Can anyone help me understand this quote? Neitzche?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

Someone sent me this quote but I don’t know how to read it. I’m not used to reading really formal writing, but they won’t tell me what it means so if anyone could help? (Sorry if this is posted in the wrong place btw.)

“Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood and though wilt find that blood is spirit.
It is no easy task to understand unfamiliar blood, i hate the reading idlers.
He who knoweth the reader, doth nothing more for the reader. Another century of readers - and spirit itself will sink.
Every one being allowed to learn to read, ruineth in the long run not only writing but also thinking.
Once spirit was God, then is became man and now it even becometh populace.
He that writeth in blood and proverbs doth not want to be read but learnt by heart.
In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak, but for that route thou must have long legs. Proverbs should be peaks, and those spoke to should be big and tall.
The atmosphere rare and pure, danger near and the spirit full of a joyful wickedness; thus are things well matched.
I want to have goblins about me, for I am courageous . The courage which scareth away ghosts, createth for itself goblins - it wanteth to laugh.
I no longer feel in common with you; the very cloud which i see beneath me, the blackness and heaviness at which i laugh - that is your thunder-cloud.
Ye look aloft when ye long for long exaltation; and i look downward because i am exalted.
Who among you can at the same time laugh and be exalted?
He who climbeth on the highest mountains, laugheth at all tragic plays and tragic realities.
Courageous, unconcerned, scornful, coercive - so wisdom witheth us; she is a woman and ever loveth only a warrior.
Ye tell me, ‘life is hard to bear.’ But for what purpose should you have your pride in the morning and your resignation in the evening?
Life is hard to bear but do not affect to be so delicate! We are all of us sumpter asses and she-asses.
What have we in common with the rose-bud , which trembleth because a drop of dew hath formed upon it?
It is true we love life; Not because we are wont to live, but because we are wont to love.
There is always some madness in love. But there is always, also, some method in the madness.
And so to me also, who appreciate life, the butterflies and soap bubbles and whatever is like them amongst us seem most to enjoy happiness.
To see these light and foolish pretty lively little sprites flit about - that moveth Zarathustra to tears and songs.
I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance.
And when i saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity - through him all things fall.
Not by wrath, but by laughter do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!
I learned to walk; since then have i let myself run. I learned to fly, since then i do not need pushing in other to move from one spot.
Now am i light. now do i fly; now do i see myself under myself.
Now there danceth a God in me.”
-Thus Spake Zarathustra, Neitzche

2

Hopefully one of the heavy Nietzsche readers can help out here :slight_smile:

3

I’d say it’s all a really fancy way of saying he likes human progression.
That requires some things, which are sometimes either counter intuitive, or immoral.

4

I think it’s pretty much like the things he says in Ecce Homo. This looking down from heights, substantiated by only jumping from one to the other mountain apex, (where no one can really have such long legs), needs a lot of filling in, , therfore, for most, this understanding is unavailable, because tomthose to whom this is adressed, will not have the
circumstances to be able to develop a spiritual sense to understand.Most men thinking laterally, not vertically. Most men would need to transvalue 90 degrees, to be able to shiftthe axis of understanding, so that all of it would/could be transposed. Here, though lies a danger of misunderstanding.

5

Of all that I have read, I love only what people have written from their own suffering and tragedy, for they write from experience and with the conviction of experience marking their work. Write from experience and you will find that such experience is the trademark of strength.
It is no easy task to understand unfamiliar experiences; I hate those who seek to try without trying, speak of knowledge without experience of that knowledge.
He who knows the reader does nothing more for the reader. Another century of readers and strength will sink for lack of knowledge to continue past a certain point, for knowing the reader is having the reader know you and such combined thoughts are often found without further progression until another suitable challenger can be found. Every person being able to read ruins reading in the long term not only writing itself, but also thinking, for there are other avenues of thought besides what can be gleaned through writing and reading; people are more prone to read a strategy guide rather than actually experience and for that lack of experience, will lack actual knowledge even though that knowledge remains in twisted fashion, pushed around back and forth by inadequate minds.
Once strength was God, then it became man in singular form and now it becomes an entire populace, such is the dwindling of it from older times.
He that writes in the blood of tragedy and with proverbs does not want to be read, but learnt by heart; as such reading would not knowledge give or transfer, yet to be understood by another,to be learned by the heart as it feels the tragedy and suffering and synchronizes with it, is the true teaching of wisdom without undue tragedy and suffering.
In mountains, the shortest way is from peak to peak and yet such is impossible save by the impossible giants or birds taking flight; proverbs should be the peaks, told only by those who have learned to stand on the shoulders of the impossible giants or climbed to those peaks themselves and should be of worthy merit to be told.
The atmosphere rare and pure, danger near and the spirit full of joyful wickedness, thus are things well matched as the spirit is found to be pure and free of such things.
I want monsters around me, for I am courageous and the courage of which I have scares away ghosts and creates for itself monsters for it wants to laugh at the fear being placed on the opposite foot for a change. It personally doesn’t scare me to be surrounded by ghosts and demons or such monsters of creation since my courage itself is what scares them the most and there company is tolerable while they are afraid, for such fear commands them to find similar courage and to them I am a monster.
I no longer feel in common with you, the very cloud which I see beneath me and the blackness and heaviness at which I laugh is your thunder cloud bringing your sadness and discomfort to which I no longer feel such things and am puzzled by your reaction even though I once shared such reaction.

Ye look aloft when ye long for exaltation and I look downward because I am exalted. 'You look up to find some answer that may not be found around you while I realize the answers are all around and find myself heightened for it, looking down to meet gazes that beg for answers that can not be delivered save for in metaphor or other means of conversation.
Who among you can at the same time laugh and be exalted? He climbs the tallest mountains laughs at all the tragic plays and tragic realities and I really have no idea why this is except that there is no longer fear of such for having traversed such and survived by those who did climb and did not fall to their death.
Courageous, unconcerned, scornful, coercive - so wisdom with us, she is a woman and ever loveth only a warrior. Wisdom is often found in women who would prefer a man willing to fight for them. It is not wisdoms concern if mankind can no longer travel the paths to find it, for there are always other paths to be taken instead of the ones unable to be trod.
You tell me that life is hard to bear but for what purpose should you have your pride in the morning and your resignation in the evening except for overcoming what was hard to do something worthwhile? To what fulfillment would you owe such that you did not put the work in your self to attain?
Life is hard to bear, but not be so sensitive and delicate, we are all of us asses for being overly sensitive and overly delicate about certain matters since we, through our reactions, teach others to do the same instead of simply bearing up under the load of life itself and become that hard creature that is also vulnerable, for that creature exists in all of us and yearns to be free if only for someone to teach it the way.
What have we in common with the rose bud which trembles because a drop of dew has formed on it? We are still weak even though we are strong and even what we need troubles us to some extent.
It is true we love life but not because we are wont to live, but because we are wont to love. Life sucks shit, but the idea of romance and so much more; love of others, etc; is enough to endure the pains thereof.
There is always madness in live, but there is always, also, some method in the madness; some genius to be found.
And so, to me also, who appreciate life, the butterflies and soap bubbles and whatever is like them amongst us seem most to enjoy happiness for they epitomize happiness in one form or another; simple things instead of complexity.
To see these light and foolish pretty lively little sprites flit about, that moves Zarathustra to tears and songs; turning even the most hardened hearts back to the wild-eyed wonder of youth viewed with innocence, tears and songs to exalt the virtues of such things when confronted by higher reasoning and thought processes.
I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance, since living is dancing to lifes rhythm and such a God would dance divinely
And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn and he was the spirit of gravity, bringing me down and through him, all things fall that fly or drift through the sky in lackadaisical fashion.
Not by wrath, but by laughter do we slay; come let us slay the spirit of gravity! and yet that gravity is still needed at times for we are bound to get out of line even in euphoric thoughts. Such a devil, I say, must learn his proper placement and not bring down that which should fly free of the excess of burden that is placed upon them.
I learned to walk and since then I have let myself run; I learned to fly and since then I do not need pushing in order to move from one spot to another but do so at my own guidance. Now I am light, now do I fly, now do I see myself under myself; now there dances a God in me. Now I have overcome; now I am free to fly unburdened and now do I see the universe mirrored within the universe.

6

I wonder if Nietzsche would have wanted someone to explain it to you or for you to read it, ponder it, make it your own.
I wonder if he would have wanted his words to be so easily understood. I mean, someone can give you “their” meaning of it or you can google it, and get another’s meaning for it.
You have a mind. Take the journey and read Nietzsche’s words. Pay attention to them. Let your heart and mind try to understand what he’s saying.
Relate them if you can to your own life. His words are poetry and so the beauty of them is that they can be understood differently by different people.
Let them take you on a journey of enrichment and then you shall/may give birth to a dancing star.

Enjoy the process.
It’s a multi-faceted diamond you have there. It’s not simply one quote.

Maybe you can read “Jonathan Livingston Seagull”.

7

Nietzsche loves a man who deals with his own personal difficulties, with difficulties that stem from his genes and experience. Most people create artificial difficulties to occupy their minds so as to more effectively run away from the difficulties that nature has placed upon them.

The key point to understand here is the difference between natural/genetic/deep-rooted and artificial/memetic/shallow-rooted.

Blood stands for natural/genetic needs. A popular example of an artificial/memetic need is money – most writers today write with money. Another is fame.

Healthy people are preoccupied with themselves, with their own needs, and as a consequence of that, with people who are equal to them, “the familiar blood”. That said, they only read books which are of utmost relevance to their real life.

Unhealthy people, on the other hand, hate themselves, they want to deny their own problems, they want to be someone else, and so they are preoccupied with those who are unequal to them, be they superiors or inferiors (equals are avoided because they remind them of themselves.) A reading idler is a reader who reads about stuff that is of no relevance to him other than in a shallow sense, as a way to distract himself with a foreign thought, as a way to build a pretense.

You shouldn’t write what the reader wants (i.e. consciously seeks), you should write what the reader needs (i.e. unconsciously seeks.)

Another century of readers and everyone will become detached from their past. Genuine needs suppressed by artificial needs through excessive reading . . .

Once everyone starts to read, the number of misintepretations will skyrocket, leading to the corruption of thought.

Once people believed in God, then they believed in man and now they believe in the mob.

A genuine writer does not want to be memorized he wants to be understood.

Big thoughts are meant for big people.

Courageous people seek danger.

What is difficult for one is easy for another.

What makes one cry makes another laugh.

Weak seek pleasure strong seek pain.

Sad seek happiness happy seek sadness.

The kind of love he speaks here is not a genuine one, it is a forced one, a desperate one: one loves life only because one is scared of death. Liking “loving” a woman only because you are afraid you will never find another one. And the point is that, in order to truly love life, you must also love death (i.e. be courageous.)

One should only believe in a God that is not too strict/rigid/serious (the opposite of Jesus.)

The spirit of gravity is the spirit that is not flexible enough i.e. it is excessively strict/rigid/serious/Apollonian, characterizing modern age.

What happens when one slays the spirit of gravity is that one becomes more relaxed/spontaneous/joyful.

Unfortunately, he is not speaking against the spirit of weightedness (which is excessively flexible/fluid/frivolous/Dionysian, characterizing hedonists, criminals and barbarians.)

8

Magnus Anderson,

Nietzsche says here that you will find that blood is spirit. So are you saying that “blood” here stands for natural/genetic needs or for spirit, by spirit I think he actually meant energy or even the daemon which drives us to create.
When one writes with their own blood, I think that what he meant was that they are writing or are to write with all of the passion which they can muster, all of the struggle, pain and focus it takes to write. Writing with their blood means writing from their deepest self and all that that requires.
Keats wrote with his blood. He had TB yet he spent himself, all of his energy, passion and creativity to the point of becoming weak and more sickly.
That is what it is like - writing with blood.

9

This is Nietzsche baby - it don’t mean shit.
N splurges out his musings, deep in metaphor, not even he knew what he was talking about half the time, and any number of N scholars will offer the same number of variations. N’s work means whatever you think and feel as you read them.
You might get more if you read into the text from the previous 10 pages, and out again reading the following few pages. That way you might get a wider context. ANd you will also need to know the time and context (historically and biographically) in which ASZ was written.

10

That’s quite the claim.

11

I’ll respond to icycalm’s interpretation, and with that, I hope I will respond to you as well.

This is wrong in the sense that writing with blood does not necessarily make you the best in what you are writing.
It is right in the sense that writing with blood leads to “expertise” (i.e. wisdom) as opposed to stupidity or weakness of another sort.
It is right in the sense that he who writes with blood is breaking new grounds in some way.
But it is wrong in the sense that being extreme is not uniquely associated with blood, and in fact, more often than not, it is associated with decadence. Specialists, for example, who are experts in their own fields, do not write with blood.

Blood → bleeding → suffering.
To write with blood means to write out of suffering, to put it simply, to write about difficulties that you have overcome.
But this is too simplistic since it leaves out a very important detail and that is that there is a difference between natural difficulties (difficulties assigned to you by nature) and artificial difficulties (difficulties you have created/chosen on your own.)

Artificial difficulties are NOT blood, even if they lead to bleeding, as they often do (see workaholics, or boxers if you want some real “blood”.) They are created in order to give expression to instincts that cannot be expressed in a natural way. Most importantly, they are often used to deny natural difficulties, as a form of indulgence, a general inability to impose restrictions on your own instincts.

There is too much focus on competition in icycalm’s writings, too much narcissism and megalomania.

12

He places rank above order. He does not want to be “healthy”, he wants to be “the best”.
He places growth above order. He does not focus on self-maintenance (i.e. order), he focuses on “progress” (i.e. growth.)
He places shaping above adapting. He talks about “choosing a subject” instead of “dealing with what is given to one”.

Nothing wrong with rank, but rank is a symptom of order, not the other way around.
Nothing wrong with growth, but growth is a symptom of order, not the other way around.
Nothing wrong with shaping, but shaping is a symptom of adaptation, not the other way around.

The thing is that it’s not enough to simply talk about passion or suffering, because one can be passionate, or one can suffer, and still be an idiot.

The key point is, as I’ve already noted, the distinction between genuine and fake, natural and artificial, genetic and memetic, ordered and disordered. And it doesn’t even have much to do with genes, because one can be genetically fake as well, but it’s much closer to the truth than the passion and suffering talk.

13

Blood in higher literature, poetry, and scriptures refers to deeply dedicated passion and the very purpose of your life.

I’m sure that even Nietzsche (as almost all Europeans) knew that.
In the USA, blood that is that stuff you drain to a proper level out of your beef.

14

Hahaha, thats excellent, James.

15

Deeply dedicated passion and the very purpose of life is not wrong but it’s a little vague since it is not specified what exactly is meant by passion. What kind of passion? All kinds of passions? Well, LeBron James is deeply passionate about playing basketball, so is that blood? Would that count as blood? A man running on the court, shooting at the hoop. Entirely artificial yet passionate. I suppose to the modern man passion and a bit of justification of his passion is all that matters. So basketball, and sports in general, are not at all artificial because they are athletic, they train the body, so they must be totally desirable, natural even.

For this reason, I say, blood must be more than just passion or expertise.

Screw basketball, take Justin Bieber for example. Are you telling me that Justin Bieber sings with blood?

16

Are you a part of a vibrant, living reality or a dull, monotonous world? That is the difference between understanding passion and not. Nietzsche said that God was dead, so I dare to think that even he did not understand fully the passion that he did talk about. However, the little snippet shared by the OP signifies otherwise since it is something very easy to understand if you have experience life at all. I find that the people who want to define what someone else has meant by such things as passion or such other words that are easily definable and understandable within the proper context to be those too afraid to live enough of their own life within vibrant channels to fully understand it and so must further define something that never needed to be defined whatsoever. The fact of the matter is that Nietzsche actually lived life and therein holds my respect especially after I read this because I understood it perfectly. To ask what he meant shows that you are unable to understand it or are not confident in their own interpretation.

Simply put, it is the passion needed to live life, to be caught up in emotion and to ride that wave of life therein within the mind. Passion, where does it come from and where does it go; why do some have it and why do some don’t. How is it that two people at the least could go through the exact same situation and come out with two completely different outlooks. Passion. Love. Nietzsche loved life as much as it hurt; it shows within his works and his words because if he did not love life, neither one nor the other would reflect it as such. It is why so many people view philosophy to be unimportant: they are unable to understand because they simply can not relate having never truly experienced life itself while claiming that they have for while it is true that they live and inhabit the world and reality itself, they have not actually experienced much at all and would rather pretend to so they can fit in, which they do so fairly well. We are great actors, great jugglers, great deceivers and great story-tellers. We’re not often very great truth-tellers. So, what truth would you impart on the world except that you could not understand the word passion when viewed in broad-form in such a manner? Wherein does your passion arise that bids you to further understand what exactly is meant by passion for only true passion will take you through life completely and all lesser forms of which that people would label as passion in any way no matter how misguided or wrong would do little to soothe or suit.

It does tie into the blood part. You say that blood must be more than just passion and expertise and I say that you are right, but that that is a given. Blood becomes laughter and tears and joy and tragedy; blood becomes the fire which we’re tried in throughout life along with our sweat. If you fail to understand metaphors then dig deeper; delve deeper into that abyss; and actually experience what Nietzsche and others have found before and after; what spurs great people in life to find their own passions to shape the very world around them in ways that many would never dare. If you can find that indefinable essence within you, you might then understand enough about passion to see you through this conversation with some dignity.

17

To op question

That it is meant, and arrived at through blood sweat and tears. Suffering is the other side of the coin of wisdom. If you haven’t suffered it, you do not know it. …an ancient wisdom not unknown in e.g. Ancient britain.
I see this as not only knowing knowledge and wisdom, but having them hammered into you until the former composite ideas blister and fragment, leaving only the core ‘truth’ remaining. Repetition + suffering, does this.

Spirit here is assumed to be what is left remaining. Hence ‘blood’ [as above] is suffering + repetition, spirit is the net result.

I.e. Where the spirit of a learned wisdom [from blood] = A different river of knowledge, although going to the same ocean, is taking a different route.
Everything we understand has an informational environment to wit the given wisdom relies. Reading wisdoms from someone of a different environment is more difficult, because we don’t have the associative informations it ‘sits in’.

Because the learning is a journey and has a cost, both mean that simply acquiring the information doesn’t give you its meaning ~ no matter how great. If we then go on to continually rehash the same unlearned informaitons, as if in increments the spirit which is gained in the original learning is lost in the current non-learning [through blood]. Eventually, even though it revels in the learned wisdoms, its sense of disconnectedness causes it to ‘sink’ ~ as in, not being replenished!

Though life’s journey can reinvigorate old wisdoms, this is only due to the current journey and >it’s< blood. If old wisdom and knowledge are only learned as information and not in the context of the current journey or an otherwise relevant and new understanding, that old wisdom becomes vacuous and irrelevant. If we think only with such information, then thinking itself becomes ‘wooden’ loosing its spirit.

This and also hinted at in the previous quote, supposes there to be a degradation when information is imparted to the masses? An intellectual prejudice?
It is assumed there to be a special kind of person, and that each of the masses are not ~ especially collectively. Perhaps this is thought of as a ‘watering down’ in a similar way to re-reading?

That’ll do for now, it gets tiresome reading old works :mrgreen:

_

18

I think Nietzsche was wrong; a math book can only really be read one way, but a book of poetry or philosophy [or a work of art compared to some photo’s] will be read with our subjectivity being able to interpret it. Hence, his complaint would be against reading e.g. His works, in a literal manner. Yet if you are saying something, then surely that something must have meaning [you are saying something], unless you are poetically placing conceptual objects and amorphous informations, in which case you aren’t saying something but allowing individuals to find their own meaning in the works.

So are Nietzsche’s works not meant to mean what they appear to mean? Isn’t he guiding the reader to think about morality etc in a certain way? Or is he not meaning any of it. If you don’t >mean< it, then its ‘blood’ surely hasn’t reached the spirit he speaks of?

In the end, spirit cannot be meant, which suggests to me that rather than being found by ‘blood’, it is found through the lack of it i.e. Innocence? It is instead, wisdoms pertaining to the world which are found through blood, and not wisdoms of the spirit.

Or/ ultimately everything [esp. of the world] means jack shit! All our suffering and learning is ultimately pointless.

19

That’s how a hedonist sees reality, that’s how he conceives life. A hedonist being a person whose main concern in life is to escape/fight off unbearable feelings of boredom, they themselves being a consequence of hedonistic, i.e. pleasure-seeking pain-numbing, tactics.

A hedonist is first and foremost a sufferer unable to suffer. His lack of self-control exposes him to uncontrolled, excessive suffering which he then opposes by uncontrolled, excessive numbing. After a while, the painful past is completely gone, completely numbed out of existence, and all that is left is unbearable numbness, which then must be opposed by seeking ever greater stimuli – how a hedonist understands passion.

And I find that people who seek excuses to avoid defining their words to be cowards who like to hide behind obscurity because obscurity allows them to fill in the details using their imagination and avoid facing the possibility of being cowardly retards.

Words such as “passion” are quite vague i.e. the number of things they can signify is enormous.

I know very well what Nietzsche meant, you imbecile. What I do not know is what YOU and people INTERPRETING his words mean. Get it, fuckhead?

That’s too simple, fuckhead. You don’t seem to understand that there is such a thing as “hedonistic passion”, don’t you? Or “masochistic passion”? You talk of emotion, but what about the will, you imbecile? Isn’t will supposed to control the emotion (i.e. the body?)

See, Nietzsche was vague, but that does not mean that we should be vague. I can explain what he meant by “passion” in a very simple, straightforward way.

What Nietzsche meant by passion is this: will controlling the body. That’s it. In other words, self-control, or Hellenic asceticism as Satyr calls it.

Hedonism (and its passions) is body with no will, hatred of order, surrender to chaos, excessive Dionysus/pleasure/release.

Masochism (and its passions) is will with no body, hatred of chaos, excessive Apollo/pain/tension. Will abusing its body by issuing commands to an idealized body, ignoring the feedback of the real body.

Simply put lol. Simply put, you moron, you are a fuckhead.

20

Magnus Anderson

Or one who is a realist might see life in that way, On the other side of the coin - the other side of the coin being the monotonous dull and tragic world the edge being between those two.
An artist and a poet may also see life as being vibrant and real.

I wonder - is that true of all hedonists? Is it simply about escaping boredom and pain?

.
Hedonists are individuals too. Are we saying that everyone who seeks pleasure in an inordinate way is trying to escape pain?
Maybe the hedonist has a lower threshhold for pleasure and needs more than many of us do.

.
But this is also true of others, Magnus, not just hedonists. This is also true of individuals who are addicted in certain ways. Would you call them hedonists? Well, yes perhaps many of them are but not all. Trying to numb the pain does not necessarily bespeak a hedonist but one in deep pain.
There is a distinction between one seeking after pleasure and one trying to escape pain. Yes?

…

I do agree that words need to be defined. They are such noble and magical things. They need the same respect that we would give one another that we didn’t understand. :laughing:
Even within a particular context, words still need definitions since they can mean different things to different people - still.

Agreed. But I do think that it is true that within the context of a certain passage, one’s meaning might be more apparent.
But I also think that meaning is based also on one’s own life experience and way of looking at something which can be quite different from anothers. Might a more logical and rational person see the word “passion” differently than let’s say an artist or a poet (that’s not to say that the latter can’t be logical and rational).

How do you know for sure?

What does hedonistic or masochist passion have to do with the will, Magnus? Isn’t their passion more emotional and uncontrolled?
Anyway, passion can be seen as the lust for life - isn’t the hedonist’s and masochist’s passion a kind of lust for something in life?
Can the desire to create something beautiful, to transcend life in an ongoing desire to BEcome more than we are, to grow, can that also be seen as “real” passion? I don’t necessarily think that passion always involves emotion. It’s also a state of mind.

If that is what he meant, he could have simply used the word “discipline”. I’m not saying that is not what he meant though.
It isn’t his self-control that is the passion but that passion (strong desire) is a tool to achieve self control. There is a distinction there - I think there is anyway.

Mind with no will. But Is it hatred of order. Might one think that the hedonist is trying to find more order but unwittingly and unconsciously creating the opposite?

I find masochism to be a lack of will, to be powerless in itself. If the masochist “saw” an idealized body, what would its purpose be of destroying itself?

lol Define SIMPLE? :evilfun: