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DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE CikivaMJ-DJ A TRANSLATION OF EDUART BAUMGARTEN’S "REPORT AND OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING THE INFLUENCE OF EMERSON ON NIETZSCHE" BY RALPH BAUER A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of American Studies 1993 ABSTRACT A TRANSLATION OF EDUART BAUMGARTEN'S "REPORT AND OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING THE INFLUENCE OF EMERSON ON NIETZSCHE BY RALPH BAUER In 1956. Eduard Baumgarten (1898—1982) published his "Mitteilungen und Bemerkungen ber den Einfluss Emersons auf Nietzsche" in the first volume of the organ for American Studies in Germany, Jahrbuch fr Amerikakunde (pp. 93—152). Although the topic of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s influence on Nietzsche has received some attention and repeatedly aroused interest since, in America, little attention has been paid to Baumgarten‘s important and suggestive report on his findings in the Nietzsche Archives: Nietzsche’s marginalia in his Emerson volumes and Nietzsche's excerpts from Emerson in a notebook. This, I think, has mainly been due to the language barrier. The thesis presented here will do away with this language barrier, hopefully stimulate interest in the subject. and perhaps. as I think it may, provide the ground for some re—evaluations in the future work to be done. Baumgarten's German quotations from Emerson’s and Nietzsche's works have. for the purpose of this translation, been replaced by the most authoritative English editions or translation available - or otherwise been translated by me along with the general text. His major findings pertain to the peculiar nature and process of Emerson's influence upon Nietzsche, the temporal extent of this influence, and Emersonian echos in Nietzsche's works. Copyright by Ralph Robert Bauer 1993 Acknowledgments I would like to thank my thesis director. Prof. Michael Lopez. for his assistence and support and Prof. Dr. Alfred Hornung. Managing Editor of Amerikastudien. for his effort in providing me with valuable information about the author. \7 CONTENTS I. Report on the manuscript found in the Nietzsche Archives (1937). II. Manuscript I: Nietzsche‘s Zarathustra meditions in his hand volume of Emerson's Versuchefi III. Manuscript 11: Nietzsche‘s excerpts from Emerson‘s essays "History" and "Self—Reliance" (I881). The influence of these excerpts on Nietzsche‘s own work. IV. A historical sketch of Emerson's influence upon Nietzsche (1862-1889). V. The principal aspects of the effects of Emerson‘s influence upon Nietzsche. 1. Nietzsche‘s renunciation of orthodox Christianity at the age of 18 (1863). 2. Nietzsche‘s announcment of the primacy of "life" over "history". (1872). (An excursus about the correspondence to the doctrine of liberty of the Humanists in a linear tradition from Erasmus over Montaigne. Jefferson, Emerson to Nietzsche. 3. The conceptualization of the Lebermensch after Emersonian models. VI. Nietzsche's personal orientation in Emerson‘s notions of health. the power of faith. and wisdom. Manuscript III: Nietzsche's marginalia and markings in the text of his personal Emerson volume. * A Grirman 1858 edition of Emerson‘s essays including translations of Essays, First Series and Essays. .Seconti Series: Translated by G. Fabririus. Carl Meyer: Hannorer 1858. Vi VII. The Differences between Emerson and Nietzsche. 1. (examples): Emerson and Nietzsche on ‘suffering" (and related issues). Emerson and Nietzsche on sin (and related issues). 2. (concluding contemplation): On “liberty" in the Nietzschean concept of the Ubermensch in a social vacuum. American society as the fulfillment and controlling instrument of Emerson's conservative and revolutionary thought. ILLUSTRATIONS Table l Nietzsche‘s meditations on ”pain" (Schmerz) on the title page of his hand volume of Ralph Waldo Emerson‘s tersuche. Table II The first page of Nietzsche‘s excerpts of Emerson's essay "History". Table III The Ecce homo marginalia. I THE DISCOVERIES IN THE NIETZSCHE—ARCHIVES In the volume "Posthumous Writings from the Time of The Gay Science" (1881).* Nietzsche briefly notes about Emerson: "Emerson. Never have I felt so much at home in a book before. so much in my own house. as it were - I must not praise it. for it is too close to me."' For more than half a century (since 1897). this curious sentence. which records a moment of Nietzsche‘s nearly complete identification with Emerson. could be read in every comprehensive edition of Nietzsche’s works. Neither German nor American scholars seem to have discovered or — if they did read it — pay any serious attention to it. In the ample Nietzsche scholarship in Germany no attention has been paid to Emerson. In the most famous philosophical discourses on Nietzsche (Baeumler. Jaspers. and others). Emerson is not even mentioned. Even in America little has been known about the effect of Emerson upon Nietzsche until recently.2 In the reference library assembled in the Nietzsche Archives in Weimar. there are three of Emerson‘s books in * There have been a number of different translations for the German title of Nietzsche‘s boot Die Frohliche hissenschaft. The first English translation was The Joyful hisdom. But. as halter haufmann points out in his introduction to his translation of Vietzsche‘s text, “wisdom“ is not only a bad translation for hissenschaft but downright wrong. he therefore translated the title The Gay Science (Vintage: New Tort 18741 in accordance with the subtitle of the German edition of 1887 lleipzig. \erlag yon E. h. Eritzsch) "la gaya scienca" but is aware of the other, and now more common, meaning that the word "gay“ has acquired. Erich Heller on the other hand. giving in to the “tyranny of yulgarization". translates the title The Joyous Science (in The importance of \ietzsche. Ten Essays. The tniyersity of Chicago Press: Chicago. 1988: p. 181). is both haufmann and Heller hare observed. Emerson has called himselt “a professor of the Joyous Science“ in various places (The Journals and Miscellaneous \utehoois. yol. 1111: 1841-1813. ed. uilliam H. Gilman and J. E. Parsons. Cambridge, hass. 1970. p. 8: The Early Lectures, \01. 111: 1838-1842. ed. Robert Spiller and hallace E. hilliams. Cambridge. hass.. 1973. p. 38? fit. hlthough [as hauimann arguest it is unlikely that Vietzsche had read any of the writings where Emerson speaks of himself in such terms. there seems to be a similarity in the two concepts of Emerson and \ietzsche in their association with Zoroaster/Zarathustra tin Emerson's “Experience“ and Vietzsche‘s Thus Spale Zarathustra. see haufmann. p. 91. Veyertheless. my final decision was to adopt haufmann's translation - not so much because it is superior to Heller's. but rather. in order to refrain from a precipitated terminological identification of the Emersonian and \ietzschean concepts and in order to preserye terminological space and clarity for a potential discussion of the textual and contextual similarities and distinctions twhich haurmann cells for). 1 Complete torts. G. G. Vaumann. 189?. 101. 111. 2 H. Hummel. "Emerson and Vietzsche" \ew England Quarterly 19 {tarch 19153: p. 83-81 German translation (or at least. they were there until 1945):3 Ralph Waldo Emerson. Tersuche (unmistakably Nietzsche's hand volume with many of his notes). Emerson, Ffihrung des Lebens (Conduct of Life): Emerson. Neue Essays ("New Essays"). In the manuscript section of the library. there also is a black notebook with excerpts from Emerson in Nietzsche‘s handwriting. However. none of these materials have attracted any attention among the archivists.4 Here. I would like to report on some of the most instructive samples of these excerpts as well as on Nietzsche‘s hand volume of Emerson‘s IErsuche: I obtained the aforementioned scripts quite coincidentally and unexpectedly. In the summer semester of 1933. I taught a seminar on Emerson in the larger context of a lecture on "Die geistigen Grundlagen des amerikanischen Gemeinwesen.” According to the minutes. the systematic attempt to reveal the reticent reasoning which permeates the seemingly disorderly rhapsodies in Emerson‘s essays resulted in the observation that Emerson must have exerted a far—reaching influence upon Nietzsche also on a historical level. The systematic congruencies between Emerson and Nietzsche had proven to be so central and comprehensive that this conclusion appeared to be inescapable. The discovery showed many surprising aspects. For one. it afforded the possibility to trace what had previously seemed to be an entirely novel style and way of thinking in Nietzsche's philosophy to one of its roots. Now. Nietzsche‘s originality appeared — at least in part — as a result of an intricate process of human communication: it appeared as something more comprehensible 3 in 1953, there was a rumor that a large part of the Archives had been lost in 1913 and that \ietzsche‘s handvolume of Emerson s tersuche had been sold off at a boot auction in the \etheriamds. However. according to a memorandum of the Vietzsche Archives in weimar (October 27. 19331. this is not true and “the pieces in question can be viewed for the purpose of scholarly research in the Archives at any time.” Perhaps then. the book that was reported to have passed through the auction records by a reliable informant was the first hand volume of Emerson's Essays. which he had lost in 1874. it this is so, a search for it would be very worthwhile. The differences. for evample. between the marginalia 0t 1862-‘1 and those done after 1881 would be an invaluable source. 4 compare with the Archival notes in the German edition of the Historical-Critical edition thistorisch— hritische Gesamtausgabet 101. 1. P. LXAt1. and true. But. as suggested earlier. our hypothesis was not supported by any of the German scholarly works on Nietzsche known at the time. On the contrary. it was even dismissed as far—fetched in conversations with prominent Nietzsche scholars. When I payed the Nietzsche Archives another visit on the occasion of the publication of the Gottingen lectures in the winter semester 1937/38. my hypothesis was met with skepticism there as well. I was referred to the Frenchman Charles Andler. then the most acclaimed authority in Nietzsche scholarship. If there really was such an intimate and far— reaching connection as I was claiming. I was told. there would have to be corresponding references in this most competent contemporary Nietzsche scholar. who was renowned for his philological and historical accuracy. A scrutiny of Andler‘s Nietzsche. sa Vie et sa pensee. (six volumes. 1920). which was conducted right there at the archives with the help of the friendly staff, resulted in the observation that Andler. in the third chapter of his first volume ("Les precurseurs"). had discussed the distinct influences of Jakob Burckhardt and Ralph Waldo Emerson upon Nietzsche. According to Andler. both of these two figures exerted an influence upon Nietzsche in a more subtle. less antagonistic. and. in part. subconscious way. Emerson fut un des auteurs aimés. dont Nietzsche a absorbe 1a pensée jusqu’a ne plus toujours 1a distinguer de la sienne (p. 340). I was now afforded ready access to the Nietzschean hand volumes of the aforementioned translations of Emerson and the notebook with excerpts. The archival record merely read: "Manuscript of Nietzsche‘s last period of creativity (1879— 1889). Excerpts from Emerson. Contains some personal remarks. occasionally used in The Gay Science." Apparently. it had commonly been assumed that these notes were "personal remarks" because Nietzsche had written an "ego" following some of the excerpts. The large. slow (as it appeared). and almost solemn handwriting in the notebook struck me as something surprising. even mysterious. There was nothing else quite alike in the archives. There was no other notebook that Nietzsche might have filled with excerpts from other writers during his late period. But what was especially interesting was the appearance of Emerson‘s versuche. which I was then shown. It was an unbound. well—thumbed volume. its front and back wrapper full of Nietzsche's notes. There was hardly a page in the entire book that was not covered with various strange symbols and notes. some of them quite lengthy and hard to decipher. And then. suddenly. there appeared in festively neat handwriting. next to a part of Emerson's text which appeared to have been especially appreciated by Nietzsche. an "Ecce homo”. In other places. there were dates such as 1882 or 1883. which apparently associated certain parts of Emerson's text with incidents in Nietzsche‘s life or related them to his character. which he avowed on his birthday (October 15 1881). The volumes FFhrung des Lebens and Aeue Essays seemed to have been read and used only little. Only in the Neue Essays. there was a line drawn all the way down the margin. (we will return to this line later). The courteous staff members of the Archives allowed me to borrow the volume tersuche and the notebook of excerpts. In February 1938. the entire notebook and the pages containing Nietzsche‘s notes in the tersuche were photocopied (26 copies). These copies were then glued on to another volume of the same 1856‘ edition of Emerson's text. which had been sent to me after I had completed a lecture on the connection Emerson—Nietzsche in Berlin (1938) by a friendly staff member of a Berlin publisher (Terramare— Office). whose name has remained unknown to me to this day. With the permission of the Archives. I manually copied the remaining marginalia and markings into this volume. imitating Nietzsche‘s handwriting as closely as possible (approximately 830 copies). The publication of this volume was postponed for a later inclusion into a critical edition of the complete works. However. it now seems that this volume of the critical ‘should be: 1858. edition will not be published in the near future. In order to promote the exploration of an area in Nietzsche's life which is. it seems to me. much more significant than the little attention it has received would suggest. I deem it appropriate to finally publish this much neglected material. II The Zarathustra—Meditations Emerson maintained exceptional importance in Nietzsche‘s life: and Andler was the first to notice this. Emerson‘s importance was exceptional for Nietzsche despite his announcement in Ecce homo:5 During periods when I am hard at work you will not find me surrounded by books: I‘d beware of letting anyone near me talk. much less think. And that is what reading would mean Has it been noted that in that profound tension to which pregnancy condemns the spirit. and at bottom the whole organism. chance and any kind of stimulus from the outside have too vehement an effect and strike too deep? One must avoid chance and outside stimuli as much as possible: a kind of walling oneself in belongs among the foremost instinctive precautions of spiritual pregnancy. Should I permit an alien thought to scale the wall secretly? — And that is just what reading would mean * Of course. Emerson did not "strike" from the outside. as "somebody else". or by "chance". But certainly. Emerson struck Nietzsche's life and work in a most crucial moment: at the time of the Zarathustra vision6 — the vision of eternal recurrence. the "Unconditional Yes" to life: Ecce homo (p. 751): 5 1 am quoting from at the six-volume edition thrbner) in arabic numerals and b) from Grossoktavausgabe in roman numerals. ‘ Ecce homo in haufmann. halter, ed. and translator. Basic hritings of Vietzsche IThe Hodern Library: New York 1966. 196?. 1968); p. 698. Further references to Ecce homo are based on this edition. 6 lot too long before Emerson - and before this vision — somebody else. a “stranger" scaled “the wall". Four weeks before August 26‘" 1881. Vietzsche. tor the first time. seriously read about Spinoza (even though he did not read Spinoza himself. he did read kuno Fischer on Spinoza): Vietzsche. Brietwechsel nit Bernoulli, p. 147: 30 July 81 .... it was an instinctual impulse that 1 should now long for him ... even though the differences are tremendously great ...1n summa: my loneliness ... has at least become togetherness. How miraculous!" - The next "instinctual impulse“. much less “miraculous“. was Vietzsche's return to the long familiar texts of Emerson. tow he truely was “together“ with him. (Tor a more detailed discussion of this see: Spinoza. Emerson. lietzsche - below. part \11: "The difference between Emerson and \ietzsche." 6 Now I shall relate the history of Zarathustra. The fundamental conception of this work. the idea of eternal recurrence. this highest formula of affirmation that is at all attainable. belongs in August 1881: it was penned on a sheet with the notation underneath "6000 feet beyond man and time " That day I was walking through the woods along the lake of Silvaplana: at a powerful pyramidal rock not far from Surlei I stopped. It was then that this idea came to me. The central moment of this thought appears in Emerson‘s essay "Spritual Laws": It will certainly accept your own measure of your doing and being. whether you sneak about and deny your own name. or. whether you see your work produced to the concave sphere of the heavens. one with the revolution of the stars.‘ In Silva Plana. Nietzsche had the idea that the highest elevation of the human self is when it dares to comprehend its existence as an image of cosmic necessity — like a star on its orbit repeating its revolutions for ever. In the margin of this passage of Emerson's "Spritual Laws." Nietzsche wrote in large. seemingly placid letters: "Ecco homo" (table III). The first work to grow out this mood of the Zarathustra vision was The Gay Science. Nietzsche began his work with the epigraph: "To the poet and the sage. all things are friendly and hollowed. all experiences profitable. all days holy. all men divine."‘* Slightly altered. this is a sentence from Emerson. which was designated as excerpt "No 8" by Nietzsche for a later transcription into the notebook "Excerpts". But instead. it appeared on the title page of The Gay Science.7 At the end of the "Prelude". which begins with Emerson in * Baumgarten's German quote from tersuche is replaced here by the corresponding passage in J. Slater. A. Ferguson. and J. Carr. eds., The follected korks of Ralph kaldo Emerson. 101. ll: Essays. First Series Harvard University Press: Cambridge. 1979): 88. ** 1 am indebted in this translation to halter kaufmann's introduction of his edition of Nietzsche's The Gay Science (Vintage Books: few York. 1974): p. 8. The literal version of this sentence from Emerson's essay "History" is: "To the poet. to the philosopher. to the saint. all things are friendly and sacred. all events profitable. all days holy. all men divine“ (The follected horis of Ralph waldo Emerson. vol. 11: 8). i The marked passage in the German translation of 1858 quotes: "The growth of the intellect consists in the clear deliberation of the causes which lead us to see beyond superficial differences. To the poet. the philosopher as well as to the saint all things are friendly and sacred. all events useful all days holy. all men divine. For the mental eye is fastened on the system and holds all circumstances in low esteem. 1...) Tot only this epigraph but also the title of the book is perhaps taken from Emerson: Emerson called himself a “professor of joyous science - an afiirmer of the on Law yet as one who should affirm it in music and dancing." Thus. Nietzsche. too. wanted his book to “walk on dancing feet“. 7 the epigraph. Nietzsche includes two poems relating to the date of August 26th and to Nietzsche's marginalia ("Ecce homo") in his Emerson volume. I think this is the reason why one of these poems is actually entitled "Ecce homo" and proclaims the unconditional "Yes”: "Yes. I know from where I came ... — Flame I am assuredly." The title of the second one also alludes to the Emerson text: "Star Morals": "Called a star‘s orbit to pursue. What is the darkness. star. to you?”* At the end of The Gay Science the idea of eternal recurrence is elaborated on more precisely: THE GREATEST WEIGHT. — What. if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it. you will have to live once more and innumerable times more: and there will be nothing new in it. but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you. all in the same succession and sequence — even this spider and this moonlight between the irees. and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again. and you with it. speck of dust!" — Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once e\perienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: "ion are a god and never have I heard anything more divine." If this thought gained posssession of you. it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. 'llve question in each and every thing. "Do you desire this once more and innumerable limes more?" would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to . . . . . t crave nothing more fervenlly than this ultvmaie eternal confirmation and seal?. It would be too much to speculate on whether Nietzsche was reading the essay by Emerson mentioned above ("Spritual Laws") on the same day (26 August 1881) and at the same place (Silva Plana) and whether it happened then and there that he wrote his "Ecce homo” next to this exciting passage of Emerson — even though the unbound volume looked as though Nietzsche had carried it in his pocket like a handkerchief. as though it accompanied him everywhere. in forests and mountains. Thus. it is well possible that he had it in his hand in Silva Plana. However. we know for certain that Nietzsche picked up a book by Emerson again in 1881. On page 344 [of the German edition]. which he read on his birthday in October 1881. there is an entry on the following passages: * this is kaufmann's translation in The Gay Science: p. 67-89. *‘ The Gay Science. p. 279-271. . 8 That exultation is only to be checked by the foresight of an order of things so excellent. as to throw all our prosperities into the deepest shade. The face which character wears to me is self—sufficingness. i revere the person who is riches; so that I cannot think of him as alone. or poor. or exiled, or unhappy. or a client. but as perpetual patron. benefactor and beatified man. [Four large and four small lines drawn by Nietzsche].* At the bottom of the page. there is. in pencil. an entry (which I have copied along with the entire page): "What have I learned to this day (15 October 1881): to please myself in all places in life and need no one else." On the following page [p. 345 of the German edition]. he found his somewhat overstrained attempt at heroism affirmed by Emerson. He wrote in the margin (which I have copied by hand) a large "WONDERFUL!” next to this passage: The wise man not only leaves out of his thought the many. but leaves out the few. Fountains. the self-moved. the absorbed. the commander because he is commanded, the assured. the primary. — they are good: for these announce the presence of supreme power.** Thus. the only thing we know with certainty is this: The Zarathustra vision was born in the year when Nietzsche. perceptive of eminent moods of his own. turned again to the book which he had already read diligently and which he had absorbed as a student. Then. during the time he wrote tntimely Meditations. he picked up this volume again and absorbed it even more. After he had lost it. he instantaneously bought another copy and meditated with Emerson's book for the third time in 1881: and we know exactly what about: Emerson's gospel of radical affirmation of the self and "supreme power". Nietzsche‘s sister found the note that Nietzsche was talking about when quoted above.7a It contained thoughts "on the conception of a new way of life." This conception entails the plan of writing four books. the content and form of which * This is a passage from Emerson’s essay “Character" in Essays. Second Series lHarVard University Press: Cambridge. 1983): p. 58. *3 This is passage is from "Character" (p. 59 in the Harvard edition“. A close re—translation from icrsuchc is "The wise cares neither about the many nor about the icy sources; those who act out of their Ohn incentive: those who are lost in thought: he yho commands because he is commanded: the brave. the strong - they are good: for they announce the immediate presence of supreme power." 7a Elizabeth Forster-tietzsche. Der einsamc Vicizsche (Leipzig. 19141: p. 208. are characterized in an abruptly visionary manner. It seems to me that these four books of Zarathustra represent the sum of the meditations which a fervently excited Nietzsche wrote down on all the cover pages of his Emerson volume during that year — perhaps in that month or even on that particular day. But also. these meditations seem to be a commentary on this visionary note and record the first basic conceptualization of the Zarathustra. It is not a coincidence, I believe. that we find these meditations on the jacket of Emerson‘s tersuche. Everything which Nietzsche wrote on the jacket revolves around that one passage by Emerson which Nietzsche marked with "Ecce homo." This is not to say that this was the only passage which deeply affected Nietzsche: but rather. every single meditation inspired by the variously corresponding and heavily marked passages of Emerson relate back to the note written on 26 August. Below. we will take apart the paragraphs of Nietzsche‘s note. Then. we will consecutively ascribe each of these four announcements of the four books of Zarathustra as headlines to a specially apertaining meditation by Nietzsche or a passage from Emerson. Under each of these headlines then ("Book 1: .": "Book 2:...": "Book 3: ...": "Book 4:..."). we put into the right column the corresponding piece of Nietzsche‘s meditations as found on the jacket of the Emerson volume. In the left column we juxtapose those texts of Emerson which I believe to have triggered these meditations written on the jacket. My notes are inserted in small print. I wanted readers to be able to compare for themselves. without any distractions in between the juxtaposed texts. The things they find might be entirely different from what I have found. All my commentaries are meant to be merely tentative. Some readers. inspired by this attempt at illustrating the process of Nietzsche‘s "absorption" of Emerson. might read up on their own in the complete text of Emerson. These readers may find other passages which affected Nietzsche much more profoundly than 10 those selected by me. It may well be that much of what Nietzsche read without specifically marking actually left a more lingering impression on him than that which he consciously took notice of and marked in multiple ways. However. what I am presenting here was the only "objective control" or ”evidence" that I had. and. therefore. I will subject myself to it. NIETZSCHE: THE FIRST DRAFT OF ZARATHUSTRA Passage from tersuche* Nietzsche: Meditations in his handvolume 0f tersuche "On the conception of a new way of living" (Sils Maria. 26 August 1881) 1. Book: In the manner of the first movement of the Ninth Symphony. Chaos sive natura: of the dehumanization of nature. Prometheus is chained to the rocky peak of the Caucasus. Written with the cruelty of kratos. of "power". * for the purpose ot this translation. i used the corresponding English original as found in Ralph haldo Emerson, Essays. First Series. The Collected hurls of Ralph haldn Emerson \ol. ll l.P. Ferguson and lean Ferguson Carr, eds. Harvard tanersit} Press: Cambridge. 1979. iFrom hop on "it“ in parentheses and Essays. Second Series. The fullected hurls of Ralph haldh Emerson \31. ill. Hariard tfil\9fili} Press: Cambridge, l983. IFrom no» on “lit“ in parentheses}. there substantial discrepancies Detueen the English and the German version existed l re-translated tron the German te\t V97} literally in a footnote. Emerson had called himself a (promethean) skeptic. His words. quoted below, were read with greatest attention by Nietzsche. "Circles": (II: 187-189). There is no virtue which is final; all are initial. The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our Virtues. or what we have always esteemed such. into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.... It is the highest power of divine moments that they abolish our contritions also. I accuse myself of sloth and unprofitableness. day by day; but when these waves of God flow into me. I no longer reckon lost time. I no longer poorly compute my possible achievement by what remains to me of the month or the year; for these moments confer a sort of omnipresence and omnipotence. which asks nothing of duration. but sees that the energy of the mind is commensurate with the work to be done. without time. But lest I should mislead any when I have my own head. and obey my whims. let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter. Do not set the least value on what I do. or the least discredit on what I do not. as if I pretended to settle anything as true or false. I unsettle all things. No facts are sacred: I simply experiment. an endless seeker. with no Past at my back... (Emerson had said: the chained Prometheus was a symbol of skepticism. Nietzsche meditated about this as well as, I suspect. about this following passage in his handvolume of Emerson: beyond love and hatred. beyond good and evil. an impostor with a clear conscience. cruel to the point of self-mutilation. concealed and. before all eyes. a seducer. who lives off the blood of other souls. who loves virtue as an experiment. the same way as he loves vice. (this is written on the back cover of Nietzsche‘s Emerson volume.) The meditation of Nietzsche about the absolute lust for experimentation consists. here. in his identification with the blasphemons skeptic. Later. on the same page, this becomes transformed into the meditation of the absolute lust for questioning (his identification with the Sphinx). (The practical aspect here is that experimenting skepticism (Prometheus) fulfills basic functions of life. Equally. the fact that the Sphinx. as questioner. is waiting for answers is almost lost in Nietzsche's transformation of Emerson's text into his own): People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled. is there any hope for them.‘ Interestingly. Nietzsche. when reading. expressed a sense of doubt toward Emerson's radicalism. He underlined the line "an endless seeker" and wrote on the margin a tiny "yes??". But in his own adaptation of this passage (see previous page. right column) he even exaggerated and fixed in exaggerated form what he had questioned in Emerson. It is almost as though the words Emerson had written against the mystics pre—empted such a fixation: "True in transition. false if fixed" (Representative Men. chapter on Swedenborg). The model for Nietzsche's meditation on the Sphinx is also taken from Emerson and quoted below. Unlike Nietzsche's meditation of self-deifying mystification however. Emerson's meditation has a tendency toward disentchantment and the commonplace. But yet. toward the end. there is a tone of solemnity discernible in Emerson’s sentences. too — more perceptable in the English original than it is in the German translation. Again. as it happened before and in many other places. it almost seems as though Nietzsche had penetrated through the translation to the more radical original. then absorbed it and elevated it in a number of degrees): "History": (II: 18—19). As near and proper to us is also that old fable of the Sphinx. who was said to sit in the roadside and put riddles to every passenger. If the man could not answer she swallowed him alive. If he could solve the riddle. the Sphinx was slain. What * a more literal re-translation of the (badly translated) German version would be: nPeople wish security in everything: in this. there is only hope for them as far as they are not unsure of themselves.“ Baumgarten remarks here: "it is as though Nietzsche detected in this diluted translation the much more radical original." Here you sit: inexorable as my own inquisitiveness. which forced me to come to you. Now then. Sphinx. I am a questioner as are you; this abyss belongs to us in common — it is possible that we speak with the same mouth. (Interior of Back cover) (On page 25 of Emerson's tersuche. Nietzsche. in pencil. re-mythesized the following Emersonian text. Not quite as strong and clear as the meditation on the interior cover-page (see above). the below passage neyertheless seems to is our life but an endless flight of winged facts or events! Those men who cannot answer by a superior wisdom these facts or questions of time. serve them. Facts encumber them, tyrannize over them, and make the men of routine, the men of sense, in whom a literal obedience to facts has extinguished every spark of that light by which man is truly man. But if the man is true to his better instincts or sentiments, and refuses the dominion of facts. as one that comes of a higher race, remains fast by the soul and sees the principle, then the facts fall aptly and supple into their places; they know their master and the meanest of them glorify him. be growing torward the farmer’s intensity. in it Nietzsche summerized Emerson's passage in a monogram of 'higher spirits”. He no longer talks about particular everyday resolvables (as had Emerson), but rather about the "riddle of life' in general, elevated to a total effect and, correspondingly, about "courage in general”: ”It is much to answer to a riddle and think that it is resolved. Nerely faced with the courage to resolve the riddle of life, the Sphinx has at times killed herself. (When transcribing this meditation and, in a sense, personal summary of Emerson's passage on the Sphinx into his notebook with excerpts, he added in parentheses the word 'ego‘ (see p.24, excerpt number 18). If l am right in my assumption that there is a connection between that parenthesized 'ego' and the 'ego' in the title of the third book of the Zarathustra draft (see below), then it means this: the “highest" '1' stands thus. in this additional remark, once again, Nietzsche's fervor seems to converge with that of Emerson. Emerson. too, speaks of the l of a 'higher race“. of an I that the facts. which are commanded by it. must 'glorify.“ Second Book: Fleetingly, skeptically, Mephistophelic. "Of the Incorporation of Experiences." Understanding is error which becomes organic and which organizes. "Experience" (III: 34. 32). Something is earned too by conversing with so much folly and defect. In fine. whoever loses. we are always of the gaining party. Divinity is behind our failures and follies also. The plays of children are nonsense. but very educative nonsense. So it is with the largest and solemnest things (More than once, Emerson spoke of the productivity of error and hypocrisy. To this Nietzsche responded in his handvolume with an unpatient polemicism against Emerson): "thybh] ... Error [HNMbM] necessary for every stage as remedy: You say that the education of man as a cure necessarily will take a rational course. In this sense I deny this necessity. It is pure coincidence that one or another creed prevailed. Any 1.4 But it is impossible that the creative power should exclude itself. Into every intelligence there is a door which is never closed. through which the creator passes. (In the margin, there is a cascade of question marks and lines drawn by Nietzsche.) "Spiritual Laws" (II, p. 81). The whole course of things goes to teach us faith.... There is guidance for each of us ..." (Here Nietzsche wrote in the margin ) "All wrong!" "Circles" (II, p. 190). "A man," said Oliver Cromwell. "never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going." Dreams and drunkenness, the use of opium and alcohol are the semblance and counterfeit of this oracular genius. and hence their dangerous attraction for men. For this reason. they ask the aid of wild passions, as in gaming and war. to ape in some manner these flames and generousities of the heart. (Nietzsche marked this passage with 10 lines.) other creed would have had the same curing effect. And above all: the consequences of the curing effect are very arbitrary and very irrational. Almost invariably, the consequence of a new creed is not a cure but rather an utter sickness." (Interior of front cover). (0n the same page. immediately following) "You live like drunkards, without consciousness - and meanwhile you fall down the stairs and do not break your bones because of your drunkenness and unconsciousness — This is where our danger lies. Our muscles are not weak and suffer terribly — much more than yours. It almost seems as though Nietzsche was speaking to Emerson in this second paragraph also - and against him. lt is a paraphrase of Emerson's own words about drunkards as deceivers as self-deceivers. But above all, the conclusion of these considerations largely turns out to be an affirmation of Emerson. 'Error' = recognition/understanding, organic and organizing. This conclusion is 'Nephistophelean-skeptical-fleeting" only from the standpoint that assumes an abstract and absolute "Truth"; on the other hand, by mocking stiff seriousness, it serves a truth that coincides with the power to elevate life. Third book: The most ardent, most heavenly piece ever to be written was "Of the final bliss of the lonely". This is about the "belonging one" who became self-belonging in the highest degree, the perfect "ego": only this ego knows love: at the earlier stage, when highest loneliness and high—handedness is not yet achieved. there is somthing else - but not love. "Spiritual Laws" (II: 95). lnmemuynnuttotMspmmy,wmm Rather let me do my own Nietzsche marked several times. he wrote a large work. . . . [instead of overestimating EGO. Paulus and Perikles. The above thought reaches its climax in the following passage ]. If the poet write a true Mdhuea drama, then he is Cesar, and not the player of Cesar: Sum felix. then the selfsame strain of thought. emotion as pure. Asm MddmewhbomerwnsbyEmrmm wit as subtle, motions as Nietzsche here again, it seems, also elicited the swift, mount ing. mood for the “third book' from this passage extravagant. and a heart as PmmtaMem,mmthmwnuk great, self—sufficing. dauntless, which on the hanu,tM Tm'ofme'mhdbmk'm ww waves of its love and hope becomes absorbed into Nietzsche’s perception of can uplift all that is on mmomlsflf:1'- ambhswd'httm reckoned solid and precious smetMeheiManMswthmrmm mewflmr in the world, — palaces. (see above, p. 2-3: 'Never have l felt so much at gardens , money. navies. home in a book before, so much in my own house kingdoms. - .H) khen characterizing the concept of the 'ego' in "Spiritual Laws" (II: 96) the excerpts (see below, p. 20). this reeling of We are the photometers. we identifications must be taken into account. the irritable goldleaf tinfoil that measure the Be a plate of gold — and accumulations of the subtle things will engrave element. We know the themselves into you. authentic effects of the true fire through every one of its million disguises. "Spiritual Laws" (II: 86). Not in nature but in man is 16 all the beauty and worth he sees. The world is very empty, and is indebted to this gilding. exalting soul for all its pride. "Earth fills her lap with splendors" not her own. The vale of Tempe, Tivoli, and Rome are earth and water, rocks and sky. There are as good earth and water in a thousand places, yet how unaffecting! [The pervading intimacy in the transpositions of Emerson's texts into Nietzsche's own here presents itself in funny tinge for those that have a musical interest in these mysterious workings: Apart form the considerable shift in meaning there is also a Thuringia-Saxony phonetic shift: Blattgold (“goldleaf") - Platte von Gold (”plate of gold.')] Fourth Book: Dithyrambic—comprehensive: "Annulus aeternitatis." The desire to experience everything again and an infinitive number of times. - The incessant transformation —: you must pass through many individuals in a short period of time. The means thereof is unremittend struggle. The affirmation of the struggle is connected with the affirmation of pain in Emerson as well as Nietzsche. On the "struggl e": "Intellect"; (II: 202). He in whom the love of truth predominates. ... will abstain from all dogmatism, and recognize all the opposite negations between which, as walls, his being is swung. . and respect[s] the highest law of his being. [Here Nietzsche wrote in the margin: 'Bravo!“] .‘ On "suffering": "Compensation" (II: 68). The indignation which arms itself with secret forces does not awaken until we are pricked and stung and sorely assailed. When he is pushed, tormented. defeated, he has a chance to learn * The text of the German edition here continues: 'Kampf und Anfechtung mdssen ihm reine Freude sein.‘ ("Struggling and contesting must be pure joy to him.” Baumgarten adds in parentheses that Nietzsche responded to this in the margin with a 'Ja' ). could not tfind anything that would correspond to this sentence from fersuche neither in the Harvard edition nor in the Centenary edition. The ability to experience pain is an excellent preserver, a sort of life insurance. This is what has preserved pain. It is as useful as is lust - which does not say much. I laugh at enumerations of pain and misery, which is the legitimate attempt of pessimism to prove itself. Hamlet and Schopenhauer and Voltaire and Leopardi and Byron. "(The world and) life is something that should not be. if it was for the mere purpose of sustaining itself" - you say. I laugh at this "should" and side with life, in order to help life outgrow the pain as maturely as possible. We are indebted to pain in everything: security, caution, patience, change. in all its shades between light and dark. bitter and sweet. The entire canon of beauty (of the gods) is only possible in a world of deep, changing. and manifold pain. What calls upon you to judge life ‘ ”(MA to g (13.1.. ...u T." ”:4 \’ av) MA ihm»: fight/1 (1,) (£ch A: 19411;, I; {q' (LZL‘W') \MJ‘E‘” C“ (“W ((44, -/}1 43 3 3t GMW- - no but Cngllmen L- ~ ( uggififi [“A‘E—Mii“ ‘5?" ”if; 13’?! wahilg 1 613W Madge-M61 ('9‘me “ 1 cc 1 ...( (1131.11 3MP“ V‘ASW’EW «(vi-W144i; "31"“35’7” OZM\ “3.)“! 41 (W ‘11:)??th ”(Z-I W: "blunting. WI Wm Bandung. MM: 0469:. W mum Spoilnlutcllu; ”NM NM “mun. Elfin. um. can. Hm 'I | {‘4 OWL“! w W»; 6V”! 1 AMIFA \w l4’9‘N‘ )1 wound] r141. 5"} "‘5" “7‘31 «1,311.4 ”CAN g: 94.1. .(1.(..:1,.1,1,.,1-..-(I 51::va T35 rl. Ikegum «any ml.» :1 Ti 17 something; he has been put cannot be justice - for on his wits. on his manhood: justice would know pain and he has gained facts; learns malady - friends! We must his ignorance; is cured of promote pain in the world if the insanity of conceit; has we want to further art and got moderation and real wisdom. skill. The wise man throws (Uflepafl himself on the side of his (This passage makes visible a difference to assailants. It is more his Emerson, who would never have pursued this last interest that it is theirs consequence of encouraging people to increase to find his weak point. The suHuMginmevak wound cicatrizes and falls off from him. like a dead skin, and when they would triumph. 10! he has passed on invulnerable. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode; every burned book or house enlightens the world . In general, every evil to which we do not succumb. is a benefactor . [heavily marked by Nietzsche. Compare his famous sentence: “what does not kill me, makes me stronger” in Selbstportrait: p. 142.] "Self-Reliance" (II: 41). Thus all concentrates: let us not rove; let us sit at home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet. for God is here within. Let our simplicity judge them. and our docility to our own law demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune beside our native riches. Not to see the new and great "The Over—Soul" (II: 172- above and outside of 173). ourselves. but rather to Ineffable is the union of turn it into a function of man and God in every act of our own. We are the ocean in the soul. The simplest which must drain all rivers person, who in his integrity of greatness. worships God. becomes God: How dangerous it is to be yet forever and ever the influx of this better and universal self is new and 18 unsearchable. "Compensation" (II: 72). His is mine. I am my brother, and my brother is me. If I feel overshadowed and outdone by great neighbors, I can yet love; I can still receive; and he that loveth, maketh his own the grandeur he loves. Thereby I make the discovery that my brother is my guardian, acting for me with the friendliest designs, and the estate I so admired and envied, is my own. It is the nature of the soul to appropriate all things. Jesus and Shakespeare are fragments of the soul, and by love I conquer and incorporate them in my own conscious domain. His virtue, — is not that mine? His wit, — if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit. [Nietzsche's note in the margin: “naive and true.'] "Nominalist and Realist" (III: 145). I talked yesterday with a pair of philosophers: I endeavored to show my good men that I liked everything by turns. and nothing long: that I loved the centre. but doated on the superficies; that I loved man, if men seemed to me mice and rats: that I revered saints. but woke up glad that the old pagan world stood its ground. and died hard: that I was glad of men of every gift and nobility, but would not live in their arms. "Prudence" (II: 133—134). Prudence It takes the laws of the world whereby man's being is conditioned. as they are. and keeps these lacking faith in the universality of our own selves. Much faith is necesssary. (Back of jacket) Do you want to become a universal and just eye? So you must — you. who has passed through many individuals and whose last individual needs all previous ones in order to function. (Back of title page) Suck out your position in life and all coincidences and then go on to a different one. It is not enough to be a human being, for this would mean to encourage you to be limited. Rather: from one thing to another! (Front jacket, inner page.) Attached to this partially Dithyramhic and partially Dionysian meditation, which circles around the making possible of the ego. is a silent note which was engendered by the simultaneous reading of Emerson. This is evident even in the headline which seens to be an acknowledgement of Emerson s 'Prudence'. laws, that it may enjoy their proper good. It respects space and time, climate, want, sleep, the law of polarity, growth and death.... We eat of the bread which grows in the field. We live by the air which blows around us. and we are poisoned by the air that is too cold or too hot, too dry or too wet. Time, which shows so vacant, indivisible and divine in its coming, is slit and peddled into trifles and tatters. A door is to be painted, a lock to be repaired. I want wood, or oil, or meal, or salt: the house smokes, or I have a headache; then the tax; and an affair to be transacted with a man without heart or brains; and the stinging recollection of an awkward word.-these eat up the hours. Do what we can. summer will have its flies: if we walk in the woods. we must feed mosquitos; if we go a—fishing we must expect a wet coat. Then climate is a great impediment to idle persons: we often resolve to give up th care of the weather, but still we regard the clouds and the rain. We are instructed by these petty experiences which usurp the hours and years... (here, Nietzsche enthusiastically wrote a large "Bravo" in the margin). To start with the smallest and most immediate. 1. to become aware of the entire dependency one is born into and brought up to live in. 2. the habitual rythm of our thinking, feeling, our intellectual needs and nourishments. 3. attempts at change. At first, to break the habits (diet), to lean on one's opponents intellectually, to attempt living in their air, "unstable and fleetingly", — a journey in every sense: from the time to time to rest on one‘s experiences — to digest. 4. attempt at ideal poetry (Idealdichtung) and at ideal living (Ideal—Leben). (back jacket) 20 III. The NOtebook "Excerpts” It seems to me that Nietzsche started the notebook with excerpts from Emerson in 1881 in order to re—create an image of the higher man (the image of the "ego") out of the thoughts of Emerson. who had been like an intimate friend to him since his youth. The note "ego” was not a personal remark of Nietzsche (as the staff of the Nietzsche Archives had assumed). But rather, in my opinion, he added this key-word to the thoughts of Emerson that he had excerpted because he found in them, in an especially well—established form, the high reality of the "ego" (in the above sense). According to another hypothesis. Nietzsche possibly added the key—word "ego” to all the passages where he was not quoting literally but rather where he re—wrote and transformed them into his own. I formerly used to regard this as plausible and adequate. and I do not simply want to dismiss it even now. Especially with regard to the excerpt no. 18 (on the Sphinx). this hypothesis is at least as plausible as my present one (compare p. 11). On the other hand. it is not plausible with regard to exerpt no. 1: this is not a transformation but merely a summary. Also there are a number of other excerpts which do not quote literally but rather summarize and compile the ideas — without the additional "ego" to point to the accuracy of this hypothesis. Both excerpts. however. (no. 1 and no. 18) can be subordinated under the concept of outstanding evidence or examples for the idea of the highest "ego" as outlined on the note that Nietzsche had written in August 1881. On the whole. the correlations seem to be so close that I now favor this more sensible supposition. Regardless whether it is ultimately proven to be correct — it bears no significance whatsoever on the evidence of the correlations themselves. In fact. the excerpts are taken from two essays in which the self—owned ego undoubtedly is the main theme also of Emerson. 1. "History" (in a negative sense): 21 independence of the self from history: 2. "Self-Re1iance" (in a positive sense): the self—relying soul of a higher man. When contemplated closely. these excerpts present an utterly strange, almost optical phenomenon. The first thing to be noted is. perhaps. that they functioned in Nietzsche's imagination as though they were reminders and compact memorials. They are not mere treasures of language which had been taken from Emerson as isolated rhetorical figures for their aesthetic appeal. To the reader who studies them closely. they quickly become "eyes" through which he can see two ways: first, into the context in which Emerson had been speaking. Nietzsche often comprehended this context so Clearly that it seems as though it had not been the German translation — which, in fact. was the only version he was familiar with — but rather the English original that influenced his own thought and shaped his work. Second. the reader can see into all periods and systematic layers of Nietzsche‘s work. The best way to proceed when presenting this book of excerpts therefore would be in form of quadripartite pages: in the left-hand column Emerson‘s (English) original. then. next to it. the German translation, then Nietzsche‘s excerpt. and in the right—hand column, the corresponding passage in Nietzsche‘s works. The passages in the works are never connected only to the excerpts but always with the full context of Emerson as well. His figures of thought, the contents of which were often not captured in the excerpts themselves, apparently were "remembered" with them; thus, the excerpts served as a key to Emerson‘s thought in Nietzsche's imagination. However, for reasons of limited space we must here compress this vivid and exciting process of representation from what it could be in the format of a book. We must omit the English original entirely: only where it deviates a great deal from the translated edition that Nietzsche used will I add it in parentheses. I will only present examples from tersuche. By means of 22 these examples (again, others may have made for an equally adequate or even better selection with regard to a juxtaposition with Nietzsche‘s works), I want to demonstrate how Nietzsche‘s excerpts as well as the underlying contexts of Emerson affected all epochs in Nietzsche‘s works. backward and forward in time from the date of the excerpts. The "ego" of the year 1881 is like a central sun in the works of Nietzsche. And the notebook of excerpts stands in this centre. To remark that through the "eyes” of these excerpts the reader can see Nietzsche's entire works - backward and forward from 1881 — is not merely to believe in miracles. Of course. what he read in 1881 could not have been effective retrospectively. But he had read and absorbed those very same sentences of Emerson at least twice before — once every decade: in 1862, in 1873, and for the third time in 1881 his reading of Emerson apparently worked in him like a religious experience. But the last time he understood deeper than ever before the long familiar and closely studied voices and languages of the other man in their highest and fullest sense. Below we firstly present the literal fair copy of Nietzsche‘s forty excerpts from Emerson in the original order of the manuscript. This manuscript of 81/2 pages seems like a picture in its dense compactness. In the third section we unravel it. At first it may appear like a beautifully preserved treasure so diligently composed by Nietzsche. We only added the (arabic) numerals to the excerpts in order to facilitate the establishment of references later. Before writing them down in his notebook. Nietzsche. too, had numbered those same and other passages in his hand volume of Emerson‘s essays for the purpose of excerpting them (1—27). he represent these numbers of his own in roman numerals. He assigned three of these numbers to notes of his own. which he inserted among the passages of Emerson‘s texts. he will come back to two of these (no. I and no. III) in section three. The third note of his own (no. XVIII). which is one we have already dealt with and related to the Sphinx, as well as nine 23 of the numbered excerpts from Emerson. actually correspond with the order in which they were later transcribed into the notebook. Other passages marked for excerption. however. were not transcribed at all (nos. II. IX. X, XI. XIV, XVII, XIX. XX, XXII, XIXV). One of the excerpts served. as mentioned before. for the epigraph in the Gay Science. Thus, we secondly present here these eleven numbered passages of Emerson which Nietzsche did not transcribe into his notebook. The reason why Nietzsche finally decided to exclude them is hard to determine. To be sure. they do not add anything new to the general idea of a pure "ego": in fact, some partially seem to dilute it or seem insignificant in themselves. Yet. some others do contain remarkable additions to the tenor of the notebook. Thirdly then. we will present the announced examples for the correlation between the Emersonian contexts. Nietzsche‘s excerpts and their effects in Nietzsche‘s works. Following the presentation of the notebook we will have to answer the question which arise from it more and more urgently: when exactly in Nietzsche‘s life did Emerson’s writings begin to influence him and how long did it remain effective enough to be clearly identifiable (section IV)? At which period in Nietzsche's life and work was this influence especially prominent? (section V). l. The Contents of Nietzsche's Notebook with Eycerpts from Emerson‘ 1. In every action there is the abbreviated history of all becoming. ego. * in the following section. I translated Vietzsche‘s excerpts very literally while retaining Emerson s diction of the English original (Harvard edition) as far as possible. l quoted from the Harvard edition in place of Baumgarten's citations from tersuchc in order to provide the context from vhich the excerpts vere taken. At times. there are significant deviations betveen the original and the translation. and. more than once. Nietzsche's excerpts are more original to the translator of lersuche rather than to Emerson himself I will refer to such instances in footnotes. L . , . ' -. , :._-_': _,...-.._.:..':arv‘-'7.::J:_._ “m «1 l (ya. «11 a; 16,. 1a,... a}. 794/ at. [Dug/f ...? has I)“. «.1 M W $45,474.14 (and. z a a2 4mm, 2%. 4/ “Wm, :9 .U a; ,4... i.1..t,.,t.i...37tvu.... ......p... _. “Jo/.14: (.4. 712% 7 .. I.“ 'hflruo’tu Km. 57.) ...) ,;/ put. I)“, )4; ..a. pup ..LM/i; 44 1w 4 -.. . .u. J. fan. Wi/r. :. “7.... )W" 11:744.... .2 {It ion/11 (ma w ,2 41;“ my“, 1..., ...;u ... 4m]... «(1'un '1“... fut/4 infirm .;.' . l a l ‘0'," ”WM 94W ft on; 3‘41,le at Jun. %;M_ fine...) I "1%; la. .W-{tv H V's/4 WV“ t/ 5,46! #3: vary... 94 ")1...an 1,... M. (Ia/5M a»... -5vL/IJM/. .4. 24 2. I hear the commendations of the world well. but they are not for me: I only hear in them the commendation of the character, which sounds much lovelier in my ear: this commendation I seek and find in every word. in every fact — in the running river and in the swaying corn. 3. What I am doing today has as deep a meaning as anything from the past. 4. I want to live all history in my own person and appropriate all might and power: not submit to kings or any other greatness. 5. The creating instinct of the soul betrays itself in the use we know how to make of history. there is only biography. Every man must recognize his whole task for himself. —— This wild. savage. preposterous There and Then shall disappear and be replaced by Now and Here. 6. To make one‘s most precious jewelry from the remains of our animality: as Isis with nothing left from the metamorphosis but the lunar horns. 7. Who can draw a tree without becoming a tree! 8. The artist has the power of awakening the activity which slumbers in the souls of others. 9. The true poem is is the poet‘s soul: there lies the sufficing reason for the last ornament. St. Pete is a lame copy. 10. The genii in the forest wait until the wayfarer has passed onward. 11. When the eye is accustomed through nature to dwell on huge shapes. art cannot move on a small scale without degrading itself (caverns). 12. To remember the cathedrals on a walk out through the pine woods: the forest exerted an overpowering influence upon the builder. 13. The intellectual nomadism is the gift of objectivity or the gift of finding everywhere a welcome sight. I have found every man and every thing: and they are my property: the love for all things. which animates him. smoothens his forehead. 25 14. It must be impossible for my eyes to squint and take furtive glances on this side and on that. but they must turn the whole head - that is the refined way. 15. Neither the poet nor the hero can look down upon the word or the gesture of the child.‘ A childlike nature next to an inborn energy. A nature which so neglects its hardships. all submerged. a high recipient of alms, begging in the name of God. 16. To be obligated to reverence is onerous to him. He wants to steal the light of the Creator and live apart from him. 17. When a god comes among men. they do not know him. 18. It is much to answer to a riddle. and it is much think that it is resolved. Merely faced with the courageous attempt at resolving the riddle of life. the Sphinx kills herself. 19. He shall be a Temple of Fame. shall walk in a robe painted all over with wonderful events and experiences." 20. To believe your own thought, to believe that which is true for you in your own heart is true for all men: that is genius. 21. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thought: they come back to us with a certain alienating majesty. 22. There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance: that imitation is assassination: that. though the wide universe is full of good. he will not have a single corn but those that grow from the toil he bestowes on his plot of land. 23. We but half express ourselves. and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents — one must put one‘s whole heart into one‘s work: in the mere attempt. our genius deserts us: no muse. no hope stands by us. 24. to compute the divided and suspicious mind. the high artistic skill which might oppose the strength and means to ‘ as Baumgarten notes, although Vietzsche quotes from two different passages here. each is quoted almost literally from the German edition. l could not find. in the Harvard nor the Centenary edition. any sentences that correspond to this one or the tollouing one in tersuehe. thieh translates: 'lt [the child] is as great as they [the poet and the herol”. *‘ This is the last excerpt from 'History" (ll. p.22). The tollouing are taken tron “Self—Relianee' . W 26 purpose: the children do not have this. When we look in the face of a child. we are disconcerted. They conform to nothing. All conforms to them. they never cumber themselves about the consequences. about the interests of others: they give an independent. unique verdict. They do not court you: you must court them. 25. To observe ever again and anew from the same unbribable. unaffrighted standpoint of innocense - that is terrifying. The power of such immortal youth is felt. 26. No law can be sacred to me but that of my own nature. The only right is what is after my constitution. the only wrong what is against it. 27. That I think of that alone what seem right to me. not what the people think - serves for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. 28. Great is the man who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect clarity the independence of solitude. 29. When the poor and the ignorant are aroused. when the unintelligent brute mass growl and frown. it needs the habit of magnanimity to treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment. 30. Man cannot violate his nature: the character. read forward. backward, or across. it still spells the same thing. What are the highest peaks compared to the entire globe? 31. The force of character comes about by itself —: the foregone days of virtue work their spiritual well—being into you. The consciousness of a great train of victories makes for the majesty of heroes. 32. Honor. therefore. is so venerable to us because it is not of today: It is always ancient virtue. 33. The true man is in the centre of things: he appropriates the whole creation: he reminds [us] of nobody else. all circumstances are put in his shadow. he requires infinite space. numbers and time to accomplish his design: — and 27 posterity follows his steps as a train of clients. 34. The actions of kings have instructed the world: they act from a broad viewpoint; they teach by colossal symbolism the reverence that is due from man to man. There has always been joyful loyalty to the one who moves about by a law of his own. who makes his own scale of men and things and overturns the existing ones and represents the Law in his person. 35. History is an absurdity and injury. if it be anything more than a cheerful story and parable of my being and becoming. — with a reverted eye he laments the past or stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. Instead he should live with nature in the present. above time. 36. Virtue is internal strength: the man who permeats to the original [lr—] power of creation overpowers. by the law of nature. all cities. peoples. kings. rich men. and poets. 37. What we love that we have: but by the way of desire we bereave ourselves of it. 38. The power men possess to annoy me. I give to them voluntarily. Do not lower yourself thus deeply. retain your dignity: do not become entangled in their circumstances. in their clamor: Let the light of your inward law permeat their confusion. 39. It demands a godlike being in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity. Height of heart. faithfulness to his will. clearness of sight must be his qualities. if he be doctrine. society. and law to himself: so that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity to others. 40. Our household is mendicant: our art. our occupations. our marriages — we have not chosen them. but society has chosen them for us. We shun the stormy battle with fate. where our internal strength is born. 28 Some NOtes on the Literalness in which the 40 excerpts Correspond with the (German) Original. I) contracted by Nietzsche — 2) almost literally quoted. Transformed from the third into the first person: N. thereby identifies with te\t. — 3) almost literally quoted: again transformed from third into first person. — 4) almost literally quoted. Transformed from third into first person. - 5) compiled from various passages. Otherwise almost literally quoted. - 6) almost literally quoted. Transformed from the indicative mood into the imperative mood. — 7) almost literally quoted. - 8) almost literally quoted. — 9) compiled from various passages. Abbreviated without alterations in meaning. — l0) Abbreviated with alteration in meaning. — ll) almost literally quoted. - l2) Transformed from indicative mood into imperative mood. Otherwise literally quoted. — l3) Abbreviated. almost literally quoted. — l4) Transformed from indicative mood into imperative mood. — 15) Contents compiled from various passages spread over two pages. Otherwise alomst literally quoted. — l6) almost literlly quoted. — I?) literally quoted. - l8) Nietzsche’s note in the margin of a passage in Emerson's te\1 which does not itself contain this point. A l9) somewhat abbreviated. almost literally quoted. — 20) almost literally quoted. - 2|) the original reads: "alienated majesty". Otherwise literally quoted. — 22) almost literally quoted [from the German original]. The English original reads: "suicide". not "assassination". — 23) Compiled from various passages. Almost literally quoted. - 24) rather literally quoted. Abbreviated and compiled. — 25) Abbreviated. almost literally quoted. - 26) literally quoted. abbreviated. - 27) Abbreviated. strictly retaining the original meaning. — 28) literally quoted. — 29) almost literally quoted. Instead of "brute n mass" the [German] original reads: "brute force that roots at the bottom of society. [in the English original: "... brute force that lies at the bottom of society"). - 30) Contracted. abbreviated. literal. - 3i) literally quoted. abbreviated. - 32) almost literally quoted. — 33) abbreviated. literal. more poignant. — 35) first sentence literally quoted: second sentence (taken from a later context) almost literally quoted. somewhat abbre\iated. - 36) literally quoted. somewhat abbreviated. — 3T) literally quoted. — 3B) literally quoted. word order slightly changed. - 39) somewhat abbreviated. literally quoted. - 10) somewhat abbreviated. literally quoted. 29 2. Some passages that Nietzsche marked for excerption but never transcribedf 1. "Oh. our greediness! I feel nothing of unselfishness. but rather an all desiring self which sees through many individuals as though they were its eyes and reaches through them as though it had hands — a self which restores the entire past. a self which does not want to lose whatever it could possibly own. [no quote from Emerson. See below] 11. Every revolution was first a thought in one man's soul. and when the same thought occurs to another man. it is the key to that era. Every reform was once only the silent opinion of one man, and only when it has become the opinion of all men. is the riddle of the age resolved. MdzmMMcofqu mmpanf‘ IX. Every one must have observed that facial features and forms without the slightest resemblance can make a like impression on the beholder. A unique painting or the manuscript of a poem. even if it does not awaken the same train of ideas in us, perhaps will yet superinduce upon us the same feeling as will. for example, a wild mountain walk. although the resemblance is nowise obvious to the senses. but is entirely out of the reach of the understanding. Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well known melody in innumerable variations. m.9 last paragraph]. X. There are men who develop the same essential splendor in their bearing and manners as does the simple. sublime sculpture on the friezes of the Partheneon. and the remains of ‘ the textual criterion for the translation of the following section is based on a re-translation of the German text while retaining the original diction of the English version wherccycr there are no discrepancies. For easier comparison. I added the corresponding page references for ycl. ll of the Harrard Edition in brackets ‘* compare the English original: “... and when it shall he a private opinion again, it will solyc the problem of the age." (ll. p. 4]. In the Centenary Edition lyol. ii. p. 38ll a note to this sentence provides this commentary: 'ln this passage. and one in 'Sclf~Reliancc". — "An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.“ with the work of St. Anthony. Luther. Fox. hesley and flarkson as instances. - came out Mr. Emerson‘s belief in the duty and the power of the man of thought. a messenger of thc Eternal iind.‘ 30 the earliest Greek art. H.1m Hmtpmflrwm XI. If any one will but take pains to observe the variety of actions to which he is inclined in certain moods of mind. and those to which he is averse. he will see how deep is the chain of affinity. [plhzmdoffhm mmngh XIV. As the Persian imitated in the slender shafts and capitals of his architecture the stem and flower of the lotus and palm. so the Persian Court in its magnificent era never gave over the Nomadism of its barbarous tribes. but travelled from Ecbatana. where the spring was spent. to Susa in summer. and to Babylon for the winter. m.lflwt XVII. The infinite charm of the ancient tragedy and indeed of all the old literature is. that the persons speak simply. — speak as persons who have great good sense without knowing it. before yet the reflective habit has become the predominant habit of the mind. [p. 15: second paragraph]. XIX. Jesus always astonishes and overpowers the feelings of sensual people. They cannot unite him to history or reconcile him with themselves. As they come to live a contemplative and pious life. their own piety explains every fact. every word. W-lh wcmdpnapamt XX. The priestcraft of the East and West. of the Magian. Brahmin. Druid and Inca. is expounded in the individual's private life. The hindering influence of a hard petant on every child in dismissing his spirits and courage as illegitemate. paralyzing the understanding. and that without producing indignation. but only fear and obedience. and perhaps even sympathy with this tyranny. is a familiar fact explained to the child when he becomes a man. only by seeing that the oppressor of his youth is himself a child tyrannized over by that apperance and those words and forms. of whose influence he was merely the organ to the youth. m.l& mhdpuaywht XXII. Who knows himself before he has been thrilled with indignation at an outrage. or has heard an eloquent tongue. or has shared the throb of thousands in a national exultation or alarm? No man can antedate his experience. or guess what 31 faculty or feeling a new object shall unlock. any more than he can draw to-day the face of a person whom he shall see to— morrow for the first time. w.hzbmmmoffnm mmgmmt XXIV. Infinitely broader and deeper we must write our annals - from an ethical reformation of our self. from an influx of the ever moving. ever sanative conscience. — if we would truelier express our central and wide—related nature. instead of this old chronology of selfishness and pride to which we have too long lent our eyes. Already that day has dawned. H.2ksewm paragraph]. 3. Ekamples of the Correlations between Ewerson's Texts, Nietzsche’s Ekcerpts. and the Central Thoughts in Nietzsche’s Wbrk On (I): "Oh. our greediness ... " Above the beginning of his essay "History" Emerson wrote these lines: I am owner of the sphere Of the seven stars and the solar year Of Cesar‘s hand. and Plato's brain Of Lord Christ‘s heart. and Shakespeare's strain. Then the begining of the text reads: History There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought. he may think: what a saint has felt. he may feel: what at any time has befallen any man. he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind. is a party to all that is or can be done. for this is the only and sovereign agent. In the margin of this passage. Nietzsche wrote a large "No!". And below that. in different writing. as though he had come back to this passage some later time. he wrote: But it is an ideal! 32 When re—reading this passage at a later time. he appropriated these sentences into his own meditation. which he wrote on the empty space above and into the title numbering it "1": Oh. our greediness! I feel nothing of unselfishness. but rather an all desiring self which sees through many individuals as though they were its eyes and reaches through them as though it had hands — a self which restores the entire past. a self which does not want to lose whatever it could possibly own. As already mentioned. the euphoria about the Zarathustra meditation in the summer of 1881 was then transformed into the Gay Science. the epigraph of which also was a quote from Emerson (see p. 7). Indeed. Emerson‘s will to power over history formed an essential part of this ”Gay Science". There. the meditation quoted above re—appears in paragraph 34 (Historia abscondita). And it re—appears throughout Nietzsche's works: in the "Zarathustra". in the hill to Power. in Ecce homo. I will compile only a few examples here: The Gay Science. no. 34’ Historia abscondita. — Every great human being exerts a retroactive force: for his sake all of history is placed in the balance again. and a thousand secrets of the past crawl out of their hiding places — into his sunshine. There is no way of telling what may yet become part of history. Perhaps the past is still essentially undiscovered! So many retroactive forces are still needed! (Compare p. 9. note 7a). From The hill to Power: (6. 263) *‘ It is richness of personality. abundance in oneself. overflowing and bestowing. instinctive good health and affirmation of oneself. that produce great sacrifice and great love: it is strong and godlike selfhood from which these affects grow. just as surely as do the desire to become master. encroachment. the inner certainty of having a right to ‘ For the purpose of this translation. I am quoting from halter kaufmann s translation [Vintage Books: \ew York. 1974). p. 104. *‘ in substitution for the german quote. I cite halter kautmann ted. and trauslatort: Friedrich Vietzsche. The hill to Power (Vinatage Books. l967): p. 209. 33 everything ... How was one able to transform these instincts that man thought valuable that which was directed against his self? when he sacrificed his self to another self. Oh the mendaciousness ..." From Ecce homo: (5. 373)* Zarathustra himself as a type ... overtook me ... To understand this type. one must ... [have] ... a soul that craves to have experienced the whole range of values and desiderata to date. ... whoever wants to know from the adventures of his own most authentic experience how a discoverer and conqueror of the ideal feels. and also an artist. a saint. a legislator. a sage. a scholar. a pious man. and one who stands divinely apart in the old style - needs one thing above everything else : the great health ... Another ideal runs ahead of us. a strange. tempting. dangerous ideal . the ideal of a spirit who plays naively — that is. not deliberately but from overflowing power and abundance — with all that was hitherto called holy. good. untouchable. divine: it is perhaps only with him that great seriousness really begins. that the real question mark is posed for the first time (Here. the reminiscence of the Emersonian spirit seems very tangible: see especially the above explanation in the essay "Circles": also: the meaning and significance of Nietzsche‘s exclamation "naive and true!" in the margin of one of Emerson‘s especially elated passages on history becomes apparent here (see p. 18). On excerpt 1: "In every action there is the abbreviated history of all becoming. ego." The context from which Nietzsche took this sentence reads: (tersuche. p. 2). [II: p. 3]: p—t- Greece. Rome. Gaul. Britain. America. lie folded already n the first man... This human mind wrote history and this must read it. The Sphinx must solve her own riddle. If the whole of history is in one man. it is all to be explained from individual ’ quoted from halter kaufmann. ed. and translator. The Basic kritings of lietzsche tlbe iodern Library: \ew md.l%m:p.fitfi. 34 experience. There is a relation between the hours of our life and the centuries of time. (Versuche; p. 5. bottom) [11; p. 5-6]: The world exists for the education of each man. There is no age or state of society or mode of action in history. to which there is not somewhat corresponding in his life. Every thing tends in a wonderful manner to abbreviate itself and yield its own virtue to him. As discussed earlier. these sentences had an impact upon Nietzsche in 1881 for the third time. Thus. from a very early time on. his vivid responses to them re—appear in his works. Here I only present passages of special interest. For Nietzsche. during the period of The Birth of Tragedkx l the recipient of Emerson‘s ”abbreviation” and the 'yielding" of the world to the individual was first of all the philosopher: (The Philosopher ... is) "image and abbreviation of the whole world."(I. 473).‘ This Emersonian idea also recurs throughout his later work: " .... I live in what moved Zarathustra. Moses. Mohamed. Jesus. Plato. Brutus. Spinoza. Mirabeau." (XII. 216). " ...When I speak of Plato. Pascal. Spinoza. and Goethe. I know that their blood runs in mine" (XII. 217). "In my ancestors Heraklit. Empedokles. Spinoza. Goethe." (XIV. 263). Let us compare to this Emerson‘s thought about a rich and contradictory ancestry of one‘s own blood which legitimizes the "alternating". changing. and experimenting mind: We are children of many Sires. and every drop of blood in us in its turn betrays its ancestors. We are of the party of war and of the peace party alternately. to both very sincerely. Only we always may be said to be heartily only on the side of truth. See—saw ... The world is enigmatical. everything said ’ is Baumgarten indicated in a footnote above to. 6). he refers to three different editions ot \ietzsche 5 works. I will retain these references to the respective German editions and indicate. in a tootnote. if and where an adequate translation can be found. Here. he quotes from \ietzsche’s kerke throssoktavausgabe) Erste Abtheilung. Band I: Die Geburt der lragodie. bnzeitgemasse Betrachtungen. Alfred krdner \erlag. Leipzig. 1917. 35 and everything known and done. and must not be taken literally but genially" (Journals. VII. 79. 1845).* It is unlikely that Nietzsche ever read these lines. Rather. he reconstructed their meaning from a less drastic passage through his own apt intensification — for example from Aature (Emerson I. 17): "broad noon shall be my England of the senses and the understanding: the night shall be my Germany of my mystic philosophy and dreams."‘* However. the only hard fact here remains that Nietzsche was inspired by the passages of Emerson which he marked conspicuously on page 107 of his hand volume of tersuche (in "Spiritual Laws"): What a man does. that he has. What has he to do with hope or fear? In himself is his might. Let him regard no good as solid. but that which is in his nature. and which must grow out of him as long as he exists. The goods of fortune may come and go like summer leaves: let him scatter them on every wind as the momentary signs of his infinite productiveness. He may have his own. A man‘s genius. the quality that differences him from every other. the susceptibility to one Class of influences. the selection of what is fit for him. the rejection of what is unfit. determines for him the character of the universe. A man is a method. a progressive arrangement: a selecting principle. gathering his like to him. wherever he goes. He takes only his own. out of the multiplicity that sweeps and circles round him. He is like one of those booms which are set out from the shore on rivers to catch drift— wood. or like the loadstone amongst splinters of steel.“‘ At the bottom of page 107 of tersuche. Nietzsche wrote: "The same for humanity. It takes its own from the multiple — all other property remains behind in material things.""“ In The Gay Science (section 242. third book). Nietzsche writes: Suum cuique. - However great the greed of my desire for knowledge may be. I still cannot take anything out of things that did not belong to me before: what belongs to others :- * Baumgarten‘s roman numerals with regard to Emerson's work (“11 . etc.) refer to the Centenary Edition of The Complete horks of Ralph haldo Emerson (Riverside Press: Cambridge. 1904). *‘ This passage is to be found on page 13 in vol. 1 of Collected horks of Ralph kaldu Emerson (Harvard University Press. 1971] *" 11. p. 83-84. **" ... alles andere bleibt in den Dingen zurUck. 36 remains behind. How is it possible for a human being to be a thief or robber?‘ In Ecce homo (section: "Why I Write Such Good Books": p. 337). he writes: "Ultimately. nobody can get more out of things. including books. than he already knows. For what one lacks access to from experience one will have no ear."‘* ON EXCERPT 3 "What I am doing today has as deep a meaning as anything from the past." The context to this sentence in Emerson‘s essay is: (Versuche. p. 5): The student is to read history actively and not passively: to esteem his own life the text. and books the commentary. Thus compelled. the muse of history will utter oracles. as never to those who do not respect themselves. I have no expectation that any man will read history aright. who thinks that what was done in a remote age. by men whose names have resounded far. has any deeper sense than what he is doing to—day.[1. p. 5] The most extreme developments of this posture returns in Nietzsche‘s work in two places (The hill to Power and Ecce homo). 1. The hill to Power (Book Three: "Principles of a New Evaluation": III "The Will to Power as Society and Individual") p. 512. no. 767.**’ The individual is something quitelnew which creates new things. something absolute: ... a 1 his acts are entirely his own. no. 768: The "ego" subdues and kills: it operates like an organic cell: . It wants to give birth to its god and see all mankind at his feet. * The Gay Science. h. kaufmann. ed. and translator (Vintage Books: \ew lork. 19741: p. 214. ** haufmann. Basic kritings of Nietzsche: p. (it "’ translation by h. kaufmann. ed.: Friedrich Nietzsche. The hill to Power. p. 103 37 2. In Ecce homo (5/330). on the other hand: Scholars who at bottom do little nowadays but thumb books When they don‘t thumb. they don‘t think. They respond to a stimulus (a thought they read) whenever they think — ... they themselves no longer think. The instinct of self—defense has become worn-out in them: otherwise they would resist books. The scholar — a decadent.’ Compare to this the train of thought in Emerson‘s "The American Scholar". which could be summed up: The spirit of the past is to be found in books. But books are a perishable nourishment. The one who wrote them lived a life and transformed it into memory and truth. But now there is truth without life in these books. This truth rests upon the living like a weight. Only the one who is strong himself can bear the costs of books. But as far as the weak one in life are concerned. he debilitates completely into a feeble thinker who does not promote life with his knowledge. but rather. he obstructs it. In an inversion exactly corresponding to Nietzsche‘s image of the sun power [Sonnenkraft] of the active soul. Emerson had summerized his verdict over the the passive scholar in the the daring words "an eye fastened on the past unsuns nature" (Journals VI: 190).88 Here Nietzsche’s identical thought in tmtimely Meditations ("On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life"). For example: "... history can be borne only by strong personalities. weak ones are utterly extinguished by it" (1. 138)-** "... that man should above all learn to live and should employ history only in the service of the life he has learned to live" (1. 185).“‘ - "Excess of history has attacked life's plastic powers with the word 'the unhistorical' I designate the art and power * kaufmann. Basic hritings. p. 709. 8a on the terms "unsuns nature" fEmerson) and the “sun power“ of the ego (Vietzschet: 1t was Emerson 5 spiritual audacity (in seing and speaking] which accounts for the power of his trains of thought and which inspired the genius of Nietzsche in countless places. Emerson's language was absorbed by \1etzsche's ear and mind like music: its contents of thought stuck to him unforgettably. *‘ translated by R. J. Hollingdale in Friedrich kietzsche. tmtimely heditations. Charles Taylor. general editor. Texts in German Philosophy. (Cambridge lniversity Press: Cambridge. 1983] with an introduction by J. P. Stern; p. 86. This edition is used for all further references to this text in English translation. *“ Entimely heditations: p. 116. 38 of forgetting ..." (and this ability we must develop) (1. 191).‘ In order to establish the borderline at which the past must be forgotten and to avoid that it will become the undertaker of the present. it must be known exactly how great the formative potential of a person. a people. a culture is. I am speaking about the potential of growing out of the own self. of re—shaping and incorporating the past and all things outside the self. of healing wounds. replacing things lost. and moulding anew all forms broken ..." (and so on: 1. 191). Compare to this Emerson's "Powers and Laws of Thought" (XII. 33): "The appetite and the power of digestion measure our right to knowledge. He has it who can use it. As soon as our accumulation overruns our invention or power to use. the evils of intellectual gluttony begin" — and Emerson's rejoicing remark about the "Power of America" (VI. 330): "There can be no danger from any excess of European importation of art or learning into a country of such excessive native strength. such immense digestive power." I have discussed the congruencies and differences between Emerson's and Nietzsche‘s concepts of the function of history in life in more detail in my book Der Pragmatismus (1938). which contains my first study of Emerson's influence up Nietzsche: "Emerson and Nietzsche on Monumental History" (pp. 83 ff and 400 ff). antique and critical history (pp. 84 ff. 381 ff. 403 ff). Also to be found there are details about Emerson's withdrawal from the ministry. his criticism of the church. and so on (pp. 10 ff. 49 ff. 66 ff. 353 ff. 363 ff. 381 ff). "We honor and protect all accumulations of power. because we hope to inherit them. We also want to be the heirs of morality — after we have destroyed the morals." This note. which Nietzsche had originally marked for transcription into his notebook. is to be found in the margin of the following passage of his Emerson text (p. 3): ‘iMd.p.HhN. 39 The property in profane goods is hindering for the soul and keeps the great deeds which are deeply innate in man from coming to the suface. but yet we hold to these goods with swords and laws and wide complex combinations.‘ Nietzsche. however. in his above commentary. dismisses the "but yet" in this passage. Reading the bad translation of this passage. Nietzsche felt it necessary to make this correction: but. in fact. he understood the original sense of Emerson‘s passage from its wider context correctly and actually agreed to its original meaning. This is another example of the profundity of Nietzsche‘s understanding of Emerson. The English context reads: It is the universal nature which gives worth to particular men and things. Human life as containing this is mysterious and inviolable. and we hedge it round with penalties and laws. All laws derive hence their ultimate reason: all express more or less distinctly some command of this supreme illimitable essence. Property also holds of the soul. covers great spiritual facts. and instinctively we at first hold to it with swords and laws. and wide complex combinations. The obscure consciousness of this fact is the light of all our day. the claim of claims: the plea for eduction. for justice. for charity. the foundation of friendship and live. and of the heroism and grandeur which belong to acts of self—reliance. It is remarkable that involuntarily we always read as superiour beings." The basic attitudes of Emerson (a. to honor history in a conservative way of thinking. b. to resist it through individual sovereignty. "as superior being") re-appears all over Nietzsche‘s works: A sort of inherited wealth of morality is perhaps presupposed." (XV. 451)“‘ - We want to be the heirs of all existing morality to date. rather than begin anew. All our actions are only morality which has turned against its older forms. (XIII. 125).‘*“ From The hill to Power: no. 295 (6/208): We are the heirs of the conscious—vivisection and of the self— ’ This is re-translated rather literally from Baumgarten's tGerman] quote. *‘ khile Baumgarten's emphasis is retained. this is quoted from 11. p. 4. second paragraph of the Harvard edition. ‘*’ kaufmann. tr.. The hill to Power: p. 230. ““ my translation. . 40 crucifixion of two millennia: in these we have the longest practice. in these lies our mastery perhaps. certainly our subtlety: we have conjoined the natural inclinations and a bad consciousness. A reverse attempt would be possible: to conjoin the unnatural inclinations. I mean the inclination for the beyond. for things contrary to sense. reason. nature. in short. all previous ideals. which were all world—slandering ideals. with a bad conscience.‘ no. 405 (6/276): To what an extent the self—destruction of morality is still a part of its own force. We Europeans have in us the blood of those who died for their faith: we have taken morality to be serious and awesome. and there is nothing that we have not in some way sacrificed to it. On the other hand: our spiritual subtlety has essentially been attained through conscience— Vivisection. We do not yet know the ”wither" toward which we are driven once we have detached ourselves from our old soil. But it was from this same soil that we acquired the force which now drives us forth into the distance. into adventures. thrusting us into the boundless. the untried. the undiscovered — we have no choice left. we have to be conquerors once we no longer have any country in which we are at home. in which we would want to "preserve" things. A concealed Yes drives us that is stronger than all our No's. Our strength itself will no longer endure us in the old decaying soil: we venture away. we venture ourselves: the world is still rich and undiscovered. and even to perish is better than to become half—hearted and poisonous. Our strength itself drives us to sea. where all suns have hitherto gone down: we know of a new world. No. 361 (6.248): I have declared war on the anemic Christian ideal (together with what is closely related to it). not with the aim of destroying it but only of putting an end to its tyranny and clearing the way for new ideals. for more robust ideals — The continuance of the Christian ideal is one of the most desirable things there are — even for the sake of the ideals that want to stand beside it and perhaps above it - they must have opponents. strong opponents. if they are to become strong.- Thus we immoralists require the power of morality: our drive of self—preservation wants our opponents to retain their strength - it only wants to become master over them.“ * The hill to Power; p. 166. *‘ The hill to Power; p. 197. 41 You call this the self—decomposition of God: but He is only shedding His skin ... You shall see Him again soon. beyond good and evil" (XII. 329).* At first. these Nietzschean meditations seem to transcend Emerson’s attitudes by far: but actually they do not! Everywhere in Emerson’s trains of thought. Nietzsche could feel Emerson's impatience with the conventional idealism of the pious and the just. Also. Nietzsche's congenial instinct at least guessed that Emerson could have as bad a temper as could Nietzsche himself (in a quite fixed. open. and loud manner at that!). In his factual memory many sentences such as the following may have had a lingering and strong effect: An idealist. if he has the sensibilities and habits of those whom I know. is very ungrateful. He craves and enjoys every chemical property. and every elemental force. loves pure air. water. light, caloric. wheat. flesh. salt. and sugar; the blood coursing in his own vains. and the graSp of friendly hands; and uses the meat he eats to preach against matter as malignant. and to praise mind. which he very hollowly and treacherously serves. Beware of hypocrisy." (compare I. 74. J. IX. 6. J. VI. 317) Nietzsche might have guessed at the possibility of the following sentences of Emerson: "Experimental writing Twice today it has seemed to me that truth is our only armor in all passages of life and death ... I will speak the truth also in my secret heart or think the truth against what is called God — Truth against the Universe." But the same Emerson recommended to preserve as much as possible the rich Christian tradition and heritage. no matter how unfortunately entangled in its own history: "There is poetic truth concealed in all the commonplaces of prayer and of sermons. and though foolishly spoken they may be wisely heard. ("The Divinity School Address").“ He concluded his last sermon before his Boston congregation with these sentences ("The Lord's Supper"): * my translation. ”l;p.%. 42 My brethren have considered my views with patience and candor and have recommended. unanimouly, an adherence to the present form. I have therefore been compelled to consider whether it becomes me to administer it. I am clearly of opinion I ought not ... It is my desire. in the office of a Christian minister. to do nothing which I cannot do with my whole heart. Having said this I have said all. I have no hostility to the institution; I am only stating my want of sympathy with it. Neither should I ever have obtruded the opinion upon other people had I not been called by my office to administer it. That is the end of my Opposition. that I am not interested in it. I am content that it stands to the end of the world. if it please men and please Heaven. and I shall rejoice in all the good it produces. It is unlikely that Nietzsche ever read these passages of Emerson’s sermon before the theology graduates and his farewell sermon on the Lord‘s Supper but perceived and reconstructed their fervency from the many indications in the essays. This testifies that Emerson as well as Nietzsche sought a "liberated heritage" - although. of course. Emerson respected the old accumulations of power in a much more sympathetic and real way than did Nietzsche. This is also suggested by another piece of evidence which aptly characterizes the radicalism inherent in Nietzsche‘s thought. But. at the same time it shows the difference between Nietzsche and Emerson. Nietzsche proclaimed: "God is dear" and therefore hOped that "now the Lebermensch can live." Emerson reprimanded the Christian churches who acted as if "God were dead." He appealed for more religious freedom of spirit and denounced the religious oligarchy of the churches. To him. such an elevation of human power was synonymous with a re- awakening of God. Emerson's attitude on this - unlike Nietzsche's. whose comments on this subject were often charged with ambiguity - was never ambiguous or unsure. Rather. it was at once radically serious in the thought of God as well as rebellious and blasphemous against Him: Jesus Christ ...: alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man ...: I am divine. Through me God acts. through me speaks. Would you see God. see me: or see thee when thou also thinkest as I now think. But what a distortion did his doctrine and memory suffer in the same. in the next and 43 the following ages ... this was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill you. if you say he was a man... Historical Christianity has fallen into the error that corrupts all attempts to communicate religion ... By this eastern Monarchy of a Christianity. which indolence and fear have built. the friend of man is made the injurer of man. ... One would rather be "A pagan. suckled in a creed outworn". than to be defrauded of his manly right in coming into nature and finding not names and places but even virtue and truth foreclosed and monopolized ... as if God were dead ("The Divinity School Address"). On excerpts 4 and 5 I want to live all history in my own person and appropriate all might and power; not submit to kings or any other greatness. The creating instinct of the soul betrays itself in the use we know how to make of History. there is only Biography. Every man must recognize his whole task for himself. —- This wild. savage. preposterous There and Then shall disappear and be replaced by Now and Here. Nietzsche. in these excerpts. contracts and condenses a number of passages from Emerson (lersuche. p. 5-7) in a few climaxes.‘ Then. the excerpted text is elevated once more — however in its original mood and tendency — in Ecce homo. 1. Emerson’s passages: The world exists for the education of each man ... [as above]. Every thing tends in a wonderful manner to abbreviate itself and yield its own virtue to him. He should see that he can live all history in his own person. He must sit solidly at home. and not suffer himself to be bullied by kings or empires. but know that he is greater than all the geography and all the government of the world: he must transfer the point of view from which history is commonly read. from Rome and Athens and London to himself. and not deny his conviction that he is the Court. and if England or Egypt have any thing to say to him. he will try the case: if not. let them forever be silent. (tersuche. p. 5).** The instinct of the mind. the purpose of nature betrays itself in the use we make of the signal narrations of history.... (tersuche: p. 6. first paragraph):*“ 44 We are always coming up with the emphatic facts of history in our private experience. and verifying them here. All history becomes subjective; in other words. there is properly no History: only Biography. Every mind must know the whole lesson for itself — must go over the whole ground. What it does not see. what it does not live. it will not know. (versuche. p. 6. second paragraph).‘ History must be this or it is nothing. (Tersuche. p. 7. second paragraph).** All inquiry into antiquity. — all curiousity respecting the pyramids. the excavated cities. Stonehenge. the Ohio Circles. Mexico. Memphis. — is the desire to do away this wild. savage and preposterous There or Then. and introduce in its place the Here and the Now. (tersuche: p. 7).**‘ 2. Nietzsche: Ecce homo (Section: "Thus spake Zarathustra". no. 8): And this is all my creating and striving. that I create and carry together into One what is fragment and riddle and dreadful accident. ... To redeem those who lived in the past and to turn every "it was" into "thus I willed it" — that alone should I call redemption.*“‘ On excerpt 11: "When the eye Emerson writes: The custom of making houses and tombs in the living rock." (says Heeren. in his Researches on the Ethiopians) "determines very naturally the principal character of the Nubian Egyptian architecture to the colossal form which it assumed. In these caverns already prepared by nature. the eye was accustomed to dwell on huge shapes and masses. so that when art came to the assistance of nature. it could not move on a small scale without degrading itself. What would statues of the usual size. or neat porches and wings have been. associated with those gigantic halls before which only Colossi could sit as watchmen. or lean on the pillars of the interior?" (Tersuche:p.l4).‘**“ * 11: p. 6. *‘ More literally the german version re-translates: 'History must have something of the present.‘ ilersuche: p. 121] ]1: p. 7] *‘* 11: p. 7. *“* Kaufmann. Basic tritings of Nietzsche: p. 761-765. “*‘* 11: p. 12. 45 Nietzsche condenses this: "When the eye is accustomed through Nature to dwell on huge shapes. art cannot move on a small scale without degrading itself (caverns)." Apparently. Emerson's sentence evoked great resonance in Nietzsche. He partially seemed to have derived from it a profound and natural legitimation not only in his concept of art but also in his outlines of the ethical constitution of man. Only the architect brings about the greatness of nature. Then. to Nietzsche. the "architect" came to mean the master builder of mankind who seeks to surpass the greatness of Nature in his very own work. [in] The architect ... is the great act of will. the will that moves mountains. the frenzy of the great will which aspires to art. The most powerful human beings have always inspired architects:" (VIII. 125).* We want to penetrate nature with human qualities. We want to take from her what we need in order to dream beyond man. Something that is greater than storm and mountains and the ocean is yet to be created. (XII. 361).*‘ The two sentences quoted from Nietzsche's work are actually far apart from each other. I do not mean to suggest here that there exists some mysterious causal link between these two sentences and the above excerpt. But. I would like to remind the reader of my image of Nietzsche‘s Pentecost experience. As we will see. Emerson inspired Nietzsche to greatness and height. In 1881. during another meditation with Emerson. Nietzsche concentrated his will to height in monograms and in this excerpt. This concentration. I believe. entirely re—shaped Nietzsche's way of perception and thinking: * this translation is taken from halter kaufmann. The Portable Nietzsche [Niking Press: New York. 1968): p. 320. The inserted "[in[" is due to a mistake in Baumgarten's quotation of Nietzsche's herke N111. 135 Baumgarten quotes “1m Architekten ist der Rausch des grossen hillens. der zur Kunst verlangt...‘ [1n the architect is the frenzy of the great will which aspires to art]. Actually. the original reads: 'Der Architekt stellt weder einen dionysischen, noch einen apollonischen Zustand dar: hier ist es der grosse hillensakt. der wille. der Berge versetzt. der Rausch des grossen killens. der zur kunst verlangt....' [Kaufmann's translation: The architect represents neither a Dionysian nor an Apollinian state: here it is the great act of will. the will that moves mountains. the frenzy of the great will which aspires to art ..] ** my translation. 46 Nietzsche himself most likely became much more certain of himself in all his intentions. But, apart from that. this excerpt as a monogram probably became the origin for a number of specific ideas corresponding in content or at least confirmed them if they had already existed before. Here. only two of these corresponding intentions were represented by the passages quoted from Nietzsche‘s works (VIII. 125: XII. 361). On excerpt 13: "The intellectual nomadism ..." Emerson writes: (Versuche: p. 16) The nomads of Africa were constrained to wander by the attacks of the gadfly. which drives the cattle mad. and so compels the tribe to emigrate in the rainy season and to drive off the cattle to the higher sandy regions. The nomads of Asia follow the pasturage from month to month. In America and Europe the nomadism is of trade and curiosity: a progress certainly from the gadfly of Astaboras to the Anglo and Italo—mania of Boston Bay. Sacred cities. to which a periodical religious pilgrimage was enjoined. or stringent laws and customs. tending to invigorate the national bond. were the check on the old rovers: and the cumulative values of long residence are the restraints on the itineracy of the present day. The antagonism of the two tendencies is not less active in individuals. as the love of adventure or the love of repose happens to predominate. A man of rude health and flowing spirits has the faculty of rapid domestication. lives in his wagon. and roams through all latitudes as easily as a Calmuc.‘ Nietzsche condenses this: "The intellectual nomadism is the gift of objectivity or the gift of finding everywhere a welcome sight. I have found every man and every thing: and they are my property: the love which animates everything for him. smoothens his forehead." "Objectiviy as nomadism" appears as a rather bleak idea in Ecce homo 5/351. a text which otherwise resounds with triumpherant euphoria: but here it is called the "most alien objectivity there can be" —: the self—projection onto "any accidental. perhaps most most alien reality": Nietzsche's ‘H;p.H. 47 giving himself away to Richard Wagner. On excerpt 14: "It must be impossible for my eyes Emerson writes: (Lbrsuche. p. 17) What is the foundation of that interest all men feel in Greek history. letter. art and poetry. in all its periods. from the heroic or Homeric age. down to the domestic life of the Athenians and Spartans. four or five centuries later? What but this. that every state is the era of the bodily nature. the perfection of the senses. — of the spiritual nature unfolded in strict unity with the body. In it existed those human forms which supplied the sculptor with his models of Hercules. Phoebus and Jove: not like the forms abounding in the streets of modern cities. wherein the face is a confused blur of features. but composed of incorrupt. sharply defined and symmetrical features. whose eye-sockets are so formed that it would be impossible for such eyes to squint. and take furtive glances on this side and that. but they must turn the whole head. The manners of that period are plain and fierce. The reverence exhibited is for personal qualities. courage. address. self—command. justice. strength. swiftness. a loud voice. a broad chest. Luxury and elegance are not known. A sparse population and want make every man his own valet. cook. butcher. and soldier. and the habit of supplying his own needs educates the body to wonderful performances. Such are the Agamenmnon and Diomed of Homer. and not far different is the picture Xenophon gives of himself and his compatriots in the retreat of the Ten Thousand. ... Throughout his army exists a boundless liberty of speech. They quarrel for plunder. they wrangle with the generals on each new order. and Xenophon is as sharp—tongued as any. and sharper-tongued than most. and so gives as good as he gets. Who does not see that this is a gang of great boys with such a code of honor and such lax discipline as great boys have?‘ Nietzsche excerpts and comments on only one sentence: "It must be impossible for my eyes to squint and take furtive glances on this side and on that. but they must turn the whole head — that is the subtle way." The plenty of thoughts and references in the above passage. along with many others of Emerson's notes on the Greeks. may objectively have guided and impressed the young Nietzsche. But then (1881) he extracted only one symbol for himself: that mechanical coercion of the eyes to look straight ahead. It seems to me that what made him concentrate on this ‘H;p.H. .-—¥x- “A" a - 48 one image has to do with the dependency of the lonely. He had to construct his style of subtlety — of his own subtlety - by himself. Consequently. two things happened: on the one hand. he swaggered into a threatening rashness: on the other hand. he actually created reliable techniques that gave his loneliness support and pride. This strange excerpt apparently takes the first tendency in The hi1] to Power (Book four: "Discipline and Breeding". chapter "The Noble Man" 950: (6.634) Eagles dive straight to the point" — Not the least sign of nobility of soul is the magnificent and proud stupidity with which it attacks - "straight to the point.‘ In the second tendency. the excerpt is reverberated in the (at least somewhat) calm pride in Ecce homo ("Why I am so Wise"): My practice of war can be summed up in four propositions. First: I only attack causes that are victorious: I may even wait until they become victorious. Second: I only attack causes against which I would not find allies. so that I stand alone — so that I compromise myself alone. — I have never taken a step publicly that did not compromise me: that is nu'criterion of doing right. Third: I never attack persons; I merely avail myself of the person as of a strong magnifying glass that allow one to make visible a general but creeping and elusive calamity. Fourth: I only attack things ... when any background of bad experiences is lacking... attack is in my case a proof of good will. sometimes even of gratitude. ... When I wage war against Christianity I am entitled to this because I have never experienced misfortunes and frustrations from that quarter - the most serious Christians have always been well disposed towards me.** On excerpts 24. 25: to compute the divided and suspicious mind to observe ever again and anew Emerson writes: (Iersuche. p. 34) Trust thyself: What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text in the face and behavior of children. babes and even brutes. That * Kaufmann. ed.. The hit! to Power: p. 499. ** Kaufmann. ed.. Basic writings: p. 688-689. 49 divided and rebel mind. that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their mind being whole. their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces. we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it. so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it. ... Do not think the youth has no force because he cannot speak to you and me. The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner. and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say ought to conciliate one. is the healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlour what the pit is in the playhouse: independent. irresponsible. looking out form his corner on such people and facts as pass by. he tries and sentences them on their merits. in the swift summary way of boys. as good. bad. interesting. silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences. about interests: he gives an independent. genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is as it were. clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or Spoken with eclat. he is a committed person. watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds whose affections must now enter into his account ... Ah. that he could pass again into his neutrality! Who can thus avoid all pledges. and having observed. observe again from the same unaffected. unbiassed. unbribable. unaffrighted innocence. must always be formidable. He would utter opinions on all passing affairs. which being seen to be not private but necessary. would sink like darts into the ear of men. and put them in fear.‘ From this Nietzsche compiles the following excerpts: to compute the divided and suspicious mind. the high artistic skill which might oppose the strengh and means to purpose: the children do not have this. When we look in the face of a child. we are disconcerted. They conform to nothing. All conforms to them. they never cumber themselves about the consequences. about the interests of others: they give an independent. unique verdict. They do not court you: you must court them. 25. To observe ever again and anew from the same unbribable. unaffrighted standpoint of innocense — that is terrifying. The power of such immortal youth can be felt. Nietzsche integrated this "childlike goodness" into the model of the Lebermensch: and he praised this very quality as being the "astonishing". the great. the "terrifying". when contrasting him against the conventional. every-day people: Where is innocence? Where there is a will to procreate. And he 50 who wants to create beyond himself has the purest will. (Thus Spake Zarathustra. 4. 133).‘ What is great is so alien to your souls that the overman would be terrifying to you in his goodness. (Ecce homo. "Why I am a destiny". 5. 405).’* The reader may appreciate the extensive significance of the above excerpts. when he or she remembers how important the motif of "the innocence of becoming" was in Nietzsche‘s thought. (Compare. in the Aachlass 1883-85 the section Die thchuld des herdens [The Innocence of Becoming]. - Megweiser zur Eriosung von der MOral. [Guide to a Redemption from Morality]. The same motif prevails in the following excerpt: on excerpt 15: "Neither the poet nor the hero ..." The intention of this excerpt runs in the same direction of the arch in which Emerson‘s text straddles the multiple forms of "unity" and "closeness" in which the diversity of history relates to our own experience: the Greeks. the medieval knights. the pious of all times. Jesus. Nietzsche not only expands on Emerson's thought - which only relates to the Greeks - to include Greeks. Jesus. and monks in one term: but also he changes the aspect from Emerson's "unity of men" to the differential. the childlikeness of everything great. which he had also extracted from an Emersonian note. It was the following context that Nietzsche read in Emerson: (lersuche: p. 19): The costly charm of the ancient tragedy and indeed of all the old literature is. that the persons speak simply. — speak as persons who have great good sense without knowing it. before yet the reflective habit has become the predominant habit of the mind. Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old. but of the natural. The Greeks are not reflective. but perfect in their senses and in their health. with the * hautmann. The Portable Nietzsche. p. 2&3 ‘3 hautmann. Basic hritings of Nietzsche. p. 787. 51 finest physical organization in the world. Adults acted with the simplicity and grace of children. They made vases. tragedies. and statues such as healthy senses should — that is. in good taste. Such things have continued to be made in all ages. and are now. whereever a healthy physique exists: but. as a class. from their superior organization. they have surpassed all. They combine the energy of manhood with the engaging unconsciousness of childhood. The attraction of these manners is. that they belong to man. and are known to every man in virtue of his being once a child: besides that there are always individuals who retain these characteristics. A person of childlike genius and inborn energy is still a Greek. and revives our love of the muse of Hellas. I admire the love of nature in the Philoctetes. In reading those fine apostrophes to sleep. to the stars. rocks. mountains. and waves. I feel time passing away as an ebbing sea. MHeVWMMM wMealame"W§'m memmgMI. I feel the eternity of man. the identity of his thought. ... Then the vaunted distinction between Greek and English. between Classic and Romantic schools seems superficial and pedantic. When a thought of Plato becomes a thought to me. — when a truth that fired the soul of Pindar fires mine. time is no more. ."‘ The train of thought proceeds. in abbreviation. as follows: "The student interpretes ... chivalry by his own age of chivalry ...... "Rare. extravagant spirits ... made their commission felt in the heart and soul or the commonest hearer. Jesus astonishes and overpowers sensual people“ ... As they come to revere their intuitions and aspire to live holily. their won piety explains every fact. every word. How easily these old worships of Moses. of Zoroaster. of Menu. of Socrates. domesticate themselves in the mind. I cannot find any antiquity in them. They are mine as much as theirs." Versuche. p. 21 (fifth paragraph): I have seen the first monks and anchorest without crossing seas or centuries. More than once some individual has appeared to me with such negligence of labor and such commanding contemplation. a haughty beneficiary. begging in the name of God. as made good to the nineteenth century Simeon the 'H:p.w. ” the German translation here reads more closely "sensitive people'. 5 Stylite. the Thebais. and the first Capuchins. Nietzsche computes from the beginning and the end of the quoted text the following excerpt: Neither the poet nor the hero can look down upon the word or the gesture of the child.‘ A childlike nature next to an inborn energy. A nature which so neglects its hardships. all submerged. a high recipient of alms. begging in the name of God. Apparently infected with Emerson's indifference towards historical differences. this excerpt summarizes the entire historical "ladder of fortune" on which. once and again. "energy and innocense" were united - from the child in general over the the Greeks up to the monks and Jesus. This same "ladder of fortune and good constitution" re— appears in The hill to Power; but there it is introduced under the name of Dionysus and with the explicit and highly polemical exclusion of Jesus (hill to Power. no. 1052): "Dionysus versus the "Crucified". The passage on "good constitution" reads (hill to Power. no. 1051): It is probable that with such perfect and well—constituted men the most sensual functions are finally transfigured by a symbol—intoxication of the highest spirituality: they experience a kind of deification of the body in themselves . .“ Then an overflowing wealth of the most multifarious forces and the most dextrous power of "free willing" and lordly command dwell amicably together in one man: the spirit is then as much at home in the senses as the senses are at home in the spirit. Was it merely negligence that Nietzsche. against his actual belief. included Jesus into the excerpt under his motif of the "Innocence of Becoming" (as "Guide to a Redemption from Morality")? Did he not juxtapose Jesus and Dionysus only in his insanity in Turin? But negligence toward the different * as Baumgarten notes. although tietzsche quotes from two different passages here. each is quoted almost literally from the German edition. 1 could not find. in the Harvard nor the Centenary editions. any sentences that corresponded to this one or the following one in [ersuche. which translates: 'It [the child] is as great as they [the poet and the hero[" ** in the English translation by haufmann [p. 340-41) this following passage actually preceeds the text already quoted. 53 contents could not have been the reason why he juxtaposed — for their rhetorical appeal and aptness only — passages in his excerpt which he found far apart from each other in the text. Also, Emerson’s paragraph on Jesus quoted above was marked for its content by Nietzsche with a "Yes" large enough to dominate optically the entire paragraph. Furthermore. this passage was also marked by Nietzsche for excerption. The fusion of Jesus and Dionysus in his own person in the Turiner kahn was prepared. As far as Nietzsche remained in communication with Emerson‘s notion of Jesus. he tended to venerate one form of pure naiveté and high childlikeness in the Greek and another - but not inferior — form of purity and highness in Jesus. Therefore. it was necessary to see through Christian theology and gain insight into the essentials of Jesus‘s life and work. This very insight was prepared by Emerson; and Nietzsche followed Emerson in this. I will quote Emerson‘s passage on Jesus in its English original. The bad translation seems to have left Nietzsche‘s understanding unaffected: doubtlessly. he understood what Emerson had meant. I also add a few examplary passages on Jesus from Nietzsche's works. which seem to correspond: Emerson: Jesus astonishes and overpowers sensual people. They cannot unite him to history. or reconcile him with themselves. As they come to revere their intuitions and aspire to live holily. their own piety explains every fact. every word. Nietzsche: 1. The kill to Power no. 159 (6. 116): The Christian way of life is no more a fantasy than the Buddhist way of life: it is a means to being happy.’ Precisely that which is Christian in the ecclesiastical sense is anti— Christian in essence: things and people instead of symbols: history instead of eternal facts: forms. rites. dogmas instead of a way of life. Utter indifference to dogmas. cults. priests. church. theology is Christian. ‘ in the English translation by Kaufmann [p. 98) this following passage actually preceeds the text already quoted. 54 (This corresponds with many comments of Emerson. which Nietzsche was familiar with at least in part.) 2. The kill to Power. no. 212 (6. 152): Christianity is possible at any time. [This was exactly Emerson‘s thought in the context excerpted by Nietzsche.] It is not tied to any of the impudent dogmas that have adorned themselves with its name: it requires neither the doctrine of a personal God. nor that of sin. nor that of immortality. nor that of redemption. nor that of faith: it has absolutely no need of metaphysics. and even less of asceticism. even less of a Christian "natural science." Christianity is a way of life. not a system of beliefs. It tell[s] us how to act. not what we ought to believe.‘ (All these sentences of Nietzsche are exactly congruent with Emerson‘s sentences on Jesus. But Nietzsche proceedsz) Whoever says today: "I will not be a soldier.’ "I care nothing for the courts." "I shall not claim the services of the police." "I will do nothing that may disturb the peace within me: and if I must suffer on that account. nothing will serve better to maintain my peace than suffering" — he would be a Christian. For this interpretation of the Emersonian term of Christian "practice" I have not found any immediate models in Emerson. However. this sort of solidly exact ("operative") definition of spiritual phenomena were most common with him. The classical "operative" terms of Christian practice visibly extend from Emerson to William James and from Nietzsche to Max Weber. On exerpts nos. 16 and 17. To be obligated to reverence in onerous to him. He wants to steal the light of the Creator and live apart from him. When a god comes among men. they do not know him. These excerpts are taken from the following context in Emerson (tersuche. p. 23): * transl. Kaufmann. p. 95. 55 The beautiful fables of the Greeks ... are universal verities. Prometheus is the Jesus of the old mythology. He is the friend of man: stands between the unjust "justice" of the Eternal Father. and the race of mortals: and readily suffers all things on their account. But where it departs from the Calvinistic Christianity. and exhibits him as the defier of Jove, it represents a state of mind which readily appears wherever the doctrine of Theism is taught in a crude. objective form. and which seems the self—defence of man against this untruth. namely. a discontent with the believed fact that a God exists. and a feeling that the obligation for reverence is onerous. It would steal. if it could. the fire of the Creator. and live apart from him. and independent of him. The Prometheus Vinctus is the romance of skepticism. Not less true to all time are the details of that stately apologue. Apollo kept the flocks of Admetus. said the poets. When the gods come among men. they are not known. Jesus was not: Socrates and Shakespear were not. Antaus was suffocated by the gripe of Hercules. but every time he touched his mother earth. his strength was renewed. Man is the broken giant. and in all his weakness. both his body and his mind are invigorated by habits of conversation with nature.* It is likely that this text decicively influenced Nietzsche much earlier than 1881 - before he became submerged into the Greeks as a philologist and before he conceptualized the blasphemer Prometheus as "active sinner" (that is as incarnation of a higher un—Christian "virtue"). He had already read Emerson for years by the time he wrote The Birth of Tragedy. I should assume that Emerson prepared him for this conception. too. "The helpful giant to destroy the old or to build the new comes out of unhandselled savage nature: out of terrible Druids and Berserkers come at last Alfred and Shakespeare" (Emerson. Works I. 90).** Even though Nietzsche might not have read this very exact sentence. he certainly had read many others with a similar meaning. The motif can be found all over Nietzsche's works. Here are some examples from the early period: The best and highest possession mankind can acquire is obtained by sacrilege ... the sublime view of active sin as the characteristically Promethean virtue (The Birth of *Hzp.H4& *3 taken originally from Baumgarten's text. 56 Tragedy. I: p.70).* certainly ... there exists the danger of the barbarian. but one has looked for it only in the depths. There exists also another type of barbarian. who comes from the heights: a species of conquering and ruling natures in search of material to mold. Prometheus was this kind of barbarian. (The kill to Power. 900: 6.609).** On excerpt 26: "No law. ." Emerson writes: (Versuche. p. 129) Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. ... must not be hindered by the name of goodness. but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself. and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying. What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions. if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested - "But these impulses may be from below. not from above." I replied. "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil‘s child. I will live then from the Devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this: the only right is what is after my constitution. the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names. to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well—spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital. and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy. shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition. ... why should I not say to him. "Go love thy infant: love thy wood—chopper: be good—natured and modest... never varnish your hard. uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for [pains]“* a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home." Rough ... but handsomer [is truth] than the affection of love. ... The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine love when that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother. when my genius calls me. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company ... do not tell me ... of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they nu poor? ... There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold: for them I will go to prison. if need be: but your * Kaufmann. Basic hritings..4 p. 71. *’ Kaufmann. transl.. p. 478-479. *‘* the german edition reads "pains'.. Otherwise quoted from 11. 29-31. which here reads ”black folt'.. 57 miscellaneous popular charities: the education at college of fools: the building of meeting—hOuses to the vain end to which many now stand ... though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar. it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold. Nietzsche excerpted: No law can be sacred to me but that of my own nature. The only right is what is after my constitution. the only wrong what is against it. The points of Emerson‘s "non—conformist" text which Nietzsche contained and concealed in the nice cipher of this excerpt is: the pact with the devil. the renunciation of Christian love. — which were not abandoned or put to sleep. Through them. they reverberate in Nietzsche‘s own texts. For example: "Undaunted": (Joke. Cunning and Revenge: Prelude to The Gay Science) Where you stand. dig deep and pry! Down there is the well. Let the obscurantists cry: ”Down there‘s only — hell!" "neighbor love" ... It always seems a weakness to me. a particular case of being incapable of resisting stimuli: pity is considered a virtue only among decadents. I reproach those who are full of pity for easily losing a sense of shame. of respect. of sensitivity for distance ... The overcoming of pity I count among the noble virtues: as "Zarathustra's temptation" I invented a situation in which a great cry of distress reaches him. as pity tries to attack him like a final sin that would entice him away from himself. To remain the master at this point. to keep the eminence of one's task undefiled by the many lower and more myopic impulses that are at work in so—called selfless actions. that is the test. perhaps the ultimate test. which a Zarathustra must pass — his real proof of strength. (Ecce homo: 5. 306. "Why I am so wise").‘ On excerpt no. 27: "That I think of that alone ..." The theme of non—conformity continues in this excerpt: That I think of that alone what seem right to me. not what the people think — serves for the whole distinction between * haufmann. Basic Writings ...: p. 684. 58 greatness and meanness. It is the harder. because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. Great is the man who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect clarity the independence of solitude. Again. this excerpt is only a cipher which contains Emerson's text in the whole. Its characteristic is the radical sense of truth. I will add some of Nietzsche‘s sentences which show the same sense of truth. the same radical tendencies and intentions — however even more impatient. In this the two were "brothers" (as Nietzsche once wrote to Overbeck in 1885). Emerson: (versuche. p. 39) If you maintain a dead church ... I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are [from all these screens]. And. of course. so much force is withdrawn from your proper life most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief. and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars. authors of a few lies. but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two. their four not the real four: so that every word they say chagrins us. and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the prison— uniform of the party to which we adhere. . What I must do. is all that concerns me. not what the people think. This rule. equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life. may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder. because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion: it is easy in solitude to live after our own: but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. Nietzsche: "The askew path on which it went down so far" (5/390).*‘ Idealist and liar — we should not let ourselves be tyrannized over by that fairest ability — that of elevating things into the ideal: otherwise one day truth will depart from us with the angry words: "you liar from the very heart. what have I to do with you?"“’ ‘ the following passage actually preceeds 111. 31) the sentences already quoted 111.32) ** Haufmann. Basic tritings ...: p. 771 *“ Translated by R. J. 801 lingdale in Friedrich Nietzsche. Human. 111 Too Human. A Book for Free Spirits lntrod by Erich Hell .(Cambridge Uniyersity Press: Cambridge 1986): 59 On excerpt 29: "When the poor and the ignorant ..." The theme of this excerpt is the outside and inside strains of nonconformity. It is an almost literal exerpt which we will highlight through italic print. Emerson: (Versuche; p. 45) For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The bystanders look askance on him in the public street or in the friend‘s parlor. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own. he might well go home with a sad countenace: but the sour faces of the multitude. like their sweet faces. have no deep cause. but are put on and off as the wind blows. and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and the college. It is easy enough for a man who knows the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent. for they are timid as being very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added. when the ignorant and the poor are aroused. when the unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of society is make to growl and mow. it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment.‘ Nietzsche: The argument of growing solitude. - The reproaches of conscience are weak even in the most conscientious people compared to the feeling: "This or that is against the morals of your society." A cold look or a sneer on the face of those among whom and for whom one has been educated is feared even by the strongest. What is it that they are really afraid of? Growing solitude! This is the argument that rebuts even the best argument for a person or cause. ....— (The Gay Science: Book I. no. 50: 3/76).“ On excerpt nos. 30. 31. 32. "Man cannot violate his nature .. " "The force of character comes about by itself ..." "Honor ... is always ancient virtue " p.H91 ‘* Kaufmann. transl.. p. 111-15. 60 These excerpts impose new points upon the theme of nonconformity: the contempt for logial consequence of thought: the price of full and free personal growth in faithfulness to the unforeseeable character of the collaboration of interior and exterior possibilities and opportunities. The excerpts in their literal exactness are to be found above on p. 25. The three excerpts. which do not contain any alterations form the original. are again highlighted through italics in Emerson's context. Again. we add passages from Nietzsche which connect to Emerson‘s train of thought as though they had been molded in the same cast. Emerson: (Versuche: p. 41) The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency: a reverence for our past act or word. because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts. and we are loath to disappoint them. ... A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds ... With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words. and to—morrow speak what to— morrow thinks in hard words again. though it contradict every thing you said to—day. ... Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? ... To be great is to be misunderstood.‘ I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his being as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. NOr does it matter how you gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza: - read it foreward. backward. or across. it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing contrite wood-life which God allows me. let me record day by day my honest. thought without prospect or retrospect. and. I connot doubt. it will be found symmetrical. though I mean it not. and see it not. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance. and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly. and * Baumgarten. in his presentation of this excerpt. juxtaposes the poor german translation with the emglish original. Some examples of the closely re-translated german text: "1f you want to be men. say what you think today in words so loud that they resound like canon-thunder and say tomorrow what you think tomorrow in an equally loud voice - even though every word may he a contradiction of what you have said today ,. 61 what you have already done singly. will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be firm enough to- day to do right and scorn eyes. I must have done so much right before, as to defend me now. Be it how it will. do right now. Always scorn appearances. and you always may. The force of character is cumulative. All the foregone days of Virtue work their health into this. Mhat makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field. which so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a train of great days and victories behind. They shed an united light on the advancing actor. He is attended as by a visible excort of angels. ... Honor is venerable because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it to-day. because it is not of to—day because it is ... self-derived. and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree. even shown in a young person.‘ Nietzsche: ad 1. "with consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do." The wisest man would be the one richest in contradictions. who has. as it were. antennae for all types of men - as well as his great moments of grand harmony — a rare accident even in us! (The hill to Power 6/186: no 259).“ Positive and negative“’ — This thinker needs no one to refute him: he does that for himself. (The Twighlight of the Idols. Skimishes of an thtimely Man. HUman All Too Human II. 249. (2. 290) The wanderer and His Shadow)fi Also. the entire passage "We incomprehensible ones" in the Gay Science no. 371 belongs here. (3. 287). ad 2: "I suppose. no man can violate his nature. All the sallies of his will ... (forward. backward. across) are rounded in by the law of his being." Meanwhile the organizing "idea" that is destined to rule keeps growing deep down - it begins to command: slowly it leads us back from side roads and wrong roads: ... one by one. it trains all subservient capacities before giving any hint of the dominant task "goal. " "aim. " or "meaning. . .a tremendous variety that is nevertheless the opposite of chaos (Ecce homo. 5/332). 11: DP. 33-33. “ kaufmann. p. 150. "* transl. by R. J. Hollingdale. introduction by Erich Heller. [Cambridge tniversity Press: Cambridge. 1988]: p 371. 9 H. Hummel [see below p. 81] aptly speculates that Vietzsche. in this aphorism. had Emerson in mind. He refers to the splendid passage in The Twilight of the Idols f'Skirmishes of an Untimely Han' no 131 where Hietzsche praises Emerson as a philosopher who never knows whether he is old or young; or. in other words. as someone who thinks as himself as well as his successor [and antipode1: 'yo me sucedo a mi mismo.‘ 62 My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different. not forward. not backward. not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary. still less conceal it — all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary — but love it. (Ecce homo. 5/335)3 On excerpt no. 33: "The true man ..." In the following passage of Emerson — as well in the context from which it is taken — there is a wide base and tendency which is at once democratic as well as aristocratic and collective as well as individual. The excerpt. in its violently simplified mood. accurately introduces us into Nietzsche‘s feeling for the self and the world during the last days in Turin. immediately before the outbreak of his mental illness.93 Emerson: I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward. ... Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times. and hurl in the face of custom. and trade. and office. the fact which is the upshot of all history. that there is a great responsible Thinker and actor working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or place. but is the centre of things. Where he is. there is nature. He measures you. and all men. and all events. Ordinarily every body in society reminds us of somewhat else or some other person. Character. reality. reminds you of nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation. The man must be so much that he must make all circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a cause. a country. and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design: — and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients. A man Cesar is born. and for ages after. we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born. that he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man: as . Monachism. of the Hermit Antony: the Reformation. of Luther: Quakerism. of Fox: Methodism. of Wesley: Abolition. of Clarkson. Scipio. Milton called "the height of Rome:" and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons.‘* Nietzsche‘s excerpt: ‘ Kaufmann. Basic hritings ...; p. 710 and 714. 9a compare Nietzsche’s letters. ed. by A. Baeumler: p. 479 (hroner Verlagl " H:3i3d 63 The true man is in the centre of things: he appropriates the whole creation: he reminds [us] of nobody else, all circumstances are put in his shadow. he requires infinite space. numbers and time to accomplish his design: - and posterity follows his steps as a train of clients. The next excerpt presents a similarly one—sided sharpening of Emerson's text. We follow up on this sharpening from Emerson‘s context to the excerpt. and to a passage in Ecce homo: On excerpt 34: "The actions of kings ..." Emerson: (Versuche. p. 47) The world has been instructed by its kings. who have so magnetized the eyes of nations. It has been taught by this colossal symbol the mutual reverence that is due from man to man. The Joyful loyalty with which men have everywhere suffered the king. the noble. or the great proprietor to walk among them by a law of his own. make his own scale of men and things. and reverse theirs. pay for benefits not with money but with honor. and represent the Law in his person. was the hieroglyphic by which they obscurely signified their consciousness of their own right and comeliness. the right of every man.* Nietzsche’s excerpt: The actions of kings have instructed the world: they act from a broad viewpoint: they teach by colossal symbolism the reverence that is due from man to man. There has always been joyful loyalty to the one who moves about by a law of his own. who makes his own scale of men and things and overturns the existing ones and represents the Law in his person. Nietzsche writes: " whoever wants to be a creator in good and evil. must first be an annihilator and break values."** On excerpts 37 and 39 What we love that we have: but by desire we bereave ourselves of it. It demands a godlike being in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity. Height of heart. faithfulness to his will. clearness of sight must be his qualities. if he be doctrine. society. and law to himself: so that a simple *H:p.%di ‘* hautmann. Basic hritings... : p. i83. 64 purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity to others. In between these excerpts. there is a troubling tension at play between fear. desire. self—bereavement, and collapse on the one hand and a soaring flight of emotions on the other. It appears as though the corresponding passages of Emerson evoked a prophetic echo in Nietzsche (rarely, for one of the excerpts. he even noted the exact page number: "p. 57"). After the emotional height of 1881. he plunged into the adventure and confusion with Dr. Ree and Lou Salome in 1882. He spoiled the "love" for mankind with desire: and the more he recoiled the stronger he later re—emerged in solitude against 3 the "mob". When re—reading the same book of Emerson a few years later. he noted the following dates in the margins of the following passages: O blessed Spirit. 1882 whom I forsake for these. they are not thou! For every friend whom he loses for truth. 1883 he gains a better.*‘ [This can only be about something violently remote from humanity: the return to the "son" Zarathustra!l. When Nietzsche endeavored to undertake this return and. however unjustly. turned against Lou he also spoke to her in Emerson's language: "You thought my law was lax?" We compare below Emerson's texts. from which the excerpts are taken. and the implications Nietzsche has given them. some of them precipitated and immoderate. Emerson: (tersuche: p. 54—57) But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man. not is his genius admonished to stay at home. to put itself in communication with the internal ocean. ... We must go alone. ... But your isolation must not be mechanical. but spiritual. that is. must be elevation. At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend. client. child. sickness. fear. want. charity. all knock at once at thy closet door and say. — "Come out onto ‘ Lumpengesindel " H:p.lM. - 65 us." But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me. I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act. "What we love that we have. but by desire we bereave ourselves of the love." If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith. let us at least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of war. and wake Thor and Woden. courage and constancy. in our Saxon breasts... Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we converse.... I shall endeavor to nourish my parents. to support my family. to be the chaste husband of one wife. — but these relations I must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you. or you.... I will trust that what is deep is holy. that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me. and the heart appoints. If you are true. but not in the same truth with me. cleave to your companions: I will seek my own. ... It is alike your interest and mine and all men's. however long we have dwelt in lies. to live in truth. .. The populace think that your rejection of popular standarts is a rejection of all standard. and mere antinomianism: ... There are two confessionals. in one or the other of which we must be shriven. ... I have my own stern claims and perfect circle. It denies the name of duty to many offices that are called duties. ... When any one imagines that this law is lax. let him keep its commandment one day. And truely it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity. and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. Hight be his heart. faithful his will. clear his sight. that he may in good earnest be doctrine. society. law to himself. that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others.‘ Nietzsche loses himself in Emerson's words "now we are a mob" more and more and turns it into the opposition between himself and the rest of the rabble. Life is a well of joy: but where the rabble drinks too. all wells are poisened. ... And some who came along like annihilators and like a hailstorm to all orchards merely wanted to put a foot into the gaping jaws of the rabble to plug up its throat. ...On the tree. Future. we build our nest: and in our solitude eagles shall bring us nourishment in their beaks. Verily. no nourishment which the unclean might share Verily. we keep no homes here for the unclean ... And we want to live over them like strong winds. neighbors of the eagles. ... (Thus Spake Zarathustra; pp. 103—105).“ *IL w.4b4l *‘ haufmann. The Portable Nietzsche: pp. 208~211 66 Somewhat more moderate and closer to Emerson‘s text: .. instinct of self—defense. Not to see many things. not to hear many things. not to permit many things to come close — first imperative of prudence. first proof that one is no mere accident but a necessity. ... To detach oneself. to separate oneself from anything that would make it necessary to keep saying No. (Ecce homo. 5/329).* In his farewell letter to Lou Salome (which was actually addressed to Dr. Ree). the same defense against confusion as in Emerson in present. Sacred egoism ... [is] the drive for obedience to the highest. You have ... confused it with its opposite. the selfishness and lust for exploitation like that of a cat. that selfisheness which wants nothing more than life ... Cat— egoism. which cannot love any longer. that feeling for life in nothingness. which you embrace (things which you have in order to transcend them. in order to transcent yourself). is what disgusts me most in man. It disgusts me more than any evil. including understanding as a sort of fun among other pleasures. [From the draft of a letter to Lou in 1882]. [From the draft of a letter to Ree in 1882 about Lou:[ She told me that she did not have morals. and I responded that. like myself. she. too. had stronger morals than anyone else.“ Even the form of the Nietzschean disappointment — in him the sincere disappointment about himself'(which he concealed in his accusations against Lou without sincerity or chivalry) — was a form of Emerson‘s form. Oddly. Nietzsche and Emerson spoke the same language also here: Nietzsche: Verily. it always lifts us higher — specifically. to the realm of the clouds: upon these we place our motley bastards and call them gods and overmen. For they are just light enough for these chairs — all these gods and overmen. Af. how weary I am of all the imperfection which must at all costs become event. (VI. 188).“‘ Emerson: * haufmann. Basic htitings. p. 708. *‘ my translations. *“ Kaufmann. The Portable Nietzsche: p. 240. 67 "We have never seen a man." — "There is a speedy limit to the use of heroes." (USes of Great Men). "Life is a sincerity. In Lucid intervals we say: let there be an entrance opened for me into realities. I have worn the fools—cap too long." On excerpt 40: Our household is mendicant: our art. our occupations. our marriages — we have not chosen them. but society has chosen them for us. We shun the stormy battle with fate. where our internal strength is born. This is the result. It is the legitimation of the human will for elevation. Emerson's text demonstrates that apparently both. he and Nietzsche. fervently sought such a legitimation for their higher will. And the texts of Nietzsche following those of Emerson demonstrate the delight of Nietzsche in his endeavor to systematize Emerson's accusation against "society" and the "mob". Unlike Emerson‘s wrath. this eagerness of Nietzsche. at times. even presents itself as malice. The difference between the two ultimately manifests itself in the difference between Emerson's concept of "prayer" as evident in the context of the excerpt and Nietzsche's concept of prayer as shaped in various other places. Emerson‘s impatience with his contemporary fellow man was supposed to help him elevate bad prayer to true prayer (= comprehensively responsible action). Nietzsche. on the other hand. focuses on old Adam in his bad prayer and scornfully gloats over the unresolvable confusions. Emerson's text: (Versuche. pp. 57. 59) If any man consider the present aspect of what is called by distinction society. he will see the need of these ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out. and we are become timorous deponding whimperers. We are afraid of truth. afraid of fortune. afraid of death. and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. We want men and women who shall renovate life and our social state. but we see that most . 68 natures are insolvent. cannot satisfy their own wants. have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force. and do lean and beg day and night continually. Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts. our occupations, our marriages. our religion we have not chosen. but society has chosen for us. We are parlor soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate. where strength is born. ... As soon as the man is at one with God. he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action.‘t Nietzsche‘s texts: Towards a critique of the herd virtues. — Inertia Operates (1) in trustfulness. since mistrust makes tension. observation. reflection necessary: — (2) in veneration. where the difference in power is great and submission necessary: so as not to fear. an attempt is made to love. esteem. and to interpret the disparity in power as disparity in value: so that the relationship no longer makes one rebellious: - (3) in the sense of truth. What is true? Where an explanation is given which causes us the minimum of Spiritual effort (moreover. lying is very exhausting); — (4) in sympathy. It is a relief to count oneself the same as others. to try to feel as they do. to adopt a current feeling: it is something passive compared with the activity that maintains and constantly practices the individual‘s right to value judgements (the latter allows of no rest): - (5) in impartiality and coolness of judgement: one shuns the exertion of affects and prefers to stay detached. "objective": - (6) in integrity: one would rather obey an existing law than create a law oneself, than command oneself and others: the fear of commanding -: better to submit than to react: — (7) in toleration: the fear of exercising rights. of judging. (The Will to Power. no. 279).** The instinct of the herd considers the middle and the mean as the highest and most valuable: the place where the majority finds itself: the mode and manner in which it finds itself. It is therefore an opponent of all orders of rank. it sees an ascent from beneath to above as a decent from the majority to the minority. The herd feels the exception. whether it be below or above it. as something opposed and harmful to it. Its artifice with reference to the exceptions above it. the stronger. more powerful. wiser. and more fruitful. is to persuade them to assume the role of guardians. herdsmen. watchmen — to become its first servants: it has therewith transformed a danger into something useful. Fear ceases in the middle: here one is never alone: here there is little room for misunderstanding: here there is equality: here one's own form of being is not felt as a reproach but as the right form of being: here contentment rules. Histrust is felt toward the exceptions; to be an exception is experienced as guilt. (The *ll: pp. lit-14. *’ haufmann. transl.. pp. 158-159. 69 Will to Power; no. 280).* Prayer. - Only under two presuppositions does prayer - the custom of earlier ages which has not yet completely died out - make any sense: it would have to be possible to induce or convert the divinity to a certain course of action. and the person praying would himself have to know best what he needed. what was truly desirable for him. Both presuppositions. assumed true and established by custom in all other religions. are however denied precisely by Christianity: if it nonetheless adheres to prayer in face of its belief in an omniscient and all-provident rationality in God which renders prayer at bottom senseless and. indeed. blasphemous — in this it once again demonstrates its admirable serpent cunning: for a clear commandment ’thou shalt not pray’ would have led Christians into unchristianity through boredom. For in the Christian era et labora. the ora occupies the place of pleasure: and what would those unfortunates who had renounced labora. the saints. have found to do if deprived of ora! — but to converse a little for being so foolish as still to harbour desires in spite of having so excellent a father — this was for the saints a very fine invention. (HUman. 41] too Human 11. 2/212).** Emerson could criticize Christianity without scorn. Instead of creduously loving and worshipping a musician. actor. and playwright — as Nietzsche worshipped Wagner - Emerson had. as a young man of the church. an absolute skeptic and atheist as a friend. For him. there was no necessity to write a book such as HUman. All Too Human for the purpose of liberating himself: Achille Napoleon Murat wrote to Emerson: "Open your parish down here (under the southern sun of Florida) instead of in New England.**‘ to substitute for decency's sake. reason. learning. and morality to nonsense. ignorance. fanaticism." - Emerson: "I love and honour this intrepid * ibid.. p. 159. ** Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. introduction by Erich Heller. (Cambridge tniyersity Press: Cambridge. 1986): p. 32$. *‘* the bibliographical information. which Baumgarten provides in his Der Pragmatismus. is: Journals [1: p. 187. bp to the point of this footnote. Baumgarten translates into German rather freely: and also his subsequent English quotation is somewhat tree. Actually the passage from Vapoleon Hurat's letter reads: Your church is increasing yery rapidly in Geo. - why should it not extend to Tallahassee. and you come here to substitute. reason. learning and morality. to nonsense. ignorance. fanaticism: eyen those who do not think as you do. would be glad of it for decency's sate. then we are tar tron that age of reason. yhere truth alone. resplendent. unbleamished. unmixed with errors. will be the proper food tor man. lJournals of Ralph haldo Emerson 1820-1872. yol. til. Houghton tittlin Company. Boston and New tori. 19i9: p. 19L. 70 doubter."* A further discussion of this broad difference between Emerson and Nietzsche can be found in my Pragmatism. vol. II; 1st book: "Emerson: passim." Of course: Nietzsche’s ardor in scorning and de-masking presents itself as more benevolent and in a more readily forgiving friendliness. The differences are manifold and have many diverse roots. In the relation between the texts and the last excerpt. there is yet another tendency: I have said that Nietzsche frequently grasped the meanings of Emerson‘s originals in spite of the faulty German translation. But also. without knowing it. Nietzsche adOpted a word of the German translator into his "Excerpts" and also read it in other places with agreement: "ITkraft" ["Primeval Force"]. Whenever Nietzsche read and heard erraft. Emerson had said something quite different: "Principles." Emerson had never refered even a single person to his Urkraft but to principles. These principles. which he (as did. for example. the Pythagorians and his other "ancestors") conceived as being of divine origin. prepared the path of man in nature (outside of him as well as his own on the inside) to his possible truths and veracity. They intergrated him into nature at large — into the nature of others as well as into the nature of things: or they subordinated him to "God." The concept of a special Urkraft that is inate in man contains the seed of a hybrid which was perhaps pandered to by Nietzsche but never by Emerson. Nietzsche took all of his excerpts from the essay "History" and the beginning of the essay "Self—Reliance." He did not excerpt the concluding sentences of this second essay. although he vividly marked it with many affirming lines in the margin. However. the conclusion of the original is not identical with that of the translation which Nietzsche read: [Both are juxtaposed below]. A political victory. a rise of rents. the recovery of your ’ Here. Baumgarten quotes from Firkins. Ralph haldo Emerson. (Houghton Hittlin Company: Boston and \ey 1on.1m5hp.fli 71 sick, or the return of your absent friend. or some other favorable event, raises your spirits. and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. A political victory. a rise of rents. the recovery of a sick or the return of an absent friend. or some other quite exterior event raises your spirits and you think good days will now come for you. Do not believe it. It will never happen. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of the Urkraft in yourself.‘ THE HISTORY 0F.EMERSON’S INFLUENCE UPON NIETZSCHE Emerson‘s influence upon Nietzsche begins in Schulpforta (1862): it animates Nietzsche‘s friendships there. especially his friendship with von Gersdorff. A passage from Nietzsche‘s diary reads: For the vacation: a sketch of the book for my friends. His point of view is American: the good remains. the bad passes. On wealth. on beauty. Short excerpts from all the essays. On philosophy in life. To write. perhaps. in Sangershausen. in the morning with leisure and diligence. (Historisch—Kritische- Gesamtausgabe II. 221).** We know with certainty that Nietzsche had read two of Emerson’s books by then: first. the volume The Conduct of Life. of which he wanted to give a sketch to his friends. It contained the above mentioned chapters on "Wealth" and "Beauty". Second. he had read (and was reading) another of Emerson's volumes: It was the volume Lersuche. which later (1871 and onward) "accompanied him everywhere” — which he lost in 1873. aquired again in the same year. and that became his intimate partner of conversation (in the manner discussed above) and remained in his hands also during the years thereafter. But also at the earlier time. in 1862/63. the young Nietzsche had dealt with this volume very intensely. His early essay "Fatum und Geschichte" ["Fate and History"] derives the title "Fatum" (and more than that) from Emerson's first essay in The Conduct of Life and the title "Geschichte" * re—translated closely from the German quotation. *‘ transation mine. 72 from the first essay in Versuche [History]. Both of the titles - "Fatum" and "Geschichte" — introduce two fundamental themes in all of Nietzsche‘s philosophical thought. Without mentioning it explicitly - but nonetheless unmistakably - Nietzsche. in his school essay. pays tribute to Emerson's essay "Cirles". which he had also read in Versuche. The pervasiveness of this influence. especially at the time of Nietzsche‘s reading of The Conduct of Life. can be felt when merely reading the headlines of each chapter. He wanted to excerpt all chapters for his friends. However. only the excerpt from one chapter. "Beauty". remains (Historisch— Kritische Gesamtausgabe II. 257). The chapters. arranged in the order in which Nietzsche read them. are entitled "Fate": "Power": — "Wealth"; — "Culture"; - "Behavior": — "Worship": — "Considerations by the Way": — "Beauty": - "Illusions". The formal effects of the essay "Considerations by the Way" were perhaps especially long—lasting by triggering in Nietzsche his fancy for aphorisms. Equally. other works such as the third and fourth "Untimely Meditation" ("Schopenhauer as Educator" and "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth") were later. according to Andler. also modelled after a "form of Emerson's" (Andler: 341). All the detailed letters about Emerson ("Our magnificent friend") but one — the one Nietzsche had written to the baron von Gersdorff — were lost. Only the letters of von Gersdorf to Nietzsche remain. It is not hard to guess what made this "friend" so magnificent for Nietzsche: the combination of a sense of realism in the face of a grim rebustness in certain aspects of the factual ("Fate" — "amor fati" in Nietzsche) on the one hand and the power for "worship". the search after power (the "Will to Power" in Nietzsche) on the other: but also the combination of a warrior‘s soberness with quite a serene eye for success. glamor. and beauty. Only the first chapter ("Fate") retains its grave course throughout. All other chapters rise steeply towards the end and invariably climax in 73 some high hope or couragous appeal. In order to convey this mood to the reader. which. perhaps. was decisive for the young Nietzsche. I would like to cite some of these conclusions of Emerson‘s chapters. (1 do not have the German translation handy and will therefore give a free translation of the English originals):‘ "Fate": Why should we fear to be crushed by savage elements. we who are made up of the same elements? Let us build to the Beautiful Necessity. which makes man brave in believing that he cannot shun a danger that is appointed. nor incur one that is not: to the Necessity which rudely or softly educates him to the perception that there are no contingencies: that Law rules throughout existence: The following conclusion. too. is at once pioneering and rough as well as elevated and appealing. As in the one already cited. this following one precludes an easy transformation of "Fate" (Necessity) into Will ("freedom"): in the last three conclusions. on the other hand. there is a certainty of victory: "Power": Success has no ... eccentricity ... A man hardly knows how much he is a machine until he begins to make telegraph. loom. press and locomotive. in his own image. But in these he is forced to leave out his follies and hindrances. so that when we go to the mill. the machine is more moral than we. Let a man dare go to a loom and see if he be equal to it. "Culture": Man ... will convert the Furies into Muses. and the hells into benefit. "Behavior": ... I will study how to make humanity beautiful to you.** "Wealth": Nor is the man enriched. in repeating the old experiments of animal sensation: nor unless through new powers and ascending pleasures he knows himself by the actual experience of higher good to be already on the way to the highest. During the subsequent years (1865—72) Emerson‘s influence is somewhat moderated by the growing influences of * Baumgarten’s "free translation“ is replaced by the original as found in The Complete torts of Ralph waldo Emerson. Centenary Edition. Vol. 6: The Conduct of Life. (Houghton. hifflin and Company: Boston and New Ymk HM)IHL. *‘ Baumgarten's translation: '1 will find ways to make humanity appeare beautiful before you.‘ 74 Schopenhauer and Wagner. Only during the brief interlude in the barracks at Naumburg (1867) does the volume Versuche. which was was kept in the locker of gunner Nietzsche. appear. He only noted a single sentence then: "Emerson. p. 114: "He that writes to himself. writes to an eternal public."‘ Nevertheless. during these years. as well as before and after. Emerson remained to be a lingering. though somewhat sublimanal and tacit counterbalance to Schopenhauer's "pity" (Mitleid). "pessimism" (Pessimismus). and "deliverance" (Erlosung). What seems to have driven Nietzsche toward Emerson in Schulpforta was a masculine-heroic instinct and a desire for health. During the years after the attack of Wilamowitz— Mollendorff (Critique of The Birth of Tragedy) in 1872. when Nietzsche defied the historians and philologists with soaring courage. Emerson was his secret ally. Unnoticed by anyone. he guided Nietzsche‘s hand in his conceptualization of the second "Untimely Meditation": "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life". Emerson‘s volume of essays accompanied him into the mountains of BerggrUn. where he wrote parts of the later "Untimely Meditations." As mentioned before. Nietzsche lost his copy at the train station in WUrzburg (1874). and immediately bought another one.'08 When overtly praising Schopenhauer and Wagner in the third and fourth "Untimely Meditations" respectively he already attempted to dissociate himself from them in these meditations. But he draped his secret declaration of war. which he hardly had the courage to stand up for all by himself. in a battle cry of Emerson‘s. which infused him with courage: Let an American tell them what a great thinker who arrives on this earth signifies as a new centre of tremendous forces. 'Beware.‘ says Emerson. ‘when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk (1/297)“ ’H:p.%. 10a compare the to-the-point and revealing dissertation of Julius Simon: "R. h. Emerson in Deutschland.’ [heue Deutsche Forschungen. Bd. 138 (1937): p. 137 ff: "Emerson and \ietzsche". as well as Elisabeth Foerster lietzsche. Das Leben lietzsches (1897) 11. 176. *‘ R. J. Hollingdale. transl.. Cntimely Meditations: p. 193. 75 In 1876. after Emerson's Neue Essays‘ had been published in Germany. Nietzsche disappointedly wrote to his friend v. Gersdorff that "the new Emerson has grown old —: too much in love with life." Himself in a state of spiritual attrition from the struggles of dissociating himself from Wagner. he was probably alienated by Emerson's certainty and serenity in the world. (See Historical-Critical Edition. volume of letters IV. 103.) Thus. Nietzsche left accordingly few traces when reading the volume Neue ESsays: only a few N. B. marks like all readers ordinarily put them into their books. Only in one place Nietzsche seems to have halted and paid attention closely: on page 320 (essay on "Immortality") he underlined the following lines and put markings into the margin: It is strange that Jesus is esteemed by mankind the bringer of the doctrine of immortality. He is never once weak or sentimental: he is very abstemious of explanation. he never preaches the personal immortality: whilst Plato and Cicero had both allowed themselves to overstep the stern limits of the spirit. and gratify the people with that picture.** During the time of Nietzsche‘s recurrence vision. when no books were to be found with Nietzsche. Emerson was with him once again. The pages we have represented above (II. III) demonstrate this. The delights. the disappointments. the despair. the destitution. the courage for loneliness - in short. all the moods of his final years of creativity - find their expression in the marginalia of Emerson‘s sentences of the same volume of essays. During the years of 1883/84. he made another series of attempts to study Emerson in a joint effort with his friends. the Basel professor of church history Overbeck and his wife. He had a "long essay of Emerson. which sheds some light on his development." translated into German for Mrs Overbeck. whom he had told that he perceived Emerson like a ‘brothersoul‘. (To date. it is not known to which essay he refered here). * A German translation of letters and Social Aims. ‘* The German quote from Neue Essays is replaced by a quote from “immortality” in Letters and Social lims vol.1111 of The Centenary Edition of The Complete torts of Ralph baldo Emerson: p. 318. 76 According to Nietzsche‘s sister. Nietzsche could "read English books not easily." At the peak of his lonliness (1888). godforsaken. craving human contact while. at the same time. cursing the Germans ("Wagner, if only he had come amongst the pigs and not the Germans!") he still clung to Emerson in this utterly helpless state of mind of the exiled outcast. He is terrified by his own rabble—rousing. This rabble. which he projects on Carlyle. is opposed to his certainty and calm toward Emerson. He seeks to identify with Emerson. Accordingly. his self-portrait in .Ecce homo is oriented in the image of Emerson. It is therefore not a coincidence that he attributed Emerson. too. with the symbol "Ecce homo"! The opposition Emerson against Carlyle was established late: in the Twilight of the Idols. There. it can easily be seen how Nietzsche's self-portrait concurs with the portrait of Emerson. 1. Carlyle: (Twilight of the Idols. Skirmishes of an Lhtimely Man. no. 12). I have been reading the life of Thomas Carlyle. this conscious and involuntary farce. this heroic—moralistic interpretation of dyspeptic states. Carlyle: a man of strong words and attitudes. a rhetor from need. constantly lured by the craving for a strong faith and the feeling of his incapacity for it (in this respect. a typical romantict). The craving for a strong faith is no proof of a strong faith. but quite the contrary. If one has such a faith. then one can afford the beautiful luxury of skepticism: one is sure enough. firm enough. has ties enough for that. Carlyle drugs something in himself with the fortissimo of his veneration of men of strong faith and with his rage against the less simple—minded: he requires noise. A constant passionate dishonesty against himself — that is his proprium: in this respect he is and remains interesting.‘ 2. Emerson: (ibid. no 13). Emerson. Much more enlightened. more roving. more manifold. subtler than Carlyle: above all. happier. One who instinctively nourishes himself only on ambrosia. leaving behind what is indigestible in things. Compared with Carlyle. a man of taste. Carlyle. who loved him very much. nevertheless said of him: "He does not give us enough to chew on" - which * translation in Haufmann. The Portable Vietzsche; p. 531. 77 may be true. but is no reflection on Emerson. Emerson has that gracious and clever cheerfulness which discourages all seriousness: he simply does not know how old he is already and how young he is still going to be; he could say of himself. quoting Lope de Vega: "Yo me sucedo a mi mismo" ("I am my own heir."). His spirit always finds reason for being satisfied and even grateful; ...* 3. self-portrait: (Ecce homo: 5. 302). What is it. fundamentally. that allows us to recognize who has turned out well? That a well—turned—out person pleases our senses. that he is carved from wood that is hard. delicate. and at the same time smells good. He has a taste only for what is good for him; his pleasure. his delight cease where the measure of what is good for him is transgressed. He guesses what remedies avail against what is harmful: he exploits bad accidents to his advantage: what does not kill him makes him stronger. Instinctively. he collects from everything he sees. hears. lives through. his sum: he is a principle of selection. he discards much. He is always in his own company. whether he associates with books. human beings. or landscapes: he honors by choosing. by admitting. by trusting. He reacts slowly to all kinds of stimuli. with that slowness which long caution and deliberate pride have bred in him: he examines the stimulus that approaches him. he is far from meeting it halfway. He believes neither in "misfortune" nor in "guilt": he comes to terms with himself. with others: he knows how to forget — he is strong enough: hence everything must turn out for his best. Well then. I am the opposite of a decadent. for I have just described myself.** But at the same time Nietzsche described Emerson: he described himself as well as Emerson in categories and evaluations which he had visibly and delightedly appropriated from Emerson in 1881 (the marginalia in tersuche). (Comapare above. p. 32: "Selective Principle" and p. 35: "Forgetting. etc.). With respect to "Slowness". Nietzsche underlined the term "Naturlangsamkeit" in the essay "Friendship" (tersuche: p. 148). He could not know from the German translation that Emerson. in the English original. had used the same untranslated German term; and he had used it to suggest the same thing which is elaborated on in the quote above. Thus. a German concept and virtue came to Emerson. who absorbed it *1M¢:p.fll *3 Kaufmann. Basic tritings ...: p. 680-81. 78 with the term. and returned to Nietzsche: "respect the naturlangsamkeit which hardens the ruby in a million years ."* (Generally, Emerson borrowed foreign words only rarely). In sum. we ask: How could this strange historical process of Nietzsche’s intellectual formation through Emerson go almost unnoticed in the two countries which. it seems. should have been interested in it most? As far as Germany is concerned. there are. I think. two sufficiently plausible answers: 1. it had to do with Nietzsche himself. 2. the incognito Emerson/Nietzsche is at once an effect and a symtom of a larger phenomenon in the relationship between Germany and America — a phenomenom which has. until recently. been at work and is. to a large degree. validly observable even today. The influence of Emerson upon Nietzsche was due to a strange relationship indeed. Whereas there is strident testimony throughout Nietzsche's writings about his close affiliations with Schopenhauer and Wagner. about his turning away from them. as well as about his wrestling in fervent attraction and then repulsion to Sokrates. Plato. Christianity. and Pascal. Emerson is mentioned only occasionally and by the way.'1 The note mentioned at the beginning of this essay (see p. 2-3). which would perhaps have drawn attentioned to this relationship. was hidden in the posthumous publications. But there is also another aspect to this. Not only is there no dramatic. great struggle with Emerson — not only is nothing heard of him: but also. what came to be a rivalry *H:p.Hd 11 Besides the passage from The Twighlight of the Idols cited above. Emerson is mentioned only in "Schopenhauer as Educator" [1. 297) [lntinely Weditations: p. 193]: The Gay Science (no. 92: 3. lh*= [Kaufmann, transl.. p. 146]: and in his writings as a youth {'Emerson' in the index of the Historical- Critical Edition of horks. vol. ll and Ill and well as the solunes of letters 2. 3. and 4:. I n Mn 1min unb eein legit with fld) snvifi immet bonus etc . feben lafi'en, ob bu Dies {Bun _IIn_b_§_eir_i gern unIgeben Inmate}? unb teinen Rangeiveelen'gnen, obet ob bu bein 2536!. «51' Fe: eon- » mum vadre be: {aimmelc fidfib’a! metben Iafit mo e6 einc iii #57" . ._I-. 45"?“ ”5‘ . .‘ ~ , . F-"‘“."i" . - *‘I1.,‘??. 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Ni biefe 6mm bet Qafammlung nicbt ibtm (ibu- eaflee nub ii): eigenflidyel Eden geigen metben. 913nm mi: @runb batten, cine mnbeiiimg in biefee art, in emcmen, miirben .mit alle Werigfeiten unb ieglicbe Dppofition I'Ibeminben, Sic mm mitten emf .Sénften bergu getragcn Inetben. use: cine meme Rene i8 eine (Estevan, ein Riot-finnemwen, eine mm- bgk. ein Rachel. unb Reine nittbeilung, reine Sprain, tein nann. Cine gleidye Siemefie mane: fiber cum Eaten bee Geiflec. flit babes! and; en iemen, bafi ein in mom gefafites sing Mini!» nod) niét Mitten/El mnfi fid) felbfl feine Gumbel: neefebafieel’, weber geammafifoe 89mm nneb einleudfienbe 'Der- fieflaug. n00 eine geotimeie fiufifibrung bun argumenten tbnnen "it. Men; geiien. Set Spend; mnfi aifo feine eigne apologie in Id; mam, um gefvroiben in fein. “:35": ‘V' k" ' “A I» guy-A 7‘ l_ :—\_ (I u. ., u“... nub..- 79 between brothers between them appeared to the outside spectator to be Nietzsche's superiority or a slightly condescending mockery toward Emerson. Without intending to do so. Nietzsche hereby perhaps employed against his friend Emerson the kind of dull boredom which Europeans (and Germans especially) like to profess toward the American mind: "What good can come from Nazareth?" But Nietzsche's mockery was misunderstood. It must be admitted that Nietzsche‘s high esteem for Emerson reveals itself amidst his mockery only to the connoisseur. The "ambivalences" that play such an important role in Nietzsche's fondnesses and venerations surface — however moderately. in comparison — also here. But especially with regard to moderation. mockery and even amusement (about Emerson's alleged lack of Virility. for example) prevailed over condescending. at times. irritated or even pedantic reprimand. The following examples will demonstrate how the pendulum of ambivalence oscillates. for the most part. in an easy manner. from one side to the other. Immediately following the sentence on Emerson quoted at the beginning of this essay (... I must not praise [him]. for [he] is too close to me ..." Aachlass. no. 375) is passage no. 376. which reads: "The author richest in thought of this century has been an American. (Unfortunately. this fact has been concealed by German philosophy: Milchglas.)" And then: Because of Jean Paul. Carlyle is ruined and has become England’s worst writer. And because of Carlyle. Emerson. the richest American. has let himself be seduced to a tasteless lavishness. which throws thoughts and images out the window by the bulk. (Nachlass. X1. 111. 342).‘ Of course. Nietzsche. quickly enough. then interrupts himself against this: Behind the poetic "lavishness". he perceived very clearly the prose of a covertly warlike lust for mockery and intentionally confusing logic (Gay Science. no. 92: 3. 107). Similar to that. in The kill to Power (6. 291): The ones that are "rich in heritage" in the highest degree must "throw * my translation. 80 much out of the window." In the presence of others, Nietzsche seems to have loved speaking in a critical manner about Emerson (in the sense described above) — and especially so when speaking to another scholar as a scholar. from professor to professor. Thus, he wrote to Overbeck that he would have loved to subject retro-actively "this [Emerson's] magnificent. great nature. rich in soul and spirit" to a "strict discipline" in the sense of "a genuinely scholarly culture". - "As it stands. a philosopher was lost for us in Emerson." (see: Oehler and Bernoulli. Fr. Nietzsches Briefwechsel with Franz Overbeck. Leipzig/Berlin 1916. Letters of December 1883. April 1884, and December 1884). The brilliant characterization of Emerson in the Twighlight of the Idols (quoted above) surprisingly ends with this new turn to the matter: always finds reasons for being satisfied and even grateful: and at times he touches on the cheerful transcendency of the worthy gentleman who returned from an amorous rendevous. tamquam re bene gesta. "Ut desint vires." he said gratefully. "tamen est laudanda voluptas."‘ Nobody could have guessed from reading this passage that the "weakling" that is addressed here was the man whose power of befief and thought was the object of total absorption on the part of Nietzsche. Germany. unlike her neighbors in the west. was in a peculiar position when facing America. Germany had never been fully integrated into the political—intellectual triangle of power England-Amerca—France.: 1620-1776-1789. Since the deaths of Kant. Herder. and Goethe and due to certain effects of the teachings of Fichte and Hegel. German philosophy has not taken into account that it could be affected in a profound way by any developments in the Anglo—American sphere. The general * Kaufmann. The Portable hietzsche: p. 322. 81 concensus in the scholarly world was that - apart from some most recent developments — the intellectual relationship between Germany and America could basically be nothing else but a one-way road: an export but not an import. It therefore has sufficiently been known (and exaggerated) in the German scholarly conscience that Goethe had influenced Emerson. What has remained largely unknown is that two answers have been on their way without having arrived yet: Emerson’s own intense struggle with and opposition to Goethe:12 and Emerson's influence upon Nietzsche. Strangely, the careful report of the Frenchman Andler about Emerson/Nietzsche reenforced these preconceived notions in Germany. In this respect. Andler contributed to the fact that the weight. extensiveness. and depth of Emerson's influence upon Nietzsche has remained unknown in Germany. Of course. he impressively compiles an extensive list of corresponding titles ("life is a search after power": "Life is the will to power"). imagery (Emerson‘s "only virtue: to give away himself": Nietzsche‘s "giving virtue"). motifs of thought (Oversoul. Plus—Man: Lebermensch). radical tendencies (critique of history. Christianity. "immoralism") — however somewhat undifferentiatedly. and without distinguishing their differences. Also. he aptly characterizes the process of absorption of Emersonian ideas by Nietzsche. He even postulates the thesis that "Emerson did not anticipate all of Nietzsche's theories: rather he forced him to conceive them." But in the end. Andler explains that Nietzsche‘s great veneration for Emerson was based on a misunderstanding. According to Andler. Emerson merely returned Nietzsche. after his "skeptical crisis" (1876-81) to the wealth of his German intellectual heritage. which had been the same heritage from which Emerson had derived his own theories. Thus. after the subtraction of the Nietzschean "illusion". Emerson did not mean more to Nietzsche than merely to be his "reminder.' In this chapter. Andler appears incontrovertibly objective in his 12 compare my “intellectual Foundations“. sol. ll (Pragmantisml. p. 374-388 and 4? ti. 82 finding and presenting data; in his conclusions. however. he seems subjectively influenced by his fondness for Nietzsche (as the great lover and genius of the franco-european spirit) and his antipathy to the "blurred. monotonous" and basically "boring" American Emerson. As far as America is concerned. the prevailing sentiments and the general situation since 1933/1939 are characterized by the remarks of F. O. Matthiesen quoted below. For the greatest part of the American consciousness. it was until recently (and perhaps still today) a repulsive imputation to claim a close connection between Emerson and Nietzsche. Was Emerson not — despite some of his strange teachings - basically a son of American democracy and a child of English common sense? In turn, was Nietzsche not the extremist voice of a nation famous for autocracy in government and a tendency toward self— individualization* of the individual in society. Furthermore. had not Emerson's reputation. even while he was still alive. consolidated itself as a sort of "American institution?" Should one have been reminded by such a connection between Emerson's reputation and that of Nietzsche that Harvard had banned Emerson as an "immoralist" and "atheist" for nearly thirty years? Meanwhile. the connection is real. and the time seems right to take on the various points of issue in its light. My earlier detailed reports (1938: "Die geistigen Grundlagen des amerikanischen Gemeinwesens" vol. II. p. 81 ff.: p. 396—414: 1939: "Emerson/Nietzsche" Internationale Zeitschrift fUr Erziehung) were first acknowledged by H. Hummel in ”Emerson and Nietzsche" (The New England Quarterly. 1946). Hummel‘s own studies of Emerson in the United States led him to the same trace and in the same manner as I have described above with regard to my seminar in Gottingen. Based on Hummel’s and my reports. the most recent — great and beautiful — work on Emerson by R. L. Rusk concludes with the remark that Emerson has had at least one significant influence * Selhst-iereinzelung. 83 on the European continent: "The half dozen or so volumes of the American Essayist to be had in German translations seemed to have been potent intellectual yeast for at least one continental genius — Friedrich Nietzsche." F. O. Matthiessen (American Renaissance. Art and Empression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman. 1941. German Edition: Wiesbaden. 1948: p. 349). who had apparently read Andler. presupposes close relations between Emerson and Nietzsche as a known fact and adds the following remark [What romanticist religion leads to can bee seen in]: the observable effects of Emerson‘s green wine on natures less temperate than its maker’s ... When Saadi became Nietzsche's Zarathustra. the ideal man of self—reliant energy was transformed into the hard—willed Uebermensch. whose image was again to be altered and degraded into the brutal man of Fascism.* We have no intention of closing our eyes before this troubling connection — which is. from an objective point of view. an extremely controversial and, from a historical point of view. a very horrible entanglement. Rather. we will try to describe and evaluate it (Chapter VII. 1. 2). The Main Aspects of Emerson's Influence Upon Nfietzsche 1. It think it highly evident that Nietzsche's turning against orthodox Christianity. which temporalily coincided with his first reading of Emerson (1862). was actually shaped by Emerson in a unique way (v.1). 2. There is evidence that Nietzsche derived his critical evaluation of the function of history for life mainly and directly from reading Emerson. At the same time. the particular influence of Emerson upon Nietzsche was a specifically American influence. (Compare. on p. 66. Nietzsche’s general perception of an American character in Emerson's philosophy.) But also. it may validly be argued that in the persons of the American (Emerson) and the German ‘ this quote can he found on p. 367-68 of the English original: F. 0. iatthiessen. .merican Renaissance. Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and khitman. (Oxford tnirersity Press: \eu York. 1941'. 84 (Nietzsche). a more general (Euro-American) relationship and a more radical kind of humanism are represented. Here. a thought travelled from Europe over America back to Europe: or more precisely: from Erasmus and Montaigne over Jefferson and Emerson to Nietzsche (chapter v.2). If Emerson’s effects upon Nietzsche were thorough in these three directions they also were comprehensive with regard to Nietzsche's life span: Emerson’s unconditional "yes" to life. — to higher life from a concentrated interior strength -. with his experimental fearlessness as a means to this end. determined Nietzsche's emotions toward life (Lebensgerhl) from the age 18 (Schulpforta. 1862) up to the fantasies of his insanity during the last ecstacies of his collapse (Turin. 1889). We will return to this most intimate aspect of Emerson's influence upon Nietzsche in a Special chapter. (VI). Nietzsche’s marginalia and markings in the text of his copy of Emerson's tersuche provide reliable guidance in this. We will report on all the necessary details from this manuscript. The more intimate the connection between Emerson and Nietzsche appears to be. the more urgently we must ask in how far they differed in their beliefs and ways thinking. Some of these differences have already surfaced here and there in chapter I and III. In chapter VIII. we will elaborate on these and attempt to get a better understanding of them. But at first. we will turn to the very main aspect of Emerson's influence upon Nietzsche. 1. Nietzsche’s Renunciation of Orthodox Christianity as a Y0ung Man On page eleven of Nietzsche und das Christentum (Nietzsche and Christianity). a small book which is very comprehensive and conclusive with respect to Nietzsche's position toward Christianity. the following passage can be found: to Nietzsche. the fundamental experience of his own life — 85 to turn from Christian motives into an opponent of Christianity - came to represent a process of the world history. On the historic foundation of of many centuries. the events of his own time seemed to him to have reached a point of both extreme peril and extreme opportunity for the human soul, for the truth of human values. for the very fact of being human. He saw himself as entering upon this center of the stage in world history. Later Jaspers continues: To fathom the depth of this psychological revolution. we shall ask how it took place in Nietzsche himself. We want to see his original Christianity. and then the way it changed. We may ask what battles of religious liberation he waged while growing from a Christian into an anti—Christian. Yet none of this really happened. Instead - and the consequences of this fact are crucial for all his thinking — Nietzsche began by acquiring the Christian motivations in the very form in which they would live in him to the end. That is to say. he had a personal experience of unconditionality. of extreme morality and truthfulness; but from childhood on. Christian contents. literal Christian teachings. Christian authority lacked real meaning for him. He had nothing to shake off later. not even a childish attachment to myths. A few examples serve to illustrate his characteristic thinking from the time of his youth. Christianity as a substantive faith and dogma was alien to him from the outset. He affirmed it only as symbolic human truth: "The main doctrines of Christianity merely express the basic truths of the human heart." he wrote at eighteen. in 1862. The insights he experienced as a boy are basically the same as those which later appear in his philosophy - for instance: "Salvation by faith means that the heart alone. not knowledge. can bring happiness. The incarnation of God suggests that man shall not seek his salvation in infinity but shall found his heaven on earth.” At the same time. he put down sentences anticipating what he would later say in criticism of Christianity. These hypothetical. hesitant. pensive utterances of the adolescent underwent some changes of expression - the impassioned concern and combativeness. above all. did not arise until later - but the basic postion was there from the start. in the child: and it never changed.‘ I believe that all of this was different. In 1862. Nietzsche was neither a child nor a boy but an eighteen-year-old man. Before 1862. as a child. boy. and even as a seventeen year old adolescend. he not only made up "Christian tales" for his * this is quoted tron an English translation of hurt Jaspers book. titled Nietzsche and fhristianity translated by E. B. Ashton (Henry Regnery Company: a Gateway Edition. 1961;: p. 8-1“. 86 mother for Christmas. but also he sought after and found spiritual security in "the contents of Christian faith." "Tale" (1857): "A little Christmas gift for my dear mother from your Fritz Nietzsche" (on sin and deliverance) (Historical—Critical Edition I. 397). "Faith in providence and God: a prayer: "God watch over me that nothing bad will happen today on the swimming tour!" (I. 124) — "But in general. God has guided me safely. as a father guides his weak child" (I. 31). ”Faith in Jesus as Saviour: On your word I will throw out my net. This is: 1. Obedience to God. 2. Trust in God. the Lord. 3. I will do my work according to my best knowledge and conscience. 4. The hope for the blessing of the Deliverer" (I. 106). "We. too. want to give ourselves totally to the Lord" (I. 25). His faith in the Saviour also re-appears in the poetry he wrote as a boy: You have called — Lord. here I come: I was lost. staggeringly drunk and sunk destined for hell and torture. ooooooooooooooooooooo beloved image: Saviour of sinners satisfy my desire to let go of my musing and thinking and rest in Your love Gethsemane and Golgatha Oh. you places of future Judgement of the world. you hope of the pious and terror of the sinners. Before you. vain glory and glamour crumbles From you blessing will fall as dew onto the world. Compared with these evidences. Jasper's hypothesis of Nietzsche’s continual development from child to man without a 87 break seems rather ficticious — not to mention its psychological improbability.I3 I do not mean to claim that his reading of Emerson effected in the eighteen-year—old Nietzsche in 1862 a sudden rebellion against his previous Christian beliefs. Other rebellious influences had been accessible to him more easily. Strauss's Leben Jesu ("The Life of Jesus”) had appeared in 1835. Feuerbach’s hesen des Christentum ("The Nature of Christianity") in 1842. the vehemently aggressive book of Bruno Bauer. Das Entdeckte Christentum ("The Discovered Christianity") in 1843. Who knows whether the minister Emerson in Concord. too. did not find nourishment in German post- hegelian/left-hegelian literature for the interpretation and justification for his abandonment of his ministry. "Radical thinkers" have sharp and quick ears. regardless of distance. However. whatever he might have learned from the enlightening. H iconoclastic "Sophists. Emerson went a novel way in this. In Emerson. it was not a rebelling intellect but the heart'4 that transcended religion in a higher "circle" and did away with orthodox historical Christianity. But it was exactly this most inner movement of the heart in Emerson which took possession of Nietzsche. It was this movement which gave to the young and doubting Nietzsche the freedom. courage. and enthusiasm necessary to give a free rein to his rebellious intellect. which had until then intimitated him as being something empty and emtying. In the essay "Fatum und Geschichte" ("Fate and History"). from the immediate context of which Jasper‘s above quote originated. Nietzsche not only explicitly refers to 13 Here the question arises how Jaspers was misled to this fiction. has it. perhaps. the belief in the pure (unexplainable) origin of examplary minds? Or the tendency to claim the “existential“ status of exceptionism for Nietzsche from the beginning? Or. perhaps. both at the same time? On 'exception' compare: Jaspers, ”iernunft und Existence" (”Reason and Existence"). 1. Lecture: "Nietzsche und Kirkegaard": “0n Truth“. p. 748 ff. Attempts of a critique. which also relates to the above problem of an interpretation of Nietzsche’s development as a youth can be found in my discussion "Efr und Iider das radikale Bbse” {Arguments for and against the radical evil”) - Reflexionen Uber vesentliche fnterschiede zvischen [basic differences between] Jaspers hay heber: Jaspers/Kant. Goethe. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche” in “The Philosophy of Karl Jaspers. ed. A. Schilpp: The Living Philosophers vol. ill. 1956. 14 “Heart" ' an approximately comprehensive title vhich. of course incorporates many different things: the tendency to trust and believe: the lust to love. to elevate one's life to happiness: the desire to be guided by the mighty and the higher. etc. 88 Emerson‘s name twice. but also - and more importantly — he applied Emerson’s thought of ever higher "circles" in human history and the inner growth of individuals.’5 The severe shock that Nietzsche experienced in 1862 was decisive not so much in its immediate effects as it was in its aftermath. It continually grew into the sentence which turned against his faith as a child and the faith of his ancestors in utter hostility: "Your courage was not in your revolting against idols but rather in revolting against their acolytes." (5/558). However. Jaspers seems to be entirely correct when pointing out (p. 12) that this courage was not to be had by the eighteen-year-old but came about later and more gradually with the maturation of his thought. In 1862. it was Emerson’s courage which carried the rebellion in Nietzsche. At first. Nietzsche followed Emerson’s language as a devoted and enthusiastic young rhetorician who seizes someone else's language. The sentences quoted by Jaspers from the "boy" Nietzsche are unmistakably sentences from the man Emerson. Also the critique of Christianity. which begins to emerge especially in the essay "Fatum und Geschichte" is the Emerson‘s critique. This critique of Emerson’s was the criticism of the responsible minister who answered for himself before his own congregation. Profoundly personal. it was an exoteric and. at the same time. public criticism. Nietzsche's criticism. on the other hand. began as a rhetorical dependency and a copy. Due to the weak conscience that resulted from this. Nietzsche's 15 "Fatum und Geschichte“ (Historical-Critical Edition ll. SA). The essay which immediately follows this one. "Hillensfreiheit und Tatum” ("Freedom of Hill and late") is also influenced by Emerson (p. 6b ff). The term “circles” was developed by Emerson in an essay by this title in his Essays (First Series). Recently my attention was drawn to the significance of the essay “Circles" in the full extensiveness of all the individual influences of Emerson upon the young Nietzsche by Laurence Stanley Hubbard (University of Basel). Based on the manuscriptual materials. which he studied. and by elaborating on the above hypothesis of Emerson‘s influence upon iietzsche in his renunciation of fhristianity. he used the early Tietzsche's essay "Fatum und Geschichte" as a starting point for his exhaustive discussion (L. St. Hubbard. Emerson und Nietzsche. Basel. 1956). This dissertation. which was conducted entirely independent of my discussion here in its hypothetical constructions and carries out very detailed comparisons of texts and meaning. will be concluded and will appear in print in the near future. I do not mean to anticipate Hr. Hubbard's in-depth analyses but only report or my hypotheses in the preliminarily rough extensiveness. 89 criticism was in danger of derailing into a self-exaggerating esotericism and extravagance. Dependency. copy. and rhetoric on the part of the receptive young Nietzsche did not preclude a simultaneous anticipation of his own growing vehemence in the future. At the same time there was at work the rhetoric of imitation (embedded in caution and worry) and outbreaks of emotional disturbance (in the medium of a daring imaginination). An impressive. almost terrifying testimony of this imagination is the poem about the delirium of a dying drunkard. "Vor dem Crucifix" ("Before the Crucifix"): "You block of stone. up there. stupid fool. come down!" (Historical-Critical.Edjtion II. 187). Here the braking can be seen taking place - of course not in a conscious effort but rather like in a sleepwalk. Beneath the surface of the sensitively careful and rational reflexions of his school essays. the destructive character of a sudden. visionary (negative) conversion can be sensed. It is no surprise then that his dependency on the breakless Emerson. who even encouraged to breaking with oneself and all things. affected Nietzsche‘s emotions throughout his entire life - with only little ambivalences (see p. 73). In Emerson‘s field of force. Nietzsche. ready for veneration from the beginning to the end. then succeeded not only at a negative but at the same time at a positive and genuine "conversion". However. Nietzsche. at that time. did not consciously rebel against Christianity but. on the contrary. decided first to embrace Christianity in a purer and higher form (precisely in succession to Emerson). With regard to the later results. it would be interesting to have a clearer insight into the inner process of the eighteen—year old Nietzsche's reception of Emerson’s language (1862/63). But only very few things become visible in their outlines. Above we heard Jaspers quote Nietzsche: "The main doctines of Christianity merely express the basic truths of the human heart" (Historical-Critical Edition II. 63). Immediately before this sentence. the following sentences can 90 be read: "Only when we realize that we are responsible only to ourselves. that the failure to reach our destiny in life is to be blamed only on ourselves but not on some higher force. will the basic ideas of Christianity cast off their garments and become marrow and blood. Fundamentally. Christianity is a matter of the heart: only when it has incarnated itself in us. when it has become an emotional state in us. are we true Christians." During the following year (same volume: 11. 258) Nietzsche began to excerpt from the Emerson volume The Conduct of Life for his friends. From the different context of the essay "Beauty" he at once seized the same thought which we have just heard and expressed it in almost the same words which had guided Emerson everywhere: No object really interests us but man. and in man only his superiorities: and though we are aware of a perfect law in nature. it has fascination for us only through its relation to him. or as it is rooted in the mind.* At once he also excerpts Emerson‘s concept of interpreting events and history through the image of changing and elevating "circles" - here as a feature of "Beauty": Nothing interests us which is stark or bounded. but only what streams with life. what is in act or endeavor to reach somewhat beyond. ... Beauty is the moment of transition. as if the form were just ready to flow into other forms.*‘ A year before. Nietzsche. in the essay "Fatum und Geschichte". had inspired himself with courage to the "free. uninhibited view" on the Christian doctrines with the sentence "Everything moves in immense and ever expanding circles” but had nevertheless remained hesitant and unsure - despite this sweeping encouragements. He had asked: "Can we really leave the "circle" of our habitual loyalties? Can we. "through an act of strong will. revolutionize the entire past of the world and step up into the order of independent gods?" (1863). But a * The Conduct of Life in The fentenary Edition fl; p. 286. *‘iMd.p N3 91 year later. he already seems to have seized this opportunity with more confidence. Despite the inner hesitation in his writing of the previous year. he embraced — at least momentarily — the formula "responsible only to ourselves." He found the models for this formula everywhere in his simultaneous and apparently very extensive reading of Emerson. ("My literary activity in 1862: during my vacation the essay "Fatum und Geschichte": - otherwise reading of Emerson ...". II. 100.). He read. for example: The saints and the demigods whom history worships. we are constrained to accept with a grain of allowance. ... pressed on our attention. as they are by the thoughtless and customary. they fatigue and invade. ... More and more the surges of everlasting nature enter into me. and I become public and human in my regards and actions. ...‘ T the imperfect. adore my own Perfect. Despite a bad German translation. the young Nietzsche probably perceived clearly the appeal in the rising of the words (imperfect — perfect). It must have had a seductivly mysterious effect upon the sensitive and even fearful ear of Nietzsche: So come I to live in thoughts. and act with energies which are immortal. Thus revering the soul. and learning. as the ancient said. that "its beauty is immense." man will come to see that the world is the perennial miracle which the soul worketh. and be less astonished at particular wonders: he will learn that there is no profane history: that all history is sacred ...“ Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act of the soul. The simplest person. who in his integrity worships God. becomes God.*** Still in 1862. Nietzsche seems to be terrified by such and similar thoughts. This fear is demonstrated by the essay "Fatum und Geschichte." Then. in 1863. he received - without hesitation and full of joy - the same thought in its * "The Over-Soul" in ll. p. 175. In the original. the sentence following this footnote actually preceeds what is quoted before. ** ibid. *** ibid.. p. 172-173. 92 moderation and its general form as a principle of "Beauty" or life arising everywhere. Nevertheless. it seems as though the originally terrifying and seducing attraction of this thought retains its (covert) magnetic effect upon Nietzsche. In 1881 suddenly. Nietzsche entirely turns toward this original effect and begins to live from it with ever increasing fervor. This was shown well by his excerpts (Chapter III) and even more clearly by his Zarathustra meditations (Chapter II). This inspiration continues all the way up to his insanity in Turin. Summary and Theses l. The nature of the influence that Emerson exerted upon Nietzsche differs from all other influences upon Nietzsche that have long and commonly been known. It took place in the medium of an unresisting friendship of Nietzsche with the figure of Emerson. The ambivalences that are involved bear no significance on the exclusively positive productivity of this relationship. 2. The influence takes place tacitly and almost entirely in secrecy. 3. The period of this influence extends. in varying degrees of intensive consciousness. throughout Nietzsche‘s creative periods starting at age 18 until the end. 4. Emerson's influence upon Nietzsche is of thorough and central importance for Nietzsche's works (critique of Christianity. critique of "history". critique of contemporary man. conceptualization of the idea of the Uebermensch). It also effected a far-reaching orientation for Nietzsche's life. 5. Nietzsche sought repeatedly to model his own life and thinking after the example of Emerson. In this respect. Nietzsche transformed himself into Emerson: at the same time. by comprehending him in such depth. he also transformed Emerson into Nietzsche: when seen in a postive light. he systematized Emerson: when seen in a negative light. he exaggerated and overstrained Emerson. In certain instances he 93 re—interpreted him radically. 8. During the process of Emerson‘s transformation into Nietzsche. differences between the two societies become apparent which had provided the substantial potential and form out of which Emerson as an American (only renewing old American traditions) and Nietzsche as a German (partially for and partially against Germany) lived and thought. To be continued (:V. 2. — VII). . . . ...1. Eur... ..»...l...... .. p---~.p.»...\...-........” \ ~.-.u—u-..-v 3.1.2.1.... . “Pg”.