On the Seventh Solitude

Transcription

1 North American Studies in Nineteenth-Century German Literature and Culture 38 On the Seventh Solitude Endless Becoming and Eternal Return in the Poetry of Friedrich Nietzsche von Rohit Sharma 1. Auflage On the Seventh Solitude Sharma schnell und portofrei erhältlich bei beck-shop.de DIE FACHBUCHHANDLUNG Peter Lang Bern 2006 Verlag C.H. Beck im Internet: ISBN Inhaltsverzeichnis: On the Seventh Solitude Sharma

2 Introduction Der mechanistische Begriff der Bewegung ist bereits eine Übersetzung des Original-Vorgangs in die Zeichensprache von Auge und Getast. (3: 751) Born on 15 October 1844, Friedrich Nietzsche grew up in a devout household. 1 He attended the prestigious Schulpforta, studied at Bonn University and Leipzig University, and was appointed professor of philology at Basel University when he was only twenty-four years old. He taught at Basel for ten years before retiring in 1879 due to ill health. His first book, Die Geburt der Tragödie, was published in 1872, after which he continued publishing till 1889, at times at his own expense, for example Book IV of Also sprach Zarathustra in Nietzsche died on 25 August 1900 in total and uncomprehending silence. 2 The beginning of Nietzsche reception can be traced back to the 1880s, although it is well known that the reception of his works remained characteristically lukewarm 3 during his lifetime. Carol Diethe, among other critics, attributes this partly to the eschewing of systems by Nietzsche and, along with R. J. Hollingdale and Joan Stambaugh, reiterates the importance of keeping the developmental nature of his work in mind and looking at it as an evolving body of thought. This is partly why a chronological reading of his works is emphasized and favored by certain critics, including Diethe. 4 Two broad trends in Nietzsche reception have been evident. One of the ways of reading Nietzsche has been to appropriate some of his thoughts into works that otherwise do not directly contribute to Nietzsche scholarship. The second trend, which saw several revivals in the post-war years, also actually dates back to the 1880s, and is above all an attempt to understand Nietzsche s thought better. Thus one may speak of Nietzscheanisms on the one hand and Nietzsche scholarship on the other. 5

3 Nietzsche Scholarship in the Twentieth Century Three main works have contributed to Nietzsche scholarship, indeed established it as an independent area of study, in the twentieth century. These are the works of Karl Jaspers, Karl Löwith, and Martin Heidegger. In the more recent post-war years, Nietzsche studies have concentrated on the unending dialectic that characterizes most, if not all, of Nietzsche s works. The search for a system of philosophy in Nietzsche s thought has been the preoccupation of some Nietzsche scholars, 6 while others have tried to look at the more complex underlying relationships between language and its role in the constitution of the subject, and language and its role in the perception of reality. 7 This has further led to extensive studies on the metaphor and the idea of truth. Other more comprehensive attempts at reading Nietzsche included looking at the concepts of overman, the eternal return, and the will to power as the components of this new philosophy. Still others have looked at Nietzsche s works and read them as the philosophy of Dionysus. During the early decades of the twentieth century Nietzsche was predominantly received as a literary influence. His appropriation in literary works was sometimes even accompanied by his idolization as a prophet by some poetic circles, like the one around Stefan George. Only to a very limited extent was he perceived and read in earnest as a philosopher. In extreme cases he was even dismissed entirely by some of his contemporaries like Wilhelm Dilthey, as Bernd Magnus also points out. Heidegger, Jaspers, and Löwith were amongst the first to have argued Nietzsche s position as a philosopher successfully. 8 Jaspers stressed Nietzsche s philosophical activity rather than a search for a philosophical system in his writings, and this is evident right in the title itself: Nietzsche. Einführung in das Verständnis seines Philosophierens. 9 For Jaspers, Nietzsche s writings enable one to transcend any fixed values or truths: 16

4 Jaspers stressed Nietzsche s writings as a sort of philosophical activity rather than a congealed body of theses or doctrines, an existential demonstration that all alleged certainties would be hurled into a vortex of endless reflection, a vortex from which no fixed doctrine, teaching, or thesis could survive unchallenged. 10 Diethe cites an example of Nietzsche s interrogation of reason as highlighted in Jasper s text by pointing to Nietzsche s questioning and rejection of institutionalized religion based on the metaphysical truth of God. 11 In contrast, Heidegger proposed the well-known thesis that Nietzsche was the last metaphysician of the West. Heidegger s substantial work titled Nietzsche (1961) is based mostly on his lectures on Nietzsche from the years 1936 through Heidegger s work has been under scrutiny also partly because of his right-wing leanings. As mentioned earlier, Löwith was also one of the main contributors in recognizing Nietzsche as a philosopher. In addition, Löwith s work considerably helped end the dominance of Heidegger s influence on continental philosophers. 12 The central thesis of Löwith s book is also evident from the title of the book itself. He regards Nietzsche as a philosopher of the eternal recurrence of the same. By privileging the doctrine (Lehre: teaching) of eternal recurrence as the central organizing concept of Nietzsche s system in aphorisms, Löwith departs markedly and brilliantly from Heidegger s attempts to make the doctrines of the will to power and eternal recurrence compatible; and he departs as well from Jaspers s tendency to eschew the very possibility that a coherent philosophical position lurks beneath Nietzsche s aphorisms. 13 Löwith himself does not try to mask or deny the paradox that is to be found in Nietzsche s writings, especially as it is expressed with regard to the eternal recurrence. He shows that on the one hand Nietzsche s theory of the eternal recurrence can be read as a cosmological theory, while on the other hand, and paradoxically, the eternal recurrence also occurs as an ethical dilemma faced by the individual. Magnus hints at the fatalism inherent to this complex and raises the question as to how one could possibly will a state that is predestined to occur regardless 17

5 of what one wills. How can one will what must happen in any case? asks Magnus (xv). Löwith s work has directly and indirectly influenced recent and present Nietzsche scholarship and must be credited, among other things, with having contributed to an emancipation from Heidegger s Nietzsche. Heidegger s concern is primarily with Nietzsche s metaphysics. Not only does he place Nietzsche in a tradition of metaphysics, but he also reads all of the rest of Nietzsche as a derivative of this metaphysical aspect. Another problem with Heidegger is his choice of texts. In his interpretation Heidegger puts great emphasis on the book Der Wille zur Macht, regarding it as a basis of a unified system that Nietzsche had planned to construct and develop. Thus, an essential part of Heidegger s book is his attempt to construct Nietzsche s system, drawing from all the writings of Nietzsche but using The Will to Power as a guiding nucleus. 14 In developing his own position as both an overcoming of metaphysics and yet a further stage in the historical unfolding of Being (Howey 9), Heidegger actually ends up utilizing Nietzsche and Nietzsche s doctrines in the light of his own philosophy (10). In a similar yet somewhat anecdotal footnote, Magnus modifies Heidegger s quote on his study Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (Heidegger: It may not be good Kant, but it is awfully good Heidegger ) to apply it to Heidegger s writings on Nietzsche by saying, they may not be good Nietzsche, but they are first-rate Heidegger. 15 Jaspers s interpretation of Nietzsche clearly attempts to place Nietzsche as an existentialist, while being completely conscious of the lack of both a system and a magnum opus in Nietzsche s works. He seems to echo Nietzsche when he insists on the process-character of interpretation and the simultaneous impossibility of any final interpretation. His Nietzsche is a philosopher of contradictions. To be able to look at the various aphoristic writings on various topics, one must juxtapose these writings and their sometimes-contradictory content to arrive at a dialectics of Nietzsche s thought. While clearly moving away from attempts to derive a system from Nietzsche s thought, Jaspers is nevertheless interested in the systematic interrelations in his thought. He clearly mentions very early in his book that no single 18

6 system ought to, and can, be derived from Nietzsche s works. The notion of perspectivism also becomes important in this context. 16 Jaspers has been criticized for emphasizing Nietzsche s philosophizing at the expense of Nietzsche s philosophy (Howey 12), while disregarding many Nietzschean doctrines like the overman, the will to power, etc. Heidegger s approach attempts to explain in great detail the thesis that Nietzsche is a metaphysician, and derives Heidegger s own ontology from this thesis. Löwith s study on the other hand seems to provide an alternative in its study of the fundamental dualism mentioned above in his readings of the doctrine of eternal recurrence. The New Nietzsche Postmodern criticism has eagerly embraced Nietzsche s views on language and truth. Many proponents of deconstruction and poststructuralism have variously adopted Nietzsche s Perspektivismus that has allowed the reader s position to be more privileged and has thus favored marginalized readings. Roland Barthes developed this idea (of the lack of the absolute truth) in his famous 1968 essay titled The Death of the Author. Though Jacques Derrida, and subsequently Gilles Deleuze, did not subscribe to situating Nietzsche in the metaphysical tradition, they still rely heavily on Heidegger s investigations into the use of metaphor by Nietzsche. Whereas Heidegger s investigations into Being tended to promise a return to an ur -state of Being if language were able to capture the ultimate truth, subsequent readings, beginning with Derrida, started to question the very nature of language and the signs associated with it. Derrida also questioned the idea of a traditional hermeneutic approach to reveal the truth an idea that had already been dismissed by Nietzsche, as he developed the idea of the perspective nature of truth and knowledge. Diethe and Schrift both warn against, and see in some appropriations of Nietzsche, the trend to use him by many theorists to expound 19

7 their own systems. The French Nietzsche reception is itself hardly homogenous. Diethe points to Jean Granier s reception to identify the dislike and disagreement that some scholars hold for such use (or abuse, in Schrift s words) of Nietzsche even within the so-called French Nietzsche. Jean Granier in Nietzsche (1982) declares the picturesque devices of his French colleagues unhelpful with regard to Nietzsche s interpretation, describing these methods as mere publicity seeking in comparison with the sober research undertaken in contemporary German Nietzsche studies. (Diethe 163) While Granier might be cited as an extreme reaction to trends in Nietzsche scholarship, Schrift investigates both the French interpretation of Nietzsche, and what he calls the French use and abuse of Nietzsche. Schrift distinguishes between those who acknowledged the importance of Nietzsche and used him in their specific discipline, and those whose research actually centered on issues in Nietzsche scholarship. One could look at Foucault to illustrate this point. The so-called French Nietzsche is also primarily the author of Der Wille zur Macht, and in this respect too, Heidegger s influence is evident. Michel Foucault s influence on modern literary theory, especially the whole idea of discursivity, is indispensable to current trends in literary theory. Foucault himself acknowledged Nietzsche as one of the prime influences on his thought. Schrift identifies Nietzsche as the first amongst the founders of discursivity who were not just authors of their own work, but established endless possibilities of discourse. Nietzsche may rightly be credited with establishing the discursive practices concerning power relations. At the same time credit is also due Foucault for having emphasized and brought to the forefront this aspect in Nietzsche s thought. In the words of Schrift, Foucault drew inspiration from Nietzsche s linkage between power, truth, and knowledge, a linkage that was both explicit in such Nietzschean remarks as knowledge functions as an instrument of power and implicit in the fluidity of Nietzsche s movement between will, will to truth, will to knowledge, and will to power. Nietzsche s rhetoric of will to power drew attention away from substances, subjects, and things, and focused that attention instead on the relations between these substantives. (Nietzsche s French Legacy 39-40) 20

8 One must be aware, however, that selective usages of Nietzsche s thoughts and the recent (since Heidegger) emphases on the perspectival natures of our knowledge and truth have both contributed to the application of Nietzsche to an extremely wide variety of discourses. To illustrate this point, one could look at gender roles and power relations in discourses and, through Foucault, trace the validity of such a study back to Nietzsche. Such a study, however, cannot and should not be read as a commentary on Nietzsche. One could similarly see Nietzsche s influence in the work of Gilles Deleuze. Deleuze s book Nietzsche et Philosophie is regarded as an alternative to Heidegger s interpretation of Nietzsche. In his other work, co-written with Guattari and titled Capitalisme et Schizophrénie, Deleuze rejected the hermeneutic and structuralist approaches and concentrated instead on the processes of codification, regarding them as inherent to every act of interpretation, which further became a political act simply by virtue of being an attempt at decoding and recoding. Schrift summarizes Nietzsche s importance in this context. Nietzsche, Schrift writes, occupies a privileged place in the political reading and writing insofar as his writings confound all codes. Further specifying Deleuze s approach, Schrift writes, Nietzsche s originality lies in part of his having written a new kind of book, one that defies codification insofar as his aphorisms transmit forces rather than signify meanings. 17 Other important French critics and theorists influenced at least partly by Nietzsche include Jacques Lacan, Pierre Klossowski, Luce Irigaray, and Sarah Kofman. Poetry vs. Philosophy The debate between poetry and philosophy remains inconclusive in spite of its long history. Going back to the very origins of poetry and philosophy, it is hard to make a distinction between the two. 18 Nietzsche s philosophy and poetry have been regarded and classified as both poetry and philosophy, without arriving at a general con- 21

9 sensus. Before discussing Nietzsche in this context, it is important to look at certain other key contributions to the debate. Plato s position in the debate is important. Mark Edmundson sees in Plato s derision of poets an implicit portrait of what a philosopher ought to be. Plato seems to place the two as bipolar opposites with the two groups defining each other reciprocally. 19 Arthur Danto examines Plato s views against art. 20 On the one hand, art is considered so far removed from reality that it seems inconsequential, yet on the other hand, art is dangerous in that it poses a threat to the supremacy of reason. In another study Danto calls Plato the proponent of the thesis that the senses at best reveal a secondary order of reality 21 or truth. Nietzsche, for Danto, is unique as one who openly advocates, or so it seemed, the primacy of the appetite and impulses which operate at the sub-rational level of the human psyche (146). Edmundson agrees with Danto s portrayal of the disenfranchisement of art and sees in Plato s dismissal of art the origins of literary criticism. This trend, begun with Plato, is evident in contemporary literary criticism also, which must defend poetry against this heaping Platonic insult. 22 The case of Aristotle is also interesting. Edmundson sees in the case of Aristotle perhaps the beginning of literary criticism. Not only did Aristotle provide formal categories to defend poetry against his teacher s derision, but in effect ended up contributing to the disenfranchisement of art more subtly than any of the more open opponents of art, including Plato. Excessive reliance on formal categories, for example those proposed by Aristotle, could end up providing literary criticism with a role more prominent than the work itself. Edmundson sees that as analogous to metaphysical philosophers vis-à-vis human experience. 23 Another key scholar to have addressed the issue of philosophy versus poetry is Eric Havelock. In his Preface to Plato, Havelock looks at Socrates s strategy in how he develops his case against the poets. Havelock discusses this case using Homer as an example: Homer s work was committed to memory. He who recited it was for all purposes lost in its immediacy, its pure presence. The reciter became the poem (Edmundson 12). To initiate philosophical thought in such a case was to pose a question and halt the poem s motion, 22

10 according to Havelock and Edmundson. This idea of halting the recitation of a poem and identifying concepts, and further isolating each concept per se is how Havelock sees the opposition of philosophy to poetry. 24 Therein is also an explanation of the word lists to be found, which we tend to associate with each philosopher: To think of Kant is to recall words like noumena, phenomena, category, reason, imagination, beautiful, sublime; for Heidegger Being, thrownness, anxiety, care, disclosure, clearing; for Derrida pharmakon, différance, écriture, phallogocentrism, metaphysics of presence, hedgehog. (Edmundson 13) In his book Edmundson counters the trend 25 in literary criticism that makes its attitude towards literature less celebratory, more inquisitive, even inquisitorial (more Platonic) (15). One must at the same time be aware that the attitude of the critic or the philosopher toward literature is not necessarily to be interpreted as a superior one. 26 At the same time what Edmundson is trying to do, and what philosophers and critics should both be aware of, is how literary art can answer the charges theory brings to it, succumbing to some yes, but also passing outside the reach of others to gesture toward futures, both linguistic and experiential, that are of human value (28). Edmundson, thus, uses poetry to defend literature against its disenfranchisement. 27 Nietzsche s is a unique case. Not only is he a poet, but also a philosopher. Or as some would have it, he is neither. 28 How does he address the debate between philosophy and poetry? He addresses the problem clearly and as early as in his first book, Die Geburt der Tragödie. Discussing the case of Socrates, Nietzsche sees in his victory over the pre-euripidean tragic writers, the victory of an overly and falsely optimistic (and rational) culture. It is under the influence of Socratic thought that Euripides is able to bring to an end the very Dionysian art of the Greek tragedy. 29 Socratic philosophy flourishes only in that it is able to suppress the Dionysian energies, which Nietzsche sees in the early Greek tragedies. Nietzsche is against a philosophy that shies away from the Dionysian depths. Nietzsche rejects Socrates for many reasons, amongst them foremost the fact that Socrates is a most theoretical person and consequently rejects the 23

11 instinct, which is of utmost importance in Nietzsche s thought. In Götzen-Dämmerung, in the section titled Das Problem des Socrates, Nietzsche equates both the Socratic and the Christian Besserungs- Moral to a disease sprung out of decadence itself and opposed to Instinkt. 30 The dominance of logic over all other forms of human knowledge perturbs Nietzsche. 31 He hopes for a rebirth of Greek tragedy and proposes the symbol of the music-playing Socrates in other words, a philosopher who is open to the Dionysian aspects of life. 32 In his Nachlaß, he provides a concept very similar to the musiktreibender Sokrates to counter the trend identifiable as the theoretical Socrates. This is the idea of the Künstler-Philosoph, which is elaborated further in the following chapter. Nietzsche s philosophical thought has been recognized and variously interpreted from perspectives as varied as existentialism on the one hand and political ideology on the other. In this vast gamut of existent Nietzsche scholarship, one part of Nietzsche s works seems strangely to have been neglected. Most of the published studies seem to have neglected his poetry. In the past five decades or so of postwar Nietzsche renaissance, only a handful of articles (and an even smaller number of complete studies) have been devoted to dealing primarily with Nietzsche, the poet. To a limited extent, this may be due to the fact that Nietzsche used some of his poems in his prose works. Out of his nine Dionysos-Dithyramben, for example, which were intended as a separate cycle of poems, three appear in part in the main text of Also sprach Zarathustra. Philip Grundlehner rightly points out that this pattern of presentation has led to the fact that scholars have tended to view Nietzsche s poetry as a mere by-product, of ancillary value to his philosophy. 33 In addition to the way in which Nietzsche presents his poetry, there is also the fact that, in addition to elevating poetry in some of his aphorisms to the highest level, he also severely mocks and criticizes poetry and poets, e.g. in the poem Nur Narr! Nur Dichter! His contradictory views on poetry (which are not limited to poetry alone) might also have contributed in part to the disregard shown in scholarship towards his poetry. 24

12 With respect to the Dionysos-Dithyramben, a more specific problem was their association with Nietzsche s mentally unstable condition in his latter years. Therefore some critics associated with, and even saw in, the dithyrambs symptoms of Nietzsche s mental instability. In more recent years the number of publications directly investigating Nietzsche s poetry have steadily increased. Two detailed studies devoted completely to his poetry were published in 1986 and 1991, respectively, the former a comprehensive study of most of Nietzsche s poems by Grundlehner, and the latter a very detailed commentary on the dithyrambs by Wolfram Groddeck. Grundlehner provides an introductory insight into a myriad of commentaries on Nietzsche s poems over the years, but continues to view Nietzsche s poetry as an informative subtext to his philosophy (xxiv). Groddeck attempts to show that the symbol of the labyrinth is both an architectural metaphor for the structure of the Dionysos- Dithyramben, and also simultaneously a metaphor for the text movement in the Dithyramben. He details the structures of and the motifs in the Dithyramben and also shows clearly that this final cycle of poems can also be read as a poetic comment on the work of Nietzsche. Areas of Concern This study does not propose to regard Nietzsche exclusively as a poet. It does intend, though, to regard him as the artist-philosopher (to use one of his own terms) that he was. The fact that Nietzsche s poetic development paralleled (he wrote his first verses at the age of nine, and was working on the Dionysos-Dithyrambs on the eve of his mental breakdown in 1889), and even preceded, his philosophic development certainly provides a justifiable argument, though most certainly not the only argument, against the simple premise that his poetry is only illustrative to his philosophy, and would not be able to stand by itself. 25

13 The one general hypothesis this study intends to establish, prove and illustrate is that Nietzsche s poetry is also his philosophy. It is in fact the very fertile area, out of which and in which all of Nietzsche s concepts (the Nietzschean keywords, or the word list associated with Nietzsche) make their first embryonic appearance, and which Nietzsche develops only later in his prose writings. More specifically, this study proposes to investigate or establish the following hypotheses. 26 i. It proposes to investigate the term die siebente Einsamkeit, which comes forth most prominently in two of the nine dithyrambs, titled Das Feuerzeichen and Die Sonne sinkt respectively. This study further proposes to discuss the concept of the seventh solitude as central to Nietzsche s philosophy and writings. ii. The term the seventh solitude will be shown to subsume under it all the so-called Abgrundswörter, which constitute the Nietzschean word list and that one tends to associate with Nietzsche. It must simultaneously be cautioned here that this study is not an attempt to establish some sort of a contest involving Nietzschean key words, at the end of which one key concept will be recognized as supreme. The word subsumed is used only to establish the uniqueness of the reading that is presented in the following pages and indicates the seventh solitude to constitute the distinguishing perspective guiding this reading. iii. The notion of becoming will also be reinforced in this reading, albeit the perspective, as mentioned above, will be different. iv. Nietzsche s style will also be shown to answer several of the questions raised by other critics and scholars in the debate between poetry and philosophy. His prolific aphorisms, metaphors, and usages of the rhetorical figure of aposiopesis demand a non-linear reading, unlike one justified above by Diethe. Furthermore, this style places the reader right in the middle of the notion of the Künstler-Philosoph, where the reader is required to turn to Nietzsche, the philosopher, only

14 to have to turn back to Nietzsche, the artist, ad infinitum. Linearity remains only an organizational principle in such a reading. v. Nietzsche s direct or implied self-referentiality has engendered numerous nomenclatures to characterize his writing. Nietzsche himself speaks of appropriate ears as a prerequisite to reading him, or simply of Ariadne. This will also be unraveled in this study. It is also important to remember that the traditional Socratic supremacy of reason is rejected in the following reading, whereby the focus of this rejection is the supremacy and not reason itself. The approach, similar to Nietzsche s own approach, is guided by the tragic wisdom of Dionysus and the key values of abundance and affirmation to life. Reading Nietzsche in the following pages is thus not characterized by the traditional scientific approach but similar to Groddeck s model of the dithyrambs is characterized by an approach and willingness to step into the labyrinthine manner and language of the poetic and poeticizing I. 27