor. So the question remains:
what is called Italy?
Ever since Goethe's Italienische Reise, Italy was like a command post,
the other Lorelei of Germanic desire. Goethe picked up Christiane
Vulpius in Italy, and brought her back to Weimar. This scandalized
everyone . The only Weimarian ever to invite Vulpius over was Ar
thur Schopenhauer's mother, Weimar's most liberated woman .
(Nietzsche's eye doctor was also called Vulpius; this was before he
was turned over to the doctor of the Basel asylum, Dr. Wille. Overbeck
was afraid to tell Nietzsche that this was his doctor's name.) Elsewhere
I have tried to show that for Freud as for Goethe, Italy became bound
up in a notion of genitalia, an argument which I cannot reproduce
here , but for which I would like to open a credit account . The extent
to which Nietzsche might have borrowed a reading of the "genitalienische
R eist' can be inferred from the citational qualities of his madness, if
it is not presumptuous momentarily to accede to the suspicions o f
Overbeck and Gast . Their opinions become part o f a history in which
it is said that Nietzsche was feigning his madness, perhaps vampiriz
ing the style of others' state-of-the-art breakdowns. These breakdowns
of which Nietzsche repeated a certain number of dimensions , come
from Hamlet , for example, from the Greeks, for whom madness was
a divine gift, from Christ's survival of himself, from Rousseau's

paranoiac transport or that of Tasso. I have even found evidence of
Nietzsche's citation of Goethe in his limited lexicon of fallen utterance .
Nietzsche often repeated mehr Licht in his long days of what in Ger
man is called Umnachtung- something like madness, probably linked
to "lunacy," in any case a nocturnal inflection of mind. But here we
run the risk of repeating Nietzsche's letter to Burckhardt, namely, that
he is all the names in history.
A horse is being beaten . In Turin . Nietzsche both will forget and
double his name after the mysterious embrace. He writes that he has
forgotten his address . The scene suggests another citation, an inver
sion of an originary street accident in which a name is forgotten, an
address blurred from memory - and when Rousseau comes crashing
on the sidewalk, a form of street paranoia overtakes him , knocking
him down, whereas we could say that Nietzsche was somewhat uplifted
by his collapse ; he began to erect governments, shooting Bismarck ,
and anti-semites, whereas Rousseau, on the contrary, felt that govern
ments were being erected to gun him down in the streets . Nietzsche ,
after his street accident, will be transfigured euphorically into god,
apologizing to the people for the weather, and wanting only to em -
brace the people of the streets. Rousseau is afflicted by an animal linked
to a carriage , a dog pursuing him through the streets . He is shown
being beaten by the unforseen . Nietzsche is afflicted by an animal
linked to a carriage. It is being whipped. The word for whip is Peitsche.
The place in which to translate the horse in Nietzsche is not so much
Pjerde, as would be appropriate say, in little H ans, but rather, in this
case, I would submit, Ross. I shall suggest why this is so momen
tarily . The Peitsche is a recurring instrument in Nietzsche's work
excuse me , it is silly to speak in this context of Nietzsche's work, only
Heidegger could assert something like that or like "Nietzsche himself,"
who thought to the end of his thought. The question of the text erupted
with Nietzsche, everything appears to be organized around the absence
of an oeuvre .8 We are reading the Peitsche, the whip , perhaps the
maypole of Nietzsche's absent oeuvre. The whip serves as a comp acted
citation of "the infamous slander unleashed behind your back" (F. N.).
The whip produces a public rebuke, perhaps of the genre we saw in
Wagner's public attack on Nietzsche following Human, All Too Human,
in the Bayreuthischer Blatter. It aims to awaken by wounding. Nietz
sche traces his Wagnerian whiplash to the shock-awakening of
6 This is unfolded i n the work o f Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe , particularly in
"L'Obliteration," in Le sujet de la philosophic (Paris : Aubier-Flammarion, 1 979) .
B rynhilde, with whom h e identified: "Verwundet hat mich der, der

mich erweckt" (I am wounded by him who has awaked me) . The whip
can be a conductor's baton or an instrument of destiny's charioteer.
It cracks down on the numbed body under general anaesthesia. A
horse is being beaten . But tl;iere is no depth to the whip - it is a sur
face writer, participating in the temporality of the father, a flash
through Nietzsche's existence, staying with him as a memory of pain.
He cannot vomit the horse .
Attached to no concept of interiority, the whip lashes out like the
explosion without gunpowder. Nietzsche once dreamed of such an
explosion; before the days of nuclear plants, something that would
originate in a sudden surface exfoliation. When the heat is on, it comes
down on you , dissolving afterwards into a moment of lightness and
dance.
At the very end, Nietzsche repeated a restricted number of
statements . They are, "I am dead because I am stupid"; mehr Licht;
"I am stupid because I am dead." And also, "I do not like horses."
As with Rousseau's catastrophic encounter with an animal-drawn car
riage, Nietzsche will lose his name to the street scene. We need to
consider the specificity of this hippopathology, as it exists inside and
outside philosophy, a drawing cart of certain stubborn tropes whose
epistemological reliability is not merely figurative. One wonders
whether Klossowski was not right in perceiving a slow shift in Nietzsche
from Greece to Rome: was Nietzsche not rearing at an unheard of
philosophical track whose grooves are so deep that only a fine ear can
hear the master's voice? The sonic boom of Peitsche, to which it can
be asserted Nietzsche loses his name - as he wanted to lose his name
to Lou, to give her, as his appointed Fortdenkerin and Erbin, his heiress
and continuance of his thought, the secret thought of the Eternal
Return - this word appears in German as part of a story of repres
sion and drive . It arrives on the scene from the East, the domain of
N ietzsche's ancestry. In any case, it settles in the 1 4th century into
the Middle High German form ofpitsche, adding to the list of feminine
equipment, which it also displaces, and to instruments of mutilation
and devoration such as die Geissel (also whip) and die Gabel (fork) .
Pitschr!s journey into Peitsche appears to follow a similar route to that
of Nietzsche, which Janz informs us took root in Nitsche . Janz also
discovers Wagner to be related to Nietzsche. Always related to drive,
or that which drives on (treiben), the Peitsche plays an instrumental role
in organizing the drives ( Triebe) or in accelerating the horse power
of trab, to trot or drive . To insert Wagner, as charioteer, into this
configuration, allows us to retain the fact that in his madness Nietz

sche often longed for Tribschen, the place and time spent in friend
ship with Wagner and Cosima. I should like to extend an apology
for brutally pacing these thoughts through friable terrain; this cer
tainly puts me at jeopardy and risks creating uneasiness. I should have
p referred the reliably scholarly pace of Rozinante , were I not honor
ing the poetry of Nietzschean philology or writing under madness's
whip . I am going to suggest rather boldly that Pitsche is the name
of the father in an exchange system that borrows a paternal "P" against
an "N" - a name that Nietzsche always stood to lose. What comes
cracking down on or before Nietzsche is the name he sought to carry
in the sheltering place of radical solitude - for example, as Giorgio
Agamben has shown, in the shadow of the wanderer. Remember that
Nietzsche always doubles up under his father, imitating his death and
going under, like his father, at the age of thirty-six (the family rumor
attributes the cause of death to the fact that he fell then) .
The difficulty resides in the doubleness of the father, as Peitsche,
and as that which phantomizes the horse; in so far as the father is
still alive in Nietzsche, as the one who is past life, numbed and fragile,
a memory, he agitates within the scene which we have named 'A
HORSE IS BEING B EATEN': "I do not like horses." We are lodged
within a moment in madness's stutter, trying to grasp Nietzsche
and his animals (Heidegger knew to write of Zarathustra and his
animals) . It seemed necessary to contain the zoomorphic energy pro
pelling a momentary difference between what Margot Norris has called
the creatural and cultural man in her reading of new ontological alter
natives for man, extending to the Ubennensch or instinctual aristocrats. 9
In Book Three of The Gay Science, Nietzsche writes of Animals as Critics:
"I fear that the animals consider man as a being like themselves that
has lost in a most dangerous way its sound animal common sense;
they consider him the insane animal, the laughing animal , the weep
ing animal , the miserable animal" (224) .
I cannot offer a full reading of the hippopathological phantasm ,
but merely scattered fragments. Let me assemble some of the prin
cipal elements. If a horse is being beaten, Nietzsche, as in all his modes
of relatedness, will insert himself into the interstices of a couple . The
couple could consist of a horse and its conductor, Lou Salome and
Paul Ree, Wagner and Cosima, or in a more strikingly negative vein,
9 Beasts ef the Modern Imagination: Darwin, Nietzsche, Kafka, Ernst and Lawrence
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985) 4.

Elisabeth and Forster. I have chosen a description of the breakdown

that appears calm and neutral. It begins on the third day of the new
year, reviving momentarily the triadic structure which pervades the
Nietzschean text. This often serves to underscore the fragility of his
physiologic: the three days of debilitation due to a migraine headache,
for instance, from which in E�ce Homo a terrible lucidity also arises .
On the third day ofJanuary, "Nietzsche had just left his lodgings when
he saw a cab-driver beating his horse in the Piazza Carlo Alberto .
Tearfully, the philosopher flung his arms around the animal's neck ,
and then collapsed."10 Here are some characteristic mentions which
will be set forth without comment but with hopes of strengthening
our reading.
First an early and late poem, linking the horse with acts of nam
ing. The word for horse in both cases is Ross, pluralized , into Rosse:
Fluchtige Rosse tragen
Mich Ohne Furcht und Zagen
Durch die Weite Fern.
Und wer mich sieht, der kennt mich ,
Und wer mich kennt, der nennt mich:
Den heimatlosen Herrn. Etc.
[ No fear shatters me when wild horses take me as far as they can.
Whoever sees me knows me; whoever knows me names me: the
homeless man . . . Never f9rsake me!]
N ietzsche was at Pforta when he wrote this. The next poein is in
cluded in the volume Kaufmann prepared for "la gaya scienza." Part
of the "Songs of Prince Vogelfrei ," it addresses the mistral wind of
the Mediterranean . These are fragments of the eleven-stanza poem
in which the Gay Science is evoked:
S ind wir zwei nicht eines Schosses
Erstlingsgabe , eines Loses
Vorbestitnmte ewiglich? . . .
Kaum erwacht, hort' ich dein Rufen
Auf den ebnen Himmelsternen

Sah ich deine Rosse rennen ,
10 Ronald Hayman, Nietzsche: A Critical Life (New York: Penguin Books, 1980) 334.
For details of the collapse, see the chapter on "Euphoria, Melancholia and Madness."
The exact location of the collapse seems to have shifted within different accounts:
it took place variously at the Piazza Carlo Alberto, the Piazza San Carlo or the Piazza
Carlina, leaving the "Carl" pretty much intact.
S ah den Wagen, der dich tragt ,

Sah die Hand dir selber ziicken ,
W enn sie auf der Rosse Riicken
Blitzesgleich die Geissel schlagt, -
S ah dich aus dem Wagen springen,
Schneller dich hinabzuschwingen,
S ah dich wie zum Pfeil verkiirzt
Senkrecht in die Tiefe stossen, -
[ Were we two not generated from the same womb, predestined to one
lot evermore? . . . Hardly awakened, I heard your calling . . I saw your
. .
horses running through the heavens' threshing basin, saw the carriage
which carries you, saw your hand tremble at you when upon the horses'
back lightning-like your whip descended. From the carriage of disaster,
leaping to bring you down yet faster, I saw you shortened to an arrow
vertically downward plunging]
The first time Nietzsche went to Italy, reports Ronald Hayman ( 1 56) ,
this is how things went : "He found that he wanted to be alone. He
started out for Italy, but, feeling ill en route , spent the first night at
a hotel . . . . Sitting, isolated, in the conductor's seat, high in the post
coach, he travelled for the first time along the Via Mala, the moun
tain road famous for its views. This is my nature, he wrote ." What
Nietzsche was doing in the conductor's seat, whom he was replacing ,
what he was driving at, still needs to be clarified, particularly if he
is en route to Italy, in which he recognizes his nature - again, a
reference to genitalia. We note in passing, moreover, that his father's
illness was referred to in Nietzsche's family as the petit mal. However,
backing up along the heterobiographical trail, one finds that Nietzsche
claimed to take more pride in his accomplishments on horseback than
in winning a prize in philosophy. In the immensely invested month
of October- Karl Ludwig Nietzsche had superstitiously fixated on
October, the month in which Ecce Homo came to be written and Nietz
sche was himself born - Nietzsche volunteered in 1 867 for military
service . Among the thirty recruits in the division there was only one
other volunteer. Nietzsche wrote: "The riding lessons give me the most
pleasure. I have a very pretty horse, and am s uppo sed to have a talent
for riding. When I hurtle out into the big exercise yard, I then feel
very satisfied with my lot" (Hayman 90) . Nietzsche - and I - was very
surprised to find he was the best horse-rider among the thirty recruits .
The officers predicted he would attain the rank of captain. But his
hopes were humiliatingly frustrated. Myopia, which was felt to be
inherited from his father, had made Nietzsche a bad judge of distances,
even at short range, and in the middle of March, jumping into the
s addle , he threw himself so hard against the pommel that he tore two
muscles in his chest . He felt a sharp, twitching pain on his left side ,
which did not stop him from riding on with determination. He fainted
twice that night, lay ten days in bed, paralyzed, and at the end of
ten days the doctor made incisions in his chest. He writes: "I am
understating it if I say that already four to five cupfuls of pus have
come out of each wound" (Hayman 93) . For another biographical
trace, we go to the "Memorabilia," which retain one image in the earlier
months of his routine military life . He writes: "At morning at winter
in a steaming horse stable." Peter Heller has commented that "this
setting, with the bespectacled intellectual as groom , brushing the
animals , cleaning the stables, recurs frequently in Nietzsche's letters
of the period. The steam'and smell of horse manure which he had
to carry out, made a strong and revolting impression on him though
he enjoyed his work with horses more than anything else ."11 Heller
links this up with Nietzsche's enormous capacity for radical compliance,
a point that certainly holds up under scrutiny if one considers the
extent to which he was driven by Wagner in the direction of abject
servility.
Wagner as conductor of Nietzsche's destiny has been linked in
psychobiographies to the paternal Nietzsche, whom he is said physical
ly to resemble. What interests me however is the double rapport of
repulsion and let us call it pleasure, which includes the carrying of
an excremental deposit. The double and oscillating movement be
tween repulsion and pleasure is best articulated in the book over which
Wagner blew up publically, Human, All Too Human : "Desire for deep
pain. When it has gone, passion leaves behind a dark longing for itself,
and in disappearing throws us one last seductive glance. There must
have been a kind of pleasure in being beaten with her whip ." There
exists nothing to prove that Nietzsche's infection did not in fact begin
with his military service , in a kind of primal embrace of the horse.
The parentheses thrown around these erotically invested whippings
or embracings give pause. For while the horse marks an important
moment in the history of photography, the photograph that we have
of Lou, Paul and Nietzsche wraps his pathogenic history around itself
in an odd and painful serenity, a photograph of the future of the
Nietzsche institution wherein Nietzsche, one of two horses, takes the
11 Peter Heller, Studies on Nietzsche (Bonn: Bouvier, 1 980) 204 .
bridle and Lou's whip, leaving Paul Ree to be the only figure among
the three to be posing. In Nietzsche's madness , he will be said to have
taken on equine features, for one was tempted often to focus on his
manelike hair. Helene Cixous has made him undecidable, sharing
the features of a dog as well. 12
Or consider this letter from his student days, written by Nietzsche's
friend, Deussen:
Intoxicated with wine and camaraderie , we allowed ourselves, in spite
of having so little money, to be talked into hiring horses to ride up the
Drachenfels. It is the only time I have ever seen Nietzsche on horseback.
He was in a mood to interest himself less in the beauty of the scenery
than in the ears of his horse . He kept on trying to measure them, and
to make up his mind about whether he was riding a donkey or a horse .
In the evening we acted still more insanely. The three of us were
wandering through the streets of the little town making overtures t o
the girls we assumed t o b e behind the windows .
The labyrinth of the ear, the minotaur, the interstice between one
and the other: Nietzsche coupled with the donkey and a horse . In
Zarathustra the ass's repeated braying is spelled I-A, which means yes
in German. The adored ass is without question the most yes-saying
of all creatures. 13 But here Nietzsche cannot make up his mind whether
he was riding the one or the other. The other was in part born from
the womb of Shakespeare , in the melancholy violence of "Venus and
Adonis," a poem urged on by the libidinal whip of the neigh-saying :
with ears uppricked, he neighs, he bounds, he wounds the earth, "what
cares he now for curb or pricking spur ? " This steed, who raises ques
tions of mastery, is an uncanny horse who is not entirely alive , "as
if the dead the living should exceed."
Of course we shall never know what sort of recognition took place
when Nietzsche saw that a horse was being beaten; we know that h e
hallucinated his father's voice, suffered indeed from a kind o f auditory
psychosis since the age of five, listening to his father's telecommanding
but disarticulated utterances. There was a telephone to the beyond
installed within Nietzsche, but at times the voice would translate itself
into a near televisibility for the myopic child . Once, Nietzsche was
sure his father was crouched behind his chair as he was writing. But
the voice was mutilated, unintelligible. I am led to suppose, but I
12 Helene Cixous, "Le bon pied, le bon oeil," Cahiers Renaud Barrault 87 (1982) 47-75.
13 Rudolf E. Kuenzli, "Nietzsche's Zerography: Thus Spoke Zarathustra ," Boundary 2
( 1 978) 1 1 0 .
have not yet been able to verify this, that his father's casket was
horsedrawn. (Neither Janz's Biographic nor other sources produce a
description of the funeral which Nietzsche attended; Nietzsche himself
remembers the unforgettable music.) The only thing that we know
is that Carl Nietzsche - perhaps the Carlo Alberto Piazza resonates
with this - began the principal part of his seminary studies at a locality
that bore the name of Rossleben. This linkage of the horse with
coming-to , literally with "life ," and the many inscriptions of destinal
naming or even destinerring in and out of Nietzsche's writings, the
way the father lives on in Nietzsche- "! am dead as my father" -
persists continually in being carried by Nietzsche, the way Zarathustra
begins by carrying a corpse, this fundamental carriage of the other
whose inscription your back bears or under whose bruising flesh you
remain immobilized. All of this leads one to want to motivate the em
brace , to "try the reins," as Nietzsche would say, of an unbroken
thought. In his last letters to Strindberg, Nietzsche's praise for le Pere
was unflagging.
In the Birth of Tragedy, a text perverted from its course to honor
Wagner, Nietzsche "dares to acknowledge the truth" about the Greeks .
"The Greeks, as charioteers , hold in their hands the reins of our own
and every other culture, but almost always chariots and horses are
of inferior quality and not up to the glory of their leaders, who con
sider it sport to run such a team into an abyss which they themselves
clear with the leap of AchiUes."14 Someone will have cleared the abyss,
someone driving the horses, but not the horse itself. Because we find
ourselves in the streets of Turin pondering the Greeks, because it will
be appropriate shortly to leap into "Ecce Fama," which actually is defama,
we ask that Nietzsche ventrilocate with his double street register the
necessary intersection, perhaps with the aim of uncrossing inevitable
polarities: Socrates's wife , writes Nietzsche, "taught him to live in the
b ack streets, and anywhere where one could chatter and be idle, and
in that way formed him into Athens' greatest backstreet dialectician ,
who finally had to compare himself to a pesty horsefly, set by a god
on the neck of the beautiful horse Athens to keep it from coming to
rest."15 The street, the horse : this is a citation , a repetition. He was
set by a god on the neck of a beautiful horse to keep it from coming
14 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth ef Tragedy, in The Basic Writings of Nietzsche, tr. and
ed. Walter Kaufmann ( New York: Random House, 1 968) 1 7 3 .

1 5 Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Bookjor Free Spirits, tr. Marian Faber
( Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1 984) § 433 .

1 34 Nietzsche in ltary
to rest, to keep it alive, to console the wound of slumber's denial: keep

it from coming to rest. The meaning of Rossleben may reside in this
backstreet passage. So , in the same text, when Nietzsche writes of
"the streets of one's ancestors," he argues:
I t is reasonable to develop further the talent that one's father or grand

father worked hard at, and not switch (tracks) to something entirely
new . . . . Thus the saying: 'Which street should you take? - that of your
ancestors.' 16
Your ancestors and mine . Let this tribute then be paid to memory,
which has caused us to enlarge it now, yearning for what we once
possessed. The tribute is cited from the Phaedrus, which we have begun
to relive in the form of Plato in Turin, the place where madness
("mania") besets the text, and this describes the soul in its emergence.
The soul of Plato will be membered by Lou, Ree and Nietzsche. Listen
to the soundtrack behind the photograph which Nietzsche staged in
Lucerne, 1 882 :
Yet it is troubled by the horses and only beholds Reality with much
difficulty. . . . As for the soul's immortality, enough has been said. But
about its form , the following must be stated . . . . Now all the gods' horses
and charioteers are good and of good descent , but those of other be
ings are mixed . In the case of the human soul, first of all , it is a pair
of horses that the charioteer dominates; one of them is noble and hand
some and of good breeding, while the other is the very opposite , so
that our charioteer necessarily has a difficult and troublesome task. 1 7
.
There are essentially two horses , therefore , under the command of
the charioteer. While one is good, the other needs to be beaten to
submission. The account of the training whereby the bad horse is
broken is of legendary cruelty, the whip being the finely attuned in
strument of higher education:
We divided every soul into three parts , two of which had the form of
horses, the third that of a charioteer. Let us retain this . As we said ,
one of the horses is good, the other not. But we did not define the
goodness of the one or the badness of the other, which we must now
do. The horse that holds the nobler position is upright and dean-limbed;
it carries its head high, its nose is aquiline, etc . , in other words, a
follower of true renown ; it needs no whip , but is driven by word of
16 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, The Basic Writings of Nietzsche 82.
17 Plato , Phaedrus (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Educational Publishing, 1 983) 28.
Ronell: Hi.tting the Streets 135
command alone . The other horse, however , i s huge, but crooked , a

great jumble of a creature, with a short thick neck . . . grey bloodshot
eyes . . . shaggy-eared . . . hardly heeding whip or spur.
Now it has been humbled and follows the driver's instructions; when
it catches sight of the beautiful, it is like to die of fear. So from this
time on the soul of the l over may follow the beloved with reverence
and awe . 18
In further passages, the bad horse is shown to be neighing. He must

learn to serve the first command of the will to power which consists
in the will to obedience. He must attune his pricked up ears differently,
to the lesson of the charioteer who, "like a racer recoiling from the
starting-rope, jerks back the bit even more violently than before from
the teeth of the wanton horse, bespatters its malicious tongue and
j aws with blood, forces its legs and haunches to the ground and causes
it much pain."19 We have \o let this compelling bit go, too . The dou
ble occupancy drawn by the image of Plato and Nietzsche in Turin ,
investing our ancestry, trails off like the other enigmas, around which
we have gathered , although this would have been the place to start
reading something like Nietzsche's nightmare . "But the other, as soon
as it has recovered from the pain of the bit and the fall and has barely
regained its wind, bitterly reviles its mate and their charioteer for their
cowardice . "20
Ecce Fama
One day that which others know about us (or think

they know) assaults us - and then we realize that
this is more powerful . It is easier to cope with a
bad conscience than to cope with a bad reputation .
The Gay Science 5 2
The rumor that hit the streets when his sister returned from Paraguay,
assuming a double name, was that there was a Friedrich Nietzsche .
The extent to which his so-called oeuvre was whipped up by the
misguided Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche has been covered in great detail ,
suggesting that Nietzsche will always to a certain extent be the effect
of the hack work of a crude forester. Walter Kaufmann's restitutional
biography of Nietzsche produces a typology of gossip which it attempts
18 Plato 3 7-39.
19 Plato 39.
20 Plato 28.
to tranquilize and master. You know some of the points that have
been beaten into the Nietzschean signatures. Lou Salome, says
Elisabeth, was a slut; Ree was Jewish, Nietzsche was not , Brandes
was (these observations by no means coincide with Nietzsche's opin
ions) . Furthermore, it is said that Nietzsche wrote that he loved his
sister, he wrote books, for example he wrote Wille zur Macht, his in
tentions were never really to repudiate Wagner, and so forth. Kauf
mann sometimes gets down into the gutter of Gerede, pulling
misogynistic switchblades on Elisabeth, the big mouth who wrote
Nietzsche's posthumous work. "One wonders how her success was
possible and why so many learned men who produced monographs on
various aspects of Nietzsche's thoughts deferred so humbly to this
woman ."21 Quoting Rudolf Steiner, he continues: "that Frau Forster
Nietzsche is a complete laywoman in all that concerns her brother's
doctrine, her thinking is void," etc. I do not dispute this, of course .
But figuring out Nietzsche's "Legend," as Betram was to call it , can
not be left to a war of the so-called sexes in which one side occupies
the seductive and unpinnable territory of gossip and the other, seriously
charted scholarship . Benjamin and others have suggested to what ex
tent criticism as Wissenschaft participates in what we might perceive
as a massively sustained gossip session, being a form of utterance that
has fallen from truth . Nonetheless, the legend of Nietzsche, from
wherever it may stem , began to develop, asserts Kaufmann, "shortly
after Nietzsche had become insane in january 1 889."22 In fact, Kauf
mann begins this particular work, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist,
A ntichrist, with the statement : " Nietzsche became a myth even before
he died in 1 900 , and today his ideas are overgrown and obscured by
rank fiction ." In a Holderlinian sense - Holderlin being a compatriot
in madness, and the poet whom Nietzsche discovered in his early
years - Nietzsche fell upward ("man kann auch in die Hohejallen"), if grow
ing into myth in one's living afterdeath can be considered an upward
fall. In any case, Nietzsche's great fall has left at least a double-tracked
imprint, suggesting for example a double origin or etiology for his
illness, neither of which has been definitively lifted from inferential
acts of reading or rescued from exiguous evidence . Dionysus issues
from a double origin, twice born, once from the Princess , Semele,
and once from the leg of Zeus. Is one not in imitation of an understand
ing of double origin as sexual difference when attributing the secret
21 Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (Princeton Univer
sity Press , 1 9 7 4) 4-5; italics added.

Friedrich Nietzsche with Lou Salome and Paul Ree, 1882.
Jules Bonnet, Goethe and Schiller Archives, Weimar.
beginnings of his disease either to something of which a woman was

a carrier- either syphilitic contagion or the spreading of rumors - or
on the other hand, to something which threw him off, the proud erect
equestrian pose that Nietzsche is supposed to have struck? There yet
remains another possibility for a hermeneutics of infectivity that I have
tried to elaborate in "Nietzsche's Antibodies" which, too , is situated
in the military, where Nietzsche gives up the rhetoric o f
immunocompetence . 23
Like Dionysus, Nietzsche is always divided, morcellated, cut in half
by the flash of a whip , or sharing the bridle with a sadistic groom .
There is time only to report what you already know . Nietzsche ended
up on the street , touching the ground, and this was the end of his
· solitude. His mother came to fetch him after Overbeck, sent by Burck-
hardt, came to pick him up, after which Elisabeth would set him
up in his own archives, near the Goethe archives. She propped him
up for photographs, and benefited financially . But I shall stick to the
streets, not to the mausoleum built by his counterfeit sister and na
tion , both inflatingly self-important, abusive, at once in awe o f
Nietzsche and hopelessly left behind b y him . This predicament did
not end in '46. For some reason still to be studied, Nietzsche, with
few but luminous exceptions, still cannot be read by Germans. Heideg
ger admittedly was the first to read him as the last philosopher. It
was as if Nietzsche were to be identified with the blindness for which
his name was made to stand. In any case, in 1 888, Nietzsche's "fame
began to spread like wildfire." A letter dated June 7 , 1 905, refers to
Jama's hold on the Nietzschean legacy. It was written by Otto
Binswanger to Ida Overbeck, wife of 0 . , and expresses regret over
the source of rumors surrounding Nietzsche's illness, something that
has caused Overbeck embarrassment ("und das ihm die Urheberschaft des
Geruchtes uber die Krankheit Nietzsches durch das Vorgehen des Herrn Gasts
noch immer Unannehmlichkeiten bereitef'). 24
Klossowski mentions that, starting into his madness , Nietzsche
began to consult newspapers to gain a referential anchoring ("la rubri
que fait divers, la chronique mondaine fournissent bizarrement une dimen
sion a Sa pensre, OU le fortuit donne aussi a son langage un ton peremp-
23"Queens of the Night: Nietzsche's Antibodies," Genre, 16.4 (Winter 1983) 405- 2 1 .
24Letter from Otto Binswanger to Ida Overbeck dated June 7 , 1 905, i n Curt Paul
Janz, Friedrich Nietzsche (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1979) 35 1 . The word forJama,
Gerucht, related as it is to the barely material sense of smell, constitutes a grand
thematics in Nietzsche's corpus.
toire . . . : Maintenant, il est devenu son propre 'propragandiste"') .25

Meanwhile, Overbeck receives a letter from Turin saying that
Nietzsche had all the antisemites shot. On consulting Dr. Wille, direc
tor of Basel's psychiatric clinic, Overbeck was advised to go immediate-
1 y to Turin.
Nietzsche wanted to address the crowds and to embrace everybody.

Overbeck was nervous about mentioning Dr. Wille's name.
Dr. Baumann of Turin sends Wille a signed statement diagnosing
"mental degeneration." Evidence given in these terms: The patient
"claims he is a famous man."
Nietzsche apologizes to everybody and no one for the bad weather.
Nietzsche says that during his attacks he wants to embrace
everybody in the street and to climb up walls .
When Frau N. arrives he embraces her delightedly. "My dear good
m amma, I am so glad to see you ." After calm discussion about fami
ly affairs , he shouts, "Behold in me the tyrant of Turin! "
I n the train, Nietzsche tells his mother that he had been i n a lunatic
asylum but soon would be alright as he was quite young, only twenty
two . But before long he flies into a rage with her and throws one of
his gloves out the window. She moves into another apartment .
When led into the psychiatric department, he keeps bowing politely.
In June he smashes a window. He thinks his chief warden is
B ismarck. Believing he is being tortured every night, he begs for help.
In mid-August he smashes more window panes, claiming he had
seen the barrel of a rifle behind them.
In mid-February, Nietzsche moves with his mother to Jena. Most
of the time he is childishly docile now , and easily reduced to tears .
In the street Nietzsche would sometimes try to hit dogs or passers-by.
Sometimes he wants to shake hands with strangers in the street .
One morning, in May, 1 890, Nietzsche leaves the house without
his mother. He began to undress on the pavement, wanting to bathe
in a puddle, until a policeman stopped him. Her overriding fear was
that she would lose him once again to the clinic.
In December, 1 890, Nietzsche waits with his mother for Elisabeth
at the railway station. He holds a bunch of roses. At home he seems
not to follow her stories about Paraguay, but listened with pleasure
when she read to him from Zarathustra .
When his mother read to him from the table, he would often lie
next to her on the sofa, holding her right hand pressed against his
25 Pierre Klossowski, Nietzsche: le cercle vicieux (Paris : Mercure de France, 1969) 198.
once wounded chest for hours at a stretch . He would sit for hours
in the armchair facing the window, childishly exclaiming, over and
over again: "I am dead because I am stupid." Or, "I am stupid because
I am dead" ; or, "mehr Licht! " and "I do not like horses."
Correction . He would say "I do not like horses," though he persisted,
despite correction, in saying "ich bebe" - I tremble, I crack- or: I ,
baby. Anyway, he could not be corrected or trained to say it right.
He persisted in saying, for I do not like horses, I do not bebe instead
of "ich liebe ."
(Shame. - Here stands the handsome steed and paws the ground: it
snorts, longs for the gallop and loves him who usually rides him - but
oh shame! his rider cannot mount up on his back today, he is weary. -
This is the shame of the wearied philosopher before his own philosophy.
Daybreak, Book V, § 487)
Barbara Spackman
NIETZSCHE, D'ANNUNZIO, AND THE

SCENE OF CONVALESCENCE
"Questi e il mio pari . . . questi e il fratel mio . . . " So D'Annunzio de

scribed Nietzsche in a poem commemorating his death ("Per la morte
di un distruttore") . A brother, an equal - until quite recently, D'An
nunzio himself seemed the first and last to have believed in this
fraternity. 1 Much critical ink has been spilled in insisting that D'An
nunzio misunderstood the Nietzschean overman , that he
misunderstood The Case of Wagner, in short, that he just didn't get it
right. The terms of the argument seem particularly un-Nietzschean :
who indeed gets Nietzsche - or for that matter D'Annunzio - "right"?
What does a reading of Triorifo della morte as a misunderstanding of
the Nietzschean overman tell us about either D'Annunzio's or Nietz
sche's texts? True, D'Annunzio's citation of Zarathustra in that novel
may seem to encourage a "get it right" approach, though I suspect
that what he did get right was not so much the overman as another
Nietzschean problem: what Gianni Vattimo has described as the
Oedipal structure of time . 2 But I would rather leave behind the ques
tion of right and wrong and take a perhaps more Nietzschean ap-
1 See Maria Teresa Marabini Moevs, Gabriele D'Annunzio e le estetiche delta fine del
secolo (L'Aquila: Japadre, 1976); Paolo Valesio, "Declensions: D'Annunzio After the
Sublime," New Literary History 1 6 ( 1985) 401- 15, and "Il coro degli Agrigentini," Qµader
n i del Vittoriale 36 (1982) 63-92, and Lucia Re, "Gabriele D'Annunzio's Novel Le vergini
delle rocce : 'Una cosa naturale vista in un grande specchio,"' Stanford Italian Review 32
( 1 983) 241-7 1 .
2 See Gianni Vattimo, It soggetto e la maschera: Nietzsche e it problema delta liberazione
(Milan: Bompiani, 1 974) 249-81 .
141
proach: a genealogical one which recognizes D'Annunzio and Nietz

sche as fraternal in their adoption of a rhetoric of sickness, and in
particular in their staging of the scene of convalescence.
Convalescence as the scene of artistic and philosophic creation is
an ideologeme of Decadent texts, a narrative which lies between texts .
The painter Constantin Guys of Baudelaire's Le peintre de la vie moderne
stands as legitimating father of the aesthete Des Esseintes of
Huysmans's A rebours, of the failed poet Andrea Sperelli of D'Annun
zio's 1 889 It piacere, and of the narrator of the 1 886 preface to N ietz
sche's The Gay Science. All are convalescent and participate in what
we might call a Baudelairean rhetoric of sickness. The Baudelairean
convalescent is the site of an intersection between psychology and
physiology; lingering sickness, fevers and congestion are the ground
of a new consciousness, a new interpretation of the body's relation
to thought. In all four of these texts, that attempt at a new interpreta
tion comes into being through a feminization of the male "protagonist"
who thus discovers a ventriloquistic mode of speech in which the body
spoken through is necessarily a "woman's" body. What is at stake, then,
in the D'Annunzio-Nietzsche intertext is not "Nietzsche's influence
on D'Annunzio" but Baudelairean influenza, a rhetoric of sickness
shared by both Nietzsche and D'Annunzio , a common ideologeme
which may encourage us to reconsider D'Annunzio's own description
of his relation to Nietzsche.
Let me begin with a rapid sketch of the narrative structure of the
scene of convalescence. In the second book of Il piacere, Andrea Sperelli
retreats to a locus amoenus, Schifanoia, in order to convalesce after a
duel in which he had, we are told, received a "mortale ferita." The
convalescent is reborn - "la convalescenza e una purificazione e un
rinascimento" ("convalescence is a purification and a rebirth") - and
discovers poetry and his own poetic vocation. This re-discovered voca
tion would seem to replace Sperelli's vocation in Book I as a womaniz
ing dandy:
L'Arte ! L'Arte ! - Ecco !'Amante fedele, sempre giovine, immortale . . . .

Come le sue mani avevan potuto oziare e lascivire su i corpi delle fem
mine dopo aver sentito erompere dalle dita una forma sostanziale.
Come, infine, i suoi sensi avean potuto indebolirsi e pervertirsi nella
bassa lussuria dopo essere stati illuminati da una sensibilita che coglieva
nelle apparenze le linee invisibili, percepiva l'impercettibile, indovinava
i pensieri nascosti della Natura?
Spackman: The Scene ql Convalescence 143
[Art! Art! She is the faithful lover, forever young, immortal. . . . How
-
could his hands have lain idle and lascivious on the bodies of females
after having felt substantial form erupt from his fingers? How, finally,
could his senses have weakened and perverted themselves in base
lasciviousness after having been illuminated by a sensitivity that grasped
invisible lines in appearances ; that perceived the imperceptible, that
divined the hidden thoughts of Nature? ] 3
The lapsed aesthete returns to his true faith . Like St. Augustine,
Sperelli leaves behind him his nugae in order to devote himself to a
"purer'' contemplation: convalescence is a sort of secular conversion .
As Kenneth Burke has noted in his reading of Augustine, the rhetoric
of conversion inevitably evokes its dialectical counterpart- perversion. 4
Sperelli's dallyings - the perversion of his senses - are thus a prereq
uisite to his conversion to art. Yet Sperelli's devoted gaze soon drifts
from Art, the faithful lover, to Maria Ferres, turris ebumea: the ex
pelled woman returns in the sacralized guise of a mother Mary.
Dedication of poems to her similarly drifts towards an apparent ab
dication of poetic voice as the narrative shifts from the third person
to the "I" of Maria Ferres's diary.
This brief and already interpretative summary allows us to note
several characteristics of the convalescent narrative which I must pass
over in haste in order to arrive at the ventriloquist moment. First,
the convalescent is socially and topographically dislocated, and oc
cupies a liminal position even when, as in the case of Constantin Guys,
he is described as the "man of the crowd. " Second, a death of desire
and eviration are occasioned upon passage into the state of con
valescence. This is clearest in Des Esseintes's case where a dinner
mourning the death of his virility is given on the eve of his withdrawal
into solitude, and alluded to in descriptions of the convalescent as
child in Baudelaire and D'Annunzio. Third, woman is expelled from
the scene of convalescence. This expulsion is not, however, the ex
pulsion of her attributes. Indeed, woman is expelled in order to abstract
her qualities and reassign them to the evirated convalescent himself.
3 Gabriele D'Annunzio, Il piacere, in Prose di Romanzi I, 5th ed. (Verona: Mondadori,

1955) 146 . All further references will appear in the text; translation mine.
• See Kenneth Burke's The Rhetoric ofReligion: Studies in Logology ( 1 96 1 ; rpt. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1 970), as well as his article on Djuna Barnes, "Ver
sion, Con-, Per-, and In-: Thoughts on Djuna Barnes's novel Nightwood," in Language
as Symbolic Action (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966) 240-53.
We might say that the old woman is expelled in order that the new
woman be put on, that the converted convalescent assume a feminine
guise. Fourth, the physiological ambiguity of the convalescent opens
the way to figures of androgyny and hermaphroditism : in Baudelaire's
case, to a discussion of the androgyny of genius; in D'Annunzio and
Nietzsche, to the description of poetic and philosophic production as
giving birth.
An element not evident in the Dannunzian summary, but equally
important to the scene of convalescence is discussed by Paul de Man
in his essay on "Literary History and Literary Modernity." In that
essay de Man notes that the scene of convalescence enacts the double
movement of modernity whereby the past is cancelled as diachrony
in order that it become the present:
The human figures that epitomize modernity are defined by experiences
such as childhood or convalescence, a freshness of perception that results
from a slate wiped clear, from the absence of a past that has not yet
had time to tarnish the immediacy of perception (although what is
freshly discovered prefigures the end of this freshness) , of a past that ,
in the case of convalescence, is so threatening that it has to be forgotten. 5
The forgetfulness which characterizes the first moment in Baudelaire's,

Nietzsche's and D'Annunzio's portrayals of convalescence is followed
by a second moment of total, and arbitrary, recall : "Comme il etait
sur le point de tout oublier, il se souvient et veut avec ardeur se
souvenir de tout," writes Baudelaire in Le peintre de la vie moderne. 6 Con
valescence, then, is the scene in which the paradox of modernity is
figured: in the moment in which the writer is most modem , he is also
most determined by his predecessors. 7
We are concerned here with a different kind of doubleness - that
wherein a male voice comes to issue from a "woman's" body. It is
Huysmans's text which provides us with a metaphor with which to
5 Paul de Man, "Literary History and Literary Modernity," Blindness and Insight:
Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press,
1 971) 1 5 7 . De Man discusses Baudelaire's Le peintre de la vie moderne and Nietzsche's
Of the Use and Misuse of History for Life.
6 Charles Baudelaire, Le peintre de la vie moderne, in Oeuvres completes, ed. Y.G. Le
Dantec and Claude Pichois, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1976) 2 ,

690. Unless otherwise indicated, all further references t o this work will refer to the
Pleiade edition and will appear in the text. Translation by Jonathan Mayne , The
Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays (London: Phaidon Press, 1964) .
7 See de Man, Blindness and Insight 1 48 .
Spackman: The Scene of Convalescence 1 45
name this doubleness. Two episodes are of particular interest . The

first is that of Miss Urania: having jogged his memory with a purple
bonbon which contained "une goutte d'essence feminine" ("a drop of
feminine essence") , Des Esseintes reenvisions his encounter with a
muscular American acrobat. Inversion is his fant a sy :
Peu a peu , en meme temps qu' ll l'observait , de singulieres conceptions
naquirent; a mesure qu'il aclmirait sa souplesse et sa force, il voyait
un artificiel changement de sexe se produire en elle; ses singeries
gracieuses, ses mievreries de femelle s'effai;aient de plus en plus, tandis
que se developpaient, a leur place, les charmes agiles et puissantes d'un
male; en un mot, apres avoir tout d' abord ete femme , puis, apres avoir
hesite , apres avoir avoisine l'androgyne, elle semblait se resoudre, se
preciser, devenir completement un homme.
[ Little by little , as he watched her, curious fancies took shape in his

mind. The more he admired her suppleness and strength , the more
he thought he saw an artificial change of sex operating in her; her min
cing movements and feminine affectations became ever less obtrusive ,
and in their place there developed the agile , vigorous charms of a male.
rn: short, after being a woman to begin with, then hesitating in a con·
dition verging on the androgynous , she seemed' to have made up her
mind and become an integral, unmistakable man. )8
Metamorphosis is specular; while the woman becomes a man, Des

Esseintes suffers a sex-change: "il en vint a eprouver, de son cote,
!'impression que lui-meme se feminisait" (A rebours 2 1 1) ("he got to
the point of imagining that he for his part was turning female" [Baldick
1 1 1]) . This metamorphosis seems at first to be an occasion to epater
le bourgeois by a shocking perversion: a dominatrix and an .effeminate
man. Des Esseintes, aroused by this "echange de sexe," is crushed
when his fantasy is deflated by reality: "la transmutation des idees
masculines clans son corps de femme n'existait pas" (A rebours 2 12 )
("no transmutation of masculine ideas into her feminine person had
occurred" [Baldick 1 1 2]) . Miss Urania turns out to be just another
ordinary woman.
But Miss Urania is not just another ordinary woman; this dominatrix
bears the name of one of the Muses, and the "echange de sexe" is
Des Esseintes-the critic's first attempt at poetic creation. The inver
sion of sexual roles is also an inversion of poetic roles; if the female
8 J . K . Huysmans, A rebours, ed. Marc Fumaroli (Paris: Gallimard, 1977) 2 1 0-2 1 1 .
All further references to this edition will appear in the text. Translation by Robert
B aldick, Against Nature ( 1 979; rpt . Middlesex: Penguin, 1959) 1 1 1 .
muse's traditional role is to inspire the male poet, here it is the male
aesthete who would inspire the muse, breathe masculine thoughts into
her. His failure to do so generates the subsequent episode in which
success is grotesquely attained.
Images of other mistresses follow that of Miss Urania, but Des Es
seintes pauses upon the memory of a nameless women, "dont la
monstruosite l'avait tant satisfait pendant des mois" (A rebours 2 13)
("whose monstrous speciality had given him months of wonderful
satisfaction" [Baldick 1 1 3)). Her monstrosity lies in her side-show pro
fession as a ventriloquist, a talent which Des Esseintes is quick to ex
ploit. Intrigued by the erotic potential of such a gift , Des Esseintes
has her memorize a script which triples her monstrosity: the dialogue
between the Chimera and the Sphinx from Flaubert's Tentation de Saint
Antoine. Marble and terracotta statuettes representing the beasts are
placed in the bedchamber for the occasion; then, while the ventrilo
quist projects the carefully rehearsed dialogue into the stone figures,
Des Esseintes makes love to her. Through this ploy, Des Esseintes
does indeed succeed in "transmuting masculine thoughts into a female
body," for while the voice, the material support, is that of the un
named woman, the words are those of Flaubert. The result of this
transmutation is quite literally monstrous, for speech thus seems to
originate in the hybrid creatures. His attempt to invert poetic roles
had been a dismal failure with Miss Urania; now he succeeds vicarious
ly by substituting a stronger poetic voice for his own . Rather than
inspiring his own thoughts into the woman, he inspires the words of
a beloved author into her. Indeed, a doubling occurs in this scene
of ventriloquism so that Flaubert too appears to be a ventriloquist;
just as the woman projects her voice into and through the statuettes,
so Flaubert projects his poetic voice into and through the woman's
body.
For Des Esseintes, this coupling of Flaubert and the woman's body
is a source of erotic titillation, but for the reader it is suggestive in
another sense: ventriloquism, etymologically speech of the stomach
or body, may describe the feminized convalescent's relationship to his
"evirated body." As Baudelaire and D'Annunzio's choice of androgyny
as the poetic state suggests, the convalescent's feminization is not total,
but rather a mixture of masculine and feminine. What is monstrous
about this particular mixture is that its constituent parts are still iden
tifiable : the convalescent does not relinquish his voice . Indeed, pro
jected into and through "his" evirated/feminized body - the woman's
Spackman: The Scene ef Convalescence 1 47
body - it becomes a poetic voice. The relationship between the body

and thought which the convalescent proposes is thus figured as a male
voice and as "idees masculines" issuing from and by means of the
woman's body.
The connection between aesthetic discourse and woman's body is ,
of course, a dauntingly broad one and is by no means limited to Deca
dent texts. The scene of ventriloquism in A rebours brings to mind
a ventriloquist performance of the Enlightenment: Diderot's Les bi
joux indiscrets. There the ventre of ventriloquism is taken quite literally
for the speakers of that text are the vaginas of the harem. Diderot
himself might be said to be the ventriloquist in this case, projecting
his narrative voice into and through the vaginas, for the woman's body
here serves as material support for Diderot's discourse on aesthetics .
But what is specific t o Decadent texts - and in particular, t o the scene
of convalescence - is that the 'speaker himself is dressed in a feminized
body. Woman is expelled from the scene of convalescence precisely
in order that the convalescent occupy her body, that he speak from
her body.
In the texts of both Nietzsche and Baudelaire , a definition of woman
as all surface and no interiority facilitates the convalescent's occupa
tion of her. In a breathtaking sentence, Baudelaire describes "la
femme" :
L'etre qui est, pour la plupart des hommes , la source des plus vives,
et meme, disons-le a la honte des voluptes philosophiques, des plu s
durables jouissances; l'etre vers qui ou au profit de qui tendent tous
leurs efforts ; cet etre terrible et incommunicable comme Dieu (avec cette
difference que l'infini ne se communique pas parce qu'il aveuglerait et
ecraserait le fini, tandis que l'etre dont nous parlons n'est peut-etre in
comprehensible que parce qu'il n'a rien a communiquer), cet etre en
qui Joseph de M aistre voyait un bel animal dont les graces egayaient et
rendaient plus facile le jeu serieux de la politique; pour qui et par qui
se font et defont les fortunes; pour qui, mais surtout par qui les artistes
et les poetes composent leurs plus delicats bijoux; de qui derivent les
plaisirs les plus enervants et les douleurs les plus fecondantes, la femme,
en un mot, n'est pas seulement pour !'artiste en general, et pour M . G .
e n particulier, l a femelle de l'homme. (Le peintre 7 1 3)
[The being who, for the majority of men, is the source of the liveliest
and even - be it said to the shame of philosophic pleasures- of the most
lasting delights; the being towards whom , or on behalf of whom , all
their efforts are directed; that being as terrible and incommunicable
as the Deity (with the difference that the Infinite does not communicate
because it would thereby blind and overwhelm the finite, whereas the
creature of whom we are speaking is perhaps only incomprehensible
because it has nothing to communicate); that being in whom Joseph
De Maistre saw a graceful animal whose beauty enlivened and made
easier the serious game of politics; for whom, and through whom, for
tunes are made and unmade; for whom, but above all through whom,
artists and poets create their most exquisite jewels; the source of the
most exhausting pleasures and the most productive pains - Woman,
in a word, for the artist in general and Monsieur G. in particular, is
far more than just the female of man. (Mayne 293)]
Baudelaire's emphases on "un bel animal" and "par qui" underline the
process we have been describing. Though the expulsion of woman
in Le peintre is less dramatic than in Itpiacere, it takes place nonetheless
as a denial of her existence as a subject or as an agent in the world
of art. The contrast between the two uses for "par qui" is striking:
fortunes may be made and unmade by the woman as an agent, but
works of art are composed by the artist who expresses himself through,
by means of, the woman. A denial of consciousness ("un bel animal")
is necessary in order that the woman become a vehicle , a body emp
tied of spiritual content. A creature who "perhaps" has nothing to com
municate becomes the artist's principal means of communication by
lending her attributes to one who, presumably, may render them con
scious. His poetic voice, his visual message is transmitted through
this body.
In the case of Constantin Guys, immersion in the mundus muliebris
is crucial for the attainment of his goal, the representation of modern
ity : "11 s'agit, pour lui, de degager de la mode ce qu'elle peut contenir
de poetique clans l'historique, de tirer l'eternel du transitoire" (Le peintre
694) ("He makes it his busirtess to extract from fashion whatever ele
ment it may contain of poetry within history, to distill the eternal from
the transitory" [Mayne 12]). As a concretization of "le transitoire, le
fugitif," fashion and clothing play an important role in Guys's proj
ect. Indeed, the absence of the transitory element is figured as an
absence of clothing, as a naked woman: "En le supprimant, vous
tombez forct�ment clans le vide d'une beaute abstraite et indefinissable,
comme celle de l'unique femme avant le premier peche" (Le peintre
695) ("By neglecting it, you cannot fail to tumble into the abyss of
an abstract and indeterminable beauty, like that of the first woman
before the fall of man" [Mayne 13]). Constantin Guys, then, assumes
Spackman: The Scene of Convalescence 149
both a robe and role de femme, and appears not as an Achilles who
dramatically rips off his womanly disguise, as Michel Butor has sug
gested, but as a ventriloquist.9 The woman of"L'eloge du maquillage"
(section XI) is, like Guys, an expert in the art of painting; her can
vas is her body, her goal to use artifice to improve upon nature:
Ainsi, si je suis bien compris, la peinture du visage ne doit pas etre
employee clans le but vulgaire, inavouable, d'imiter la belle nature, et
de rivaliser avec la jeunesse . . . . Qui oserait assigner a l'art la fonction
sterile d'imiter la nature? (Le peintre 717)
[Thus, if you will understand me aright, face-painting should not be
used with the vulgar, unavowable object of imitating fair Nature and
of entering into competition with youth. . . . Who would assign to art
the sterile function of imitating nature? (Mayne 34)]
An artist in her own right, the cosmetician serves as a model for
Constantin Guys in two senses; her painting prescribes an aesthetic
at the same time as she and her painting pose for his contemplation.
But ifthe woman is already a work of art, has already improved upon
nature, then what aesthetic governs Guys's representation of her? To
which of the age-old camps- mimesis or cosmesis - does Guys belong?
Does he improve upon artifice as the woman improved upon nature,
or is he guided by an aesthetic of imitation which Baudelaire holds
in contempt? The text provides no answer, but it would seem that
Guys imitates artifice: "les artistes qui se sont particulierement appli
ques a fetude de cet etre enigmatique raffolent autant de tout le mun
dus muliebris que de la femme elle-meme" (Le peintre 7 1 4) ("Those ar
tists who have made a particular study of this enigmatic being dote
no less on all the details of the mundus muliebris than on Woman herself "
[Mayne 30]). While both Butor and Baudelaire seem to understand
mundus muliebris as "the woman's world," the expression may also refer,
as it does in the Book of Esther, to "the woman's cosmetics."10 It is,
9 See Michel Butor, Histoire extraordinaire: Essai SUT un reve de Baudelaire (Paris :
Gallimard, 1961) 86.
1 0 Baudelaire glosses the French monde as mundus: "Enfin, je veux dire que le gout
p recoce du monde feminin, mundi muliebris, de tout cet appareil ondoyant, scintillant
et parfume, fait des genies superieurs. . . " (le peintre 499). The biblical mundus muliebris,
instead, refers quite specifically to ointments: "His ita gestis, postquam regis Assueri
indignatio deferbuerant, recordatus est Vashti, et quae fecisset, vel quae esset: Dix
eruntque pueri regis, ac ministri eius: Quaerantur regi puellae virgines ac speciosae ,
et mittantur qui considerent per universas provincias puellas speciosas et virgines:
then, the woman's art of painting which inspires Guys, in which he

must immerse himself and throu gh which ("par qui") , finally, his
message is transmitted. If "la peinture du visage" is the model for his
aesthetic, then Guy's paintings of"les femmes et les filles" speak through
those painted faces and ornamented bodies, through n ature improved
by artifice . His poetic "voice" is projected through that woman's
body, which supposedly had nothing to communicate. Here, with the
aid of the convalescent-artist, that body begins to speak and turns
out to have everything to communicate. The woman is a work of art,
but a mute one : "C'est une espece d'idole , stupide peut-etre," a sort
of dummy awaiting animation and occupation by the convalescent .
The convalescent's feminization and the artist's androgyny are thus
the preparation for, and legitimation of, an act of ventriloquism .
In the preface to the second edition of The Gay Science, it is Nietzsche
himself who poses as convalescent. Such a pose is, of course, not unique
to this preface; in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche presents himself as a life-long
convalescent, "Der Genesende" is one of Zarathustra's incarnations,
and the opposition between health and sickness furnishes rhetorical
scaffolding in almost all of his works. 1 1 I speak therefore of the 1 886
preface as a moment in Nietzsche's writings which depends upon and
recalls other moments, not as a synecdoche for the opera omnia but
as the most powerful mise en scene of the scene of convalescence.
The Nietzschean convalescent of this preface is strikingly
Baudelairean. Though the expulsion of woman does not strictly speak
ing occur in these few pages, if we read the preface against the
background of Nietzsche's other writings, against the background of
Nietzsche's repeated stabs at "abortive females" and "hysterical blue
stockings," at women young and old, we can say that the expulsion
of woman is a pre-condition of Nietzsche's discourse . i z The accom
panying step - the liquidation of the crowd- is a similar pre-condition,
et adducant eas ad civitatem Susan, et tradant eas i n domum feminarum sub manu
Egei eunuchi, qui est praepositus et custos mulierum regiarium: et accipiant mun
dum muliebrem, et caetera ad usus necessaria" (Liber Esther 2, Biblia Sacra iuxta
Vulgateam Clementinam [Madrid : La Editorial Catolica, 1977]) .
1 1 For a discussion of the rhetoric of sickness in Nietzsche, see Pierre Klossowski,
Nietzsche et le cercle vicieux (Paris: Mercure de France, 1969). The "Lombrosian" response
to Nietzsche's rhetoric of sickness and biographical illness is analyzed by Sander
Gilman in his article on Nietzsche as "pathogen" : "The Nietzsche Murder Case,"
New Literary History 1 4 . 2 ( 1 983) 359-72, now in Difference and Pathology (Ithaca: Cor
nell University Press, 1985).
1 2 The function and significance of "woman" in Nietzsche's writings has been the
subject of a number of recent essays. Those to which I am most indebted are: Eric
and is merely alluded to as the "radical retreat into solitude as a self

defense against a contempt for men,"13 from which the convalescent
slowly emerges. These two steps taken, the narrative moves rapidly
to the feminization of the convalescent and his ventriloquizing speech.
The convalescences of Constantin Guys and of Andrea Sperelli are
the scene of artistic creation; Nietzsche's convalescence is the scene
and source of philosophic creation. Convalescence is the preface to
the work; it is placed, mimetically, before its product:
Gratitude pours forth continually, as if the unexpected had just

happened - the gratitude of a convalescent -for convalescence [Genesung]
was unexpected. "Gay Science" : that signifies the Saturnalia of a spirit
who has patiently resisted a terrible, long pressure - patiently, severe
ly, coldly, without submitting but also without hope - and who is now
all at once attacked by hope, the hope for health , and the intoxication
of convalescence. (GS 32)
As in the texts of Baudelaire and D'Annunzio , convalescence is linked
to intoxication as well as to rebirth and childhood: "one returns
newborn . . . with merrier senses, with a second dangerous innocence
in joy, more childlike" (GS 37). And, once again, the convalescent
occupies a space in-between , an interstice. The Gay Science, Nietzsche
tells us, contains April weather. As a month of passage between
seasons, April is most appropriate to the convalescent's passage be
tween health and sickness. Interesting enough, April and September
are described in Il piacere as "i mesi neutri" ("the neuter mo nths") ;
Sperelli's preference is for the month in which his own convalescence
takes place: "II settembre. E piu feminino . . . " (September . . . It is more
feminine") (It piacere 1 78) . Nietzsche, however, changes the terms of
the expected analogy, for in his text April marks not a passage from
the winter behind (or sickness) to the summer ahead (or health), but
a moment between different sicknesses , between one winter and
another: "one is instantly reminded no less of the triumph over winter
that is coming, must come, and perhaps has already come" (GS 32) .
Blonde! , "Nietzsche: Life as Metaphor," The New Nietzsche: Contemporary Styles of In
terpretation , ed. David B . Allison (New York: Dell, 1 977); Jacques Derrida, Eperons:
Les styles de Nietzsche (Paris : Flammarion, 1978); Sarah Kofman, Nietzsche et la scene
philosophique (Paris : Union Generale d'Editions, 1979); and Luce Irigaray, Amante
marine: De Friedrich Nietzsche (Paris : Editions de Minuit, 1 980).
13 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, ed. and tr. Walter Kaufmann (New York:
Vintage Books, 1 974) 3 3 . All further references to this work (hereafter GS) will ap
pear in the text; Nietzsche's emphases.
Thus, though the convalescent experiences a "hope for health ," the
term "summer" which might fulfill that hope and represent such a stable
state is absent. It is not health which is desirable , but the perpetua
tion of convalescence. A stable state of health would represent precisely
that which Nietzsche attacks- the immobilization of perspective and
consequent scleroticization of values:
You see that I do not want to take leave ungratefully from that time
of severe sickness whose profits I have not yet exhausted even today.
I am very conscious of the advantages that my fickle health gives me
over all robust squares. A philosopher who has traversed many kinds
of health , and keeps traversing them , has passed through an equal
number of philosophies; he simply cannot keep from transposing his states
every time into the most spiritual form and distance: this art of
transfiguration is philosophy. (GS 35)
The convalescent-philosopher moves along the vector between "kinds

of health"; like Nietzsche's skater, dancer and tightrope walker, he
never touches stable ground, never stops at either pole , never adopts
a rigidly fixed perspective. Philosophy occupies this space in-between,
the space of convalescence .
It is by traversing kinds of health that Nietzsche comes to see all
previous philosophy as "a misunderstanding of the body" and, as Eric
Blondel puts it, as the equivalent of a hysterical symptom, of the body's
conversion into language . 14 The valorization of convalescence is thus
an important epistemological move - the thematization of the body
and its symptoms aims to establish a new , non-hysterical relation
ship between the body and thought. Rather than being tyrannized
by the ways in which "the sick body and its needs unconsciously urge,
push and lure the spirit" (GS 34), the convalescent-philosopher would
give voice to these urgings. Yet in order to hear and give voice to
these whisperings, the convalescent must, paradoxically, occupy the
hysterical body par excellence: the woman's body. Giving voice is figured
as giving birth: the convalescent-philosopher is an incarnation of what
Nietzsche calls the "mother-type":
We philosophers are not free to divide body from soul as the people
do; we are even less free to divide soul from spirit. We are not thinking
frogs , nor objectifying and registering mechanisms with their innards
14 "As a sickness of culture, man is born in and by bad conscience which, itself,
ushers in this meta-phorical, quasi hysterical, and displaced language: it is the body's
symptomatic conversion into language" (Blondel 1 5 1 ) .
removed: constantly w e have to give birth t o our thoughts out of our

pain and, like mothers (miltterlich), endow them with all we have ofblood,
heart, fire, pleasure, passion, agony, conscience , fate and catastrophe .
(GS 35)
That the figuration of the phi)osopher as mother is linked to the scene

o f convalescence is confirmed by passages in both The Gay Science and
The Genealogy of Morals, where Nietzsche makes explicit yet another
stage in the convalescent's feminization. The convalescent's otium turns
out to be a lying-in, for one of the sicknesses from which he recovers
is that of the bad conscience: "The bad conscience is an illness, there
is no doubt about that, but an illness as pregnancy is an illness ."15
True, this sort of pregnancy does not always receive a positive prog
nosis, but in the case of the artist and philosopher - of "male
mothers" - such pregnancy is the matrix of a new art and philosophy
in The Gay Science. The philosopher's spiritual activity is described in
terms of and inscribed in the body of the woman, the very body which
is an object of vituperation and horror in Nietzsche's writings. Once
again, woman is expelled so that her attributes might be parcelled
out; her mothering function is appropriated by the philosopher as a
figure for an altered relationship between the body and thought .
"Woman" is a particularly seductive ground for this metaphorical
operation: vituperation of women frequently relies upon a rhetorical
move whereby manifestations of woman's body are said to be "all in
the mind," while the activity of her mental faculties is said to be con
trolled by her body. The mother is thus chosen to represent the new
philosopher not only because of her creative fecundity, but also because
of this supposed, peculiarly female, interanimation between mind and
body.
The "children" born of the convalescent-philosopher's pregnancy
are his truths- not the truth but a number of truths born of his mobile
perspective. In relation to traditional notions of truth as an essence
to be sought behind appearance, these truths must appear to be un
truths, little more than personal whimsy. As Derrida has noted in
Eperons, woman, as all surface and no interiority, thus comes to repre
sent both the alluring deceptiveness of the notion of truth as essence,
1 5 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, tr. Walter Kaufmann and R . J .
Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1 969) 88. The genealogy of Nietzsche's
discourse on pregnancy can, of course, be traced to Plato's Symposium, where it is
Diotima (in yet another act of ventriloquism) who expounds upon the pregnancy
of the soul.
and the new philosopher's truths. 16 So it is that at the end of the 1 886
preface, the philosopher ventriloquizes:
We no longer believe that truth remains truth when the veils are
withdrawn ; we have lived too much to believe this. Today we consider
it a matter of decency not to wish to see everything naked, or to be
present at everything, or to understand everything.
"Is it true that God is present everywhere?" a little girl asked her
mother; "I think that's indecent" - a hint for philosophers! One should
have more respect for the bashfulness with which nature has hidden
behind riddles and uncertainties. Perhaps truth is a woman who has
reasons for not letting us see her reasons? Perhaps her name is- to speak
Greek- Baubo? (GS 38)
The convalescent-philosopher's truth is spoken through the woman's

body: Baubo , the personification of the female genitals, is the site of
knowledge. It is this act of ventriloquism which Blondel seems to have
in mind when he characterizes "Nietzsche's 'ontology' as feminine ,
or even as gynecological, for this ontology speaks of being as a woman
who has no bein�' ( 1 56) . Blondefs phrase "as a woman" can, it seems
to me, be read as alluding to both a metaphorical and a metonymic
sense, woman is both metaphor of being and the gender adopted by
the philosopher when he speaks of being.
Andrea Sperelli's ventriloquist moment is, like Nietzsche's, situated
at the end of the narrative of convalescence. But unlike Nietzsche and
Constantin Guys, Sperelli is not "toujours, spirituellement, a fetat
du convalescent" (Le peintre 690). In books 3 and 4, Sperelli will return
to a vita del piacere, to that life of flirtations and seductions which had
ended, temporarily, in the "mortale ferita'' which had necessitated his
convalescence. After the curtains dose upon the scene of convalescence,
he will once again feel "come un malato che abbia perduto ogni fiducia
di guarire" ("like a sick man who has lost all hope of cure") (ll piacere
258). The concluding section of Book 2 , then, represents the culmina
tion of Sperelli's convalescence and of his unstable conversion to the
ivory tower of art. It is here that we find the diary of a turris eburnia
and androgyne, Maria Ferres.
Maria Ferres's diary has been variously de scr ibed as the weakest
point in the novel, as a discordant note in the stylistic register of ll
piacere, or as an anachronistic and artificial use of a technique of the
1 6 See Eperons 39: "II n'y a pas de verite de la femme mais c'est p arce que cet ecart
abyssal de la verite, cette non-verite est la verite. Femme est un nom de cette non
verite de la verite "
.
eighteenth-century novel. 1 7 But there is something more disquieting

about the diary than possible lack of skill on the part of the author .
The diary clears a particular space for a voice which receives special
descriptive attention : "Era una voce ambigua; direi quasi bisessuale;
duplice, androginica, di due timbri" ("It was an ambigouos voice , I
would almost say bisexual: ' double, androgynous, of two timbres")
(ll piacere 1 69): Maria thus has interesting potential, both as a ven
triloquist and for a ventriloquist, potential which Sperelli cannot resist
exploiting in Book 4 .
"II timbro feminile appunto ricordava l'altra" ("The feminine tim
bre recalled the other woman") (fl piacere 1 69), the feminine timbre
which so reminds Andrea of Elena Muti supplies the foundation for
the climactic episode of Book 4 . Outside the scene of convalescence,
the ex-convalescent does not attempt to project his own voice through
the woman but rather the voice of another woman . Sperelli is not
as unabashed as Des Esseintes, but his game is the same; rather than
simply handing Maria a dialogue to memorize, he coaxes her into
following his script. Maria remains unaware of the part she plays in
this "staged scene" and thus unknowingly repeats the words Elena had
pronounced on the occasion of her first tryst with Andrea.18 Elena's
voice and Elena's words issuing from Maria's body sends Sperelli in
to an erotic fury, much as Flaubert's dialogue issuing from the ven
triloquist had excited Des Esseintes. His ardor is checked only by a
tragic slip of the tongue when, in the climactic episode, he calls out
Elena's name in the most inappropriate of intimate circumstances .
This slip of the tongue is , of course, tragic for Andrea only insofar
as Maria is unwilling to continue with the script. The voice of Elena
issuing from the body of Maria is not merely a substitute for Elena,
but an exquisitely tantalizing object of desire in itself. Only Maria
with-the-voice-of-Elena can satisfy Sperelli's penchant for combining
the "sacred'' with the "profane." Thus, at the end of the novel Sperelli
has fully exploited the "timbro feminile" of Maria's voice by trans
forming her into an unknowing and unwilling ventriloquist; Elena' s
tone becomes dominant when Maria assumes Elena's position in amor
prefano .
What becomes of"Il timbro maschile, basso e un poco velato" ("The
m asculine timbre, low and slightly veiled'') (Il piacere 1 69)? It is this
1 7 See, for example, Eurialo De Michelis Tutto D'Annunzio (Milan : Feltrinelli, 1960)
80.
1 8 For a discussion of this episode as a "staged scene," see Paolo Valesio, "Genealogy
of a Staged Scene: Orlando furioso V," Yale Italian Studies 1 ( Spring 1980) 5-3 1 .
voice which recounts, I suggest, the story of the amor sacra between
Andrea and Maria. The record of her stay at Schifanoia, Maria's diary
is also the account of her gradual surrender to Andrea's charms. What
at first seemed a change of focus in the narrative turns out to be a
sharpening of focus on Sperelli, for the Count's opinions, tastes , and
professions of love are so faithfully recorded that the diary is, for the
most part, a repetition of the narrative which precedes it. Maria , the
ivory tower, begins to lean when she admits to deriving pleasure from
this repetition: "Se ci fosse un mezzo, potrei riprodurre ogni modula
zione della sua voce" ("If there were a means, I could reproduce every
modulation of his voice") (Il piacere 2 14). What is added is corrobora
tion of the emotions already expressed by Andrea; when Maria notes
that "la sua voce e come l'eco dell'anima mia" ("his voice is like the
echo of my soul") (Il piacere 269), it is because her voice is, in fact,
the echo of his. Her diary is the fullfillment of Sperelli's goal:
Egli voleva possedere non il corpo ma l'anima, di quella donna; e

possedere l'anima intera, con tutte le tenerezze, con tutte le gioie, con
tutti i timori, con tutte le angosce, con tutti i sogni, con tutta quanta
insomma la vita dell'anima; e poter dire: - Io sono la vita della sua
vita. (/l piacere 180)
[ He wanted to possess not the body but the soul of that woman, to
possess her entire soul, with all its tenderness, all its joys, all its fears
and anguish and dreams, with all the life of the soul and be able to
say: - I am the life of her life.]
These are exactly the terms in which the narrator presents Maria
Ferres's diary. The diary, then, bears witness to Maria's possession
by Andrea, a possession which, as the phrase suggests, verges on the
demonic. Possession is characterized as the repetition of the same
words, sentiments and desires which Andrea had used and expressed;
the more Maria's voice resembles Andrea's, the more complete
his possession of her. His occupation of her is total when she makes
it possible for him to say, "Io sono la vita della sua vita":
- Quando , sul limite del bosco , egli colse questo fiore e me l'offerse,
non lo chiamai Vita delta mia vita?
Quando ripassammo pel viale delle fontane, d'innanzi a quella fon
tana, dove egli prima aveva parlato, non lo chiamai Vita delta mia vita?
Quando tolse la ghirlanda dall;Erma e la rese a mia figlia, non mi
fece intendere che la Donna inalzata ne' versi era gia decaduta, e che
io sola, io sola ero la sua speranza? Ed io non lo chiamai Vita delta mia
vita? (It piacere 209)
[ When, at the edge of the woods, he picked this flower and offered
-
it to me, did I not call him Life of my life?

When we returned by the fountain path , in front of that fountain
where he had first spoken, did I not call him Life of my life?
When he took the garland from the bust and gave it to my daughter ,
did he not give me to understand that the Woman glorified in verse
had already fallen, and that I alone was his hope? And did I not call
him Life of nry life?]
Andrea thus succeeds in ventriloquizing; if the feminine timbre is that

of Elena, the masculine timbre is that of Andrea himself. Read against
the background of the convalescences of Guys and Nietzsche, Sperelli's
erotic success is a measure of his artistic failure; the masculine ideas
which he succeeds in transmuting into the woman's body are con
cupiscent rather than aesthetic. Maria Ferres's diary thus appears to
be soundly motivated predsely as testimony to Sperelli's failure as
an artist, to his failure to discover a new relationship between the
body and thought.
For Sperelli, then, occupation of the woman's body for initially poetic
ends leads to ventriloquism as a form of seduction, while the
Nietzschean convalescent occupies the woman's body in order to avoid
seduction, both sexual and epistemological, and thereby arrive at a
new philosophy whose mode of expression is ventriloquistic . Neither
D'Annunzio nor Nietzsche could have known the other's text, and
yet these readings are possible only when their texts are read as in
terpretations of each other: as brothers , as equals.
David L. Miller
NIETZSC HE'S HORSE AND OTHER

TRACINGS OF THE GODS
The animals are their [ . . . ] shadows.

- C .G. Jung1
Under normal circumstances, it would certainly be appropriate to

clarify poor pronoun reference, as in the epigram taken from the
autobiography of C .G. Jung, placing a gloss in square brackets to
aid the reader . But our time's circumstances are hardly normal , and
J amesJoyce has told us to "wipe our glosses with what we know'' (Fin-
negans Wake 3 0 4)
·
.
Jung had been speaking about the gods, and in other moments ,
perhaps , the epigram should read, "The animals are the shadows of
the gods." But what we know, as did Holderlin , concerning our pres
ent vocation ofpoiesis, is that . bis Fehl Gottes hilft, "sometimes God's
. .
absence helps" ("Dichterberuf " 1 38), and that our task is to attend
the "traces" (die Spuren) of the gods that have deserted human attempts
to confine them within syntactic brackets (Heidegger, Holzwege 250f) .
The times are paratactic, gappy. We are left with the animals and
our poor pronouns (see Rasula). And these may well suffice.
That the animals may be more than sufficient was Heidegger's
testimony in his essay on "Zarathustra's Animals." On Heidegger's
view it is important, not orily not to inflate the animals by identify
ing them with divinities, but also not to "take them home with us [mor
tals] and proceed to d_omesticate them'' ( 4 7) . Heidegger gives reason:
1 This quotation i s from Memories, Dreams, Reflections 2 1 6 .
159
"They are alien to all that is domesticated and usual, all that is 'familiar'
in the petty sense of the word. These . . . animals define for the first
time the loneliest loneliness . . . . Yet in our loneliest loneliness [vacated
by the gods] the most hair-raising and hazardous things are loosed
upon us and on our task . . . . To hold out in loneliest loneliness does
not mean to keep these . . . animals as company or as pleasant pastime;
it means to possess the force that will enable one to remain true to
oneself in their [the animals] proximity and to prevent them from
fleeing" (47f) .
H eidegger was tracing the eagle and the serpent of Zarathustra,
whereas we are attending the horse at Torino as a tracer of Nietzsche's
divine madness. But the strategy is not dissimilar. Heidegger senses
that "Zarathustra's animals are . . . saying from out of their essential
natures what is essential, and saying it with growing lucidity through
the palpable presence of sensuous imagery." "Sense images," Heidegger
notes, "speak only to those who possess the constructive energy to give
them shape, so that they make sense. As soon as the poetic force . . .
wanes, the emblems turn mute" (48) - like the coachman's horse! The
animal is present (and the god in the trace?) as long as the poetic is.
And the poetic is present so long as the animal is, so long as we can
embrace the horse , and prevent it from fleeing.2
But how shall we obtain the word of the horse concerning the crucial
event at Torino? How shall we obtain the horse's sense? Has not the
horse turned mute and fled?
The biographer's word is not helpful. It carries no trace of the divine
in its tale of the animal . Ronald H ayman - to give one typical and
certainly not irresponsible sample- reports : "On the morning of 3
January [ 1 889) Nietzsche had just left his lodgings when he saw a
cab-driver beating a horse in the Piazza Carlo Alberto . Tearfully, the
philosopher flung his arms around the animal's neck, and then col
lapsed" (334f) . It was the beginning of Nietzsche's insanity. As
Overbeck wrote: "His madness - and no one had closer experience
of his outbreak than I did - had been as abruptly catastrophic as I
2 See the remarkable essay on the relation of the bestial and the poetic by Patricia
Cox, "Adam Ate From The Animal Tree." This article and the chapter by James
Hillman, "The Animal Kingdom,'' have served the present writer as true "horses
of instruction" (Blake) . Compare also Rilke's saying: "Before one can write a single
verse, one must get to know the animals" (Notebo oks 26); and Norman 0. Brown's
aphorism: "Turning and turning in the animal belly . . . . The way out: the poem"
(Love's Body 56); and Denise Levertov, "Horses with Wings."
Miller: Nietzsche's Horse 161
originally believed" (qtd. in Hayman 334) . This comes from Nietz

sche's friend.
But what of the horse? Did not the horse have closer experience
of Nietzsche's outbreak than Overbeck ever could have? How can we
hear it from the horse and achieve the animal's sensibility? - like Rilke
seeing with the eyes of a dog (Elegies 67ff, 1 10) .
The hunch from Heidegger is that animal-utterance displays itself
in the poetic voice, just as for Holderlin the trace of the obscure gods
dichterisch wohnet . . . auf dieser Erde, "dwells poetically on the earth"
(H6lderlin, "In lieblicher Blaue" 246; Hopper, "Naming of the Gods").
So, following this clue, a poet is petitioned. The fictive (?) tale of Milan
Kundera contains a difference.
Nietzsche leaving his hotel in Turin. Seeing a horse and a coachman
beating it with a whip, Nietzsche went up to the horse and, before the
coachman's very eyes, put his arms around the horse's neck and burst
into tears. That took place in 1889, when Nietzsche, too , had removed
himself from the world of people . In other words, it was at the time
when his mental illness had just erupted . But for that very reason I
feel his gesture has broad implications: Nietzsche was trying to apologize
to the horse for Descartes. ( Unbearable Lightness 290)
If Nietzsche was apologizing to the horse, not merely for the coachman,
but for Descartes (who had the view of animals as machinae animatae,
which denies soul to animals), then, not only may the coachman have
been beating a dead horse, but Nietzsche's madness may have been
long in preparation and not so sudden as his friend and his biographer
may have thought. They, of course, were not viewing the incident
with horse-sense.
But how did the novelist know what Nietzsche said to the horse?
There were only two witnesses, and Nietzsche himself did not speak
about the incident. He joined the muteness of the animal and the
divine . Kundera must have gotten it from the horse's mouth, seeing
it with animal imagination, animated by the anima of the animal, from
whose perspective it is Descartes who is the "dead horse ," not even
worth beating. The coachman must not have heard of Owen Barfield's
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Dead Horses .
James Hillman has aroused suspicion that Nietzsche's Untergang may
be, not only not sudden, but also considerably longer in preparation
than just from tJi.e time of Descartes. Hillman indicts the Christian
Church Fathers and the Stoics in his case against the degradation of
the soul of the animal and the animal of the human soul ("The Animal
Kingdom" 305-3 1 0) . Surely the Anti-Christianism is relevant .

Nietzsche had begun The Antichrist in early September of 1 888, seven
teen days before moving back to Torino, and just four months before
embracing his horse. But it may be that the connection with Stoicism
is even more to the point. Though Nietzsche had launched a major
polemic against the Stoics in Beyond Good and Evil, XI, and in Daybreak,
C IX, he had also, and at the same time in Beyond Good and Evil, iden
tified himself as the last of the Stoics, saying: "We last Stoics!" ( 1 55) .
Perhaps a comparison with Marcus Aurelius could be instructive.
It is, of course, absurd to juxtapose Marcus Aurelius and Nietzsche.

The passionate , Dionysian animal-spirit is surely incomparable to
Marcus' meditations on "sobriety'' (8, 3 1 ) and his dictum to "show
no trace of any passion" (5) . But, on the other hand, in the very text
where Nietzsche says "we last Stoics," the human virtue of "honesty"
( Redlichkeit) is praised as fundamental to human' quality, not at all
unlike Marcus' identification of "honesty" (euthys) .
(Nietzsche) : Honesty, supposing that this is our virtue from which we

cannot get away, we free spirits- well , let us work on it with all our
malice and love and not weary of "perfecting'' ourselves in our virtue,
the only one left us. May its splendor remain spread out one day like
a gilded blue mocking evening light over this aging culture and its musty
and gloomy seriousness! (Beyond Good and Evil 1 55)
(Marcus) : How rotten and spurious is the man who says: "I have decid
ed to be straightforward with you." What are you doing, fellow? You
"need not declare this beforehand; the facts speak for themselves. It need
not be stamped on the forehead. Honesty is at once clear from the tone
of voice and the look of the eyes , just as a loved one at once knows
all from the glance of his lovers . . . . The good, simple , kindly man looks
these qualities; they are seen at once. (Meditations 1 1 5)
Furthermore, for Marcus, as for Nietzsche, this quality of honesty

involves the person in a "heroic" selfhood. Zarathustra speaks strongly
against a rejection of"selfishness" (Selbstsuchen, "a seeking of self," 190f),
just as Marcus urged as a primary vocation the "practice of looking
at the naked self " (94) . Both - to use Nietzsche's words - "pronounced
selfishness blessed, the wholesome, healthy selfishness that wells from
a powerful soul" (Zarathustra 1 90) .
But, as Nietzsche asked: "What ultimately do .we know of ourselves?
And how the spirit that leads us would like to be called? . . . And how
many spirits do we harbor?" (Beyond Good and Evil 1 56) .
In the answers to the questions Nietzsche puts concerning

Selbstsuchen, Nietzsche and Marcus Aurelius again agree. For both,
the via longissima is indicated by the vertical metaphor of depth, a figure
to which we , after Freud and Jung, are no strangers , even if the ex
perience remains, as for Nietzsche and Marcus, alien . Zarathustra's
words are by now familiar: "Like you, I must go undergo down, as
is said by man, to whom I want to descend . . . . Behold, this cup wants
to become empty again, and Zarathustra wants to become man
again . . . . I love those who do not know how to live, except by going
under, for they are those who cross over" (Zarathustra 10, 1 5) ; and,
in the preface to Daybreak ( 1 ) , Nietzsche writes: "In this book you will .
discover a 'subterranean man' at work, one who tunnels and mines
and undermines . You will see him - presupposing you have eyes
capable of seeing this work in the depths . . . " (compare Krell, "Descen
sional Reflection").
How very much like Marcus is Nietzsche's location of the self's
virtuous dislocation! Here are the words of the earlier "Stoic" : "Dig
down within yourself, where the source of goodness is ever ready to
gush forth, if you always dig deeply" (Meditations 70) . Further, there
is the advice from Marcus to "withdraw continually" and to "find a
retreat within yourself " (25) . And, perhaps most striking are the words
which come late in the Meditations, and which sound as if Nietzsche
were picking up cues from this very text. "The time left to you is short.
Live it as on a mountain" ( f02) - Zarathustra's mountain, no doubt!
The matter of Selbstsuchen's "loneliest loneliness" is, however, not
unsubtle, and Walter Kaufmann's translation of the term by the
English word "selfishness" is likely misleading. On the precision of
the subtlety, also , Marcus and "the last Stoic" agree . Selbstsuchen's way
of depth is not a narcissistic knuckling under to ego and its -ism .
Another self is involved . Nietzsche says it in this lexicon: "This is the
soul's secret: only when the hero has abandoned her, she is approached
in a dream by the overhero" (Zarathustra 1 19) . Behind the "instruments
and toys" of ego "lies the self," "an unknown sage" (34) . Indeed, "your
self laughs at your ego and at its bold leaps," for it is not the ego but
"your self [that] wants to go under'' (35) .
Marcus' lexicon is different, but the fantasy is shared. The earlier
Stoic calls the Other self by the Greek word Mgemonikon, "the direc
ting mind within us" (Meditations 90). "What can help us on our way?"
asks Marcus, and then he responds: " . . . guarding our inner spirit
[ daimon]" ( 1 7) . How different this is from the egoist! "Nothing is more
wretched than the man who runs around in circles busying himself
with all kinds of things - investigating things below the earth, as the
saying goes - always looking for signs of what his neighbors are feel
ing and thinking. He does not realize that it is enough to be concerned
with the spirit within oneself and genuinely to serve it'' ( 1 5). In
fact, Marcus approaches Nietzsche's own diction on this matter of
another self when he writes: "The tantrums and toys of children . . .
make the story of visits to the underworld stike us more vividly" (90) .
In the Stoical passage on "honesty" (Redlichkeit) in Beyond Good and
Evil, Nietzsche had intuited that the way of crossing over by going
under may require that we "come to the assistance of our gods with
our devils" ( 1 55). But whether invoked by the name of daimones or
devils, deep self or overman, it is another self that is sought . How
can one know and experience this Other of the Untergang, these
Holzwege?
A nte mortem dei with Marcus or post mortem dei with Nietzsche, before
Christendom's hegemony or after, the answer is one and the same.
The topography of deepening is in the domain of the imaginal . The
daimon comes in image . 3 "God is a conjecture," says Nietzsche
(Zarathustra 86) , and he makes the case further with a parody of
Goethe's line, A lles Vergiingliches ist nur ein Gleichnis, by writing: "All
that is permanent [ Unvergiingliches] is also only parable" (86, 1 26) . But
this echoes what already had come to speech in Marcus' Meditations:
"Your doctrines live . . . [in] the mind's images [phantasiazl" (6 1 ) . As
Jung once remarked: "Everything of which we are conscious is an
image, and that image is psyche" (Alchemical Studies 50) . Freud's pa
tients, too, found fantasy to be the soulful locus of the traces of another
self. But, before contemporary depth psychology, Marcus and Nietz
sche were already mapping fantasia's terrain.
The contours of the terrain showed themselves to these depth
philosophers to be typical , even archetypical ( Unvergiingliche) . That
the images (Gleichnisse) are not, like egos, transitory, but rather are
perduring, urges Stoical (or is it Dionysian?) embrace . If it is to be
a matter in a life lived deeply of the "eternal return of the same," then
deep honesty calls for/forth amorfati (Zarathustra 2 1 7 , 220f, 324) . Nietz
sche acknowledges this notion to belong to the Stoics (Ecce Homo 3).
On this point, the animals say to Zarathustra: "Everything goes ,
everything comes back; eternally rolls the wheel of being. Everything
dies, everything blossoms again; eternally rolls the year of being" ( 2 1 7) .
3 The allusion here is to Heraclitus: "The oracle at Delphi neither revealed nor con
ceii!ed, but gave a sign (semeion)" (DK).

In Marcus's words: "All things as they come round again have been
the same from eternity" (Meditations 1 6) . And so Nietzsche concludes:
"My formula for the greatness of human being is amorfati: that one
wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in eter
nity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it . . . but
love it" (Ecce Homo II: 10). And Marcus echoes beforehand: "There re
mains as characteristic of the good man that he loves and welcomes
whatever happens to him and whatever his fate may bring . . . . Sur
render yourself willingly to Clotho to help her spin whatever fate she
will" (Meditations 24, 33).
The Stoic is a horse. But - amorfati! - does the horse love its fate?
If the horse is a Stoic, or, at least, an animal-image of the Stoical
soul/self, then what is embraced when the horse at Torino is em
braced? And what is flogged when the horse is flogged? Is it another self
that is flogged/embraced? Is it the soulful/soulless animal? Is it the
animal of soul?
In the beginning, the saint in the forest had advised Zarathustra:
"Do not go to man . . . go rather . . . to the animals" ( 1 1) . But Zarathustra
( Nietzsche?) resisted . He asked the people rhetorically, "Do you want
to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather
than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or
a painful embarrassment. . . . You have made your way from worm
to man, and much in you is still worm" ( 1 2) .
But much later, Zarathustra himself notes: "Have I not changed?"
And he consults the animals for an answer: "What has happened to
me my animals?" (83) Further, when Zarathustra' s friends gibe, "Look
at Zarathustra! Does he not walk among us as if we were animals?"
he corrects them, saying that it would be more precise to say: "He
who has knowledge walks among men as among animals'' (88) .
So Zarathustra came to be able to say (after half the book) , "May
my animals lead me!" and "I found it more dangerous to be among
men than among animals!" ( 183)
He was indeed led by the animals, and at the peripeteia when
Zarathustra began to embrace the "eternal recurrence of the same"
( amor fati) , the text says simply: " . . . his animals walked about him
thoughtfully and at last stood still before him" (237), and Zarathustra
sees that "only now I know and feel how much I love you, my animals"
(296) .
So , at the end, "when he reached the door of his cave, behold, he
again felt a desire for the good air outside and for his animals" (303) .
"My animals are awake, for I am awake" (325) - and, presumably,

the "I" of this consciousness is another than ego .
Who are these animals? What are the animal-images o f another
self ? Zarathustra' s animals of the Untergang are not only the
Heideggerian eagle and serpent. The litany of daimones from Thus Spoke
Zarathustra is an over- (under-) whelming semiology of soul. Nietzsche
himself calls this "hodgepodge of humanity" a "Noah's ark" (245) , a
zoological garden over whose terrain are tracings of lost gods and soul:
bear ( 1 1 ) , bird ( 1 1 , 5 7 , 1 1 0f, 1 9 2 , 2 1 0 , 23 1 , 294, 301), ape ( 1 2) ,
worm ( 1 2 , 7 2 , 1 2 1 , 1 2 3 , 208 , 2 1 5 , 232, 320) , flee-beetle ( 1 7) , but
terfly (41 , 1 08, 1 35 , 185, 1 87), snake (39, 67, 74, 1 24, 143, 1 59f,
224) , dog (2 1 , 43 , 102f, 1 2 2 , 132, 158f, 1 70 , 225, 248 , 254, 230, 322) ,
sheep (23 , passim!), eagle ( 7 5 , 296, 303), camel ( 2 5 , 1 93), lion (25,
103 , 146, 162 , 206, 283 , 305 , 309 , 326) , dragon (26f, 68, 1 44) , ass
(41 , 1 03 , 1 04, 1 94, 244, 279, 3 1 1 £1), monkey (50, 305), flies ( 5 1 £),
cat (57, 74, 165, 307) , wolf (74, 1 02) , maggot (97) , tarantula (99) ,
horse ( 1 03 , 192, 290), tiger ( 1 1 7 , 1 44), bug ( 1 2 1 , 307), lizard ( 1 24 ,
277) , ox ( 1 25 , 204) , frog ( 1 2 5 , 258) , spider ( 1 2 5 , 1 5 8 , 276) , peacock
( 1 29), buffalo (1 29), owl ( 1 35 , 225), toad ( 1 44), crocodile ( 1 44), rooster
( 168 , 2 1 5) , hedgehog ( 1 68) , fish ( 1 74, 225, 238ff), bee ( 1 78) , whale
( 1 79), moth (1 80), rabbit (191), ostrich (192), oyster ( 193), mole ( 194,
197), swine ( 194, 292) , vulture ( 196) , vermin (208) , bat (225) , doe
(225), crab (238ff), flamingo (244), leech (249), wildcat (279), elephant
(295) , panther (300), dove (326) ! 4
Take that, Descartes! Like Gaston Bachelard' s Lautreamont, Nietz
sche's Zarathustra is a veritable bestiary of soul!
But who could embrace this horse of so many divine colors? "Tell
me," Zarathustra asks, "who will throw a yoke over the thousand necks
of this beast?" (50) Untergehen , indeed! Is Nietzsche's deeply felt senti
ment after all so different from Descartes' soulless thought or . from
the Coachman's flogging action when, in the truth of the madness,
Nietzsche said over and over again' "I do not like horses" (qtd. in
Hayman 344) .
Nor was this difficulty of animal-embrace without personal reason.
When he was twenty-three, Nietzsche had attempted to avoid induc
tion into the armed services with fake eye-glasses. It did not fool the
examiners, however, and, four days later, he discovered that he would
• The list is not exhaustive, albeit exhausting! The animal-images are listed in the
order of their first appearance in the text of the Zarathustrian dramatic agon .
be required to join the cavalry. A hatred of military service was con

fused with a hatred of horses, and vice versa. "Philosophy can now
b e of practical value to me," wrote Nietzsche. "I have not yet been
depressed for a moment, but very often smiled, as if I were reading
a fairy-tale. From time to time, concealed underneath the horse's belly,
I mutter: 'Schopenhauer, help!'" (qtd. in Hayman 90)
The worst was yet to come. In the middle of March, 1 868, Nietzsche
tore two muscles in his chest when jumping into the saddle and hit
ting the pommel. Stoically, he rode on. But the wound festered. After
three months, Nietzsche was discharged: saved by the horse that had
hurt him, saved by the hurt of the horse .
But there is, perhaps inevitably, another side. Even in the army
Nietzsche enjoyed his time with the horse most of all: waking at four
fifteen, in the stables by five-thirty, sweeping the dung by lamplight ,
and grooming Balduin, his. horse, with brush and comb (Hayman
90) . "The riding lessons give me the most pleasure," confessed
N ietzsche. "I have a very pretty horse, and am supposed to have a
talent for riding. When I hurtle out into the big exercise yard on my
Baiduin, I feel very satisfied with my lot" (qtd. in Hayman 90) . And
had not Nietzsche described the friendship with Erwin Rhode of 1867 ,
during which they took riding lessons together, as being "inside a mov
ing magic circle" (Hayman 87)?
That Nietzsche was horse-drawn, rocked back and forth by the

doubleness of the horse, is expressed in the anecdote of Torino; when
it is viewed as a dream.
All the figures in a dream can be interpreted as belonging to the
dreamer: the Coachman, the Horse, and Nietzsche (the dream-ego) .
What is striking about this fantasy is how the human figure is so
radically split . When the horse comes into the life-situation, there are
two responses: flog the animal, embrace the animal. The ego of the
dreamer has another side , but this Other is completely split off . . .
like the soul and like God . The animal bears the brunt, both of the
flogging and of the embrace. 5
The anecdote-as-dream recalls the Centaur. Does not this
mythological horse-figure hold the antithesis of heroic knight and the
instinctual horse-powers in one dangerous image? Who is this horse ,
which, when it appears, prompts a radical split in the human
experience?
5 The present author is grateful to Patricia Berry-Hillman for the insight of this
paragraph.
The tale finally belongs to the cunning of the horse . The dialectic
of this animal - the split-offness and one-sidedness of the embraces
of ego - carry intimations of immortality, tracings of the gods in
Nietzsche's parataxis. The horse at Torino may have more in its car
riage than we can imagine.
Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant have, nonetheless, made
the imaginal attempt to read the traces and to name the gods whose
shadows animals bear. The gods, they say, which "confront each other
through the intermediary of a concrete . . . horse either mounted or
harnessed to a chariot" are Athena and Poseidon ("The Live Bit'' 206).
And, in the particular case of the image of the horse, "far from merging
together with the vague , shared status of Master of Horses, each
(Athena and Poseidon) is distinguished from the other . . . " (206) . The
horse brings with it the split .
"All the [Greek mythological] evidence about Athena Hippia shows
that her province is that of control : control over the horse by means
of an effective instrument, control in the driving of the chariot, whether
by guiding the chariot straight along the track without veering off
course or by making the most of a favourable opportunity . . . " (De
tienne & Vernant 206) . Yet, it is well to remember that in the case
of Athena the "control" is worked, not through Cartesian rationality,
nor by post- Enlightenment technology, but rather by the intelligence
of cunning (metis, even polymetis, "many-wisdomed") and by the techne
of magic.
On the other side, "Poseidon is the Lord of the Horse and can at
will control his creature's fiery spirit or release its violence" (Detienne
& Vernant 206) . Poseidon is an "earthshaker."
Detienne and Vernant risk a thought: "These different situations
in which Athena and Poseidon appear as powers in competition pro
vide us with examples of the various ways in which religious thought
seeks to express the opposition and complementarity of two powers
intervening within the same domain but each with a distinctive mode
of operation" (204) . The schizophrenia is religious, as Plato told us
when he spoke of the "live bit," the dialectic of the bridle . The horse
is a theologian .
Athena seems to know this. "When she invents the instrument which
is to enable Bellerophon to control [ ? ! ] his mount, Athena reminds
her protege that he must first give homage to Poseidon Daimaios by
presenting to him the horse in harness and wearing the bit and by
offering him the sacrifice of a white bull." Detienne and Vernant note:
"Athena is acting with perfect propriety, rendering to Poseidon the

things that are Poseidon's" (206).
The religious fantasy of the Greeks had to do , not with worship,
but with remembrance of the gods. Nietzsche invoked Apollo and
Dionysos . Did he forget Athena and Poseidon? Was it a case of "the
eternal recurrence of the same"? To render to Poseidon the things
that are Poseidon's : would this not be amor fati? But how could one
"embrace" Poseidon and live? Nietzsche suffered the split "on earth
as it is in heaven ."
Perhaps Holderlin was speaking about Nietzsche and about the

horse at Torino when, eighty-eight years earlier, and four years before
his own "going under" and "crossing over," he wrote concerning the
"vocation of the poet" ("Dichterberuf " 1 36) :
You fateful days , you sweeping ones, when the god,
Silently pondering, drives to where with drunken wrath ,
Gigantic horses take him!
Indeed, the gigantic horses take one, not merely to personal loneliness,
but to the larger loneliness of the gods. For, as Heidegger said, speak
ing post mortem dei, "animals define for the first time the loneliest
loneliness" (47): shades of amorfati, the recurrence of the eternal duplici
ty in the soul of the animal imago .
-
Just as the animal has soul, so Nietzsche's soul had an animal . Was
it the animal speaking when Nietzsche called Socrates "Athen's greatest
backstreet dialectician , who finally had to compare himself to a pesty
horsefly, set by a god on the neck of the beautiful horse Athens to
keep it from coming to rest" (Human, All Too Human § 433)?
Nietzsche: our Socrates , our gadfly, stung by the horse he himself
stung! But how can we embrace him? Did Athens embrace Socrates?
Does a horse embrace a fly? C an we embrace the vocation of the
loneliest loneliness?
Works Cited
Aurelius Antoninus, Marcus. The Meditations. Tr. G . M.A. Grube . In

dianapolis: The Library of Liberal Arts , 1 963 .
B achelard, Gaston . Lautreamont. Paris: Librairie Jose Corti, 1 939.
Brown, Norman 0 . Love's Body. New York: Vintage Books, 1966.
Cox, Patricia L . "Adam Ate From The Animal Tree : A Bestial Poetry o f
Soul ." Dionysius, 5 : 1 65-80.
Detienne, Marcel and Vernant, Jean Pierre . Cunning Intelligence in Greek
Culture and Society . Tr. J . Lloyd. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press,
Inc. , 1978.
Hayman , Ronald . Nietzsche: A Cn'tical Life. New York: Oxford University
Press , 1980.
Heidegger, Martin . Holzwege. Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1972 .
---- · "Zarathustra's Animals." Nietzsche, Volume II: The Eternal Recur
rence of the Same. Tr. D . F . Krell . New York: Harper and Row, 1 984.
Hillman , James . "The Animal Kingdom in the Human Dream." Eranos
51-1982. Frankfurt : Insel Verlag, 1 983 . 279-334.
Holderlin, Friedrich . "Dichterberuf." Holderlin. Ed. Michael Hamburger.
Baltimore : Penguin Books, 1 96 1 . 1 3 5-38.
---- · "In lieblicher Blaue." Holderlin . Ed. Michael Hamburger .
Baltimore : Penguin Books, 1 96 1 . 245-49.
Hopper, Stanley R. "The Naming of the Gods in Holderlin and Rilke." Chris
tianity and the Existentialists. Ed. C . Michalson. New York: Charles Scribners
Sons, 1 956.
Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. New York: Viking, 1939.
Jung, C . G. Alchemical Studies . Tr. R . F . C . Hull. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 196 7 .
---- · Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Ed. A. Jaffe, tr. R. Winston and
C . Winston. New York: Vintage Books, 1 965 .
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Tr. M . H. Heim . New
York: Harper and Row, 1 984.
Krell, David F. "Descensional Reflection." Philosophy and Archaic Experience.
Ed. John Sallis . Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1 982. 3- 1 2 .
Levertov, Denise. "Horses with Wings." Spring 1985: 74-83.
Nietzsche , Friedrich . Beyond Good and Evil. Tr. W. Kaufmann. New York:
Vintage Books, 1 966.
---- · Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices ofMorality. Tr. R.J. Hollingdale.
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 1 982.
---- · Ecce Homo. Tr. W. Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1 96 7 .
---- · Human, All Too Human. Tr. Marion Faber. Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 1 984.
---- · Thus Spoke Zarathustra . Tr. W. Kaufmann. New York: Viking,
1966.
Rasula, Jed . "Spicer's Orpheus and the Emancipation of Pronouns." Boun
dary 2, 6: 1 .
Rilke, Rainer Maria. Duino Elegies. Tr. J.B. Leishman and S . Spendor. New
York: Morton, 1 963.
Part III
Giorgio Colli
THE POSTHUMOUS FRAGMENTS FROM

THE BEGINNING OF 1 8 8 8 TO JANUARY 1 8 8 9 *
In chronological continuity and theme, the posthumous fragments

of this volume are closely tied to those of the preceding volume . 1
Together, they constitute the vast deposit of material from which Nietz
sche drew or abstracted his last published writings, or those destined
to publicatfon . This material for construction , chaotic and heaped
with incredible labor, is astonishing in its revelation of the will to self
realization which lies behind it . Theoretically, the fragments of this
volume mark an ebb with respect to what Nietzsche had written in
the preceding months; and yet , there gradually emerges a new ele
ment : autobiographical narration , personal documentation as a
philosophical ingredient , or even as a cathartic resolution . It is as if
Nietzsche had grown tired of handling abstract concepts. He had ex
tracted from those philosophical shells all possible combinations ,
especially the most paradoxical and strident couplings . But in the end
such concepts were the only ones there were. One could no longer ,
or he could no longer, get anything more out of them. To explore
other spheres of abstraction seemed futile, maybe too laborious; above
all it would have required too much time . By now Nietzsche was in
a hurry and, besides, he seemed to have cracked all the shells . The
• We gratefully acknowledge Adelphi Edizioni for permission to publish the follow
ing pages ( 1 8 1 -88) from Colli's Scritti su Nietzsche (Milan, 1980) .

1 Colli is referring to the fragments from 1 88 7 , contained in volumes 1 2 and 1 3 o f
Friedrich Nietzsche, Samtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Banden, ed. Giorgio

Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1980). -Ed.
1 75
concepts of morality, of logic, of metaphysics had all been demolished

by his skepticism, and, finally, even the concepts that guided this de
struction were affected.
In these fragments one finds the other face of the philosopher which
Nietzsche wanted to keep hidden: a man thirsting for life but con
demned to abstraction , constrained to look for his stimuli there,
transforming whatever he touches into lifeless shadows . Finally, fed
up with words, with empty shells, with no companions, he was forced
to extract life from within himself. Here, facing this posthumous
m aterial, in the last year in which Nietzsche thinks and writes , we
enter the laboratory in which he experiments with new techniques .
Before his final expressive derailment, when the edifices of his last
writings suddenly emerge (basically as new enticements to draw others
and the world into the events of his mind) , here now is a man alone
with himself, crushed by his own repetitions, uncertain of which path
to take , lacking expedients, imprisoned and paralyzed by the nets of
his own arguments . Nietzsche had arrived at the point of death, for
he was unable to evade overly manipulated universals through
reason- "science," "art ," "philosophy," "decadence," "morality," and
so on - neither in the direction of new, illuminating, and specific
distinctions, nor in that of purer logical categories. The satiety of these
concepts pushes him inward . One observes his exasperation, in the
spring of 1 888 , as he searches for an inspiration that might arise dur
ing the process of writing (against his teaching) . One observes him
wearily reformulating statements, critiques, schemes, programs
already formulated repeatedly, coming back to gnoseological positions
already left behind, and even renovating obvious refutations of Chris
tian doctrines .
In this desolation, where all the abstract instruments and objects
manipulated by Nietzsche appear to be worn-out and unusable , the
only palpitating thing is his own person . This is a desperate strategy
to attain a state in which might flow from him that literary and stylistic
miracle in which form and content would no longer be separable . It
is thus in the posthumous material that we see emerge the memory
of Wagner, a retreat to biographical matters, a series of lyrical,
fragmented effusions . And paradoxically the theoretical regression pro
vokes doctrinal formulations that are finally new in which behind
'
the appearance of a brilliant and overbearing superficiality is hidden
a profundity immersed in an unexplored region . That the value of
a philosopher and of an artist may reside in a personal element, not
Colli: The Posthumous Fragments 17 7
so much in one's comportment as in one's nature or character, is an

indication that tends to overpower literature, or in any case mediated
expression, in favor of a direct manifestation of wisdom, of the
superiority of a physiological wisdom. This is the new doctrine , even
if cut off at birth, that Nietzsche achieves in his last year . That the
excellence and force of the thoughts of a philosopher result from the
geniality of his nourishment seems to be a paradoxical exaltation of
a banal materialistic and positivistic module .
But are the discourses on nutrition which we find in the Upanishads
positivistic? The discussion of nutrition is not in itself a sign of a
pathological aberration in Nietzsche: it is a serious indication of satia
tion with abstraction, of the insurgence of new views, of a philosopher's
new demands. In fact, one knows that among the Indians the discipline
of respiration belongs to the technique for achieving supreme
knowledge . More generally, this reflection of Nietzsche on his own
person is the path followed by every philosophic mysticism, even if
Nietzsche knows how to masquerade it mundanely with an illusionistic
representation. Nietzsche re-enters himself and finds new landscapes.
But this is not a resolution, a reconciliation, for this retreat is partial ,
pertaining to only one face of an individual already divided.
Nietzsche cannot abandon himself to a mystic disposition : a

dissatisfaction, a tension , an interior laceration prevents him from
doing so. In his thinking, even prior to the actual derangement,
gradually intervenes an anarchy of contents . Testimony of this are
the posthumous fragments written in these months. On the one hand,
hints return of a deepening of the thematic of the Birth of Tragedy which
already blossomed in the winter of 1 887- 1 888 , in which Nietzsche
tends to overcome the conception of the will to power in a philosophy
of deception . According to this perspective, art, religion, philosophy
and science are all aspects of a universal tendency to mendaciousness.
It was, theoretically, a step forwards , but he stopped at these hints ;
there were no developments . On the other hand, in this same period
return occasionally appraisals of science (along with reproaches)
without the addition of new arguments -which, alongside the
preceding objections, betray a regression; thus he reformulates an an
tithesis between science and philosophy resolved in favor of science.
In addition, the critiques of the "real" and "apparent" world opposi
tion, to which many of these fragments are dedicated and which return
in the Twilight ef the Idols, are theoretically weak, illusionary; in any
event inferior to other arguments Nietzsche had already formulated .

The same thing can be said about the critiques of the concept of causal
ity , which harken back to obviousmodules. Indeed, sometimes we seem
almost to find ourselves in front of the Nietzsche of ten years prior ,
seeing him becoming exasperated along lines of positivistic exegesis .
One thing that reveals this regressive aspect is a step in which Nietz
sche contests the idea of the creation of the world. It seems strange
that, having arrived at this phase of his thinking, he should halt at
such a problem , even only for an instant.
All this material, it is known, had been gathered by Nietzsche in

view of the project of a great work, The Will to Power. But evidently
Nietzsche, given these fragments written in the spring of 1 888, which
are quite consistent quantitatively, did not consider himself to have
made any decisive step towards the actualization of his project. One
would rather say the opposite, that he saw his goal as more distant
than that . What is missing here are the signs of a tentative articula
tion of the order of the material, the headings , the numbering of the
fragments, which are found in the notebooks of the preceding winter.
The theoretical discussion of the concept of the will to power is inter
rupted, with the exception of a few fragments. After a short while
the "great" project will be abandoned, becoming fragmented in a series
of writings . But what counted more, at that moment, with regard
to the abandoning of The Will to Power- even more than his mistrust
of systematic efforts, repelling Nietzsche's most profound nature , and
perhaps evidencing a certain impotence or weakness in precisely this
regard, even more than the demolition of the fundamental concepts
which served as instruments for his research and which now, through
his corrosive scepticism, were crumbling in his hands, as can be noticed
in the fragments on the concept of action and those on will - what
counted even more was a sense of emptiness, of theoretical impoverish
ment, a lack of new intuitions, of abstract inventions . Surprising is
the frequency with which Nietzsche traces possible title-pages of his
projected work in the notebooks of these months. He notes the table
of contents of the various parts, the succession of the chapters, and
all this with almost exact textual repetitions, with a monotonous
thematic he knows by heart, with a synthesis of arguments that con
tinually return .
It is his will that nails him to his desk. In this aridity, there are
more schemes thrown into notebooks than workings-out of articulated
Colli: The Posthumous Fragments 179
and fertile problems, written to arrest something he had already

meditated. Even his habitual search for stimuli in reading seems to
decline in this period. Still, Jacolliot's book on the Indian code of Manu
makes a very strong, indeed excessive, impression on Nietzsche .
Traces of this text are numerous in his notebooks , and they will also
appear in Twilight of the Idols. Faced with the magnified perspective
to which Nietzsche submits this law, one cannot help thinking of the
exaltation of things and persons that characterize the last Turinese
period. In this particular case everything was provoked by the
casualness of a single reading.
In the last pages of this volume may be found fragments which
(along with the letters of the same period) document Nietzsche's
passage to madness. It is possible to track down signs of a tragic mental
derangement even earlier, for example in the "Law Against Chris
tianity" or even, embleriiatically, in the violence of certain of his
declarations against antisemites. Nevertheless, what provokes amaze
ment is the exiguity of properly pathologic texts . It is a matter of a
few pages dedicated to grand politics in which a mortal war is pro
claimed against the Hohenzollern. In other words, "almost" at the
very moment when Nietzsche takes leave of his senses, he ceases to
be literary. He who has lived his whole life writing cannot stop all
of a sudden even if a disease forces him to . Inertia drags him on a
'
little longer. In this tragic and unexpected passage one can notice only
a slight smudging of the borders between sanity and insanity. Other
wise every hypothesis is possible, beginning with the suggestion that
in every one of his periods , and in every one of his works , Nietzsche
writes like a person "possessed by God," or according to the Greek
vision, like a person seized by "mania." In their details, how many
passages of Ecce Homo appear insane to a sober and cold eye, and how
many reveal themselves to be esoteric allusions , symbols of an ar
cane tragedy and gestural transpositions to one who wants, and knows
how, to give himself over to another communication?
Translated by Richard Collins

Thomas Harrison
HAVE I BEEN UNDERSTOOD?

THE ETERNAL NOWHERE
OF NIETZSCHEAN EXISTENCE
Everything belonged to him -

but that was a trifle.
The thing was to know
what he belonged to.
]. Conrad
If Peter Gast had not persuaded Nietzsche to change the title of one
of his manuscripts to Twilight of the Idols, five out of the six books
Nietzsche wrote in his last year of sanity would have been named after
himself: The Idleness ef a Psychologist, Nietzsche contra Wagner, The Anti
christ, Ecce Homo and Dionysus Dithyrambs.
After attacking the epitome of contemporary culture in The Case
of Wagner, Nietzsche advances himself as an alternative model: Nietz
sche contra Wagner. A bookshop browser in Leipzig would certainly have
been surprised to glimpse such a title in a shop window: a universal
ly acknowledged and pedigreed genius contested by the strange and
unknown name "Nietzsche"; an apparent nobody - as it turns out ,
a retired professor of philology- defying the apogee of the age. A
brilliantly pathetic coupling.
What was to have been the first book of The Transvaluation of A ll
Values also names the author of this "Curse on Christianity" instead
of the issues at stake: The Antichrist. More accurately, the title per
forms a deixis towards the author, for his identity has been displaced
in a figure. A book envisioning the possibility of new modes of human
181
valuation advertises the provenance of the vision instead of its obj ect .
The title points not to a work but to a man, who in turn is concealed
in a figure . Friedrich Nietzsche : The Antichrist.
Friedrich Nietzsche : Ecce Homo. At least stylistically this particular
equation seems justified, for the book is indeed an autobiography.
But what of the appellative here? As with another book from the end
of 1 888, Dionysus Dithyrambs, no less than with The Antichrist and Thus
Spoke Zarathustra , the writer introduces himself as a universal type,
as an archetypical, mythological event. But there is another ambiguity
imbedded in this announcement: the object of the deictic ecce. What
does it indicate? Not the homo it announces but a book (a book about
books , about books that define a man) . While The A ntichrist promises
us a book but names a man, here the title promises a man but gives
us a book.
Even the notebooks from 1887 to 1 888 bear witness to Nietzsche's
concern with the nature of his identity. With compulsive obsession
he designs and redesigns title pages to works he had written or would
never write, continually repeating his name upon them and copying
them into his notebooks . 1 The same notebooks contain dozens of
autobiographical sketches. In his last months of sanity Nietzsche begins
to sign his letters with still other names: Fromentin , Dionysus, the
Monster, the Crucified, the Phoenix, etc. As Colli notes ( 1 8 1 ; 1 7 5
o f this volume) , the truly new problematic o f Nietzsche's work in this
final year of sanity is autobiography. Significantly , the last statement
to which Nietzsche applies his pen is not philosophical but lyrical :
Dionysus Dithyrambs. 2
In 1 888 Nietzsche becomes die Sache selbst of his work. What is this
Sache and what is the significance of the fact that it is the ultimate
concern of his writing?
According to Giorgio Colli, what is manifested by Nietzsche's final
year of sanity is not a psychological aberration but a new mystical
wisdom ( 183- 1 84 ; 1 77 of this volume) . For Franco Rella it would
seem as if Nietzsche "were trying to gather around the permanence
and resistance of the 'I' of writing the fragments of a reality which
on a historical and personal level he felt to be increasingly precarious
and fleeting' (68) . Surely the question about the significance of the
1 See Nietzsche, Samtliche Werke, XII; Janz I, 534-6 1 8 ; and Rella 68.
2 According to Verrecchia, on January 8 , 1 889, Franz Overbeck found Nietzsche
working not on the galley proofs of Nietzsche Contra Wagner (as Overbeck reports it) ,
but on Dionysus Dithrambs, "the last work he sent to press" (Colli 190) .
T. Harrison: The Eternal Nowhere 183
Sache cannot be answered without first establishing the status of this

I - of this name or person - which seems so much to concern Nietz
sche . Does it denote an individual existence or its literary work? or
a process which is neither? Even the I of writing seems to possess no
proper signature (Derrida) . Perhaps what is at stake in this turn to
the I involves more than· a biographical matter, more than a
methodological shift in the pursuit of truth , and more than a clutch
ing to scripture as Nietzsche' s world falls apart around him . Perhaps
what is at stake is precisely the ontology of this I. It may be that this
ontology of I-ness, which becomes a conspicuous issue only in the
Nietzschean texts of 1 888, has been the central concern of Nietzsche's
philosophy all along.
Nietzsche' s analysis of his own destiny occurs in conjunction with
a well-known developme�t in his biography: the astounding outburst
of creative energy which allowed him to compose six compact books
in the last four months of the year, one dealing the killing blow to
the world of traditional values, two attacking the cultural symbol of
the age , another proposing a transvaluation of values , the fifth an
autobiography, and the sixth a collection of lyrics. In this period of
extraordinary productivity, Nietzsche unleashes all the expressive
powers of which he is capable . It is in the works of this period that
he masters the style chefama mi acquista. Inhis most acute, rhythmical,
economical, and ironical prose, Nietzsche capers, exploiting the seman
tic resources of every word that occurs to his pen, addressing with
agility any and all issues: the four great errors of philosophers, the
origins and principles of culture, the effects and disguises ofdecadence,
the moral effect of aesthetics, and how one becomes what one is.
Nietzsche' s months in Turin truly represent his "great harvest time,"
as he writes to Franz Overbeck (Letter of 18 October, 1 888 ; Mid
dleton 3 1 5).3 Over the past year he had made, or tried to make , the
leap from aphorism to system, deciding to gather this thoughts into
a coherent and ordered whole, at times planning his magnus opus as
The Will to Power, at others as the equally ambitious Transvaluation
of All Values. As never before, Nietzsche conceived of himself as a
world-historical thinker, a man destined to change the configuration
of Europe. Thanks to his work, his prophecy in The Gay Science (§ 1 25)
concerning the death of God -"whoever is born after us . . . will belong
3 For an opposite assessment of Nietzsche's final work, that is, for a statement of
its unoriginality, see Janz II, 5-7 and 16, and Colli 195-202.
to a higher history than all history hitherto" - was on the verge of

becoming a reality. The anno domini had shifted 2000 years.
Not incidentally, the great harvest time also corresponds to the
European- and by Nietzsche's reckoning, worldwide- recognition of
his importance as a philosopher. Georg Brandes was lecturing on his
work at the University of Copenhagen, serious thinkers were atlast
reviewing his books in prestigious journals, Hypollite Taine, Auguste
Strindberg and others were corresponding with him. The contem
porary world had taken note of this singular character, Friedrich Nietz
sche. Nietzsche had finally acquired a voice in current cultural debates.
This is how Nietzsche seems to have perceived himself in his last
few months in Turin : His philosophy constitutes a systematic whole,
his life is a destiny engaged in a world-historical mission, he has
become what he truly is: a public figure, musicologist, poet,
philosophical giant, culture critic, and unparalleled master of Ger
man prose . "I am," he announces in his last letter to Burckhardt, "all
names in history'' (6 January, 1 889; Middleton 347 ) . As he takes on
every face and form , every art and argument, everything belongs to
him . But what Nietzsche himself belongs to , or is, remains a ques
tion. In fact, it is questionable whether is-ness holds any relevance
at all for this artist of becoming and perspective.
And yet, it is Nietzsche himself who, precisely at this time , insists
on who he is . "Hear me! " he cries out at the beginning of his
autobiography, "For I am such and such a person. Above all, do not mistake
me for someone elsr!' (Ecce 673) . At the very moment when he begins
to attend to his world-historical mission he becomes obsessed with
his finite, concrete existence as flesh and blood, as living particulari
ty rather than transcendent text. The more universal the implications
of his work come to appear, the more concrete becomes his concern
with the unique and irrepeatable I that is behind the work. Yet the
more Nietzsche's I consumes his interest, the more it consumes itself.
Consider the following example of this doubling of perspective so
characteristic of Nietzsche's final work. The text in question is the
preface to The Antichrist, which, as we remember, was originally sub
titled First Book ef the Transvaluation efAll Values. 4 What does one ex
pect from the preface to a work announcing itself as a cultural monu
ment, as a radical rethinking of the foundations of human history?
• Nietzsche originally planned The Antichrist as the first of four books making up
the Transvaluation. Indeed, the preface to Twilight ef the Idols, begun immediately
after Nietzsche finished The Antichrist, is signed "Turin, September 30, 1 888, on the
T. Harrison: The Eternal Nowhere 1 85
Perhaps an explanation of what Nietzsche means by the phrase

"transvaluation of all values," or a philosophical context for the work
and its revolutionary ambition. Here, however, in slightly abbreviated
form, is what we get:
This book belongs to the very few. Perhaps not one of them is living
yet . . . how could I mistake myself for one of those for whom there are
ears even now? - Only the day after tomorrow belongs to me. Some
are born posthumously.
The conditions under which I am understood, and then of necessity - I
know them too well. One must be honest in matters of the spirit to
the point of hardness before one can even endure my seriousness and
my passion. One must be skilled in living on mountains - seeing the
wretched ephemeral babble of politics and national self-seeking beneath
oneself. One must have become indifferent; one must never ask if th e
truth is useful o r if i t may. prove our undoing . . . . The predilection of
strength for questions for which no one today has the courage ; the
courage for the forbidden; the predestination to the labyrinth. An ex
perience of seven solitudes. Ne.w ears for new music. New eyes for what
·
is most distant. A new conscience for truths that have so far remained
mute . And the will to the economy of the grand style: keeping our
strength, our enthusiasm in harness . . . . Reverence for oneself; love of
oneself; unconditional freedom before oneself.
Well then! Such men alone are my readers, my right readers , my
predestined readers: what matter the rest? - The rest are merely
m ankind. - One must be above mankind in strength, in loftiness of
soul - in contempt (568-569; translation slightly revised) .
Instead of introducing us to the transvaluation of values immediately

to follow, Nietzsche defends his own uniqueness, enlarging on what
he is like and on what it would take to resemble him. Given the classical
distinction between the author and his work, Nietzsche's self-portrait
would seem to be utterly irrelevant to the question of what he has
to say. The same curious logic governs his decision, about this time,
to write an autobiography. The first sentence of Ecce Homo reads: "See
ing that before long I must confront humanity with the most difficult
day when the first book of the Transvaluation ofAll Values was completed." The epigraph
to Ecce Homo also makes reference to this "first book" of a projected work. In December,
however, Nietzsche scratched the subtitle ''Transvaluation of All Values" off the galley
p roofs of The Antichrist and substituted "A Curse on Christianity." On the transfor
m ation of Wille zur Macht into Umwertung al/er Werte and the vicissitudes of Nietzsche's
p rojected magnus opus see the commentary in Nietzsche, Samtliche Werke, XIV, 383-400
and 434-35, as well as Montinari 47-65.
demand ever made of it, it seems indispensable to me to say who I

am." Why does it seem indispensable for Nietzsche to say who he is?
Kant felt no need to do so, and his Critique of Pure Reason has not
suffered any diminishment on account of it. Heidegger, Hegel, Plato ,
and Marx did not either. The philosophical arguments of Nietzsche's
texts- concerning life as interpretation and will to power, concern
ing the genealogy of moral values, concerning the rejection of such
values and realignment on a more healthy track - these arguments
can stand without the supporting details of Nietzsche's psycho
physiological constitution. What seems indispensable , if anything, is
that this world-historical thinker should be able to formulate his
arguments without having to say who he is- as he had more or less
done up to 1 888. This, moreover, would accord better with his classical
ideal of the "grand style ."
What seems to be foremost on Nietzsche's mind as he writes this

preface is his own untimeliness, the antagonism between himself and
his cultural present ("the disproportion between the greatness of my
task and the smallness of my contemporaries," as he puts it in Ecce Homo
[ 673] ) . Until these two become reconciled, the first sentence of The
Antichrist will remain accurate: "This book is for the very few."
This implicit dichotomy of self and world - the unspoken premise
of his very project of self-making- haunts Nietzsche's work from the
start . In a poem written when he was only thirteen, Nietzsche had
already articulated the opposition that he later tries to collapse in
Dionysian synthesis: "Life is a mirror:/ To recognize oneself/As what
is reflected in this mirror/Is what is most desirable" (La mia vita 39) .
In the words of The Gtry Science ( § 280) , "We wish to see ourselves translated
into stones and plants, we want to take walks in ourselves when we stroll
around these buildings and gardens . " The "basic doctrines" of Nietz
sche's philosophy, including the will to power, the eternal return of
the same and amor fati, may all be read as formulas for integrating
self and world. In fact, it may be argued that the only way Nietzsche
achieves his goal of a mutual reflection of self and world is by
substituting a metaworld for the finite, historical one in which men
actually live . However much at odds Nietzsche the man may be with
his nauseous historical present, he achieves a type of self-realization
by participating in a higher, transcendent, infinite, world-historical
process extending beyond the moment . One need only think of the
weddings with eternity in Zarathustra ("Never yet have I found the
woman from whom I wanted children, unless it be this woman whom
I love:/ for I love you, 0 eternity" [343]}, or of remaining faithful

to the earth , or of willing backwards, or of affirming the value of
everything that is, "without subtraction, exception, or selection" ( Will
to Power § 1041). Whatever other functions these ideas may serve, they
are all strategies for overcoming the limits of finitude, for bridging
the gap between the individual will and its historical fate. Nietzsche
seems to posit a dialectical superation of estrangement in integrity,
just as he suggests that one may become what one is by
Selbstilberwindung.
The question of whether this process of becoming what one is is
truly dialectical, or a transformation of X into Y, hinges on an analysis
of the existential condition with which Nietzsche begins. Undeniably,
this second-level, Dionysian coincidence between self and world
represents a sublimation of a fundamental and irreparable non
coincidence of self and wbrld in the historical present. The existen
tial analytic of Nietzsche's philosophy- implicit in such figures as the
wanderer, the shadow, the free spirit, the Versucher and the overman- is
one in which the individual juts out into and against the world, ex
sisting in a projectual search for his proper place. Nietzsche's homeless
individuals are called upon destiny to create their home or perish.
Their exile from all fixed economies inaugurates an extraordinary and
utopic quest which is their destiny proper. Although this quest for
oneself never results in "finding oneself' - since the self is not a
preconstituted entity, rior, consequently, reflected by the outside
world - it may lead to other, more interesting discoveries ; the inven
tion of an art, the glimpse of a truth, a vision through veils that have
been laid for good reasons. And such achievements redeem their un
timely origin.
This then would seem to be the logic of Nietzsche's thematic of un
timeliness: it originates and is justified by timeless production. At the
start no inore than an ironic rubric under which to gather some un
fashionable arguments (the Unzeitgemasse Betrachtungen of 1873-76) , un
timeliness comes to signify for Nietzsche the existential prerequisite
of a creative destiny. "What does a philosopher demand of himself
first and last?" Nietzsche asks in The Case of Wagner. "To overcome
his time in himself, to become 'timeless' (61 1 ; cf. The Gay Science §380
and Good and Evil § 2 1 2 ) . If he fights against whatever marks him
as a child of his time it is because his subject is time at large. "We
children of the future," Nietzs�e remarks in The Gay Science (§377) ,
"how could we b e at home in this today?" I t i s simply impossible to
do philosophy without living on icy mountain peaks, as he stresses
in Ecce Homo (674) . Untimeliness is not only a symptom but a cause

of "higher men" with a foot beyond life . 5 For the Versucher the present
is a step to the future; today's buffoon is tomorrow's prophet. When
Nietzsche suggests in the famous letter to Burckhardt that he had to
become God because he was not egotistic enough to remain a Basel
professor, he is again alluding to this dialectic whereby suprapersonal
obligations demand the sacrifice of present satisfaction (in this case,
that of a Basel professor) .
Nowhere is this opposition so pronounced as in Nietzsche's writings
in Turin . However, by pushing the two categories to an extreme
never has he been so untimely, and never so timeless - Nietzsche
disrupts the dialectical balance which seemed to obtain between them.
Each metaphor runs an independent course, overlapping and intersec
ting the other at random, as if seeking to dissolve the opposition into
a third, unspoken condition. Witness, for instance , the arbitrariness
with which Nietzsche leaps from one figure to its opposite, as if they
were interchangeable.
The Idleness of a Psychologist, the original title of Twilt'ght of the Idols,
was unassuming. It drew attention to the existential condition of the
person responsible for the thoughts in the book. The suggestion of inac
tion in the word "idleness" or "leisure" (Mussiggang) echoes the prob
lematic of untimeliness, of possessing no vital function in the present. 6
Here no promise is made for the importance or quality of the thoughts
such a condition has produced. It is precisely this modesty that the
reader Peter Gast objects to when, commenting on the manuscript,
he admonishes Nietzsche : "The stride of a giant, which makes the
mountains shake to their very foundations, is no longer idleness . . .
So I beg you . . . a more sumptuous, more resplendent title!" ( qtd.
in Portable Nietzsche 464) Nietzsche is convinced . He revaluates his idle
meditations as giant strides, calling his manuscript Twilight of the Idols.
By this simple modification, Nietzsche's private hours suddenly en
tail the most momentous consequences . His armchair considerations
are transformed into the activism of philosophizing with a hammer .
The apparently incidental revision of a title changes the theme from
the excavations of an underground man to the toppling of a culturai
5 This is one of the implications of a line in the "Second Postscript' to The Case of
Wagner (644) : "To be sure, the possibility cannot be excluded that somewhere in
Europe there are still remnants of stronger generations, of typically untimely human
beings . . . .
"
6 On the semantic aptness of Nietzsche's original title, see Doueihi's article in this
volume.
T. Harrison: The Eternal Nowhere 1 89
world. Existential untimeliness is now not only the necessary but also
the sufficient cause of timeless achievement.
The same interchangeability and mutual contamination of the public
and private, unique and universal, concrete and theoretical is inscribed
in the above quoted preface t? The Antichrist. ls it not curious that
Nietzsche conceives of the book as a transvaluation of all values and
yet as a book "for the very few"? (Zarathustra: A Bookfor All and None.)
Proposing objective arguments, he underscores their subjective origin .
"Well then! Such men alone are my readers . . . what matter the rest?
The rest are merely mankind" -that is, the species the book is designed
to change .
B ut the obvious place to look for this undialectical conjunction of
the particular and the general is Ecce Homo. The word ecce in the title -
literally an imperative see there! but idiomatically here is, as in the Italian
ecco and the French voila - prepares us for a pure, unnameable par
ticular: just this one here and now, not what is only conceivable or
abstract and could equally well be named by a universal category. 7
B ut in Nietzsche's usage, the ecce that one expects to reveal a singular
particular (F. N.) points to nothing less than the generic essence homo .
Behold, .the title wants to say, a concrete embodiment of an abstrac
tion, an existential locus of essence. Perhaps no more apt a gesture
could be found to begin an autobiography paradoxically subtitled How
O ne Becomes What One Is. The how is in service of the what, existence
in service of essence, becoming in service of being. The topic addressed
b y Ecce Homo is at once "this extremely singular and concrete man,
F. N . (whom I will describe in the most minute detail so that you will
not mistake him for what he is not)" and "Man as the realization of
his highest potential, as an improvement on the most divine instance
of himself that he has ever invented- namely Christ." And, like Christ,
this new man, or overman, is more than existent. He is textual ,
timeless, and eternal . If he is an irrepeatable particular, he is also ,
like Christ, an exemplary divinity transcending all accidents and con
tingencies . Ecce Homo is the story of a concrete particular miraculously
uplifted to an abstract universal.
According to Giorgio Colli, during this latter half of 1 888, Nietz
sche becomes incapable of separating his life and his work. As he em
b arks on a "desperate strategy to attain a state in which might flow
7 On the ontological and semantic implications of deictic gestures to the "here and
now" see Hegel 149-60, Wittgenstein 16- 2 1 et passim , Heidegger 14-26; Agamben
28-37 and 43-5 1 .
from him that literary, stylistic miracle in which form and content
would no longer be separable," "the thought of Nietzsche is identified
with the person Nietzsche" ( 1 83 and 199; see 1 76 of this volume) .
Nietzsche would now find the locus of his spiritual genius in his physical
state . As we know, most of the weight of the how in the phrase "how
one becomes what one is" falls on the discipline of organic matters :
alimentation, climate, sickness, and the reply of health . "I, an oppo
nent of vegetarianism from experience . . . cannot advise all more spin"tual
natures earnestly enough to abstain from alcohol. Water is sufficient . . . .
No meals between meals, no coffee: coffee spreads darkness (verdU.stert) .
Tea is wholesome only in the morning. A little but strong . . . All preju
dices come from the intestines," and so on (Ecce 695-96) . Philosophy
is understood as the spiritualization of a physical state, as he de
scribed it in Beyond Good and Evil and in Philosophy in the Tragic Age
of the Greeks. What is uncommon about this autobiographical account
is that, as Hollingdale writes (8), it takes Nietzschean psychology "to its
predestined end in physiology, in a dialectic of sickness and recovery
as the principle of his own development, and in a revaluation of the
little everyday things in the 'psychical' economy of mankind (they are
'beyond all comparison more serious things than anything that has
been taken seriously hitherto')."
Now, for perhaps the first time in his life, Nietzsche considers it
important to report in his letters about what delicious food he is eating
in Turin, about how he looks like a man of the world as he walks
through the streets , about the respect and deference he is shown by
passers-by, about his fashionable and expensive new overcoat. In three
or four letters he describes with rapture the broccoli and ossobuco he
eats at dinner. Nietzsche nourishes the conceit that he has mastered
every detail of his daily existence, boasting that "there are no more
coincidences in my life ,"8 that all difficult things are coming easily
and that everything is invariably turning out well . "I have just seen
myself in a mirror," he writes at a time when he was known to grimace
uncontrollably in the theatre and streets, "never have I looked so well."9
Suddenly Nietzsche makes the mistake of thinking that his immediate
experience is of actual importance. He reinterprets his ill-timed ex
istence as an instance of vital perfection .
8 Letter t o August Strindberg, 7 December, 1888 (Middleton 329). Compare the
letter to Overbeck dated Christmas, 1 888: "there are no coincidences any more: I
need only to think of somebody and a letter from him comes politely through the
door" (338).
9 Letter to Peter Gast, 30 October, 1 888 (Middleton 3 18).
To some extent Colli is right ( 1 95-202) : i n these last few months

of sanity Nietzsche simply abandons his thematic of untimeliness. He
had always been willing to overlook the fact that his life was not much
to speak of, for his icy existence without coffee, sex, and wine had
more than its fill of intoxicating ideas. Now, however, he begins to
'
consider his style of life as the extraordinary work of art - and hard-
1 y, or not only, because it has produced philosophy. This develop
ment was at least a year in the making. In the preface to On the Genealogy
of Morals Nietzsche had exclaimed, "our ideas, our values, our yeas
and nays, our ifs and buts, grow out of us with the necessity with
which a tree bears fruit . . . evidence of one will, one health, one soil,
one sun" ( 452) . While in his earlier writings his sickly and ascetic ex
istence had been redeemed by its fruitfulness, now it is the fruit that
must show its warrant - in .the singular tree, soil, and health that has
nourished it . While Zarathustra had understood his project as that
of creating and gathering into One "what is fragment and riddle and
dreadful accident" (25 1 ) , oneness now is the origin, not the product ,
of one's labor; fragmentation and multiplicity characterize the result.
Colli and even Heidegger might argue that in trying to furnish an
unequivocal ground to his equivocal texts Nietzsche is letting the em
pirical I impinge on the autonomy of the text .
And yet, the abandonment of untimeliness for what Yeats called
"the perfection of the life'' is only one side of the story, and a misleading
one at that. While Nietzsche' s Turinese writings try to account for
his I entirely in terms of the concrete particularity of his finite ex
istence, they reveal this I to belong to it less than ever. Consider,
for instance , the recurrence of figures bespeaking the obliteration of
the empirical self in Nietzsche's later work. Figures such as the phoenix
have traditionally been read as emblems of self-overcoming, timeless
transcendence and eternal rebirth. 1 0 What calls for further elabora
tion, however, is the opposite side of the coin: their figuration of Nietz
sche's empirical life as a form of death. "One pays dearly for immor
tality," he writes in Ecce Homo . "One must die several times while liv
ing." Or: "The good fortune of my existence . . . lies in its fatality
[ Verhangniss]" (Ecce 678) . We remember that in the preface to The An
tichrist Nietzsche had suggested that he does not live in the present.
"Some are born posthumously." If we apply these lines to Nietzsche' s
today instead of his tomorrow, we must conclude that to be born
posthumously is to be a stillborn, if not even an abortion . Here it
10 See R . Harrison's essay in this volume.
is no personal I impinging on a universal I, but the contrary. "The

work," to adapt Foucault's words, "possesses the right to kill, to be
its author's murderer" ( 1 42). Daily dying occasions a transcendence
which is purely hypothetical. Death is already the self-transcendence
of which Nietzsche boasts- of which immortality, timelessness, and
so on are simply the desiderata.
In the preface to The Genealogy Nietzsche had written that the only
element in life that matters to philosophers is the intellectual harvest
of"bringing something home": "Whatever else there is in life, so-called
'experiences' - which of us has sufficient earnestness for them? Or
sufficient time? Present experience has, I am afraid, always found
us 'absent-minded' " ( 45 1 ) . What, in 1 887 , sounds like an aestheticist
dismissal of historical reality (bordering on Axel's "As for living, our
servants will do that for us") conceals an inexorably tragic condition.
By the last quarter of 1 888 Nietzsche complains that "nobody writes
to me," that "people are simply deaf to anything I say" (Letters to
G . Brandes and F . Overbeck, Middleton 3 1 7 and 3 1 5) . In the preface
to Ecce Homo Nietzsche is convinced that none of his contemporaries
has either "heard or even seen me ," making him wonder whether it
is not "a mere prejudice that I live" (673) . Life is only a species of
death, as Nietzsche had written in an earlier aphorism . By 1 888 he
has confronted this fact directly.
This ontology of non-existence represents Nietzsche's ultimate com
ment on a life that is lived fully "beyond." It grounds the hypothesis
of living tomorrow in the same way that dismemberment grounds
the possibility of Dionysian integrity, and Untergang grounds
Zarathustra's projected victory over the minds of men. This victory
(which never comes to pass in the course of the narrative) is postulated
upon nothing less than the hero's destruction. ("Also begann Zarathustras
Untergang ," concludes the prologue [ 1 3 7) . ) The awaited advent of the
overman is predicated on the same condition . 'I love those," says
Zarathustra, "who do not know how to live except by perishing
[ untergehen] , for they are those who cross over . . . they are the great
reverers and arrows of longing for the other shore" ( 1 2 7) . (What other
shore?) If the overman represents a new spirit of comedy and parody, 1 1
1 1 The aphorism which first announces Zarathustra's advent at the close of Book
Four of The Gay Science (§ 342) is entitled "Incipit tragiidia ." It ends, "Thus Zarathustra
began to go under." Nietzsche's gloss on this aphorism in his second preface to The
Gay Science adds a twist :" 'Incipit tragodia' we read at the end of this awesomely aweless
book. Beware! Something downright wicked and malicious is announced here: in
cipit parodia, no doubt." Section 1 53 of the same work locates the spirit of comedy
it is only as the fifth act to what Nietzsche considers to be the historical

and cultural tragedy of man's Untergang, of his sinking into a nihilistic
inability to will the present. Thus Zarathustra describes the actual
condition of man as he (barely) functions as that of "a rope over an
abyss . A dangerous across, a dangerous on-the-way [Auf-dem- Wege] ,
a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and stopping''
( 1 26) . That is: a place without substance, an ungrounded verbal move
ment , a projection without direction , a suspension over a vacuum .
This image ties up with Nietzsche's description of men of knowledge
as engaged in an unending on-the-wayness, and of the philosopher
as one who finds his advantage outside time and space , "in standing_
aside and outside, in patience , in procrastination, in staying behind
. . . who looks back when relating what will come" ( Will to Power 3 ; §
3 of the preface) . By and large the terms are similar to those describ
ing what it takes to be like Nietzsche in the preface to The Antichrist:
one must be honest, indifferent, transcendent, with a predilection for
questions , a taste for the forbidden , new ears for new music, an ex
perience of seven solitudes, a predestination for the labyrinth. AH this
implies that such a man - if he lives at all - has no fixity, no prece
dent, no warrant , no commitment, and no compulsion. Characterized
by "eyes for what is most distant ," and by an "unconditional freedom
from himself," he lives beyond the claims of present necessity.
Where, then, does such a man truly live? The next lines, the begin
ning of The Antichrist proper (although still refusing its "topic''.) , tell
us where : "Let us face ourselves. We are Hyperboreans; we know
very well how far off we live . 'Neither by land nor by sea will you
find the way to the Hyperboreans'- Pindar already knew this about
u s . Beyond the north, ice , and death - our life, our happiness" (569) .
This "beyond" - the "other shore" to which the Ubermensch crosses - is
so utterly transcendent, so utterly utopic, that Nietzsche's earlier words
about being predestined to a labyrinth call out to be taken literally.
Thus while Colli may be right to read Nietzsche's turn to his own
person as an attempt to conflate thought and life, or form and con
tent, this turn paradoxically ends up obliterating its own presupposi
tions, starting with the very concept of a "living person." Nietzsche's
endeavor in his final year of sanity to participate in the world around
at the end of a five act tragedy:" 'I myself . . . have now slain all gods in the fourth
act , for the sake of morality. Now what is to become of the fifth act? From where
am I to take the tragic solution? - Should I begin to think about a comic solution?' "
On i"ncipit tragiidia cf. also the concluding sentence of § 382 and Beyond Good and Evil
§ 26.
him only stresses the fact that he is irremediably inactual, that he

belongs so little to his historical present that, like Zarathustra's shadow,
he inhabits an Eternal Nowhere.12 Untimeliness turns into literal in
actuality (a connotation preserved in the French and Ital ian transla
tions of unzeitgemass as inactuel and inattuale) . The questionability of
an existence pursuing the possible is never "overcome" in the ac
complishment of another state of being; such an overcoming would
only annul the profundity of the question . Yes , Nietzsche has
transcended the personal in the impersonal, the individual in the
universal, but in a way that does not allow this impersonality to be
equated with the achieved results of philosophy. Nietzsche's
"timelessness" is dispossesion by time. Otherwise put, timelessness and
untimeliness have collapsed into a condition of self-suspension and
not-belonging, of belonging to an absent time and to time's absence .
In Nietzsche's final writings the I has faced its destiny as a shifter,
ontologically as well as linguistically, referring beyond its every
designation. While in the world, it is ever outside it, an emblem of
immanent transcendence , of ceaseless, ecstatic displacement . By the
end of 1888 Nietzsche has lost his address; "let us suppose that it will
soon be the Palazzo del Quirinale" (Letter to Peter Gast, 3 1 December
1 888 ; Middleton 344) . The I has shown itself to be invisible and
nonreferential . Erring without end in a time without present, it is
marked by a lack of being; it is "dead."13
Nietzsche's final texts focus on timelessness and untimeliness only
to depict them as shifting faces of a third, existential process- in which
the I is present in absence. The nameless universality that Nietzsche
assumes with his conceits of living tomorrow and being a world
historical destiny unhinges his identity from every particular that would
12 "I am," Zarathustra confesses to himself in the words of his shadow, "a wanderer
. . . always on my way, but without any goal, also without any home . . . With you
I haunted the remotest, coldest worlds like a ghost . . . . With you I strove to penetrate
everything that is forbidden, worst, remotest. . I overthrew all boundary .stones and
. .
i mages . . . . Trying . . . to find my home . . . trying this was my trial, it consumes me.
'Where is - my home?' I ask and search and have searched for it, but I have not
found it. 0 eternal everywhere, 0 eternal nowhere, 0 eternal - in vain!" (385-86)
C f. the aphorism with which Human, All Too Human originally ended (§ 638) :
"Whoever has attained intellectual freedom even to a small extent cannot feel but
as a wanderer . . . and not as a traveler toward some final destination; for that does
not exist . "
1 3 Cf. the essays o f Nancy and Ronell i n this volume .
otherwise seem to constitute it. At the same time , the concretizing

and particularizing thrust of these later writings has an equal effect ,
for the singularity of this Nietzsche-link in a differential chain of
becoming is as undescribable as any universal - the inarticulable
referent of an ecce. Nietzsche'� madness coincides with his entry into
this inarticulable realm of singular universality. His literary career
ends not with a delusory equation of form and content, but with a
recognition that becoming what one is occurs between , beyond, or
outside the two. We are now in a position to recognize the extent
to which this presupposition of existence as self-excession, betweenness
and on-the-wayness has guided Nietzsche's philosophy all along,
grounding its most paradoxical principles, including the interminability
o f Selbstuberwindung, the inappropriate appropriation known as will
to power, the understanding of valuation as transvaluation, the retur�
of sameness in flux, and the choice of necessity called amor Jati.
Another reason why Nietzsche turns so obsessively to this
unspeakable Sache of his I at the end of his career may now be clearer.
The voice or I that informs any utterance can no more be spoken
than can the proto ousia which is the ground of its predicates . The
shifter-I epitomizes a problem that has worried Nietzsche's philosophy
from the start: the inessentiality of language and the failure of con
ceptual knowledge. At the end of his career, at the juncture of madness,
N ietzsche runs into the impasse at which one cannot make out a case
for the difference between integrity and dismemberment, living and
dying, transcendence and immanence, discovery and forgetfulness .
These two terms cling together not in a dialectical relation - the
"negative" issuing into the "positive" - but in an equation , evoking
either the highest affirmation or a forfeit of reason.
The ultimate vision of Nietzsche's final writings is this andere Zustand
underlying and belying the distinction between the person and ·the
work and all other oppositions. This is the site of that difference out
lined by the preface to The Antichrist, from which Nietzsche's text is born
and outside of which it cannot be understood. After all , the purpose
of the preface is to set forth the conditions for the work's comprehen
sion . It states that in order to understand the work the reader must
already, like Nietzsche, inhabit this other space beyond life [Ecce 682] .
But what a strange hermeneutical circle is thereby traced - in which
the very objective of Nietzsche's text is its precondition , and the type
of life it aims to foster must already exist for the text to acquire mean
ing. Like the existence from which it is inseparable, then, the text
too is literally unreadable, suspended in utopic exile, a ring inscrib

ing its own autonomous and impenetrable space . lff this last com
municative year, Nietzsche's speaking is a resounding silence, the over
ture of his autobiography only a monologue : "And so I tell my life
to myself " (Ecce 677) . 14 And, given the private code in which these
public texts are written, readers can abstract no signification from
them.
Since Heidegger , we have grown accustomed to understanding ex
istential transcendence as the necessary condition of language - that
distinguishing mark of the human. In the light of Nietzsche's final
texts, we might now equate that language , that speaking or writing,
with becoming what one is - an articulation of being in a changing
series of positions , descriptions, and declarations evoking a missing
I . This writing, or exchange between body and text , may be what
Nietzsche understands as destiny, that category with which he ultimately
identifies himself. The four chapters of Ecce Homo ("Why I Am So
Wise,"/"Why I Am So Clever,"/"Why I Write Such Good
Books ,"/"Why I Am a Destiny" - with their three I Ams and one I
Write) present a complex transcription of this self-essentializing,
transformational destiny by which "work�' and "person" seem to
autonomize themselves only by producing each other, each being itself
by becoming the other. "I am one thing, my writings are another mat
ter" [ Ecce 7 1 5] : the third face that this Doppelganger hints that he
possesses in addition to the first two [Ecce 68 1 ] is the passage between
them . Nietzsche's account of how he becomes what he is is thus
necessarily a reading of his writing, 1 5 of the process making books
of a man and a man of books, allowing each to stand as a figure fo r
the other, and both t o b e symbols o f this third, scriptorial process.
If writing, or becoming what one is, is the ultimate object of Nietz
sche's investigations - the final referent of his I , as it were - it can be
reflected neither by traditional autobiography nor theoretical
philosophy. It requires the coalescence of styles of Nietzsche's last,
Turinese period, addressing equivocal topics of analysis, engaging
incommensurable vocabularies , effecting, at the very least, a de
subjectification of the person and a de-objectification of the work.
, . Everyone is familiar with Nietzsche's distinction between monologic art and "art
before witnesses" (Gay Science §367). But at one point he thought of subtitling even
Beyond Good and Evit •Selbstgesprache eines Psychologen" (Soliloquies ofa Psychologist;
see Samtliche Werke XII, 84) .
1 5 See Doueihi's essay in this volume.
Works Cited
Agamben, Giorgio . fl linguaggio e la morte. Turin : Einaudi , 1 98 2 .

C olli, Giorgio . Scritti s u Nietzsche. Milan: Adelphi, 1980. I cite from three
essays: "I frammenti postumi dagli inizi del 1 888 al gennaio 1 889"
( 1 81 -88), "Le opere e gli scrittj postumi del 1 888" ( 195-202), and "Ditiram
bi di Dioniso" ( 1 89-94) . The first of these essays is the one translated
in this volume.
Derrida, Jacques. Otobiographies: L 'enseignement de Nietzsche et la politique du nom
propre. Paris : Editions Galilee, 1 984.
Foucault, Michel . "What is an Author?" in Textual Strategies. Ed. Josue Harari.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press , 1979.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. The Phenomenology of Spirit. Tr. J .B. Baillie.
New York: Harper and Row, 1 96 7 .
Heidegger, Martin. What is a Thing? Tr. W . B . Barton Jr. and Vera Deutsch .
Southbend : Gateway, 1 96 7 .
Hollingdale , R.J. "Introduction," Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One ls.
Tr. R .J. Hollingdale . Middlesex, England : Penguin Books, 1 979.
Janz, Curt Paul. Vita di Nietzsche. 2 vols . Tr. Mario Carpitella. Rome-Bari:
· Laterza, 1 982 .
Middleton , Christopher . Ed. and tr. Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche.
Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 1969 .
Montinari, Mazzino . Su Nietzsche. Rome: Editori Riuniti , 1 98 1 .
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Antichrist, in The Portable Nietzsche. Ed. Walter Kauf
mann . New York: The Viking Press, 1 968 .
____ . Basic Writings. Tr. and ed. Walter Kaufmann. New York: The
Modern Library, 1 968 .
____ . Beyond Good and Evil, in Basic Writings.
____ . The Case of Wagner, in Basic Writings.
---- · The Gay Science. Tr. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage
Books , 1 974.
____ . Human, All Too Human. Tr. Stephen Lehmann . Lincoln: Univer-
sity of Nebraska Press, 1 984.
____ . Ecce Homo , in Basic Writings.
____ . On the Genealogy of Morals, in Basic Writings .
____ . La mia vita . Tr. Mario C arpitella. Milan: Adelphi, 1 9 7 7 .
____ . Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. Tr. Marianne Cowan.
Chicago : Henry Regnery Co. , 1962.
---- · The Portable Nietzsche. Ed. Walter Kaufmann . New York: The
Viking Press, 1 968 .
---- · Samtliche Werke: Kritische Studiimausgabe in 15 Banden. Eds. Giorgio
Colli and Mazzino Montinari. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag ,
1 980 .
____ . Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in The Portable Nietzsche .
---- · Twilight of the Idols, in The Portable Nietzsche.

---- · The Will to Power. Ed. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random
House , 1 968.
Rella, Franco . It silenzio e le parole: It pensiero nel tempo della crisi. Milan:
Feltrinelli, 1 984.
Verrecchia, Anacleto. La catastrofe di Nietzsche a Torino . Turin: Einaudi, 1978.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Tr . G . E . M . Anscombe .
New York: MacMillan, 1968.
Jean-Luc Nancy
DEi PARAL YSIS PROGRESS/VA
InJ anuary 1889, in Turin , Nietzsche does not disappear. He becomes

paralyzed. "Paralysis progressiva": that is the diagnosis of the psychiatrist
Doctor Wille when Overbeck brings Nietzsche back to Basel. Nietz
sche is paralyzed for eleven years of fixed existence - one third of the
thirty-three years that will have passed between his first written
publication and his death. This paralysis is not primarily a cessation,
an annulment or a destruction. It is above all a presentation. It presents
him whom it strikes, immobile , in the posture and figure in which
he is overcome, and it progressively accomplishes this presentation,
to the point of offering, definitively immutable, a death mask and
the eternity over which it closes (but his face had already become "like
a mask'' when he appeared at the clinic ofJena, as Peter Gast wrote) .
The posture and figure in which Nietzsche is paralyzed are the
posture and figure of God. He who announced and proclaimed the
death of God - with no resurrection- died in persona Dei: God outliv
ing himself, but paralyzed.
Or else: God did not die in the Nietzschean statement, in Nietz
sche's text (who, in a text, ever died a death not fictitious?) . God died
by the death of Nietzsche. And for eleven years, progressive paralysis
identified God and him who could write nothing, say nothing anymore.
God resuscitated one last time: paralyzed, mad, alienated, so con
gealed in the anticipated posture of death - preceding death itself,
death not ceasing to precede itself- that he could never resuscitate
again. For death, now, was to him no longer the absolute accident
199
200 Nietzsche in Ita(y
which the spirit knows how to confront and pass over with no less
absolute a power. Rather, death had become the very being of God.
In 1889 God is no longer simply dead, as he was or could have
seemed to be in The Gay Science. That is to say, the quality or state
of death are no longer simply attributed to his being, which would
bear them and perhaps ultimately even transmit to them in return
something of his divinity. Rather, death is in his being. (Nietzsche
had noted one day: "'Being' - we have no other representation of it
than 'living. ' - How, then, can something dead 'be'?")
In other words: the cry "God is dead" no longer allows itself to be
accompanied, in 1 889 , by that muffled and limiting echo , "At bot
tom, only the moral God has passed away." For this echo accused
the expression "God is dead" of being a metaphor, and authorized
the thought of another life of God or of another living God, beyond
morality. At present, however, God is truly dead, his being is abol
ished. And that is why there is no longer any voice to announce this
predication "God is dead," for there is no longer any subject to whom
a predicate can be attributed ("Who then would be the subject of whom
it is here predicated that he is now, here, dead?" - Adorno) . Rather,
there is God "himself," who does not say his own death (no one can) .
On the contrary, he proffers his own identity, with a mad, gaping,
and progressively paralyzed voice - for this identity no longer is. No
longer does one hear a sentence saying something (that God is dead),
one hears someone no longer able to say himself, for he no longer
is, and he disappears in his choked voice .
When the madman cried out, "God is dead!" one heard someone's
voice, with his tone and accent. It was the voice of Nietzsche, author
of The Gay Science- and, all told, it was also the poetic and embellished
voice of Prince Vogelfrei. But here one no longer hears the voice
of anyone. It is not an anonymous voice. It is still the voice of"Nietz
sche," but it pronounces nothing anymore but the effacement and
dispersion of this name, it pronounces nothing but the drift and
delirium of its own provenance and emission . It no longer speaks ,
it vainly shapes articulations (sounds, names) which might procure
for it the point from which a word can be spoken . It is too late, it
has lost the power of speech, even the possibility of exper:iencing it
as unattainable. No longer, by speaking, can it expose itself to the
test oflanguage and the word, nor, as a consequence, to that of silence.
It unravels a language beyond or behind language itself, where names
are infinitely interchanged, no longer naming anything or anyone,
Nancy: Dei Paralysis Progressiva 201
where the play of meaning is at once dissolved at the limits of the

arbitrary and seized in a blocked necessity. It is the voice of God,
insofar as "God is dead" now means: the Unnameable names itself,
it assumes all names, it paralyzes language and history, and it presents
itself in this way, a living mo,uth articulating death. (Before ceasing
completely to speak, in the years 1 892-93 , Nietzsche used to repeat
phrases such as "I am dead because I am stupid," or else, without
syntax, "in short, dead.")
God is dead, but this time it is not news anymore. It is the presenta
tion of the deceased, and this is why, instead of showing us churches
as tombs closed over the absence of God, as the madman did,
the scene in Turin shows us someone who "attended his own funeral
twice": God presents himself dead, and his death makes him present
with an absolute presence, incommensurable with all past modes of
his presence, of his repres�ntation or absence. This presence cannot
be endured: the absence of God caused anxiety, but the presence of
God dead, and of his voice, paralyzes. Nietzsche is the name and body
of this presence. In contrast to Christ or as his pendant, he is the in
carnation of the dead, not the live, God. In addition he is not the
son but the Father:
What is disagreeable and offends my modesty is that at bottom I am
every name in history. With the children I have put into the world too ,
I consider with some mistrust whether it is not the case that all who
come into the "kingdom of God" also come out of God . 1
I n Turin God the Father is incarnated directly, without

mediation - and without a Mediator for any sort of health - that is
to say, without a Mediator by which to pass through death and
resuscitate from the tomb . No longer is there any tomb . It is in the
middle of the street, in full gesticulation, in the middle of the written
page to Gast or to Burckhardt that God presents himself dead. He
is incarnated dead, or as death itself, presenting and preceding itself
in paralysis. God present as death is God present as nothing, or as
that immobile suspension in the "nothing," which strictly speaking
cannot even be called "death" since it has no identity. Rather, it
withdraws all identity. In the becoming-dead of God the identity of
God is withdrawn. It loses itself in the loss of identity of him who
has become God, assuming all divine names with all names of history.
1 Letter to Jacob Burckhardt, January 6, 1889, in The Portable Nietzsche, tr. Walter
Kaufmann (New York: Viking Press, 1 968) 686.

Nietzsche paralyzed presents God dead: he does not represent him,

for the authentic reality of God dead is not to be found in another
place, from which it might delegate or figure itself as "Nietzsche." In
stead, God dead is there, for Nietzsche's paralysis - which is the preces
sion of his death - presents this: that there is no God, or that all there
is of "God" is but in death and as death. Nietzsche presents nothing
other than that which is presented by all human death - simply this ,
that it is death , and the "God" is immersed in it even before having
been. (God is immersed in it because God is death conceived as un
nameable, death conceived under a name and as the presence of this
name - death presented, the end of named and presented presence.)
With Nietzsche and in Turin, there occurs that moment in history
where death precedes itself to show what it "is." Until that moment,
"God" had always signified, as long as there had been a "god," that
death is not; and God had always been that which infinitely overtakes
death, withdrawing its prey from it in advance, conceding to it no
more than the simulacre of its mortal operation. That is why, once
this significance is abolished, once this meaning which had asserted
itself for centuries (or for millenia) comes to touch its own limit and
to close, a moment arrives, in Turin, where it is death which over
takes itself and which shows itself for what it is: paralysis and death .
No longer, "death is not," but rather, "the being of death is non
being, and such is also the being of God." Thus God no longer precedes
death , and does not suppress it or sublimate it into himself. Rather,
it is death that precedes itself in him. Thus God sees himself dead
and presents himself dead (Jean Paul, whom Nietzsche had read, had
already written the Discourse of Christ Dead, That There is no God) . God
presents himself as a paralyzed creator of a caricature of creation :
"son dio, ho Jatto questa caricatura." And the caricature is that of God.
God declares himself his own caricature, for he is not. When Nietz
sche slaps passersby on the back in Turin and tells them "hojatto questa
caricatura," it is himself that he shows, and thus he says: "I am God,
I made this caricature, this man with the large moustache who walks
around in his student's coat, forty-four years old, for there is no God,
for I do not exist." Yet still, if he is every name in history, it means
that through all these names he is the name of their provenance and
of their transcendent recollection, the name of God, while at the same
time he is no more than the names of history, for the name of God is
not the name of a being, and Nietzsche is paralyzed in announcing

himself through the impossible name.
In Turin that moment of history comes to pass where it is shown
that the name of God is no longer the name beyond all names, that
it is no longer the extreme nomination of the Unnameable (for the
name of God was never anything but the name of an impossible
Name), but that it is rather the emptiness of all nomination, an absence
of name furrowed behind all names, or else, the paralysis and death
of all names. As God, and as God "the successor of the dead God,"
in his words to Overbeck, Nietzsche presents the haggard, stray, and
frozen countenance not of him who has an impossible name (who
would at least reserve in himself the secret of his nomination) but of
him who has no name , of him who is no name, and who has no way
of being called, for he does not exist. "God" has become something
other than a name or the name of a name: it has become the cry of
him who sees himself not being.
He is one who has entered into death, and who, in a certain way,
recognizes and rediscovers himself there (in his last letters, Nietzsche
identifies himself both with dead people and with murderers, he camps
on both banks of death, and it is in this being-between-two that he
is God) . He is thus very close to the Hegelian Spirit, whose "life brings
death and preserves itself in death itself." Nietzsche's paralyzed spirit
is the twin brother of this Spirit; or its caricature; or even, and here
this means the same thing, its truth.
In fact, the spirit that "preserves itself in death itself," and, by con
sequence , resurges from this death to affirm itself in its plenitude ,
is spirit as Self. The Self- or subjectivity - is the determination of
being (or life, that which Hegel calls "the living substance") as self
production and self-positing. In the ontology of Self, the relation-to
self (the phenomenological face of which is self-consciousness) is not
subordinate to the positing of a "self-itself " (as an external and em
pirical consideration of self-consciousness might make it seem). On
the contrary, the relation�to-self is antecedent and generative. The
Self comes from "relating to oneself." It is the constitutive movement
of the ego , and it is already that of Montaigne's "I." Now, in order
for the relation-to-self to take place, in order for it to articulate itself,
what is necessary is the moment of the outside-oneself, of the nega
tion of self through which a self-relation can be produced (both in
the sense of establishing a relation and restoring propriety) . Death

is this moment, in itself void, and the nullity of which allows the Self
to be mediated.
The Self would not be able to be immediate, for what is immediate
is not produced, has not become, has not been actualized - which,
for Hegel, and in truth for all philosophy, comes down to not being
effective. Death, consequently, is the moment and the movement of
the effective production of Self. The same is the case in the death of
God and even in the mortal paralysis of his caricature. With this
difference, however, that now what is produced is the opposite of a
production : it is nothing more than the reproduction of the produc
tive instance . The paralyzed Self does not present the Subject resur
rected from death. Instead, it presents death as the truth of this sub
ject. It presents death itself stopped in its tracks (in what metaphysics
would represent as a move, a passage), death paralyzed; and it presents
this death as the true subjectivity of the subject. That is what God
now means in the sentence "I am God," and it is also the meaning
of the irony or sarcasm with which it charges the sentence, that is,
the consciousness of madness. A mad consciousness of conscious
madness constitutes the self-consciousness of the subject that is achieved
paralyzed.
For one should not mistake this sentence. One might be tempted
to see the announcement of a theophany in it. A god would be com
ing to show himself, and would thus be declaring his coming. Nietz
sche, up until Turin no doubt, had awaited nothing else (cf. his famous
exclamation, "how many new gods are still possible!") . In Turin, he
was the first person in our history to know that this epiphany would
never take place. But whether it could or could not - and whether
it ever did or did not- take place, what is in any case certain is that
it cannot be accompanied by such a sentence. By definition, a divine
epiphany does not have to be declared or reflected in an enunciation
of itself. In such an epiphany, an unproduced immediacy is revealed
immediately. (A careful reading of theophanic texts could show it :
when the god declares himself, and says "I am God," he has already
been recognized at the bottom of the heart or soul; his divinity has
already presented itself, for otherwise his enunciation would not be
understood .) "I am God" is the statement of someone who sees his
divinity abolished.
On the other hand, it is the statement of a subject who affirms
himself before his own production. He affirms that he has presided
over the operation of the self-relation, which would therefore not oc
cur before him. In effect, it is nothing but the logic of the self-relation
taken to its most rigorous extreme. At this extreme it turns out that
the Subject is identical to the null moment required by its produc
tion, that necessary and impossible moment of self-production where
no "itself " is available, or ever w'ill be- that moment of pure and simple
death . "I am God'' means "I am dead,'' and this new statement does
not mean that the I has lost its living quality; it means that the I never
had this quality, and that it never will have it. It means that the self
constitution of the self-relation is identical to death, or that it does
not occur except as a death which does not occur unexpectedly to
something living, but is only death preceding itself infinitely. For on
ly death is really capable of such preceding. And yet at the same time
it reveals that this precession - the ontological self-precession con
stitutive of the Subject- is not and cannot be anything but a paralysis .
The Self is an ontological paralysis, the truth of which could be ar
ticulated in this way: on(y death is self-productive, but thus produces nothing.
This truth was already at work when Descartes understood that
the ego sum also belongs to madness. It was the tenebrous truth of
the blind evidence from which the cogito issues. It was perhaps on ac
count of this truth that Hegel once thought he was going mad. It was
through it that God, less than a century later, entered into the paralysis
progressiva of Nietzsche .
What Nietzsche would have become aware of in Turin, by a sort
of final implosion of the C artesian evidence, or by a last convulsion
of the "life that preserves itself in death itself," is that "one can die
of immortality," as he himself had written. In other words: the Sub
j ect is nothing but death, that is, nothing but his death . But this does
not involve a death of the Subject. It involves this: that, in the ab
solute constitution of the self-relation, subjectivity does not attain or
present anything but its own absence. Yet this absence is so much
its own that it is not an absence at all. That is to say, it is not the default
of the presence of something or someone who might have been there
before; it is the disappearance of a presence in the very process of
its presentation. The subject, says Hegel, is "the being . . . that does
not have mediation outside itself, but is this mediation itself." Now,
death is mediation. In death and as death, the subject actualizes and
presents itself: immobilized before having begun to budge; paralyzed;
its glance fixed, and fixed on nothing that is presented to it but
the unreality of its presence ("death," says Hegel again , "if that is the
way we want to call such unreality . . ."). The subject attends its own
burial - and attends it twice, for in truth this blocked epiphany repeats
itself unendingly and vacuously.
"I am God" is the utterance of such knowledge, and the word "God"
operates the de-nomination of the Subject: it has no name, it traverses
history blowing all names, leading all the children of God , along with
itself, back to the abyss of the heavens. Paralysis freezes on Nietz.
sche's face the absent traits of him no longer inscribed by anything
anywhere, who leaves no trace (the last letters are only a way of cover
ing over, and then of effacing, the traces of the person named Nietz
sche), and who , instead of being taken away by death, takes away
from death, beforehand, its power of reaching him, for he is already
no longer. Death itself, eleven years later, will be insignificant. It will
not come to cut the course of Nietzsche's life . It will only confirm that
which is the case with God: the absolute and void knowledge of self
in the complete night in which the Subject produces itself, that is to
say, paralyzes itself.
It is impossible to imagine the cold horror that must have been,
for eleven years, the confrontation between the Self and the efface
ment of all inscription .
But nor is it possible to imagine a strange gaiety, and even a shim
mering joy, not in this night but next to it, as an infinitesimal gleam
in the corner of Nietzsche's eye. This is the gaiety which animates
most of the Turinese letters - for example, in the last one to Burck
hardt, after he has designated himself God the Creator: "I salute
the Immortals. M . Daudet belongs to the quarantd' - and this is the
joy of the note to Peter Gast:
To my maestro Pietro. Sing me a new song: the world is tranifigured and all
the heavens rt;foice. The Crucified.
Whence comes this joy, sung with the words and cheerfulness of
the psalmist? What reason have the heavens for rejoicing? Precisely
because God has abandoned them to fix himself in the thick darkness
of the Subject. The heavens with no Self, with no Supreme Being,
are the heavens delivered from the necessity of subjectivity, that is
to say, from the self-production and self-positing of being. Otherwise
put - and this is why the worldis transfigured - they are heavens opened
onto their new truth. No longer the abode of the world's support ,
they are the free spacing in which the world is cast without reason,
as if by the game of a child . This child is still a god - pais paizon - the
child-god of Heraclitus, "Zeus the big child of the worlds," as Nietz
sche called him.
But the child-god is not God, not even a small god. He is the play
of the world, and being is not its subject. And this game is no game :
it is the mittance of the world in the space of a freedom that disengages
it from the paralyzing compulsion of the Self, but engages it at the
same time in an obligation: that of "singing a new song." Nietzsche
does not sing this song, he tells others to sing it. He says it laughing
beside his madness, laughing at it and at God paralyzed - a silent
laughter turned towards the rejoicing heavens .
To him the heavens are no longer the heaven one reaches after pass
ing through death. Here, too , death shrinks into insignificance, now
no longer because it precedes itself in paralysis, but because the life
which will attain it, which is always already in the process of attain
ing it, does not, in it, touch on the moment of its mediation. This
life does not have to mediq.te itself in order to appropriate its own
substance in the form of a subject. It simply exposes itself to its end,
just as it has been exposed to the space of the play of the world. Its
end is a part of this game; in its space it inscribes the trace of a name -
here, that of Friedrich Nietzsche - in the same way that each time,
with each name of history, a singular trace, a finitude whose limit
puts into play each time anew the whole spacing of the world, in
scribes itself. Each name, each time that its subject is progressively
paralyzed, discloses again, instantaneously, the whole space of the
world; or else it discloses, that is , inscribes, a new spacing. The spac
ing of a bountiful community, whose history does not consist in ac
complishing an end, but in letting new names, and new songs, arise
unendingly.
As Nietzsche wished to read it, against the Christian reading (and
perhaps against all possible readings of this text), in the Gospels, "death
is not a bridge, not a passage," for "the Kingdom of God" is not
something that one has to wait for; it has no yesterday and no day
after tomorrow. It does not arrive in a "thousand years'' - it is the
experience of a heart: it exists everywhere, it exists nowhere . . . . Death
therefore is indeed the end, and in this sense Nietzsche's jubilation pro
nounces nothing but his paralysis. But for this paralysis the end is
endless: it fixes the subject's regard on the eternity of its nothingness.
While Nietzsche's "heart" is filled with the cheer of this kingdom
delivered from God, where all beings, like children, are simply given
life.

Milad Doueihi
NIETZSCHE , DIO A TORINO
My purpose in this essay is to sketch out a possible interpretation of

the subtitle of Ecce Homo, an interpretation that calls for a close in
spection of the text and the elaboration of a textual network extend
ing from Ecce Homo to some of Nietzsche's other writings and to his
last letters . It is in this somewhat restricted context that I will ven
ture a reading of the maxim "How one becomes what one is."
In the untitled page inserted between the Preface and the first
chapter of Ecce Homo we re_ad the following:
It was not for nothing that I buried my forty-fourth year today; I had
the right to bury it; whatever was life. in it has been saved, is immortal .
The first book of the Revaluation of All Values, the Songs of Zarathustra ,
the Twilight of the Idols, my attempt to philosophize with a hammer all
presents of this year, indeed of its last quarter! How could I fail to be
grateful to my whole life? And so I tell my life to myself. 1
The autobiographical motif is introduced here under the guise of
the death of an imaginary and fragmented subject. This death pro
vides the necessary mediation constitutive of the autobiographical text
to the extent that what survives is simply a number of texts defined
or identified by the narrator as life (Leben). This displacement of the
subject in question deploys its subject as a plurality of figures that
require a specific and interested theoretical framing of the subject of
the autobiography the reader is about to read. The subsequent chapters
1All quotations from Ecce Homo refer to Walter Kaufmann's translation in On the
Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo ( Vintage, 1969) 22 1 .
209
of the book, each devoted to a text written by Nietzsche, illustrate

this operation. Autobiography is a form of communication between
life and death; it constitutes the proof of the existence of a special
subject who is at once the subject and the destinator of his own
autobiography, who is at once dead and alive.
This problematic position of the subject finds different formulations
in Ecce Homo and elsewhere . In the second paragraph of the preface
to Daybreak, Nietzsche talks about the preface as a funeral oration :
"And indeed, my patient friends, I shall now tell you what I was after
down there - here in this late preface which could easily have become
a funeral oration: for I have returned, believe it or not, returned safe
and sound."2 In Ecce Homo, the double position of the narrator, of
the subject of autobiography, his detachment from the world as well
as his privileged status of exteriority and therefore as an observer.
will become the condition of possibility for reading and understand
ing. In other words, the reader will have to be, like Nietzsche, the
reader of his own texts and of his own autobiography: "In order to
understand anything at all of my Zarathustra one must perhaps be
similarly conditioned as I am with one foot beyond life" (Ecce 226) . In
this preliminary context, one possible interpretation of the subtitle
of the book would simply say that Ecce Homo is the description of the
constitutive process of Nietzsche the writer, of Nietzsche the subject
about to become an author. This view is inadequate, for it is already
evident that writing and reading are closely interconnected and almost
indistinguishable from each other, especially in the case of Ecce Homo.
In an earlier version of the "exergue" to Ecce Homo, Nietzsche added
the following paragraph: "He who has the faintest idea of what
I am will know that I have lived more than any other man. The ac
count of this is even inscribed in my books, my books, which are ,
line by line, lived books , lived from a will to live, and that represent,
in so far as they are creation, a true supplement, a surplus of this life ."3
The book is both a representation and a creation, it is both a supple
ment and an excess. The book represents in its creation, it supplements
because it is a surplus. This supplementary structure that characterizes
writing constitutes for Nietzsche the condition of possibility of
knowledge in particular and of knowledge in general. It is in fact the
negation of Christianity and of the rule of the priest: "I have been
2 Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, tr. R. J. Holl
ingdale (Cambridge, Mass. : C ambridge University Press, 1 982) 1 .
3 Friedrich Nietzsche, Nachgelassene Fragmente Anfang 1888 bis Anfang 1889, ed. G .
Colli an d M . Montinari (Berlin: Walter d e Gruyter, 1 972).
Doueihi: Nietzsche, Dio a Torino 211
understood. The beginning of the Bible contains the whole psychology

of the priest. The priest knows only one great danger: that is science ,
the sound conception of cause and effect. But on the whole science
prospers only under happy circumstances, there must be a surplus of
time, of spirit, to make 'knowledge' possible."4 "How one becomes
what one is," in this perspecfive, functions like a demonstration or
a practical illustration undertaken in the form of an apparent
recapitulative reading of one's life, that is to say of one's writings .
The identification between life and books on the one hand and life
and surplus or supplement on the other puts into relief the double
role performed by writing and reading. On the one hand, writing
represents a surplus of life, it stands for the texts that survive after
and beyond the death and the burial of years. On the other, writing
supplements life, it is life and the will to live combined in an almost
heroic effort. Ecce Homo is, in a sense, the figurative deployment and
unveiling of this survival in a gesture that repeats and enacts that which
it seeks to show and to represent. To tell the story of one's life means,
in the logic of our text , to tell the story of certain books, to write their
story and their history. Or, in other words, to re-read them and to
interpret them in a new text, in a new supplement that will exceed
its obj ect. Survival , along with the will to affirm one's identity as
different from all others, is only possible in and through writing,
through re-writing one's own writing. This endless process of sup
plementarity, as we shall see, defines the "divine nature" of the nar
rator of Ecce Homo. Writing in general, and writing prefaces and proof
reading one's own books in particular, informs and problematizes
Nietzsche's interpretation of the death of god and invites a new reading
of his own claim to being god. A theological fable in Ecce Homo il
lustrates this problematic:
Theologically speaking, listen closely, for I so rarely speak as a
theologian, it was God himself who at the end of his day's work lay
down as a serpent under the tree of knowledge: thus he recuperated
• Friedrich Nietzsche, The A ntichrist in The Portable Nietzsche, tr. Walter Kaufmann
(New York: Penguin Books, 1983) 629-30. In this section Nietzsche develops and
comments on the fable of creation. He represents the creation of man as a form of
divertissement of God, a divertissement that is designed to liberate him from his boredom .
Man, however, turns out to be a threatening rival for the Creator; his rivalry
necessitates the Fall and subsequently, for Nietzsche, the original sin and the philology
it produces. This Nietzschean problematic of the Fall is close to the one developed
by Pascal in the Penstfes and especially in the fragments on the Divertissement. I treat
this question in a forthcoming essay, to appear in Diacritics.
[ erholte] from being God . . . He had made everything too beautiful. The
devil is merely the leisure of God on that seventh day [Der Teufel ist
bloss der Mussiggang Gottes an Jenem siebentem Tage] . (3 1 1 )
This fable re-writes the story of Creation in terms of the transforma
tion and the transfiguration of the Creator into an actor, in terms
of the effect of the creation on the Creator. God is the paradigm of
the negative effects of creation-writing , for God returns, after having
observed and deciphered his masterpiece, in order to disturb the order
he has just established. God is transformed and transfigured into his
irreducible other by his own creation. It is precisely this transfigura
tion that sets the world in motion. God did not effectively create the
world until he initiated a displacement of his own nature, of his own
figure, an initiation that signifies his own death to the extent that
he had to take on the role of his other. Being God, being the Chris
tian God, in this Nietzschean perspective, means to become the devil
out of boredom , out of vanity . "How one becomes what one is," in
a theological context, is a maxim implying the necessity of misrecogni
tion and of defiguration. God has to overcome and to disturb the
beauty of his own creation in order for him to be God ; he has to sup
plement it with an element that would distinguish this beauty from
himself so that he may be recognized as God. This supplementarity
constitutive of God is introduced by Nietzsche in the form of reading,
in the form of contemplation of a written text.
In the Antichrist, where we find a more detailed version of this fable,
Nietzsche explains what he means by theology, what the theological
tone represents: "Another sign of the theologian is his incapacity for
philology. What is here meant by philology is, in a very broad sense,
the art of reading well - of reading facts without falsifying them by
interpretation, without losing caution, patience, delicacy, in the desire
to understand. Philology as ephexis in interpretation - whether it is a
matter of books, the news in a paper, destinies, or weather condi
tions, not to speak of the 'salvation of the soul .'"5 The theologian in
terprets the story of creation in the same way God interpreted it. He
5 The Portable Nietzsche 635. The philology of Christianity is the "art of reading bad
ly'' (Daybreak 49) . The philology that is demanded by Nietzsche is "that venerable
art which demands of its votaries one thing above all: to go aside, to take time, to
become still, to become slow - it is a goldsmith's art and connoisseurship of the word
which has nothing but delicate, cautious work to do and achieves nothing if it does
not achieve it lento" (Daybreak 5). The whole question of the ternpo of reading and writing
in Nietzsche is closely related to that of tonality. Reading, in this perspective, is an
expansive operation that respects the word and its working. We will encounter one
version of this expansive nature of reading later on in this essay.
Doueihi: Nietzsche, Dio a Torin o 2 1 3
reads into i t the institution o f a rival that challenges God. In other

words, the creation of the world represents God's assassination; it
represents his burial in the world ofrepresentations and defigurations.
This derives from Nietzsche's interpretation of the Pascalian divertisse
ment. Nietzsche's divine nature will call for a different strategy of sur
vival. It will put into play a d�fferent problematic that will make it
p ossible for the writer-reader to live beyond and after the writing of
the first text, it will make it possible to survive the first fall into tex
tuality. Nietzsche the God is Nietzsche the eternal writer and reader
of his own books, the writer and reader who does not require
theologians, that is to say who has no need for other interpreters. This
is perhaps one of the most interesting manifestations of the eternal
recurrence of the same , for this instance implies that the subject in
question who is writing the story of his life, as the opening lines o f
Ecce Homo has it, i s still unl;>am and yet h e i s telling his story from
beyond the grave. The impossibility of determining the temporal posi
tion of this subject accounts perhaps for the different styles adopted
in the narrative as well as for the importance given to leisure and
recuperation. 6 Moreover, this mastery of various styles constitutes
the differential element distinguishing Nietzsche from the Christian
God, from the God of bad philology.
Reading is thought of by Nietzsche as the prototype of recreation :
In my case, every kind of reading belongs among my recreations [meine
Erholungen] , hence among the things that liberate me from myself, that
allow me to walk in strange sciences and souls that I no longer take
seriously. Reading is precisely my recreation from my own seriousness
[ Lesen erholt mich eben von meinem Emste] . During periods when I am hard
at work you will not find me surrounded by books: I'd beware of let
ting anyone near me talk, much less think. And that is what reading
would mean . . . . The periods of work and fertility are followed by periods
of recreation: come to me, pleasant, brilliant, clever books! [Auf die Zeiten
der A rbeit und Fruchtbarkeit folgt die Zeit der Erholung: heran mit euch, ihr
angenehmen, ihr geistreichen, ihr gescheiten Bi1cher!] (242)
Reading is the ideal form of recreation that is initially opposed to

writing and the creative process. It liberates and allows the reading
6 The paragraph preceding the fable of creation describes the effects of Zarathustra
in terms of recuperation, in terms of the necessitated recuperation from the style
of Zarathustra: "All this [writing of Beyond Good and Evil] is recuperation [Alles das
erholt] : who would guess after all what sort of recuperation [Erholung] such a squander
ing of good-naturedness as Zarathustra represents makes necessary?" (3 1 1) Already
here we encounter the generative power of recuperation as revision and writing.
subject to discover others on their own terms. This encounter with

the other, however, is not innocent. It is rather defined by the lack
of seriousness towards that which is read. To read amounts to sub
jecting oneself to the discourse of the other, to transform oneself into
a pure listener. Reading, interestingly enough, is inscribed by Nietz
sche at this first stage into the mode of tonality. Books are not simply
read; they rather speak and make it possible for their authors to con
verse with the reader. Writing and reading are presented as opposites ,
the one excluding the other. This initial determination of reading and
writing is transformed into a self-reflexive moment. The last sentence
in the passage commands books, it demands recreation. For Nietz
sche, in writing Ecce Homo, is reading his own books. He is
recuperating from the work of the past, a recuperation that informs
the production of the text we are reading.
The form of reading described by Nietzsche here is antitheological .
This passage rehearses, but with an important displacement, the fable
of the creation. God's mistake, his fatal error, consists precisely in
his being incapable of detaching himself from his own seriousness and
thus of listening to his creation. The Nietzschean strong reading will
c,onsist in the negation of the theological reading and in the installa
tion of a different resolution to the recreation that is reading, a resolu
tion that is Ecce Homo. In other words, Ecce Homo cannot simply be
read as the articulation of Nietzsche's readings of his own works. It
is rather the description of the discovery of a new tone, of a new style,
the description of a tone and a style that Nietzsche will recognize as
his ultimate contribution in the famous letter to Burckhardt.
The discovery of a new style is intimately connected with Turin . 7
In the chapter on the Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche tells the story of
his last journey to Turin:
It was only on September 20 that I left Sils Maria, detained by floods
in the end by far the only guest of this wonderful place on which my
7 The choice of place and climate is included by Nietzsche, in Ecce Homo, under
the heading of recuperation and leisure: "Now that the effects of climate and weather
are familiar to me from long experience and I take readings from myself as from
a very subtle and reliable instrument - and even during a very short journey, say,
from Turin to Milan, my system registers the change in humidity- I reflect with
horror on the dismal fact that my life, except for the last ten years, the years when
my life was in peril, was spent entirely in the wrong places that were nothing short
offorbidden to me" (24 1 ) . In his letters, Nietzsche constantly complains about the
unfavorfable effects of cities like Rome, . Nice, Genoa, etc.
Doueihi: Nietzsche, Dio a Torino 215
gratitude wants to bestow an immortal name. After a journey with in

cidents, including some danger to my life in Como, which was
fl ooded- I got there only late at night- I reached Turin on the after
noon of the 2 1 st - my proven place, my residence from now on. I took
the same apartment I had occupied in the spring, via Carlo Alberto
6 , fourth floor, opposite the imposing Palazzo Carignano in which Vit
torio Emanuele was born, with a view of the Palazzo Alberto and the
hills beyond. Without hesitation and without permitting myself to be
distracted for a moment, I went back to work: only the final quarter
o f the work remained to be done. On the 30th of September, great vic
tory; seventh day; the leisure of a god walking along the Po river (Miissig
gang eines Gottes am Po entlang) . On the same day, I wrote the Preface
for Twilight of the Idols: correcting the printer's proof of that book
had been my recreation (Erholung) in September. (3 15-3 1 6)8
"The leisure of a god walking along the Po river'' - the i mage ry usec
by Nietzsche to describe the completion of the book which was to be
entitled A Psychologist's Idleness or Leisure (Milssiggang) - recalls th(
theological fable we discussed earlier.9 Writing and re-writing, as wel
as reading one's own books, replace here the creation of the work
and the transformation and transfiguration of God into the devil. Thi
8 In her biography of Nietzsche, his sister wrote: "During this period [ 1 888- 1 889
he [Nietzsche] wrote a few pages in which are mixed, in some strange fantasy, th•
legend of Dionysus Zagreus, the Gospel Passion and some of his contemporaries
the god, torn apart by his en�mies, wanders around, resuscitated, along the Pc
river. . . . " It is interesting to note here that Nietzsche's sister, in her description o
her brother, combines the vision of Dionysus torn into p ieces with the reference tc
- Nietzsche's own text in Ecce Homo.
9 It was at the suggestion of Peter Gast that Nietzsche changed the title of the boo]
to the Twilight of the Idols. In his letter to Nietzsche , Gast comments in the followin1
way on leisure: "The title , A Psychologist's Leisure, sounds too unassuming to me whe1
I think how it might impress other people: you have driven your artillery on th
highest mountains, you have such guns as have never yet existed, and you nee1
only shoot blindly to inspire terror all around. The stride [ Gang] of a giant, whicl
makes the mountains shake to their foundation, is no longer leisure [Mussiggang]
( The Portable Nietzsche 464) . Even though Nietzsche agreed to change the title, h
might have replied to Gast by saying: "The worst readers of aphorisms are the author'
friends if they are intent on guessing back from the general to the particular instanc
to which the aphorism owes its origin; for with such pot-peeking they reduce th
author's whole effort to nothing; so that they deservedly gain, not philosophic outloo
or instruction, but- at best, or at worst- nothing more than the satisfaction ofvulga
curiosity" ( The Portable Nietzsche 65). The original title, as my essay shows, was perhai:
a more appropriate one.
transfiguration or the victory of the writer is , for Nietzsche, the

discovery of a problematic defiguration and the overcoming of natural
barriers as well as the barriers separating reading from writing. Vic
tory is the effect of surplus, of the supplement. It is the supplemen
tarity of writing.
In his letter to Burckhardt, a letter that is considered one of the
last manifestations of Nietzsche and one proving his madness ,
Nietzsche writes: "Since I am sentenced to while away the next eter
nity with bad jokes, I have a new way of writing here which leaves
nothing to be desired- very nice and not in the least strenuous." 1 0
Writing at Turin is a leisurely experience. The new way of writing ,
the new style o f Turin i s a style designed to reveal the divine nature
of the narrator. This style is opposed to the one deployed by God
and the one that gives rise to theology and its misinterpretations as
well as to the obscurity of its products. For Nietzsche, God is primarily
a bad writer, an author manque:
A god who is all-knowing and all-powerful and who does not even make
sure that his creatures understand his intention - could that be a god
of goodness? Who allows countless doubts and dubieties to persist, for
thousands of years, as though the salvation of mankind were unaffected
by them, and who on the other hand holds out the prospect of frightful
consequences if any mistake is made as to the nature of truth? Would
he not be a cruel god ifhe possessed the truth and could behold mankind
miserably tormenting itself over the truth? - But perhaps he is a god
of goodness notwithstanding- and merely could not express himself more
clearly! Did he perhaps lack the intelligence to do so? Or the eloquence?
So much the worse! for then he was perhaps also in error as to that
which he calls 'truth,' and is himself not so very far from being the '.poor
deluded devil'! 1 1
Perhaps we can now appreciate the significance o f this revealing
passage . The style(s) adopted in Ecce Homo, the new style of writing
mentioned in the letter to Burckhardt, stand in opposition to the Chris
tian God and his manner of revealing himself. The revelation of
Nietzsche or, more precisely, of the narrator and the subject of Ecce
Homo's divine nature is articulated in strict opposition to the immorality
of the Deus absconditus, the immorality of a god that fails to come out
clearly and unambiguously into the light of speech. Nietzsche the god
does not reveal himself fully as such. Instead, he elegantly and secretly
disperses signs and hints of his divine nature in his writings in order
10
The Portable Nietzsche 635 .
11 Daybreak 5 2-53 .
Doueihi: Nietzsche, Dio a Torino 2 1 7
t o make it possible for his gifted readers , for those who are armed
with the "most select ears" to detect his subterranean message. The
Deus absconditus of Pascal , and for Nietzsche , of all Christianity, is
necessarily hidden for he lacks the intelligence and the words to reveal
himself in all his glory. This opposition between two styles, between
a style and a plurality of styles, constitutes for Nietzsche the struc
ture of opposition between the Crucified and Dionysus, an opposi
tion that signs Ecce Homo.
The Crucified represents for Nietzsche a representation that negates
life in its most tragic manifestation. "The God on the cross is a curse
on life , a pointer to seek redemption from it; Dionysus cut to pieces
is a promise of life; it is eternally reborn and comes back from
destruction."12 We remember that Dionysus receives the fatal blow
at the moment he looks upon his own image , apparently distorted
by the surface of the mirror. Dionysus, at the moment of his death,
is caught in the trap of his own image, caught in the trap of a foggy
mirror, a mirror that fails to return a faithful image but that never
theless makes possible his destruction . In the Neoplatonic tradition ,
Dionysus is cut to pieces because he is attached to his own physical
appearance. For Nietzsche, however, Dionysus cut to pieces represents
an alternative to the Crucified and to the Eucharist that celebrates
his death and transfiguration. The plurality and the proliferation of
Dionysus are opposed to the unique repetition of the experience of
the Crucified. Nietzsche reproduces this opposition in a variety of
ways, most importantly for us here in terms of water and alcohol .
"I, an opponent of vegetarianism from experience, just like Richard
Wagner, who converted me, cannot advise all more spiritual natures
e arnestly enough to abstain entirely from alcohol. Water is sufficient.
I prefer towns in which opportunities abound for dipping from run
ning wells (Nizza, Turin , Sils) ; a small glass accompanies me like
a dog. In vino veritas. It seems that here, too , I am at odds with all
the world about the concept of 'truth' - in my case, the spirit moves
over water" (239) . 1 3 Water is sufficient because it designates a specific
method of reading that is appropriate to Nietzsche's styles :
12 The Portable Nietzsche 459.
13 In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche refers to himself and to his books in terms of water or
as sea animals: "Ultimately, I myself was this sea animal: almost every sentence in
this book [Daybreak] was first thought, caught among that jumble of rocks near Genoa
where I was alone and still had secrets with the sea"(290). In Zarathustra, man is defined
as a stream: a polluted stream without becoming unclean. "Behold, I teach you the
overman: he is this sea; in him your great contem p t can go under" ( The Portable Nietz
sche 1 25).
My writings are difficult, I hope this is not considered an objection?

To understand the most abbreviated language ever spoken by a
philosopher - and also the one poorest in formulas, most alive, most
artistic - one must follow the opposite procedure of that generally re
quired by philosophical literature. Usually one must condense, or upset
one's digestion ; I have to be diluted, liquified, mixed with water, else
one upsets one's digestion. (3 40)
Nietzsche's divine body is his textual "corpus." Water designates

reading, philological reading that N ietzsche opposes to Christianity
and its priests. Nietzsche is the first Nietzschean reader of Nietzsche,
and Ecce Homo is the book of that reading. The wine of the Eucharist
that is transformed into the blood of the Crucified is here opposed
to the water that transforms the text and that opens it up for reading
and interpretation . The water constitutive of reading is added, it is
the surplus and the necessary supplement of every reading. Nietz
sche's water is made into ink. The triumphant god walking along the
Po is the god reading and writing his own story; he is the god reading
and writing one and the same book. How one becomes what one is ,
or how Nietzsche becomes god at Turin, is perhaps the ultimate symp
tom and the expression of a mad and inevitable reading. To become
what one has always been is to tell one's own story; "Finally, I speak
only of what I have lived through, not merely of what I have thought
through; the opposition of thinking and life is lacking in my case .
My 'theory' grows from my 'practice'- oh , from a practice that is not
by any means harmless or unproblematic!" (340)
Robert P. Harrison
BEYOND THE END:

NIETZSCHE IN TURIN
Nietzsche is sometimes called a prophet, most recently by Alan Megill

in his book entitled Prophets efExtremity. 1 Germans, on the other hand,
Classify his work under the heading of Kultur Kritik. Nietzsche himself
insists on yet other categories: "I am no man, I am dynamite ."2 This
is the voice of that "explosive" Nietzsche who seems to destroy foun
dations both critically and prophetically. But then we have Martin
Heidegger, who, bringing the prophetic voice to a more quiet extreme,
invites us to see Nietzsche as a culmination and not a destruction of
the Western metaphysical tradition. Where Nietzsche projects a new
and revolutionary era beyond good and evil, Heidegger sees a paradox
ical revelation of the end. We may side against Heidegger, of course ,
but sooner or later we run up against the ends of Nietzsche's think
ing. This thinking takes place along an ambiguous edge which in the
present context goes by the name of Turin .
In a section of The Twilight ef the Idols which collapses the distinc
tion between prophecy and culture criticism, Nietzsche offers an ab
breviated history of how Platonism follows its epochal course and gives
rise to an era beyond the dichotomies between truth and appearance .
This "History of an Error," as Nietzsche calls it, passes through six
1 Alan Megill, Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida (Berkeley:
University of C alifornia Press, 1985).

2 Ecce Homo, "Why I am a Destiny," in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, tr. Walter Kauf
mann (New York: Random House, 1967). Basic Writings (hereafter B WN) also in
cludes The Birth of Tragedy (B7); Beyond Good and Evil (BCE); On the Genealogy ofMorals
( GM); The Case of Wagner (CUI).
2 19
stages, all of which unfold the course of Platonism until its final over
turning by Nietzsche himself. The last stage describes a cultural rebirth
after the completed trajectory of Western nihilism:
The true world- we have abolished. What world has remained? The
apparent one perhaps? But no! With the true world we have also abolished
the apparent one! (Noon; moment of the briefest shadow; end of the longest
error; high point of humanity ; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA) . 3
The word incipit, which both ends this history of nihilism and over
comes its finality, marks the far edge of Nietzsche's thinking. At this
edge, or loco torinese, ends and end-points are transcended, transformed
into higher beginnings, metamorphosized into a child, to recall
Zarathustra's allegory. 4 We must look to the innermost logic of the
will to power to find the reasons for this metamorphoses of ends into
new initiations . Nietzsche often refers to that logic as the law of
overcommg:
And life itself confided this secret to me. "Behold ," it said, "I am that
which must always overcome itself! . . . Only where there is life is there also
will; not will to life - thus I teach you- but will to power. " (Zarathustra,
"On Self Overcoming," PN 2 27)
The self-propelled wheel of the will to power subverts linear teleologies

in a motion of conversion, a motion of transvaluation, to use Nietz
sche's term . By virtue of such conversion, the last turns into a first .
Zarathustra's "last man," for example - last in a linear ontological
sense - marks the beginning of the overman; that is to say, he marks
the beginning of the very principle of new beginnings. "Are you a
new strength and a new right? A first movement? A self-propelled
wheel?" asks Zarathustra ("On the Way of the Creator," PN 1 74) .
While one might have seen the overman as a futurist goal on a linear
trajectory, he really only embodies the ideology of overcoming by which
3 Twilight of the Idols, in The Portable Nietzsche, tr. Walter Kaufmann (New York:
Viking Press, 1 967) 486 . The Portable Nietzsche, (hereafter PN) also includes Thus
Spoke Zarathustra (Z) ; Nietzsche Contra Wagner (NC W); selections from Nietsche's other
works and letters.
• "But say, my brothers, what can the child do that even the lion could not do? Why
must the preying lion still become a child? The child is innocence and forgetting,
a new beginning, a game, a self-propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred 'Yes.'
For the game of creation, my brothers, a sacred 'Yes' is needed: the spirit now wills
his own will, and he who had been lost to the world now conquers his own world"
(PN 1 39) .
R.P. Harrison: Nietzsche in Turin 221
cultural history transcends its epochal moribundity in an overturn

ing that goes by the name of Zarathustra. The phrase incipit Zarathustra,
therefore, involves a tautology insofar as Zarathustra speaks the princi
p le of new beginnings.
The question, from our perspective, is whether this is the begin
ning of the end or a step beyond the end. Heidegger finds in the doc
trine of the will to power an exasperation of subjectivist metaphysics
and a final exhaustion of its possibilities. For Heidegger, metaphysics
means the failure to think finitude as the ultimate horizon of being.
Does Nietzsche's thinking internalize such a failure? Is there an on
tological finality which it resists, or else responds to , or else cir
cumscribes? Death, for example. It is almost too easy to remark that
we find practically no meditation on the reality of personal death in
Nietzsche's entire corpus. The problem of finitude, on the other hand,
is more difficult to situate in his philosophy, precisely because we can
not see where its edges lie. When life confides the secret of overcom
ing to Zarathustra, one is not sure whether it is life or death that speaks:
"I am that which must always overcome itself." Life speaks of itself
as other. To be itself it must overcome the other in itself. Nietzsche
calls life's overcoming of the other in itself a "convalescence ." Ascend
ing life neither evades nor neutralizes the death element that lurks
at the heart of its vitality; instead, it realizes its ascent by growing
out beyond the destructive element, sublating it into its convalescent
drive. "What does not destroy me, makes me stronger'' (PN 467.) . The
other of life is the very ground of life's convalescent health, which,
as such, embodies the vigor of a new beginning.
The opening paragraph of Ecce Homo contains perhaps the best
known and most dramatic articulation of this convalescent strife be
tween ascending and declining life . Nietzsche here describes his own
fatality in terms of his "dual descent":
I am, to express it in the form of a riddle, already dead as my father,

while as my mother I.am still living and becoming old. This dual des
cent, as it were, both from the highest and the lowest rung of life, at
the same time a decadent and a beginning- this , if anything, explains that
neutrality, that freedom from 'all partiality in relation to the problem
o f life, that perhaps distinguishes me. (B WN 678)
Derrida's subtle analysis of this passage in Otobiographies exasperates
the motifs of life and death , decadence and beginning, mother and
father, with which Nietzsche establishes the credentials of the
autobiographical voice .5 They are the credentials of one living on his

own credit: "I live on my own credit," Nietzsche writes in the preface
to Ecce Homo, "it is perhaps a mere prejudice that I live." Derrida's
reading of the dual descent leaves us with the enigma of the pas au
dela, the step beyond, the not-beyond: "Ce qui compte en .fin de compte
et au-dela du compte, c'est un certain pas au-dela" (69). What counts at the
end of, and beyond, the account, is that Nietzsche lives a step beyond
his solvency with regard to death. Derrida calls this "une de-marche de
franchissement ou de transgression impossibll' (69) , a crossing over or an
impossible transgression that remains outside the dialectical logic of
opposition that characterizes traditional metaphysics. The impossibility
of this transgression makes it impossible to situate the autobiographical
voice within a topology of the subject. It speaks from outside, from
a space of dislocation , without a proper name.
Heidegger and Derrida, then, are at odds on the question of
Nietzsche's location. Heidegger's reconstruction of the fragmentary
text of the Will to Power places Nietzsche at the end of the history of
metaphysics, while Derrida's deconstruction of the autobiographical
text finds an impossible transgression of some essential limit. In this
respect Derrida rescues Nietzsche from the Heideggerian reading and
claims him as the proto-deconstructor or depositioner who cannot,
and yet does, escape the closure of metaphysics.
The issue here is one of place. At what limits does Nietzsche's think
ing take place? But with this question we are already asking about
the topology of Turin , where Turin means not only the end of, but
also the end in, Nietzsche's thinking. Its topology is hard to describe
precisely because it takes on the character of an event . For all their
close textual analyses, neither Heidegger nor Derrida charts the topical
eventuality of the end in Nietzsche. Expressed otherwise, one could
say that until now Nietzsche's most extreme readers have charted only
the peripheries of Turin , not its interior. 6
5 Jacques Derrida, Otobiographies: L 'enseignement de Nietzsche et la politique du nom pro
p re (Paris: Galilee, 1984).

6 Nietzsche's madness has so far been dealt with strictly biographically, not critical
ly, by such biographers as Podach, Verrecchia and Janz. Heidegger, in his customary
fashion, brackets altogether the biographical dimension of the thinker and chooses
to discuss those fragments which show the "remarkable lucidity" of Nietzsche short-
1 y before he goes mad. Derrida writes about la politique du nom propre but neglects
to analyze the famous mad letter to Burckhardt, in which Nietzsche declares, "at
bottom I am every name in history." Michel Foucault, another extreme reader of
Nietzsche, sets up a radical opposition between his creative thinking and his madness ,
R . P. Harrison: Nietzsche in Turin 223
When Franz Overbeck arrives in Turin on January 9, 1 889, Nietz

sche has already gone mad. Overbeck finds him crouched in the cor
ner of a sofa reading the proofs of Nietzsche Contra Wagner. Nietzsche
Contra Wagner is Nietzsche's last book, even if it is not his last writing.
We will turn, predictably enough, to the end of that text, that is to
say, to the epilogue, where, once again, Nietzsche expounds his faith
beyond the end. I quote from the epilogue (PN 680) :
And as for my long sickness , do I not owe it indescribably more than
I owe to my health? I owe it a higher health . . . . Only great pain is the
ultimate liberator of the spirit, as the teacher of great suspicion which
turns every U into a X , a real, genu ine X, that is , the letter before
the penultimate one . . . . Only [such pain] forces us philosophers to des
cend into our ultimate depths and put away all trust . . . all that would
veil, all that is medium.
The passage places us in a topology of the ultimate, or better, in an

alphabet of the ultimate. Pain figures as the ultimate liberator that
leads to an ultimate depth . Suffering turns every U into an X, the
letter before the penultimate one. The ultimate letter, of course, is
Z . But Zarathustra figures as a beginning beyond the end. The
ultimate, therefore, overcomes the end. The motion of conversion
which turns every U into an X also turns the X into the next letter,
the penultimate Y. Between the X and the Z lies the edge of the end
where a turn towards a new beginning occurs. The Y is the enigmatic
letter where finitude itself is overcome by an event of renewai . The
step beyond the Y, the pas au-de/a, leads to the Z. We wonder, though,
about the step back. What is the X? The X is a cross, the cross of
Nietzsche contra Wagner, for example. In Ecce Homo Nietzsche
describes the moment of sending a copy of Human, All Too Human
to Wagner in the following terms: "By a miraculously meaningful coin
cidence, I received at the same time a beautiful copy of the text of
Parsifal . . . . This crossing of the two books - I felt as if I heard an
where the latter means the absolute dissolution of the former. Thus he declares: "It
is of little importance on exactly which day in the autumn of 1 888 Nietzsche went
mad for good, and after which his texts no longer afford philosophy but psychiatry."
The concern here, on the other hand, is to enter into the autumn of 1 888, to pass
over the limit into 1889 , and to insist on thinking what Foucault eajoins us not to
think, namely Nietzsche's madness as a progressive process which in itself tropes
the systematic thrust of his culture criticism. For Foucault's remarks on Nietzsche's
madness, see Madness and Civilization, tr. Richard Howard (New York: Random
House, 1965) 286-89 .
ominous sound - as if two swords had crossed" (B WN 744) . In Nietz

sche Contra Wagner Nietzsche discusses how Wagner "suddenly sank
down, helpless and broken, before the Christian cross." What did Par
sifal mean, asks Nietzsche. "In the end," he answers, "a self-abnegation,
a self-crossing-out on the part of an artist who had previously aimed
at the very opposite of this" (PN 6 75-6) . In short, Wagner as a sort
of "last man" who cancels himself out.
The letter X, then, is a crossing of various crosses. But in the passage
quoted from the epilogue, the X alludes above all to the crucifixion
of personal suffering. Such suffering figures as the ultimate libera
tion of the spirit, the limit before the end- before the Y of annihila
tion itself. We must note , however, that beyond this crucifixion and
annihilation, a resurrection takes place in the letter Z . Turning every
U into an X, great pain turns every X into a Y and ultimately a Z .
What does not destroy me only makes me stronger. The ultimate
liberator of the spirit allows the spirit to perish and then resurrect.
If the logic sounds strangely Christological for an Antichrist like Nietz
sche, we have only to read further in the same passage of the epilogue,
where Nietzsche describes a resurrection in no uncertain terms:
Out of such abysses, also out of the abyss of great suspicion, one returns
newborn , havin g shed one's skin , more ticklish and sarcastic, with. a
more delicate taste for joy . . . with a second dangerous innocence in joy,
more childlike, and yet a hundred times more subtle than before . ( 681 )
The Christology here is at the very least a submerged pattern . Nor

is it so submerged if we return to the preface of Nietzsche Contra Wagner
and notice that it is signed in Turin on Christmas day. In Otobiographies
Derrida averts us to the relevance of dates and signatures in Nietz
sche's text. They are never merely occasional or casual. Nietzsche Contra
Wagner is signed in Turin not on December 2 5 , but rather on
Christmas day. In the epilogue beyond the end of this text Nietzsche
writes that through the suffering and crucifixion of the X, one resur
rects newborn from the abyss of pain, having passed beyond the
penultimate letter to the "higher health," we presume, of Zarathustra.
Bringing the v arious threads together, one begins to see in the fabric
of Nietzsche's culture criticism - its culmination in the incipit
Zarathustra - a Christological pattern of death and resurrection that
Nietzsche calls the law of overcoming. Overcoming overcomes
finalities. Just as Christ defies the finality of the crucifixion , so
Zarathustra defies the finality of cultural history, which nevertheless
has come to an end .
R .P. Harrison: Nietzsche in Turin 225
This alphabet of the end , or XYZ of the ultimate, already spells

Turin. In Turin we enter the neighborhood of Nietzsche contra
Wagner, of Dionysus versus the Crucified, and of the Christological
figurations which the very title of Ecce Homo insists on. The Turin
period means not only a dramatic personal culmination for the author
of Zarathustra, but also, biograpnically speaking, his crucifixion. During
his stay in Turin Nietzsche perceives the imminence of his personal
end with remarkable lucidity and yet with the blind euphoria of one
who believes that a new beginning is at hand. We know from his let
ters that he was in an unusual state of exaltation and that the closer
he came to his collapse the more urgently he sensed the imminence
of a great breakthrough. I quote from a letter to Carl Fuchs dated
December 1 8 , 1 888:
Never have I known anything remotely like these months from the
beginning of September until now. The most amazing tasks as easy
as a game; my health , like the weather, coming up every day with
boundless brilliance and certainty. I cannot tell you how much has been
finished - everything!
The world will be standing on its head for the next few years; since
the old God has abdicated, I shall rule the world from now on. 7
At the time this letter was written, the funeral of Prince von Carignano
took place in Turin, an event Nietzsche refers to in other letters. As
we know, it was not the only funeral to attract his attention . There
was also the funeral of Count Robilant . In the letter written to
Burckhardt after the collapse , Nietzsche indicates that he imagined
his own burial in the solemn procession for Robilant that passed under
his window. In the letter to Fuchs quoted above he does not mention
funerals as such, except perhaps obliquely, where it is now God's
funeral ritualized by Nietzsche's personal triumph: "Since the old God
has abdicated, I shall rule the world from now on." But the incipit
Nietzsche which buries the old God seems actually to translate Nietz
sche's own finality when he writes to Fuchs: "I cannot tell you how
much has been finished- everything!" Nietzsche announces this con
summation in terms of a triumphant breakthrough beyond the finality
of that which is over. The end has been overcome and now gives way
to the ultimate: "I shall rule the world from now on." This utterance
comes from the realm of the posthumous, from the realm of Turin .
7 Letter to C arl Fuchs, 18 December, 1888, in Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche,

tr. Christopher Middleton (Chicago University Press 1969) 335.
,
It figures as one of those "impossible transgressions" which Derrida

discloses in the autobiographical voice of Ecce Homo .
Ecce Homo , however, engages the pattern of death and resurrec
tion in more explicit terms than Derrida cares to indicate. On the
one hand it represents the funereal gesture of one who finds himself
at the end of his trajectory. On the other, Nietzsche presents it as
the story of how its author has overcome the encroachments of the
end. The vital victory is announced already in the epigram, where
Nietzsche writes: "It was not for nothing that I buried my forty-fourth
year today; I have the right to bury it; whatever was life in it has been
saved, is immortal" (B WN 677). But here too life and salvation create
a tautology: always overcoming the other in itself, life saves itself from
what otherwise overcomes it and thus justifies the gesture of
autobiography. The autobiographical voice, in any case, always and
inevitably has saved itself from the biodangers it turns into a
posthumous story (it is always, therefore - to recall the title of Elias
Canetti's recent autobiography - a story of "the tongue saved") .
If Ecce Homo begins posthumously, it ends in a way that is more
ambiguous but no less dramatic. In fact, we do not lmow exactly where
or how this text ends, since Nietzsche originally intended to add a
"Final Consideration" in which he speaks about putting an end to wars
in Europe. By now we can expect that where Nietzsche speaks of an
end, he also introduces a beginning. In the "Final Consideration" he
writes: "If we could dispense with wars, so much the better. . . there
are other means of winning respect for physiology than field
hospitals. - Good; very good even: since the old God is abolished, I
am prepared to rule the worlrf' (B WN 800) . Nietzsche decided not to
include this final consideration and Ecce Homo now ends with the
dramatic exclamation: "Have I been understood? Dionysus versus the
Crucified!"8 We know from the Will to Power, section 1 052, what the
difference between the two gods consists in - a difference in attitude
toward human suffering- but beyond this difference we do not know
why Nietzsche, in his last letters from Turin, signs some "Dionysus"
and others "The Crucified" in roughly equal proportions. Do the
signatures dramatize perhaps the sameness more than the difference
between the two gods? They are both, after all, dying gods. More
8 On the motif of Dionysus versus the Crucified see Rene Girard, "Dionysus versus
the Crucified," MLN 99 (1984) 816-35. The essay offers a counter-angle on the ques
tion of madness by focusing on the madman in the marketplace who declares the
death of God as an act of collective murder.
R . P. Harrison: Nietzsche in Turin 227
importantly, they are both gods whose death liberates the principle
of their rebirth or resurrection.
At the prophetic extremity of Ecce Homo Nietzsche declares that he
is already dead as his father, while as his mother he still lives on, on
his own credit, as perhaps a mere prejudice . Further on in the text
he calls Turin his "proven place." In what sense was it his proven place?
"I go everywhere in my student's coat, and here and there slap
somebody on the shoulder and say, Siamo contenti? Sono dio, io ho fatto
questa caricatura." This madness speaks Italian, assuredly, but it speaks
yet another language: "I have had C aiphas put in fetters. Also , last
year I was crucified by the German doctors in a very drawn out man
ner." It also speaks an ultimate language: "This fall I was blinded as
little as possible when I twice witnessed my own funeral, first as Count
Robilant (no, that is my son, insofar as I am Carlo Alberto, unfaithful
to my nature) but Antonelli I was myself." But even the ultimate
language leaves something out: "The rest is for Frau Cosima -
Ariadne - from time to time there is magic" (PN 685).
The rest remains unproven in the proven place of Turin, where
Nietzsche sees signs everywhere that he has arisen from his own burial,
that he lives posthumously in this city of imperial funerals . Here is
the man, prophet, or culture critic who reads the signs with another
vision. "Signs and wonders ," he writes at the end of a letter to Peter
Gast on December 1 , 1888 , "Greetings from the Phoenix."
David Farrell Krell
CONSULTATIONS WITH THE PATERNAL

SHADOW: GASCHE, DERRIDA,
AND KLOSSO�SKI ON EGGE HOMO*
In memory of Little Joseph Nietzsche, 1848- 1 850.
Ecce· Homo- an autobiography? At all events, a tale of fathers and

mothers, of loves and execrations And a series of riddles in and about
.
the text. For example, the riddle of an entire section - the third sec
tion of Part One, "Why I Am So Wise" - that only recently has been
restored to the form that Nietzsche himself, on the eve of his collapse,
devised for it. My question. is whether this textual riddle (or confu
sion) affects three otherwise compelling interpretations of Ecce, Homo,
those of Rodolphe Gasche, Jacques Derrida, and Pierre Klossowski. 1
O n December 2 9 , 1888 , from Turin , Nietzsche mailed to his
publisher G. C . Naumann a large packet of corrections for the
manuscript of Ecce Homo. Among them was an entirely recast section
3 of Part One, which Nietzsche instructed Naumann to insert in place
of the one then in his possession . The revised section came to light
in July of 1 969 among the papers of Heinrich Koselitz (Peter Gast)
in the Nietzsche collection of the Goethe-Schiller Archive in Weimar.
• Copyright David Farrell Krell. We gratefully acknowledge David Wood and the
Warwick Workshop Series for permission to publish this essay.

1 Rodolphe Gasche, "Autobiography as Gestalt," originally published in boundary
2 , IX, 3 and X, 1 ( 1 98 1 ) ; this double issue of boundary 2 has been published as a

volume entitled Why Nietzsche Now?, ed. Daniel T. O'Hara (Bloomington and Lon
don: Indiana University Press, 1 985). Jacques Derrida, "Logique de la vivante,"
appears in two places . First, in Derrida, L'ortille de l'autre, ed. Claude Levesque and
Christie V. McDonald (Montreal: VLB-Editeur, 1982) 1 3-32; second, in Derrida ,
229
Koselitz had made a careful copy of Nietzsche's original, which

Naumann had passed on to him, before sending that original to Nietz
sche's mother and sister- who promptly destroyed it. The first ver
sion of Ecce Homo, I , 3 , written in October of 1 888 and present in
almost all editions to date , reads as follows: 2
This double series of experiences , this access to apparently quite dispa
rate worlds, repeats itself in every aspect of my nature - I am an alter
ego , I also have the "second sight (or: the "second" face: Gesicht), in addi
tion to the first. And perhaps the third as well . . . My very lineage grants
me a glimpse beyond all merely locally or nationally conditioned
perspectives: no great exertion is required for me to be a "good Euro
pean." On the other hand, I am perhaps more German than our con
temporary Germans- these mere Imperial Germans- are able to be: -
I , the last antipolitical German. And yet my ancestors belonged to the
Polish aristocracy: who knows, that may be the reason why I incor
porate so many instincts pertaining to race, up to and including the
liberum veto . When I think how often in my travels I am addressed as
though I were a Pole, and by Poles themselves , and how rarely anyone
takes me to be a German, it might well seem that I simply belonged
among the mottled Germans. Yet my mother , Franziska Oehler, is at
all events a very German phenomenon, as is my paternal grandmother ,
Erdmuthe Krause . The latter lived throughout her youth in the heart
of good old Weimar, and not without a connection to Goethe's circle .
Her brother, Professor Krause, a Konigsbergian theologian, was ap
pointed General Superintendent in Weimar after Herder's death. It is
not impossible that her mother, my great grandmother, appears in the
young Goethe's diary under the name "Muthgen." She married a sec
ond time, taking the hand of Superintendent Nietzsche in Eilenburg;
during that vital year in the Napoleonic Wars, 1 8 1 3 , on October 1 0 ,
the very day Napoleon marched into Eilenburg with his General Staff,
she lay in childbirth. Being a Saxon, she was a great admirer of
Napoleon's; it may well be that I still am. My father, born in 1 8 1 3 ,
Otobiographies: L'enseignement de Nietzsche et la politique du nom propre (Paris : Galilee,

1 984) 33-69. And Pierre Klossowski, Nietzsche et le cercle vicieux, revised edition (Paris:
Mercure de France, 1 969) 25 1-84. I cite Nietzsche's works from the Kritische Stu
dienausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin and Munich: de Gruyter
and Deutsche Taschenbuch Verlag, 1980), by volume and page, e . g. : VI, 45. His
autobiographical sketches, not contained in Colli-Montinari, I cite from the edition
by Karl Schlechta, Werke in drei Biinden (Munich : Hanser, 1 956) . The story of the
textual confusion of Ecce Homo I, 3 is recounted by Mazzino Montinari in Nietzsche
Studien, Band 1 ( 1972) 380- 4 1 8 .
2 I cite the edition b y Karl Schlechta, II: 1073-74.
Krell: Consultations with the Paternal Shadow 231
died i n 1849. Before h e became pastor of the congregation at Rocken ,

near Liitzen, he lived for several years at Altenburg Castle and tutored
the four princesses there. His pupils are now the Queen of Hanover ,
the Grand Princess Constantina, the Grand Duchess of Oldenburg,
and Princess Therese of Saxony-Altenburg. He was full of profound
piety toward the Prussian king; Friedrich Wilhelm IV, from whom he
had received his pastorate; the events of 1 848 troubled him egregious
ly. I myself, born on the king's birthday, October 1 5 , received, as was
fitting, the Hohenzollern name Friedrich Wilhelm . In any case, the choice
of this day had one advantage: throughout my childhood my birthday
was a holiday. I regard the fact that I had such a father as a great
privilege : it even seems to me that this accounts for whatever other
privileges I possess - life , the magnificent Yes to life, not included. Above
all, that I need exercise no special intention, but can simply wait, in
order to enter willy-nilly into a world of lofty and delicate things: I am
at home there, my innermost passion is liberated there alone. That I
p aid for this privilege almost with my life is, to be sure, no petty ex
change. - In order to understand anything at all of my Zarathustra , one
must perhaps be conditioned in a way similar to the way I am � with
one foot beyond life . . . .
Diese doppelte Reihe von Erfahrungen, diese Zuganglichkeit zu anschei
nend getrennten Welten wiederholt sich in meiner Natur in jeder
Hinsicht- ich bin ein Doppelganger, ich habe auch das "zweite" Gesicht
noch ausser dem ersten . Und vielleicht auch noch das dritte . . . Schon
meiner Abkunft nach ist mir ein Blick erlaubt jenseits aller bloss lokal ,
bloss national bedingten Perspektiven, es kostet mich keine Miihe , ein
"guter Europii.er" zu sein. Andrerseits bin ich vielleicht mehr deutsch ,
als jetzige Deutsche, blosse Reichsdeutsche es noch zu sein
vermochten - ich , der letzte antipolitische Deutsche. Und doch waren
meine Vorfahren polnische Edelleute: ich habe con daher viel Rassen
Instinkte im Leibe, wer weiss? zuletzt gar noch das liberum veto . Denke
ich daran, wie oft ich unterwegs als Pole angeredet werde und von Polen
selbst, wie selten man mich fiir einen Deutschen nimmt, so konnte es
scheinen, class ich nur zu den angesprenkelten Deutschen gehorte . Aber
meine Mutter, Franziska Oehler, ist jedenfalls etwas sehr Deutsches;
insgleichen meine Grossmutter vii.terlicherseits , Erdmuthe Krause. Letz
tere lebte ihre ga11ze Ju gend mitten im guten alten Weimar, nicht ohne
Zusammenharig mit dem Goetheschen Kreise . Ihr Bruder, der Pro
fessor der Theologie Krause in Konigsberg, wurde nach Herders Tod
als Generalsuperintendent nach Weimar berufen . Es ist nicht un
moglich, class ihre Mutter, meine Urgrossmutter, unter dem Namen
"Muthgen" im Tagebuch des jungen Goethe vorkommt. Sie verheiratete
sich zum zweiten Mal mit dem Superintendent Nietzsche in Eilenburg;
an dem Tage des grossen Kriegsjahrs 1 8 1 3 , wo Napoleon mit seinem

Generalstab in Eilenburg einzog, am 1 0 . Oktober hatte sie ihre
Niederkunft . Sie war, als Siichsin, eine grosse Yertehrerin Napoleons;
es konnte sein, class ich's auch noch bin. Mein Yater, 1 8 1 3 geboren ,
starb 1849. Er lebt, bevor er <las Pfarrarnt der Gemeinde Rocken unweit
Lutzen iibernahm , einige Jahre auf dem Altenburger Schlosse und
unterrichtete die vier Prinzessinnen daselbst. Seine Schiilerinnen sind
die Konigin von Hannover, die Grosssfurstin Constantin, die Grossher
zogin von Oldenburg und die Prinzess Therese von Sachsen-Altenburg.
Er war voll tiefer Pietiit gegen den preussischen Konig Friedrich
Wilhelm den Yierten , von dem er auch sein Pfarramt erhielt; die
Ereignisse von 1848 betriibten ihn uber die Massen. Ich selber, am
Geburtstage des genannten Konigs geboren , am 1 5 . Oktober, erhielt,
wie billig, die Hohenzollern-Namen Friedrich Wilhelm . Einen Yorteil
hatte jedenfalls die Wahl dieses Tages: mein Geburtstag war meine
ganze Kindheit hindurch ein Festtag. - Ich betrachte es als ein grosses
Yorrecht, einen solchen Yater gehabt zu haben : es scheint mir sogar,
class sich damit alles erkliirt, was ich sonst an Yorrechten habe- <las
Leben, <las grosse Ja zum Leben nicht eingerechnet . Yor allem, class
es ftir mich keiner Absicht dazu bedarf, sondern eines blossen Ab
wartens, um unfreiwillig in eine Welt hoher and zarter Dinge ein
zutreten: ich bin dort zu Hause, meine innerste Leidenschaft wird dort
erst frei . Dass ich fur dies Yorrecht beinahe mit dem Leben zahlte,
ist gewiss kein unbilliger Handel. - Um nur etwas von meinem
Zarathustra zu verstehn, muss man vielleicht iihnlich bedingt sein, wie
ich es bin - mit einem Fusse jen.reits des Lebens . . .
Nietzsche's revised text, obliterated by his mother and/or sister but

preserved by Koselitz , reads as follows : 3
I regard the fact that I had such a father as a great privilege: the peasants
to whom he preached - for, during his last years , after having lived for
several years at the court of Altenburg, he was a preacher - used to
say that the angels must look like him . - And herewith I touch on the
question of race. I am a pure-blooded Polish nobleman, in whom not
a drop of ignoble blood has been admixed, least of all German blood .
Wherever I search for my profoundest opposite , to wit, incalculable
vulgarity of instinct, I always find my mother and sister- if I thought
I were actually related to such canaille it would be a veritable blasphemy
.
against my divinity. The treatment I have always received from my
mother and sister - up to the present moment- fills me with unutterable
horror: here a highly perfected, infernal machine is at work , one that
3 See 6: 267-69; for further details on the textual history, see 1 4: 460-62 and 472-74.
operates with unfailing accuracy at the very moment when I am most

vulnerable and most likely to bleed - during my supreme moments ,
. . . for in these one lacks all the energy that would be needed to defend
oneself against venem�us vipers. . . . Physiological contiguity makes such
a disharmonia praestabilita possible. . . . But I confess that the most pro
found objection to the "eternal 'return," that is, to my properly abyssal
thought , is always mother and sister. - Yet even as a Pole I am an
incredible atavism . One would have to go back centuries in order to
find this noblest of races ever to exist on Earth as pristine in its instincts
as I exhibit them here and now. Toward everything today that calls
itself noblesse I possess a sovereign feeling of distinction - I wouldn't do
our young Kaiser the honor of appointing him my driver. There is one
single case in which I acknowledge my equal - I confess it with pro
found gratitude. Frau Cosima Wagner is the noblest nature by far; and ,
in order not to leave a single word unsaid, I say that Richard Wagner
was by far the man most akin to me . . . . The rest is silence. All the
prevailing concepts that govern degrees of consanguinity are unsur
passable physiological nonsense. Even today the Pope insists on
trafficking in such absurdity. One is least akin to one's parents . Higher
natures have their origins much, much farther back; with a view to
these natures, much had to be accumulated, saved, horded. The greatest
individuals are the oldest: I do not understand it, but Julius Caesar
could be my father - or Alexander, this Dionysos in the flesh. At the
very moment I write this the mail brings me a Dionysos-head . . . .
Ich betrachte es al s ein grosses Vorrecht, einen solchen Vater gehabt
zu haben: die Bauern, vor denen er predigte - denn er war, nachdem
er einige Jahre am Altenburger Hofe gelebt hatte , die letzten Jahre
Prediger - sagten, so miisse wohl ein Engel aussehn. - Und hiermit
beriihre ich die Frage der Rasse. Ich bin ein polnischer Edelmann pur
sang, dem auch nicht ein Tropfen schlechtes Blut beigemischt ist, am
wenigsten deutsches. Wenn ich den tiefsten Gegensatz zu mir suche,
die unausrechenbare Gemeinheit der Instinkte, so finde ich immer
meine Mutter und Schwester, - mit solcher canaille mich verwandt zu
glauben ware eine Liisterung auf meine Gottlichkeit. Die Behandlung,
die ich von Seiten meiner Mutter und Schwester erfahre , bis auf die sen
Augenblick, flosst mir ein unsiigliches Grauen ein: hier arbeitet eine
volkommene Hollenmaschine, mit unfehlbarer Sicherheit iiber den
Augenblick, wo man mich blutig verwunden kann - in meinen hochsten
Augenblicken, . . . denn da fehlt jede Kraft, sich gegen giftiges Gewiirm
zu wehren . . . Die physiologische Contiguitiit ermoglicht eine solche
disharmonia praestabilita . . . Aber ich bekenne , class der tiefste Ein
wand gegen die "ewige Wiederkunft'', mein eigentlich abgriindlicher
Gedanke, immer Mutter und Schwester sind. - Aber auch als Pole bin
ich ein ungeheurer Atavismus. Man wiirde jahrhunderte zuriickzugehn

haben, um diese vomehmste Rasse, die es auf Erden gab, in dem Masse
instinktrein zu finden, wie ich sie darstelle. Ich habe gegen Alles, was
heute noblesse heisst, ein souveraines Gefiihl von Distinktion , - ich
wiirde dem jungen deutschen Kaiser nicht die Ehre zugestehn , mein
Kutscher zu sein . Es giebt einen einzigen Fall, wo ich meines Gleichen
anerkenne - ich bekenne es mit tiefer Dankbarkeit. Frau Cosima
Wagner ist bei Weitem die vomehmste Natur; und, damit ich kein Wort
zu wenig sage , sage ich, class Richard Wagner der mir bei Weitem ver
wandteste Mann war . . . Der Rest ist Schweigen . . . Aile herrschenden
Begriffe iiber Verwandtschafts-Grade sind ein physiologischer Wider
sinn, der nicht iiberboten werden kann. Der Papst treibt heute noch
Handel mit diesem Widersinn . Man ist am wenigsten mit seinen Eltern
verwandt: es wii.re das ausserste Zeichen von Gemeinheit, seinen Eltern
verwandt zu sein . Die hoheren Naturen haben ihren Ursprung
unendlich weiter zuruck, auf sie hin hat am liingsten gesammelt ,
gespart, gehiiuft werden miissen . Die grossen Individuen sind die
iiltesten , ich verstehe es nicht, aber Julius Casar konnte mein Vater
sein - oder Alexander , dieser leibhafte Dionysos . . . In diesem
Augenblick, wo ich dies schreibe, bringt die Post mir einen Dionysos
Kopf. . .
Ignoring most of the fascinating contrasts between these two texts,

and setting aside Nietzsche's (bogus) claim to aristocratic Polish
ancestry and his (mistaken) grandmotherly liaison with Goethe, I wish
to stress what is perhaps obvious to any first reading. While the pater
nal shadow in the revised text still retains something of its foreboding
aspect, it is now essentially benign, even "angelic." To have had such a
father- both texts proclaim - was a "privilege." Gone from the revised
text, however, is the romanza of the Oehler-Krause side, the mater
nal side, of Nietzsche's family, that "very German phenomenon ." The
revised account leaves us with two profound objections to the eternal
recurrence of the same- who are delighted to ac:t as Nietzsche's editors.
The very first section of Ecce Homo, Part One, begins as follows:
The fortune of my existence, perhaps its very singularity, lies in its fatali
ty: I have - to put it in the form of a riddle- as my father already died,
as my mother I am still alive and am growing old. This double prov
enance, from the highest and the lowest rungs on the ladder of life,
as it were, simultaneously &cadent and commencement - this , if anything,
accounts for that neutrality, that freedom from all bias in relation to
the entire problem of life , which perhaps distinguishes me . . . I know
both, I am both . (VI, 264)
N ietzsche's "riddle," propounded originally as the conclusion to a series

of notes we now call the Ur-Ecce Homo (see XIII, 629) , is taken up
by Gasche, Derrida and Klossowski in ways that merit careful atten
tion. All three have meditated on the riddle of Nietzsche's double origin,
the nondialectical, neutral, irre�ucible doubling of high and low, ascen
dancy and decrepitude, mother and father in Nietzsche's "life." But
may the last-named pair serve as the key to unlock the mystery of
the others? Can we - and does Nietzsche - attribute unequivocally
vitality to the mother, ennervation and death to the father? Can we
assume that it is sheer oversight, or the force of a conventional idiom,
that causes him to place "highest" and "lowest'' in improper sequence ,
since everywhere else the paternal legacy is listed first? In short, is
the double provenance ultimately reducible to a single opposition?
All three commentators resist such a reduction, though perhaps not
always successfully. Indeed, such resistance is difficult . The bulk of
Ecce Homa, I: 1 , emphasizes the fatality of the father's early demise
(Mein Vater starb . . . ) , in such a way that the identification of paternity
and shadow appears to be a foregone conclusion. Entropy, decline
and death: are these not the names and negatives of the father?
However, if decadence appears to be the paternal legacy, the legacy
of vitality and upsurgence (Anfang) cannot so readily be attributed
to the mother. The second section of Part One refers to such vitality,
ascribing it not to her but to Nietzsche's own hand:
For, discounting the fact that I am a decadent, I am also the opposite

of one . . . . As summa summarum I was healthy, as nook and cranny, as
specialty, I was decadent . . . I took hold of myself (!ch nahm mich selbst
in die Hand) , I made myself healthy again . . . . Out of my will to health ,
to life, I made my philosophy . . . - So you see, I am the precise con
trary of a decadent . . . . (VI, 266-67)
Whether we can take the opposition of summa summarum to Winkel

and Specialitiit as somehow corroborating the equation (mother life;
=
father = death) is doubtful, unless one insists on identifying the organs

that gave Nietzsche particular distress (eyes, brain , and stomach) as
those that suffered most from Nietzsche's paternal "spiritual
intellectual" heritage. Yet such distress is matched by the anguish in
duced by that "infernal machine" of the maternal presbytery. It may
well be that much depends on how we read section 3 of Part One -
and on which version we read.
In his article , "Autobiography as Gestalt," Rodolphe Gasche cites

these early pages of Ecce Homo to which I have been referring. Focus
ing on Nietzsche's "double origin," he stresses the philosopher's own
search for his "nethermost self," the self that is to be found nowhere
e lse than in physiologicis. Nietzsche's double maternal/paternal face or
sight makes him a veritable Janus bifrons. Not simply in physiologicis,
however: Gasche invokes the gateway A ugenblick, in which the eter
nities of past and future "affront one another," as an eminent instance
of the double structure in Nietzsche's writing. If the gateway - or,
as Heidegger would insist , our standing in the gateway- closes the ring
of eternity in a moment of decision, then the very "vision" or "visage"
( Gesicht) of the gateway marks the closure of infinite past (the dead
father) and endless future (the surviving mother) .
Although I cannot reproduce all of Gasche's reading here, I at least
want to present his "first transcription" of the solution to the riddle
of Nietzsche's double origin - the "riddle" here referring, not to the
stricken shepherd of "On the Vision and the Riddle," but to Nietz
sche's Ecce Homo . Gasche writes, with the hand of .Nietzsche : "I have
killed myself as my own father so that I can commit incest with myself
as my mother while as my father I am preventing myself from being
born." I shall defer discussion of the first half of Gasche's transcrip
t ion , at once necrological and oedipal, hence oedipal in the full sense
inasmuch as it would embrace Oedipus at Co/onus, in order to emphasize
the final words : " . . . while as my father I am preventing myself from
being born ." Here the paternal shadow appears as Chronos - Time
jamming the mother, as yet untouched by the surgical legerdemain
of the son .
That Nietzsche bore his father with him always, as though he (Nietz
sche, Friedrich) were his own mother, filled by the father, pregnant
by and with him ; that Nietzsche felt himself to be reliving the misfor
tunes and illnesses of the father, waiting for his own brain to ooze ,
anticipating his mother's tears, the doctor's tragic mien - who can
doubt these things? Nietzsche took his chances with such a father ,
the Gluck of his existence, and such chances took him. Unlike the later
case of jean-Paul Sartre, Nietzsche for the first four years of his life
knew his father, sat on his lap - and in German a lap is a womb:
Schoss - at the piano, rapt to his father's improvisations, enthralled
by the origins of the music. How could Nietzsche ever have been born
from such a lap? Once borne on it, he would never be released , never
partured. It is as though in later years his father emerged from the
Krell: Consultations with the Paternal Shadow 23 7
grave to fetch the young son back to his bosom, back to the origins
of all music. - But that is to anticipate. Indeed, nothing about the
p aternal shadow seems to follow in good order, generation upon
generation ; everything seems to anticipate and presuppose a long
lineage. On both sides.
To hear with a new ear the names of Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm,
who is himself dead, and whose very signature is now a mark of death -
that is the task Jacques Derrida assigns himself in "La logique de la
v ivante." To read with a new eye the "thanatography" of Nietzsche's
"biography," to take up again the relation of the "I," writing and death
as developed in chapter seven of La voix et le phinomene. Yet the pres- .
ent investigations of the logic of the living are less a logic than a gloss
o n Glas, a logic of the knell, an obsequy. Derrida's is an essay on ob
sequence. It is Nietzsche's fatality to be both neutral (neither-nor) and
doubling (both-and) , to be between the dead and the living, between
le (pere) mort and la (mere) vivante, to be both death, la mort, and life,
la vie, during that stretch of time that he himself, Nietzsche, Friedrich,
is (was) alive, le vivant. Obsequence turns out to be an enigmatic sort
of sequentiality, not of generation upon generation , but of first-person
existences. Note in the following passage the variety of possible senses
and sequences of the je suis, "I am" and "I follow" :
En tant que je suis mon pere , je suis mort , je suis le mort et je suis la
mort. En tant que je suis ma mere, je suis la vie qui persevere , le vi
vant , la vivante. Je suis mon pere, ma mere et moi, mon fils et moi ,
l a mort et la vie, l e mort et l a vivante, etc. 4
Derrida's transcription of the riddle thus doubles up on itself in a

way that no English transcription can . One attempt to retranscribe
D errida's transcription - to anglicize the logic of obsequence:
I nsofar as I am and follow my father, I am dead; I am and follow the
dead progenitor, I am and follow death . Insofar as I am and follow
my mother, I am the life that perseveres [cf. by way of contrast Lacan:
je, pere, severe] , I am the living male heir, I am the progenitrix. I am
and follow my father, my mother and me, my son and me, death and
life, the dead progenitor and the living progenitrix . Etc.
Thus Derrida spins out the riddle into a complex fable of death
and living-on, survivance and ob-sequence. And yet there is a tendency
(at least , I believe there is, although I am unsure) in Derrida's fable
! In L 'oreille de l'autre 28; in Otobiographies 62.
to identify the father with decadence and to acknowledge the mother,

without further ado, as she who survives collapse. Like Ursula in Cien
aiios de soledad, Franziska would be she who lives on, survives to bury
her son . Whom Derrida mistakenly calls le.fits unique. Forgetting Lit
tle Joseph. And the survival of the mother - is it the survivance of life?
Of death? Of deaths?
Pierre Klossowski begins his "Consultation of the Paternal Shadow"
by remarking , apropos of Nietzsche's talent for riddles, that to pose
a riddle is "to simulate a necessity in order to flee the vacuity of
something arbitrary." Nietzsche's own account of the fortune and fatali
ty of his "double origin" Klossowski therefore calls "the shadow of a
solution" to the puzzle of his "life." Yet even the shadow is double ,
multiple, at once the oneiric shadow of the father and the oppressive
shadow(s) of the mother-in-mourning and of all the women in the
presbytery who raise Little Fritz . Yet, why is the paternal shadow
"oneiric"?
Klossowski cites two versions of a premonitory dream that Nietz
sche had - presumably at five-and-a-half-years of age, about eighteen
months after his father's death- which foretold the sudden death of
his younger brother, Joseph, "Josephchen." The first report, composed
at Christmas 1 856, reads as follows:
At that time I once dreamt that I heard the sounds of the church organ,
playing as it did during the funeral [i.e . , of Nietzsche's father] . When I
perceived what lay behind these sounds a gravemound suddenly opened
and my father, wrapped in linen cerements , emerged from it . He
hurried into the church and returned a moment later with a child in
his arms. The tomb yawned again , he entered , and the cover closed
over the opening. The sterterous sounds of the organ ceased instantly,
and I awoke. - On the day that followed this night Little Joseph abrupt
ly fell ill, seized by severe cramps, and after a few hours he died. Our
grief knew no bounds . My dream had been fulfilled completely. The
tiny corpse was laid to rest in his father's arms. 5
Note the progression of this first account: hearing organ music,
seeing nothing as yet, discovering that this is the music of the deceased
father- not the improvisations played while Little Fritz sat on his
father's lap (alone?) but the music of interment - and then the gap
ing of the grave. His father hurries into the church and emerges car
rying a child, ein Kind, in his arms. Not Little Fritz , who is observing
all this (but from where? and how? presumably from the second floor
5 Schlechta edition, III: 1 7 .
o f the large country house that looked out over the church and the
adj acent cemetery: !ch bin als P.ftanze nahe dem Gottesacker, als Mensch
in einem Pfarrhaus geboren another doubling here, except that if as a
-
human being Nietzsche was born in a pastor's house, in the house

of the father, then his life as a plant is rooted in God's Green Acre,
that is, the cemetery, which would be the mother) , not Little Fritz
b ut Little Joseph is the dead man's object.
This first account, written at age twelve, is followed by a second ,
composed when Nietzsche was seventeen:
Some months later [i.e. , following the death of the father] , a second
misfortune struck me, a misfortune of which I had a premonition, thanks
to a remarkable dream. I felt as though I could hear muffled organ music
coming from the nearby church. Surprised, I open the window that
looked out over the church and cemetery. My father's grave opens, a
white figure emerges and disappears into the church. The gloomy, un
canny sounds surge on; the white figure appears again, carrying
something under his arm that I did not clearly recognize. The grave
mound yawns, the figure sinks into it , the organ goes silent - I waken.
The following morning my younger brother, a lively and gifted child,
is seized by cramps. and a half-hour later he is dead . He was buried
n ext to my father's grave. 6
Klossowski notes several divergences in the second account. The
music is now muffled, sinister; the dreamer himself opens a window
to seek the source of the music, uncanny yet familiar; the "thing'"borne
under the father's arm is now not readily identifiable; and josephchen
(for it will be) is now, after his seizure with cramps, cramps caused
perhaps by the tightening of that paternal grasp, removed from
his father's arms (their father's arms) and buried alongside. Klossowski,
perhaps recalling chapter four of the Wolfman case, and himself
alluding to the "compensatory value of a reconstitution of the
traumatism" (Beyond the Pleasure Pn'nciple, chapters two and three), writes
now with the hand of the dreamer himself:
I open the window and the tomb is opened: I open the tomb of my father,
who then looks for me in the church. My dead father searches me out
and carries me off because I am trying to see my dead father [or: try
ing to see my father dead - a voir mon pere mort] . I am dead, the father
of myself, I suppress my self in order to reawaken in the midst of music.
My dead father makes me hear the music . (257)
6 Schlechta edition, III : 93.

Although he is looking for me in the church, the father finds

Josephchen instead. Little Joseph is not in the house, but has been
removed to the church . Who has removed this gay and gifted child
to the pale altar? Who has exposed him to the waxen pastor?
Klossowski does not raise this question explicitly. Yet if the oedipal
situation applies (recall Gasche: "I have killed myself as my own father
so that I can commit incest with myself as my mother . . . "), then it
is not only the father but also the second son who must be removed
to God's Green Acre: "Our grief knew no bounds. My dream had
been fulfilled completely. The tiny corpse was laid to rest in his father's
arms ." Note the sequence, the ob-sequence , up to the perfunctory
close: muffled organ music; surprised, I open the window (the infant
Wolfman's eyes open of themselves, says Freud, to the primal scene:
it is a matter of attentive, interested observation, insists Freud) that
looks out onto the cemetery ( Wie lebendig steht noch der Gottesacker vor
mir! exclaims Nietzsche at age fourteen) where I see my father dead.
First my father, then Little Joseph. Our grief knew no bounds. Ours .
Me 'n Mum's. Unencumbered. My dream had been fulfilled com
pletely. Alone at last.
'
Yet if the first of Klossowski's consultations appears to conform to
the usual (oedipal) view - negative identification with the father as
decadence, transgression and guilt- the second consultation (285ff.)
begins to subvert or distort that view . Klossowski stresses the asym
metry and disequilibrium of Nietzsche's "double" origin: the mother
simply does not embody "commencement" in the way the father adum
brates closure. Keeping before him the shadow of the dead father as
a kind of shield or amulet, Nietzsche distances himself increasingly
in the course of his life from mother and sister, distances himself
through his writings, his texts, such as the new text of Ecce Homo I :
3 , which no mother o r sister should ever have seen. Beneath the forced
jollity of a late letter (the last, I believe) to Franziska Nietzsche , writ
ten on December 2 1 , 1 888 (Meine alte Mutter. . . . Dein altes Geschopf) ,
in which he assures her that he is by now ein ungeheuer bernhmtes Tier
("a monstrously renowned beastie"), we hear overtones that resonate
quite distinctly in a letter four days later to Franz Overbeck:
- This does not prevent my sister from writing to me on October 1 5

[i.e. , on Nietzsche's birthday, the halcyon forty-fourth birthday com
memorated by the exergue to Ecce Homo] that I too ought to commence
becoming "renowned" . . . All the while she calls me "Darling Fritz" . . . .
.
This has been going on now for seven years!

Thus Nietzsche is driven to invert the oedipal situation : he

substitutes himself for the mother and his father's daughter in order
to become intimate with the father- "as though being," says
Klossowski, "his own mother."7 Such inversion/subversion will not go
unpunished. Nietzsche's "real" mother and sister, his "editors," will
eventually suffocate him: Klossowski adduces a mordant word on the
mother's "mortal compassion for the convalescent son." Indeed, mother
and sister represent what Deleuze calls "the second feminine power. "8
They embody, according to Klossowski, "life in its most contempti
ble form," the sluggish worm and the viper - counterimages to the
serpent of eternal return.
The consequences of such inversion become increasingly radical
in Klossowski's own consultations. If the father is detachment from
1 ife , if the father - and not the ghost ship of woman - is Distanz, then
he is also the great healthfulness of the revaluation of all values .
Magnificent health is the father's, the deceased father of all genealogy.
He.nee "the presence of the dead father as an explanation of Nietz
sche's struggle with his own fatality." Klossowski depicts such distance
and struggle as Nietzsche's perilous perch on the crest of a wave: from
it Nietzsche can descry with "ultimate lucidity" the fatality on which
he will founder- and yet that very perception marks the onset of in
expungible darkness. In the end, the end(s) of Nietzsche himself,
Friedrich, the disequilibrium of origins is radicalized. It is his destiny
to replace (to follow, to be) the mother and to insinuate himself with
the oneiric shadow of the father - and thus, one must add, to follow
and to be his younger brother, Josephchen . The living mother em
bodies decay of blood, loss of exuberance, end of adventure, the sur
vival of death and death alone; the dead father, more a dream about
life than life itself, but a dream dreamt by at least one of his sons ,
e mbodies- if a shade may be said to embody - the very course and
flow (sens) of life . Paternal shadow and gaping tomb become a single
7 In the second session of the "Double Seance," Derrida (see La dissemination [Paris:
Seuil, 1972] 3 0 1 n . ) cites Freud's reference to such inversion in the Wolfman case :
"The phantasm of a second birth was thus here an abbreviated and bowdlerized ver
sion of phantasms involving homosexual desire. . . . The rending of the veil is analogous
t o the opening of the eyes, to the opening of the window . . . . To be born of his father,
. . . to give him a child at the cost of his own virility, . . . homosexuality here fim;ls
its supreme and most intimate expression ." See Freud, Studienausgabe (Frankfurt am
Main: Fischer, 1 982) VIII: 23 1 .
8 Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche et la philosophie (Paris : Presses Universitaires de France,
1962) 24 and 2 14 .
sign in Nietzsche's destiny; the sign of Chaos, the shadow of the mourn
ing mother, mourning her spouse, mourning Little Joseph, mourning
Friedrich, is finally dispersed in what Klossowski calls "automater
nity" : "Yet in order to rediscover life itself, Nietzsche, insofar as he
is his own mother, becomes the child anew (s'enfante a nouveau) and
becomes his own creature" (260). Hence "the necessity to be born to
himself from himself and thereby his tendency to restore himself to
a double presence, feminine and virile . . ." (274) .
And yet this elevation of the paternal shadow and expulsion of the
living mother ought to give us pause. Such "automaternity," such
taking-oneself-in-hand: Wie? Und dies ware nicht - circulus vitiosus deus?9
The apparent restoration of what Klossowski here calls a "double
presence" and "double affirmation" (after Deleuze) may well be no
more than the dream of the "perfect object," the dream of the
metaphysics (and morals) of presence. Such restoration would forget
what it most needs to remember: that Nietzsche's great good luck is
his fatality. Automaternity fares no better than autobiography.
Ecce Homo - an autobiography? automaternity? shadow?
Autobiography doubles up with absences, not presences, and i s
thanatography. I f Nietzsche, Friedrich, i s once again with child, is
once again himself a child, that child will turn out to be otherwise .
It will be Little Joseph. Doubling up. In the end there will be nothing
left for that child -J osephchen, Herzensfritz - but fatal consultation
with the paternal shadow, fatal embrace of the mother: the riddle of
an origin that never stops doubling, sundering, receding into the
infinite distance of all music.
9 jenseits von Gut and Bose 56 (V, 75).
Part IV
The Italian Heritage
Jejfrey Schnapp
NIETZSCHE'S ITALIAN STYLE:

GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO
. . . riconobbi i suoi pensieri

fraterni come il navigatore
ansio riconosce i verzieri
d'Italia da lungi all'odore
che gli recano i venti.
G. D'Annunzio , "Per la morte
di un distruttore" (vv. 358-362),
Elettra
Aspettate dunque e preparate l'evento .
G . D'Annunzio , Le vergini
delle rocce (4 7)
To plant Nietzsche on or in Italian soil is to obey certain imperatives

both internal and external to Nietzsche's writings. Among the exter
nal , there is first and foremost Nietzsche's biography, punctuated as
it is by a number of lengthy sojourns each linked to the production
of major works : Genoa to The Gay Science, Venice to The Dawn, Sor
rento to Human, All Too Human, Rapallo to Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
Turin to The Case of Wagner, The Antichrist, Twilight of the Idols, Nietz
sche contra Wagner and Ecce Homo. Out of this network of coincidences
it is possible to construct a map which, while evoking certain features
of the Italies of Goethe and Stendhal, may be placed under the general
rubric of"Nietzsche's Italy." Nietzsche's Italy, as its topographical layout
247
suggests, is at once anti-Christian and ante-Christian, anachronistic

and touristic . It favors the margin over the center; francophilic
aristocratic Turin, the former capital, over industrial Milan; L'Aquila,
the citadel of the Emperor Frederick II , over papal Rome. And it
is likewise a Mediterranean and Aegean Italy: an Italy composed of
ports - Venice, Sorrento , Genoa and Rapallo, among others
traversed by ancient mariners and modern vacationers . 1
To this topographical map corresponds a symbolic map , at once
cultural , historical, gastronomical and climatological. It presents an
Italy that is a privileged locus of the aesthetic; whose dry air and clear
skies, Hellenic tempo and light-footed cuisine make it the anti-northern
place par excellence; the place where "opportunities abound for dipping
into running wells" and where the philosopher's spirit can move free
ly over the waters; and hence the place where Zarathustra can over
take him. 2 Zarathustra arrives in Italy because he arrives out of a
future already inscribed into the Italian past ( if only as an unfulfilled
promise) . 3 In him return the corporealized ideals and idols of the
Italian Renaissance: the virtu of a Machiavelli and of a Cesare Borgia,
untainted by Christian piety and ressentiment, unclouded by the fog
of northern idealism. "Cesare Borgia as Pope - this would have been
the true meaning of the Renaissance, its proper symbol," Nietzsche
writes in a letter to Georg Brandes dated November, 1 888.4
Renaissance Italy thus occupies a pivotal place in Nietzsche's genealogy
of history. In it is prefigured another continent surrounded by an "ideal
mediterranean " : an "undiscovered country whose boundaries remain
1 Some fifty years later Rapallo would of course provide the distant vantage point
from which another distinguished explorer of the Nietzschean "ideal Mediterranean"
would construct his own eccentric vision of Italy: namely, Ezra Pound.
2 "I prefer towns in which opportunities abound for dipping from running wells (Niz
za, Turin , Sils); a small glass accompanies me like a dog. In vino veritas: it seems
that here, too, I am at odds with all the world about the concept of 'truth' - in my
case the spirit moves over water" (Ecce Homo IL 1 ) . Cited from Basic Writings efNietz
sche, tr. and ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library, 1968) 695 .
3 "Mornings I would walk in a southerly direction on the splendid road to Zoagli,
going up past pines with a magnificent view of the sea; in the afternoon, whenever
my health permitted it, I walked around the whole bay from Santa Margherita all
the way to Portofino . . . . It was on these two walks that the whole of Zarathustra I
occurred to me, and especially Zarathustra himself as a type: rather, he overtook me"
(Ecce Homo Z . 1 ; [Basic Writings 753-54]).
• "To Georg Brandes," Turin , 20 November, 1888. Cited from Nietzsche: A Seif-portrait
from His Letters, ed. and tr. Peter Fuss and Henry Shapiro (Cambridge, Mass . : Har
vard University Press, 1 97 1 ) 1 3 2 .
Schnapp: Nietzsche's Italian Style 249
unsurveyed" except by certain "argonauts of the ideal," the bold prac

titioners of the gaya scienza. 5
B ut to return for a moment from the ideal to the real, there exists
a negative double of Nietzsche's Italy, an Italy that is not centrifugal
but centripetal : the Italy of the "drift towards Rome" whose historical
profile embraces the Middle Ages and the Baroque, and whose borders
extend outward at least as far as Bayreuth. 'Judging by the Wagnerians
I've met so far," writes Nietzsche in 1 886 , "present day W agnerizing
strikes me as an unconscious drift towards Rome."6 Even this Christian
Italy of bad air and bad faith, however, ultimately manifests itself
as spectacle, a pure spectacle which reveals contemporary Germany
to be but the simulacrum ofa simulacrum. Wagner is thus unmasked
no less by Dionysus than by an Italian original: Count Alessandro
Cagliostro, physician, alchemist and impostor, Europe's first magi
cian of the spirit and spiritual hypnotist . Wagner, you will recall, is
termed by Nietzsche "the Cagliostro of music," "the Cagliostro of
modernity."7
. While this ideal and not-so-ideal Mediterranean might be worth
exploring in its own right, my subject here is less Nietzsche's Italy
than the Italian Nietzsche. By the latter phrase I mean the Nietzsche
formed in pre-Fascist Italy, and it is for this reason that I invoke his
style and not the reception of his thought. I speak of"style" not because
Nietzsche's "thought" can be easily dislodged from his "style" any more
than Nietzsche's "concepts" can be easily disjoined from his
"metaphors." Rather, I do so to call attention to a most unusual cir
cumstance in Nietzsche's reception in pre-war Italy: the first Italian
N ietzsche is not a philosopher, but a poet; the poet , in fact, of the
pre-Fascist and Fascist eras. So I speak of "Nietzsche's Italian style"
in order to evoke the double translation of Nietzsche carried out in
5 "Whoever has a soul that craves to have experienced the whole range of values
and desiderata to date , and to have sailed around the coasts of this ideal 'mediterra
nean' . . . needs one thing above everything else: the great health - that one does not
merely have but also acquires continually . . . . And now, after we have long been on
our way in this manner, we argonauts of the ideal . . . - it will seem to us as if, as
a reward, we now confronted an as yet undiscovered country whose boundaries
nobody has surveyed yet" ( The Gay Science 38,2). Cited from The Gay Science, ed. and
tr. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974) 346 .
6 "To Malwida von Meysenbug," Sils-Maria, 24 September, 1886 (Nietzsche: A Seif
Portrait from His Letters 92).
1 Ecce Homo W. 1 (Basic Writings 773); The Case of Wagner 5 (Basic Writings 622) and
Epilogue (Basic Writings 648).

the writings of the poet Gabriele D'Annunzio . "Double" because in

inscribing Nietzsche even more deeply into the linguistic, cultural and
political matrix of Italy than Nietzsche himself had already done, D'An
nunzio also perform s an important generic transfer. In and th rough
D'Annunzio's Italian transcription , Nietzsche's text is driven out o f
the unstable middleground between philosophy and literature (which
is its usual abode) into a lyrical realm of dreams and philosophical
fictions, where it finds itself animated and, indeed, transformed by
certain ghosts from ancient and early-modern Italian literary history. 8
Via D'Annunzio , Nietzsche returns to Italy as a poet; but a poet, to
echo Dante, with the voice and vellum of an-other ("con altra voce
omai, con altro vello") . 9
One especially hesitates to speak of "Nietzschean thought" in pre
World War I Italy for a secondary reason. Aside, perhaps, from such
figures as Zoccoli, Orestano, Morasso , Papini and Banfi, there is really,
strictly speaking, no such thing/Positivism, Croceanism and, alter
nately, Marxism held center stage in the pre-war period as Italian
philosophy aggressively distanced itself from Nietzsche (a situation
which remained mostly unaltered until the rise to prominence of Gian-
.
ni Vattimo and the pensiero debole movement in the late seventies) . 1 0
Witness the following item from the 1894 Gazzetta Letterarz"a authored
by the neo-Kantian philosopher Emilio Morselli:
In all likelihood we are dealing here with a madman who shall not leave
a lasting mark. He is perhaps a philosopher in fashion , but it is worth
recalling that "fashion is the sister of Death." The positive science o f
the Marxs, Spencers and Novicovs finds i n the majestic progress of the
great river of humanity the vision of a future which bears no
resemblance whatsoever to that imagined by Friedrich Nietzsche. I I
" On D'Annunzio's transformation of Nietzsche's text see Paolo Valesio's essay "The
Beautiful Lie: Heroic Individuality and Fascism," in Reconstructing Individualism, eds.
Thomas A. Heller, Morton Sosna, David E. Wellbery ( Stanford: Stanford Univer
sity Press, 1986) 163- 1 8 3 .
9 L a Divina Commedia: Paradiso 25. 7 .
1 0 Brief summaries o f the reception of Nietzsche's thought i n Italy may be found

in Anacleto Verrecchia, La catastrofe di Nietzsche a Torino (Turin : Giulio Einaudi,
1 9 78) 290-97 , and Francesco Piga, Il mito del superuomo in Nietzsche e D'Annunzio
( Florence: E. Valecchi , 1 979) 75-83. For a more exhaustive treatment see Gaia
Michelini, Nietzsche nell'Italia di D'Annunzio (Palermo: S.F. Flaccovio, 1978) . The fun
damental reference text is Nietzsche in Italia: Rassegna Bibliograjica 1893-1970, ed.
Manuela Angela Stefani ( Rome: B. Carucci, 1 975). ,
1 1 "Probabilmente ci troviamo di fronte a uno squilibrato, che non lascera una
Schnapp: Nietzsche's Ita lian Style 251
To speak, at least in Italy, of "Nietzschean thought," it seems, is

something of a scandal. To speak, however, of a certain Nietzschean
"style" is another matter. Only the notion of "style" would seem to
justify Morselli's association of Nietzsche with the "feminine" realms
of fashion and her twin sistei;- death. And as we know from Derrida's
elegant reading of Nietzsche's styles in Eperons, any style or stylus which
leaves "no lasting mark'' is by definition a "de-cadent" style: a declin
ing unbalanced style, a style which falls away from the progenera
tional flow of majestic progress and positive science, a style which
can bear no fruit .
What I am trying to hint at is that the quotation from Morselli
refers less to Nietzsche than it does to a local Nietzschean: namely,
Gabriele D'Annunzio . It was D'Annunzio who in 1 894 was so much
in fashion that his name w.as already on the way to becoming an "ism,"
an "ism" usually pronoun:ced alongside the cognate term "decaden
tism." And it was D'Annunzio who in 1 894 had published a stylish
novel, entitled fl trionfo delta morte (or The Triumph of Death) , which
in its preface announces itself as preparing in art with certain faith
the advent of the Overman: "prepariamo nell'arte con sicura fede l'av
vento dell' Ubermensch , del Superuomo."12 More importantly, while
Italy's professional philosophers remained firmly committed to the
futures envisioned by Hegel, Marx and Spengler, D'Annunzio had
emerged as the most important
. Italian spokesman for the new gospel
of Zarathustra.
The turning point in D'Annunzio's metamorphosis into the self
proclaimed angel Gabriel of Italian Nietzscheanism had come in the
fall of 1 892, when after studying a number of articles from the prin
cipal French literary journals, as well as certain translated fragments
of Beyond Good and Evil, D'Annunzio composed the first of his essays
on Nietzsche. Its title was "La bestia elettiva" (or "The Beast Who
durevole impronta; sara forse un filosofo alla moda, la quale non bisogna dimen
ticarlo , e sorella della morte; la scienza positiva coi Marx, cogli Spencer, coi Novicow
scorge nel grandioso procedere dell'immenso fiume dell'umanita ben altro avvenire
che quello immaginato <la F. Nietzsche." From "II pensiero italiano," Gazzetta Let
teraria (February 1894); quoted from Piga, Il mito del superuomo 77; (an identical ver
sion of Morselli's article had appeared somewhat earlier in the 1 894 issue of Pensiero
Italiano) . In his identification of fashion with death , Morselli alludes to Giacomo
Leopardi's "Dialogo della moda e della morte," which figures among the Operette moralz).
12 " Noi tendiamo l'orecchio alla voce del magnanimo Zarathustra, o Cenobiarca;
e prepariamo nell'arte con sicura fede l'avvento dell' Ubermensch , de! Superuomo" (Il
triorifo delta morte [Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1983] 54).
Wills") and it was featured on the front page of the influential

Neapolitan daily Il Mattino. 1 3 Plagiarized, at least in part, from an
article by Jean de Nethy which had appeared in La Revue Blanche , this
important and little studied essay opens with an extended medita
tion on Europe's decadence . 14 The continent's crisis, D'Annunzio
argues, is at once physical and spiritual . It is marked by the decline
of Europe's traditional ruling families and by the corresponding
triumph of egalitarianism and of democratic ideals - the so-called
"dogmas of 1 789." As a solution to this double crisis , D'Annunzio an
nounces an event in the not too distant future : the advent of a new
aristocracy through whom Nietzsche's discourse on the morality of
the noble will find itself actualized. Instituting a new "realm of force" -
an order founded on the values of solitude, distance and difference
this elite will eventually seize the reins of state power and bring an
e nd to the tyranny of democratic rule .
While such a translation of Nietzsche's text into a concrete political
program for authoritarian rule could be rightly characterized as proto
Fascist, it should be remembered, nonetheless, that the entire discus
sion is underwritten by a series of literary concerns: what is to be
the poet's role in an era dominated by egalitarian values and by the
modern bureaucratic state? Is he to celebrate universal suffrage and
sing of the masses' accession to political supremacy? If his patrons ,
formerly aristocratic and currently bourgeois , are both implicated in
Europe's decadence and hence unworthy of him, for whom is he to
write? For D'Annunzio, at this time still a struggling journalist, novelist
and poet , the advocacy of Nietzsche's noble morality answers such
troubling questions with an assertion of the moral autonomy and
superiority of the artist and of his art.
"The Beast Who Wills" was followed by a three part essay on The
Case of Wagner whose emphasis is less on Nietzsche's doctrine than
on the stylistic and rhetorical attributes of Nietzsche's writing . 1 5 In
this second essay, D'Annunzio confronts the "case of Wagner" with
13 The article appeared in the September 25, 1892 issue of Il Mattina. No more than
a paragraph is reproduced in Pagine disperse: cronache mondane-letteratura-arte di Gabriele
D'Annunzio, ed. Alighiero Castelli (Rome: Bernardo Lux, 1 9 1 3) 544.
" De Nethy's "Nietzsche-Zarathustra" is found in La Revue Blanche (April 1 892)
206- 1 2 . D'Annunzio's borrowings from de Nethy were first uncovered by Guy Tosi
in "D'Annunzio decouvre Nietzsche ( 1 89 2- 1 894)," Italianistica 2 . 3 (September/
December 1 973) 481 - 5 1 3 .
15 "II caso Wagner'' appeared in the L a Tribuna di Roma o n July 23 and August 3
and 9 , 1 893 . The full text is reproduced in Pagine disperse 57 2-88.

the "case of Nietzsche," reaffirming the basic tenets of Nietzsche's criti

que of "the Jesus of Bayreuth"- the phrase is D'Annunzio's own
yet coming out on the side of artistic license and against the imposi
tion of philosophical strictures- even Nietzschean strictures - upon
the work of art. Yet if D'Annunzio's argument is pro Wagner et contra
Nietzsche, its conclusions ar� extremely telling as regards the future
trajectory of Nietzsche's Italian style. D'Annunzio writes :
All eighty pages of this little work are traversed by an uninterrupted
chain of witticisms, verbal sneers and sarcasms, frequently of quite
dubious or of excessively Germanic taste . 1 6
H e later continues:
why on earth does the far-gazing Zarathustra, instead of examining
the artificer of decadence with tranquil rigor and disentangling the
countless elements that joined together make him so complex, assault
him with so much wrath and reprove him so ferociously for a "corrup
tion" that he is not responsible for?
Accusations, caustic diatribes, ironies of this sort are by now so fruitless
and undignified, especially of a philosopher, even if this philosopher
has raised himself "out of his time."17
If one were to survey D'Annunzio's Nietzsche in the conventional
manner, one would find in due course all of the most frequent Nietz
schean commonplaces: the will to power, the Overman, eternal recur
rence , the transvaluation of values, etc. Such is the approach pur
sued by several generations of anti-Dannunzian scholars and critics,
who, attempting to measure D'Annunzio's Nietzscheanism by the stan
dard of a certain Nietzschean orthodoxy, have arrived at the conclu
sion that D' Annunzio somehow "emasculates and impoverishes"
Nietzsche . 1 8
1 6 "Le lepidezze, i dileggi e i sarcasmi, spesso d'assai dubbio gusto o d'un gusto ec
cessivarnente germanico , si seguono senza intervalli per le ottanta pagine del libello"
(Pagine disperse 582).
17 "Ma perche mai il dilungo riguardante Zarathustra, invece di esaminare con tran
quillo rigore l'artefice della ·decadenza e di sceverare gli innumerevoli elementi che
concorrono a farlo si complesso , gli sl lancia addosso con tanta ira e gli rimprovera
cos! aspramente la 'corruzione' di cui quegli e irresponsabile?
Accuse, rampogne, ironie di ta! genere sono omai vanissime e indegne, specialmente
d'un filosofo, anche se il filosofo s'e messo 'fuori de! suo tempo' " (Pagine dispers.e
585-86) .
1 8 " [In D'Annunzio] il drama nicciano si capovolge, si svirilizza e s'immeschinisce"
(Carlo Salinari, Miti e coscienza del decadentismo italiano: D'Annunzio, Pascoli, Fogazzaro
e Pirandello [Milan: Feltrinelli, 1960] 81).
Yet, whatever the veracity of the latter statement , the rhetoric of

virility that it adopts (and, in fact, shares with the entire anti
D annunzian tradition) - a subject I will return to in my closing
remarks - suggests a judgement diametrically opposite . To the ex
tent that D'Annunzio "emasculates and impoverishes" the text of his
predecessor, he may simply be what Harold Bloom defines as a "strong
reader": a reader who affirms his own mastery by imposing a correc
tive Lucretian clinamen or "swerve" upon the text of his master. 1 9 In
deed, even in this early essay, one may already perceive a certain acuity
i n D'Annunzio's reading of Nietzsche's style. Just as the philosopher
essayist Giovanni Papini would later insist on the symptomatic rela
tion of Nietzsche's rhetoric of health to the actual infirmity of his body,
D'Annunzio points to a rift in Nietzsche's tract : the rift between the
philosopher's narrative stance and his adoption of certain rhetorical
strategies that reek of ressentiment, a rift which his own Italian rewriting
o f Nietzsche sets out to remedy. 20
H ere, as elsewhere , D'Annunzio's fundamental difference with and
from Nietzsche is a matter of decorum: a decorum both stylistic and
"nationalistic." The entire thematic complex of Nietzsche's writings
does return in D'Annunzio, as others have demonstrated, yet with
the tropes and figures of humor and vituperation - sarcasm , biting
irony, puns and verbal laughter - extracted . Most of all , what D'An
nunzio censures in Nietzsche is the prevalence of sarcasm , the most
marginal of all the tropes of vituperation ; so marginal , in fact, that
in the Latin tradition its existence seems to have been noted alone
b y Quintillian . 21 Etymologically, the tearing of flesh or biting of the
lip, the disfiguring sneer or snarl of a wild dog (or perhaps, of a
l aughing cynic) , sarcasm stands in D'Annunzio's essay for a certain
"German" taste at the very fringes of Classical rhetoric (and, for that
m atter, good taste) inasmuch as it tends to provoke a breach in the
19 Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (New York: Oxford Univer
sity Press, 1973) 1 9-45 .

2 ° Cf. Giovanni Papini, fl crepusculo dei .filosofi (Milan: Vallecchi, 1906).
2 1 Quintillian discusses sarcasm under the rubric of veiled language or "allegory":

"Praeter haec usus est allegoriae, ut tristia dicamus mollioribus verbis urbanitatis
gratia aut quaedam contrariis significemus aliud textum spectaco et enumeravirnus.
Haec si quis ignorat, quibus Graeci nominibus appellent, aapKaaµov, aarel'aµov,
avrflppaaiv, napo1µfav dici sciat" (Inslitutio Oraton"a 8.6.57). Cited from the Loeb Classical
Library edition , ed. and tr. H . E . Butler (London: Heinemann, 1 976) 332-34. In
Aristotle's Rhetoric sarcastic wit is rep udiated and linked to the "cultured insolence"
of the young. On the persuasive use and misuse of wit see Cicero, De Oratore 2.2 16-90.
gravitas of the grand style, disrupting the decent and comely order
of thought and feeling.
In addition to the disfiguring and excessively Germanic character
of this rhetorical figure, D'Annunzio would also seem to suggest that
its repeated and injudicious use ends up reversing the intended
rhetorical effect. Although it p�etends to interpose a distance between
speaker and interlocutor, elevating the status of the former while lower
ing that of the latter, sarcasm, in D'Annunzio's view, readily becomes
a trope of engagement and even of an engagement on the verge of hysteria.
So adopting sarcasm's logic of verbal violence and revenge, the
philosopher - even a philosopher who , like Nietzsche, has "raised
himself out of our time" - is likely to find himself not elevated but
lowered, dragged down into the undignified business of our time : the
business of ressentiment. The critic of corruption is thus himself cor
rupted, and even the philosopher's style is not spared. D'Annunzio
writes: "there is something frenetic about this strange libel ( The Case
of Wagner) : in the disordered succession of its ideas, the syntactical
incoherence of its sentences , the fury of its invective . "22
In place of the "descending'' movement of sarcasm, D'Annunzio
will institute the "ascensional" movement of allegory. Not the didac
tic and parabolic allegory of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra; rather,
something at once more Platonizing and Dantean. Dannunzian
allegory, as displayed, for instance, in an avowedly Nietzschean text
like Le vergini delle rocce (or The Maidens of the Rocks) , published in 1 895,
functions as a kind of literary dream-work: aiming at the elaboration
of conscious dreams by means of the intensification (or condensation)
and expansion (or displacement) of the narrative or historical present.
It operates on the "temporal" plane by projecting the narrative or
historical present forward in time, like the gaze of the far-sighted
Zarathustra, towards an apocalyptic future , a silence, which lies just
beyond the confines of the text . And, reciprocally, it makes it possi
ble for certain heroic moments and texts from the Italian and ancient
p ast to be reinscribed and reinvested with meaning in the historical
or narrative present.
Dannunzian allegory functions instead as a principle of poesis in
asmuch as it provides the mechanism for raising up the commonplace
into a transfigured poetic realm: a superior linguistic and physical
2 2 " C'e qualcosa di frenetico in questo bizzarro libello : nella successione disordinata
delle idee, nella incoerenza sintattica delle frasi, nella furia dell'invettiva" (Pagine disperse
585) .
order inhabited by superior beings, where Beauty and the Ideal are
j oined in a corporeal wedlock. Beyond irony and laughter , beyond
the rhetorical ruses of ressentiment, this transfigured and liminal world
is at once lyrical, heroic and oneiric. It is made up of extreme, even
h ypertrophic, sensual states; states in which the will - projected out
into the temporal unfurling of syntax- continuously expands or con
tracts in dialogue with the imperatives of nature and biology.
In The Maidens of the Rocks, the first of the three projected novels
which were to make up the Romanzi del Giglio (or Romances of the Lily),
the above description applies on both the text's molar and molecular
levels. The narrative, closely modeled after the Nietzschean scheme
of"The Beast Who Wills," is best described as a "drama of progenera
tion" in which the protagonist and narrator , Claudio Cantelmo , is
called upon to determine the future trajectory of a race of Renaissance
heroes of which he is the sole nineteenth century inheritor. Claudio,
called "lo Sposo" (in order to evoke the husband of the Song of Songs) ,
must select as his bride one of three virgin princesses, the last bearers
of the . decaying seed of another aristocratic family, the Capece
Montagas . Each of the three represents for him a separate universe
of physical and supraphysical possibilities. Massimilla, the eldest of
the sisters, unveils the temptations of an otherworldly eros and of
mystical ascent . Anatolia, an Antigone figure, promises this-worldly
potency and life-force , a life projecting itself beyond the illusion of
death into a superior realm of existence . And Violante, the youngest,
shadows forth "the ideal beauty which all earthly peoples have sought
confusedly from the beginning of time, and which artificers have in
voked in poems , in symphonies, in canvas and in clay. Everything
in her and about her is a sign."23
Much of D'Annunzio's text consists of Claudio's exploration of the
alternative universes opened up by the three princesses. The choice
is urgent because of a doubly imminent threat (which is none other
than that defined in "The Beast Who Wills") : the threat posed by a
"wind" of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois "barbarism" sweeping the city
23 I am paraphrasing from the following passage: "I poeti vedevano in me [Violante]

la creatura speciosa, nelle cui linee visibili era incluso ii piu alto mistero della Vita,
ii mistero della Bellezza rivelata in came mortale dopo intervalli secolari, a traverso
l'imperfezione di discendenze innumerevoli. E pensavano: - Ben e questa la com
piuta ef!igie dell'Idea che i popoli terrestri intuirono confusamente fin dalle origini
e gli artefici invocarono senza tregua nei poemi, nelle sinfonie, nelle tele e nelle argille .
Tutto in lei esprime, tutto in lei e segno" (Le vergini delle rocce [Milan: Arnoldo Mon
dadori, 1978] 29).
of Rome, and the threat that a magnificent race of heroes may soon
be extinguished - the aristocratic race of the Cantelmos and Capece
Montagas. To the first corresponds the decadent backdrop against
which Claudio's mission is first proclaimed: a contemporary Rome
of "the pickaxe , the trowel and bad faith ," of "enormous and empty
cages, riddled with rectangul� holes, surmounted by artificial cor
nices, encrusted with opprobrious stucco and . . [built] upon rubbish
.
filled foundations ."24 Stripped of all genuine style , artifice and art,
this city is populated by an undifferentiated Medusa-like mob which
threatens at every moment to engulf the "ancient and legitimate regal
lineages" within its muddy egalitarian vortex. 25 In the absence of a
king, a rightful heir to sit upon its throne, the city is ruled by a master
class of money-lenders and merchants:
Such, in fact, were the new. masters of that Rome which dreamers and
prophets, intoxicated with the ardent exaltation of so much spilled Latin
blood, had likened to the bow of Ulysses . . . . They busied themselves
with selling, barratry, lawmaking and setting traps, no one making any
more allusion to the murderous bow. And in truth it did not seem likely
that the cry might rise which should cast them suddenly into fe ar "O ,
Proci, devourers of the substance of others , be forwarned; Ulysses is

alre ady landed in Ithaca!"26
24 "II piccone , la cazzuola e la mala fede erano le armi. E, da una settimana all' altra,
con una rapidita quasi chimerica, sorgevano su le fondamenta riempite di macerie
le gabbie enormi e vacue, crivellate di buchi rettangolari, sormontate da cornicioni
posticci, incrostate di stucchi obbrobriosi" ( Vergini 57) .
25 "Voi vedete , mio caro padre , - io ripresi a dire , senza poter frenare i palpiti che
mi sembravano ripercuotersi nella voce- voi vedete che da per tutto le antiche regalita
legittime declinano e che la Folla sta per inghiottirle nei suoi gorghi melmosi" ( Vergini
152). The image first appears at the close of the first book: "Le magnifiche stirpi
- fondate , rinnovellate, rafforzate col nepotismo e con le guerre di parte - si ab
bassavano a una a una, sdrucciolavano nella nuova melma, vi s'affondavano , scom
parivano" ( Vergini 56) .
26 "Tali, in fatti, i padroni di quella Roma che sognatori e profeti, ebri dell'ardente
esalazione di tan to latino sangue sparso, avevano assomigliata all'arco di Ulisse . . . .
S'industriavano anch'essi a vendere, a barattare, a legiferare e a tender trappole,
nessuno piu facendo allusione all'arco micidiale . E non pareva probabile, in verita ,
che a spaventarli s i levasse d'improvviso i l grido: 0 Proci, divoratori della sostanza
altrui, badate, Ulisse e gia approdato in Itaca!"' ( Vergini 58). The allusion is to Odyssey
2 1 . 4 1 1 ; and to the eighth stanza of the aftersong "From High Mountains" in Beyond
Good and Evil : "Ein schlimmer Jiiger ward ich! - Seht, wie steil/Gespannt mein
Bogen!/Der Stiirkste war's, der solchen Zug gezogen - - : /Doch wehe nun!
Gefahrlich ist der Pfeil/Wie kein Pfeil, - fort von hier! Zu eurem Heil!" (Basic Writings
432). D'Annunzio recalls this passage from Nietzsche's poem once again in vv. 260-68
of "Per la morte di un distruttore," in Elettra.
It is from this gray spectacle that Claudio Cantelmo withdraws ,

abandoning the decadent city for a no less decadent hortus conclusus:
the enclosed garden of the virgins. Here "decadence" signifies not bar
barism, but instead its opposite pole: the sort of terminal overript'ness
manifest in the landscape as well as the Capece-Montaga's biological
stock. 27 Infinitely fertile , both stand, paradoxically, on the brink of
death . The old king, Prince Luzio, has abdicated his throne; the old
queen, Princess Aldoina, has gone mad; their sons are drowning in
their own sadness; the virgins sit in waiting for "lo Sposo ."
The intrusion of Claudio Cantelmo into this moribund world has
the effect of a seasonal revolution. Under his influence old memories
are revived, life returns, the future reappears on the horizon . The
garden, once on the threshold of extinction, now looses its boundaries ,
becoming the site of the text itself: the site of love and writing, of
insemination and dissemination. This metamorphosis is marked
stylistically as a shift from prosaic to poetic language, with a corre
sponding expansion of the text's allusive powers. Its sentence struc
tures become more extravagantly Latinate , its lexicon opulent, and
its music symphonic; and its language is pictorialized by regular
recourse to the figures ofprosopopoeia and ecphrasis. And perhaps most
striking of all , the text is suddenly filled with the voices of literary
ancestors . Merged into a lyrical filigree of Dantean , Petrarchan,
Classical Greek and Latin paraphrases and citations, the voice of Nietz
sche here takes on a distinctively Italian inflection , finding itself, in
the process, lyricized and transformed into D' Annunzio's own.
But if this art, this beauty, this potential life-force , rooted in the
pre-modern and ancient past, is to be made new again; if Italy's an
cient regal lineages are to stride triumphantly across the surface of
the earth as they did before; if the enclosed garden is to bear new
fruit; and if allusion is to be made once more to Ulysses's murderous
bow . . . a marriage must take place. Hence the importance of Claudio
Cantelmo's choice: only a marriage against decadence , against bar
barism and overripeness, will ensure the birth of a progeny - a living
artwork - in whom the image of the race shall be fulfilled and then
gone beyond. It is towards such an event, later described as the foun
dation of a Third Rome, that the action of D'Annunzio's text unfolds ,
driven at every moment by the thought of "Colui che deve venire"
("He who must come") : the advent of the Overman, the new Ulysses
2 1 On the bi-valence of the term "decadence" see Richard Gilman, Decadence: The
Strange Life of an Epithet (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1979).
who will drive the herd of suitors out of Ithaca, the legitimate heir
to Rome's empty throne .
Despite this future promise, however, the enclosed garden is not
gone beyond. Like every one of D'Annunzio's Nietzschean texts, The
Maidens ef the Rocks ends in an aporia; a blockage which leaves us with
but a foretaste of the garden's inseminative and disseminative fruit
fulness . The drama of progeneration is interrupted, concluding as
it began : in an oneiric freeze-frame, a tableau vivant, with Claudio's
selection of Anatolia having provisionally been postponed. (Accord
ing to the original plan of the Romanzi del Giglio , Violante was to
have been Claudio's final choice. ) So, instead of representing the new
o rder instituted by "He who must come," D' Annunzio's text functions
e ssentially as a pre-text: as a preparation, a praeparatio in the evangelical
sense of the word. This is to say that, as is the case of Nietzsche's
own Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the new order is instituted only by prolep
sis. It can only be modelled in and through the text's narrator and
protagonist, Claudio Cantelmo, whose role is to clear the aesthetic
and moral slate for "He who roust coroe . "28
Accordingly, this mission , as announced by Claudio's ancestor ,
Alessandro Cantelmo , a Renaissance commander and the military
architect of Cesare Borgia, conflates genealogical and aesthetic im
peratives, while at the same time confusing present creation with the
creation of future values . Appearing through his portrait painted by
none other than Leonardo da Vinci, Alessandro speaks as the living
i mage of a living image:
Your task is three-fold: to conduct your being with upright method to
the perfect integrity of the Latin type, to bring together the purest
essence of your spirit and reproduce the most profound vision of your
universe in a sole and supreme work of art; to preserve the ideal riches
of your race and your own conquests in a son, who under the paternal
teaching, recognizes them and sets them in good order in himself so
as to become worthy of aspiring to the realization of possibilities ever
more elevated. 29
28 C f. Lucia Re, "Gabriele D'Annunzio's Novel Le vergini delle rocce: 'Una cosa naturale
vista in un grande specchio,"' Stanford Italian Review 3 . 2 , (Fall 1983) 241-7 1 , which
argues that, in a deliberate fashion, D'Annunzio "systematically undermines the
(Nietzschean) expectations which the novel sets up so hyperbolically" (25 7 ) .
29 "Triplice e ii tuo compito: - condurre con diritto metodo ii tuo essere alla perfet
ta integrita de! tipo latino; adunare la piu pura essenza del tuo spirito e riprodurre
la piu profonda visione del tuo universo in una sola e suprema opera d'arte ; preser
vare le ricchezze ideali della tua stirpe e le tue proprie conquiste in un figliuolo che,
D'Annunzio's hero, thus, must do much more than simply choose .

His task is to pre-figure the trans-figurer, and to this end he must craft
three overlapping images: a self-image ("the ideal Latin type"), an
artwork ("a supreme work of art''), and a son. In all three, the ancestral
image - the image of Alessandro, the image of Leonardo , the image
of Claudio - must return in order that it exceed itself, according to
a temporal sequence that is "affirmative" or, to use D'Annunzio's own
term , "ascensional" in character . So instead of falling away from its
origins, or being subsumed into a future not yet come , the image
engenders the image engenders the image in a genealogical circuit
of interlocking pre-figurations and trans-figurations, whose sole ob
j ective is a perpetual recycling and expansion of Beauty and Style .
"That which is dead," Claudio had affirmed in a discussion of the empty
throne of the king of Rome , "shall resurrect, but in another form" :
"le cose che sono morte risorgeranno; ma trasformate."30
I hope that by now it has become evident that, contrary to the con
ventional view, D'Annunzio's poetic "translation" of Nietzsche is a
strong and systematic one; and that a text such as The Maidens of the
Rocks continually displaces, or better , replaces Nietzsche's constructs
within the aesthetic sphere. Power, for D'Annunzio, is always the
power of a superior being - the artist - to make and remake images.
The forging of "values" is no less a pictorial than a moral matter. The
will to power is the will to form : the will to impose a style, a tempo ,
upon being. Style is but the present of creation , the image or art
work its fulfillment, and the creative act the inscription of new aesthetic
laws upon new tablets. And the transfigured world prefigured in the
poet's text is less a world where Ulysses's bow is "murderous" in any
literal sense, than it is a literary world where ancestral texts are vivified
by allusion .
But if art, as such, would seem to become the sole arena for
transvaluation, this does not preclude a simultaneous move into the
sotto l'insegnamento patern o , le riconosca e le coordini in se per sentirsi degno
d'aspirare all' attuazione di possibilita sempre piu elevate" ( Vergini 55) . The passage
is a reworking of a description of Giorgio Aurispa's "sterile loves" in fl trionfo delta
morte 324: "In nessun figliuolo egli avrebbe perpetuato le impronte della sua sostan
za, preservato la sua effigie , propagato il movimento ascensionale dello spirito verso
l'attuazione di possibilita sempre piu alte . In nessuna opera egli avrebbe adunato
l'essenza del suo intelletto , manifestato armonicamente la potenza delle sue facolta
molteplici, rivelato interamente il suo universo."
30 Vergini 1 50 .
Schnapp: Nietzsche's Italian Style 26 1
sphere of theater and politics . Quite to the contrary, it would seem

that art tends to invade both of these spheres. By theater, I am think
ing less of D'Annunzio's activities as a playwright, which do happen
to coincide with his period of greatest political activism, than of his
reworking of a nineteenth century figure : the dandy. The dandy in
·
D'Annunzio's hands becomes a variety of poet-warrior, one who not
o nly transforms his body into an artwork, but also constructs his own
public stage . Such a stage is the Dannunzian villa, poised on the
threshold between a deeply hermetic privacy and a scandalous publici
ty. Site of pageants, masquerades and erotic rituals, it is a shrine to
the Ideal and a place of communion with literary and artistic ancestors
where the poet's life can be performed as a mysterium.
Another such stage is that provided by the world of politics, where
the language of power finds itself translated into a rhetoric of grand
gestures and heroic spectades. In 1 89 7 , for instance , D'Annunzio
would run for the Italian parliament on a Nietzschean platform whose
slogan was "beyond the right and the left" ("al di la della destra e dell a
sinistra") . During his tenure in parliament, this program was carried
out by dramatic shifts from the far-right to the far-left, and by means
of various initiatives to promote the physical beauty and strength of
Italy's people and cities. From among his many World War I exploits ,
I cite but the most notorious: the 1918 aerial bombardment of the
city of Vienna with red, white and green pamphlets exhorting the
Viennese to surrender if they wished to avoid future bombardments
with not so metaphoric bombs.
Equally characteristic were his demands, when, in September of
1 9 1 9 , he was entreated by the Italian legionnaires to lead the assault
on the formerly Austro-Hungarian city of Fiume . He would assume
the role of commander, D'Annunzio insisted, only if the people of
Fiume would agree to greet him at the city gate and later join the
A rditi in the singing of their hymn "Giovinezza," an anthem to the
h eroic ardor of youth later adopted by the Fascists . 3 1 The Fiume
episode, as is well knowD, represents a kind of"political passion play,"
with D'Annunzio cast in the role of the Crucified and with Fiume
3 1 The Fiume episode is described in detail by Michael A. Ledeen in The First Duce:
D'Annunzio at Fiume (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977)
esp. 58- 1 1 4 . According to Ledeen (104) the "sacred entrance" of the legionnaires
into the City of the Holocaust was even captured on film .
cast as the "City of the Holocaust'' ("la Citta Olocausta") . 3 2 To seek

the beginnings of a modern politics of spectacle in the late decadent
atmosphere of Dannunzian Fiume might at first glance seem implausi
ble, yet with its uniforms, its Homeric war chants, its hybrid rituals
of Greek, Roman, early Christian and modern extraction, Fiume in
augurates a political style which, in certain respects, would soon
become that of the Fascist movement and state. 33
Yet before making any too sudden leap from D'Annunzio's political
style to a Fascist politics of spectacle, one might do well to entertain
the following cautionary anecdote, and with this I conclude. When
earlier in this essay I suggested that it was not Nietzsche but D'An
nunzio who was the butt of Morselli's attack on a certain "feminine"
style that could leave "no lasting mark," I did so with an ulterior motive.
The first time that I taught The Maidens ef the Rocks, there was an elderly
gentleman who was auditing my course; a dermatologist, I believe .
During the various meetings at which we analyzed this particular text,
he remained silent in the back of the classroom , but never without
a look of disgust on his face . At the conclusion of our final discus
sion, he came to speak to me after class . In an agitated manner he
said: "I know that D'Annunzio banters a great deal about Nietzsche,
the will to power and supermen . ma non era unfroccio? (but wasn't
. .
he a faggot? ) ."34 Style, it seems , makes or unmakes the man . Ecce

Homophobia. For all my misguided attempts to persuade him that D'An
nunzio was the foremost seducer of.fin de siecle Europe he remained
thoroughly unconvinced. D' Annunzio's rhetoric of virility was for him
but a coverup, and the proof was in D'Annunzio's style: its opulence
and preciosity; truly a style in which every mark swiftly gives way
to another mark. In short: fashion , the feminine .
32 The phrase "political passion play" is Ledeen's ( 1 0) . On D'Annunzio's Fiuman

rhetoric and its relation to proto-Fascist and Fascist discourse see Barbara Spackman,
"Il verbo (e)sangue: Gabriele D'Annunzio and the Ritu alization of Violence," Quademi
d'ltalianistica 4.2 ( 1 983) 2 1 8-29.
33 In this regard one need only think of the founding myth of Fascism's origins: the
March on Rome - a reenactment of Caesars crossing of the Rubicon which in real i
ty was little more than a "train ride to Rome."
34 This topos of anti-Dannunzian criticism extends back at least as far as Benedetto
Croce, who in La storia d'Italia dal 1871 al 1915, 1 1 th ed. (Bari: Laterza, 1956) 1 7 2 ,
in si sts that D'Annunzio falls short of"la pienezza d i umanita, l a virilita carducciana
o foscoliana." (This passage, like that from Salinari cited above , is noted in Spackman,
"fl verbo (e)sangur!' 225.)
Now as it turned out, my doctor friend was no less repulsed by

Dannunzianism than he was fascinated by Fascism. As a matter of
fact, he was something of a collector of Italian Fascist regalia: black
shirts, daggers, medallions, wedding rings and propaganda. As such,
I should like to imagine that he ,spoke in the voice of Facism, sound
ing a warning against any too · simple equation of the Dannunzian
Nietzsche to the Nietzsche of Italian Fascism. For the Fascist, there
always remains in D'Annunzio something of a scandal, something
which points not towards the literal "health" and "virility" of the body
politic, but back towards the veils , the incense, the chiaroscuro of
decadence. This scandal , I believe, consists in the following :
everything- the Overman, the will to power, the transvaluation of all
values - ultimately belongs within the fold of art, indeed, for D' An
nunzio there is no other fold.
Gabriele D'Annunzio
THE BEAST WHO WILLS

Il Ma ttin o (di Nap o li),
S u n d ay -M o n d ay 25-26 Sep t e m b e r, 1 892
Transla tor's In troductio n

The appearance o f D'Annunzio's "La bestia elettiva" o r "The Beast
Who Wills" in the Neapolitan daily fl Mattina in September of 1 892
marks the first moment in the reception of Nietzsche's thought in Italy.
Meshing Nietzsche's meditation on slave and noble morality from such
texts as Beyond Good and Evil; The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra
with an irreverent analysis of the decay of Europe's traditional ruling
classes, "The Beast Who Wills" inaugurates a certain "literalizing"
reading of Nietzsche which will hold sway in Italy well into the twen
ties and thirties . This reading is "literalizing" to the extent that, like
�early all of Nietzsche's early readers, D'Annunzio roots Nietzsche's
text in the concrete historical particulars of his own era. According
ly, the chronologically indeterminate scene in Beyond Good and Evil
in which the moralities of noble and slave first come into being via
a series of acts of nami'n.g, distancing and differentiation appears in
D'Annunzio's essay not as a post-structuralist allegory of linguistic
deferral and difference, but rather as a concrete event whose value
is both diagnostic and prophetic.
For D'Annunzio , Nietzsche's scene is "diagnostic" in that it offers
a precise analysis of the origin of contemporary Europe's twin ills - a
decaying aristocracy and the triumph of bourgeois/mass values; "pro�
phetic" inasmuch as it proposes a solution to these ills : a return to
265
the noble morality and the advent of a new aristocracy. If to a con

temporary reader's ears such an interpretation has a distinctly Fascist
ring, it is perhaps worth stressing certain tensions and discontinuities .
First o f all, there i s the matter o f Nietzsche's "solution" to Europe's
double crisis: a solution so internally fractured that it simply covers
up what can only be described as an aporia . A new master class will
rise up at some future date, D'Annunzio affirms at the beginning o f
the third section o f "The Beast Who Wills ," from within the modern
pluralist state and, seizing the reins of power, will place the masses
in its service.
At the close of the essay, however, this master class is not within ,
but instead outside the state. No longer a "class," the new aristocrat
is recast as an isolated individual whose emblematic gesture is one
of abdication and refusal. All that he wills is to avoid contagion: the
contagion of everyday life, of the state, and of the ballot box. While
such a schism between inside and outside, collective and individual,
bears the distinctive bivalent stamp of the phrase "Romantic in
dividualism," it also describes a characteristically Dannunzian
blockage: the blockage which will structure D'Annunzio's earliest
Nietzschean texts, Il Trionjo della morte and Le vergini delle rocce.
Secondly, unlike the Fascist attempt to elaborate a concrete political
program on the basis of Nietzsche's writings, D'Annunzio's "literaliza
tion" is in the end primarily "literary." "The Beast Who Wills" begins,
and, I would suggest, concludes, with the image of a litterateur at the
margins of society. First we encounter one of those "anonymous
unemployed scribes" who prostitutes himself to the public's basest tastes
"by compiling pornographic anthologies for underground publishers,"
and who (disingenuously) calls for a high-minded civic literature - a
literature of public service available to the mass reader - linked to the
project of reform and enlightenment. This description is followed by
a sequence of rhetorical questions which suggest that the latter pro
ject is entirely at odds with the requirements of art.
Having provisionally disposed of the possibility of a socially in
strumental mass art, D'Annunzio turns to an analysis of the decline
of Europe's traditional patronage class, her monarchs, only to find
that all is no less "old and ignoble" on this side of the social divide .
The problem, according to D'Annunzio , is that there now exists an
unprecedented disequilibrium between monarch and artist, between
the art of exercising power and the power of art. Having long ago
lapsed into decadence, Europe's monarchs are no longer capable of
D'Annunzio: The Beast Who Wills 26 7
producing a spectacle worthy of her artificers and image-producers

(the lone exception being the ideal, albeit brief and fragile , duo per
formed by Richard Wagner and Ludwig II) .
What then is to be the future of literature and the role of the author,
asks D'Annunzio, if he can serve !!either his traditional masters nor
the populace? The answer conies in the third and final section of the
essay, where D'Annunzio affirms the resurgence of a "realm of force"
within the horizon of egalitarianism, to be instituted by a new elite
through whom the master morality will again triumph. Seen first as
a collectivity on the verge of seizing political power, then as in
dividualized and depoliticized, this elite is, I would suggest, but the
redeemed double of the anonymous unemployed littt!rateur with whom
the essay began: the modern(ist) author.
Unlike the "unemployed scribe," the modernist's marginality is not
a symptom of powerlessness or of a slavish self-immersion in the bain
des multitudes. Rather, it is the sign of his elevation, of his disdain for
the seductions of the vulgar herd, a sign that he inhabits the edge,
that he and his art stand for and with the future. Behind D'Annun
zio's fractured promise of a new political dispensation, consequent
ly, there lurks a new literary credo: a Nietzschean credo in which the
Slavic piety and Schopenhauerian pessimism of his earlier works are
overcome . On the one hand, this credo grants art and the artist ab
solute power and autonomy: both are empowered to turn away from
all contaminated founts, both are freed from the burden of social
usefulness. On the other hand, the gesture of resistance and self
distancing from social demands, the refusal to drink from any merely
common source, infuses art and artist alike with prophetic powers: their
task becomes that of providing an anticipatory enactment of an inex
orable future, that of prefiguring certain transfiguring events still to
come.
While the philosophical substance of "The Beast Who Wills" has
been called into question by Guy Tosi's important discovery of D'An
nunzio borrowings from an earlier essay by Jean de Nethy, its im
portance remains, nonetheless, undiminished. Undiminished, because
there can be no doubt whatsoever that the structural matrix for the
first of the Romanzi del Giglio , the novella Le vergini delle rocce, finds
its source in this early essay. Not only does the action of Le vergini
unfold against the background of an identical double crisis scene, not
only is Claudio Cantelmo one who "withdraws from life" in order to
preserve such higher forms of life as those of the artist and the ruler;
but also , considerable portions of "The Beast Who Wills" are written
into the novella word for word. D'Annunzio's repetition of Jean de
N ethy' s repetition of Nietzsche is thus repeated once again in Le vergini
delle rocce, but within the last of these embedded Chinese boxes some
of the most resplendent jewels of decadent prose shine forth.
Part I
Every now and then in Italy an anonymous unemployed scribe of

the sort that makes ends meet by compiling pornographic anthologies
for underground publishers rises up with great dignity to deplore the
indifference exhibited by artificers of prose and of verse toward the
commonwealth , toward the political life of the nation. In the end the
accuser calls for a high-minded civic literature appropriate to the needs
of the new kingdom: for poets who will exalt the people's suffrage in
verse, for novelists who will represent their heroes intent upon resolving
some vexing social problem.
Why is it that poets and novelists do not respond to this appeal?
Why won't they renounce the proverbial man in love with two women
or the proverbial woman in love with two men? Why don't they apply
a little smattering of sociology, and favor the fall of kings , the aqvent
of republics, the accession of the populace to power?1 After all, critics
would surely forgive them for their feeble syntax in the name of a
certain "seriousness of content."
For the moment I remain within the narrow limits of my metrics
and my casuistry. Like the Mrs. Lee of the American novella, I need
to depart for Egypt: "Democracy has shattered my nerves. Oh, how
restful it would be to go and live in the great Pyramid and to gaze
eternally upon the Pole Star!" "That's strange,'' says the deputy Bonghi,
responsible for the translation's cacophonies, "or rather, a most natural
thing!"2
1 This paragraph and the preceding one are repeated almost verbatim in Le vergini
delle rocce : "Chiedevano intanto i poeti scoraggiati e smarriti, dopo aver esausto la
dovizia delle rime nell'evocare imagini d'altri tempi, nel piangere le loro illusioni
morte e nel numerare i colori delle foglie caduche; chiedevano, alcuni con ironia,
altri pur senza: 'Qual puo essere oggi ii nostro officio? Dobbiamo noi esaltare in
senarii doppii ii suffragio universale? Dobbiamo noi affrettar con Yansia dei decasillabi
la caduta dei Re, Y avvento delle Repubbliche, l'accesso delle plebi al potere? . . . '
"
( Vergini 45).
2 The reference would seem to be to Ruggero Bonghi ( 1 826-1 895), the eminent
classicist, historian and philosopher, a frequent contributor to such reviews as Nuova
Antologia , and one of the leading and most cosmopolitan figures of the Cavourian
right. Bonghi served in the Camera dei Deputati for nearly three decades.
D'Annunzio: The Beast Who Wills 269
The twilight of kings and princes does not seem to me today to

be a subject worthy of much attention. 3 Those who possessed a genu
inely regal soul, having sought in vain to bring their lives into con
formity with their dreams and unable to resign themselves to the in�
evitable contagion of vulgarity, h�ve already departed this world rapt
in the wings of their own chimeras. Ludwig the Second, the virgin
king, after communing for so many years with the resplendent heroes
that Richard Wagner gave him for his companions in supernatural
regions , immune to all feminine toxins, hostile to all outsiders, sens
ing that the intensity of his pleasure had begun to exceed the capacities
of his organs, determined to transform himself into a higher being
through death and descended into the depths of his own lake to seek
the supreme vision. 4 Rudolph of Hapsburg, a contemplative prince,
deeply absorbed in the spectacle of the inner life , paid dearly for an
intellectual crime: for having killed a woman who bound him too close
ly to the materiality of common existence. 5 Johann Orth , untameable
in spirit, intolerant of all forms of slavishness, one day turned his prow
in the direction of Infinity and was never again seen. 6
Those who remain are either like diligent functionaries, replaceable
and ever fearful of being dismissed, or they are entirely dedicated
to cultivating their petty and puerile obsessions and mediocre vices. 7
Only William II occasionally excites our curiosity with the swift and
3 Cf. "II crepuscolo dei Re e tutto. cinereo , cieco d'ogni splendore" ( Vergini 1 5 1 ) .
• D'Annunzio i s referring to Ludwig II of Wittelsbach ( 1 845- 1 886) who, after his
deposition due to increasing spells of madness, drowned himself in the waters of
L ake Starnberg . The passage reappears in Le vergini as follows: "I suoi sforzi per
rendere la sua vita conforme al suo sogno hanno una violenza disperata. Qualun
que contatto umano lo fa fremere di disgusto e di collera; qualunque gioia gli sem
bra vile se non sia quella che egli stesso imagina. Immune da ogni tossico d'amore ,
ostile a tutti gli intrusi, per molti anni egli non ha communicato se non con i fulgidi
eroi che un creatore di bellezza gli ha dato a compagni in regioni supraterrestri .
Ne! piu profondo dei fiumi musicali egli estingue la sua sete angosciosa de! Divino,
e poi ascende alle sue dimore solitarie ove sul mistero delle montagne e dei lag·hi
ii suo spirito crea l'inviolabile regno che solo egli vuol regnare . E incredibile ch'egli
. .
non si sia gia partito dal mondo trascinato dal volo delle sue chimere" ( Vergini 1 5 1 -52).
5 Archduke of Austria, Rudolph (1858- 1 889) was the son of Franz-Joseph I and
Elisabeth of Bavaria. The incident referred to is the apparent double suicide of
Rudolph and his lover, Marie Vetsera.
6 "Johann Orth" was the pseudonym adopted by the Archduke Giovanni Nepomuceno
S alvatore of Austria ( 1 852- 1 89 1 ?), son of Leopold II, the Granduke of Tuscany. In
1 890 he renounced his title and princely prerogatives and embarked as captain of
the ship Santa Margherita, which vanished at sea.
7 Cf. . . . poiche non si chiama Re un uomo ii quale, essendosi sottomesso alla volonta
"
dei molti nell'accettare un officio ben determinato e angusto, si umilia a compierlo

variegated shows he puts on within his empire and beyond. 8 He is

truly the busy bee of this lugubrious company of the crowned. His
labours are truly amazing. He changes uniforms more frequently dur
ing a single day than a fashionable cocotte changes her outfits over the
course of an entire year. He traverses Europe from one end to the
other, appearing in every train station in a new heroic pose. His
ministers are now at a loss as to how to dissuade him from going to
America to show off his international military trousseau. No human
activity is unknown to him. He knows everything and does everything:
the consummate strategist when he rides at the head of his Guard
through the blaring of fanfares; the consumate orator when, erect on
the prow of his ship , he projects his voice out over the waters; the
consummate actor when and if he should decide to walk the stage
in the armor of the hero in one of those dramas that a doggerel
Shakespeare (whose name at present escapes me) has been commis
sioned to knead together with plenty of flattering leaven.
And the others! The Czar, his herculean muscles eaten away by
the wood-worm of suspicion, consumes himself all alone in a gloomy
misanthropy, lacking even the courage to parry the little chemical for
mulas of his rebels with the sort of magnificent bare-weaponed
massacre needed to irrigate and fertilize his sterile lands .9 Franz
Joseph, the Austrian , having lost his sole heir, until only yesterday
did little more than soothe the miseries of his old age with purgative
waters ; that is, until the once unheard cries of his people proclaimed
con la diligenza di un publico scriba che la tema d'esser licenziato aguzzi senza tregua"
( Vergini 1 50); "All'ombra di troni posticci vedrete falsi monarchi compiere con esatezza
le loro funzioni publiche in aspetto di automi o attendere a coltivar le loro manie
puerili e i loro vizii mediocri" ( Vergini 1 5 1 ) .
8 D'Annunzio's reference i s t o the extravagant series of excursions embarked upon
by William ( 1 859- 1 94 1 ) in 1 888, right after his coronation as King of Prussia and
Emperor of Germany. In less than seven months, William made official visits to
Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Italy, Greece and Turkey, as well as traversing
much of Germany.
9 The allusion is to Czar Alexander III ( 1 845-1 894), described in Le vergini as: "II
piu potente, ii padrone di piu vaste turbe, corroso nei suoi muscoli erculei dal tarlo
de! sospetto, si consuma solo in una cupa misantropia, non avendo nemmeno il gusto
di contraporre alle piccole formule chimiche dei suoi rebelli una qualche magnifica
strage ad arme bianca per irrigare e concimare le sue terre isterilite" ( Vergini 1 5 1 ) .
The phrase "formule chimiche" had already appeared with reference t o the power
of the poetic verbum: "un ordine di parole puo vincere d'efficacia micidiale una for
mula chimica" ( Vergini 46) .
to him that the grace of God had reserved for his final years quite
a different sort of comfort . 10 It is already widely known that, to the
great jubilation of the archduchesses and other ladies of the court ,
negotiations with an Italian impressario are underway to arrange for
the transfer to the Imperial Gou� of the prodigous melodramatist
and the additional transfer (for a modest price) of Metastasio
Daspuro . 1 1 But, bad news at the last minute! The latest telegrams
threaten a visit by William II to Vienna. And William, a man of primal
impulses and an authoritarian, is more than capable of having the
maestro kidnapped and carted off to Berlin in order that all the military
regulations governing the use of arms on foot and on horseback, as
well as accounting procedures and ambulances, be put to music .
And yet others? Queen Victoria, in her lucid moments , busies
herself with rearranging the museum of her dolls and the dolls of
her daughters and grand-daughters, in a touching return to childhood
innocence. The Prince of Wales, now bald and graying but, as always,
the perfect clubman, may very well die as the crown prince, content,
perhaps, never to have inherited the crown. Every year, in order to
accommodate his slowly expanding Epicurean girth, he is forced to
loosen his belt an additional loop, overcoming his gentlemanly
repugnance for all ridiculous masquerades whenever obliged to repre
sent his aged Mother at an official ceremony. The Russian Grandukes
leave Saint Petersburg from time to time to go shake hands with the
engineer Sadi Carnot, renewing thus the illusion of an alliance for
the obliging French populace and in return obtaining certain advan
tages from the Republic in the pursuit of their favorite pastimes . 1 2
As regards pretenders: Victor Napoleon, having lost any hope of
artificially stirring up a renewed heroic frenzy in the blood of the First
Consul, which in him stagnates, limits his political interventions to
the occasional modest epistle , which, filled with regret, he writes from
1 0 D'Annunzio seems to be alluding to the numerous tragedies that beset Franz
Joseph I ( 1 830- 1 9 1 6) before 1 892 : the death of his son Rudolph of Hapsburg, the
1 867 execution of his brother Maximilian in Mexico , and the suicide of his mad
cousin, Ludwig II, in 1886.
1 1 The "prodigious melodrammatist" is perhaps identical to the unnamed "doggerel
Sh akespeare" mentioned above. D' Annunzio seems to be imagining a sort of comic

reenactment of events from the eighteenth century Viennese. court, where Pietro
Metastasio presided as "poeta cesareo" from 1 729 until 1 782.
12
Sadi Carnot had been president of the Third Republic for five years at the time
D'Annunzio composed the present essay. As for the Russian granddukes, D'Annun
zio seems to have in mind the Grand Duke Cyril ( 1 87 6- 1 938) and his family.
a hotel table on a day of spleen 13 The Count of Paris is no less passive

.
and resigned. 1 4 And the young Duke of Orleans appears to give

credence to those who argue for the impurity of his blood on the basis
of his plebian lineaments .15 Indeed, he seems properly fit and disposed
only to fulfill his duties as a male, as a groom in the royal stables .
After hoisting the white flag over his own barracks in a show of puerile
weakness, he quickly shoved it like a useless rag under the bed of a
popular singer.
Part II
As a result it is necessary to lean towards Democracy. But, alas! . . .

everything is old and ignoble on this side as well.
The dogma of Eighty-Nine, the fundamental axiom of modern
societies- that to the People belongs the sovereignty of States, that
the authority of subjects is greater than that of their King-had already
been taught, accepted and practiced in all Christian communities ;
in fact, it was especially fought for.. by the Jesuits. 16 How many sound
ings of apocalyptic trumpets, ho� many rumblings of thunder, how
many flashes of lightning, simply to place at the summit of a great
knotty and twisted pole a placard inscribed in letters of blood with
13 Victor Napoleon Bonaparte ( 1 820-1904) inherited the claims of his father "Prince
Napoleon" (Napoleon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte) to the French throne, but,
like his father, never became ruler of France. Championed by the reactionary wing
of the Bonapartist movement, he broke with his father in 1 884 and went into exile
in Belgium after the passage of a parliamentary edict in 1886 which banished from
France all of the heirs and pretenders to the throne.
1 4 The Count of Paris or the "Prince Royal'' was Louis Philippe (VII) Albert of
Orleans ( 1 838- 19 1 9), who, like Victor Napoleon, was banished in 1886 by parliamen
tary edict . Although initially protesting his expulsion both in print and by giving
encouragement to the royalist party, the Count of Paris eventually resigned himself
to his exile.
1 5 Eldest son of the Count of Paris, the Duke of Orleans was Louis Philippe (VIII)
Robert of Orleans ( 1 869- 1 932). In early 1 890 (at the age of 2 1), he returned on his
own initiative to Paris in order to enroll in the military service, despite the 1886
order banishing all potential heirs to the French throne. The result was a trial at
which he was convicted to two years of imprisonment at Clairvaux. He did not,
however, serve out his full sentence, since after only four months he was granted
(and accepted) a presidential pardon from Sadi Carnot . It is to the latter event that
D'Annunzio would seem to refer.
16 Cf. "O dobbiamo noi (patrizi) ricono scere ii gran dogma dell'Ottantanove , aprire
i portici dei nostri cortili all' aura popolare, coronar di lumi i nostri balconi di traver
tino nelle feste dello Stato . . . " ( Vergini 46).
the most Catholic of commonplaces! 1 7 Louis XVI was executed in

accord with the very same principles that had armed Jacques Clement ,
Balthazar Gerard, and Ravaillac. 18
Shall poets sing the populace's triumphal accession to Power? But
universal suffrage was invented .with extraordinary cunning in order
to strip the populace of its rights. The common people's lot remains
always the same, whether the governing will be that of a tribune or
of a king, whether the privileged class be the nobility or a majority
of Parliament. The common people remain forever enslaved and con
demned to suffer, no less under the shadow of feudal towers than under
the shadow of the feudal smokestacks of modern factories. Never shall
they have within them the feeling of freedom. 19
It is in vain that contemporary Cleons shout to the multitudes: "You
are not only power, but also light, thought, wisdom."20 Perhaps even
the multitudes are not taken iii by these sorts of blandishments. They
believe but in a single form of progress: the increase in their own
physical well-being. The leaven of the spirit cannot lighten up a dough
so heavy, coarse and dull. To mobilize a mob one needs to counter
its vice with another vice. And Cleons understand this psychology
well: they give the impression of idolizing the great marionette whose
strings they themselves pull.
Democracy is thus little more than a battle of vain egotisms, made
possible by the systematic erosion of all legitimate and just forms of
superiority. It marks the triumph of the bourgeois , of the philistine ,
17 D'Annunzio is deliberately conflating Christ's crucifix, long referred to as the antenna
crucis in the patristic tradition, with the "Trees of Liberty" or "Liberty Poles" which
were planted throughout revolutionary France between 1 790 and 1 793 as symbols
of the revolution. These bore a placard with the inscription "liberte, fraternite, egaiite"
as well as a red pileus cap (standing for emancipation from slavery) upon their summit.
18 Jacques Clement, Balthasar Gerard and Franc;:ois Ravaillac were the assassins
of, respectively, Henry III ( 1 589), William of Orange (1 584) and Henry IV ( 16 1 0) .
All three murders were motivated by religious zealotry.
1 9 Cf. "Le plebi restano sempre schiave, avendo un nativo bisogno di tendere i polsi
ai vincoli. Esse non avranno dentro di loro giammai, lino al termine dei secoli, il
sentimento della liberta" ( Vergini 47).
2 o Cleon was an Athenian political and military leader in the fifth century B. C . D'An
nunzio's characterization of him would appear to be dependent upon Thucydides
and Aristophanes. Compare the corresponding passage in Le vergini: "Non e in Roma,
come gia fu in Atene, un qualche demagogo Cleofonte fabbricante di lire? Noi potrem
mo, per modesta mercede, con i suoi stessi strumenti accordati da lui, persuadere
gli increduli che nel gregge e la forza, il diritto, il pensiero , la saggezza, la luce . . .
"
( Vergini 45).
of the hypocrite, of the presumptuous ass, of the pedant who pretends

to be in-the-know, of the idiot who thinks he is equal to a man of
genius, of mediocrity and baseness in all of their various forms. While
Nature tends to multiply all differences without limit, Democracy tends
instead to render all men equal: to imprint a precise stamp upon each
soul as if upon a social implement, to manufacture human heads as
if they were simply pinheads. 2 1 It is concerned neither with individual
activity, nor with free and spontaneous energy, nor with the authen
tic and vital man; but instead with an abstract formula. To create
movement within the State, it takes into consideration only the ac
tion of the masses and molecular forces .
But from within Lady Democracy's turbid bowels is born a tyrant
much more menacing than those she herself had to defeat : the Royal
State, the Providential State, the State Producer of the Public
Happiness- a monstruous Polyphemus who will shear and butcher
his own flocks. All the apostles of the populace, all our future-gazing
prophets invoke this newest shepherd of nations!
And all the while, Demos deludes himself. His stupidity (oh, ine
quality!) has no equal in the world. Under the wings of the implacable
vulture that devours his liver, he deposits the miraculous egg from
which the Golden Age is supposed to hatch.
Part III
Fortunately, the State founded on universal suffrage and on equal

ity, held together mostly by fear, is not only an ignoble edifice, but
also a precarious one. Within the economic and political equality to
which socialist and non-socialist democracy aspires, a new oligarchy
will gradually form, a new domain of force; and little by little this
group will seize the reins of power, harnessing the masses for its own
benefit and destroying all empty dreams of equality and justice. 22
2 1 C f. "Bollate voi [poeti] sino all'osso le stupide fronti di coloro che vorrebbero mettere
su ciascuna anima un marchio esatto come su un utensile sociale e fare le teste umane
tutte simili come le teste dei chiodi sotto la percussione dei chiodaiuoli" ( Vergini 45) .
22 Cf. "Per fortuna lo Stato eretto su le basi de! suffragio popolare e dell'inugualian
za, cementato dalla paura, non e soltanto una costruzione ignobile ma e anche
precaria . . . . Su l'uguaglianza economica e politica, a cui aspira la democrazia, voi
andrete dunque formando una oligarchia nuova, un nuovo reame della forza; e
riuscirete in pochi, o prima o poi, a riprendere le redini per domar le moltitudini
a vostro profitto" ( Vergini 4 7) .
Force i s the founding law o f Nature, indestructible and inexorable .

The world can only b e founded o n force , no less in times of civiliza
tion than in primeval epochs. 23 Nature is unjust. We are the products
of this Nature. As a result, we are unable to aspire to justice , rebel
ling against our very origin. Whoever protests this and dreams and
prophetizes is either ingenuous or is a rhetor.
If all the earthly races were to be destroyed in another deucalian
flood and new generations - as the fable has it - were to arise from
stones, men would fight amongst themselves from the very instant
they were thrust up out of Mother Earth, until one , the most power
ful, succeeded in ruling over the others . 24
Now, for some four centuries Europeans have done nothing but
despoil and exterminate other racial stocks. European civilization,
like a voracious spider , has wrapped the whole globe in its web . In
the Americas entire races have vanished upon contact with the white
man; the Oceanic peoples are disappearing, pursued even into remote
hideaways; Africa has been invaded in its entirety. By what right?
By the right of him who is most strong. H igh rhetorical sermonizing
in the name of brotherhood under a common Sun is merely a stratagem
to cover over the .noise of the weapons factories . The innocent
silhouette of Peace emerging from the waters of Genoa brings to mind
that cliff in the Sicilian sea into which the nymph Scylla was trans
formed. The cliff had the soft contours of a woman, her bust rising up
over the sea foam, while all around her the jaws of six ghastly dogs
ceaselessly barked. The jaws of War howl at the sides of the invoked
Peace. The latest ode of our greatest living poet is filled with the sounds
of bellicose trumpets and with lightning flashes. 2 5
After a century of humanitarianism - a word as ugly and ridiculous
as the thing to which it refers - we have arrived at this: every citizen
2 3 Cf. "La forza e la prima legge della natura, indistruttibile , inabolibile . . . . II mon
do non puo essere constituito se non su la forza, tanto nei secoli di civilta quanta
nelle epoche di barbarie" ( Vergini 46).
2 4 Cf. "Se fossero distrutte da un altro diluvio deucalionico tutte le razze terrestri
e sorgessero nuove generazicini dalle pietre, come nell'antica favola, gli uomini si
batterebbero tra loro appena espressi dalla Terra generatrice, finche uno, ii piu valido,
non riuscisse ad imperar su gli altri" ( Vergini 46-47).
2 5 The allusion is to Giosue Carducci, who, after publishing the third edition of his
Ode barbari in 1889 , had begun to compose a series of bellic odes, later collected in
the volume Rime e ritmi ( 1 889). The precise ode that D'Annunzio has in mind is pro
bably "La guerra" (composed in November of 1 89 1 ) .
a soldier, twenty million men in uniform; Europe, an encampment.

What difference is there between our century and those first years
of barbarism when each man defended his cavern with a bow ready
and strung?
So force is still the supreme law. And so should it be; and it is right
and proper that this be the case until the end of time. Equality and
justice are empty abstractions and the doctrines which derive from
them are unacceptable to superior men.
The new aristocracy shall form itself, accordingly, by restoring the
feeling ef power to its rightful place of honor, by raising itself beyond
good and beyond evil. 26
According to the doctrine of Friedrich Nietzsche, one of the reasons
for our generalized state of decadence is the following: that Europe
as a whole has been irrevocably marked by notions of good and evil
as defined by the slave morality.
There are two moralities: one appertaining to the "nobles" and one
to the servile herd. Now, because noble and good are synonymous terms
in all primitive languages and because the word noble also designates
a social class , it clearly follows that the ruling caste was the first to
create the notion of the Good . Its entire morality is rooted in a
sovereign conception of its own dignity and aims at the proud glorifica
tion of life .
The genesis of the Good is necessarily different in the case of the
slave. By instinct he mistrusts that which the ruler identifies as the
Good, since precisely that which is deserving of such an affirmative
label for the ruler is for the slave bad and hence represents Evil.
But, unfortunately, the slave morality has defeated the other. In
order to assure its victory, it needed a certain power of seduction.
This Jesus of Nazareth brought to it through the ruse of love, so draw
ing to himself the malcontent and the abject. All the sufferings of the
weak and the oppressed were thence transformed into virtues; and
the strong man who derived his laws from contrary principles became
abhorrent. Asceticism extended a veil of pallor and sadness over all
things.
This morality is, consequently, nothing but the instinct of the herd.
Superior men, leaving to the naive the tasks of improving the sort
26The bulk of the material D'Annunzio plagiarized from Jean de Nethy's "Nietzsche
Zarathustra" begins with this paragraph and extends to the end of the paragraph
below which begins "But, unfortunately, the slave morality. . . . " On this subject see,
once again, Guy Tosi , "D'Annunzio decouvre Nietzsche ( 1 892- 1 894)," esp. 503-04 .
D'Annunzio: The Beast Mo Wills 277
of the multitudes and of practicing the Christian virtue of charity,

shall dedicate their every effort to its destruction.
Is it perhaps worth prolonging the lives of the miserable? To what
end? To be preoccupied with the mob to the detriment of the "nobles" :
isn't that a bit like passing over the most vigorous trees in a wood
so as to nurse some poor lymphatic shoot or common weed?
Mankind will be divided into two races . To the superior race, lifted
up by the sheer energy of its will, all shall be permitted; to the in
ferior race, little or close to nothing. The lion's share of well-being
will belong to a privileged few whose personal nobility is such that
it will make them worthy of every privilege .
The true "noble" is in no way similar to the decrepit heirs of the
ancient patrician families . The essence of the "noble" is an inner
sovereignty. He is the free man, stronger than circumstances, con
vinced that the value of personality exceeds that of all secondary at
tributes. He is a force that governs itself, a freedom that affirms itself
and regulates itself according to the ideal of dignity. He has an in
fallible eye when he looks into himself. And in this autocracy of con
science is the distinctive feature of the new aristocrat . 2 7
A single one of his joys is preferable to the jubilations of the entire
populace.
For the moment, however, he has renounced his role as sovereign.
Never will an election ballot contaminate his hands.
Life is a wellspring of joy - says Friedrich Nietzsche - but, where
the rabble comes to drink, all the founts are poisoned. 2 8
And later: - he who withdrew from life, was simply turning away
from the rabble . He didn't wish to share the fount, the flame and the
fruit with the rabble. 29
Translation and commentary
by Jeffrey Schnapp
27 Cf. "Siate convinti (voi patrizi) che l'essenza della persona supera in valore tutti
gli attributi accessorii e che la sovranita interiore e ii principal segno dell'aristocrate .
Non credete se non nella for:za temprata dalla lunga disciplina" ( Vergini 46).
2 s Thus Spoke Zarathustra 2 "On the Herd."
2 9 Thus Spoke Zarathustra 2 "On the Herd." This retreat is of course none other than
that of Prince Luzio (and Claudio Cantelmo): "Piuttosto che rinunziare al privilegio
e prendere un'attitudine disconveniente al vostro orgoglio legittimo, piuttosto che
apparire il superstite di voi medesimo, vi siete ritratto dal mondo . . . e siete venuto
in solitudine ad aspettar I' evento che il Destino riserba alla vostra Casa" ( Vergini 1 49).
Thomas Sheehan
DIVENTARE DIO: J ULI US EVOLA AND

THE METAPHYSICS OF FASCISM
Deus: Quid ergo scire vis?

A nima: Deum et animam scire cupio .
Deus: Nihilne plus?
A nima: Nihil omnino.
Augustine of Hippo
Tethneke gar ho Zeus
Clement of Alexandria
It seems incongruous to mention Friedrich Nietzsche and Julius Evola

in the same breath, these contraries, these antipodes. 1 Evola is the
Plato who should have been rendered impossible by the Nietzschean
devaluation . He searches for meaning in history by recollecting, in
anamnesis, the arche, the "being of origins" (l'essere delle originz) , whereas
Nietzsche, in a freely willed amnesia of being and origins, proclaims
that, as regards the arche, "No one is reponsible for man's being there
1 This text retains the spoken style of the original delivered at Stanford University,
April, 1986. Throughout the text "he," "him," and "his" are abbreviations of"he/she,''
"him/her," and "his/her." I frequently gather the footnotes apopistically at the end
of the paragraph in order not to interrupt the reader . The texts in the epigram are
from, respectively, Soliloquiorum libri II, in J.P. Migne, ed. , Patrologia Latina (Paris :
Migne, 1861 ), vol . xxxn, column 872, and Logos protreptikos pros Hellenas, in Patrologia
Graeca (Paris: Migne, 1 89 1 ) , vol. vm, column 1 16b.
279
at all" and, as regards the telos, " We have invented the concept of end.
In reality there is no end."2
Or do these antipodes need each other in order to speak? Do they
shadow each other, like the Wanderer and his Shadow, allowing each
other to speak? You will recall that the Shadow speaks first :
Shadow: Since it has been so long since I have heard you speak, I thought
I would give you an opportunity.
Wanderer: Someone is speaking - but where? and who? It is almost as
if l were hearing myself speak, but in a weaker voice . . . . By God (and
other things I do not believe in) it is my shadow speaking. I hear it
but I do not believe it .
And so they dialogue, almost like St. Augustine and his God in the
Soliloquia:
Wanderer: I thought a man's shadow was his emptiness.
Shadow: A man's emptiness, as far as I know , does not ask permission
to speak , as I have done. It always speaks .
Wanderer: My dear shadow, how happy I am to hear as well as see you .
. . .I love the shadows as much as I love the light . . . . Light and shadow
are not opponents but hold hands like lovers . And when the Light disap
pears, the Shadow slips after him.3
Nietzsche and Evola, locked as they are in the gigantomachia between

the play of active nihilism and the revenge of recollection, do indeed
need each other, and in the struggle between positive and negative
metaphysics, between the beginning and the climax (Anfang and Vollen
dung) of metaphysics, the stragglers mirror each other, not as mimetic
rivals but like Ying and Yang.
We may leave open the question of who is the Wanderer, that is ,
the Light, and who the Shadow. Both men claim to be in movement
towards the light: Evola, whose "Traditionalism" understands itself
as an ascent from the cave of materialism to the upper world of
suprahuman themis, the law of stable being; and Nietzsche, who wrote:
"Life- that means for us constantly transforming all that we are into
light and flame."4
2 Julius Evola, Rivolta contro ii mondo modemo, 5th ed. (Rome: Edizioni Mediterranee,
1 976) 229 (l'essere). Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche, tr. Walter Kaufmann
(New York: The Viking Press, 1 968) 500.
3 Friedrich Nietzsche, Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, II, "Der Wanderer und sein
Shatten," in Nietzsche, Werke: Kritische Ausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Mon
tinari (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1 967) vol. 4:3, 175-76.
• Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, tr. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random
House, 1 974) 36.
Sheehan: Diventare Dio 281
Whether Nietzsche be the Wanderer or the Shadow (Heidegger,

in addressing him as our century's heuristikon , calls him both : "Nietz
sche, the one in whose light and shadow everyone today thinks") , we
all at least know who he is and what he wrote. But Julius Evola? In
most works on Italian philosophy he gets, at most, a footnote, and
in works on Italian Fascism hardly much more . He was born in 1 898
of petty Italian nobility (in his early years he used his inherited title
"Barone"), and he died in Rome in 197 4. Throughout his life he was
a self-employed writer; his only regular job ran from February 1 934
through July 1 943 , when he contributed a sporadic column (first bi
weekly, then monthly, then occasionally) called "Diorama filosofico"
to the Fascist Cremona newspaper edited by Roberto Farinacci. Evola's
major work, Rivolta contra il mondo moderno presents systematically his
doctrine of Traditionalism , his metaphysical theory of history, and
his critique of the modem world (even if the title is somewhat modest:
Evola sees the West as careening downhill ever since the eighth cen
tury B . C . E. ) . 5
In Renzo de Felice's multi-volume work on Mussolini, Evola ap
pears only in the late Thirties and merits mention only in terms of
his theory of "spiritual racism," which allegedly constituted an advance
over the cruder biological racism of the Nazis. Mussolini did, in fact,
read and. was influenced by Evola's works on race , especially Il mito
del sangue ( 1 937) and Sintesi di dottrina delta razza ( 1 941), but the net
effect was simply that il Duce was allowed to adduce higher motives
for degrading and persecuting Italian Jews. The utter imbecility of
Evola's racial theories is perhaps captured by a passage (which
Mussolini did in fact read) in which Evola describes a "limit case"
called "telegenesis" : "A [white] woman whose sexual relations with
a black man have been over for years can, nonetheless, in union with
a white man give birth to a black baby" through "subconscious
influences ."6
Apart from such hateful little tracts, Evola's only claim to fame
within the Fascist regime was to have provoked Pope Pius XI into
5 On Evola see my " Myth and Violence: The Fascism of Julius Evola and Alain
de Benoit," Social Research 48 (Spring, 1981) 45-7 3 . The citation from Heidegger is
from his The Question ofBeing, tr. William Kluback andJean T. Wilde (New Haven :
College and University Publishers , 1958) 106.
6 Renzo De Felice, Mussolini it duce, IL· Lo stato totalitario 1 936-1940 (Turin: Einaudi,
1 98 1 ) 63 n . , 248 n . , 297, 3 1 6 and n . , and 7 1 5 n. Julius Evola, ll mito del sangue:
Genesi del razzismo (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 1937); Sintesi di dottrina delta razza (Milan:
Ulrico Hoepli, 1941); for the text cited here: Sintesi 1 25 . See also Evola's lndirizzi
per una educazione razziale (Naples: Conte, 194 1 ) .
issuing the 1 929 encyclical Divini illius magistri, devoted to the topic
of Catholic education . In 1 928 Evola had published his book Im
pen'alismo pagano (Todi, Rome: Atanor). It was a typical Evolian treatise
that condemned the leveling process of modern statecraft, both liberal
and conservative, and argued for a hierarchical corporate state derived
by necessity from the metaphysical structure of the universe as an
"ontological imperialism . " In this work Evola could have been seen
to be simply spelling out the traditional Catholic justification of the
divine right of kings and the absolutism of monarchy, both in Church
and state, from the vertical structure of the Aristotelico-Thomistic
cosmos. But in fact Evola excoriated Christianity for not having the
courage of its imperialistic convictions insofar as it watered down its
ontologically based political theory with such teachings as compas
sion for the poor (derived from Jesus) and distributive justice (de
rived from a less metaphysical Aristotle) .
In fact a few months later the journal of the Gioventu Fascista in
Bologna carried an article by Evola that proclaimed the incompatibility
of Catholic and Fascist education. The former, he said, was dedicated
to "the exaltation of the weak and disinherited" and to the "praise of
humility and charity," whereas the latter advocated "Roman and virile
values of courage, valor, aristocracy, wisdom, and power." The
Vatican, in its eternal wisdom, responded with Divini illius magistri,
attacking, as Tracy H . Koon puts it, "coeducation and public gym
nastic displays for girls, labeling them 'contrary to the very instincts
of human nature ."'7
All of this is to say that as far as the Italian Fascist regime went,
Julius Evola was a minor intellectual with minimum political effect .
And yet nowadays, when virtually no one reads the Fascist philosopher
Giovanni Gentile anymore (and even fewer people understand him
or are bothered by the fact that they do not understand hini) , Evola,
who has been dead for over a decade, is probably the single most
popular and influential Fascist philosopher in Italy today.
As I have suggested elsewhere, Evola's philosophical and mythico
metaphysical writings have had and continue to have considerable
impact on the demi-monde of the Italian Far Right. The influence
spans the spectrum that runs from the intellectuals and the parliamen
tarians of the Movimento Sociale Italiano and the Destra Nazionale, like
Pino Rauti, through the more radical theoreticians of the "disintegra
tion of the system," like Giorgio Freda, and on to members of the
1 Tracy H. Koon , Believe, Obey, Fight: The Political Socialization of Youth in Fascist Ita
ly, 1 922-1943(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1 985) 1 3 2 .
sporadically violent groups of the late Seventies and early Eighties

like Terza Posizione and Nuclei Armati R ivoluzionari. 8
What Evola is read for today, and what he was known for during
the Twenties and Thirties, are not his political writings on the cor
porate state (which are about mi applicable as Plato's Republic) so much
as his "philosophical" writings in two areas: first in the arena of
speculative idealism, in which Evola sought to surpass Gentile's at
tualismo and to arrive at what he called l'individuo assoluto; and second
in a wide-ranging field that covered mysticism, hermeticism , and
theories of cyclical history - mythico-metaphysical studies that, for
all their diversity, Evola gathered under the one rubric of "Tradi
tionalism," or (borrowing the strange phrase from Novalis) sometimes
called idealismo magico .
Evola's production in both areas was both immense and quite
serious, even if undoubtedly' idiosyncratic. What he attempted to do
was to provide Fascism with what he called a "metaphysical" (not just
a philosophical but a metaphysical) foundation . And he did this, in the
first instance, by rewriting Gentile's speculative idealism . Here is not
the place to summarize Gentile's Theory of the Mind as Pure Act, his
major theoretical treatise . Suffice it to say that Gentile saw himself
as the last moment in the dialectical history of an idealism that de
rived from the Aristotelian and Christian notions of pure act, of a self
thinking act of thought th'!-t constitutes itself in what Gentile called
autoctisi (from the Greek auto , self, and ktisis, creation) and that, in
constituting itself, founds the world. It is this absolute creative ac
tivity that every individual expresses when he or she thinks or speaks
or acts. 9
What, then, of concrete individuals, who must act i n a world in
which they face determinations over which they have no power or
control? This was the question that Evola put to Gentile : "To what
point and under what conditions can the position of idealism be main
tained . . . while holding firm to the living totality of the individual?"10
And to answer that question Evola boldly reconstructed Gentile' s
metaphysics - with a little help from Nietzsche.
8 See Furia Jesi, Cultura di destra (Milan: Gatzanti, 1979); also "Myth and Violence"
( cf. note 5 , above); and F. Giorgio Freda, La disintegrazione del sistema, 3rd ed. (Padua:
Ar, 1 980) .
9 Giovanni Gentile, The Theory ofMind as Pure Act, tr. H. Wildon Carr (New York:
Macmillan, 1 922).
1 0 Evola, Teoria dell'individuo assoluto, 2nd. ed. (Rome: Edizioni Mediterranee, 1973
[original edition, Turin: Bocca, 1 927]) 2 1 .

Evola's early works from the Twenties, especially Teoria dell'individuo

assoluto and Fenomenologia dell'individuo assoluto, in effect did to Gentile
with the aid of Nietzsche what the Left Hegelians had done to Hegel
with the aid of Feuerbach. In Evola's telling, it is not the Pure Act
that constitutes the concrete individual; rather, it is the concrete in
dividual of flesh and blood who realizes God in and through the act
of self-assertion, which for Evola is the will to power . What all
philosophical systems express, he says, is "the exigency of the individual
for absolute self-affirmation in himself and in the context of the whole
world in which he finds himself living . . . : una volonta di essere e, in
fondo, di dominio ." This urge to domination as will to power - this vis
originaria, as he calls it- is the urge to become God in a world in which
God is dead. "Tu devi diventare Dio," he writes in Saggi sull'idealismo magico
( 1925) , echoing the Madman in Nietzsche's The Gay Science: "Must
we not become gods simply to appear worthy [of the deed of killing
God]?" Or, as if glossing St. Augustine ("Rede in teipsum et transcende
ti') , Evola writes: "Sii, fatti Dio": "Be God, make yourself God , and
in so doing, make the world be, save it (jai essere, salva it mondo) ." 1 1
Whereas Hegel had described the cosmic movement in and through
which Spirit develops according to its own internal necessity and ar
rives at full possession of itself in the absolute universality of a pure
thought that is somehow incarnate in the world, Evola posits a new
dialect of the absolute concrete individual as freedom and will , one
who makes the world be by constantly surpassing it in acts of free
self-creation which at one and the same time liberate the self and
dominate the world. In this way man becomes himself; he becomes
the absolute act of freedom that is his identity with God. For Evola
the will to power is "a decisive excess [eccedenza] of the possible over
the real, of contingency and freedom over any kind of necessity" -
but then comes the twist - "issuing in an active realism With a transcen
dent and supra-rational character." 1 2
That last phrase embodies much of the novelty of Evola's thought .
Up to this point (the mid-Twenties) Evola, fresh from his study of
Nietzsche and vitalism , had been taking on die verkehrte Welt of Gentile
and had put it back on its feet, transforming Gentile's attualismo dell'atto
11
Evola, Fenomenologia dell'individu.o asso/uto (Turin : Bocca, 1 930); Teoria 19 (exigen
cy . . . dominio); Saggi sull'idealismo magico (Todi and Rome: Atanor, 1925) (tu devi
diventare Dio . . . sii, fatti Dio) cited in Omaggio a Julius Evola , ed. Gianfranco de
Turis (Rome: Volpe, 1973) 65 and 26.
1 2 Omaggio 48.
puro into a realismo attivo , transforming, as it were , Hegel into Nietz

sche, Fichte into Weininger, Berkeley into Michelstaedter. But just
at the point where Evola proclaims the excess of freedom over necessity
(the young Marx!) and the excess of the possible over the real (the
young Heidegger!) at that very point we hear of the transcendent and
supra-rational character of th� real.
It is impossible, I believe, to understand Evola's metaphysical
justification of the Fascist corporate state (indeed of the state as em
pire) without grasping beforehand his characterization of this "supra
rationality of the real ." Let us, then, move laterally for a moment .
Evola is not banally reasserting the Platonic supra-sensible world, as
much as his language might lead us to believe that. Rather, he i s
reasserting another perennial theme in Western philosophy, one that
is much closer to the inner-worldliness of Aristotle than to the supra
sensible realm of Plato: the theme of the primacy of nous over episteme,
of intellectus over ratio, of Vernunft over Verstand, of intellectual intui
tion over discursive knowledge, of"meditative thinking" over "calcula
tion ." Evola's assertion of the supra-rational over the rational is em
phatically not a flight to a supra-sensible Beyond but always remains
inner-worldly. As he puts it, from within life itself one attains a
superiority over life. Evola's supra-rational nous does not remove man
from the world: "L'altro mondo . . . non e un'altra realta; e un'altra dimensione
delta realta." 1 3 The "other world," therefore, is that dimension in which
the real, without being negated, acquires an absolute meaning.
To return now from our lateral move: By 1927 Evola had concluded
the major works of the first (or "philosophical") period of his think
ing, focused as it was on the completion of Gentile's speculative
idealism and on its Aufhebung into the absolute individual as the will
to power in a process of asymptotic divinization: nous returning to
itself in and through action . In 1 934 Evola began the second period
of his intellectual career, which occupied him until his death forty
years later. The task of his second period was twofold: first, a retrieve
( in the Heideggerian sense of Wiederholung) of the tradition of inner
worldly nous as it is found in the prerational traditions of both East
and West; and then, second, the application of that tradition to the
social, political , and economic realms. Elsewhere I have spelled out
Evola's retrieve of the tradition and his would-be reconstruction of
the political order. Here let me simply recall some of the major themes
1 3 Evola Cavalcare la tigre (Milan: Il Falco, 198 1) 59.

,
that can be found in his Rivolta contro ii mondo moderno and his later
writings. 14
Evola often refers to the realm of nous as "transcendent" and even
as "supernatural ," but most surely he does not mean to indicate a
hypostasized, separate, supra-sensible realm or a personal God (un
dio persona), even though he will speak of the "divine" character of this
realm . Evola is absolutely committed to Nietzsche's assertion of the
death of God; but he is just as entirely committed to what he calls
"the principle of quality,'' an impersonal power (numen) or law (themis,
but to be distinguished from arbitrary human nomoi) , which in and
through the individual's enactment of the will to power "reacts on the
world of quantity by impressing upon it a form and quality,'' thereby
bestowing ontological rank, hierarchy, and organicity as the basis for
social and political rank and hierarchical order.15
A person's resonance with this non-hypostasizable principle of quali
ty is called "fidelity,'' and it issues in what Evola calls "spiritual virili
ty." The word "virility'' is not accidental. A woman, according to Evola,
can participate in such fidelity and spirituality and thus enter the
hierarchical order of the cosmos "only mediately, by her relation to
a man" - who, of course , represents the formal, qualitative element.
Such virile fidelity is best manifested, Evola says , in the priest-king
of ancient cultures, the heroic warrior oflater societies, and the knight
of medieval chivalry. These three archetypes (as well as others such
as the shaman, the philosopher-sage, and so on) function as symbolic
instantiations of authentic correspondence with one's true nature , in
accordance with Pindar's protreptic, Genoi hoios essi: "Become what
you [already, i . e . , essentially] are . " Evola is asserting no more or less
than what Aristotle meant when he wrote: Man is- more than
anything else - nous, and striving for anything short of nous, i . e . ,
pretending that desire wants anything less than eternity, would be
atopos, out-of- place or off-center, a denaturing of the self, whereas "life
in accordance with nous is, for human beings, their fate-fulfillment
and-happiness, their eudaimonia" (Nicomachean Ethics, K, 7 , 1 1 78 a 8) . 1 6
1• For Evola's characterization of the stages of his career, see the "Premessa" to the
1 973 edition of Teoria 1 5-23.
1 5 Rivolta 2 1 1 (principle of quality). For "dio-persona" see Cavalcare 57.
16
On "fidelity" and "spiritual virility" see Rivolta 49, 65, 69, 145- 1 65 , 1 32f. , 227f.
The text on woman is at p. 203; cf. further pp. 200- 2 1 5 . The text from Pindar is
from "Pythian Odes," II, 72, in The Works of Pindar, ed. Lewis Richard Parnell, 3
vols. (London: Macmillan , 1932), The Text, vol . 3 : 56 .
The social and political consequences of fidelity to this inner-worldly,

supra-logical, and numenous center of vitality are twofold : an on
tologically grounded state-as-Empire (this is what Evola means by
his dictum, "If an Empire is not a sacred Empire , it is no Empire
at all") and a corresponding aris�ocratic caste system (this is his answer
to the exigency of an "organic society," ontologically founded) .
However, Evola's caste system is not some rigid social delineation
based on blood or genes or on anything other than the degree of one's
fidelity to the principle of quality. According to Evola, it is not the
caste system that gives one his nature; rather , the system offers each
man "the way to recognize and 'recollect'" his proper nature, to "discover
what is 'dominant' in oneself . . . , then to will it, to transform it into
an ethical imperative, to actualize it 'ritually' in fidelity."17
Finally, let us note the temporo-historical framework of this fideli
ty. Evola's theory of history is one long argument against history, against
attributing reality or value to any movement that distances man from
the archeological ordering principle of the world. There is absolutely
no theory of teleology in Evola's work. Rather, inspiring his thought
from beginning to end is a powerful nostalgia for the archaic, not for
a temporal arche but for an ontological one: the same inner-worldly
principle of quality or form that stamps the world of becoming with
the character of being by elevating it, through human fidelity, to the
status of a relation with the divine. In that sense (and here I have
Mircea Eliade's work in mind) Evola's theory of history is through
and-through "primitive." It is not accidental , therefore , that Evola
p refers to express his theory in mythical terms and to represent the
critical , apocalyptic nature of the present century under the sign of
H induism's fourthyuga , the Kali Yaga, the final "age of obscurity" that
p recedes the cataclysmic Pralaya or "dissolution" that in turn will lead
back to the Golden Age of the Satya Yuga (or Krta Yuga), the Arche
Epoch of being-as-truth . 1 8
Exigencies o f space prevent m e from elaborating an intrinsic
criticism of Evola and his reading of Nietzsche . In place of that I pro
pose to sketch the outline of a possible Heideggerian response to Evola's
N ietzschean reading of the project of diventare Dia . That is , I wish to
make the first and preliminary gesture of playing the Heideggerian
11 On Empire: Rivolta 1 05 ; "recognize and recollect," etc. : 1 26 .

18
See R ivolta 229, and Cavalcare 1 5- 1 7 .
2 BB Nietzsche in Italy
card in the gigantomachia of Nietzsche and Evola taken as mirrors of

each other, as Wanderer and Shadow.
Heidegger might argue that subtending both discourses - that of
Dionysus in Nietzsche and that of Apollo in Evola- one finds the
abiding Western problematic of what Parmenides called to auto , the
ontological-epistemological identity principle. This principle holds that
human existence, in all its regional and epochal forms, follows en
tities, in all their regional an<;l epochal forms , in a play of connaturality
and correlativity between the analogical, always approximated self
presence of the human being, on the one hand, and the epistemic
penetrability or practical manageability of worldly entities on the other .
Heidegger claims (correctly, I believe) that this correlativity is what
constitutes metaphysics - whether it be the correlativity of theoria and
its theoremata, with all the variations of that from Parmenides to
Husserl - all of them ruled by the ideal of seeing or touching (Aristo
tle's thigein: Metaphysics IX, 1 0 , 1 05 1 b 25; Augustine's tangere in the
O stia vision: Confessions IX, 1 0) - or whether it be the correlativity
of praxis and its pragmata, ruled by the equally presential ideal of
freedom, efficiency, and domination. (Heidegger would go further ,
of course, and argue that the principle of to auto governs even the rela
tionship between the overman and the will to power in Nietzsche ,
a correlativity ruled by the presentially oriented ideal of positing values
as the condition of the preservation and enhancement of life , that is
to say, the enduring availability or stete Zuganglichkeit of life - but for
the purposes of this essay I wish to leave that question open.)
As we said, Heidegger argues that this correlativity is what con
stitutes metaphysics- this and not, as in the vulgar conception (shared
even by Nietzsche), the separation of the sensible and supra-sensible
realms. That latter is only one form, and only the most obvious and
banal form, of metaphysics; and as Aristotle had already shown, it
is the easiest and cheapest of targets. What this identity-correlativity
establishes is the endless availability of the world, even if that
endlessness be itself finite : a finite infinity of availability. Whatever
man meets, whether in praxis or theory, he can at least strive to turn
into property, into ownedness; whatever power he encounters he can
struggle to dominate. The correlativity of noein and einai turns the
world into property, actual or potential , and makes the essence of
human being be appropriation. The history of metaphysics, in turn,
is the history of the capitalization of the world, the gradual change
of the essence of entities into what Heidegger calls Bestand, that is,
property. Capitalism is thus an ontological category before it designates
a particular and perhaps passing form of political economy. Capitalism

is the establishment of the essence of the real as fonds, as caput, as
ground, in the specific form of property. The history of metaphysics
is pari passu the history of politics: the story of how the world became
available as property in accordance with the nature of the principle
of identity as the principle of appropriation .
Here is where the traditional doctrine of God finds its place, not
just the Hellenistic doctrine (in Aristotle , for example) but the later
Jewish and Christian utilizations of that Greek metaphysics for
religious-theological purposes. If the principle of identity declares the
real to be endlessly comprehensible and appropriable by human be
ings (notice the potentiality: "-able"), that must be because the world
i s already actually appropriated- by God. Long before God got taxed with
the job of policing the game of Good-and-Evil, he was the principle
of valere, "value" not in the sense of"worth" but of"possession," "having
and-holding," value as strength. God is the first capitalist, the first caput
mundi, the one who owns it all. The world is only because it is his.
As St. Augustine puts it in De Trinitate, things exist because God
knows - that is, owns - them.19
B ut if God is the first and complete appropriator of the world, the
first capitalist, it is his business to share the business with his rational
creatures . Precisely because our nous is a participation in the divine
nous - whether through our .nous poietikos, or "agent intellect," as in
Aristotle and the medievals, or through what Clement of Alexandria
called our archaia pros ouranon koinonia, our "aboriginal fellowship with
heaven ," whereby we are rooted in God-as-origin (archaiozomen)- and
since our relatedness-to-God is planted in us by nature (emphytos) , we
too share in his appropriation of the world. This, in fact, is our nature
according to the classical metaphysical vision : to "mean" the world,
that is, to make it our own. When Aristotle in the De Anima says that
the soul is in some way all things (panta pos) , he roots that appropria
tion in the human approximation to the divine. We are panta pos on
ly because we are theos pas. To put this in other terms: The reason
why metaphysics has the bivalent structure of onto-theo-logy is that
human being itself has the bivalent structure of appropriating the world
because we mimetically approximate the divine. 20
1 9 De Trinitate, XV, 1 3 , Patrologia Latina, XLII, column 1 076 (cf. VI, 1 , in ibid. ,
column 93 1).
2 ° Clement of Alexandria, Logos protreptikos; Archaia . . . koinonia, and emphytos,
Patrologia Graeca, VIII, column 93; archaiozomen , ibid. , column 6 1 . On panta pos,
see De A nima G, 8, 43 1b 21 (he psyche ta onta pos esti panta) and G, 5, 430a 1 4f.
In a neutral sense we could say that the nature of human being

is to overreach itself in order to own and possess the world . But that
empty and formal designation of overreaching in fact has its material
content in the fully self-appropriated and therefore fully world
appropriating entity called God. Man's nature is to become God; in
knowing God man knows himself- and vice versa. Noverim me, noven"m
te. 2 1
But if the history of met�physics is the history of this divine-human
capitalism, it is the history of the incarnation of God and the deifica
tion of man, the history not only of the progressive appropriation of
the earth but also and above all the history of a meta-appropriation :
the growing awareness of the undecidability of what is divine and what
is human , the irresolvability of the natural and the supernatural, of
nature and grace. It is one and the same thing to say that "all that
is sacred is profaned," as Marx does, and that "everything is God's
grace," as Philo Judaeus does.22 One might choose to say, for exam
ple, that "God" is the symbol, of which man is the recovered content :
the overman is the enactment of the now demythologized project of
the total availability of the world as property. The point, in any case ,
is that such capitalism would be the most theological act that a human
being could perform. As Evola puts it: To deny or doubt God would
be like denying or doubting oneself. 23 It would seem that, with or
without the vulgar metaphysics of the supra-sensible realm, God (like
the poor) we shall always have with us - so long as we remain the
capitalists, the metaphysicians, that we seem fated to be, whether in
the form of Evola's supra-rational but inner-worldly numen , or Nietz
sche's myth of the Eternal Return as the supreme approximation of
becoming to being. Both are instances, like shadow and light, of what
Heidegger calls Technik, the fulfillment of the theological metaphysics
of the West in the world-as-property.
One last gesture, then, in playing the Heideggerian card . It would
seem that the mystery of human being is that nothing is mysterious ,
(ho men toioutos nous toi panta ginesthai). On Greek theos pos, see Pierre Rousselot ,
L 'Intellectualisme de Saint Thomas, 2nd . ed. (Paris: Beauchesne, 1 924) 62.
21
Augustine, Soliloquia, II, 1, 1, in Patrologia Latina, XXXII , column BB5.
2 2 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, "The Manifesto of the Communist Party," Col
lected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, VI [ 1 976]) 487 ; and Philo, Allegorical In
terpretation of Genesis II, III (Legum Allegoria) III, xxiv, in Philo I (Loeb No . 226) , 352 ,
353, tr. F . H . Colson and G . H . Whitake� (Cambridge, Mass . : Harvard University
Press, 1956) .
2 3 Cavalcare 60: "negare o mettere in dubbio Dio sarebbe come negare o mettere in
dubbio se stessi."
Sheehan: Diventare Dio 29 1
that all is appropriable. Staying within metaphysics , one can attribute

this extraordinary correlativity between the appropriator and the ap
p ropriable to the Chief Property Owner, always already in the act
of possession; or one can defer complete ownership and relegate it
to an ever-receding future; or ope can acknowledge endless own
abiliry that is , an always finite appropriation - without final owner
-
ship . If this correlativity is man's fate, what else would there be to

do except to chose from among the various possibilities of appropria
tion? Heidegger answers this question by asking another :. If all is a
matter of availability and appropriation, in fact if God is the highest
instance of availing-oneself-of, the most noble ( timiotaton) form of ap
propriation, how are we to understand thefact of appropriation without
simply reciting the story of the highest and most noble appropriator?
Why appropriation at all? What empropriates (empowers , brings
about) appropriation?
You recognize , of course, Heidegger's question about Ereignis, the
"event-of-empropriation" (or the "bringing-into-its-own") of the game
of appropriation. And you know as well Heidegger's answer: Ap
p ropriation is our fate : es ereignet. And with this recognition Heideg
ger's thought, and the playing of the Heideggerian card, comes to
its end, its own limit, its finitude: all is comprehensible except the fact of
the comprehensibiliry of everything. Standing at that limit Heidegger would
maintain that Nietzsche and Evola shadow each other precisely because
both of them, in their theologies of the world-as-property, do not face
the question of the origins of the game of property. They realize that
the world is infinitely comprehensible (open, manageable, dominable),
but they do not articulate what, as finite human beings, they must
intimate: that the endless comprehensibility of the world is itself in
comprehensible . They do not say that unsayability: that he who
endlessly wanders through the light can never step over his own
shadow . Both Nietzsche and Evola, Heidegger would say (and I am
speaking here in Heidegger's voice , not necessarily my own) , hide
their oblivion of their own shadow under the name of"fidelity": Nietz-·
sche's fidelity to the earth , Evola's fidelity to the inner-worldly supra
rational being-of-origins.
And what might Heidegger's alternatives to such oblivion be? If
the correlativity of appropriator and the appropriable is fated and
therefore ultimately incomprehensible, then it is our nature, Heidegger
says , to correspond to that ultimate incomprehensible fatedness in
something he calls "meditative thinking." This is a correspondence
on a different axis from the fated correlativity of knowing and being .
It is a correspondence with mystery (Geheimnis, Lethe) , one in which

apparently the only necessary and sufficient action would be, as Pro
fessor Gianni Vattimo puts it, "to follow being along its evening decline
and thereby to prepare for a post-metaphysical humanity."24
Thus far the Heideggerian card, a gesture that for this reader is
at one and the same time helpful to a certain extent and ultimately
disappointing. Where does Heidegger leave us when, surrounded by,
permeated by, and complicit with the culmination of metaphysics in
the epoch of the world-as-property, we are called upon to correspond
with the fated givenness of the appropriation process, with the em
propriation (Ereignis, das Es-gibt) of the game of appropriation? How
might we even begin to find a foothold where we could take a stand
and call into question the proprietary instincts and structures of the
age of fulfilled theology? For Heidegger, even to ask such a question
is feckless, since it still seeks where one might stand, and so is com
plicit with the game of appropriation - from which, in fact, Heideg
ger will not rescue us. For my part, however, I refuse that critique .
The point is not to overcome metaphysics or to reform it, but neither
is the point merely to wait, meditatively, hoping for a "turn in being''
that will fulfill itself in a better dawn. Nor is it enough to simply re
m ain faithful to the earth , where all has been baptized, beyond good
and evil, in the font of eternity; or, with Evola, to cavalcare la tigre,
to mount and ride the tiger of nihilism until it drops of exhaustion
and we can again respond to the call of origins.
Another suggestion? I can only allude to it here, by citing a fable
that another nineteenth - century prophet wrote, in fact when Nietz
sche was only two years old: the fable of a professor, and perhaps
of all professors. This very valiant fellow ( so the fable goes) believed
he had discovered that people drowned because their minds were
possessed by the idea of gravity. And he was convinced that if only
that idea could somehow be exorcized, people would forever float on
top of the water and never be dragged down to the depths. He devoted
a lifetime to this noble task. But sadly, despite all the professor's work,
people continued to drown, and he never found out why. 25
" Gianni Vattimo, "Dialectics, Difference, and Weak Thought," tr. Thomas Harri
son, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, 10.1 (1 984) 1 63 .
2 5 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, "Preface," The German Ideology ( Moscow: Foreign
Languages Publishing House, 1 964).

C!audio Magris
T HINGS NEAR AND FAR: NIETZSCHE AND

THE GREAT TRIESTINE GENERATION
OF THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY
Too many years , a whole middle age, will have to pass, wrote Saba
in his Scorciatoie, before men cease to misunderstand, i .e . , to malign,
Nietzsche. The "middle age" Saba has in mind as he writes these words
in the Forties is that cultural season of the twentieth century "re
acting'' to modernity and its crisis. This culture lives the schism as a
sickness, and responds with fury, exasperating it, proposing remedies
and medication which are often no more than the opposite : extreme
and pathological symptoms of the crisis itself. Fascism is the most
clamorous manifestation of this reaction to modernity, an aberrant
and degenerate expression of the very modernity which it believes
it is combatting or even curing. The Fascist negation of democracy,
mass culture , and progress is a violent discharge in the process of
massification itself. The incapacity to perceive the positive and
liberating charge of that massification results in a forced and visceral
reaction. The great intellectuals and writers who let themselves be
blinded by Fascist radicalism - Hamsun, Celine , Pirandello , and
Mishima - saw and lived through to the end the contradictions of the
contemporary age . They suffered from and cleverly unmasked its
unresolved problems while remaining prisoners of those same con
tradictions , experiencing them to be absolute existential reality and
thus failing to recognize the real dialectic of history.
293
Nietzsche, the diagnostician of the European cns1s, was often

perceived - and misunderstood, as Saba acutely notes- to be a symp
tom of reactive nihilism or a false prophet purporting to redeem that
nihilism. When Saba wrote his vehement Scorciatoie, the image of Nietz
sche diffused throughout public opinion was that reductive and
stereotypical one of the herald of the superman and the blond beast,
if not even the ideological precursor of national-socialist doctrines .
That image, which harkened to some elements actually present in
Nietzsche, though now distorted and inflated, abstracted from his total
thought, was constitutive of Fascist pseudo-culture . Nevertheless, it
was an image accepted - though with an opposite assessment - even
by democratic circles , whence the "maligning of Nietzsche" of which
Saba speaks.
The misunderstanding was also tied to the absence of a philologically
correct edition of Nietzsche's works. As a result, Nietzsche was often
read in altered or manipulated texts, emended of their uncomfortable
liberationist and Voltairian , anti-nationalistic and anti-Wilhelmian
accents . A clamorous example of this falsification is the well-known
montage, The Will to Power, which only the critical edition of Colli
and Montinari has succeeded in restoring.
In this general climate, Saba's intuition seems to be extraordinari
ly intelligent. Nevertheless, from the very first years of the century,
the great generation of writers from Trieste - of which Saba, together
with Svevo , is the greatest representative- demonstrated itself to be
particularly sensitive to an authentic reading of Nietzsche, whether
profoundly influenced by the philosopher or at odds with him. It reads
Nietzsche to be an extremely lucid and unmasking- certainly not em
phatic or vitalistic - spokesman for the discontents of civilization .
Trieste, which then belonged to the Habsburg Empire, was rooted
at once in Italian culture, to which it reached out with patriotic Ir
redentist passion, and also in the composite and plurinational soil of
the empire. Symbolizing this double soul, its writers and poets
Slataper, Marin , the Stuparichs, strongly marked by the Nietzschean
lesson - pursu.ed their studies both in Florence, the cradle of Italianism ,
and in Vienna or Prague, the hearts of Mitteleuropa. Like the
Habsburg Empire to which it belonged, Trieste - interwoven with
contrasts and identifying itself with their unresolvability - presented
a concentration of the heterogeneity and contradictoriness of modern
civilization, lacking a central foundation and a unity of values.
Magris: Things Near and Far 295
Trieste becomes an outpost of the crisis of culture and the culture

of crisis precisely on account of its position in the Habsburg Empire,
in that "true Austria" which, as Robert Musil writes ironically in The
Man Without Qualities, was "the entire world," because it revealed with
particular saliency the epochal ,crisis of the West. When , in Musil's
novel, the committee of the Collateral Campaign seeks the "first prin
ciple" upon which Austria (that is, European civilization) is based ,
it is not to be found. The Empire lays bare the emptiness of all reali
ty and "feeds on air." Trieste is a laboratory model of the Imperial
contradictions . Thus Svevo and Saba were able to treat it as a
sysmographic station for the spiritual quakes that were preparing to
convulse the world, the locus of the crisis of the contemporary in
dividual and his ironic and tragic, disillusioned and elusive poetry.
It is for this reason that the culture of Trieste ends up being particularly
sensitive to the radical critique of foundations that Nietzsche articulates
and to the problematic of nihilism.
Scipio Slataper's Il m io Carso , incorporating the soul-scape of
Triestine literature in 1 9 1 2 , links up with the Nietzschean revolt of
life against culture, against the knowledge that Nietzsche denounced
as a tautology divided from experience , a mechanism reproducing
itself while imprisoning the multiplicity of vital flux in its schemes.
This revolt liberates vitality, which erupts impetuously in ll mio Car
so. Yet as it investigates life , the book also addresses that melancholy
experience of discontent, that "decadence" which, as Nietzsche well
knew, is involved not only in every reflection upon vitality but in the
very celebration of vitality. In his splendid book on Ibsen, posthumous
ly published in 1 9 1 6 , Slataper descends into the heart of this contem
porary laceration with a penetration derived from Nietzsche's inter
pretation of nihilism, from his attempt to descend to the very bottom
of nihilism to bring it to fulfillment and liberate it from everything
inducing men to live it with discontent. Ibsen seems to be the
demystifier of "life's megalomania'' - as he himself called it - which
does not allow for the realization of the individual and then renders
him guilty of this incapacity. Ibsen appears as the dramatist of the
dilemma between the mortal dispersion of the 'T' and its no less mor
tal rigidification, the writer who descends into the inexplicable depths
o f pulsations to bring them to light and to realize that they are dead,
and to realize that death is the price to pay for tragic analysis and
recognition .
In Slataper's Nietzschean reading of Ibsen, the Norwegian poet is

the artist who , in order to recuperate life , must distance himself from
it and lose it. Representation - knowledge, culture, art- is equivalent
to death. Slataper intuits that Nietzsche is the father of the modern
avant-garde, in Baioni's definition, or the unmasker of language as
an instrument of power, the destructive critic of the rigidity of the
linguistic sign, which fossilizes life , and thus the liberator of life from
the tyranny of signifying systems. On the other hand, the Slataperian
reading is articulated in a tragic-pathetic tone and ignores the Hal
cyonic lightness preached- if not actually mastered - by Nietzsche ,
who proposes to liberate life from meaning or from a metaphysical
dependence on value, and instead joyously accepts the convention
of signifiers recognized as such. For Slataper the interpreter of Ibsen,
on the other hand, in the plays of the Norwegian there is no meaning
that transcends life , even if life be lost without that meaning. The
essence of civilization is still nihilism, but it is destructive and self
destructive.
In fact, in this deeply Nietzschean generation of Trie ste there oc
curs a conte st with the Nietzschean "transvaluation of all values" or
completed nihilism, a contest played out as an attempt to read Nietz
sche through to the bone, finding in his work - beyond what he pro
fessed explicitly - the unspoken prime mover of his thought: a need
for value and truth, which had, w ith a type ofradical coherence, come
to destroy itself. For example, the poetry of Biagio Marin , irresisti
ble, vital, and surging as the eruption of nature, but also nourished
by philosophico-religious thought, is saturated with the tension be
tween the Apollonian and the Dionysian. However, it is also pervad
ed by the conviction that the pathos of a life resisting consciousness
can exist only in conflict with consciousness , and that , with the
cancellation of the latter and its demand for value and significance,
the very incantation of life beyond good and evil also disappears. Thus
poetry, for Marin, becomes the foundation of being, the horizon or
the gulf in which finite things appear, the soil in which life thrusts
its roots and from which it draws its lymph - a place of meaning and
value and not · only seduction.
The Triestine generation of the beginning of the century wove its
passionate reading of Nietzsche together with a reading of Otto Wei
ninger, the obsessive and implacable adversary of nihilism. Weininger
rejects becoming, eternal recurrence, time, and even life itself, furi
ously sacrificing them to truth. He teaches that one should place no
weight on nothingness but rather be fearless, for courage, which frees

the individual, is connected to truth. Courage is the virtue of the man
who has perceived the unreality of valuelessness and refuses to be
frightened by phantasms, by what has no moral value and hence does
not exist . Even to allow oneself to be annihilated by the empty pass
ing of time is for Weininger a symptom of an ethical shortcoming.
Whoever cannot recognize the eternity of value must suffer existence
as a senseless oozing of fleeting hours and years and as vain dispersion.
The paradoxical interweaving of Nietzsche and Weininger reveals
a generation incited by time and attempting to conquer its anguish,
either restocking it with value or convincing itself in a Nietzschean
fashion of the irrelevance of value itself and gaily abandoning itself
to flashes of becoming.
The most important answ�r to Nietzsche may have been that of
Carlo Michelstaedter, the philosopher from Gorizia who died by
suicide in 1 9 1 0 , whose book Persuasion and Rhetoric, published in the
same year, remains one of the masterpieces of the century, a gran
diose text seizing the nihilism of Western civilization at its roots .
Michelstaedter defends the procedure of seeing from afar, so as not
to be overcome by the misery of insolvent life and the incitement of
all it lacks . His is a response to Nietzsche, to the philosopher's invita
tion to become intimate with nearby things. Even Persuasion and Rhetoric
is born from that culture of t_he end of the century which felt that ex
istence was dissolving. It re-echoes the question of Oblomov, who ,
after having deprecated the fact that life aggresses upon and assaults
us from all sides, asks himself, "When , then, does one live?" And
Michelstaedter too, like Slataper, faces up not only to the entire
Western philosophical tradition from the pre-Socratics on, but also
to Ibsen and the insidiousness of nihilism.
He too thought that nihilism was a snare , a sickness, not a cure
as Nietzsche seemed to have viewed it. According to Michelstaedter ,
persuasion is the possession of one's life in the present, the capacity
to live every instant without incessantly consuming it in the expecta
tion of a result which is always forthcoming but never is . For
-Michelstaedter men live only "in the meantime ," waiting for life to
reach them and consuming it in expectation . Existence is contradic
tion, fatal malady, and self-negation. To live means to will, and that
means pursuing something, destroying the present for such a future,
hankering after life and not possessing it, on the contrary, losing it
when one attains it definitively and thus arrests oneself or dies .
298 Nietzsche in Itafy
In his masterpiece Michelstaedter analyzes this alienation by harken -

ing, with epochal pathos, back to the origins of Western thought when
wisdom and the indivisible unity of life and thought were replaced
by the schism between sectors of knowledge . If Michelstaedter refutes
that which Nietzsche exalts - appearance, fable, the mask, and
becoming- he follows Nietzsche in rejecting rhetoric, the enormous
and sterile edifice of fossilized thought that men erect in order to avoid
seeing their own emptiness and nothingness. Persuasion , according
to Michelstaedter, is based on value, not life, and thus is antithetical
to the "Yes, and so be it!" that Nietzsche declares to the latter . Yet,
beneath it all, persuasion is probably not so dissimilar to the great ,
quiet noon of the pure present that Nietzsche describes in the follow
ing way between the spring and the summer of 1 888: "What might
be possible is not the object of my attention . . . I lack the concept of
a future, I look in front of me as upon a smooth surface: not a single
desire ripples over it, not even the smallest desire, no projects, no
will for things other than they are."
Yet the most original and unpredictable reader of Nietzsche in these
decades of Trieste is Italo Svevo . For instance , he titles a series of
sketches and aphorisms "Nietzsche" which have nothing to do with
the philosopher directly and do not even name him . They address
a nude and savage life devoid of all order and all value, a life in which
exist no corners "that can be mathematically calculated" and which
seems like "the contest between individual molecules in a great body
of water in the process of evaporating," like "a sickness of matter."
In Svevo's work as in Nietzsche's, life no longer resides in a totality.
An anarchy of individual atoms corrodes the great unities of discourse
and existence; every particular acquires autonomy at the expense of
the whole; no classification can impose significance or a hierarchy on
the multiplicity of things. Thought neither resolves the contradictions
of the real nor shapes them into a unity; it is instead the very ferment
of these contradictions , the chemical agent dissolving the coherence
of the world and of lived experience. The subject leans over the tur
bine of an immense and capillary proliferation of desire in which he
himself dissolves, experiencing his own fictitious compactness as a
prison. Svevo is the poet of the Nietzschean twilight of the subject,
of the "over-man," in Gianni Vattimo's expression, of the "f' that lives
a present of transition and mutation, reaching towards a new an
thropological epoch, a new organization of its own psychic nuclei and
own quanta of energy.
S aba, on the other hand, loved above all another Nietzsche, whose
saying he paraphrased often: "We are deep, let us again become
transparent." Saba's poetry tends toward this pure and indifferent
grace, toward a terse and merciless clarity which lets appear wholly
without attenuation the obscm;e bottom of pulsating life in the lim
pid surface of things as they are. Saba had learned from Nietzsche
the innocence involved in accepting life in its entirety, in its mildness
and ferocity, like the birds of his lyrics which sing while ferociously
snatching at food. For Saba, innocence also signifies that inextricable
vortex of surrender and avidity, that "silent longing" - as one of his
verses has it - which the poet lived and fully incarnated with a desire
that was never sublimated or placated, in which the impulse of love
intertwined with the most raving egocentrism. The poet was truly
beyond good and evil; the philosopher instead was an exemplary vic
tim of that discontent of civilization which he had intrepidly unmasked,
incapable as he was of delivering himself to his coveted sea of pulsa
tions and will to power. In Saba's words , "He was an extreme case
of the almost complete sublimation of eros ." But Saba himself felt the
need to add, "He was also something else , I am sure ."

A ngus Fletcher
MUSIC , VISCONTI , MANN, NIETZSC HE :

DEA TH IN VENICE
For B arbara Fisher
In every respect Visconti's film Death in Venice derives from Nietzsche.

Nietzsche may be called its philosophic source . The stream from this
source is filtered, however: the immediate story-line comes through
Mann's novella and through the late Faustus. Both literary texts
translate into moving picture . Mann's Aschenbach becomes Viscon
ti's Aschenbach. A writer becomes a composer, Aschenbach/
Leverkiihn, who ( somehow) writes Mahler's music. From this
cardinal change derives, we may say, a myth of derivation. By reshap
ing and recombining materials from Mann's text, Visconti opens a
path back to Nietzsche, the Nietzsche for whom in so many ways music
provides the key to a worldview, if not a fairly complete worldview
in itself. Searching for the center and the boundary of this worldview,
both Visconti and Mann return to the play of music. Visconti uses
each proposition or movement of this art as philosophers use the pro
positional elements of a proof. Like the dithyrambic style in Nietzsche's
philosophy, here music is allowed to have the force of destiny.
It helps to treat the unusually complex score of this film as a single ,
m any-sided, polytonal and especially parodic composition, which
makes the spoken word integral to its form . Of this constellation and
its musical genealogy, including its relation to Sprechstimme, a
301
musicologist might have much to say. However, in line with 1 9th

century beliefs that music is a language - a Romantic belief- we can
make a modernist and Nietzschean assumption: here "musical score"
means the total soundtrack of the film. Such an assumption fits the
global description of the "aesthetic state," provided by an entry of 1888 ,
in The Will to Power (§ 809) :
The aesthetic state possesses a superabundance of means of communica
tion, together with an extreme receptivity for stimuli and signs. It con
stitutes the high point of communication and transmission between liv
ing creatures - it is the source of languages . This is where languages
originate: the languages of tone as well as the languages of gestures
and glances . The more complete phenomenon is always the beginning, our
faculties are subtilized out of more complete faculties. But even today
one still hears with one's muscles, one even reads with one's muscles .
Or again, from The Will to Power: "One never communicates thoughts:
one communicates movements, mimic signs, which we then trace back
to thoughts" (§ 809) . On this view it follows that every single sound
in Visconti's film may be scored as a type of music, including whistles,
bells, feet crunching on gravel, coffee spoons tinkling on breakfast
coffee cups, the sound of the gondolier's oar, and so on; but more
important than these normally nonlinguistic sounds, there is scored
into the film the variety of spoken language and linguistic silence.
Because with Visconti every detail works, this extended understand
ing of music permits the artist to organize and express the deeper
lying principles of existence which, in the first place, allow this Nietz
schean story to be told , in thefirst place. The logic here is that no sound
effect escapes the condition of music; every such element is part of
a world . In principle, aesthetically, the sound-world is always more
perfectly a world than can be any collection of the objects of vision ,
since , unlike them, music surrounds.
Some literary people were shocked, by failing to grasp Visconti's
analysis of Mann. He had destroyed Mann's magnificent, granitic
literary hero . Aschenbach's mutation had more than a touch of anti
literary sacrilege about it. It attacked blind reverence for "the im
mediate literary source ." Visconti's reasoning should have been clear:
if Mann had seen fit to transform his Nietzschean hero of aesthetics
from writer to composer, arriving at Leverkiihn/Faustus , why should
the filmmaker not go one step further, to recombine or hybridize the
two arts in his myth of derivation? Recursively, Visconti raised the
Nietzschean question of the purity of an origin for speech: "Compared
Fletcher: Music, Visconti, Mann, Nietzsche 303
with music all communication by words is shameless ; words dilute

and brutalize; words depersonalize; words make the uncommon com
mon" ( Will to Power, § 809) . One asks then , the very old and the very
new question: does literature begin with music, or does music begin
with some kind of strange gestural inscription, that is, with the in
vention of a key-word, and thence with literature?
This ambiguity raises, in turn, a philosophic issue somewhat beyond
the question of the hero and his representational origins in some
literary text. Suppose we enlarge the concept of immediate, literary,
textual sources- suppose that Visconti is trying to probe the ques
tion of source itself. What is a source? How does a flow of thought,
of philosophy, of poetic vision, of a life begin and then flow onward ,
transforming as it goes? That is a Nietzschean question.
Its investigation turns here upon thoughts centering on the fictionali
ty of biography. For the life of an Aschenbach, what is a reliable
source?
Let's see how this line of filmic thought develops. Having jettisoned
Mann's opening pre-Venice pages in the novella, Visconti (by a
m athematical substitution) interpolates the substance of Chapters 16
and 1 7 of the Faustus, the scene where Leverkiihn visits the Leipzig
brothel - let us call it the original scene of contamination. With this
single move , Visconti initiates an inquest into the nature of
biographical fact. For it tun1s out that no one, including Nietzsche
himself, could be sure of the events of his own life which Mann
reinvented and realized in this scene, as its "picture" and its conse
quences were shown to us through the eyes of his narrator, Serenus
Zeitblom . Nietzsche's own account of this experience was ambiguous ,
or changeable, and finally unreliable. Did he touch the woman at the
brothel, or only the piano? Was it as in the Faustus only a later obsessive
drive to revisit the woman that led the man to her a second time ,
in another city, with (or without?) fatal medical consequences? By
annexing the episode irt the first place, Visconti annexes a doubt, at
taching the dynamic of his story to a source that has low initial reliabili
ty and a later fictional haze thrown over it.
The film encapsulates this brothel scene, and the effect is enigmatic.
But unless we can penetrate the haze, we must ask, does this past
event matter at all to the present Venetian narrative? Surely this
Aschenbach shows no signs of tertiary syphilis! Finally, of course, we
never do know of what Visconti's Aschenbach dies, except that in the
world of appearances (as of medical diagnosis) he dies of a broken
heart. Not only is source equivocal, so also are whatever consequences

may be said to flow from any such equivocal source. The Nietzschean
myth of derivation analyzes source and consequence as if the latter
might have a paradoxical priority over the former.
The classic modern examples of the power of the equivocal source
are to be found as originating moments or episodes in the
psychoanalytic case-study. In effect, by interpolating the brothel
episode, Visconti seems to be tracing part of a case-study.
Precisely here, however, our sense of artistic style pulls us in the
opposite direction. Visconti suggests depth-analysis more than once
in this film, and this encapsulated episode somehow has to exist "deep
ly," but, we might say, it explodes at the surface of a present remember
ing. And that effect fits. Stylistically Visconti prefers an aesthetic of
unforgiving surfaces- ruthless, staring, visual attention . The ques
tion then arises: in what surface fashion can the artist probe the depths
of his subject? Perhaps film shows depth to be the great illusion. My
own feeling is that Visconti follows the Nietzschean plan of trying
to render always whatever is exactly right in front of us, as it appears
immediately and uncensored, even when screened by the waking
dreams of consciousness, but certainly in the domain of perception .
The film is hypersensitive, yet outrageously outspoken. Since romantic
depths are never thus outspoken, we shall look for depth in another
quarter- certainly not in the staring, glancing, peering visual acuity
of the camera technique that gives this film its Nietzschean sensibility.
Let us return then to the Faustus interpolation. It is surely significant
in a general way that the film begins by focusing on one aspect of
that narrative material, by literally, silently, tacitly spelling its word.
Aschenbach is carried to Venice on a steamer whose name stands out
in bold letters, as it docks, the ESMERALDA. Later, following Mann's
text, the prostitute he visits is likewise called "Esmeralda," though now
we hear rather than see the name. The madam calls out "Esmeralda''
in heavy, gutteral German; the young woman must stop her piano
playing, to see the Professor, whom she apparently already knows.
A sharp observer might register the double use of the name, but
not know the exact source in Mann, where the name is introduced
in yet another context as Hetaira Esmeralda . This scientific name labels
the butterfly whose symbolic attributes recur throughout Doctor Faustus
with the force of a Wagnerian leitmotif. As Hetaira , the species-name
stands for "the concubine," the companion in forbidden pleasure. With
its first mention the name starts a metonymic chain that carries through
to the very end of the book, and similarly to the end of the film , giv
ing us one mode of originating source: the giving of a name to some
effect in the world.
As leitmotif it introduces a set of ideas. "Hetaira (Mann says in
C hapter 3 of the Faustus) had on her wings only a dark spot of violet
and rose ; one could see nothing else of her, and when she flew she
was like a petal blown by the wind." What could seem more magical
ly innocent, we say, than this wind-borne spot of violet and rose? But
what more dangerous, in the event? At first the child Adrian responds
to such creatures with what Mann calls "infectious mirth," thus link
ing contagion to the idea and fact of uncontrollable laughter - the
Zarathustran theme. It is only a short, ironic step to the ominous ex
perience of Adrian Leverkiilm, now a young man, who writes to his
friend Zeitblom as follows, with characteristic defensive archaism: in
the brothel he had seen "your nymphs and daughters of the wilderness,
ribaudes, laced muttons all , six or seven , morphos , clear-wings ,
esm�raldas, etc ." He tells Zeitblom that having struck a chord or two
on the piano (chords relating to some "brightening semitone" which
then preoccupied him) , he met the young woman who , perhaps not
then, but perhaps later, would infect him. "A brown wench puts herself
nigh me, in a little Spanish jacket, with a big gam, snub nose , al
mond eyes, an Esmeralda, she brushed my cheek with her arm ."
(Almost all these details Visconti used.) Horrified, Leverkiilm rushed
from her, flinging himself "back through the lust-hell," out into
the street.
Zeitblom, whose narrative is itself veined like a systemic disease,
takes immediate and hardly restrained pedantic delight in the musical
import of this scene and its precursor scenes . He notes that from the
name Hetaira Esmeralda the composer was to extract a musical anagram,
the notes B (German: H) , E, A, E, E Flat . Leverki.ihn labels this
anagram or series of notes "a word, a key word, stamped on everything
in the song." This "word" is a determining source . Wherever it appears,
it controls the musical composition so that "there would no longer
be a free note." The series includes a half-hidden tritone, the interval
A - E Flat, which medieval music always called diabolus in musica ,
because of its forbidden, ambiguating effect for harmony. Yet the series
controls musical development; "there would no longer be a free note."
Mann, with hundreds of discursive pages available to him, weaves
an immense and everstronger web from his three-termed idea
Esmeralda the spotted butterfly, Esmeralda the brown wench ,
Esmeralda the truncated tone-row, the "key-word ." These evolve into
a motivic subsystem, which Zeitblom finally labels for convenience
"the Hetaira Esmeralda figure." This figure recurs wherever
Leverkiihn's music is most tragic and most Faustian . Its serial prin
ciple also generalizes to become the method of Leverkiihn's whole
musical output, one way or another. Its harmonically ambiguous idea
underlies what in the film Aschenbach's friend Alfred (his Nietzschean
daimon) calls a "science of ambiguities." Fixed series implies its op
posite , ambiguity, and hence the idea of series gets tied here to a ran
domized modern notion of fate.
Other associations are at work . Esmeralda is the emerald, the sea
green stone of oceanic depths, contrasting with the strings of orient
pearl worn by the mother, who in effect is a Dionysian priestess
Venice , Queen of the Sea, Serenissima, who wears the pearls "that were
his eyes."
More powerful is the Viscontian structure of bodily gestures, of
pose. Esmeralda is seen in two poses. First, reclining as odalisque ,
her posture exactly doubles that of a photograph we do not see in
the film, that of the great dancer Kchessinska as she starred in and
created Petipa's version of the once famous ballet, Esmeralda.. But when
Visconti's Aschenbach leaves her, abruptly, she sits open-thighed on
the edge of her bed. Now her pose shockingly doubles another
photograph, which we have already seen, that of the composer's little
daughter. Aschenbach had stooped to kiss the photo of his scowling,
open-thighed little girl, before descending in full evening dress to eat
dinner on his first night at the Grand Hotel des Bains, on the Lido .
Such image-play, such pictorial juxtapositions gradually develop
into a symbolic optics. On one level, image is called upon to substitute
for the heavy verbal texture of the novella and the Faustus.
There seems to be a limit, within this optics, to the degree to which
image can reach for the depths normal in the overtoning oflanguage.
Image focusses; it frames; it disconnects; and when film sets image
in apparent motion, it tends to produce fragments of a life experienced
by the viewer as the severed pieces of a broken continuity. Despite
Visconti's languorous slow panning shots and almost possessed in
trospective use of the zoom lens, visual discontinuities shove their way
into the foreground, especially with his sudden flashbacks. Something
else is required to reconnect, to produce the illusion of cause and
effect - the illusion of the wholeness of a flow of events . This must
be an illusion, because flow is a process, not a closed productive form
with a beginning, middle and end. Illusion or not, continuity is the

assumption of a life that "means something," but a film like this gives
us the question, rather than the answer to the question : what breaks
the flow of life? The meaning of death is thence an everpresent ques
t ion Visconti courts, virtually seduces out of its hiding place.
'
The strongest resistance to broken flow comes from Visconti's
musical use of the Hetaira Esmeralda figure. Now, in a normal sense,
music exercises its continuative power. Not only is the assemblage
of musical materials a kind of musical ethnography, from high to low
musical culture, but, remarkably, all the major items in the score are
based on various transformations of the rising (or inverted) intervals
of the Fourth - hence B to E, E to A - or are based on the stressed
semitone, E to E Flat (there in its falling, flatted form) . The rising,
brightening semitone Zeitblom mentioned appears within the play of
Fourths, as the leading tone; which always generates an expectation
of a furthering closure. The brightening semitone suspends the listener
for a time, an effect that here comes across most powerfully in the
central musical piece, the Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony.
The derivation from the Hetaira Esmeralda figure holds for all the
m ajor items Visconti uses: the Adagietto - the Merry Widow waltz
(another piece identified with Mahler) - the great slow movement from
the Third Symphony, the contralto solo based on Nietzsche's Second
Dance Song ( 0 Man, beware!)- the Mountebank's laughing song which
assaults the guests reposing Casually after dinner on the hotel terrace
the Mussorgsky lullaby that gives the film its penultimate elegiac close,
before the final return to the Adagietto one last time, as the film ends .
Visually, sonically, the film ends in pure wave-motion, as it had begun
(only in minute stages do we realize at the outset that the film-titles
are being shown, by a zoom lens, coming at us over a slowly un
dulating background of darkened, gently rocking waves of the Adriatic
Sea) .
Hetaira Esmeralda equally configures the one piece I take to be
the ironic and dramatic center of this universe of sounds. This piece
directly links Tadzio and Esmeralda, hence links Aschenbach to them
and to his own daughter . It is the archetypal salon piece, Fur Elise,
which begins with and obsessively repeats a slow trill on E, E Flat
(though Beethoven wrote these notes, E, D Sharp , for the key ofA
Minor) . Fur Elise follows the trill with a figured series of rising Fourths,
again a structure demanded by the originating musical series, Adrian's
"single word ."
As a mere pose had linked Esmeralda and Aschenbach's daughter,

Fur Elise links Tadzio and Esmeralda by a mere musical gesture, whose
physical performance Visconti emphasizes in the brothel scene, as
she practices her piece. This "much loved" composition is an emblem
not only in, but of, music as cultural destiny. The piece prompts u s
t o ask: what then i s music, i f it can b e thus imperishable, comman
ding, infectious, determining, even contaminating, as clearly is the case
with Beethoven's apparently trivial bagatelle? (When he was praised
for his Moonlight Sonata , he dealt with that parallel case by stating
a marked preference for his Op. 78 sonata in F Sharp. But the magic
of certain melodies in their magic harmonic guise is too much for a
discriminating taste to contravene; the Moonlight persists as magic.)
Is music then an irresistible sonic atmosphere? or the Dionysian pulse
of dancing blood? or a sensuous double of mathematics? a Pythagorean
emblem of cosmic order? What, indeed, is the nature of its magic?
For, among the arts , it appears to have the most strictly controlled
logical form . We often say that music expresses emotion , that flux
of non-referential feeling-tones. Perhaps it reveals the structure of the
unconscious, and its changes mimic the changes of a hidde� self,
metamorphosing like the liebestod motifs of Strauss's late string work,
the Metamorphosen . It appears impossible (perhaps it is analytically
undesirable) to picture the operations of music in the mind. For, no
visual "shot" can express musical tones in motion. The picture would
have to be of a special kind.
If we relate our broad question of sound/vision relations to the Vene
tian aspect of this liebestod, we do , however, open out into a possible
answer . We should not forget that this death occurs in Venice , that
is, as an aspect of being contained by Venice . The city completely
environs. Let's suppose that one key to the question of musical world
is to be found, for Visconti, in Ecce Homo, where Nietzsche says: "When
I seek another word (ein andres Wort) for music, I never find any other
word than Venice." This is the romantic vision of Venice, which Offen
bach caught perfectly in The Tales ofHqffman , with its celebrated bar
carolle: undulent Venice.
"I never find any other word than Venice" - music and this one
place so rich in food for every sense mutually implicate each other.
This city is configured as an extension in sensed time, through musical
structure and experience. Nietzsche, Mann and Visconti were at one
in believing that Venice "aspires to the condition of music ." Venice
is in constant musical motion, so to speak.
Film presents edited pictures of things moving. Although picture

disconnects, Eisenstein and other film-makers have shown us that a
moving-picture defies this disconnection . Montage also aspires to the
condition of music, which means that, as with music proper, fil mic
montage-ruptures actually enable the phrasing of a complex flow of
images or scenes which would', as still shots, be perfectly closed off
from each other. The whole art of film appears to be the search for
devices for reestablishing flow on the visual plane . To a great extent
this is a matter of illusionistic montage.
Music, by contrast, simply produces the stimulus to an experience
of continuous presence . Music then enters film as the most powerful
means of connecting distinct visual elements. Recall that if music is
a true "world ,'' it is so because it fills the space of a universe . Like
an ideal city, such music defines a propagation of space , as space is
filled with significant tonal interactions. Film enjoys special powers
for defining this propagation of significant space, since the film-maker
can choose to show, or to hide, the actual source of his musical (or
other sonic) materials. In Death in Venice we begin to learn this choice.
We actually see the salon trio perform Franz Lehar's melodies in the
lounge of the Grand Hotel; we actually see the mountebanks perform
ing outdoors , in the evening; we actually see the Russian woman
sing the Mussorgsky lullaby; and in the most controlled showing of
a sound-source, we actually see and are at certain moments prevented
from seeing Esmeralda playing Fur Elise on the piano , as we, have
just seen Tadzio play this same piece on a quite different piano , a
grand, at the Hotel . Aschenbach stares at both performances .
The directorial choice can equally go the other way. Usually in film
we do not see the sound-source . Here , two major pieces , both by
Mahler, have no visually apparent source. Hitchcock once quipped
of some "unreal" background music he wanted (for Lifeboat) , "it has
to come from somewhere." He was right. The most powerful film music
s imply "comes from somewhere." Such music is present as source ,
without apparent source, and hence becomes a model of source itself.
It simply begins, continues and ceases to sound. It has no palpable
origin , and , oddly enough , thereby gains a greater power than any
music whose performing source we are allowed to perceive on the
screen .
Visconti performs one twist on this ideal or perfect invisibility
he shows us Aschenbach at the beach writing out the great Nietz
schean Dance Song (from the Third Symphony) . We see the com-
poser putting notes on paper. At first we do not know what music

he is writing. But then, from somewhere unknown , from some
unknown orchestra and soloist, but also ( simultaneously) from the
composer's pen, comes the extraordinary sound of that contralto solo .
Music then begins to bind, to ease, to lift the broken pieces of im
age and event into a flow the seen world can never possess.
The Nietzschean gift to Mann and then to Visconti is the gift of
this idea of music - an art that wells up without origin, out of "an
emerald happiness ," as Nietzsche described his dithyrambic ecstasy.
Musical sound invisibly permeates and structures and stirs and disturbs
space by temporal and rhythmic and tonal force. Here too we discover
the problem of reliable source, for with regard to music it remains
impossible to separate Nietzsche's own sense of this art from that deep
life-crisis, his intellectual "marriage" and "divorce" from Wagner and
Wagner's music. To what degree is Nietzsche the child of Tristan?
Better than anyone he was latterly able to describe the loss, in Wagner,
of classical form; and to describe the way in which, one might say,
Wagner had poisoned Western music. With Wagner music no longer
maintains its distance from the listener, who can then no longer listen .
And listening is the spiritual requirement for a true music. The
Wagnerians do not listen to music; they merely react to it. Instead,
Nietzsche's philosophy always implies that song calls for its listener ,
and the art of song tries to define the place or space of a spiritual
responsiveness, which is to say, it forms "the soul that loves itself the
most , in which all things have their currrent and counter-current and
ebb and flow ."
In this sense music provides the medium for the soul's desire to
experience metaphysical distance. In Venice, Nietzsche had experi
enced this distance, specifically as a musical awareness, a musical
response. Visconti, by allowing the Nietzschean dimensions of Mann's
"musicology" to unfold as Death in Venice unrolls before our eyes, allows
a similar distance to find its ideal space. "Soul" and "spirit" name this
process . There is an old understanding of the soul as a butterfly,
Psyche . Here Psyche is again a butterfly, Hetaira Esmeralda, and the
force of her name has the force of a single, originating word. Her
single word crosses over to another single word, the name of an ac
tual city, Venice. Venice, where, once, the philosopher found himself
standing on a bridge, "in the brown night."
From afar there came a song:

a golden drop , it swelled
across the trembling surface.

Gondolas, lights, music-
drunken it swam out into the gloom . . .
My soul, a stringed instrument,
touched by invisible h ands
sang to itself in reply a gondola song ,
and trembled with gaudy happiness.
- Was anyone li stening? [Hollingdale's translation]
Scarcely a note in this song from the Venetian passage in Ecce Homo
is unfamiliar: the words belong to High Romanticism. But Nietz
sche attaches the theme of longing for a met aphysical response to the
physics of actual musical experience, and thus he hardens and
strengthens the logic of his nostalgia. The hands of the instrument
soul are "invisible hands ." Always the theme of the invisible.
It remained for a later author, Italo Calvino, to elaborate this V ene
tian theme to its most precise form , the idea of the "invisible city."
Throughout Invisible Cities, Marco Polo and Kublai Khan weave a
dialogue of interpretation , as they try to share the question: where
h as Polo "come from" and "where is he going?" It turns out that he
comes from a city which he can never describe , even fabuluously,
because it must remain (as Marco Polo says to the Khan) an "im
plicit city." Venice is a fictive, logical entity, of which one could never
s ay for sure whether it is subject or predicate, premise or consequence.
Hence Kublai Khan craves each fabled account to begin again with
an ever more complete description of Venice , Polo's "source ." But this
would lead to infinity: "You should then begin each tale of your travels
from the departure , describing Venice as it is, all of it, not o mitti ng
anything you remember of it."
"Memory's images , once they are fixed in words, are erased," Polo
says . "Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak o f
i t . O r perhaps, speaking o f other cities , I have already lost it, little
by little ."
Their dialogue ends there . We turn the page. There follows , for
the first time in the book, a fabulous description of the actual Venice,
t he fifth of the Trading Cities . The description begins:
In Esmeralda, city ofwater, a network of canals and a network of streets

span and intersect each other . . . the ways that open to each passerby
are never two, but many, and they increase further for those who alter
nate a stretch by boat with one on dry land.
Esmeralda can be mapped only in the air, by drawing an impossible

tracery along the "routes of the swallows . . . dominating from every
point of their airy paths all the points of the city." This airy topography
reduces Venice to its ideal state, as an empty logical space . Venice
finally exists only nell'aria and "touched by invisible hands," like the
poet's instrument-soul .
Only in the air is the soul free . I have wished to claim a special
place for music in the thought of Visconti and his progenitors . I have
said that the actual aesthetic invisibility of music- which Visconti over
and over examines, asking "what if we see its source?"; "what if we
do not see its source?" - eventually by means of a good contamina
tion succeeds in binding the disconnected images of memory and
perception. These are the images which , as pieces of thought utterly
divided from each other, would kill us . Divided, lacking any link ,
they point only to raw materiality. Divided, they stand between us
and our own souls . They obscure; they prevent us from seeing; they
are opposed to what Nietzsche meant, when he began Ecce Homo with
the phrase, "On this perfect day . . ."
Normally, Bertrand Russell claims, immediate memory and percep
tion are paradigms of the self-evident. But in Visconti, as in Nietz
sche's song at the bridge, the invisible and sourceless music of the
gondolier and the responding soul is an even sharper self- evidence .
This music does not have to be there to be, evidently, itself. It is the
fundamental model, then , of context - it is perfectly all around. It
defines the soul's invisible horizon. But this tnusic models context in
a secondary sense as well: it permeates and is all through . It touches
every object and body in any filled space where it resonates . If there
is anything real in any scene where it permeates, music freely touches
those real things, which belong to the experienced nearby world of
a human life , the life of some listener. Music embraces nearly, and
from afar.
To combine this "all through" with this "all around" in one passing
moment or extending passage of time is to achieve, in a final Nietz
schean and Viscontian sense, the Dionysian . "The more complete
phenomenon is always the beginning." In Visconti's film, music is
this more complete phenomenon- the complete soundtrack.
A . Thomas Norris
NIETZSCHE AND VICO

ON IRONY AND CULTURAL DISSOLUTION
That Giambattista Vico ( 1 668- 1 744) anticipated the work of numerous

later thinkers including Hegel and Marx is well known . But although
Friedrich Nietzsche too finds his place among those receiving frequent
mention in the Vico literature, there is a remarkable intellectual
closeness between these two figures that is perhaps not as widely ap
preciated. To uncover some of the ties between them is the main pur
pose of this essay. Vico apparently exerted no direct influence on Nietz
sche, but they concur so strongly on so many crucial points concerning
the creative nature of human consciousness, the linguistic forms
associated with man's conceptualization of the world and with the rise
and decay of cultures, as well as on questions of philologico-historical
method- Nietzsche's genealogical method mimics to a high degree
the method of Vico's New Science- that a systematic comparison of
the two thinkers seems called for. 1
Central to the effort toward such a comparison must be the
tropological aspect of Vico's New Science, which Hayden White ar
ticulates extremely well in "The Tropics of History: The Deep Struc-
1 This paper had its origins in a seminar led by Professor Robert Harrison, to whom
the author is indebted for much valuable advice and, indeed, for the very idea of
a comparison between Vico and Nietzsche. I should also thank Professor Thomas
Harrison for substantial editorial help.
313
ture of the New Science. "2 Vico of course posits an "ideal eternal history
of nations," a theory that all pagan nations or peoples (he excludes
the Hebrew and Christian nations from the scope of his principle
because he says they have been guided by revealed truth) naturally
pass through "divine,'' "heroic," and "human" stages, terms which
characterize the languages, laws, religions, and other institutions
distinctive of each period . White focuses attention on Vico's highly
original correlation of the transition into each of these three periods
with the inception of one of the poetic tropes Vico considers fundamen
tal: metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and the final negative linguistic
technique of irony. These four uses of language arise gradually, in
succession across the three ages, with the effects on consciousness of
the rise of each trope catalyzing the transformation of social institu
tions into those of the next age. According to Vico , men are first
elevated from the level of beasts when certain "more robust giants"
exercise metaphorical misinterpretation of natural events as the in
tentional actions of gods. This begins the animistic religion
characteristic of the divine age, in which men metaphorically project
their own spirits and passions onto all aspects of nature, ascribing
all agency to some deity. The rise of the trope of metonymy causes
the belief that powerful men, the "heroes," are the descendents of gods
and that they must enjoy a natural ascendancy over other men. This
state of affairs , emblematic of the heroic age, seems related to the
"metonymy of subject for form and accident" (§ 406). 3 With the begin
ning of synecdoche, the figure of speech in which a whole object is
referred to by one of its parts, or a general class by a particular feature
common to that class- hence with the beginning of relatively abstract
thought - the human age also has its origins. In this third and most
advanced period, the piety of earlier ages evaporates in light of in
creasing levels of abstraction and a growing awareness and sensitivity
toward truth and falsity. The subjugated classes of men, through their
2 Hayden White , Tropics of Discourse (Baltimore : John Hopkins University Press,

1978) 200-2 1 7 .
' Giambattista Vico, The New Science ef Giambattista Vico , Third Edition ( 1 744), tr.
T.G. Bergin and M . H . Fisch ( Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1 984). Paragraph
numbers from this book designated by § . "Practic" refers to Vico's "Practic of the
New Science," included in this edition. Some translations, where indicated, are from
Vico: Sef£cted Writings, ed. tr. Leon Pompa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1 982) 157-26 7 . Hereafter SW.
Norris: Nietzsche and Vico 315
new powers of reason and reflection, start to cognize the possibility

of construing all men as equal qua "human beings," or some similar
abstract classifiction. The concept of humanity as something univer
sal among men is enlisted to justify demands upon the ruling
families - and eventually their overthrow. And with these rulers go
the once entrenched traditional �ores, thus revealing the supposedly
natural social institutions of the past and present as the human crea
tions Vico thinks they are. Where men once falsely viewed these in
stitutions as absolutely necessary, they now no less falsely regard them
as pure contingencies, as the whims of careless rulers, lacking any
natural necessity or justification, when the truth, according to Vico ,
lies somewhere in between : that "divine providence" has compelled
men, in spite of themeselves, to create certain institutions which
naturally tend to preserve humanity. Traditional cultural practices
and pious moral aspirations become objects of ironic consciousness
and are cynically rejected toward the end of the human age. The
nihilistic disorder which ensues Vico terms the "barbarism of reflec
tion," which, if it proceeds unchecked, reduces men to the level of
beasts and starts the cycle of ages, the course and recourse of institu
tions, once again .
Although Nietzsche does not argue explicitly for the cyclicality of
the rise and fall of cultures - his doctrine of "eternal recurrence" is
possibly related but seems more metaphysical - he nonetheless thinks
that an ironic self-awareness pertains to the paralysis and eventual
collapse of a culture and constitutes a kind of final stage following
earlier ones. In the essay "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History
for Life ," the second of the Untimely Meditations, 4 Nietzsche says, for
example, that the modern passion for the scientific study of history,
which produces "the belief that one is latecomer and epigone . . . leads
an age into a dangerous mood of irony in regard to itself and subse
quently into the even more dangerous mood of cynicism" (83) . Both
authors at least mention irony as something perilous, and seem to
associate the prevalence of_ an ironic consciousness in a culture with
a crisis of incipient sickness, catabolism, and impending dissolution .
Vico and Nietzsche express similar and, I shall argue , complemen
tary thoughts about the relationship between irony and cultural
decadence. And furthermore, their closeness as pathologists of
f Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, tr. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cam
bridge University Press, 1 983) 57-123.

decadence stems, it appears, from a shared conception of man's con

scious relation to the world: a relation not merely representational
and passive , but rather, in the words of White, "reproductive and
creative, active and inventive" (199).
A notion of the "barbarism of reflection" is essential to Vico's theory
of cultural dissolution. However it is not reflection per se which seems
to dissolve culture, but rather reflection as an instrument in the hands
of a base and malicious segment of humanity. In an opposition almost
identical to Nietzsche's figurative master-slave distinction, Vico
metaphorically calls the destructive segment "matter," and contrasts
it to "form," the energetic, constructive, and humanizing force in a
society. Some men are capable of reflection without becoming cor
rupt while others are naturally prone to viciousness and barbarism
unless their weakness of character and immorality is ruled by virtue
("Practic" § 1 407-8). Since the weaker natures are themselves incapable
of preserving a society, says Vico,
providence has set up such orders for human institutions that religions
and laws, assisted by the force of arms, may move them to it. This
force began among the gentiles with the force ofJove through religions,
which force instigated the exertion of the more robust giants to found
humanity. To this force the few strong are drawn by nature and conse
quently with pleasure, for it moves them to exertion, which is connatural
with the strong; and the many weak are bound therein despite
themselves, to the end that they may not dissolve human society. And
this is the spirit of this entire work. ("Practic" § 1 4 1 0)
This spirit reveals the precise way in which reflection can lead to
barbarism. The ability of the more creative natures- even at first the
especially "robust giants" - to lead and organize the weak "despite
themselves ," or against their conscious will, is compromised if reflec
tion reveals to all men the mythical or illusory basis of the institu
tions that bind society. When these stronger types cease to dominate
the weaker, who are "greedy to destroy all forms," the humanizing
process falters and recedes . Reprehensible as the appeal to natural
anthropological divisions may seem in explaining the historical conflict
between action and reaction, between effort and ressentiment, it
nonetheless suggests a strategy for opposing decline. A science which
could reflect upon institutions and disclose their hidden social pur
poses could give the strong the tools needed to combat barbarism -
is this not, in part, the purpose of Vico's science?
No"is: Nietzsche and Vico 317
Now a distinction of paramount importance for understanding Vico

on the way in which the strong can be overthrown in a reflective age
is that between coscienza, or consciousness, the object of which is il
certo, the certain, and scienza, or knowledge, whose object is il vero ,
the true . According to Vico, il certo is that which is particularized,
'
individuated (§ 321) or determmate (§ 141 ) - hence the particular facts,
myths, customs, laws and beliefs discovered by history or philology
( § 1 39) as well as the data of the natural sciences. The true consists
in what is universal or common or eternal - as are the principles
discovered by reason and philosophy and by Vico's science with regard
to the necessary and eternal features of human society.
In the divine and heroic ages, the weak could be bound together
in society by institutions partaking of nothing more than certainty and
lacking philosophical justific;:itions: merely mythical religions or laws
arbitrarily enacted by an heroic ruling class. But in the human period,
when all men have a measure of reason and are aware of truth and
falsity, the "matter" can no longer be restrained by the traditional in
stitutions founded on certainty; using their wits and powers of reflec
tion, they now falsify and reject, through the use of irony, many of
the past certainties. Unless new socially cohesive institutions based
upon reason and truth are produced, the mob will triumph and bar
barism will return. Clearly Vico intends his science to provide the
foundation for such institutions by combining, as he says, the cer
tainties of the philologians with the truths of the philosophers (§ 1 38-
1 40) . What is grounded in eternally true objects of reason, Vico
must think, cannot be so easily falsified by the malicious wits and
subtleties of the canaille armed with reflection.
In his essay "On Truth and Lies in the Extra-Moral Sense,"5
Nietzsche distinguishes two kinds of truth that roughly parallel Vico' s
distinction between the certain and the true. Truths in the "moral"
sense are, according to Nietzsche, truths by convention, agreements
to label things in a systematic way. Lying against social convention
is a moral offense; hence the "moral" sense of truth and lies. Truths
in this sense are exactly what Vico would regard from a historical
perspective as "certainties." They are particular objects of consciousness
( e . g . , the myth of Jove as the author of thunder) , not necessarily
universal or eternal or correct in an absolute sense. Now a truth which
5 Friedrich Nietzsche, "On Truth and Lies in an Extra-moral Sense," in Philosophy
and Truth, ed. Daniel Breazeale (Atlantic Highlands, N.J . : Humanities Press, 1979)
79-9 1 . Hereafter OTL.
is not merely conventional but rather a completely adequate represen

tation of an external world is also conceivable; this would be a truth
in the "extra-moral sense." Truths in the extra-moral sense, regard
ing the external world at least, are for Nietzsche impossible, since
they require some "criterion of correct perception," which, he says
emphatically, is not available. "It is only by means of forgetfulness
that man can ever reach the point of fancying himself to possess a
'truth' of the grade just indicated [of the extra-moral type]" (OTL 81) .
Nietzsche likens the condition of all men to that of a deaf man observ
ing the formation of the so-called Chladni's sound figures in grains
of sand poured on a violin which is being played. The deaf man might
observe the patterns formed by the vibrations and "now swear that
he must know what men mean by 'sound."' But at best he will have
obtained a crude metaphor bearing some unspecifiable relation to the
actual sound, but not truly "resembling" it. So indicates Nietzsche,
"we possess nothing but metaphors for things - metaphors which cor
respond in no way to the original entities."
Now let us examine three specific areas of agreement between Vico
and Nietzsche involving the constructive and creative nature of human
consciousness. First is the epistemological status of various objects
of consciousness. Both authors deny that men can acquire true
knowledge of the natural world, but they seem to agree that worlds
of human creation can be known . In the second area is the question
of method. Vico and Nietzsche investigate the history of human con
sciousness through philology or etymology, thereby stressing the im
portance of language in the development of consciousness. Vico con
ceives of a "mental dictionary" common to all nations, and Nietzsche
apparently writes entries for it in On the Genealogy efMorals. 6 The third
area involves the results which this method uncovers - they seem to
agree on the tropological patterns by which man has creatively, through
language, arrived at his conceptual representations of the world.
First, concerning the question of epistemology, Vico and Nietz
sche agree strikingly about men's inability to acquire knowledge of
the natural world. They even use the same similes of depth and
superficiality. In On the Ancient WiSdom ef the Italians7 Vico says, "divine
6 Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy efMorals and Ecce Homo, ed. tr. Walter Kauf
man and R .J . Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1 969).

7 Giambattista Vico, On the Ancient Wisdom of the Italians Taken from the Origins of the
Latin Language, in Selected Writings 47-78.

Norris: Nietzsche and Vico 3 19
truth is a solid representation of things, like something moulded;

human truth is a line drawing or two-dimensional representation , like
a picture . . . . Divine truth is solid because God grasps all things, human
truth is two-dimensional because man grasps the externals of things"
(SW 5 1-52). Likewise, Nietzsche, in "On Truth and Lies," says of
men that "their eyes merely gllde over the surface of things. and see
'forms .' Their senses nowhere lead to truth" (OTL 80) . Both authors
conceive of man's relation to the natural world as nonrealistic and
mediated by the creative use of language. The notion that men can
have knowledge only of their metaphors for the natural world, but
not of the thing in itself, suggests that the criterion for knowing
something is to have created it, since men create all metaphors but
not all external things in themselves. This criterion, which both authors
seem to share, raises an impprtant question about the possibility of
knowing the worlds of human society and history. Have men created
these worlds according to determinate laws of consciousness, that is ,
can the creating mind of the historical agent be linked in a lawlike
m anner with the potentially knowing mind of the historian? There
is evidence that both Vico and Nietzsche believe in certain lawlike
conceptual transformations or "modifications of the mind." And if this
were true, it would form a basis for their agreement on the issues
of the relative epistemological status of the historical and natural
sciences, on historical method, and on the linguistic forms and pro
cesses associated with patterns of historical development.
C onsiderations of the possibility of knowledge thus leads naturally
to the question of the proper method for historical inquiry. At the
heart of Vico's position regarding both historical and physical
knowledge is his doctrine , verum ipsumfactum, 8 which says that what
is true and what is made are interchangeable and convertible . One
can have knowledge (scienza) only of that which one has made oneself.
Thus men cannot really know the natural world since it was created
by God and not by men (§ 331). The purely created world of geometry
is paradigmatic of human.knowledge, since it was made by men and
c an be recreated in the mind of each subsequent student of geometry.
This view has certain obvious affinities with Nietzsche's distinction
between truths in the moral sense, which can be known since they
are man-made conventions, and truths in the extramoral sense, which
cannot be had. Now Vico thinks that men have "made" the entire
8 Hayden White, Tropics 197 . Also see Vico, "On verum andfactum," in Sekcted Writings
50-52; New Science § 349 .
historical world in such a way that they can know it, and I think we
may see that Nietzsche proposes something akin to this. The world
of history and of human institutions can, according to Vico, be
recreated out of the determinate modifications of our own minds, which
work according to principles shared with the minds that produced
the institutions in the past, by virtue of what Vico calls the "common
sense" - "judgment without reflection, shared by an entire class, an
entire people, an entire nation, or the entire human race'' (§ 142) . The
linkage between minds of the present and the past produced by this
common sense thus permits the study of history via axioms as cer
tain as those of geometry.
Vico maintains, for example, that there are three customs which
are common to men of all nations and cultures, of any period of
history: practice of religion , contraction of solemn marriages, and
burial of the dead (§ 333). The form of these universal social adapta
tions apparently arises necessarily from basic shared features of human
consciousness. Consequently, the history of these institutions can be
known insofar as the minds that produce them in any past age operate
in certain eternal patterns, which are shared as a "common sense"
by historians of the present. Looking beyond these three fundamen
tal customs, Vico thinks it possible to construct a "mental dictionary"
(§ 1 45) which would allow the ideal eternal history of nations to be
conceived in greater detail. "There must in the nature of human in
stitutions," he writes, "be a mental language common to all nations,
which uniformly grasps the substance of things feasible in human social
life and expresses it with as many diverse modifications as these same
things may have diverse aspects" (§ 161). The mental dictionary will
reveal this common mental language by correlating the etymologies
of words for the same concept in many different languages. Not any
hodgepodge of institutions is feasible in a human society. Certain
features are necessary. By reasoning from these constraints upon
history, Vico asserts, we may substantially reconstruct the human past :
Hence this Science comes at the same time to describe an ideal eternal
history, traversed in time by the histories of all nations, in their birth ,
growth, perfection , decline and fall. Indeed, we venture to affirm that
since this world has certainly been made by men (which is our first in
dubitable principle laid down above) and since its mode must therefore
,
be rediscovered within the modifications of our own human mind,

whoever narrates this ideal eternal history to himself inasmuch as he
makes it for himself by demonstrating that 'it had, has and will have
[to be thus]' ; for when it happens that he who makes the things also
narrates them, then history cannot be more certain. Thus this Science
proceeds exactly like geometry, which, as it contemplates the world of
dimensions or constructs it from its elements, makes that world for itself,
but the reality of our science is �s much greater [than that of geometryJ
as is that of the orders which p ertain to the affairs of men than that
o f points, lines, planes and shapes. (§ 349 , Pompa's translation)
We must ask whether Nietzsche, although perhaps not in such an

explicit manner, also tries to make use of "universal and eternal prin
ciples" (§ 332) about human cognition and social construction in his
philosophical thinking. This is to ask, then, whether he shares to any
extent Vico's historical method and epistemological assessment of
history. In "On Truth and Lies," Nietzsche considers primarily the
possibility of knowing the natural world. Just as Vico diminishes the
reality of geometry in comparison with his science, Nietzsche dismisses
as of little value the absolute knowledge possible of formal ,
mathematical creations- it i s hiding something behind a bush and
looking for it again in the same place (OTL 85) . In this same essay
he also acknowledges certain eternal features of cognition, basically
the so-called "Kantian categories": "All that we actually know about
these laws of nature is what we ourselves bring to them - time and
space, and therefore relationships of succession and number . . . But
we produce these representations in and from ourselves with the same
'
necessity with which the spider spins'' (OTL 87) . But this essay,
although otherwise quite Vichian in its portrayal of metaphorical
creativity in human consciousness, lacks the historical emphasis of
the later book On the Genealogy ef Morals, which presents a splendid
example of Nietzsche's using a Vichian historical method . Nietzsche
was, of course , a classical philologist, and his concern for language
seems to have led him in Vico's footsteps:
The signpost to the right road was for me the question : what was the
real etymological significance of the designations for "good" coined-in
the various languages? I found that they all led back to the same con
ceptual transformation - that everywhere "noble," "aristocratic" in the social
sense, is the basic concept from which "good" in the sense of "with
aristocratic soul," "noble," "with a soul of higher order," "with a privileged
soul" necessarily developed: a development which always runs parallel
with that other in which "common," "plebian," "low" are finally
transformed into the concept bad " (Genealogy 28)
" .
Nietzsche claims here to have discovered what appears to be nothing

less than a prospective entry in Vico's mental dictionary. He has un
earthed a historical principle governing a certain conceptual transfor
mation, which is reflected in language, specifically, in the etymology
of a certain word in every language. He is uncovering the origins of
morality- of the concepts "good" and "bad" - by the same method Vico
uses to reveal the origins of-religion, marriage, burial, and so forth.
Furthermore , although Nietzsche does not refer directly to the
tropology involved, this particular transformation is metonymic, since
it involves a substitution of the nature of one's social position for the
nature of one's soul . It would thus seem to fall cleanly into Vico's age
of heroes. Later in the First Essay of the Genealogy (section 1 7) ,
Nietzsche poses a similarly Vichian question: "What light does
linguistics, especially the study of etymology, throw on the history
of the evolution of moral concepts?" Nietzsche's genealogical method
not only exploits the same kind of "mental language common to all
nations" that empowers Vico's new science, but also yields a result
(concerning the aforementioned specific metonymic transformation)
which implicitly acknowledges part of Vico's tropological theory of
the history of consciousness.
Also in relation to historical method, both authors attack the
obstinacy of their ages concerning questions of the origins of humanity.
Vico condemns the "conceit of nations" and the "conceit of scholars"
( § 1 25-8), the modem parochial beliefs that current national customs
and standards of rational thought must have been in place since the
beginning of time; he thus repudiates the tendency of thinkers in the
C artesian tradition to attribute the rational sophistication of the pres
ent to the primitive origins of human institutions. Nietzsche, referring
to his words on the origins of "good'' and "bad" quoted above, likewise
observes: "With regard to a moral genealogy this seems to me a fun
damental insight; that it has been arrived at so late is the fault of the
retarding influence exercised by the democratic prejudice in the
modern world toward all questions of origin . . . . But what mischief
this prejudice is capable of doing, especially to morality and history . . ."
(28). The political and intellectual vanity of the present, both com
plain, always desires to overlook its embarassing origins in the savage
and irrational past.
The third area of shared intellectual territory encompasses the for
mation of human concepts by means of a specific tropological pro
gression . According to Vico, the first trope with which men created
ideas of the natural and social worlds is metaphor, "by which the first
poets attributed to bodies the being of animate substances, with

capacities measured by their own, namely sense and passion, and in
this way made fables of them. Thus every metaphor so formed is a
fable in brief " (§ 404) . The divine Jove, who received his name by
onomatopoeia from the roar of thunder, was the first fable, and in
deed, "the first of all gentile thoughts in the human world" (§ 447).
Vico equates these fables with "vera narratio, or true speech" (§ 401).
They must be true in two senses: first qua "universal" and "eternal ,"
because they embody social structures (e.g. religion) produced by
divine providence, structures which the "common sense" of all history
confirms as beneficial adaptations for man's survival, and second, qua
accurate representations of primitive consciousness, therefore as cer
tainties . Although we might say that the first fables of the divine age
were "errors," they were not falsehoods. Only with the ill-use of reflec
tion are falsehoods invented, says Vico (§ 8 1 7).
Originally able to think only in a highly "particular" and "sensible"
mode, these early poets increased their powers of abstraction by ex
tending their particular anthropomorphic metaphors to more general
names of things using the tropes of metonymy and synecdoche (§ 406) .
Since names for agents were presumably commoner than names for
acts, metonymy of agent for act extended the agent-metaphor to cover
a type of act performed by an agent. The original tropes, such as the
synecdoche mucro , or "point," for sword, were, for want of any superior
level of consciousness, at first taken uncritically as literal, and "had
originally their full native propriety." Only in more rational, abstract
and prosaic times were such terms rediscovered as metaphors, as
fi gurative, and the now difficult calculated art of poetry conceived.
In "On Truth and Lies," Nietzsche strongly echoes Vico with the
pronouncement that concepts are formed by generalizations of our
metaphorical assignments to include in the same class objects which
are in many respects dissimilar. We think that we identify classes of
objects, "whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts ,
and likewise with no species, but only with an X inaccessible and
undefinable for us" (OTL 83). What we take as literal statements of
truth are in fact figurative poetical statements that have been
transformed and extended by the various tropes and used to the point
of dry literality. Nietzsche asks in a famous and highly Vichian passage:
What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and
anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have
been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embel
lished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed ,
c anonical and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten

are illusions; they are metaphors which have become worn out and have
been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing
and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins. (OTL 84)
He mentions two of Vico's three fundamental constructive tropes, and

describes the evolution of language from the poetical to the prosaic ,
mythical to scientific, with the inevitable literalization of our metaphors
and other figurative terms as they increase in familiarity "after long
usage."
The recognition of figurative language as figurative betokens a
highly developed human consciousness with the capacity to distinguish
between the "fabulous" and the actual or literal. Now with regard to
the natural world, of which neither the "fabulous'' nor the actual is
true as scienza, this awareness is certainly harmless and arguably of
great benefit since it paves the way for the explorations of natural
science. But with respect to the social world of human institutions,
it is potentially catastrophic, since the fables have already been defined
as vera narratio and are therefore true as providential adaptations ,
naturally beneficial to human life. The conscious distinction between
the "fabulous" and the real, reflection upon the figurative and the literal,
can lead to an unjust rejection of what Vico considers socially vital
institutions, such as religion and marriage. The common sense by
which men had agreed on what was to be the rule of social life starts
to break down in an age of reflection when an ironic awareness
developes. "Irony," which Vico says "certainly could not have begun
until the period of reflection, because it is fashioned of falsehood by
dint of a reflection which wears the mask of truth" (§ 408), induces
men to deceive themselves by rejecting much truth as falsehood and
accepting falsehood as truth .
With the awareness of truth and falsity, truth tends to become a
desideratum, one which is potentially fatal. Because of the different
kinds of truth, the crucial vero is often lost among certainties which
are really eternal falsehoods wearing the "mask of truth." Nietzsche' s
identification of the "will to truth" as a formula for destruction , for
"self overcoming," should be interpreted with this Vichian model in
mind. Nietzsche dea rly thinks that certain illusions (which Vico's
jabulae surely were) are necessary to human existence. The will to truth,
which would destroy these beneficial illusions, is often a will against
life, he says.
The falsest judgements (among which are to be classed synthetic

judgements a priori) are the most indispensable for us; . . . the renun
ciation of false judgements would be a renunciation of life.9
An example of a life-negating drive for truth - a drive for truths
which are not illusions - is that ,of Christianity, thinks Nietzsche, who
claims that this Christian will to truth has been the central impetus
in the evolution of its own morality (see Genealogy, Third Essay, sec
tion 27) and will finally overcome Christianity itself in a wave of
nihilism. Nietzsche more than obviously rejects Vico's position regard
ing Christianity - that it is a direct revelation from God, and that
its truth will rescue the nations of Europe from the eternal course and
recourse of institutions - and instead includes Christianity in his criti
que of moral history.
What has been most important in this discussion is the notion that
genuine truths in the Vichian sense (of vero), as universal and eternal
principles of human society, are constructed first in fables and later
in laws and philosophies, but most often unwittingly and always in
terspersed with large quantities of illusion. Vico seems to say that
in order that truth should endure, it is often necessary that these illu
sions be overcome by others: the illusion of nature as animated with
gods by the illusion of the heroes as of divine lineage, and this by
the illusion of all men as equal in humanity. But in the advanced
human age an awareness arises which exposes the falsity of these il
lusions but does not reveal the true and necessary social principles
underlying them. The instruments by which divine providence had
formerly preserved society are useless. The will to truth becomes a
problem for human existence . When the forces of declining life - for
Vico the "matter'' among humanity, and for Nietzsche the weak whose
will to power has been thwarted externally and bent back inwardly
upon themselves (re-fiexion), thus creating a source of "bad conscience,"
ressentiment, and moralic acid - when these become reflectively aware
of the possibilities of irony, their revolt against any culture dominated
by strong, creative, luminous, forward-looking natures becomes
inevitable.
As a preparation for examining Vico' s representation of irony and
its consequences and implications for culture, we should remind
9 Quoted by Hans Vaihinger in "Nietzsche and His Doctrine of Conscious Illusion"
in Vaihinger, The Philosophy of 'As .lf'(Harcourt Brace, 1925). From Nietzsche's Werke
VI, 1 2 .
ourselves of some features of Kierkegaard's potentially helpful analysis

of irony both as a figure of speech arid a mental outlook. In The Con
cept of Irony, 10 he characterizes irony as "infinite absolute negativity"
(276), emphasizing the importance of subjectivity. The rhetorical
ironist sometimes engages in a kind of dissemblance for the sake of
dissembling, experiencing a satisfying "subjective freedom." "At such
moments," writes Kierkegaard, "actuality loses its validity for him;
he is free and above it'' (270). Irony in the "eminent" sense - as an
attitude (as opposed to a rhetorical figure) - "directs itself not against
this or that particular existence but against the whole given actuality
of a certain time and situation" (273) . The negativity of a generalized
ironic consciousness lies in its condemnation of objective actuality
of every type: political, moral, religious, scientific, etc. The main
ironist in Kierkegaard's study, for example, is Socrates, whose stand
point is summarized thus: "the whole substantial life of Hellenism had
lost its validity for him, that is to say, the established actuality had
become unreal to him, not in some particular aspect but in its totali
ty as such" (287) . The power to negate an entire cultural landscape,
which Vico and Nietzsche as well as Kierkegaard (279) seem to at
tribute to irony, allows it sometimes to clear the way for new cultural
construction - but by itself irony produces nothing. We should say
that the Vichian revolt of the "matter" and the Nietzschian "slave revolt''
alike employ irony in an unremittingly destructive way, since the vi
sion of a society without "form" or of man as "herd-animal" is essen
tially negative .
According to Vico , ironic consciousness. engenders it own revolu
tion in human society by reducing philosophy to skepticism and oratory
to eristic, thereby destroying the mechanisms by which virtue is pro
moted in a rational age, as it was by religious sentiment or heroic
power in earlier ages. Vico thinks that divine providence, as always,
will preserve human society, but will do so either by handing power
to a monarch who can try to stabilize the institutions of popular liberty
( § 1 104), or by allowing the conquest of the decadent nation by a
stronger and more orderly one. Failing these solutions, one harsher
possibility remains: to await the rebirth of society after the barbarism
of reflection has run its course. In the following passage Vico gives
an important description of how advanced barbarism proceeds and,
in effect, cleans the slate of culture:
1 0 S0ren
Kierkegaard, The Concept ef Irony, tr. Lee Capel (Bloomington: In<liana
University Press, 1 965) .
But if the peoples are rotting in that ultimate civil disease and cannot
agree on a monarch from within, and are not conquered and preserved
by better nations from without, then providence for their extreme ill
has its extreme remedy at hand. For such peoples, like so many beasts,
have fallen into the custom of each man thinking only ef his own private in
terests and have reached the ext�me of delicacy, or better of pride, in
which like wild animals they bristle and lash out at the slightest
displeasure. Thus no matter how great the throng and press of their
bodies, they live like wild beasts in a deep solitude ef spirit and will, scarcely
any two being able to agree since each follows his own pleasure or
caprice. By reason of all this, providence decrees that, through obstinate
factions and desperate civil wars, they shall turn their cities into forests
and the forests into dens and lairs of men. In this way, through long
centuries of barbarism, rust will consume the misbegotten subtleties
of malicious wits that have turned them into beasts made more inhuman
by the barbarism of refT.ection than thefirst men had been made by the barbarism
of sense. (§ 1 1 06, italics added)
As ironic consciousness degrades philosophy into the Epicurean

skeptical resignation to chance or the Stoic to fate , it likewise pro
duces a cynicism about the ability of discourse and rhetoric to reach
truth and encourages the routine and shameless use of a "false elo
quence" by which men , hungry no longer for rightness, but instead
for wealth and power ( § 1 1 02), can attack in a most insidious man
ner those persons or institutions which stand in the way. Unlike the
plain and honest "generous savagery" or "barbarism of sense" displayed
by primitive men, these reflective barbarians act "with a base savagery,
under soft words and embraces , [a savagery which] plots against the
life and fortune of friends and intimates " ( § 1 106) and thereby plunges
a nation into civil strife , making society impossible.
These features of the barbarism of reflection bear close comparison
with Nietzsche's highly similar account of what he also describes as
a kind of barbarism, which can result from the scientific study of
history, and which likewise arises from ironic consciousness. In the
"Use and Disadvantages of History for Life" Nietzsche describes a
course of societal decay brought on by an excess of historical
knowledge . One might object that historical knowledge is different
from the reflective awareness of truth and falsity which lies at the root
of the barbarism of reflection. But by asking how a people can be
supposed to have developed such an awareness, it becomes clear that
only by having seen gods once thought to be real but now known as
mere myths , heroes once thought to be divine but now known to be
human, gross imp1et1es once unthinkable but now known to be

possibilities, only, in short, through the study of moral and social
history can men learn that what is considered "true" may in fact be
false and that what is false or even unthinkable may in actuality be
true, although this does not mean true in the sense of il vero .
Nietzsche's basic premise in "The Use and Disadvantages of History
for Life" is that "there is a degree of sleeplessness, of rumination , of
the historical sense, which is harmful and ultimately fatal to the living
thing, whether this living thing be a man or a people or a culture"
(62). Although some kinds of history serve life, he says, when the
study of history becomes a science, when pure historical knowledge
is pursued for its own sake, then "all that has ever been rushes upon
m ankind" (77) with potentially disastrous consequences:
The oversaturation of an age with history seems to me to be hostile

and dangerous to life in five respects: such an excess creates the con
trast between inner and outer that we have just discussed, and thereby
weakens the personality; it leads an age to imagine that it possesses
the rarest of virtues, justice, to a greater degree than any other age;
it disrupts the instincts of a people, and hinders the individual no less
than the whole in the attainment of maturity ; it implants the belief,
harmful at any time , in the old age of mankind, the belief that one i s
latecomer and epigone; i t leads a n age into a dangerous mood o f irony
in regard to itself and subsequently into the even more dangerous mood
of cynicism : in this mood, however, it develops more and more a pru
dent practical egoism through which the forces oflife are paralyzed and
destroyed. (83)
The first of these dangers, the "contrast between inner and outer,"
arises, according to Nietzsche, when an influx of historical "knowledge
. . . no longer acts as an agent for transforming the outside world but
remains concealed within a chaotic inner world which modern man
describes with a curious pride as his uniquely characteristic 'subjec
tivity"' (78) . This inward content, this burden of multiple and con
tradictory truths and values of past ages, he claims, makes men "walk
ing encyclopaedias," but is no longer real cuture since it is not
manifested outwardly, as traditions openly shared by a society,
"as unity of artistic style in all the expressions of the life of a people"
(79). Among a people wretchedly torn apart "into inner and outer,
content and form" (79), any outward form of culture is disdained as
social convention and pretense. And so Nietzsche says something
almost exactly like what Vico had said about the barbarism of reflec
tion; he also speaks of the negation of reality of which Kierkagaard
wrote in connection with irony:
This antithesis of inner and outer . . . makes the exterior even more bar
·
baric than it would be if a rude riation were only to develop out of itself in accor
dance with its own uncouth needs. For what means are available to nature
for overcoming that which presses upon it in too great abundance? One
alone, to embrace it as lightly as possible so as quickly to expel it again
and have done with it. From this comes the habit of no longer taking real
things seriously , from this arises the 'weak personality' by virtue of which
the real and existent makes only a slight impression . . . one finally widens
the dubious gulf between content and form to the point of complet.e
insensibility to barbarism. (79; italics added)
With respect to the "second danger," the false sense ofjustice which
historical knowledge may lead an age to possess, Nietzsche notes that
historical verification always brings to light so much that is false, crude,
inhuman, absurd, violent that the mood of pious illusion in which alone
anything that wants to live can live necessarily crumbles away . . . . (95)
Here we see precisely the problem of an advanced reflective awareness
that is implicit in Vico . Without the benefit of Vico's science, men
are unable to separate the eternal truths of human society which
underlie the barbarities of past institutions from all the falsehqods ,
errors and illusions which these same institutions contain. An inference
is naturally drawn against the "truth" of present institutions, which
start to be viewed ironically. Although illusions per se may be of little
intrinsic worth, naturally evolved illusions often contain principles
indispensible for life and are true in the Vichian sense of il vero . Now
as for Nietzsche's "third danger," he says that for any nation or in
dividual to attain maturity, such an enveloping illusion is also required.
Exposure too early in life to all of the strangeness and violence in
history can lead only to "intentional stupidity" or to a sense of
"disgust"(98) . The "fourth peril,'' that of the sense of the "old age" of
mankind, arises not suprisingly from this disgust with the past and
despair for the future . And here Nietzsche displays � rather Vichian
sense of the eternal in human nature, of the necessity of certain in
stitutions (religion, marriage, burial) in spite of important but more
superficial changes in modes of consciousness and institutions: "But
the human race is a tough and persistent thing and will not permit
its progress - forwards or backwards - to be viewed in terms of
millenia, or indeed hardly in terms of hundreds of millenia . . . " ( 10 1 ) .

The "fifth'' and last danger of the scientific study of history which
Nietzsche mentions is the development of an "ironic self-awareness"
( 1 00) . This ironic consciousness is implicit in the first four dangers:
irony with respect to outward culture, with respect to any ideal
unhistorical sense ofjustice, with respect to growth and maturity, and
indeed with respect to any hope for the future other than senescence
and death. This self-irony, according to Nietzsche, can produce a kind
of cynicism, a denial of responsibility for the future, a surrender to
the notion of a "world-process." He calls this "the cynical canon: as
things are they had to be, as men now are they were bound to become,
none may resist this inevitability" ( 1 07). The cynical outlook is used
to justify all sorts of egoism, since egoism will have been discerned
as the force behind all movement in history, but now no longer the
"imprudent egoism" of the past, rather a "cunning and historically
cultivated egoism" which knows how to use the power of the state
( 1 14-5) . Culture falls apart in this way simply because of an over
dose of historical truth, "doctrines of sovereign becoming, of the fluidity
of all concepts, types and species, of the lack of any cardinal distinc
tion between man and animal- doctrines which I consider true but
deadly," says Nietzsche ( 1 1 2) . And the reason for this flood of history?
Nietzsche indicates, "we shall have to discover a particularly unpleas
ant fact: that the excesses of historical sensefrom which the present day suffers
are deliberateryfurthered, encouraged and- employed" ( 1 1 5) . The perpetrators
whom he accuses are certain belated "greybeards," basically agents
of what he would later call the slave revolt, who are writing "history
from the standpoint of the masses and seeking to derive the laws which
govern it from the needs of these masses, that is to say from the laws
which move the lowest mud- and clay-strata of society" ( 1 1 3). Nietz
sche of course emphasizes in this essay that the goal of humanity can
lie only in its "highest exemplars," in a few great men, not in the end
of humanity envisioned in some historical process conceived to suit
the masses. He proposes two antidotes to the pathological excess of
the historical: the "unhistorical" and the "suprahistorical." The former
is simply the power of forgetting; the latter consists of "powers which
lead the eye away from becoming towards that which bestows upon
existence the character of the eternal and stable, towards art and religion"
( 1 20) .
With the notion of the suprahistorical we return to the heart of the
New Science. The construction of a "mental dictionary," the philologico
historical inquiry into that which changes and that which remains fixed
in human consciousness - the method which Vico and Nietzsche

share - is at one level essentially genealogical (and traces the rupture
and discontinuities of an object's history) , but out of discontinuity
it also seeks the unchanging pattern. A science of the suprahistorical
that could abstract the eternal truths of culture from the flux of
ephemeral illusions, that could acknowledge the continuous and
developing presence throughout history of certain institutions essen
tial for human society, may, it is thought, protect society from the
over-acute awareness of a mass of historical ironies and injustices and
the dangerous globally ironic outlook which this induces .
But in the light of this hope for the preservation and continuity
of culture, the Nietzsche we see in his later works poses a serious ques
tion concerning the feasibility and desirability of efforts to oppose
decline. What if all such efforts are eventually doomed to failure, either
because the "matter" will always finally overcome the "form," or perhaps
because no such division truly exists and all will succumb to the bar
barism of reflection? Although a conservative and constructive spirit
fills Vico's New Science (§ 1 4 1 0), he himself seems all too ready to
acknowledge the dark possibility that only when "rust will consume
the misbegotten subtleties of malicious wits ," will human society rise
again from its ruins and ascend to previous heights. If the continuity
of culture is impossible, if eventual collapse and rebirth are inevitable,
why not encourage the process rather than resist it? In section 4 1 7
o f the Will to Power, 11 Nietzsche retraces his path to precisely this radical
view:
1 . My endeavor to oppose decay and increasing weakness of per
sonality. I sought a new center.
2 . Impossibility of this endeavor recognized .
3 . Thereupon I advanced further down the road to disintegration -
where I found new sources of strength for individuals. We have to be
destroyers! - I perceived that the state of disintegration, in which in
dividual natures can perfect themselves as never before - is an image
and isolated example ot existence in general. To the paralysing sense
o f general disintegration and incompleteness I opposed the eternal
recurrence.
His reason seems to lie in his ever-present affirmation of the prime
significance of the individual as opposed to the society. If the goal
of a society lies only in its "highest exemplars," then what matter if
1 1 Friedrich Nietzsche,
Will to Power, tr. ed. Walter Kaufmann, tr. R.J. Hollingdale
(New York: Vintage Books, 1 968).
the society is periodically smashed as long as the individual is afforded

the opportunity for increasing perfection? The later Nietzsche's radi
cal, reversal of the preservationist position of Vico and the earlier
Nietzsche represents simply a refinement of this emphasis on the in
dividual . It remains an open question whether Vico, who also places
considerable weight on individual perfection (with his theory of the
"more robust" giants and so forth), might ever have come to espouse
unequivocally a view like that of the mature Nietzsche.
Beverly Allen
NIETZSCHE'S ITALIAN DECLINE :

THE POETS
The "readings'' of Nietzsche discernible in contemporary Italian poetry

may be thought of in two categories. One includes poets who, by seeing
Nietzsche through the lens of Heidegger, give him a "German" tone,
a coloration, so to speak, that indicates a sense of noble lineage and
quest. The goal of this quest is to escape from or go beyond language's
metaphysical bondage; the pursuit of this goal creates a sense of elite
community for those who engage in it. The other group, to the ex
tent that it "reads'' Nietzsche, does so mostly negligently, with a sense
of expendability, say, that might more easily characterize the ludic
reverence of a communal potlatch than the nobility of an elite quest .
Disdaining attempts to "go beyond" metaphysics , this poetry is com
municatively motivated. The terms in which Nietzsche "appears" in
this kind of poetry are more "French" than "German"; they are found,
for example, in Bataille's Sur Nietzsche, a text that has been of seminal
importance since Andrea Zanzotto translated it almost two decades
ago . 1 But some prophetic hints of the current situation appear already
in the work of Dino Campana, and so I shall begin to trace this con
temporary literary history or genealogy in Campana. I quote :
"Once I was a writer, but I had to quit because my mind got weak.
I don't connect ideas, I don't follow . . . Now I have to take care of more
.
important things."
1 Georges Bataille, Sur Nietzsche, in Oeuvres completes, VI, Tome II (Paris : Gallimard,
1 973); tr. Andrea Zanzotto as Nietzsche, il cu/mine e il possibile, with an introduction
by Maurice Blanchot (Milan: Rizwli, 1976). Translations of Bataille mine.
333
"And yet they used to praise you for your poetic genius . You really
should take up poetry again . . . .
"
"I am occupied with communications! I am in communication with

Milan as a kind of gramophone, a wireless telegraph. I use a form of
intercontinental hypnotic suggestion . The whole press is written by me.
I am the war topic. It is I who marry off all the princesses, the princesses
are the industry of the dead, the dead are a kind of critique that the
allies make of Germany. My life consists in speaking continuously."2
Of the various imitations of Nietzsche we may discern in twentieth
century Italian poetry after D'Annunzio, Dino C ampana's is the most
literal. Nietzsche's influence on Campana's poetry, chronicled by Neuro
Bonifazi in 1 964, extends beyond the page to C ampana's life . 3 If we
recognize Nietzsche's eternal return as the ideational basis of
C ampana's Canti oifici [orphic songs] , it is also tempting to view the
Italian poet's entry into madness as a biographical mimesis of his
philosopher-predecessor's own dementia. The delusional hyperbole
of Campana's dialogue - which I just quoted - with his psychiatrist ,
C arlo Pariani, on November 8 , 1926, reverberates with echoes of
Nietzsche's 1889 letters from Turin. The similarities between the life
situations of these two thinkers are so notable that one may feel prompt
ed to search in C ampana's poetry for some equine encounter as fate
ful as that of Nietzsche .
There are, in fact, many horses in Campana. They appear in diverse
guises, at times synesthetic metaphor, at times simile, at times as the
implicit (and etymologically present) agents of human distinction -
the original horseriding trait, that is, of the noble class of cavalieri.
The appearances of horses in the Canti oifici do not signal a literal
entry into madness , as in the legend about Nietzsche's collapse . But
they are associated with themes of eros, disgregation and death, and
poetry, each of which has some traditional occidental resonance as
a break in order, each of which is, as readers of Ariosto and other
canonical Italian literature well know, a bit mad. Prose poems like
"La notte ," "La Verna," and "Sulla Falterona" show galloping horses
in these thematic contexts. 4 They appear, for example, as the auditory
accompaniment to the liberation of a young woman's libido, as a
chivalric dream of white-armed ladies leaning languidly over balconies,
and as a cavalry of cracks in a landscape that is coming undone . In
2 In Carlo Pariani, Vita non romanzata di Dino Campana (Milan: Guanda, 1978) 31-32.
Translation mine.
3 Neuro Bonifazi, Dino Campana (Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo, 1 978).
• In Dino Campana, Canti orfici (Florence: Vallecchi, 1973). All translations from
this volume mine.
A llen: Nietzsche's Italian Decline 335
the poem "Viaggio a Montevideo," sand dunes disintegrate "like diz

zy mares," and, in the prose poem "Pamoa," themes of death and
liberation are played out in a cavalry-against-the-Indians scenario .
Campana's horses weave these disruptive themes of eros, disgrega
tion and death, and poetry thrnughout the book, but thefr most con
cise occurrence is in the prose section of "Ritorno ," where poetry is
fi gured in a genealogy now at an end, a genealogy whose order is
definitively broken . In a context defined, on the one hand, by Italian
literature and painting, and, on the other, by a story of death and
mourning, a shadowy but sensual tu appears as the very daughter
of poetry. Having descended from her horse, however, she is forget
ful of the love the poet bears her as she departs with her friends . The
subject speaks:
I rest now for the last time in the forest's solitude. Dante his poetry
of movement it all comes back in my memory. Oh pilgrim, oh pilgrims
who go thoughtfully! Catrina, strange daughter of the barbarous moun
tain, of the winds' rocky hollow, how sweet is your cry: how sweet when
you were there at the scene of your mother's mourning, of your mother
whose last son had died. One of the pious women near her, kneeling,
sought to console her: but she did not wish to be consoled, but she,
casting herself down upon the ground, wanted to cry out all her grief.
Ghirlandaio figure, last daughter of the Tuscan poetry that was, you
then descended from your horse you then were watching: you who arose
in the waving flood of your hair, you arose with your companions, as
in the fables of ancient poetry: and you had already forgotten the poet's
love. (39)
For C ampana, the poet of return, a patrilineally-defined tradition
of poetry has come to an end. The last son is dead, and the noble
ordeals of the original cavalieri of the lyric are over. There are no male
heirs left to imitate their struggles or to take up the rivalry lying at
the heart of such imitation. With changed lineaments, poetry's future
is gendered as female . It survives in its "last daughter," who chooses
walking over horseback riding. Having other things to do , she neglects
the poet's love and, with it, the proprieties of chivalric tradition .
Poetry also survives, in Campana, as speech, in the everyday noise
of conversation in a Tuscan piazza, as we read in "Stia, 20 settem-
. bre . " This prose poem is one of the Canti 01:fici 's most economic
statements of Campana's projective poetic genealogy, for it includes
in one representative anecdote two ideas central to that genealogy:
one, the survival of poetry in the communicative function of language ,
and the other, the end of chivalric rivalry. Here, after a day's climb
and descent of the Falterona mountains, the subject catches some

sounds of"Tuscan poetry still alive in the piazza resounding with tran
quil voices." Then, upon entering an inn, he happens on the story
telling of an old Milanese knight. The decrepit cavalier, vexed at his
lady's explanation of "the oddities of the heart," brings his own collo
quy to an end with a little French poem consisting entirely of a simile
whose first term has been cut off:
Comme deux ennemis rompus
Que leur haine ne soutient plus
Et qui laissent tomber leurs armes! (34)
[ Like two broken enemies
Whose hatred no longer sustains them
And who let their weapons fall!]
This French moment of the descent of chivalric rivalry in C am
pana's book signals a change in the nature of Nietzsche imitations
in Italian poetry. No Italian poet's life after Campana is so readable
as an imitation of Nietzsche . No Italian poet after Campana has read
Nietzsche so literally. But, going backwards for a moment, we find
that Nietzsche's Italian sojourn holds a poetic genealogy of its own .
Nietzsche descends the Alps and comes to Turin, and Turin is Italy,
and Italy, for Nietzsche, is , like poetry, the aperture onto that which
cannot be communicated in prose. Nietzsche's own poetry always ap
pears as a break in or an appendage to the inevitable but undesired
teleology of his prose and brings to it, by contrast, a language that
does not know its own end. Poetry is, in Nietzsche's writings, a mise
en-abyme of what even Zarathustra strives for but cannot attain in
language . It is the sign of an anti-narrative , Dionysian art, the sur
charging of the parts at the expense of the misleading whole, the ap
pearance of disorderly excess within linear order. It literally makes
of the prose an opera aperta, an invitation to eternal, willful revision .
Nietzsche comes to Italy, and Italy gives him fatherly predecessors
in Vico's rincorsi, in Tasso's madness. These figures take their places
in a genealogy whose origins are traceable in the chivalric lyric of
a thirteenth-century Sicilian court. As we have already seen,
Campana's twentieth-century web of metaphors re-presents those
origins as the place where eros and disgregation found speech in the
verse of Italy's medieval horsemen of the courtly lyric. While Nietz
sche's mad embrace of the horse in Turin may be apocryphal, his
symbolic participation in a literary genealogy whose origins bear the

distinguishing mark of horsemanship is not .
But Nietzsche comes to Italy again in 1970, when the poet Zanzotto
translates a French text "on" Nietzsche. Written in occupied France
in 1943, Sur Nietzsche appears witfiin George Bataille's ambivalent criti
que of Fascism as an inventive, rather than imitative, reading of "sum
mit morality." For Bataille , such "morality" always implies its own
inversion . He writes, "To formulate a critique is already to decline .
The fact of 'speaking' of a moral of the summit itself depends on a
moral of decline" (56) . Such "decline," then, is the inevitable, gravity
bound counterpart of askesis; it mimics the movements necessary both
to mountain-climbing and to mounting and dismounting a horse .
Bataille's Nietzsche disdains such exertions and instead embraces no
tions of immanence and communication which, in turn, are impossi
ble without lightness.
In a gloss on the eternal return, for example, which Bataille speaks
of as an "added idea'' (like poetry in Nietzsche's own texts) , he says ,
"Absence of effort! . . . How beautiful is this denial of transcendence,
of its formidable commandments, because of its lightness!" ( 1 59) . The
l ightness is ludic, risky, experimental, and its naivete corresponds to
what Bataille calls a state of immanence where the self, and conse
quently language, are put into play. He writes:
The state of immanence means: beyond good and evil. It is linked to

non-askesis, to the freedom of meanings. The same goes for the naivete
of the game. By arriving at this immanence, our lives leave, at last ,
the phase of the masters. ( 1 70)
While we may see a resemblance between this "non-askesis" and

the last daughter of Tuscan poetry's disdain for both her poet and
her horse in Campana, such immanence, in Bataille's reading of
Nietzsche, is the communion established between the perpetrator and
the victim of theocide. But the result of such a crime, of such a trans
gression of propriety, is a more loving, if imperfect, communication .
Bataille's Nietzsche dismisses the heroics of askesis in favor of the
negligent aporia of communication, even though it is inevitably messy.
In Sur Nietzsche, communication is love, and love, like crime, "soils
what it unites'' ( 43). For Bataille, the necessity of communicating within
the metaphysics of language is ineluctable: it is both the measure of
our humanity and the paradoxical condition of a glimpse of the "sum
mit ." "Like Kafka's castle," he writes,
the summit is finally nothing more than the inaccessible. It reveals itself
to us, at least to the extent that we do not cease to be human: to the
extent , that is, that we do not ce ase to speak . (57)
This "French" Nietzsche of Bataille is represented in a vast array

of contemporary poetic production in Italy which may be contrasted
with the endeavors of the more Heideggerean poets to whom I allud
ed earlier. These "Heideggerean" poets have been likened to the
stilnovisti in their communal (and perhaps paradoxical) endeavors to
transcend metaphysics. 5 Luigi Ballerini finds an emblem for their quest
in Tiresias's prophecy to Odysseus . 6 Odysseus will have arrived at
the inland place of his death when the oar he carries is "read" as a
winnowing fan by one whose agricultural lexicon admits no seafar
ing reference . To such poets as Ballerini, Raffaele Perrotta, Alfredo
Giuliani, Angelo Lumelli, and Nanni Cagnone, poetic language is
an enactment of "noetic dignity" in the face of death, and death i s
the "ultimate and inimitable object o f poetic imitation" (Ballerini 1 9 7 ,
1 95). The most representative o f these poets is Nanni Cagnone, and
the most representative of Cagnone's poetic devices is the line con
stituted solely by an initial comma. The comma , in turn, is itself the
succinct, punctual site of referential shift, the shift, say, from oar to
winnowing-fan . But the comma is also a cutting-off, an interruption
Angus Fletcher has characterized as "the virtual or actual castration
of a continuous speaking ,"7 and we can find representative enactments
of this in many of Cagnone's poems.8 Take the following, for exam
ple , in which the comma is used as it is, Fletcher suggests, "because
it is a poem of death, that most dismal of castrations- one might call
it the last castration, or maybe just 'the last roundup"' (341) :
- contiguita e la morte puo darsi
invece di toccare sapere che

- essere spinti dalla vicinanza9
5 See Robert Harrison, «The Italian Silence" Critical Inquiry 1 3 . 1 ( 1 986) 8 1 -99.
6 Luigi Ballerini, "The Oar of Odysseus,» in Thomas Harrison, ed. , The Favorite
Malice: Ontology and Reference in Contempomry Italian Poetry (New York: Out of Lon
don Press, 1983) 195-99.
7 Angus Fletcher, "Letter, in Haste, to Nanni Cagnone," in T. Harrison 339.
8 See also, for example, the poems "considera che ii moto" and "sfondo d'osso
dell'udito' in Cagnone's volume, A ndatura (Milan: Guanda, 1 979) .

9 Cagnone 10. Translation mine. This 1 979 version differs from one that appeared
four years earlier in What's Hecuba To Him Or He To Hecuba? (New York: Out of
[ - contiguity is death maybe
instead of touching knowing that

- being pushed by nearness]
Whatever interpretation we· might bring to this poem and its com
ma, one thing, at least, is evident: the horizontal messiness of com
munication is not the goal of the "Heideggerean" Italian poets.
(Cagnone's poetry, in fact, has been characterized by a supportive
commentator as a "refusal to offer itself as actor in the tragedy of
communication."10) The goal of these poets is a neat delineation of
what they take to be a Nietzschean "silence" - a silence that would
hover between speech and nonspeech. The Heideggerean affiliation
of this project has been traced in detail by Gianni Vattimo . 1 1 This
serious quest for an ideal poetic "silence," a quest which seeks to em
body its own cutting off has, however, a joyful Nietzschean prere
quisite: "One must already be happy in order to seek," Cagnone writes .
And he reveals the elite , unsullied uncertainty as well as the errant
nature of the quest when he adds , "Only the scum are right."12
But such a poetics of ennobling quest both justifies and undermines
a comparison of these "Heideggereans" with the stilnovisti. Centuries
have passed since Cavalcanti rode through Florence on horseback,
and the stilnovistic search for a poetic community in which nobility
depends not on lineage but rather on gentility of soul continues in
our time, but in somewhat different terms. To move into a · more
egalitarian poetic community, one perhaps has to read Nietzsche as
humbly and as lovingly as Bataille has done . One would also have
to accept that, along with paradoxical attempts at "getting beyond''
metaphysics, there comes an aporistic communion with what one has
challenged. We should therefore take Zanzotto's lightness seriously
when he speaks of the text as an alien that comes to possess the body
psyche and so become one with it in a messy, problematic "field" where
ontology and reference cannot be distinguished. 1 3 Zanzotto , in fact,
reveals his own unsuitability as a father figure for Cagnone's and
B allerini's thanatography when he writes :
London Press, 1975) in that the final line o f the earlier version, "a tenere inutili le
mani" (to hold hands useless) , has been cut.
1 0 Tomaso Kemeny, Foreword, in Cagnone, What� Hecuba xiii.
1 1 "The Shattering of the Poetic Word," in T. Harrison 223-235.
1 2 Axiom 25 in the "Prima e poi" section of A ndatura 67. Translation mine,
1 3 "(Ontology?) (Reference?)", in T. Harrison 1 3 3 . Tr. Thomas Harrison.

There was once a time of "dances," of funeral pyres, of very Nero

nian theaters ; then of residues , ash e s , shapes on Japanese walls . To
d ay it seems that everything has gone into gelatin , an excellent one ,
made of chicken, or maybe of the plasma of daily drippings of blood .

A gelatine perhaps not un pleasant to Nietzsche the dietician , the
hygienist and expert on the liquidation of divine firms . a
B y o ppo s ing " gelatin" to funeral rituals and their cindery residues,
Zanzotto s u gge st s a po e tic s which de rive s more from the everyday
events of biology and biography than from the "mo st dismal of castra
tions," the non- e vent of de ath . In so doing, he opts for the impulse
to constant communication in spite of everything, and he relinquishes
any figure-head authority the "H eideggerean" poets might wish to give
·
him.
From this perspective, as s o c i atio n s of the "Germ an" I t ali an poets
with Zanzotto - or with the stilnovisti , for that matter - appear to con
tradict those poets' own po etic s of noncommunication or "silence ."
If we look inste ad at the "French" I talian poets, those emblematized
by Bataille's rather than by Heidegger's Nietzs che , that i s , we find
a contr a stin g situation . Such diverse poetics as those of Mario Luz i ,
Amelia Rosselli , Jolanda I ns ana , Vivian Lamarq ue , Armanda

Guiducc i , Giulia Niccolai , th e late Pier Paolo Pasolini , and Andre a
Z anzotto share a quality that di stinguish es their v aried production
from the im puls e toward "silence" of the m ore Heideggerean poets .
Regardless of their individual dilemmas re g ardin g metaphysics , the
work of the se poets demonstrates a sense of context - whether sub
j ective , civic , literary, p oliti c al , theological or linguistic . This implies
a fun d am ental i m p ulse toward and commitment to communication .
The contexts th at , t o use Zanzotto's term , " inv ade" the work o f these
poets are akin to the immanence Bataille talksab out in Nietzsche ;
that is , t hey su g gest a communion of alteriti es, which
result in com·
m unic at ion , even if the medium , or " gel ," to quote Zanzotto again ,
is the imperfect one of l angu age . The representative anecdote for these
poets would be one of incorporation , the representative literary mode ,
autobiography (or autophysiography) . Their art has the mobili ty that
comes from not be in g attached to a ph ant a sm of castration . The
"French" rather than the "German" Nietzsche is thus discernible in
this poetic production , and the most succinct site of this discemment
what C agnone' s comma is to the "Heideggereans" - is found in the
erotic discourse of the feminists .
, . "(Ontology?) (Reference ?)" 1 36 . Translation slightly modified.

The eros in feminist poets like Rosselli, Lamarque and Niccolai,

for example, is a willful undoing of inherited proprieties . Most often
"heterosexual," the subject of this discourse speaks with the voice of
her who for centuries was only its object. Unlike her nineteenth-century
predecessors, she is no longer particularly angry. Having claimed ti
tle to her own experience, she communicates it with little concern
for whether such communication is bound to or allowed by
metaphysics. Her dealings with language tend to the polyglotism of
Rosselli and Niccolai, which, like dialect in Zanzotto and Pasolini,
emphasize a lively multiplicity of communicative possibilities rather
than a concern with the impossibility ofreference. This linguistic fluid
ity neglects many of the problems posed by metaphysics just as it often
neglects the proprieties of normative psychoanalytic anecdote. In
Rosselli's "October Elizabethans," for example, an antiquated English
gives lusty, ironic voice to a young girl's sexual desire for a substitute
father.15 In a contrasting plunge into infantile sexualjty, Vivian
Lamarque's prize-winning "Teresino" poems make children oflovers ,
butthey are children who enjoy some very "adult" games. 1 6 Giulia
Niccolai transgresses any number of traditional imagistic and linguistic
proprieties in her book, Harry 's Bar. In the poem, "Two Jewels," for
example; instead of attributing woman's pleasure to the agency of a
man's hand, the subject declares her own body to be the agent of what
the man's hand does . 1 7
Some o f these poems are a little dirty, particularly to sensibilities
unused to hearing poetic articulations of womanly pleasure from the
person who experiences it. Many of them, Lamarque's and Niccolai's
in particular, are also very happy. The dirtiness and euphoria
associated with this female telling of eros are crimes against proprie
ty precisely in the way that theocide, in Bataille's Nietzsche , is. This
erotic discourse thematizes Bataille's incorporative notion of im
manence in. sexual terms, giving it, from a heterosexual woman's point
of view, a most positive cast. It also contains the linguistic implica
tions we find in Sur Nietzsche of communication as both love and the
distinguishing feature of humanity. Its joy is the effortless, "criminal"
lightness that transgresses propriety and writes itself in a living con
tinuity of events, even when those events are the imperfect ones of
l anguage.
15 Amelia, Rosselli, "On Fatherish Men," in Primi Scritti 1 952-1 963 (Milan: Guan
da, 1 980) 63-64.

15 Vivian Lamarque, Teresino (Milan: Guanda, 1 981), especially the poem , "Teresino
squisito" (81).
1 77 In Giulia Niccolai, Harry's Bar (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1981) 1 7 5 .
For all this, we may see this particular eros as an emblem of a wealth
of poetry now flourishing in Italy which has not cut itself off in an
elite solitude but has chosen Zanzotto's nutritious, if messy, "gelatin"
over a poetics based on thanatography. Its disregard for a post
metaphysics of ontology and reference that informs the serious efforts
of its brothers may simply be a choice of Sappho over Plato. It has,
in the "archeological" Pasolini, a precedent for a transgressive rewriting
of the past, but its "reading'' of Nietzsche, like Pasolini's, is generally
negligent, emblematized by, but not necessarily historically traceable
to, Bataille. The poetry, from Luzi to Lamarque, which the com
municative impulse of this erotic discourse in part represents has, in
any case , a more "French" than "German" tinge to it. Of course, like
most heuristic devices, this is too rough a distinction. But, to mix
Campana's metaphoric realms with those of Bataille , it may just be
in this lightness that comes from continual speech, in this impulse
to communication, that we find the "last daughter of the Tuscan poetry
that was."
CONTRIBUTORS
GIORGIO AGAMBEN is the author of works of philosophy and aesthetic history,

including L'uomo senza contenuto, Stanze, fl linguaggio e la morte, lnfanzia e storia .
GIANNI VATTIMO is Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of
Turin. His books include fl soggetto e la maschera: Nietzsche e la problema delta

liberazione, Le avventure delta differenza, Al di la del soggetto, and La fine delta
modernita.
MICHEL SERRES is Professor of French at Stanford University. He has pub
lished books about the history of science and philosophy.

REN E GIRARD is the Andrew B: Hammond Professor of French, Comparative
Literature, and Religious Studies at Stanford University. He is currently

completing a book on Shakespeare.
LOUIS MARIN is Directeur d'Etudes at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes and
Directeur du Centre de Recherche sur les Arts et le Langage. He has written

La critique du discours, Le recit est un piege, Le portrait du roi, and La parole mangee.
DAVID E. WELLBERY is Professor of German Studies and Comparative
Literature at Stanford University. He has written books on Lessing and

Goethe and edited Positionen der Literaturwissenschaft (Munich, 1 985) and
Reconstructing Individualism (Stanford, 1986) .
ANACLETO VERRECCHIA is the author of La catastrofe di Nietzsche a Torino (Turin:
Einaudi, 1 978).
MAZZINO MONTINARI was the coeditor of the Walter de Gruyter edition of
Nietzsche's works and the author of Su Nietzsche.

AVITAL RONELL is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Berkeley.
She is the author of Dictations: On Haunted Writing ( 1986) , a number of ar

ticles on Heidegger, Goethe, Nuclear Criticism and Kafka, translations of
Jacques Derrida. Her next work, The Telephone Book, is forthcoming in 1988.
343
BARBARA SPACKMAN is Assistant Professor of ltalian at Northwestern Univer

sity. She has published on D'Annunzio at Fiume and is currently completing
a book on the Decadent rhetoric of sickness.
DAVID L . MILLER is Watson-Ledden Professor of Religion at Syracuse Univer
sity. He is the author of The New PolytheiSm ( 1 98 1), Gods and Games: Toward
a TheolOgy ef Play ( 1 970), and Three Faces ef God: Traces ef the Trinity in Literature
and Life ( 1 986) .
GIORGIO COLLI was the coeditor of the Walter de Gruyter edition of Nietzsche's
works and the author of many philosophical studies, including Dopo Nietzsche
and La sapienza greca .
THOMAS HARRISON, Assistant Professor ofltalian at Louisiana State Univer
sity, is the editor of The Favorite Malice: Ontology and Reference in Contemporary
Italian Poetry (New York: Out of London Press, 1 983).
JEAN-LUG NANCY is Professor at the University of Strasbourg and the Univer
sity of California at San Diego. He is the author of Ego Sum, La Communaute
desouvree, and , with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, of Le titre de la lettre, and
L 'absolu litteraire.
MILAD DOUEIHI is Assistant Professor in the Humanities Center, The Johns
Hopkins. University.
ROB'ERT P. HARRISON received his Ph. D. in Romance Studies from Cornell
University and is presently Assistant Professor of Italian at Stanford. He

has published articles on Kierkegaard, contemporary Italian poetry, Plato
and phenomenology. His book The Body efBeatrice will appear shortly at Johns
Hopkins University Press.
DAVID FARRELL KRELL is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Essex
and editor-translator of many of Heidegger's works into English, most

notably the four-volume Harper & Row Nietzsche. Among other studies of
Heidegger and Neitzsche are his recent Intimations of Mortality and
Postponements.
JEFFREY SCHNAPP is Associate Professor of Italian at Stanford University.
He is the author of The Trans.figuration ef History at the Center efDante's 'Paradise"
( 1986). and of essays on Dante, Marinetti and D'Annunzio . He is currently
at work on a book on problems of gender and genre in the Latin tradition.
THOMAS SHEEH AN is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University of Chicago.
He is the author of Karl Rahner: The Philosophical Foundations ( 1987) , The First
Coming: How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity ( 1 986) , and the editor of
Heidegger, The Man and The Thinker ( 1981).
CLAUDIO MAGRI S is Professor of German Literature and Philosophy at the
University of Trieste .. He is the author of many works on late Austro

Hungarian culture, including L'anello di Clarisse ( 1984).. He has' written a
novel called lllazioni su una sciabola (1984).
Contributors 345
ANGUS FLETCHER is CUNY Distinguished Professor at Lehman College and

Graduate Center. He has published books and articles on literary theory
and the English renaissance.
A .. THOMAS NORRIS graduated in Philosophy from Stanford University. He
is presently a law student at Duke University.

BEVERLY ALLEN is Assistant Professor of Italian at Stanford University. She
is the author of Andrea Zanzotto: The Language of Beauty's Apprentice (Univer

sity of California Press, 1988) and the editor of The Defiant Muse: Italian
Feminist Poetry from the Middle Ages to the Present (The Feminist Press, 1986)
and Pier Paolo Pasolini: The Poetics of Heresy (Anma Libri, 1983) .

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GIO AGAM B F.N CilANNI VATTIMO MIC:llEJ, Sf.fUU�5 Hf.NE GfRAii°I>

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IELE D'ANNUNZIO THOMAS SllF.f.HAN Cl.A UDJO MAGRIS ANGUS I

I.UC S..\�CY.JF.Fl1RF.Y SCHNAPP ANGUS Fl.F.TCHF.R

Giorgio Agamben , The Eternal Return and the Paradox

PART II: THE COLLAPSE, SEXUALITY, THE BODY,

Anacleto Verrecchia, Nietzsche's Breakdown in Turin' 105

THE END, DIVINITY, SELF

Giorgio Colli, The Posthumous Fragments from the

PART IV: THE ITALIAN HERITAGE

Jeffrey Schnapp, N ietzsche s Italian Style: Gabriele

At the origin of this publication lies the Nietzsche in Italy conference

Nietzsche in Italy: the reciprocal commerce between his work and

recurrence of the same) to its original meaning of likeness, Agamben

Nietzschean aesthetics . For Wellbery , Nietzschean artistic symboliza­

sense of Nietzsche's declared obsession in his last year of sanity - the

to other Nietzschean statements and dreams, marks out a place for

his first Italian reception in Gabriele D'Annunzio. Schnapp's is also

Michelstaedter, and other Triestine writers at the beginning of the

this volume as she defends the "French Nietzsche" of feminine, erotic

THE ETERNAL RETURN

In a notebook of uncertain date (though no later than 1916) Dino

1 Dino Campana, Opere e contributi (Florence: Vallecchi, 1973) 444.

of a woman'') and even in the adjective solch (the philosophical ex­

Etymologists have been unable to explain how Leich came to have

water in a broken pitcher, or of Sisyphus, eternally rolling uphill a

But even in Christian theology one finds a connection between the

Selected Writings (Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1973) 5 1-65.

conception of the resurrection (the resurrection of the corpse or, at

In his 1939 course on Nietzsche, "The Will to Power as

Precisely because perspective coincides with the will to power itself,

Recapitulation: imposing on becoming the character of being: this is

9 The fragment is 6 1 7 of Wille zur Macht.

he reproaches Kant, namely, of believing it possible to free oneself

Let us try to define the paradox which Nietzsche is trying to develop

meanings o f the Aristotelian dynamts: potentia passiva, passivity, recep­

The thing-in-itself is not another object, but another relation of the

according to the identity principle, in which the subject is conceived

Have we gone beyond this paradox of passion, this giving of self

which led him to postulate a "passionate" dimension which precedes

NIETZSCHE AND HEIDEGGER

To raise once more the question of the relationship between Heidegger

begins to be published, first in Italian (Milan: Adelphi, 1963ff.) .

itself as a development of Heidegger's thought and which, on this

subject, and so on . Here Dilthey appears to be more radical and

recognize his own closeness to Nietzsche. This closeness is what con­

for him , too , thinking is An-denken, and not representation or foun­

ty o f power and strife (the "fascist" reading o f Nietzsche, though there

9 Reiner Schiirmann, Le Principe d'anarchie: Heidegger et la question de l'agir (Paris: Seuil,

archai which have dominated metaphysics time and again, je undje) ,

Translated by Thomas Harrison

CORRUPTION - THE ANTICHRIST :

DEDICATIO N . All of the ideas that follow were graciously given me by an

two or three times, numerous occurrences of terms like decay, decom­

of catharsis? The new physician, he of the new science, unexpectedly

is a phase produced by power, the energizing power of fire, which

Human, All Too Human, aphorism twenty. Degree one of culture

theological and metaphysical ground from which science arose then

of these particles brought them down t o the flatlands in great quan­

Hence the fundamental question: what about cheese in all this?

a form of feedback. This idea, the practice of return-feeding, of semi­

Nietzschean aesthetics . For Wellbery , Nietzschean artistic symboliza

of a woman'') and even in the adjective solch (the philosophical ex

meanings o f the Aristotelian dynamts: potentia passiva, passivity, recep

recognize his own closeness to Nietzsche. This closeness is what con

for him , too , thinking is An-denken, and not representation or foun

two or three times, numerous occurrences of terms like decay, decom

of these particles brought them down t o the flatlands in great quan

a form of feedback. This idea, the practice of return-feeding, of semi

and by Lucretius himself. Serene knowledge asserts without pertur

effects - the brute historical reality- of this change. What h e ques

To conclude this reading of Habermas, I want to return to the ques

Nietzsche 'transposes' aesthetic experience into the archaic; then a per

10. "Litteratur" " Idee" "Hegel" ironisch-fremd

expressive domain the form of phantasmatically legitimated authori