The Three Metamorphoses of the Spirit
“Three metamorphoses of the spirit do I designate to you: how the spirit becometh a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child. Many heavy things are there for the spirit, the strong load-bearing spirit in which reverence dwelleth: for the heavy and the heaviest longeth its strength. What is heavy? so asketh the load-bearing spirit; then kneeleth it down like the camel, and wanteth to be well laden. What is the heaviest thing, ye heroes? asketh the load-bearing spirit, that I may take it upon me and rejoice in my strength. Is it not this: To humiliate oneself in order to mortify one’s pride? To exhibit one’s folly in order to mock at one’s wisdom? Or is it this: To desert our cause when it celebrateth its triumph? To ascend high mountains to tempt the tempter? Or is it this: To feed on the acorns and grass of knowledge, and for the sake of truth to suffer hunger of soul? Or is it this: To be sick and dismiss comforters, and make friends of the deaf, who never hear thy requests? Or is it this: To go into foul water when it is the water of truth, and not disclaim cold frogs and hot toads? Or is it this: To love those who despise us, and give one’s hand to the phantom when it is going to frighten us? All these heaviest things the load-bearing spirit taketh upon itself: and like the camel, which, when laden, hasteneth into the wilderness, so hasteneth the spirit into its wilderness. But in the loneliest wilderness happeneth the second metamorphosis: here the spirit becometh a lion; freedom will it capture, and lordship in its own wilderness. Its last Lord it here seeketh: hostile will it be to him, and to its last God; for victory will it struggle with the great dragon. What is the great dragon which the spirit is no longer inclined to call Lord and God? “Thou-shalt,” is the great dragon called. But the spirit of the lion saith, “I will.” “Thou-shalt,” lieth in its path, sparkling with gold—a scale-covered beast; and on every scale glittereth golden, “Thou shalt!” The values of a thousand years glitter on those scales, and thus speaketh the mightiest of all dragons: “All the values of things—glitter on me.” All values have already been created, and all created values—do I represent. Verily, there shall be no ‘I will’ any more. Thus speaketh the dragon. My brethren, wherefore is there need of the lion in the spirit? Why sufficeth not the beast of burden, which renounceth and is reverent? To create new values—that, even the lion cannot yet accomplish: but to create itself freedom for new creating—that can the might of the lion do. To create itself freedom, and give a holy Nay even unto duty: for that, my brethren, there is need of the lion. To assume the right to new values—that is the most formidable assumption for a load-bearing and reverent spirit. Verily, unto such a spirit it is preying, and the work of a beast of prey. As its holiest, it once loved “Thou-shalt”: now is it forced to find illusion and arbitrariness even in the holiest things, that it may capture freedom from its love: the lion is needed for this capture. But tell me, my brethren, what the child can do, which even the lion could not do? Why hath the preying lion still to become a child? Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea. Aye, for the game of creating, my brethren, there is needed a holy Yea unto life: ITS OWN will, willeth now the spirit; HIS OWN world winneth the world’s outcast. Three metamorphoses of the spirit have I designated to you: how the spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child." Nietzsche |
Apollo and Dionysos
"It is either under the influence of the narcotic draught, of which the hymns of all primitive men and peoples tell us, or by the powerful approach of spring penetrating all nature with joy, that those Dionysian emotions awake, in the augmentation of which the subjective vanishes to complete self-forgetfulness. So also in the German Middle Ages singing and dancing crowds, ever increasing in number, were borne from place to place under this same Dionysian power. In these St. John's and St. Vitus's dancers we again perceive the Bacchic choruses of the Greeks, with their previous history in Asia Minor, as far back as Babylon and the orgiastic Sacæa. There are some, who, from lack of experience or obtuseness, will turn away from such phenomena as "folk-diseases" with a smile of contempt or pity prompted by the consciousness of their own health: of course, the poor wretches do not divine what a cadaverous-looking and ghastly aspect this very "health" of theirs presents when the glowing life of the Dionysian revellers rushes past them." Nietzsche |
Out of the frame
Our philosophical tradition honours all the priests in disguise, who have done nothing but naturalise the violence of the institutions established by the ruling class. Thick volumes of hundreds of pages, stuffed with neologisms and surrealist concepts designed to drown anyone wishing to seek enlightenment in them. A small number of precious and freeing jewels can be found hidden in this history of our civilisation, often in the form of fragments, among the atomists, the cynics, the materialists, the Epicureans and the Cyrenaicans. These thinkers defined pleasure as the only goal of their actions, considering knowledge based on feeling and the present moment the sole reality. All of these findings gave me the feeling of escaping from a cage.
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Vanity
Our ego and our vanity encourage the worship of genius. There is sweetness in the idea that some individuals, as if by divine grace, hold a gift that allows them to surpass humanity. We cannot compete with them. A very comfortable point of view, hiding a more brutal truth. It is rather the investment put into one’s work, the ability to channel one’s thoughts into a unique direction, that will produce a result close to the work of a genius. As for the belief in inspiration, that sudden gush of perfection, as if the artist were a transitory filter between the human and the divine, I prefer to see the condensation of a will to create, of a long period of research, freed from a temporary obstacle. Again, I wish to think in terms of perspectivism. Which way of thinking will produce the best effects on the evolution of our work? What should we teach children to encourage them to be as audacious as possible? A natural injustice that favours a handful of individuals? Or the capacity shared by all to evolve thanks to patience and consistency, to acquire talent step by step. I do not think that we should aspire to produce a “masterpiece”, we should instead combine the best results of several years of work, fragments of pieces submitted to our most severe judgment and selected by the highest sensitivity, the sharpest gaze. One case gives a static, frozen, Aristotelian universe, of which the immutability reminds me that it is constantly cooling and makes me shiver. I prefer the vitalist heat of the Hubble model, a universe that is constantly evolving. |