II. DIONYSUS
1003 ( lan-Fall 1888)
To him that has turned out well, who does my heart good,
carved from wood that is hard, gentle, and fragrant — in whom even
the nose takes pleasure — this book is dedicated.
He enjoys the taste of what is wholesome for him;
his pleasure in anything ceases when the bounds of the whole-
some are crossed;
he divines the remedies for partial injuries; he has illnesses
as great stimulants of his life;
he knows how to exploit ill chances;
he grows stronger through the accidents that threaten to
destroy him;
he instinctively gathers from all that he sees, hears, experi-
ences, what advances his main concern — he follows a principle
of selection — he allows much to fall through;
he reacts with the slowness bred by a long caution and a
deliberate pride — he tests a stimulus for its origin and its intentions,
he does not submit;
he is always in his own company, whether he deals with
books, men, or landscapes;
he honors by choosing, by admitting, by trusting,
Around 1876 I was terrified to see all I had desired hitherto
compromised, as I grasped which way Wagner was going now;
and I was bound very closely to him by all the bonds of a profound
identity of needs, by gratitude, by his irreplaceability and the
absolute privation I saw before me.
At the same time I seemed to myself irrevocably incarcerated
in my philology and teaching — in an accident and makeshift of
my life: I no longer knew how to extricate myself, and was weary,
spent, used up.
At the same time I grasped that my instinct went into the oppo-
site direction from Schopenhauer’s: toward a justification of life,
even at its most terrible, ambiguous, and mendacious; for this I had
the formula “Dionysian.”
Against the theory that an “in-itself of things” must neces-
sarily be good, blessed, true, and one, Schopenhauer’s interpre-
tation of the “in-itself” as will was an essential step; but he did
not understand how to deify this will: he remained entangled in
the moral-Christian ideal. Schopenhauer was still so much subject
to the dominion of Christian values that, as soon as the thing-in-
itself was no longer “God” for him, he had to see it as bad,
stupid, and absolutely reprehensible. He failed to grasp that there
can be an infinite variety of ways of being different, even of being
god.
In Honour of Shakespeare.
The best thing I could say in honour of Shakespeare, the man, is that he believed in Brutus, and cast not a shadow of suspicion on the kind of virtue which Brutus represents! It is to him that Shakespeare consecrated his best tragedy. It is at present still called by a wrong name, to him, and to the most terrible essence of lofty morality. Independence of soul! that is the question at issue! No sacrifice can be too great there : one must be able to sacrifice to it even one's dearest friend, although he be the grandest of men, the ornament of the world, the genius without peer, if one really loves freedom as the freedom of great souls, and if this freedom be threatened by him : it is thus that Shakespeare must have felt! The elevation in which he places Caesar is the most exquisite honour he could confer upon Brutus ; it is thus only that he lifts into vastness the inner problem of his hero, and similarly the strength of soul which could cut this knot! And was it actually political freedom that impelled the poet to sympathy with Brutus, and made him the accomplice of Brutus? Or was political freedom merely a symbol for something inexpressible? Do we perhaps stand before some sombre event or adventure of the poet's own soul, which has remained unknown, and of which he only cared to speak symbolically? What is all of Hamlet's melancholy in comparison with the melancholy of Brutus! and perhaps Shakespeare also knew this, as he knew the other, by experience! Perhaps he also had his dark hour and his bad angel, just as Brutus had them!
1009 ( Spring-Fall 1887 )
Points of view for my values: whether out of abundance or
out of want? — whether one looks on or lends a hand — or looks
away and walks off? — whether out of stored-up energy, “spon-
taneously,” or merely stimulated reactively, and provoked? whether
simple, out of a paucity of elements, or out of overwhelming mastery
over many, so they are pressed into service when they are needed?
— whether one is a problem or a solution ? — whether perfect with a
small task or imperfect with an extraordinary goal? whether one
is genuine or merely an actor, whether one is genuine as an actor
or merely a copy of an actor, whether one is a “representative”
or that which is represented?" whether a “personality” or merely
a rendezvous of personalities — whether sick from sickness or
excessive health? whether one goes on ahead as a shepherd or
as an “exception” (third species: as a fugitive)? whether one
needs dignity, or to be a “buffoon”? whether one seeks resistance
or avoids it? whether one is imperfect through being “too early”
or “too late”? whether by nature one says Yes or No or is a
peacock’s tail of many colors? whether one is sufficiently proud
not to be ashamed even of one’s vanity? whether one is still capable
of a bite of conscience? ( — this species is becoming rare: formerly
the conscience had too much to chew: now it seems to have lost
its teeth)? whether one is still capable of a “duty”?
1029 ( 1884-1886 )
I have presented such terrible images to knowledge that any
“Epicurean delight” is out of the question. Only Dionysian joy is
sufficient: I have been the first to discover the tragic. The Greeks,
thanks to their moralistic superficiality, misunderstood it. Even
resignation is not a lesson of tragedy, but a misunderstanding of
it! Yearning for nothingness is a denial of tragic wisdom, its
opposite!
1032 ( 1883-1885 )
The first question is by no means whether we are content
with ourselves, but whether we are content with anything at all.
If we affirm one single moment, we thus affirm not only ourselves
but all existence. For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us our-
selves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with happiness
and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed
to produce this one event — and in this single moment of affirmation
all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed.
1033 {March-June 1888)
The affirmative affects: pride, joy, health, love of the sexes,
enmity and war, reverence, beautiful gestures and manners,
strong will, the discipline of high spirituality, will to power,
gratitude toward earth and life — everything that is rich and
desires to bestow and that replenishes and gilds and immortalizes
and deifies life — the whole force of transfiguring virtues, every-
thing that declares good and affirms in word and deed —
1034 (1888)
We few or many who again dare to live in a dismoralized world,
we pagans in faith: we are probably also the first to grasp what
a pagan faith is: — to have to imagine higher creatures than man,
but beyond good and evil; to have to consider all being higher
as also being immoral. We believe in Olympus — and not in the
“Crucified.”
Many white pussies will try to argue that the Uebermensch needs to be white, and love ... Frank Zappa or David Bowie some shit.
the attainment of power by the black freed-men by the means of combative and intoxicating music, narratives of which are steeped in tragedy.
1037 ( Spring-Fall 1887)
Let us remove supreme goodness from the concept of God:
it is unworthy of a god. Let us also remove supreme wisdom:
it is the vanity of philosophers that is to be blamed for this mad
notion of God as a monster of wisdom: he had to be as like them
as possible. No! God the supreme power — that suffices! Every-
thing follows from it, “the world” follows from it!
1038 ( March-Fall 1888)
— And how many new gods are still possible! As for myself,
in whom the religious, that is to say god-forming, instinct occasion-
ally becomes active at impossible times — how differently, how
variously the divine has revealed itself to me each time!
So many strange things have passed before me in those time-
less moments that fall into one’s life as if from the moon, when
one no longer has any idea how old one is or how young one will
yet be — I should not doubt that there are many kinds of gods —
There are some one cannot imagine without a certain halcyon and
frivolous quality in their make-up — Perhaps light feet are even
an integral part of the concept “god” — Is it necessary to elaborate
that a god prefers to stay beyond everything bourgeois and
rational? and, between ourselves, also beyond good and evil?
His prospect is free — in Goethe’s words. And to call upon the
inestimable authority of Zarathustra in this instance: Zarathustra
goes so far as to confess: “I would believe only in a God who
could dance ” —
To repeat: how many new gods are still possible! — Zarathus-
tra himself, to be sure, is merely an old atheist: he believes
neither in old nor in new gods, Zarathustra says he would; but
Zarathrusta will not — Do not misunderstand him.
Fixed Cross wrote:What you have now easily divined from these text is: the Übermensch has much to do with Nietzsche's adoration of Dionysos.
Users browsing this forum: Ecmandu, Google [Bot], Majestic-12 [Bot]