Douglas Mercer
May 11 2024
Nietzsche subtitled his book Human, All Too Human as “a book for free spirits.” Read closely the book’s introduction is rather peculiar in that it seems to outline a very personal and very unspecified mystical experience that he had had, or, better, was having. It’s always said that with just a few changes of words or perspective Nietzsche could have turned his works into novels and been one of those famous decadent novelists—but this was not fiction, and pink flamingos, painted turtles, garish greens and floppy berets were never his style. He seems reticent to give too many details but he seems to hint that he has become some sort of adept, if one with cunning irony and cutting wit. It’s elliptical the way he says it but for those in the know (those who have had the experience) what he is saying is crystal clear, and quite often the less we say about it the better. He indicates that what is needed more than anything is to go out into the blue beyond all customary boundaries, to pass over all shibboleths, to take nothing as given except what is given in the moment of passing over. This is the vaunted “inner freedom” of the Germans taken to the nth degree, the inner spirit heading into space. And despite the encroaching dark times he saw coming Nietzsche was in ebullient spirits as to the future, the great future, he said that he was going to narrate the next 200 years of history, and so he has, only about fifty more or so to go, or less.
“That such free spirits can possibly exist, that Europe will number among our sons tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, such a brilliant and enthusiastic company, alive and palpable and not merely, as in my case, phantasms and imaginary shades, I, myself, can by no means doubt. I see them already coming, slowly, slowly.”
Slowly slowly and then quickly quickly as always always; gradually and then suddenly. The inner evolution that he was embarking on was no chimera, but something which was bodying forth in his soul like a solid state, or an integrated system. Naturally there have always been people (few, but some) in touch with this state but theretofore it had always been personal, diffuse, fleeting and transitory, glimpses of which were gotten but no full explication forthcoming. What Nietzsche was experiencing was the first shimmering glimmerings of putting forth a vague sense and feeling into codified articulate speech, of putting the mystical on a sound and solid basis and footing, where it belongs and is at home.
“The free spirit that can attain maturity and completeness has a deciding and decisive event in the form of a great emancipating. The great liberation comes suddenly, the soul is shaken and a strong curiosity regarding an undiscovered world flames and flashes in all his being.”
The flaming and the flashing is the lightning strike of insight; the light opens up the clearing until everything is clear. His vaunted perspectivism has incorporated all points of view, they have become second nature to him, and he has seen the whole in all of its well-rounded essence, taken it all in in all of its myriad aspects, jettisoned what needs to be tossed over, and retained all that is essential. When the merely conditioned and contingent is gone, when the ad hoc is a thing of the past, through clear space one can finally transparently see. His tenacious distrust has turned over one value after another to the end but to see through everything is not to see nothing, but to see what perdures and what remains, one’s own imaginary will. He said that the danger of looking into the abyss is that the abyss might just look back at you. But it’s not the abyss that is looking back at you, it is the god itself who is catching sight of you now that you have caught sight of it. It is in this mutual and final recognition that ecstasy ensues.
“An exultation at having done it brings an intoxicating tremor in which is betrayed a strong sense of victory—a victory over whom? Over what? A riddle like victory fruitful in questioning, such things belong to the moment of great liberation. He is in amaze and sits hushed: for where had he been?”
Where he had been is in the self-created space of the clearing, the future in an instant. What is evinced is victory, the final victory is to be convinced (vincer, conquer). Here all the doubts fall away, the last illusion departs, for it is a victory over oneself and one’s reservations about what one has been seeing. This is the German inner world of pure idealism writ large and finally come to fruition, the infinite space of Shakespeare bound in his nutshell, the inner world being infinite in its extension and its dimension, the outer world of space and stars being but a pale imitation and reflection. That is the world has become pure will and pure representation. It was EE Cummings who said there was hell of a good universe next door, and our philosopher was the first to go.
***
At the time of his death a few knew of the thunderclap that Nietzsche had unleashed on Europe and the world but it was not until 1907 that Nietzsche mania hit full blown; from then on he has been cast into the philosophical stratosphere; but as always people treat him as master instead of forerunner, as a pedestal rather than a stepping stone; Nietzsche said that man was something that needed to be overcome and surely he felt that he needed to be overcome as well, overcome most of all; the idea of analytic or regurgitating glossing acolytes would have appalled him; he wanted inheritors and descendants, descendants who would build on what he had accomplished and exceed him; as far as we know there has only been one such “free spirit” that the philosopher prophesied: Martin Heidegger. And it was he who became so obsessed with Nietzsche as a forerunner and idol that he told his students to put aside the study of him; to read Aristotle for fifteen years and then pick up his books; for Heidegger himself was overwhelmed by his influence and had to leave him off for a while; finally his most intense involvement with the sage of Sils-Maria came in 1941 and 1942 which makes those years in all aspects the hinge of the history of the earth, the fulcrum of world destiny, when things went from this to that and never back again; when he emerged he was ready to move on to the next step.
To the “sober” and the “judicious” and the “calculating” his path must have seemed to have been a zigging when he should have zagged, must seem a kind of language fetishism, or a language idolatry. Indeed from the customary perspective it must seem to be rank nonsense or muttering in a corner. Put simply he went the last step and said that language was alive, was a living and breathing organism with an implacable and imperious will of its own. He said that language was a living entity and that in order to understand what was really going on, going on down in the deep well of memory, in the deep interstitial spaces of time, we simply had to listen to what it was saying, catch the trace of its track and follow it down in it dizzying bottomlessness. To be still and silent and open up all our spaces to give it the breathing room it needs to speak clearly finally once and for all. That is Heidegger took up the cudgel and made a hard detour of a hair pin turn out of the blue, and so gave us the first of those destinings within destinings he spoke of which are nested within each other like Matryoshka Dolls. Each one is set free on its course until they disperse over space forever.
“May the world in its worlding be the nearest of all nearing that nears, as it brings the truth of being near to man’s essence, and so gives man to belong to the disclosing bringing to pass that is a bringing into its own.”
One can acknowledge that to the untrained eye and untutored ear this may seem strange or, worse, meaningless, a going off the beam, high sounding gibberish by way of high-flown gobbledygook. Fair enough. But once one is caught and swept up in the draft it seems like child’s play, another way station that has been passed long ago. It has many ways of putting it, one could say that the world that we see is real enough, but there are levels and degrees of reality, and that our existence will move and transgress though many incarnations and become realer and realer still; one could say that an ultimate shining forth of consciousness in its totality will bring on a space of clearing which will be a playground for our will; one could say that in the final opening we will make it up as we go along; one could say that it will be the glance and the looks that will control things like a mute does a speaking device with her eyes; or one could just stay silent, at least for a while. Heidegger himself is a careful and painstaking and meticulous scholar who moves slowly and philosophizes and repeats; and then breaks into heartbreaking poetry; but having holed up with him for a time one leaves him behind as well. The wisdom of the world is that there will never be another future song we won’t roll in to a ditch; and one soon grows weary of a horse town approach.
***
Let me break it down for you
Future: suture
god
go: power
og: original gangster
do: action
od: odd (strange), overdose
dog: man’s loyal best friend
destiny / density
Lan(guage) is a gauge, what you measure by, a measuring rod (word); the letters are what let (ie, make). There are no dead letters.
Love is what moves you. Love and move are nearly the same word (103/104)
Owe, own, one, now, won
Ovo: egg
Answerve
***
Memory is a deep well. The brain is a perfect recording device that, short of brain damage, will suffer no diminution. As long as the body remains prefect the brain has every chance of sailing to the ends of the universe. While it remains healthy every impression is recorded and sorted according to time and type; if you have a memory of when you were eight the memories that are near in time are dredged up and come closer to the threshold (limn) and are more available for use. Likewise it you recall a memory of a certain type all the memories that are like that type, are associated with it, are one step closer to coming into consciousness, of being activated. Thinking is itself being and there is reason that they say that on the point of death one’s life flashes before one; to open up all the spaces within creates panoply of words and images which stand in their imperious is ever rotating majesty waiting to be made sense of. It is when the barely discernible logic of the memories begin to congeal and body forth that one can begin to track the trace of the articulate speech of being, it is as if you thought you were talking to yourself but begin to realize that you are in conversation. The words come up on cue and just at the right moment and assume their proper place in the constellation; there is no leap here, there is no bridge, but a glide path and a smooth transition from one thing to another, eventually it just overtakes you and you see the pattern of it and become convinced of its internal logic.
In the end of course all things must be proved as all things must be reproved, and only time will tell as only time tells. Any one after all can make any numbers of unsupported assertions. After all if I told you I was a mirror would you look into me and try to see yourself? But if this is not true I might as well pack it in and leave forever on a one-way train to the land of megalomania. That is it's my view, and so fit and proper it is, so on point, that such a proposition leaves me cold. Have I said too much? Or have I not said enough? I leave that superfluous question to the historians of the next century to puzzle over were there ever to be such which there will not. It is always necessary to go on the record, to get it in cold hard print, so there is no quibbling at a later date, so the recalcitrant in the back of the class stand can't stand on loopholes. And anyways to say it does not make it false, one just has to shove off into the draft and go along with its flow and leave the rest behind. The time may be long or it may be short but for certain time’s arrow only flies one way thankfully; and one can never step in the same river more than once. One would be remiss however not to point out that cupid’s arrows on the other hand from time to time flow this way and that; and as they cross they kiss and they consume; and then we see nothing but form.
In the end it is all about disclosure; about willing the disclosure to come to pass, for it to happen not in consciousness but in the world itself. Then the spirit becomes free to enter its home. It is then that those two things (world and word, world and spirit) will become one and the same; that is this is the other side of idolatry, where the gilt comes off on our hands, where the gift is given, where life becomes art and art life, and the statues begin to move; you too can see it in the distance or near at hand if you so choose; you too can enter into it; it's your call as always; but either way the music of the future belongs to everyone; until then there is nothing whatsoever to do save just hang around.
