Yet surmise is
essentially
different from calculation.
Heidegger - Nietzsche - v1-2
Section 357, one of Nietzsche's most detailed statements on the German philosophical tradition (especially Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel), cites Scho- penhauer's lucubrations on the "value" or "meaning" of "existence" and Hegel's "gran- diose attempt" to convince us of "the divinity of existence.
" In passage number 373 Nietzsche doubts whether the paragons of scientific optimism such as Herbert Spencer are capable of espying "genuinely great problems and question-marks," that is to say, questions pertaining to Dasein.
Here, as in the earlier passages, Nietzsche equates Da- sein with Welt, identifying optimism as a particularly naive Welt-Interpretation.
The latter is capable of seeing only the "most superficial and most extrinsic elements of existence.
" Section 374 "Our new 'infinite'," also refers to the conceptual triad Dasein,
Welt, Leben. In reproducing it I have placed these words in capitals:
How far the perspectival character of existence extends, or even whether EXISTENCE has any other character than that; whether it is not the case that an EXISTENCE without interpretation, without "sense," amounts precisely to "nonsense"; whether, on the other hand, all EXISTENCE is not essentially an interpreting EXISTENCE;-it is fitting that these things cannot be descried by even the most diligent, painfully scrupulous analysis and self-examination of the intellect. . . . It is futile curiosity to want to know . . . , for example, whether some creature exists that can experience time as running backwards, or alternately forward and back (at which point another segmentation of LIFE . . . would be at hand). But I think that we today at least are far removed from such ridiculous vainglory. . . . The WORLD has rather once again become "infinite" to us, inasmuch as we cannot reject the possibility that it encompasses infinite interpreta- tions. . . .
4. "lncipit tragoedia"
The thought of eternal return of the same, as the greatest burden, is also the thought that is hardest to bear. What happens when we actual- ly think the thought? Nietzsche provides the answer in the title of the section that follows immediately upon his first communication of the most burdensome thought, and that forms the proper conclusion to The Gay Science (1st edition, 1882; number 342): "lncipit tragoedia. " The tragedy begins. Which tragedy? The tragedy of beings as such. But what does Nietzsche understand by "tragedy"? Tragedy sings the tragic. We have to realize that Nietzsche defines the tragic purely in terms of the beginning of tragedy as he understands it. When the thought of eternal return is thought, the tragic as such becomes the fundamental trait of beings. Viewed historically, this marks the beginning of the "tragic age for Europe" (WM, 37; cf. XVI, 448). What begins to hap- pen here transpires in utter stillness; it remains concealed for a long time and to most men; nothing of this history goes into the history books. "It is the stillest words that bring on the storm. Thoughts that approach on doves' feet govern the world" (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, conclusion to Part II). "What does it matter that we more cautious and reserved ones do not for the nonce abandon the venerable belief that it is only the great thought that lends greatness to any deed or thing" (Beyond Good and Evil, number 241). And finally: "The world re- volves, not about the discoverers of new forms of hullaballoo, but about the discoverers of new values. It revolves inaudibly' (Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, Part Two, "Of Great Events").
Only the few, the rare, only those who have ears for such inaudible
revolutions will perceive the "Incipit tragoedia. " Yet how does Nietz- sche understand the essence of the tragic and of tragedy? W e know that Nietzsche's first treatise, published in 1872, was devoted to the ques- tion of "the birth of tragedy. " Experience of the tragic and meditation
"lncipit tragoedia" 29
on its ongm and essence pertain to the very basis of Nietzschean thought. Nietzsche's concept of the tragic grew steadily clearer in step with the inner transformation and clarification of his thinking. From the very outset he opposed the interpretation of Aristotle, according to which the tragic is said to accomplish katharsis, the moral cleansing and elevation that are attained when fear and pity are aroused. "I have repeatedly put my finger on the egregious misconception of Aristotle, who believed he had found the tragic emotions in two depressive af- fects, namely, terror and pity" (WM, 851; from the year 1888). The tragic has absolutely no original relation to the moral. "Whoever en- joys tragedy morally still has a few rungs to climb" (XII, 177; from 1881-82). The tragic belongs to the "aesthetic" domain. To clarify this we would have to provide an account of Nietzsche's conception of art. Art is "the metaphysical activity" of "life"; it defines the way in which beings as a whole are, insofar as they are. The supreme art is the tragic; hence the tragic is proper to the metaphysical essence of beings.
The aspect of terror does pertain to the tragic as such, but not as what arouses fear, in the sense that the tragic would actually allow one to circumvent terror by fleeing toward "resignation," by yearning for nothingness. On the contrary, the terrifying is what is affirmed; in- deed, affirmed in its unalterable affiliation with the beautiful. Tragedy prevails where the terrifying is affirmed as the opposite that is intrinsi- cally proper to the beautiful. Greatness and great heights subsist to- gether with the depths and with what is terrifying; the more originally the one is willed, the more surely the other will be attained. "Fright- fulness is proper to greatness: let us not be deceived" (WM, 1028). Affirmation of the convergence of these opposites is tragic insight, the tragic attitude; it is what Nietzsche also calls the "heroic. " "What makes someone heroic? " asks Nietzsche in The Gay Science (number. 268); and he replies, "Going out to meet one's supreme suffering and supreme hope alike. " The word "alike" is decisive here: not playing off one against the other, still less averting his glance from both, but be- coming master over his misfortune and good fortune as well, in that way preventing his ostensible victory from making a fool of him. *
• On mastery of one's misfortune and good fortune, or unhappiness and happiness, see Volume I of this series, p. 159. On the entire question of beauty and the terrible or terrifying, see sections 16--17 of that lecture course.
30 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
"The heroic spirits are those who in the midst of tragic horror say to themselves, "Yes": they are hard enough to feel suffering as pleasure' (WM, 852). The tragic spirit incorporates contradictions and uncertainties (XVI, 391; cf. XV, 65; XVI, 377; and XIV, 365 f. ). The tragic holds sway only where the "spirit" rules, so much so that it is only in the realm of knowledge and of knowers that the supremely tragic can occur. "The supremely tragic motifs have remained untouched up to now: the poets have no knowledge based on experience of the hundred tragedies of knowers" (XII, 246; from 1881-82). Beings themselves imply torture, destruction, and the "no" as proper to them. In Ecce Homo, at the place where he describes the gestation of the thought of eternal return of the same, Nietzsche calls that thought "the highest formula of affirmation that can ever be achieved" (XV, 85). Why is the thought of return supreme affirmation? Because it affirms the uttermost "no," annihilation and suffering, as proper to beings. Thus it is precisely with this thought that the tragic spirit first comes into being, originally and integrally. "lncipit tragoedia," Nietzsche says. But he adds, "INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA" (Twilight ofthe Idols, VIII, 83).
Zarathustra is the initial and proper thinker of the thought of thoughts. To be the initial and proper thinker of the thought of eternal return of the same is the essence ofZarathustra. The thought of eternal return of the same is so much the hardest to bear that no prior, medi- ocre human being can think it; he dare not even register a claim to think it; and that holds for Nietzsche himself. In order to let the most burdensome thought-that is, the tragedy-begin, Nietzsche must therefore first create poetically the thinker of that thought. This hap- pens in the work that begins to come to be one year following The Gay Science, that is to say, from 1883 on. For Nietzsche's report on the gestation of the thought of eternal return of the same also says that the thought constitutes "the fundamental conception of the work. "* Nevertheless, the concluding section of The Gay Science itself, bearing the title "lncipit tragoedia," runs as follows:
• The "work" in question is, of course, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
"lncipit tragoedia" 31
Jncipit tragoedia. -When Zarathustra was thirty years old he left Lake Urmi and his homeland and went into the mountains. There he communed with his spirit and his solitude and for ten years did not weary of them. But at last something in his heart turned-and one morning he rose with the dawn, confronted the sun, and addressed it in this way: "You magnificent star! What would become of your felicity if you did not have those you illumine? For ten years you've been coming up here to my cave: you would have tired of your light and that path had it not been for me, my eagle, and my serpent. But every morning we waited for you, relieved you of your excess, and blessed you for it. Behold, I am glutted with my wisdom, like the bee that has gathered too much honey. I need hands that reach out, I want to give, to dispense, until the wise among men are happy again in their folly and the poor in their splendor. For that I must descend to the depths, as you do in the evening when you slip behind the sea and bring light to the very underworld, you superabundant star! Like you, I must go down, as men call it, and it is men I want to go down to. So bless me, then, tranquil eye that can look without envy upon a happiness that is all-too-great! Bless the cup that wants to overflow until the waters stream from it golden, bearing to all parts reflections of your delight! Behold, this cup wants to become empty again, and Zarathustra wants to become man again. "-Thus began Zara- thustra's downgoing.
The conclusion of The Gay Science constitutes the unaltered begin- ning of the first part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, published the follow- ing year; the sole change is that the name of the lake, "Urmi," is dropped and is replaced by the phrase "the lake of his homeland. " When Zarathustra's tragedy begins, so does his downgoing. The down- going itself has a history. It is the history proper; it is not merely an end. Here Nietzsche shapes his work by drawing upon his profound knowledge of great Greek tragedy. For Greek tragedy is not the "psy- chological" matter of preparing a "tragic conflict," of "tying the knots," and such. Rather, everything that one usually takes as constituting "the tragedy" has already occurred at the moment tragedy as such begins. The "only thing" that happens in tragedy is the downgoing. The "only thing," we say, quite ineptly, for only now does the proper matter begin. Without the "spirit" and the "thought," all deeds are but -nothing.
5. The Second Communication of the Doctrine of Return
The book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, considered as a whole, constitutes the second communication of the doctrine of eternal return. Here Nietzsche no longer speaks of it incidentally, as though it were a mere possibility. To be sure, he does not speak of the doctrine directly and peremptorily. When Nietzsche creates poetically the figure of Zara- thustra he creates the thinker, creates that other kind of humanity which, in opposition to humanity heretofore, initiates the tragedy by positing the tragic spirit in being itself. Zarathustra is the heroic think- er, and, granted the way this figure takes shape, whatever the thinker thinks must also be fashioned as tragic, that is, as the supreme "yes" to the extreme "no. " And according to the statement that serves as the guiding thought of our own lecture course, everything in the hero's sphere turns to tragedy. In order to render the tragedy visible, Nietz- sche must first of all create the solitary hero in whose sphere alone the tragedy will crystallize. The ground for the figure of this hero is the thought ofeternal return; this is also the case when that thought is not expressly mentioned. For the thought of thoughts, and its teaching, require a unique teacher. In the figure of the teacher the teaching will be presented by way of a mediation.
As in the case of the first communication of the thought of return, so too in the second the how of the communication is initially more important than the what. The crucial matter is that human beings come to exist who will not be shattered by this doctrine. Prior man is unable actually to think it. He thus must be made to transcend him- self, to be transformed-into the overman. When Nietzsche employs
The Second Communication of the Doctrine 33
the latter word, he is by no means designating a creature that is no longer human. The "over," as an "above and beyond," is related to a particular kind of man; the determinate shape of that man first becomes visible when we have passed through him to a transformed humanity. Only then, in retrospect, can we see prior man as some- thing preliminary; only in retrospect does prior man become visible. The man whom it behooves us to overcome is man as he is today. Man today is at the same time-reckoned from the standpoint of the humanity that overcomes him, that is, from the standpoint of the new commencement-the "last man. " The last man is the man of "mid- dling felicity. " He is incomparably sly, knows just about everything, and is as busy as can be; but with him everything peters out into something harmless, mid-range, and universally bland. In the sphere of the last man each thing gets a little bit smaller every day. Even what he takes to be great is actually petty; and it is diminishing all the time.
The overman is not a fairy-tale character; he is the one who recog- nizes the last man as such and who overcomes him. Over-man is the one who ascends above the "last" man and thereby earmarks him as last, as the man of bygone days. In order therefore to make this opposi- tion palpably clear at the outset, Nietzsche has the teacher of eternal return of the same refer in his first speech-in the Prologue to the first part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, section 5-to the one who must be "most contemptible" to him, namely, the "Last Man. "
"Now I shall speak to them of what is most contemptible, and that is the
Last Man. "
And Zarathustra spoke thus to the people:
"The time has come for man to stake out his goal. The time has come for man to sow the seed of his supreme hope.
"His soil is still rich enough for that. But one day this soil will be poo~ and tame, and no tall tree will be able to flourish in it.
"Woe! The time is coming when man will no longer shoot the arrow of his longing beyond man, and the string of his bow will have forgotten how to whir!
"I say unto you: one must still have chaos in him to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in you.
"Woe! The time is coming when man will give birth to no more stars.
34 THE ETER~/\L RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
Woe! The time of the mo~t contemptible man is coming, the one who can no longer feel contempt for himself.
"Behold, I show you the Last Man. "
To this passage we ought to compare the section entitled "On the Attenuating Virtue" in Part III of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The last man is mentioned at the conclusion of subsection 2:
"We have placed our stools in the middJe"-that is what your smirk tells me-"equidistant from dying warriors and pleasure-loving sows. "
But this is mediocrity, even though it be called moderation.
However, the fact that the last man is cited as the most contemptible man at the outset of the work, the fact that Zarathustra gives vent to his feeling of nausea at the very beginning, has in terms of the work as a whole a still more profound sense. Zarathustra is here merely at the beginning of his path, upon which he is to become the one who he is. He himself must first of all learn; among other things he must learn how to feel contempt. As long as contempt derives from nausea in the face of what is despised it is not yet supreme contempt. Such contempt based on nausea is itself contemptible. "Out of love alone should my contempt and my admonishing bird soar in me, and not out of the swamp! " (Part III, "On Passing By"). "0 my soul, I taught you the contempt that does not come gnawing like a worm; I taught you the great, the loving contempt that loves most where it most feels con- tempt" (Part III, "On the Great Longing").
When Nietzsche creates poetically the figure of Zarathustra he projects the space of that "loneliest loneliness" cited at the end of The Gay Science, the loneliness that induces the thought of thoughts. Nietzsche does so in such a way that Zarathustra resolves to follow the direction which in The Gay Science is mentioned as merely one possi- bility among others, namely, that of "becoming beneficent toward life," that is, affirming life in its extreme anguish and in its most rollicking joy.
The communication of the thought most difficult to bear, the great- est burden, first of all requires the poetic creation of the figure who will think this thought and teach it. But in such creation the doctrine itself cannot be wholly disregarded. It is in fact portrayed in the third part of
The Second Communication of the Doctrine 35
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which was composed in 1883-84. Neverthe- less, whenever the doctrine is directly introduced, it is invoked in a poetic manner-in similes that portray the sense and the truth of the doctrine in images, that is to say, in the realm of the sensuous, so that these images are sensuous-sensible. When Nietzsche pursues the sen- suous presentation of the thought of eternal return in Thus Spoke Zarathustra he is following-among other essential motivations-a thought that he had jotted down during this same period (1882-84): "The more abstract the truth that one wishes to teach is, the more one
must begin by seducing the senses to it" (XII, 335).
However, we would be misinterpreting Zarathustra were we to ex-
trapolate the doctrine of eternal return from the work, even in the form of figures of speech, as its "theory. " For the most intrinsic task of this work is the· limning of the teacher himself and, through him, the teaching. At the same time, of course, it remains the case that the figure of the teacher can be comprehended only on the basis of the teaching, of what comes to light in its truth, and of the way in which the teaching-<:oncerning as it does beings as a whole-defines the Being of beings. The implication is that our interpretation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra as a work can proceed only on the basis of Nietz- sche's metaphysics in its entirety.
After the publication of Thus Spoke Zarathustra Nietzsche had oc- casion to rue the fact that he had risked the surrender of his most intimate and loftiest experiences. With the passage of time he learned to endure this anguish as well, knowing that the publication was a necessity and that miscomprehension is part and parcel of all such communication. Nietzsche once pinpointed this insight in the follow- ing note: "The necessary concealment of the wise man: his awareness that he is unconditionally not to be understood; his Machiavellian strategy; his icy rejection of the present" (XIII, 37; from the year 1884).
What is difficult to grasp about this work is not only its "content," if it has such, but also its very character as a work. Of course, we are quick to propose a ready-made explanation: here philosophical thoughts are presented poetically. Yet what we are now to call thinking and poetizing dare not consist of the usual notions, inasmuch as the work defines both of these anew, or rather, simply announces them.
36 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
And when we say that this work constitutes the center of Nietzsche's philosophy, it remains nonetheless true that the work stands outside the center, is "eccentric" to it. Finally, when we emphasize the fact that this work is the highest peak attained by Nietzsche's thinking, w~ forget--or, more precisely, we are unapprised of the fact-that precise- ly after the book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, during the years 1884 to 1889, Nietzsche's thinking continued to take essential steps that brought him to new transformations of his thought.
Nietzsche provided the work entitled Thus Spoke Zarathustra with a subtitle: "A Book for Everyone and No One. " What the book says is directed to all, to everyone. Yet no one ever truly has the right, as he is, to read the book, if he does not ahead of time and in the process of his reading undergo a metamorphosis. That means that the book is for no one of us as we happen to be at the moment. A book for everyone and no one, and consequently a book that can never, dare never, be "read" complacently.
All this must be said in order for us to acknowledge how very extrin- sic, how full of reservations, our own way of proceeding will remain. For our provisional characterization of the second communication of the doctrine of return will indicate only quite briefly those "figures of speech," which, more directly than the other utterances, treat of the thought of eternal return.
6. "On the Vision and the Riddle"
The eternal return of the same is discussed quite clearly and explicitly as the fundamental teaching in the section entitled "On Redemption," toward the end of Part II of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, written in the fall of 1883. But discussion of the doctrine flourishes principally in two sections of Part III of that work, composed in January 1884.
The first of these two sections bears the title, "On the Vision and the Riddle. "* It is not a matter of just any vision or just any riddle about something or other. It is a matter of that particular riddle with which Zarathustra comes face to face, the riddle in which being as a whole lies concealed as "the vision of the loneliest one," the riddle that becomes visible only "in our loneliest loneliness. " But why a "riddle"? What the riddle conceals and contains becomes open to view whenever it is surmised.
Yet surmise is essentially different from calculation. The latter discloses step by step, along the guideline of some "thread" given beforehand, something unknown from what is known. But in surmise we take a leap, without guidelines, without the rungs of any ladder which anyone can clamber up anytime. To grasp the riddle is to leap, especially when the riddle involves being as a whole. Here there is no particular being or assortment of beings from which the whole could ever be disclosed. To make surmises on this riddle we must venture a journey into the open region of what in general is concealed, into that untraveled and uncharted region which is the unconcealment (aletheia) of what is most concealed. We must venture a journey into truth. Such riddling ventures the truth of being as a whole. t For Nietzsche knows that he occupies an exceptional
• The second of the two, "The Convalescent," is treated in section 8, below.
t Dieses Raten ist ein Wagen der Wahrheit des Seienden im Ganzen. On the word
38 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
place in the history of philosophy. During the period of The Dawn,
about 1881, he jots down the following note (XI, 159):
What is novel about the position we take toward philosophy is a conviction that no prior age shared: that we do not possess the truth. All earlier men "possessed the truth," even the skeptics.
Corresponding to this is a later utterance which also characterizes Nietzsche's own thinking within the confines of the position he takes. In the plans for Thus Spoke Zarathustra (XII, 410) Nietzsche remarks, "We are conducting an experiment with truth. Perhaps mankind will perish as a result! Splendid! "
Nevertheless, we would misunderstand the riddle and our riddling on it abysmally if we were to believe that our task is to hit upon a solution that would dissolve all that is questionable. Riddling on this riddle should rather bring us to experience the fact that as a riddle it cannot be brushed aside.
Profound aversion to reposing once and for all in any sort of totalized view of the world. The magic of the opposite kind of thinking: not letting oneself be deprived of the stimulation in all that is enigmatic (WM, 470; from the years 1885-86).
And in The Gay Science (Book V, number 375, written 1887) Nietz- sche speaks of the "addiction to knowledge, which will not let the questionmark behind all things go at a bargain price. "
Thus we must take these words "riddle" and "riddling" in their es- sential importance and scope if we are to understand why Nietzsche grants Zarathustra himself the sobriquet "riddler" (Part Ill, "On Old and New Tablets," section 3). What sort of visage, then, does the riddle which Zarathustra tells have? Again we must pay heed to the way he tells it, to the where and when and to whom, if we are to estimate the what aright. Zarathustra tells the riddle aboard ship, un-
Wagen, related to way, weight, risk, hazard, venture and adventure, see Heidegger, "Wozu Dichter? " in Holzwege (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1950), pp. 255 ff. , esp. pp. 259 and 275. See the English translation by Albert Hofstadter in Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), pp. 99 ff. , esp. pp. 103-04 and 139-40. Heidegger's use of the word in his Nietzsche course antedates that in the Rilke lecture by almost a decade.
"On the Vision and the Riddle" 39
derway on a voyage to open, "unexplored" seas. And to whom does he tell it? Not to the other passengers but to the crew alone: "To you, bold searchers and researchers, and those that ever took to ship with cun- ning sails on terrifying seas. . . . " In the same vein we hear now one of the "Songs of the Outlaw Prince," appended to the second edition of The Gay Science in 1887:
Toward New Seas•
I will go there, and will confide In myself and in my steady grip. Open lies the sea; into the tide Plunges my Genuese ship.
All shines new before the mast! Space and time sleep at midday. Only your eye-unutterably vast Gazes on me, 0 infinity!
And when does Zarathustra tell the crew the riddle? Not the mo- ment he comes on board, because he keeps silent for two days. That is to say, he speaks only after they have gained open sea and only after he himself has in the meantime tested the seamen to learn whether they are the right listeners.
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.
Welt, Leben. In reproducing it I have placed these words in capitals:
How far the perspectival character of existence extends, or even whether EXISTENCE has any other character than that; whether it is not the case that an EXISTENCE without interpretation, without "sense," amounts precisely to "nonsense"; whether, on the other hand, all EXISTENCE is not essentially an interpreting EXISTENCE;-it is fitting that these things cannot be descried by even the most diligent, painfully scrupulous analysis and self-examination of the intellect. . . . It is futile curiosity to want to know . . . , for example, whether some creature exists that can experience time as running backwards, or alternately forward and back (at which point another segmentation of LIFE . . . would be at hand). But I think that we today at least are far removed from such ridiculous vainglory. . . . The WORLD has rather once again become "infinite" to us, inasmuch as we cannot reject the possibility that it encompasses infinite interpreta- tions. . . .
4. "lncipit tragoedia"
The thought of eternal return of the same, as the greatest burden, is also the thought that is hardest to bear. What happens when we actual- ly think the thought? Nietzsche provides the answer in the title of the section that follows immediately upon his first communication of the most burdensome thought, and that forms the proper conclusion to The Gay Science (1st edition, 1882; number 342): "lncipit tragoedia. " The tragedy begins. Which tragedy? The tragedy of beings as such. But what does Nietzsche understand by "tragedy"? Tragedy sings the tragic. We have to realize that Nietzsche defines the tragic purely in terms of the beginning of tragedy as he understands it. When the thought of eternal return is thought, the tragic as such becomes the fundamental trait of beings. Viewed historically, this marks the beginning of the "tragic age for Europe" (WM, 37; cf. XVI, 448). What begins to hap- pen here transpires in utter stillness; it remains concealed for a long time and to most men; nothing of this history goes into the history books. "It is the stillest words that bring on the storm. Thoughts that approach on doves' feet govern the world" (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, conclusion to Part II). "What does it matter that we more cautious and reserved ones do not for the nonce abandon the venerable belief that it is only the great thought that lends greatness to any deed or thing" (Beyond Good and Evil, number 241). And finally: "The world re- volves, not about the discoverers of new forms of hullaballoo, but about the discoverers of new values. It revolves inaudibly' (Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, Part Two, "Of Great Events").
Only the few, the rare, only those who have ears for such inaudible
revolutions will perceive the "Incipit tragoedia. " Yet how does Nietz- sche understand the essence of the tragic and of tragedy? W e know that Nietzsche's first treatise, published in 1872, was devoted to the ques- tion of "the birth of tragedy. " Experience of the tragic and meditation
"lncipit tragoedia" 29
on its ongm and essence pertain to the very basis of Nietzschean thought. Nietzsche's concept of the tragic grew steadily clearer in step with the inner transformation and clarification of his thinking. From the very outset he opposed the interpretation of Aristotle, according to which the tragic is said to accomplish katharsis, the moral cleansing and elevation that are attained when fear and pity are aroused. "I have repeatedly put my finger on the egregious misconception of Aristotle, who believed he had found the tragic emotions in two depressive af- fects, namely, terror and pity" (WM, 851; from the year 1888). The tragic has absolutely no original relation to the moral. "Whoever en- joys tragedy morally still has a few rungs to climb" (XII, 177; from 1881-82). The tragic belongs to the "aesthetic" domain. To clarify this we would have to provide an account of Nietzsche's conception of art. Art is "the metaphysical activity" of "life"; it defines the way in which beings as a whole are, insofar as they are. The supreme art is the tragic; hence the tragic is proper to the metaphysical essence of beings.
The aspect of terror does pertain to the tragic as such, but not as what arouses fear, in the sense that the tragic would actually allow one to circumvent terror by fleeing toward "resignation," by yearning for nothingness. On the contrary, the terrifying is what is affirmed; in- deed, affirmed in its unalterable affiliation with the beautiful. Tragedy prevails where the terrifying is affirmed as the opposite that is intrinsi- cally proper to the beautiful. Greatness and great heights subsist to- gether with the depths and with what is terrifying; the more originally the one is willed, the more surely the other will be attained. "Fright- fulness is proper to greatness: let us not be deceived" (WM, 1028). Affirmation of the convergence of these opposites is tragic insight, the tragic attitude; it is what Nietzsche also calls the "heroic. " "What makes someone heroic? " asks Nietzsche in The Gay Science (number. 268); and he replies, "Going out to meet one's supreme suffering and supreme hope alike. " The word "alike" is decisive here: not playing off one against the other, still less averting his glance from both, but be- coming master over his misfortune and good fortune as well, in that way preventing his ostensible victory from making a fool of him. *
• On mastery of one's misfortune and good fortune, or unhappiness and happiness, see Volume I of this series, p. 159. On the entire question of beauty and the terrible or terrifying, see sections 16--17 of that lecture course.
30 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
"The heroic spirits are those who in the midst of tragic horror say to themselves, "Yes": they are hard enough to feel suffering as pleasure' (WM, 852). The tragic spirit incorporates contradictions and uncertainties (XVI, 391; cf. XV, 65; XVI, 377; and XIV, 365 f. ). The tragic holds sway only where the "spirit" rules, so much so that it is only in the realm of knowledge and of knowers that the supremely tragic can occur. "The supremely tragic motifs have remained untouched up to now: the poets have no knowledge based on experience of the hundred tragedies of knowers" (XII, 246; from 1881-82). Beings themselves imply torture, destruction, and the "no" as proper to them. In Ecce Homo, at the place where he describes the gestation of the thought of eternal return of the same, Nietzsche calls that thought "the highest formula of affirmation that can ever be achieved" (XV, 85). Why is the thought of return supreme affirmation? Because it affirms the uttermost "no," annihilation and suffering, as proper to beings. Thus it is precisely with this thought that the tragic spirit first comes into being, originally and integrally. "lncipit tragoedia," Nietzsche says. But he adds, "INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA" (Twilight ofthe Idols, VIII, 83).
Zarathustra is the initial and proper thinker of the thought of thoughts. To be the initial and proper thinker of the thought of eternal return of the same is the essence ofZarathustra. The thought of eternal return of the same is so much the hardest to bear that no prior, medi- ocre human being can think it; he dare not even register a claim to think it; and that holds for Nietzsche himself. In order to let the most burdensome thought-that is, the tragedy-begin, Nietzsche must therefore first create poetically the thinker of that thought. This hap- pens in the work that begins to come to be one year following The Gay Science, that is to say, from 1883 on. For Nietzsche's report on the gestation of the thought of eternal return of the same also says that the thought constitutes "the fundamental conception of the work. "* Nevertheless, the concluding section of The Gay Science itself, bearing the title "lncipit tragoedia," runs as follows:
• The "work" in question is, of course, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
"lncipit tragoedia" 31
Jncipit tragoedia. -When Zarathustra was thirty years old he left Lake Urmi and his homeland and went into the mountains. There he communed with his spirit and his solitude and for ten years did not weary of them. But at last something in his heart turned-and one morning he rose with the dawn, confronted the sun, and addressed it in this way: "You magnificent star! What would become of your felicity if you did not have those you illumine? For ten years you've been coming up here to my cave: you would have tired of your light and that path had it not been for me, my eagle, and my serpent. But every morning we waited for you, relieved you of your excess, and blessed you for it. Behold, I am glutted with my wisdom, like the bee that has gathered too much honey. I need hands that reach out, I want to give, to dispense, until the wise among men are happy again in their folly and the poor in their splendor. For that I must descend to the depths, as you do in the evening when you slip behind the sea and bring light to the very underworld, you superabundant star! Like you, I must go down, as men call it, and it is men I want to go down to. So bless me, then, tranquil eye that can look without envy upon a happiness that is all-too-great! Bless the cup that wants to overflow until the waters stream from it golden, bearing to all parts reflections of your delight! Behold, this cup wants to become empty again, and Zarathustra wants to become man again. "-Thus began Zara- thustra's downgoing.
The conclusion of The Gay Science constitutes the unaltered begin- ning of the first part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, published the follow- ing year; the sole change is that the name of the lake, "Urmi," is dropped and is replaced by the phrase "the lake of his homeland. " When Zarathustra's tragedy begins, so does his downgoing. The down- going itself has a history. It is the history proper; it is not merely an end. Here Nietzsche shapes his work by drawing upon his profound knowledge of great Greek tragedy. For Greek tragedy is not the "psy- chological" matter of preparing a "tragic conflict," of "tying the knots," and such. Rather, everything that one usually takes as constituting "the tragedy" has already occurred at the moment tragedy as such begins. The "only thing" that happens in tragedy is the downgoing. The "only thing," we say, quite ineptly, for only now does the proper matter begin. Without the "spirit" and the "thought," all deeds are but -nothing.
5. The Second Communication of the Doctrine of Return
The book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, considered as a whole, constitutes the second communication of the doctrine of eternal return. Here Nietzsche no longer speaks of it incidentally, as though it were a mere possibility. To be sure, he does not speak of the doctrine directly and peremptorily. When Nietzsche creates poetically the figure of Zara- thustra he creates the thinker, creates that other kind of humanity which, in opposition to humanity heretofore, initiates the tragedy by positing the tragic spirit in being itself. Zarathustra is the heroic think- er, and, granted the way this figure takes shape, whatever the thinker thinks must also be fashioned as tragic, that is, as the supreme "yes" to the extreme "no. " And according to the statement that serves as the guiding thought of our own lecture course, everything in the hero's sphere turns to tragedy. In order to render the tragedy visible, Nietz- sche must first of all create the solitary hero in whose sphere alone the tragedy will crystallize. The ground for the figure of this hero is the thought ofeternal return; this is also the case when that thought is not expressly mentioned. For the thought of thoughts, and its teaching, require a unique teacher. In the figure of the teacher the teaching will be presented by way of a mediation.
As in the case of the first communication of the thought of return, so too in the second the how of the communication is initially more important than the what. The crucial matter is that human beings come to exist who will not be shattered by this doctrine. Prior man is unable actually to think it. He thus must be made to transcend him- self, to be transformed-into the overman. When Nietzsche employs
The Second Communication of the Doctrine 33
the latter word, he is by no means designating a creature that is no longer human. The "over," as an "above and beyond," is related to a particular kind of man; the determinate shape of that man first becomes visible when we have passed through him to a transformed humanity. Only then, in retrospect, can we see prior man as some- thing preliminary; only in retrospect does prior man become visible. The man whom it behooves us to overcome is man as he is today. Man today is at the same time-reckoned from the standpoint of the humanity that overcomes him, that is, from the standpoint of the new commencement-the "last man. " The last man is the man of "mid- dling felicity. " He is incomparably sly, knows just about everything, and is as busy as can be; but with him everything peters out into something harmless, mid-range, and universally bland. In the sphere of the last man each thing gets a little bit smaller every day. Even what he takes to be great is actually petty; and it is diminishing all the time.
The overman is not a fairy-tale character; he is the one who recog- nizes the last man as such and who overcomes him. Over-man is the one who ascends above the "last" man and thereby earmarks him as last, as the man of bygone days. In order therefore to make this opposi- tion palpably clear at the outset, Nietzsche has the teacher of eternal return of the same refer in his first speech-in the Prologue to the first part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, section 5-to the one who must be "most contemptible" to him, namely, the "Last Man. "
"Now I shall speak to them of what is most contemptible, and that is the
Last Man. "
And Zarathustra spoke thus to the people:
"The time has come for man to stake out his goal. The time has come for man to sow the seed of his supreme hope.
"His soil is still rich enough for that. But one day this soil will be poo~ and tame, and no tall tree will be able to flourish in it.
"Woe! The time is coming when man will no longer shoot the arrow of his longing beyond man, and the string of his bow will have forgotten how to whir!
"I say unto you: one must still have chaos in him to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in you.
"Woe! The time is coming when man will give birth to no more stars.
34 THE ETER~/\L RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
Woe! The time of the mo~t contemptible man is coming, the one who can no longer feel contempt for himself.
"Behold, I show you the Last Man. "
To this passage we ought to compare the section entitled "On the Attenuating Virtue" in Part III of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The last man is mentioned at the conclusion of subsection 2:
"We have placed our stools in the middJe"-that is what your smirk tells me-"equidistant from dying warriors and pleasure-loving sows. "
But this is mediocrity, even though it be called moderation.
However, the fact that the last man is cited as the most contemptible man at the outset of the work, the fact that Zarathustra gives vent to his feeling of nausea at the very beginning, has in terms of the work as a whole a still more profound sense. Zarathustra is here merely at the beginning of his path, upon which he is to become the one who he is. He himself must first of all learn; among other things he must learn how to feel contempt. As long as contempt derives from nausea in the face of what is despised it is not yet supreme contempt. Such contempt based on nausea is itself contemptible. "Out of love alone should my contempt and my admonishing bird soar in me, and not out of the swamp! " (Part III, "On Passing By"). "0 my soul, I taught you the contempt that does not come gnawing like a worm; I taught you the great, the loving contempt that loves most where it most feels con- tempt" (Part III, "On the Great Longing").
When Nietzsche creates poetically the figure of Zarathustra he projects the space of that "loneliest loneliness" cited at the end of The Gay Science, the loneliness that induces the thought of thoughts. Nietzsche does so in such a way that Zarathustra resolves to follow the direction which in The Gay Science is mentioned as merely one possi- bility among others, namely, that of "becoming beneficent toward life," that is, affirming life in its extreme anguish and in its most rollicking joy.
The communication of the thought most difficult to bear, the great- est burden, first of all requires the poetic creation of the figure who will think this thought and teach it. But in such creation the doctrine itself cannot be wholly disregarded. It is in fact portrayed in the third part of
The Second Communication of the Doctrine 35
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which was composed in 1883-84. Neverthe- less, whenever the doctrine is directly introduced, it is invoked in a poetic manner-in similes that portray the sense and the truth of the doctrine in images, that is to say, in the realm of the sensuous, so that these images are sensuous-sensible. When Nietzsche pursues the sen- suous presentation of the thought of eternal return in Thus Spoke Zarathustra he is following-among other essential motivations-a thought that he had jotted down during this same period (1882-84): "The more abstract the truth that one wishes to teach is, the more one
must begin by seducing the senses to it" (XII, 335).
However, we would be misinterpreting Zarathustra were we to ex-
trapolate the doctrine of eternal return from the work, even in the form of figures of speech, as its "theory. " For the most intrinsic task of this work is the· limning of the teacher himself and, through him, the teaching. At the same time, of course, it remains the case that the figure of the teacher can be comprehended only on the basis of the teaching, of what comes to light in its truth, and of the way in which the teaching-<:oncerning as it does beings as a whole-defines the Being of beings. The implication is that our interpretation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra as a work can proceed only on the basis of Nietz- sche's metaphysics in its entirety.
After the publication of Thus Spoke Zarathustra Nietzsche had oc- casion to rue the fact that he had risked the surrender of his most intimate and loftiest experiences. With the passage of time he learned to endure this anguish as well, knowing that the publication was a necessity and that miscomprehension is part and parcel of all such communication. Nietzsche once pinpointed this insight in the follow- ing note: "The necessary concealment of the wise man: his awareness that he is unconditionally not to be understood; his Machiavellian strategy; his icy rejection of the present" (XIII, 37; from the year 1884).
What is difficult to grasp about this work is not only its "content," if it has such, but also its very character as a work. Of course, we are quick to propose a ready-made explanation: here philosophical thoughts are presented poetically. Yet what we are now to call thinking and poetizing dare not consist of the usual notions, inasmuch as the work defines both of these anew, or rather, simply announces them.
36 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
And when we say that this work constitutes the center of Nietzsche's philosophy, it remains nonetheless true that the work stands outside the center, is "eccentric" to it. Finally, when we emphasize the fact that this work is the highest peak attained by Nietzsche's thinking, w~ forget--or, more precisely, we are unapprised of the fact-that precise- ly after the book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, during the years 1884 to 1889, Nietzsche's thinking continued to take essential steps that brought him to new transformations of his thought.
Nietzsche provided the work entitled Thus Spoke Zarathustra with a subtitle: "A Book for Everyone and No One. " What the book says is directed to all, to everyone. Yet no one ever truly has the right, as he is, to read the book, if he does not ahead of time and in the process of his reading undergo a metamorphosis. That means that the book is for no one of us as we happen to be at the moment. A book for everyone and no one, and consequently a book that can never, dare never, be "read" complacently.
All this must be said in order for us to acknowledge how very extrin- sic, how full of reservations, our own way of proceeding will remain. For our provisional characterization of the second communication of the doctrine of return will indicate only quite briefly those "figures of speech," which, more directly than the other utterances, treat of the thought of eternal return.
6. "On the Vision and the Riddle"
The eternal return of the same is discussed quite clearly and explicitly as the fundamental teaching in the section entitled "On Redemption," toward the end of Part II of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, written in the fall of 1883. But discussion of the doctrine flourishes principally in two sections of Part III of that work, composed in January 1884.
The first of these two sections bears the title, "On the Vision and the Riddle. "* It is not a matter of just any vision or just any riddle about something or other. It is a matter of that particular riddle with which Zarathustra comes face to face, the riddle in which being as a whole lies concealed as "the vision of the loneliest one," the riddle that becomes visible only "in our loneliest loneliness. " But why a "riddle"? What the riddle conceals and contains becomes open to view whenever it is surmised.
Yet surmise is essentially different from calculation. The latter discloses step by step, along the guideline of some "thread" given beforehand, something unknown from what is known. But in surmise we take a leap, without guidelines, without the rungs of any ladder which anyone can clamber up anytime. To grasp the riddle is to leap, especially when the riddle involves being as a whole. Here there is no particular being or assortment of beings from which the whole could ever be disclosed. To make surmises on this riddle we must venture a journey into the open region of what in general is concealed, into that untraveled and uncharted region which is the unconcealment (aletheia) of what is most concealed. We must venture a journey into truth. Such riddling ventures the truth of being as a whole. t For Nietzsche knows that he occupies an exceptional
• The second of the two, "The Convalescent," is treated in section 8, below.
t Dieses Raten ist ein Wagen der Wahrheit des Seienden im Ganzen. On the word
38 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
place in the history of philosophy. During the period of The Dawn,
about 1881, he jots down the following note (XI, 159):
What is novel about the position we take toward philosophy is a conviction that no prior age shared: that we do not possess the truth. All earlier men "possessed the truth," even the skeptics.
Corresponding to this is a later utterance which also characterizes Nietzsche's own thinking within the confines of the position he takes. In the plans for Thus Spoke Zarathustra (XII, 410) Nietzsche remarks, "We are conducting an experiment with truth. Perhaps mankind will perish as a result! Splendid! "
Nevertheless, we would misunderstand the riddle and our riddling on it abysmally if we were to believe that our task is to hit upon a solution that would dissolve all that is questionable. Riddling on this riddle should rather bring us to experience the fact that as a riddle it cannot be brushed aside.
Profound aversion to reposing once and for all in any sort of totalized view of the world. The magic of the opposite kind of thinking: not letting oneself be deprived of the stimulation in all that is enigmatic (WM, 470; from the years 1885-86).
And in The Gay Science (Book V, number 375, written 1887) Nietz- sche speaks of the "addiction to knowledge, which will not let the questionmark behind all things go at a bargain price. "
Thus we must take these words "riddle" and "riddling" in their es- sential importance and scope if we are to understand why Nietzsche grants Zarathustra himself the sobriquet "riddler" (Part Ill, "On Old and New Tablets," section 3). What sort of visage, then, does the riddle which Zarathustra tells have? Again we must pay heed to the way he tells it, to the where and when and to whom, if we are to estimate the what aright. Zarathustra tells the riddle aboard ship, un-
Wagen, related to way, weight, risk, hazard, venture and adventure, see Heidegger, "Wozu Dichter? " in Holzwege (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1950), pp. 255 ff. , esp. pp. 259 and 275. See the English translation by Albert Hofstadter in Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), pp. 99 ff. , esp. pp. 103-04 and 139-40. Heidegger's use of the word in his Nietzsche course antedates that in the Rilke lecture by almost a decade.
"On the Vision and the Riddle" 39
derway on a voyage to open, "unexplored" seas. And to whom does he tell it? Not to the other passengers but to the crew alone: "To you, bold searchers and researchers, and those that ever took to ship with cun- ning sails on terrifying seas. . . . " In the same vein we hear now one of the "Songs of the Outlaw Prince," appended to the second edition of The Gay Science in 1887:
Toward New Seas•
I will go there, and will confide In myself and in my steady grip. Open lies the sea; into the tide Plunges my Genuese ship.
All shines new before the mast! Space and time sleep at midday. Only your eye-unutterably vast Gazes on me, 0 infinity!
And when does Zarathustra tell the crew the riddle? Not the mo- ment he comes on board, because he keeps silent for two days. That is to say, he speaks only after they have gained open sea and only after he himself has in the meantime tested the seamen to learn whether they are the right listeners.
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.
