03 - Why I Write Such Excellent Books, Part 1 - Ecce Homo - Friedrich Nietzsche

https://www.solgoodmedia.com Listen to hundreds of audiobooks, thousands of short stories, and ambient sounds all ad free! "Daily Philosophy" brings you daily episodes that dissect major philosophical questions and theories. Explore the intersections of philosophy with science, politics, and culture, and how these ideas shape our society. This podcast is a treasure trove for anyone eager to deepen their understanding of the philosophical landscape.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Why I write such excellent books. Part one one. I
am one thing, my creations are another. Here, before I
speak of the books themselves, I shall touch upon the
question of the understanding and misunderstanding with which they have met.

(00:24):
I shall proceed to do this in as perfunctory a
manner as the occasion demands. For the time has by
no means come for this question. My time has not
yet come either. Some men are born posthumously. One day,
institutions will be needed in which men will live and

(00:48):
teach as I understand living and teaching. May be also
that by that time shares will be founded and endowed
for the interpreter of Zarathustra. But I should regard it
as a complete contradiction of myself if I expected to

(01:10):
find ears and eyes for my truths to day. The
fact that no one listens to me, that no one
knows how to receive at my hands to day is
not only comprehensible, it seems to me quite the proper thing.
I do not wish to be mistaken for another. And

(01:33):
to this end, I must not mistake myself to repeat
what I have already said. I can point to but
few instances of ill will in my life, and as
for literary ill will, I could scarcely mention a single
example of it. On the other hand, I have met

(01:53):
with far too much pure foolery. It seems to me
that take up one of my books is one of
the rarest honors that a man can pay himself, even
supposing that he put his shoes off from his feet beforehand,
not to mention boots. When on one occasion Doctor Heinrich

(02:19):
von Stein honestly complained that he could not understand a
word of my Zarathustra, I said to him that this
was just as it should be. To have understood six
sentences in that book, that is to say, to have
lived them raises a man to a higher level among

(02:40):
mortals than modern man can attain. With this feeling of distance,
how could I even wish to be read by the
moderns whom I know my triumph is just the opposite
of what Schopenhauer's was. I say, none legere, non legard,

(03:03):
not that I should like to underestimate the pleasure I
have derived from the innocence with which my works have
been frequently contradicted. As late as last summer, at a
time when I was attempting perhaps by means of my
weighty all to weighty literature, to throw the rest of

(03:25):
literature off its balance. A sudden professor of Berlin University
kindly gave me to understand that I ought really to
make use of a different form. No one could read
such stuff as I wrote. Finally, it was not Germany

(03:47):
but Switzerland that presented me with the two most extreme cases.
An essay on beyond Good and Evil by doctor foul
Vittmann in the paper called The Bunt under the heading
Nietzsch's Dangerous Book, and a general account of all my

(04:08):
works from the pen of her Kyle Spitelaer, also in
The Bunt, constitute a maximum in my life. I shall
not say of what the latter treated my Zarathustra, for instance,
as advanced exercises in style, and expressed the wish that

(04:30):
later on I might try and attend to the question
of substance as well. Doctor Wildman assured me of this
respect for the courage I showed in endeavoring to abolish
all decent feeling. Thanks to a little trick of destiny.
Every sentence in these criticisms seemed with a consistency that

(04:54):
I could but admire to be an inverted truth. In fact, act,
it was most remarkable that all one had to do
was to transvalue all values in order to hit the
nail on the head. With regard to me, instead of
striking my head with the nail, I am more particularly

(05:17):
anxious therefore, to discover an explanation. After all, no one
can draw more out of things books included, than he
already knows. A man has no ears for that to
which experience has given him no access to. Take an

(05:41):
extreme case, suppose a book contains simply incidents which lie
quite outside the range of general or even rare experience.
Suppose it to be the first language to express a
whole series of experiences. In this case, nothing it contains

(06:02):
will really be heard at all, and thanks to an
acoustic delusion, people will believe that where nothing is heard,
there is nothing to hear. This, at least, has been
my usual experience, and proves, if you will, the originality

(06:24):
of my experience. He who thought he had understood something
in my work had, as a rule I adjusted something
in it to his own image, not infrequently the very
opposite of myself. An idealist. For instance, he who understood
nothing in my work would deny that I was worth

(06:48):
considering at all. The word superman, which designates a type
of man that would be one of nature's rarest and
luckiest strokes, as opposed to modern men, to good men,
to Christians and other nihilists. A word which in the

(07:10):
mouth of Zarathustra, the annihilator of morality, acquires a very
profound meaning, is understood almost everywhere, and with perfect innocence,
in light of those values to which a flat contradiction
was made manifest in the figure of Zarathustra, that is

(07:32):
to say, as an ideal type, a higher kind of man,
half saint and half genius. Other learned cattle have suspected
me of Darwinism on account of this word. Even the
hero cult of that great unconscious and involuntary swindler Carlyle,

(07:57):
a cult which I repudiate with such roguish malice, was
recognized in my doctrine. Once, when I whispered to a
man that he would do better to seek for the
superman in a caesar Borgia than in a passerphal, he
could not believe his ears. The fact that I have

(08:20):
been quite free from curiosity in regard to criticism of
my books, more particularly when they appear in newspapers, will
have to be forgiven me. My friends and my publishers
know this, and never speak to me of such things.

(08:41):
In one particular case, I once saw all the sins
that had been committed against a single book. It was
beyond good and evil. I could tell you a nice
story about it. Is it possible that in the Natsion
nal Zaidun, a Prussian paper this comment is for the
sake of my foreign readers. For my own part, I

(09:04):
beg to state I read only Les Journal des de
Bats really and seriously regarded the book as a sign
of the times, or a genuine and typical example of
Tory philosophy for which the kreuz Zeitunk had not sufficient courage.

(09:26):
Translator's footnote Yunk philosophy. The landed proprietors constitute a dominating
class in Prussia, and it is from this class that
all officers and higher officials are drawn. The kraw Zeitunk
is an organ of the Dunker party and Translator's note two.

(09:52):
This was said for the benefit of Germans. For everywhere
else I have my readers of them exceptionally intelligent men,
characters that have won their spurs, and that have been
reared in high offices and superior duties. I have even

(10:13):
real geniuses among my readers. In Vienna, in Saint Petersburg,
in Stockholm, in Copenhagen, in Paris and New York. I
have been discovered everywhere. I have not yet been discovered
in Europe's flat land Germany. And to make a confession,

(10:36):
I rejoice much more heartily over those who do not
read me, over those who have neither heard of my
name nor of the word philosophy. But whethersoever I go
here in Turin, for instance, every face brightens and softens
at the sight of me. A thing that has flattered

(10:59):
me more than anything else hitherto is the fact that
old market women cannot rest until they have picked out
the sweetest of their grapes. For me, to this extent,
must a man be a philosopher. It is not in
Vain that the Poles are considered as the French among

(11:20):
the slaves. A charming Russian lady will not be mistaken
for a single moment concerning my origin. I am not
successful at being pompous. The most I can do is
to appear embarrassed. I can think in German, I can
feel in German, I can do most things, but this

(11:43):
is beyond my powers. My old master Ritzschel, when so
far as to declare that I planned even my philosophical
treaties after the manner of a Parisian novelist, that I
made them absurdly thrilling. In Paris itself, people are surprised

(12:06):
at two de mes ardas et finesse. The words are
monsieur tains. I fear that, even in the highest forms
of the Diathram, that salt will be found pervading my work,
which never becomes insipid, which never becomes German. And that

(12:29):
is wit I can do naught else. God help me, Amen,
we all know, some of us even from experience, what
a long ears is. Well, then I venture to assert
that I have the smallest is that have ever been seen.

(12:51):
This fact is not without interest to women. It seems
to me they feel that I understand them better. I
essentially the anti ass and on this account alone, a
monster in the world's history. In Greek, and not only
in Greek, I am the Antichrist. Three, I am to

(13:20):
a great extent aware of my privileges as a writer.
In one or two cases it has even been brought
home to me. How very much the habitual reading of
my works spoils a man's taste. Other books simply cannot
be endured after mine, and least of all philosophical ones.

(13:44):
It is an incomparable distinction to cross the threshold of
this noble and subtle world. In order to do so,
one must certainly not be a German. It is, in short,
a distinction which one must have deserved. He, however, who

(14:04):
is related to me through loftiness of will, experiences genuine
raptures of understanding in my books. For I swoop down
from heights into which no bird has ever soared, I
know abysses into which no foot has ever slipped. People
have told me that it is impossible to lay down

(14:27):
a book of mine that I disturb even the night's rest.
There is no prouder or, at the same time more
subtle kind of books. They sometimes attain to the highest
pinnacle of earthly endeavor cynicism. To capture their thoughts, a
man must have the tenderest fingers as well as the

(14:49):
most intrepid fists. Any kind of spiritual decrepitude utterly excludes
all intercourse with them, even any kind of dis spepsia.
A man must have no nerves, but he must have
a cheerful belly. Not only the poverty of a man's
soul and its stuffy air excludes all intercourse with them,

(15:15):
but also, and to a much greater degree, cowardice, uncleanliness,
and secret intestinal revengefulness. A word from my lips suffices
to make the color of all evil instincts rush into
a face. Among my acquaintances, I have had a number

(15:36):
of experimental subjects in whom I see depicted. All are
different and instructively different reactions which follow upon a perusal
of my works. Those who will have nothing to do
with the contents of my books, as for instance, my
so called friends, assume an impersonal tone concerning them. They

(16:01):
wish me luck and congratulate me for having produced another work.
They also declare that my writings show progress because they
exhale a more cheerful spirit. The thoroughly vicious people, the
beautiful souls, the false from top to toe do not
know in the least what to do with my books. Consequently,

(16:26):
with the beautiful consistency of all beautiful souls, they regard
my works as beneath them. The cattle among my acquaintances.
The mere Germans leave me to understand, if you please,
that they are not always of my opinion, though here
and there they agree with me. I have heard this

(16:49):
even said about Zarathustra. Feminism, whether in mankind or in man,
is likewise a barrier to my writings. With it, no
one could ever enter into this labyrinth of fearless knowledge.
To this end, a man must never have spared himself.

(17:12):
He must have been hard in his habits in order
to be good, humored and marry among a host of
inexorable truths. When I tried to picture the character of
a perfect reader, I always imagine a monster of courage
and curiosity, as well as of suppleness, cunning, and prudence.

(17:34):
In short, a born adventurer and explorer. After all, I
could not describe better than Zarathustra has done. Unto whom
I really address myself, unto whom alone would he reveal
his riddle, unto you, daring explorers and experimenters, and unto

(17:56):
all who have ever embarked beneath cunning sails upon terrible seas,
unto you who revel in riddles and in twilight, whose
souls are lured by flutes into every treacherous abyss. For
ye care not to grope your way along a thread
with craven fingers, and where you are able to guess

(18:20):
there you hate to argue. Four. I will now pass
just one or two general remarks about my art of style.
To communicate a state and inattention of pathos, by means

(18:41):
of signs, including the tempo of these signs, that is
the meaning of every style. And in view of the
fact that the multiplicity of inner states in me is enormous,
I am capable of many kinds of style. In short,
the most multifarious art of style that any man has

(19:04):
ever had at his disposal. Any style is good which
genuinely communicates an inner condition, which does not blunder over
the signs, over the tempo of the signs, or over moods.
All the laws of phrasing are the outcome of representing

(19:25):
moods artistically. Good style in itself is a piece of
sheer foolery, mere idealism, like beauty in itself, for instance,
or goodness in itself, or the thing in itself. All
this takes for granted, of course, that there exists ears

(19:48):
that can hear, and such men as are capable and
worthy of a like pathos that those are not wanting
unto whom one may communicate one's self. Meanwhile, my Zarathustra,
for instance, is still in quest of such people, alas

(20:08):
he will have to seek a long while. Yet a
man must be worthy of listening to him. And until
that time there will be no one who will understand
the art that has been squandered in this book. No
one has ever existed who has had more novel, more

(20:31):
strange and purposely created art forms to fling to the winds.
The fact that such things were possible in the German
language still awaited proof. Formerly, I myself would have denied
most emphatically that it was possible. Before my time people

(20:54):
did not know what could be done with the German language,
what could be done with language in general. The art
of grand rhythm, of grand style in periods, for expressing
the tremendous fluctuations of the sublime and superhuman passion, was
first discovered by me with the diathram entitled the Seven Seals,

(21:20):
which constitute the last discourse of the third part of Zarathustra.
I soared miles above all that which heretofore has been
called poetry. Five. The fact that the voice which speaks
in my works is that of a psychologist who has

(21:43):
not his peer is perhaps the first conclusion at which
a good reader will arrive, A reader such as I deserve,
and one who reads me is just as the old
philologists used to read their horrace. Those propositions about which

(22:04):
all the world is fundamentally agreed, not to speak of
fashional philosophy of moralists and other empty headed and cabbage
brained peoples, are to me but ingenuous blunders. For instance,
the belief that altruistic and egotistic are opposites, while all

(22:26):
the time the ego itself is merely a supreme swindle,
an ideal. There are no such things as egotistical or
altruistic actions. Both concepts are psychological nonsense. Of the proposition
that man pursues happiness, or the proposition that happiness is

(22:51):
the reward of virtue, or the proposition that pleasure and
pain are opposite morality, the soursay of mankind has falsified
everything psychological, root and branch. It has demralized everything, even
to the terribly nonsensical point of calling love unselfish. A

(23:16):
man must first be firmly poised, he must stand securely
on his two legs, otherwise he cannot love at all. This. Indeed,
the girls know only too well. They don't care two
pins about unselfish and merely objective men. May I venture

(23:37):
to suggest, incidentally, that I know women. This knowledge is
part of my Deonesian patrimony. Who knows? Maybe I am
the first psychologist of the eternally feminine women all like me.
But that's an old story, save, of course, the abortions

(23:58):
among them, the emancipated ones, those who lack the wherewithal
to have children. Thank goodness, I am not willing to
let myself be torn to pieces. The perfect woman tears
you to pieces when she loves you. I know these
amiable manads. Oh what a dangerous, creeping, subterranean little beast

(24:23):
of prey she is, and so agreeable withal A little
woman pursuing her vengeance would force open even the iron
gates of fate itself. Woman is incalculably more wicked than man.
She is also cleverer. Goodness in a woman is already

(24:45):
a sign of g generation. All cases of beautiful souls
in women may be traced to the faulty physiological condition.
But I go no further lest I should become medicinical.
The struggle for equal rights is even a symptom of disease.

(25:08):
Every doctor knows this. The more womanly a woman is,
the more she fights tooth and nail against rights. In general,
the natural order of things, the eternal war between the sexes,
assigns to her by far the foremost rank. Have people

(25:29):
had ears to hear my definition of love? It is
the only definition worthy of a philosopher. Love in this
means is war in its foundation, it is the mortal
hatred of the sexes. Have you heard my reply to
the question how a woman can be cured? Saved? In fact,

(25:53):
give her a child. A woman needs children. Man is
always only a means, Thus spake Zarathustra, the emancipation of women.
This is the instinctive hatred of psychologically botched, that is
to say, barren women. For those of their sisters who

(26:14):
are well constituted, the fight against man is always only
a means, a pretext, a piece of strategy. By trying
to rise to women, per se, to higher women, to
the ideal woman, all they wish to do is to

(26:36):
lower the general level of women's rank, and there are
no more certain means to this end than university education, trousers,
and the rights of voting cattle. Truth to tell, the
emancipated are the anarchists in the eternally feminine world. These

(26:57):
psychological mishaps the most deep rooted instinct of whom is revenge,
the whole species of the most malicious idealism, which, by
the bye also manifests itself in men. In Heinrich Ibsen,
for instance, that typical old maid, whose object is to

(27:20):
poison the clean conscience, the natural spirit of sexual love.
And in order to leave no doubt in your minds
in regard to my opinion, which on this matter is
as honest as it is severe, I will reveal to
you one more clause out of my moral Code against vice.

(27:43):
With the word vice, I combat every kind of opposition
to nature, or, if you prefer fine words, idealism. The
clause reads, preaching of chastity is a public incitement to
unknown natural practices. All the appreciation of the sexual life,

(28:05):
all the sullying of it by means of the concept impure,
is the essential crime against life, is the essential crime
against the holy spirit of life. Six. In order to
give you some idea of myself as a psychologist. Let

(28:28):
me take this curious piece of psychological analysis out of
the book Beyond Good and Evil, in which it appears.
I forbid by the bye any guessing as to whom
I am describing this passage. The genius of the heart,
as that great anchorte possessed it, the divine tempter and

(28:51):
born piper of consciences, whose voice knows how to sink
into the inmost depths of every soul who neither utters
a word nor casts a glance in which some seductive
motive or trick does not lie. A part of whose
masterliness is that he understands the art of seeming, not

(29:14):
what he is, but that which will place a fresh
constraint upon his followers to press ever more closely upon him,
to follow him ever more enthusiastically and wholeheartedly. The genius
of the heart, which makes all loud and self conceited

(29:36):
things hold their tongues and lend their ears, which polishes
all rough souls and makes them taste a new longing
to lie placid as a mirror that the deep heavens
may be reflected in them. The genius of the heart,

(29:57):
which teaches the clumsy and to hate fisty hand, to
hesitate and grasp more tenderly, which sense the hidden and
forgotten treasure, the pearl of goodness and sweet spirituality beneath
thick black ice, and is a divining rod for every

(30:17):
grain of gold long buried and imprisoned in heaps of
mud and sand, the genius of the heart, from contact
with which every man goes away richer, not blessed and overcome,
not as though favored and crushed by the good things

(30:39):
of others, but richer in himself, fresher to himself than before,
opened up, breathed upon and sounded by a thawing wind,
more uncertain, perhaps more delicate, more fragile, more bruised, but

(31:00):
full of hopes which as yet lacked names, full of
a new will and striving, full of a new unwillingness
and counter striving. The birth of tragedy one. In order
to be fair to the Birth of Tragedy eighteen seventy two,

(31:24):
it is necessary to forget a few things. It created
a sensation, and even fascinated by means of its mistakes,
by means of its application to Wagnerism, as if the
latter were the sign of an ascending tendency. On that

(31:44):
account alone, this treatise was an event in Wagner's life. Thenceforward,
great hopes surrounded the name of Wagner. Even to this day,
people remind me sometimes in the middle of Parserval, that
it rests on my conn if the opinion that this
movement is of great value to culture at length became prevalent.

(32:09):
I have often seen the book quoted as the second
birth of tragedy. From the spirit of music. People had
ears only for new formulae for Wagner's art, his object,
and his mission, and in this way the real hidden
value of the book was overlooked. Hellenism and pessimism. This

(32:35):
would have been a less equivocal title, seeing that the
book contained the first attempt at showing how the Greeks
succeeded in disposing of pessimism in what manner they overcame it.
Tragedy itself is the proof of the fact that the

(32:55):
Greeks were not pessimists. Schopenhauer blundered here as the blended
in everything else regarded impartially, The Birth of Tragedy is
a book quite strange to its age. No one would
dream that it was begun in the thunder of the

(33:15):
Battle of Verd. I thought out these problems on cold
September nights, beneath the walls of Mes, in the midst
of my duties as a nurse to the wounded. It
would be easier to think that it was written fifty
years earlier. Its attitude towards politics is one of indifference

(33:38):
un German, as people would say to day. Translator's note,
Those Germans who like Nietzsche or Girte recognize that politics
constitute a danger to culture, and who appreciate the literature
of maturer cultures such as that of France are called

(33:59):
un Deutsch on German by imperialistic Germans. And translator's note.
It smells offensively of Hegel. Only in one or two
formulae is it infected with a bitter odor of corpses,
which is peculiar to schopenhauer An idea. The antagonism of

(34:22):
the two concepts Deunesian and Apollonian is translated into metaphysics.
History itself is depicted as the development of this idea.
In tragedy, this antithesis has become unity. From this standpoint,

(34:43):
things which thereto before have never been face to face,
are suddenly confronted and understood and illuminated by each other
Opera and Revolution, for instance. The two decisive innovations in
the book are first the comprehension of the Denesian phenomenon

(35:03):
among the Greeks. It provides the first psychological analysis of
this phenomenon and sees in it the single root of
all Greek arts. And secondly, the comprehension of Socraticism, Socrates
being presented for the first time as the instrument of

(35:24):
Greek dissolution, as a typical decadent reason versus instinct reason
at any cost, as a dangerous life undermining force. The
whole book is profoundly and politely silent concerning Christianity. The
latter is neither Apollonian nor Dinesian. It denies all aesthetic value,

(35:51):
which are the only values that The Birth of Tragedy recognizes.
Christianity is most profoundly nihilistic, whereas in the Dionnesian symbol,
the most extreme limits of a yay saying attitude to
life are attained. In one part of the book, the

(36:12):
Christian priesthood is referred to as the perfidious order. Of
goblins as subterraneans. Two. This start of mine was remarkable
beyond measure. As confirmation of my inmost personal experience. I

(36:34):
had discovered the only example of this fact that history possesses.
With this, I was the first to understand the amazing
Dionnesian phenomenon. At the same time, by recognizing Socrates as
a decadent, I proved most conclusively that a certainty of

(36:55):
my psychological grasp of things ran very little risk at
the hands of any sort of moral idiosyncrasy. To regard
morality itself as a symptom of degeneration is an innovation,
a unique event of the first order in the history
of knowledge. How high I had soared above the pitifully

(37:21):
foolish gabble about optimism and pessimism. With my two new doctrines,
I was the first to see the actual contrast the
degenerate instinct, which turns upon life with the subterranean lust
of vengeance, Christianity, Schopenhauer's philosophy, and in some respects too,

(37:44):
even Plato's philosophy. In short, the whole of idealism in
its typical forms as opposed to a formula of the
highest yay saying to life born of an abundance, and
a superabundance of life, a ya saying free from all reserve,

(38:05):
applying even to suffering and guilt, and all that is
questionable and strange in existence. This last, most joyous, most exuberant,
and exultant yay to life is not only the highest
but also the profoundest conception, and one which is most

(38:28):
strictly confirmed and supported by truth and science. Nothing that
exists must be suppressed, nothing can be dispensed with. Those
aspects of life which Christians and other nihilists reject, belong
to an incalculably higher order in the hierarchy of values

(38:51):
than that which the instinct of degeneration calls good and
may call good. In order to understand this, a certain
courage is necessary, and as a prequisite of this, a
certain superfluidity of strength. For a man can approach only

(39:13):
as near to truth as he has the courage to advance.
That is to say, everything depends strictly upon the measure
of his strength. Knowledge and the affirmation of reality are
just as necessary to the strong man as cowardice the
flight from reality, in fact, the ideal are necessary to

(39:36):
the weak. Inspired by weakness. These people are not at
liberty to know decadence stand in need of lies. It
is one of their self preservative measures. He who not
only understands the word de Innesian, but understands himself in

(39:58):
that term, does not require any refutation of Flato, or
of Christianity, or of Schopenhauer for his nose sense decomposition three.
The extent to which I had, by means of these

(40:19):
doctrines discovered the idea of tragedy. The ultimate explanation of
what the psychology of tragedy is I discussed finally in
the Twilight of the Idols Aphorism five, Part ten, the
saying of yea to life and even to its weirdest

(40:43):
and most difficult problems, the will to life, rejoicing at
its own infinite vitality in the sacrifice of its highest types.
That is what I call Dionesian. That is what I
meant as the bridge to the psychology of the tragic poet.
Not to cast out terror and pity, or to purge

(41:06):
one's self of dangerous passions by discharging it with vehemence.
This was Aristotle's misunderstanding of it. Translator's note, Aristotle's Poetics,
Chapter six end translator's note, But to be far beyond
terror and pity, and to be the eternal lust of

(41:29):
becoming itself, that lust which also involves the joy of destruction.
In this sense, I have the right to regard myself
as the first tragic philosopher, that is to say, the
most extreme antithesis and antipods of a pessimistic philosopher. Before

(41:52):
my time, no such thing existed as this translation of
the Denesian phenomenon into philosophy. Emotion, tragic wisdom was lacking
in vain. Have I sought for signs of it even
among the great Greeks in philosophy, those belonging to the
two centuries before Socrates. I still remained little doubtful about Heraclitis,

(42:18):
in whose presence alone I felt warmer and more at
ease than anywhere else. The Ya saying to the impermanence
and annihilation of things, which is the decisive feature of
Dionesian philosophy, the Ya saying to contradiction and war the
postulation of becoming, together with a radical rejection even of

(42:42):
the concept being in all these things. At all events,
I must recognize him who has come nearest to me
in thought hitherto the doctrine of the eternal recurrence, that
is to say, of the absolute and eternal repetition of
all things in periodical cycles. This doctrine of Zarathustras, might,

(43:06):
it is true, have been taught before. In any case,
the Stoics, who derive nearly all the fundamental ideas from Heracitis,
show traces of it. Four. A tremendous hope finds expression
in this work. After all, I have absolutely no reason

(43:31):
to renounce the hope for a deneasy in future of music.
Let us look a century ahead, and let us suppose
that my attempt to destroy two millenniums of hostility to
nature and of the violation of humanity be crowned with success.
That new party of life advocates, which will undertake the

(43:52):
greatest of all tasks, the elevation and perfection of mankind,
as well as the relentless instruction of all degenerate and
parasitical elements, will make that superabundance of life on earth
once more possible, out of which the Denesian state will

(44:13):
perforce arise again. I promise the advent of a tragic
age the highest art in the saying of yea to life.
Tragedy will be born again when mankind has the knowledge
of the hardest but most necessary of wars behind it, without, however,

(44:34):
suffering from that knowledge. A psychologist might add that what
I heard in Wagnerian music in my youth and early
manhood have nothing whatsoever to do with Wagner. That when
I described Denesian music, I described merely what I personally

(44:54):
had heard. That I was compelled instinctively to translate and
transfigure everything into the new spirit which filled my breast.
A proof of this, and as strong a proof as
you could have, is my essay Wagner in by right,
in all its decisive psychological passages, I am the only

(45:17):
person concerned. Without any hesitation. You may read my name
or the word Zarathustra wherever the text contains the name
of Wagner. The whole panorama of the Diathrambic artist is
the representation of the already existing author of Zarathustra, and

(45:39):
it is drawn with an abysmal depth which does not
even once come into contact with the real Wagner. Wagner
himself had a notion of this truth. He did not
recognize himself in the essay. In this way, the idea
of by right was changed into something which, to those

(46:02):
who are acquainted with my Zarathustra, will be no riddle,
that is to say, into the great noon, when the
highest of the elect will consecrate themselves for the greatest
of all duties. Who knows the vision of a feast

(46:22):
which I may live to see? The pathos at the
first few pages is universal history. The look. The look
which is discussed on page one oh five of the
book is the actual look of Zarathustra. Translator's footnote This

(46:43):
number and those which follow refers to the thoughts out
of Season Part one in this edition of Nietzsche's works
and translator's note. Wagner bayright. The whole of this petty
German wretchedness is a cloud upon which an infinite fat

(47:05):
Morgana of the future is reflected. Even from the psychological standpoint,
all the decisive traits in my character are introduced into
Wagner's nature the juxtaposition of the most brilliant and most
fatal forces. A will to power such as no man

(47:27):
has ever possessed, inexorable bravery in matters spiritual, an unlimited
power of learning, unaccompanied by depressed powers for action. Everything
in this essay is a prophecy, the proximity of the
resurrection of the Greek spirit, the need of men who

(47:50):
will be counter Alexander's, who will once more tie the
Gaudian knot of Greek culture after it has been cut.
Listen to the world historic accent with which the concept
sense for the tragic is introduced on page one o eight.

(48:11):
There are little else but world historic accents in this essay.
This is the strangest kind of objectivity that ever existed.
By absolute certainty in regard to what I am projected
itself into any chance reality truth about myself was voiced

(48:32):
from out appalling depths on pages one seven four and
one seven five. The style of Zarathustra is described and
foretold with incisive certainty, and no more magnificent expression will
ever be found than that on pages one four four
to one four seven for the event for which Zarathustra stands,

(48:57):
that prodigious act of the beautifulation and consecration of mankind
Thoughts out of Season one. The four essays composing the
Thoughts out of Season are thoroughly warlike in tone. They

(49:17):
proved that I was no mere dreamer that I delight
in drawing the sword, and perhaps also that my wrist
is dangerously supple. The first Onslaught eighteen seventy three was
directed against German culture, upon which I looked down even

(49:39):
at that time, with unmitigated contempt. Without either sense, substance
or goal. It was simply public opinion. There could be
no more dangerous misunderstanding than to suppose that Germany's success
at arms proved anything in favour of German culture, and

(50:02):
still less the triumph of this culture over that of France.
The second essay eighteen seventy four brings to light that
which is dangerous, that which corrodes and poisonous life in
our manner of pursuing scientific study. Life is diseased thanks

(50:24):
to this dehumanized piece of clockwork and mechanism, thanks to
the impersonality of the workmen and the false economy of
the division of labour, The object, which is culture is lost.
Sight of modern scientific activity as a means there too,

(50:45):
simply produces barbarism. In this treatise, the historical sense of
which this century is so proud is for the first
time recognized as sickness, as a typical symptom of decay.
In the third and fourth essays, a signpost is set

(51:06):
up pointing to a higher concept of culture, to a
re establishment of the notion culture, and two pictures of
the hardest self love and self discipline are presented. Two
essentially unmodern types full of the most sovereign contempt for

(51:27):
all that which lay around them, and was called empire, culture, Christianity,
Bismarck and success. These two types were Schopenhauer and Wagner,
or in a word, Nietzsche. Two of these four attacks,

(51:52):
the first met with extraordinary success. The stir which it
created was in every way gorgeous. I had put my
finger on the vulnerable spot of a triumphant nation. I
have told it that its victory was not a red
letter day for culture, but perhaps something very different. The

(52:15):
reply rang out from all sides, and certainly not from
old friends of David Strauss, whom I had made ridiculous,
as the type of the German philistine of culture and
a man of smug self content, in short, as the
author of that subterranean gospel of his called the Old

(52:36):
and the New Faith. The term philistine of culture passed
into the current language of Germany after the appearance of
my book. These old friends, whose vanity, as Weertembergians and
Swabians I had deeply wounded in regarding their unique animal,

(52:57):
their bird of Paradise as a rifle comic, replied to
me as ingenuously and as grossly as I could have wished.
The Prussian replies were smarter, they contained more Prussian blue.
The most disreputable attitude was assumed by a Leibsig paper,

(53:18):
the Egregarius Gretzborden, and it cost me some pains to
prevent my indignant friends at Boola from taking action against it.
Only a few gentlemen decided in my favor, and for
very diverse and sometimes unaccountable reasons. Among them was one

(53:39):
Edouald of Gertingen, who made it clear that my attacks
on Strauss had been deadly. There was also the Heglian
Bruno Bauer, who from that time became one of my
most attentive readers. In his later years he liked to
refer to me when, for instance, he wanted to give

(54:02):
her von Treysk, the Prussian historiographer, a hint as to
where he could obtain information about the notion culture of
which he her von Te had completely lost sight The
weightiest and longest notice of my book and its author
appeared in Wurtzburg and was written by Professor Hoffmann, an

(54:27):
old pupil of the philosopher von Bada. The essays made
him foresee a great future for me, namely that of
bringing about a sort of crisis and decisive turning point
in the problem of atheism, of which he recognized in
me the most instinctive and most radical advocate. It was

(54:49):
atheism that had drawn me to Schopenhauer. The review, which
received by far the most attention and which excited the
most bitterness, was an extraordinary, really powerful and plucky appreciation
of my work by Karl Hillebrand, a man who was
usually so mild and the last humane German who knew

(55:11):
how to wield a pen. The article appeared in the
Augsburg Gazette and can be read to day, couched in
rather more cautious language among his collective essays. In it,
my work is referred to as an event, as a
decisive turning point, as the first sign of an awakening,

(55:33):
as an excellent symptom, as an actual revival of German
earnestness and of German passion in things spiritual, Hillebrand could
speak only in the terms of the highest respect of
the form of my book, of its consumer taste, of
its perfect tact in discriminating between persons and causes. He

(55:57):
characterized it as the best polemic work in the German language,
the best performance in the art of polemics, for which
Germans is so dangerous and so strongly to be depreciated.
Besides confirming my standpoint, he laid even greater stress upon
what I had dared to say about the deterioration of

(56:21):
language in Germany. Nowadays writers assume the heirs of purists
and can no longer even construct a sentence translator's footnote.
The purists constitute a definite body in Germany, which is
called the Deutscher sprate Wearin. Their object is to banish

(56:43):
every foreign word from the language, and they carry this
process of ostracism even into the domain of the menu,
where their efforts at rendering the meaning of French dishes
are extremely comical. Strange to say, their principal organ and
their other publications are by no means free either from
solecisms or faults of style. And it is doubtless to

(57:07):
this curious anomaly that Nietzsche here refers and translators footnote,
sharing my contempt for the literary stars of this nation.
He concluded by expressing his admiration for my courage, that
greatest courage of all, which places the very favorites of

(57:28):
the people in the dark. The after effects of this
essay of mine proved invaluable to me. In my life.
No one has ever tried to meddle with me. Since
people are silent in Germany, I am treated with gloomy caution.
For years I have rejoiced in the privilege of such

(57:50):
absolute freedom of speech, as no one nowadays, least of
all in the Empire, has enough liberty to claim. My
paradise is in the sh shadow of my sword. At bottom,
all I had done was to put one of Senhaal's
maxims into practice. He advises one to make one's entrance

(58:10):
into society by means of a jewel. And how well
I had chosen my opponent, the foremost freethinker of Germany.
As a matter of fact, quite a novel kind of
free thought found its expression in this way. After the present,
nothing has been more strange and more foreign to my
blood than the whole of that European and American species

(58:35):
known as libre panceur, incorrigible blockheads and clowns of modern
ideas that they are. I feel much more profoundly at
variance with them than with any one of their adversaries.
They also wished to improve mankind after their own fashion,

(58:57):
that is to say, in their own image, against that
which I stand for and desire. They would wage an
implacable war if only they understood it. The whole gang
of them still believe in an ideal I am the
first immoralist. Three. I should not like to say that

(59:21):
the last two essays in the Thoughts out of Season,
associated with the names of Schopenhauer and Wagner respectively, serve
any special purpose in throwing light upon these two cases
or in formulating their psychological problems. This, of course does
not apply to a few details. Thus, for instance, in

(59:44):
the second of the two essays, with a profound certainty
of instinct, I already characterized the elementary factor in Wagner's
nature as a theatrical talent, which, in all his means
and inspirations, only draws its final conclusions. At bottom, my
desire in this essay was to do something very different

(01:00:07):
from writing psychology an unprecedented educational problem, a new understanding
of self discipline and self defense carried to the point
of hardness, a road to greatness and to world historic
duties yearned to find expression. Roughly speaking, I seized too

(01:00:29):
famous and theretofore completely undefined types by the forelock after
the manner in which one seizes opportunities simply in order
to speak my mind on certain questions, in order to
have a few more formulas, signs, and means of expression
at my disposal. Indeed, I actually suggest this with a

(01:00:55):
most unearthly sagacity. On page one eight three of Schopenhauer
as Educator, Plato made use of Socrates in the same way,
that is to say, as a cipher for Plato. Now
that from some distance I can look back upon the

(01:01:15):
conditions of which these essays are the testimony I would
be loath to deny that they refer simply to me.
The essay Wagner in by right, is a vision of
my own future. On the other hand, my most secret history,
my development is written down in Schopenhauer as Educator. But

(01:01:40):
above all the vow I made what I am to
day the place I now hold at a height from
which I speak no longer with words, but with thunderbolts.
Oh how far I was from all this in those days.
But I saw the lamp, and I did not deceive

(01:02:01):
myself one moment as to the way, the sea, the danger,
and success the great calm in promising this happy prospect
of a future which must not remain only a promise.
In this book, every word has been lived profoundly and

(01:02:22):
intimately the most painful things are not lacking in it.
It contains words which are positively running with blood, but
a wind of great freedom blows over the whole. Even
its wounds do not constitute an objection as to what
I understand by being a philosopher, that is to say,

(01:02:44):
the terrible explosive in the presence of which everything is
in danger. As to how I sever my idea of
the philosopher by miles from that other idea of him,
which includes even a count, not to speak of the
academic ruminators and other professors of philosophy. Concerning all these things,

(01:03:08):
this essay provides invaluable information, even granting that at bottom
it is not Schopenhauer as educator but Nietzsche as educator.
Who speaks his sentiments in it, considering that in those
days my trade was that of a scholar, and perhaps

(01:03:30):
also that I understood my trade. The piece of austere
scholar psychology which suddenly makes its appearance in this essay
is not without importance. It expresses the feeling of distance
and my profound certainty regarding what was my real life
task and what was merely means intervals and accessory work.

(01:03:56):
To me, my wisdom consists in my having been many
things and in many places, in order to become one thing,
in order to be able to attain to one thing.
It was part of my fate to be a scholar
for a while, and of why I write such excellent books.

(01:04:22):
Part one