No More Learning

And what does Zarathustra relate? He tells of his ascent upon a mountain path at twilight. He stresses the atmosphere of twilight when he remarks, "Not only one sun had gone down for me. " In his narra- tive of the ascent two regions of essential imagery converge-and, in fact, Nietzsche's transposition of thought into sensuous imagery always haunts these two realms: the sea, and mountain heights.
• The German text reads:
Nach neuen Meeren
Dorthin-will ich; und ich traue Mir fortan und meinem Griff. Offen liegt das Meer, in's Blaue Treibt mein Genueser Schiff.
Alles glanzt mir neu und neuer, Mittag schlaft auf Raum und Zeit-: Nur dein Auge--ungeheuer
Blickt mich's an, Unendlichkeit!
40 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
While ascending, Zarathustra must constantly overcome the "spirit of gravity. " The spirit of gravity pulls downward without cease, and yet for the one who climbs, the one who carries his "archenemy" into the heights with him, that spirit is no more than a dwarf.
But as he climbs the depths themselves increase and the abyss first becomes an abyss-not because the climber plunges into it, but pre- cisely because he is ascending. Depths belong to heights; the former wax with the latter. For that reason the following lines appear by way of anticipation in the first section of Part III, which conjoins the two realms of imagery, "mountain" and "sea":
"Whence come the highest mountains? " I once asked. Then I iearned that they come out of the sea.
The testimony is inscribed in their stone, and in the walls of their sum- mits. From unfathomable depths the highest must rise to its height.
In any ascent there are always way-stations where one may estimate the way up and the way down against one another. The spirit of the ascending heights and the spirit of the downward-wending path meet face to face while on the way. Zarathustra the climber versus the dwarf, the one who drags down. Thus, when climbing, it comes to a question for decision: "Dwarf! It is either You or me! " The way the issue is posed here, it seems as though the dwarf (named first and with the "You" capitalized) is to win supremacy. Soon, however, at the beginning of the second section of "On the Vision and the Riddle," matters are reversed:
"Stop, dwarf! " said I. "It is I or you! But I am the stronger of us two: you do not know my abysmal thought. That you could not bear! "
Inasmuch as Zarathustra thinks the abyss, the thought of thoughts, inasmuch as he takes the depths seriously, he rises to the heights and surpasses the dwarf.
Then something happened that made me lighter: the dwarf, being curious, sprang from my shoulder. He squatted on a rock in front of me. But at the very place we stopped there was a gateway.
Zarathustra now describes the gateway. With the description of the image of the gateway Zarathustra brings the riddle to vision.
"On the Vision and the Riddle" 41
In the gateway two long avenues meet. The one leads forward, the other leads back. They run counter to one another; they affront one another. Each extends infinitely into its eternity. Above the gateway appears the inscription "Moment. "*
The gateway "Moment," with its avenues stretching infinitely on- ward and counter to one another, is the image of time running forward and backward into eternity. Time itself is viewed from the "moment," from the "now. " Both ways find their point of departure here, one extending into the not-yet-now of the future, the other leading back into the no-longer-now of the past. To the extent that the most abys- mal thought is to be made accessible to the vision of the dwarf squat- ting at Zarathustra's side, made accessible by means of this sighting of the gateway, and to the extent that for the dwarfs vision time and eternity are obviously to be transposed into sense-images, the passage as a whole suggests that the thought of the eternal recurrence of the same will now be conflated with the realm of time and eternity. But this vision, the envisaged gateway, is a sighting of the riddle itself, not of its solution. When the "image" becomes visible and is described, the riddle draws into sight for the first time. The riddle is what our riddling must aim at.
Riddling commences by questioning. Zarathustra therefore immedi- ately directs some questions to the dwarf concerning the gateway and its avenues. The first question involves the avenues-which one, we are not told. Indeed, what Zarathustra now asks is equally pertinent to both. If anyone were to strike out on one of these avenues, and con- tinue on and on, what would happen? "Do you believe, dwarf, that these ways contradict one another eternally? "-that is to say, do the paths run away from one another eternally, are they contrary to one another?
" 'Everything straight deceives,' murmured the dwarf contemptuous-
• "Moment" unfortunately fails to capture the dramatically temporal nature of the German Augenblick, literally, the glance or flash of an eye. The drama in question has everything to do with what Heidegger in Being and Time calls "ecstatic temporality," especially in its connection with the analysis of death. (Sec, for example, section 68a, on the "authentic present. ") The gateway "Glance of an Eye" remains throughout Heideg- ger's lecture course the most compelling image of eternal return.
42 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
ly. 'All truth is curved; time itself is a circle. ' " The dwarf resolves the
difficulty-indeed, as we are expressly told, in a "contemptuous" mur-
mur. The difficulty is not one which the dwarf would take pains with·
•·
for him it is scarcely worth even talking about. For if both ways extend to eternity, they wind up at the same place; they meet there, they link up and form one uninterrupted highway. What to us looks like two straight avenues taking off in opposite directions is in truth that seg- ment of an enormous circle which is visible to us here and now, while the circle itself perpetually revolves back upon itself. The straight is semblance. In truth, the way the avenues take is circular; that is to say, truth itself-being as it proceeds in truth-is curved. Time's circling in itself, and hence the ever-recurring same for all beings in time, is the way in which being as a whole is. It is in the way of eternal recurrence. That is how the dwarf guesses the riddle.
But Zarathustra's narrative takes a curious turn. "'You spirit of gravity,' I cried wrathfully, 'don't make things too easy for yourself! Or I'll leave you squatting where you are right now, lamefoot! -and I was the one who carried you high! '" Instead of rejoicing in the fact that the dwarf has thought his thought, Zarathustra speaks "wrathfully. " So the dwarf has not really grasped the riddle; he has made the solution too easy. Accordingly, the thought of eternal recurrence of the same is not yet thought when one merely imagines "everything turning in a cir- cle. " In his book on Nietzsche, Ernst Bertram characterizes the doc- trine of eternal return as a "deceptively aping, lunatic mysterium. ''* He appends a saying of Goethe's by way of remonstrance, obviously because he views it as a superior insight which puts to shame the thought of eternal return. Goethe's saying runs, "The more one knows and the more one comprehends, the more one realizes that everything turns in a circle. " That is precisely the thought of circling as the dwarf thinks it, the dwarf who, in Zarathustra's words, makes things too easy-inasmuch as he absolutely refuses to think Nietzsche's stupendous thought.
The thinker abandons anyone who thinks Nietzsche's keenest thought dwarfishly, leaves the lamefoot squatting where he squats.
• See page 6, above, for the reference.
"On the Vision and the Riddle" 43
Zarathustra lets the dwarf sit, even though he has carried him "high," transposed him to a height where he would see if only he could, and where he could see if he were not forever-a dwarf.
Zarathustra immediately directs a second question to the dwarf. This question refers not to the avenues but to the gateway itself, "the Mo- ment. " " 'Behold,' I went on, 'behold this Moment! ' " The entire vi- sion is to be pondered once again on the basis of the "Moment" and in relation to it. " 'From this gateway Moment a long avenue runs eter- nally rearward: behind us lies an eternity. ' " All the finite things that can hasten along that avenue and that need only a finite span in order to run their course, all these finite things must therefore have already run through this eternity, must have already come along this avenue. Nietzsche summarizes an essential thought concerning his doctrine so succinctly here, in the form of a question, that it is hardly comprehen- sible on its own, especially since the requisite presuppositions, al- though mentioned, do not really become visible. Those presupposi- tions are: first, the infinity of time in the directions of future and past; second, th~ actuality of time, which is not a "subjective" Form of
Intuition; third, the finitude of things and of their courses. On the basis of these presuppositions, everything that can in any way be must, as a being, already have been. For in an infinite time the course of a finite world is necessarily already completed. If, therefore, " 'every- thing has already been there, what do you make of this Moment, dwarf? Must not this gateway too already have been there? ' " And if all things are knotted tight, so that the moment pulls them along behind, must not the moment also pull itself along behind? And if the moment also moves down the lane ahead, must not all things strike out along the avenue once again? The patient spider, the moonlight (cf. The
Gay Science, number 341), I and you in the gateway-" 'must we not recur eternally? '" It seems as though Zarathustra's second question repeats exactly what was contained in the dwarfs answer to the first question: Everything moves in a circle. It seems so. Yet the dwarf fails to reply to the second question. The very question is posed in such a superior fashion that Zarathustra can no longer expect an answer from the dwarf. The superiority consists in the fact that certain conditions of understanding have been brought into play, conditions the dwarf can-
44 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
not satisfy-because he is a dwarf. These new conditions derive from the realization that the second question is based on the "Moment. " But such questioning requires that one adopt a stance of his own with- in the "Moment" itself, that is, in time and its temporality.
When that requirement appears, the dwarf vanishes. Indeed, he vanishes on account of an event that in itself is sinister and foreboding. Zarathustra relates: "I saw a young shepherd, writhing, choking in spasms, his face distorted: a thick black snake hung out of his mouth. " The snake had bitten fast there. Zarathustra pulls at the snake, in vain. "Then the cry rose out of me, 'Bite! You must bite! Bite off the head! Bite! '"
The event and the image are difficult for us to think. But they are most intimately bound up with the effort to think the thought that is hardest to bear. Right now we will pay attention to only one aspect: after Zarathustra has posed the second question there is no place left for the dwarf, who no longer belongs in the realm of this question because he cannot bear to hear it. Questioning, riddling, and thinking, as they approach ever nearer the import of the riddle, themselves become more riddlesome, loom ever more gigantic, towering over the one who is doing the questioning. Not everyone has a right to every question. Rather than expect a response from the dwarf, and rather than provide a polished reply couched in propositions, Zarathustra continues the narrative: "Thus I spoke, and ever more softly: for I feared my own thoughts and hinterthoughts. " The thought that is hardest to bear grows terrifying. Behind what one might imagine as a turning in lazy circles, it descries something altogether different. It thinks the thought in a way dwarfs never think it.
7. Zarathustra's Animals
At this point we will interrupt our interpretation of the episode "On the Vision and the Riddle. " We will consider the episode again in another context later in the course. After we have portrayed the essence of nihilism as the domain of the thought of eternal return we shall be better prepared to understand what is now to transpire in that episode. We will not consider the remaining episodes of Part Ill, but only ex- trapolate some details of the fourth-to-last section, "The Conva- lescent. "'"
Zarathustra has in the meantime returned from his sea voyage to the solitude of the mountains-to his cave and to his animals. His animals are the eagle and the serpent. These two are his animals; they belong to him in his solitude. And when Zarathustra's loneliness speaks, it is his animals who are speaking. Nietzsche writes at one point (it was in September of 1888 in Sils-Maria, at the conclusion of a preface-no longer extant-to Twilight of the Idols in which Nietzsche casts a retrospective glance at Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil): "His love ofanimals-men have always recognized the solitary by means of this trait" (XIV, 417). However, Zarathustra's animals are not chosen arbitrarily: their essence is an image of Zarathustra's proper essence, that is to say, an image of his task-which is to be the teacher of eternal return. These animals of his, eagle and serpent, therefore do not enter on the stage at some fortuitous point. Zarathustra first espies
• "The Convalescent" is discussed in section 8, below. Heidegger returns to his inter- pretation of "The Vision and the Riddle" in section 24, "Moment and Eternal Recur- rence," after having raised the question of that thought's domain, namely, the overcoming of nihilism, in sections 21-23. Heidegger's remarks here are most important for our understanding the structure and movement of the lecture course as a whole. For further discussion, see section I of the Analysis at the end of this volume.
46 THE ETERl'\AL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
them at glowing midday, that part of the day which throughout the work Thus Spoke Zarathustra unleashes an essential image-generating force.
When Zarathustra speaks to his heart at glowing midday he hears the piercing cry of a bird. He looks inquiringly into the sky. "And behold! An eagle soared through the air in vast circles, and a serpent hung suspended from him, not as his prey but as though she were his friend: for she had coiled about his neck" (Prologue, section 10). This magnificient emblem scintillates for all who have eyes to see! The more essentially we comprehend the work Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the more univocal yet inexhuastible the emblem becomes.
The eagle soars in vast circles high in the air. The circling is an image of eternal return. Yet it is a circling that simultaneously rises skyward and holds itself there in the heights.
The serpent hangs suspended from the eagle, coiled about his throat. Again, the coils of the serpent, wound in rings about the eagle's throat, are symbolic of the ring of eternal return. Moreover, the ser- pent winds itself about the one who wends his way in great circles in the sky-a singular and essential, yet for us still obscure, tangle of coils. Through it the graphic force of the imagery gradually displays its wealth. The serpent, not as prey pinned in the eagle's talons and so suppressed, but winding itself freely about the throat as the eagle's intimate companion, winding about him and soaring upward with him in circles! Into this sensuous imagery of the eternal return of the same -circling in a ring, and coiling in a circle-we must integrate what it is the animals themselves are.
The eagle is the proudest animal. Pride is the fully developed resolu- tion of one who maintains himself at the level of his own essential rank, a rank to which his task appoints him. Pride is the assurance of one who no longer confuses himself with anyone else. Pride is poised above, is defined by heights and elevation; yet it is essentially different from arrogance and superciliousness. The latter remain in need of a relationship with what is beneath them; they have to set themselves in relief against it and thus they remain necessarily dependent on it. For they possess nothing that would inherently enable them to imagine themselves in elevation. They can be uplifted only because they re-
Zarathustra's Animals 47
main defined by what is beneath them; they can ascend only to some-
thing that is not elevated but which they fancy to be so. Pride is differ-
ent.
The eagle is the proudest animal. He lives always in the heights, and
for them. Even when he plunges into the depths, these are depths among mountain heights, crevasses, not plains where all is flattened out and equalized.
The serpent is the most discerning animal. Discernment suggests the mastery of actual knowledge concerning the sundry ways in which knowing announces itself, holds itself in reserve, asserts itself and yet remains flexible, avoiding its own pitfalls. Proper to such discernment are the power to metamorphose and to disguise oneself-a power that cannot be reduced to vulgar falsehood-and the mastery of masks. Discernment does not betray itself. It haunts the background while playing in the foreground; it wields power over the play of Being and semblance.
Zarathustra's two animals are the proudest and most discerning of animals. They belong together and they are out on a search. That is to say, they seek someone of their own kind, one who matches their standards, someone who can hold out with them in loneliness. They seek to learn whether Zarathustra is still living, living as one who is prepared to go under. That should be enough to let us know that the eagle and serpent are not pets; we do not take them home with us and proceed to domesticate them. They are alien to all that is domestic and usual, all that is "familiar" in the petty sense of the word. These two animals define for the first time the loneliest loneliness, and it is some- thing different from what the usual view takes it to be. In the usual view, solitude is what liberates us, frees us from all things. Solitude, according to this view, is what happens after you post the "Do No! Disturb" sign. Yet in our loneliest loneliness the most hair-raising and hazardous things are loosed upon us and on our task, and these cannot be deflected onto other things or other people. They must penetrate us through and through, not that we might be rid of them once and for all, but that in authentic knowing and supreme discernment we may become aware that such things remain relevant. To know precisely
that is the knowing that is hardest to bear. All too easily such knowing
48 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF' TBE SAME
flies off, or creeps away, into evasions and excuses-into sheer folly. W e must think this magnificient conception of loneliness in order to grasp both the role played by these two sensuous images-the two animals of Zarathustra the solitary-and the figure of Zarathustra him- self. We dare not falsify all this by romanticizing it. To hold out in loneliest loneliness does not mean to keep these two animals as com- pany or as a pleasant pastime; it means to possess the force that will enable one to remain true to oneself in their proximity and to prevent them from fleeing. Hence at the conclusion of the Prologue to Thus
Spoke Zarathustra we find the words:
"Thus I bid my pride always to accompany my discernment. And if my discernment should one day leave me-alas, she loves to fly off! -then let my pride fly with my folly! "
Thus began Zarathustra's downgoing.
A curious downgoing, which commences by exposing itself to the supreme possibilites of Becoming and Being. These cohere in the es- sence of will to power; that is to say, they are one.
What we set out to do here was to indicate briefly what the figures of Zarathustra's two animals, eagle and serpent, symbolize: first, in their circling and coiling-the circle and ring of eternal return; second, in their essential character as pride and discernment, respectively, these constituting the basic stance of the teacher of eternal return and his mode of knowledge; third, as the animals of his loneliness, being su- preme exactions on Zarathustra himself. Zarathustra's animals are all the more implacable inasmuch as we hear them-not expressing cer- tain propositions or rules or admonitions-but 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 speak only to those who possess the constructive energy to give them shape, so that they make sense. As soon as the poetic force-that is, the higher constructive energy-wanes, the emblems turn mute. They petrify, become sheer "facade" and "ornament. "
8. "The Convalescent"
The reference to Zarathustra's animals has left us not totally unpre- pared to grasp the episode that, along with "On the Vision and the Riddle," considered earlier, treats the eternal return in a more direct fashion.
This episode, the fourth-to-last of Part III, entitled "The Con- valescent,'' remains in mysterious correspondence to that earlier one. In "The Convalescent" Zarathustra's animals speak to him about what they themselves symbolize: they speak of eternal return. They speak to Zarathustra, hovering about him, and remain present to his solitude until a particular moment when they leave him alone, cautiously steal- ing away. Their standing by him suggests that they are curious about him and are ever on the search for him; they want to know whether he is becoming the one he is, whether in his Becoming he finds his Being. But Zarathustra's Becoming commences with his downgoing. The downgoing itself comes to its end in Zarathustra's convalescence. Everything here is indicative of the most profound strife. Only when we grasp the various facets of the strife will we near the thought that is hardest to bear.
We shall place special emphasis on the characterization of the doc- trine of eternal return, as befits the preliminary elucidations we are now engaged in. Yet we must continue to keep to the style of the present work; we must grasp everything that happens, in the way that it happens, in terms of that work itself. We must also understand the teaching, as taught, in connection with the questions as to who Zara- thustra is, how the teacher of that teaching is, and in what way the teaching defines the teacher. That is to say, precisely where the teach- ing is most purely expressed in doctrines, the teacher, the one who teaches and speaks, dare not be forgotten.
50 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
How do matters stand with Zarathustra at the beginning of the sec- tion entitled "The Convalescent"? What is happening here? Zarathus- tra has returned once again to his cave, home from his sea voyage. One morning soon after his arrival he leaps from his bed and cries out like a madman, gesturing frantically, "as though someone were still lying in his bed and refused to get up. " Zarathustra rages in a frightful voice in order to wake this other and to make sure that he will remain awake in the future. This other is his most abysmal thought, which, although it lies with him, still remains a stranger to Zarathustra; the other is his own ultimate recess, which Zarathustra has not yet con- ducted to his supreme height and to the most fully wakeful of lives. The thought lies beside him in bed, has not yet become one with him, is not yet incorporated in him and hence is not yet something truly thought. So saying, we indicate what is now to happen: the full import and the whole might of the thought that is hardest to bear must now rise and reveal itself. Zarathustra roars at it, calls it a "sluggish worm. " We easily discern the meaning of the image: the sluggish worm, lying as a stranger on the floor, is the counterimage to the ringed serpent who "wrings" his way to the heights, soaring there in vast circles, vigilant in friendship. When the invocation of the most abysmal thought begins, Zarathustra's animals grow fearful; they do not flee in consternation, however, but come nearer, while all the other animals about them scatter. Eagle and serpent alone remain. It is a matter of bringing to the light of wakeful day, in purest solitude, what the ani- mals symbolize.
Zarathustra invokes his ultimate recesses and so conducts himself to himself. He becomes what he is and confesses himself to be the one who he is: "the advocate of life, the advocate of suffering, the advocate of the circle. " Living, suffering, and circling are not three distinct matters. They belong together and form one: being as a whole, to which suffering, the abyss, belongs and which is inasmuch as, circling, it recurs. These three manifest their mutual affinity when they are gathered in the light of day, that is, when they are thought in their unity by Zarathustra's supreme "Yes. " In that supreme moment, when the thought is comprehended and is truly thought, Zarathustra cries, "Hail me! " Yet his "Hail me! " is at the same time a "Woe is me! "-for
"The Convalescent" 51
his is the victory that overcomes even itself as its greatest danger, the victory that grasps itself as downgoing.
Scarcely is it accomplished, when Zarathustra collapses. After he regains his senses he takes to his bed for seven days and seven nights. "But his animals did not abandon him, neither by day nor by night. " Even so, Zarathustra remains in his solitude. The eagle, the proudest animal, flies off alone to fetch all sorts of nourishment. That means to say that Zarathustra does not lose himself, that he continues to nourish his pride and to secure the certainty of his rank, even though he must lie prostrate, even though his discernment does not bother about him now, so that he cannot even tell himself what he knows. Among other things, the eagle brings him "yellow and red berries," and we recall the earlier reference to "deep yellow and fiery red" (cf. Part III, "On the Spirit of Gravity"). Taken together, these two colors conform to what Zarathustra wants to have in sight: the color of deepest falsehood, er- ror, and semblance, and the color of supreme passion, of incandescent creation.
When interpreting the two colors we have to keep in mind the fact that for will to power "error" constitutes the necessary essence of truth and that it is therefore not at all to be valued negatively. "Deep yellow" may also be interpreted as the gold of the "golden flash of the serpent vita" (WM, 577), which is "the serpent of eternity" (XII, 426). For the second interpretation "deep yellow" is the color of the eternal recur- rence of the same, "fiery red" the color of will to power. For the first interpretation the two colors display the essential structure of will to power itself, inasmuch as truth as that which fixates and art as creation constitute the conditions of the possibility of will to power. In both cases the mutual affinity of the two colors points toward the essential unity of the Being of beings as thought by Nietzsche.
But after seven days "the animals felt that the time had come to t:ilk with him. " Zarathustra is now strong enough actually to think and to express himself about his most difficult thought, his ultimate recess. For what the eagle and serpent (the loneliest loneliness) wish to talk about-the only thing they can talk about-is the thought of eternal return. In the dialogue between Zarathustra and his animals the thought of thoughts is now brought to language. It is not presented as
52 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
a "theory"; only in conversation does it prove itself. Fot here the speak- ers themselves must venture forth into what is spoken: conversation alone brings to light the extent to which the speakers can or cannot advance, and the extent to which their conversation is only empty talk.
The two animals open the conversation. They inform Zarathustra that the world outside is like a garden that awaits him. They sense somehow that a new insight has come to him, an insight concerning the world as a whole. It must therefore be a pleasure to proceed to this newly constituted world, since all things are bathed in the light of the new insight and want to be integrated into the new dispensation. Inso- far as they are so illuminated and integrated, things corroborate the insight in a profound way; they heal the one who up to now has been a seeker, they cure him of the disease of inquiry. That is what the animals mean when they say to Zarathustra, "All things yearn for you. . . . All things want to be doctors to you! " And Zarathustra? He listens to the animals' talk, indeed gladly, although he knows that they are only jabbering. But after such solitude the world is like a garden, even when it is invoked by mere empty talk, in the sheer play of words and phrases. He knows that a cheerful loveliness and gentle humor settle over the terrifying thing that being genuinely is; that being can conceal itself behind semblances in what is talked about. In truth, of course, the world is no garden, and for Zarathustra it dare not be one, especially if by "garden" we mean an enchanting haven for the flight from being. Nietzsche's conception of the world does not provide the thinker with a sedate residence in which he can putter about unper- turbed, like the philosopher of old, Epicurus, in his "garden. " The world is not a cosmos present at hand in itself. The animals' allusion to the garden has the sense of rejecting any sedate residence; at the same time, indirectly, it has the task of referring us to the concept of world in the tragic insight. Here we must ponder an important note by Nietzsche (XII, 368, from 1882-84):
Solitude for a time necessary, in order that the creature be totally permeated --cured and hard. New form of community, asserting itself in a warlike manner. Otherwise the spirit grows soft. No "gardens" and no sheer "eva- sion in the face of the masses. " War (but without gunpowder! ) between different thoughts! and their armies!
"The Convalescent" 53
The animals talk to Zarathustra about his new insight in seductive words that tempt him to sheer intoxication. Yet Zarathustra knows that in truth these words and tones are "rainbows and sham bridges con- necting what is eternally distinct. " Where things most reminiscent of other things are named in the conversation, when it sounds as though the same is being said, then and there comes the loveliest lie: "For the smallest gap is the hardest to bridge. "
What is Zarathustra thinking about? Nothing else than the sole mat- ter under discussion, the world, being as a whole. But what response did the dwarf give to this riddle? The dwarf said that the avenues of the gateway, running counter to one another, meet in the infinite; every- thing turns in a circle and is a circle. And what did Zarathustra call himself when he thought his most difficult thought out of his ultimate recess, a thought he did not take lightly, as the dwarf did? He called himself the "advocate of the circle. " Hence the two of them, the dwarf and Zarathustra, say the same thing. Between them lies only "the smallest gap": in each case it is an other who speaks the same words. Otherwise that same word, "circle," is but a sham bridge between things that are eternally distinct. Thus one man's circle is not another man's circle. What now comes to light is that whenever the Being of beings as a whole is to be uttered the semblance of unanimity is great- est and correct understanding-which is decisive and determinative of rank-most difficult.
It is easy for anyone and everyone to say, "A being is," and "A being becomes. " Everyone thinks that anybody can understand that. Mean- while, talking this way, "man dances above and beyond all things. " Man, drifting along as he usually does, oblivious to the true dimen- sions and proper stages of genuine thinking, needs that kind of dance, that kind of jabbering, and Zarathustra takes joy in it. Yet he also knows that it is an illusion, that this garden is not the world, that "the world is deep, and deeper than the day has thought" (Part III, "Before Sunrise").
Thus Zarathustra does not allow the animals' talk to seduce him away from what he has known now for seven days and nights. He can find nothing reassuring in the fact that everyone confidently asserts-as though it were evident-that "everything turns in a circle," thereby to
54 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
all appearances agreeing with him in their empty talk. But the animals reply, "To those who think as we do, all things themselves dance. " We do not dance above and beyond the things, they seem to say, but see the things' own dance and sway: you can trust us. And now they tell how the world looks under the new sun of eternal recurrence:
Everything goes, everything comes back; eternally rolls the wheel of Be- ing. Everything dies, everything blooms again; eternally runs the year of Being.
Everything sunders, everything is joined anew; eternally the identical House of Being is built. Everything departs, everything greets again; eternal- ly true to itself is the Ring of Being.
In every instant Being begins; around every Here the sphere of There rolls. The center is everywhere. Curved is the path of eternity.
Thus talk Zarathustra's animals. And why shouldn't they, they who are only insofar as they soar in vast circles and form rings? Could eternal return of the same be portrayed in more elegant words and more striking images than those employed here? How different this speech seems from the contemptuous grumblings of the dwarf! Never- theless, the speeches of the dwarf and the animals betray a fatal resem- blance. The dwarf says "All truth," that is to say, what is truly in being, in its passage and passing, "is curved. " The animals say, "Curved is the path of eternity. " Perhaps the animals' talk is only more effervescent, more buoyant and playful than-yet at bottom identical with-the talk of the dwarf, to whom Zarathustra objects that he makes things too easy for himself. Indeed, even the speech of his very own animals, who present his teaching to him in the fairest formulas, can- not deceive Zarathustra: " 'Oh, you rascally jesters and barrel organs,' answered Zarathusra, smiling again, 'how well you know what had to be fulfilled in seven days-' . " Yet their knowing is not knowledge. If Zarathustra calls it that he is only being ironic and is really suggesting that they know nothing. They are barrel organs: they turn his words concerning the eternal return of the same, words obtained only after the hardest struggle, into a mere ditty; they crank it out, knowing what is essential about it as little as the dwarf does. For the dwarf vanishes
"The Convalescent" 55
when things take a serious turn and all becomes foreboding, when the shepherd has to bite off the head of the black snake. The dwarf experi- ences nothing of the fact that really to know the ring of rings means precisely this: to overcome from the outset and perpetually what is dark and horrid in the teaching as it is expressed, namely, the fact that if everything recurs all decision and every effort and will to make things better is a matter of indifference; that if everything turns in a circle nothing is worth the trouble; so that the result of the teaching is disgust and ultimately the negation of life. In spite of their marvelous talk about the Ring of Being, Zarathustra's animals too seem to dance over and beyond what is essential. His animals too seem to want to treat the matter as men do. Like the dwarf they run away. Or they too act as mere spectators, telling what results if everything revolves. They perch before beings and "have a look at" their eternal displacement, then describe it in the most resplendent images. They are not aware of what is going on there, not aware of what must be thought in the true thinking of being as a whole, namely, that such thinking is a cry of distress, arising from a calamity.
And even if the anguished cry is heard, what is it that usually hap- pens? When the great man cries the little man hastens to the scene and takes pity. But everything that smacks of pity keeps to the periphery, stands on the sidelines. The little man's gregariousness accomplishes only one thing: his petty consolations diminish and falsify the suffer- ing, delay and obstruct the true insight. Pity has not an inkling of the extent to which suffering and outrage crawl down the throat and choke a man until he has to cry out, nor does it know the extent to which this is "necessary to attain the best" in man. Precisely the knowledge that chokes us is what must be known if being as a whole is to be thought.
This marks the essential and altogether unbridgeable difference be- tween the usual kinds of spectation and cognition, on the one hand, and proper knowing, on the other. And it suggests what the dwarf failed to see when he misinterpreted eternal recurrence and turned it into a mere ditty, into empty talk. It should be apparent by now that nothing is said here about the content of the doctrine beyond what is said in the animals' ditty, that Zarathustra does not contrapose any
56 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
other presentation to theirs, and that in the course of the conversation we are told always and only by indirection how the teaching is-Qr is not-to be understood. Nevertheless, the "how" does provide an essen- tial directive for our understanding of the "what. "
It is our job to pursue that directive more keenly and to ask: What is it that turns the doctrine into a ditty? The latter concedes that things do depart, die, and disintegrate; it also accepts everything destructive, negative, adverse, and outrageous. Yet at bottom these things are con- ceived of as eventually passing away in the world's circuitry, so that other things will come and everything shall take a turn for the better. Hence all is bound for perpetual compensation. Such compensation in fact makes everything indifferent: striving is flattened out into mere alternation. One now possesses a handy formula for the whole and abstains from all decision.
Looking back to the earlier episode, we may now ask: In what way does the dwarf make the interpretation of the imagery, that is, of the gateway and the two avenues, too easy for himself? Zarathustra indi- cates the answer when he goes on to command, "Look at the gateway itself-the Moment! " What does that directive mean? The dwarf merely looks at the two paths extending to infinity, and he thinks about them merely in the following way: If both paths run on to infinity ("eternity"), then that is where they meet; and since the circle closes by itself in infinity-far removed from me-all that recurs, in sheer alter- nation within this system of compensations, does so as a sequence, as a sort of parade passing through the gateway. The dwarf understands nothing of what Zarathustra means when he says-bewilderingly enough-that the two paths "affront one another" in the gateway. But how is that possible, when each thing moves along behind its predeces- sor, as is manifest with time itself? For in time the not-yet-now becomes the now, and forthwith becomes a no-longer-now, this as a perpetual and-so-on. The two avenues, future and past, do not collide at all, but pursue one another.
And yet a collision does occur here. To be sure, it occurs only to one who does not remain a spectator but who is himselfthe Moment, performing actions directed toward the future and at the same time accepting and affirming the past, by no means letting it drop. Whoever
"The Convalescent" 57
stands in the Moment is turned in two ways: for him past and future run up against one another. Whoever stands in the Moment lets what runs counter to itself come to collision, though not to a standstill, by cultivating and sustaining the strife between what is assigned him as a task and what has been given him as his endowment. * To see the Moment means to stand in it. But the dwarf keeps to the outside, perches on the periphery.
What does all this say about the right way to think the thought of eternal recurrence? It says something essential: That which is to come is precisely a matter for decision, since the ring is not closed in some remote infinity but possesses its unbroken closure in the Moment, as the center of the striving; what recurs-if it is to recur-is decided by the Moment and by the force with which the Moment can cope with whatever in it is repelled by such striving. That is what is peculiar to, and hardest to bear in, the doctrine of eternal return-to wit, that eternity is in the Moment, that the Moment is not the fleeting "now," not an instant of time whizzing by a spectator, but the collision of future and past. Here the Moment comes to itself. It determines how everything recurs. Now, the most difficult matter is the most tremen- dous matter to be grasped, and the tremendous remains a sealed door to little men. Yet the little men too are; as beings they too recur forever. They cannot be put out of action; they pertain to that side of things that is dark and repulsive. If being as a whole is to be thought, the little men too wait upon their "Yes. " That realization makes Zara- thustra shudder.
And now that his most abysmal thought has been thought in the direction of that abyss, Zarathustra's animals "do not let him talk any- more. " For when Zarathustra recognizes that the recurrence of the little man too is necessary; when he grapples with that "Yes" spoken to
• Indem er den Widerstreit des Aufgegebenen und Mitgegebenen entfaltet und aus- hiilt. Aufgegebenen could of course also have to do with surrender, but I am conjectur- ing that Heidegger here wants to juxtapose the task (cf. Aufgabe) that we project into and as the future to the endowment (cf. Mitgabe, Mitgift) of skills we bring to the task from our past. For here there often seems to be a disparity, a striving, and strife. Cf. the similar phrasing in Heidegger's Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes (Stuttgart: P. Reclam, 1960), p. 89 (top), ably rendered by Albert Hofstadter in Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 77 (middle). And see sections 24 and 26, below.
58 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE o~· THE SAME
everything that over the years wearied and sickened him, to everything he wanted to repulse; when he conquers his illness with that "Yes" and so becomes a convalescent; then his animals begin to speak again. Once more they repeat their message: the world is a garden. Again they call for Zarathustra to come out. But now they say more. They do not simply tell him to come out so that he can see and experience how all things are yearning for him. They call to him that he should learn from the songbirds how to sing: "For singing does a convalescent good. " The temptation to take the thought of return merely as some- thing obvious, to take it therefore at bottom as either contemptible mumbling or fascinating chatter, is overcome.
By now the dialogue between the animals and Zarathustra is moving upon a ground that has been transformed by the conversation itself. The animals are now speaking to a Zarathustra who has come to grips with his illness and overcome his disgust with the little man by achiev- ing the insight that such adversity is necessary.
Now Zarathustra agrees with his animals. With their injunction to sing, the animals are telling him of that consolation he invented for himself during those seven days. Once again, however, he warns against turning the injunction to sing into a call for tunes on the same old lyre. What is being thought here? This, that the thought most difficult to bear, as the convalescent's conquering thought, must first of all be sung; that such singing, which is to say, the poetizing of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, must itself become the convalescence; but also that such singing must be singular, that it dare not become a popular tune. Zarathustra therefore calls himself a poet as well as one who guesses riddles. Poet and riddler, but not in the sense that he is a poet and something else in addition, namely, one who solves riddles. Both these roles are thought in an original unity, thought therefore ultimately as some third thing. Hence poetry, if it is to fulfill its task, can never be a matter for barrel organs and ready-made lyres. The lyre, viewed now as an instrument for the new singing and saying, has still to be created. The animals know that-after all, they are his animals.