I.
"The desert grows, / woe to whom it appears ..." - the beginning of the Nietzschean poem Unter Töchtern der Wüste is often taken as a diagnosis and a warning, interpreting this desert not in the old sense of "wilderness", an empty space, devoid of human presence and human works, but on the contrary, as something co-essential with humanity. The desert understood in this way would grow with the human being as its carrier, and the desertification of the earth would be the result of his reckless and destructive actions. In the Heidegger tradition, the Verwüstung thus becomes something more dangerous than the Vernichtung as a squandering of future opportunities for life and growth. Along with the expansion of this technologically understood wilderness, man himself would deteriorate and would be diminished, thus becoming a victim of himself and his own actions.
"The desert grows, / woe to whom it appears ..." - the beginning of the Nietzschean poem Unter Töchtern der Wüste is often taken as a diagnosis and a warning, interpreting this desert not in the old sense of "wilderness", an empty space, devoid of human presence and human works, but on the contrary, as something co-essential with humanity. The desert understood in this way would grow with the human being as its carrier, and the desertification of the earth would be the result of his reckless and destructive actions. In the Heidegger tradition, the Verwüstung thus becomes something more dangerous than the Vernichtung as a squandering of future opportunities for life and growth. Along with the expansion of this technologically understood wilderness, man himself would deteriorate and would be diminished, thus becoming a victim of himself and his own actions.
in such a desert, man himself would be diminished
But in fact, it was not about such a desert that Nietzsche wrote in Unter Töchtern der Wüste included in the Dionysian Dithyrambs collection. Appearing among "the songs of Zarathustra who sang to himself to endure his last loneliness," this "afternoon psalm" belongs to another, albeit related, character, the wanderer, "calling himself the Shadow of Zarathustra" and appears primarily as an anti-philosophical erotic. This particular desert - let's call it the Desert - is already presented at the outset as the antithesis of Europe, and therefore of a philosophical tradition whose metonymy could be Europe. On the one hand, we have "good bright eastern air", and on the other - stuffy air, "damp melancholy", "obscured sky", "stolen suns", "howling autumn winds" and similar elements associated with the climatic conditions of the old continent. The "European" dampness is undoubtedly feminine, that powerless and lazy femininity which both repelled and disturbed Nietzsche so much. So if Europe were to connote philosophy, the latter would have to turn out to be something suspiciously musty and rotten. The desert and its daughters are different: it is a different femininity, girls with "no clouds and no thoughts dimmed", these are "cloudless riddles that can be guessed." And it is to them that the "afternoon psalm" is dedicated. Probably, like Ariadne, the chosen one of Dionysus, they also have "little ears" to become worthy listeners of this new, anti-philosophical sounding song. It is worth noting that this "Desert grows, / woe, whom it turns up to ...", so often appearing in philosophical works from Heidegger to Agata Bielik-Robson, is indeed a quotation from the very beginning. A wanderer who "started to sing like that with a roar", cites another roar, "a lion worthy and / or morally howling". The quotation of the overheard discourse, however, serves only to ridicule him and distance himself from it. So it rains this mocking "Ha! / Solemnly! / a worthy start! / African festive! ”. The wanderer joins the Desert, seeks shelter in it, not looking back at the warning howl. He enters into a paradoxical relationship of closeness and strangeness, separateness and swallowing: "I am sitting here / close to the desert, and at the same time so far from it (der Wüste nahe und bereits / so ferne wieder der Wüste), and desolate for nothing (in Nichts noch verwüstet): / namely, swallowed up by this little oasis ”. This location of a foreign body in the abdomen (oasis, whale) is the first step towards the erotic dimension of the Desert, the intimacy into which the subject falls, absorbed by the "most odorous" and "lovable", open in a lazy yawn of kisses (das wohlriechendste aller Mäulchen). In that desert mouth it turns into a "hot" and "swollen" date, thirsty for "sharp snow-covered icy teeth". Thus, the subject "devastated" (verwüstet) experiences an experience of extraordinary potential, enhanced by the experience of "erotic reduction" 2. The poetic 'I' shrinks, surrounded by 'tiny beetles' and 'less and less willing', while 'kitty girls' - the sphinxes - become enormous above it, with which it is completely 'sphinxed' (umsphinxt). The picture of pleasure is complemented by the experience of hyperventilation, the absorption of "delicious air" that "flew from the moon". Everything would be great, if it were not for the specter of Europe as an old wife poisoning the delight with its exhalation: "I, a skeptic, doubt about this / I am not / from Europe / what is more skeptical than all wives" (zweifelsüchtiger [...] als alle Eheweibchen ). Immersion in the present of bliss, full actualization (surviving the Now, "no future, no memories") ultimately cannot succeed. The experience of the desert turns out to be just an adventure interrupted quickly. What's more, there is a macabre problem of the dancer's "other leg": "already stripped, chewed / miserable! Woe! Woe! bitten! ”. Well, a visible sign of the presence of the "fawn lion-monster" circling around the oasis.
Everything would be great, if it were not for the specter of Europe as an old wife poisoning the delight with its exhalation: "I, a skeptic, doubt about this / I am not / from Europe / what is more skeptical than all wives" (zweifelsüchtiger [...] als alle Eheweibchen ). Immersion in the present of bliss, full actualization (surviving the Now, "no future, no memories") ultimately cannot succeed. The experience of the desert turns out to be just an adventure interrupted quickly. What's more, there is a macabre problem of the dancer's "other leg": "already stripped, chewed / miserable! Woe! Woe! bitten! ”. Well, a visible sign of the presence of the "faded lion-monster" circling around the oasis. Worse still, along with the lost perspective of erotic realization, the necessity to dispose of dignity, which will be replaced by a bloated and vain substitute - virtue: “Ha! / Goodbye, dignity! / Blow again, blast, / laugh of virtue! ”. And with it, a substitutive masculinity that longs no longer for pleasure, but for domination, to "roar once more, / morally roar, / as a moral lion against the desert daughter to roar!". So there is an inevitable fall into the impotence of "Europeanness", in that "I can't do otherwise" (Ich kann nicht anders). And with it, the sarcastic repetition of the self-fulfilling prophecy quoted at the beginning: “The desert grows, woe to whom it appears! / A boulder grinds against a boulder, lets loose, absorbs, chokes. / Death, immeasurable by the dark heat, breathes / and chews - with its chewing it exists ... ”. The place of Eros is therefore taken by Thanatos, and he already dominates another desert, the reverse of that one, which could be "watered in the shape of a bloated spell". The moral lion turns out to be a deceitful animal. He warned with his roar against the expansion of the Desert, which, in fact, was limited and tyrannized. Hence, behind the loud threats of growth lies the truth about the shrinking of the Desert, about its vestigial nature. Thus, the area of freedom, which is constantly threatened by the lion, is shrinking, as eroticism understood in Bataille's terms as "an unadulterated form of conscious human autonomy" 1. It is not the Desert, but being a "European" that grows, and with it the primacy of moisture, black bile and melancholic temperament. The "European" as homo saturninus fills the world with his thoughts and works, leaving no room for the desert as a wasteland, untouched by intention, exploration and exploitation. Work takes the place of eroticism as Bataille's useless activity. Instead of the Desert - an amorphous, unorganized space, the City grows, a hemmed place and an analogue of the Oedipal triangle in Deleuze and Guattari. Instead of the desert's open horizon, multiple figures of imprisonment emerge. The wanderer, the equivalent of a wandering schizophrenic, is finally captured by his old wife - the mother, that femininity towards which Nietzsche is consistently a misogynist. The chaotic offensive of nomads crashes against the walls of the City, the Empire, the metaphorical Egypt from which the Hebrews barely escape to go out into the Desert. The more the City grows, the more the desert's temptation to find a space outside of it, where another existence, the vitalist-Thanatist art of living, understood as consent to swallow but not to be eaten, grows. The key point of Nietzsche's dithyramb is precisely the juxtaposition of two orals: on the one hand, the (desired) tiny girl's teeth, and on the other, the fangs of a lion, which it is wiser not to covet. Being in the belly of a whale and being in the belly of a lion are fundamentally different: in the former case the subject retains its integrity, in the latter case it is torn and crushed. Here we go deeper into the philosophical sense of the Nietzschean opposition, which we might at first impulse to understand flatly, as the opposition between delightful play and the shallow bourgeois morality that forbids it. The opposition between erotic life in the Desert and moral life in the City, however, is much more weighty and fundamental. It is a choice between the sovereignty and integrity of the subject who, despite being swallowed, retains himself in a state of paradoxical power, and the loss of subjectivity, chewing with the illusion of power (crushed and chewed, he believes that he will be able to chew and crush himself). So there is a choice of tiny masculinity, shrinking to the size of a "swollen date", or masculine bloated and vain, inflated with a bellows and roaring like a lion in the wilderness. The former can be swallowed, so it can enter into an intimate relationship with the female subject; the latter can only maim, devour or destroy him, as evidenced by the bitten leg of the dancer. Well, the "voraciousness of an animal contrasted with the cook's calmness", mentioned by Bataille 3.
Everything would be great, if it were not for the specter of Europe as an old wife poisoning the delight with its exhalation: "I, a skeptic, doubt about this / I am not / from Europe / what is more skeptical than all wives" (zweifelsüchtiger [...] als alle Eheweibchen ). Immersion in the present of bliss, full actualization (surviving the Now, "no future, no memories") ultimately cannot succeed. The experience of the desert turns out to be just an adventure interrupted quickly. What's more, there is a macabre problem of the dancer's "other leg": "already stripped, chewed / miserable! Woe! Woe! bitten! ”. Well, a visible sign of the presence of the "faded lion-monster" circling around the oasis. Worse still, along with the lost perspective of erotic realization, the necessity to dispose of dignity, which will be replaced by a bloated and vain substitute - virtue: “Ha! / Goodbye, dignity! / Blow again, blast, / laugh of virtue! ”. And with it, a substitutive masculinity that longs no longer for pleasure, but for domination, to "roar once more, / morally roar, / as a moral lion against the desert daughter to roar!". So there is an inevitable fall into the impotence of "Europeanness", in that "I can't do otherwise" (Ich kann nicht anders). And with it, the sarcastic repetition of the self-fulfilling prophecy quoted at the beginning: “The desert grows, woe to whom it appears! / A boulder grinds against a boulder, lets loose, absorbs, chokes. / Death, immeasurable by the dark heat, breathes / and chews - with its chewing it exists ... ”. The place of Eros is therefore taken by Thanatos, and he already dominates another desert, the reverse of that one, which could be "watered in the shape of a bloated spell". The moral lion turns out to be a deceitful animal. He warned with his roar against the expansion of the Desert, which, in fact, was limited and tyrannized. Hence, behind the loud threats of growth lies the truth about the shrinking of the Desert, about its vestigial nature. Thus, the area of freedom, which is constantly threatened by the lion, is shrinking, as eroticism understood in Bataille's terms as "an unadulterated form of conscious human autonomy" 1. It is not the Desert, but being a "European" that grows, and with it the primacy of moisture, black bile and melancholic temperament. The "European" as homo saturninus fills the world with his thoughts and works, leaving no room for the desert as a wasteland, untouched by intention, exploration and exploitation. Work takes the place of eroticism as Bataille's useless activity. Instead of the Desert - an amorphous, unorganized space, the City grows, a hemmed place and an analogue of the Oedipal triangle in Deleuze and Guattari. Instead of the desert's open horizon, multiple figures of imprisonment emerge. The wanderer, the equivalent of a wandering schizophrenic, is finally captured by his old wife - the mother, that femininity towards which Nietzsche is consistently a misogynist. The chaotic offensive of nomads crashes against the walls of the City, the Empire, the metaphorical Egypt from which the Hebrews barely escape to go out into the Desert. The more the City grows, the more the desert's temptation to find a space outside of it, where another existence, the vitalist-Thanatist art of living, understood as consent to swallow but not to be eaten, grows. The key point of Nietzsche's dithyramb is precisely the juxtaposition of two orals: on the one hand, the (desired) tiny girl's teeth, and on the other, the fangs of a lion, which it is wiser not to covet. Being in the belly of a whale and being in the belly of a lion are fundamentally different: in the former case the subject retains its integrity, in the latter case it is torn and crushed. Here we go deeper into the philosophical sense of the Nietzschean opposition, which we might at first impulse to understand flatly, as the opposition between delightful play and the shallow bourgeois morality that forbids it. The opposition between erotic life in the Desert and moral life in the City, however, is much more weighty and fundamental. It is a choice between the sovereignty and integrity of the subject who, despite being swallowed, retains himself in a state of paradoxical power, and the loss of subjectivity, chewing with the illusion of power (crushed and chewed, he believes that he will be able to chew and crush himself). So there is a choice of tiny masculinity, shrinking to the size of a "swollen date", or masculine bloated and vain, inflated with a bellows and roaring like a lion in the wilderness. The former can be swallowed, so it can enter into an intimate relationship with the female subject; the latter can only maim, devour or destroy him, as evidenced by the bitten leg of the dancer. Well, the "voraciousness of an animal contrasted with the cook's calmness", mentioned by Bataille 3.
instead of the Desert - an amorphous, unorganized space, the City grows, a hemmed place
II.
But does the moral lion triumph, and is there no hope of erotic fulfillment at the end? Here emerges the possibility of a second reading of the "post-dinner psalm", which is competitive, and perhaps complementary, to the first one outlined above. The roaring lion could be a figure of the desire for loss and self-destruction, the source of the horror of lust. Eroticism is not what is given in human biology, but on the contrary, it is the transgression of an instinctive impulse. It comes from overcoming the disgust about the sexual act itself, but also the trauma associated with knowing death. The wanderer has fallen into "Europeanness" and did not manage to settle in the Desert, but he did not reduce it to a meaningless adventure. On the contrary, he found in the experience of the Desert a wisdom that is not a moral, an essential knowledge about himself: "You are a stone, a desert, you are death ...". When we read the poem again, from the end to the beginning, a suspicion arises opposite to our first doubt of the lion's truthfulness: perhaps the Desert is really growing, rooted in the wanderer. So no longer a wanderer inside the Desert, swallowed by an oasis as in the belly of a whale, but a Desert within a wanderer who has overcome this death, a terror circling intimacy like a beast lurking in the darkness. Thus, we find the double negation indicated by Bataille as the source of eroticism, the dynamics of flight and return, re-undertaking what caused terror or disgust, its transformation into desire. A resident of the City becomes a wanderer periodically, returns to the Desert, aspires to it, makes it what is most desired. As Bataille points out, the new comeback is something qualitatively different from the first meeting: Desire is no longer a compulsion, as it might have originally been, in a moment of overwhelming and fleeting animal excitement. Now it is a transformed nature, because it is cursed, so the spirit is approaching it again rebellious, reluctant, hesitating. Thus, the result of this second phase is to maintain the fervor (or, if you will, the insanity) of the first; the temperature decreases as the first one extends unidirectionally (i.e. when the only effect of disgust becomes a relaxed life) 1. One can therefore hope that the second arrival in the Desert will no longer be the arrival of the "European" who "cannot otherwise" and who cannot afford any other fervor, but the fulfillment of the second phase, the fulfillment of eroticism that will not contradict itself by quoting - even a mockery - the moral roar of a lion. Maybe the second time around, the missing leg will be found ("Where is it, sad, abandoned, / that lonely leg?"), And the macabre hypothesis of biting it off will turn into a bedroom game? On the second reading, backwards, we learned more about the sources, mechanisms and conditions of eroticism, going beyond that first, flat reading about the triumph of bourgeois morality over playfulness. Still, the question of the philosophical meaning of eroticism remains unanswered. What philosophy is actually eroticism in this text? So what is this "lost / twin gem" that we still haven't found when we only see erotic reflections on the surface of meaning?
But does the moral lion triumph, and is there no hope of erotic fulfillment at the end? Here emerges the possibility of a second reading of the "post-dinner psalm", which is competitive, and perhaps complementary, to the first one outlined above. The roaring lion could be a figure of the desire for loss and self-destruction, the source of the horror of lust. Eroticism is not what is given in human biology, but on the contrary, it is the transgression of an instinctive impulse. It comes from overcoming the disgust about the sexual act itself, but also the trauma associated with knowing death. The wanderer has fallen into "Europeanness" and did not manage to settle in the Desert, but he did not reduce it to a meaningless adventure. On the contrary, he found in the experience of the Desert a wisdom that is not a moral, an essential knowledge about himself: "You are a stone, a desert, you are death ...". When we read the poem again, from the end to the beginning, a suspicion arises opposite to our first doubt of the lion's truthfulness: perhaps the Desert is really growing, rooted in the wanderer. So no longer a wanderer inside the Desert, swallowed by an oasis as in the belly of a whale, but a Desert within a wanderer who has overcome this death, a terror circling intimacy like a beast lurking in the darkness. Thus, we find the double negation indicated by Bataille as the source of eroticism, the dynamics of flight and return, re-undertaking what caused terror or disgust, its transformation into desire. A resident of the City becomes a wanderer periodically, returns to the Desert, aspires to it, makes it what is most desired. As Bataille points out, the new comeback is something qualitatively different from the first meeting: Desire is no longer a compulsion, as it might have originally been, in a moment of overwhelming and fleeting animal excitement. Now it is a transformed nature, because it is cursed, so the spirit is approaching it again rebellious, reluctant, hesitating. Thus, the result of this second phase is to maintain the fervor (or, if you will, the insanity) of the first; the temperature decreases as the first one extends unidirectionally (i.e. when the only effect of disgust becomes a relaxed life) 1. One can therefore hope that the second arrival in the Desert will no longer be the arrival of the "European" who "cannot otherwise" and who cannot afford any other fervor, but the fulfillment of the second phase, the fulfillment of eroticism that will not contradict itself by quoting - even a mockery - the moral roar of a lion. Maybe the second time around, the missing leg will be found ("Where is it, sad, abandoned, / that lonely leg?"), And the macabre hypothesis of biting it off will turn into a bedroom game? On the second reading, backwards, we learned more about the sources, mechanisms and conditions of eroticism, going beyond that first, flat reading about the triumph of bourgeois morality over playfulness. Still, the question of the philosophical meaning of eroticism remains unanswered. What philosophy is actually eroticism in this text? So what is this "lost / twin gem" that we still haven't found when we only see erotic reflections on the surface of meaning?
erotic reflections on the surface of meaning
III.
The Daughters of the Desert appear first of all as houris untouched by thought, figures standing at the antipodes of philosophy. And, it seems, with this mental virginity they tempt both the traveler and Nietzsche himself. After embarking on philosophizing, he still succumbed to another temptation throughout his life, poetry, which he seemed to perceive as an opposite and complementary mode to the philosophical discourse. As Nietzsche's insightful biographer Rüdiger Safranski1 attests, the lightning metaphor, already appearing in juveniles, refers to the power of a word beyond language, a word taken separately, liberated from the shackles of discursive organization. This single word, beyond philosophy, hides a peculiar potential, capable of shocking you against a background of silence, just like the suddenness of a lightning bolt bursting in the dark. The same metaphor returns in the poem Pinie und Blitz, written in 18822. In the image of a lonely pine tree, rising above the ground level inhabited by people and animals, instead of the absent dialogue (sprech 'ich - Niemand spricht mit Mir), the expectation for lightning appears as an aspiration (—Ich worth auf den ersten Blitz). Nietzsche is silent above philosophy, growing out of debate, dialogue, radical loneliness, and at the same time specific démesure, hubris, exceeding the measure, that too lonely, too high, too close (Zu einsam wuchs ich und zu hoch [...]; Zu nah ist mir der Wolken Sitz). Moderation as a philosophical virtue has remained long abandoned on a lower level in the horizontality of relationships with humans and animals. The measure enabled communication; so now, beyond the measure, what remains? This waiting and poetry after philosophy, the reduction of speech, which in philosophizing was fully visible in its full blossom. In philosophy, language proliferated and grew; while poetry tends towards an ellipse and complete silence. It is to be filled at the border in the long-awaited lightning. Philosophy, understood in the classical sense, was persistence. All reflection assumed the temporality of duration, an extension in time.
The Daughters of the Desert appear first of all as houris untouched by thought, figures standing at the antipodes of philosophy. And, it seems, with this mental virginity they tempt both the traveler and Nietzsche himself. After embarking on philosophizing, he still succumbed to another temptation throughout his life, poetry, which he seemed to perceive as an opposite and complementary mode to the philosophical discourse. As Nietzsche's insightful biographer Rüdiger Safranski1 attests, the lightning metaphor, already appearing in juveniles, refers to the power of a word beyond language, a word taken separately, liberated from the shackles of discursive organization. This single word, beyond philosophy, hides a peculiar potential, capable of shocking you against a background of silence, just like the suddenness of a lightning bolt bursting in the dark. The same metaphor returns in the poem Pinie und Blitz, written in 18822. In the image of a lonely pine tree, rising above the ground level inhabited by people and animals, instead of the absent dialogue (sprech 'ich - Niemand spricht mit Mir), the expectation for lightning appears as an aspiration (—Ich worth auf den ersten Blitz). Nietzsche is silent above philosophy, growing out of debate, dialogue, radical loneliness, and at the same time specific démesure, hubris, exceeding the measure, that too lonely, too high, too close (Zu einsam wuchs ich und zu hoch [...]; Zu nah ist mir der Wolken Sitz). Moderation as a philosophical virtue has remained long abandoned on a lower level in the horizontality of relationships with humans and animals. The measure enabled communication; so now, beyond the measure, what remains? This waiting and poetry after philosophy, the reduction of speech, which in philosophizing was fully visible in its full blossom. In philosophy, language proliferated and grew; while poetry tends towards an ellipse and complete silence. It is to be filled at the border in the long-awaited lightning. Philosophy, understood in the classical sense, was persistence. All reflection assumed the temporality of duration, an extension in time.
at the beginning, the philosophy was persistence
At the same time, philosophy tended towards community. From its Greek beginnings it was an urban phenomenon, an agora phenomenon, an encounter; the duration of reflection was also the duration of the debate. And it is precisely as a denial of philosophy in these two basic aspects, duration and community, that something like anti-philosophy may emerge: the suddenness of an idea, fulguration, contrasting with the duration of reflection like a vertical axis, perpendicular to the horizontal one. At the same time, anti-philosophy isolates, becomes a non-communicable experience, lying outside the ordinary, dialogical, debate-based mode of philosophizing. While philosophy fulfilled itself in plain language, invested in language, shaped it for its own needs (up to sophistic perversions), anti-philosophy turns towards reducing the flow of words, towards an ellipse, and finally fades away on the verge of silence, which is the only appropriate experience of fulguration. At the same time, a question arises about the universality of the experience of enlightenment, of instantaneous insight. Socrates believed that the truth could be born if only the midwife and obstetrician had enough persistence, that it could be brought to a public square and made available. Meanwhile, suddenness is beyond human control. You can wait for it, but you cannot provoke it, procure it when it is not coming; So it is impossible to raise it on an agora or share it freely with others. Similarly, eroticism, as thoughtlessness and suddenness - or maybe "instant", and therefore the excessive, dazzling and non-discursive nature of the experience of ejaculation? - appears as a complementary mode to philosophizing, and at the same time as an indivisible, private experience that cannot be elevated to the agora (despite the precedent of another ancient philosopher who tried to masturbate there, and thus reduce erotic unpredictability and suddenness, bringing it under control) and putting it at any disposal).
the dazzling and non-discursive nature of the experience of ejaculation
IV.
Nietzsche got the fame of a philosopher-misogynist, who was bad at dealing with women. In view of this common view, then it might surprise us to dwell on its erotic sensitivity; it may seem exaggerated to emphasize the importance Nietzsche might ascribe to erotic experience as an area outside of philosophy and as a counterweight to it. In an 1877 note listing "things by degree of pleasure," he placed bodily pleasure below music, certainly not at the top of the hierarchy. Safranski juxtaposes this with an episode in the Cologne brothel where "just a few chords allow him to escape into another space" 1. It seems, however, that much of the confusion here results from the blurring of the very notion of eroticism. The eroticism that we are dealing with here is fulfilled precisely in the escape, and not in the full use of the opportunity that arose from accidentally hitting a brothel while exploring the city. It is worth recalling here once again Bataille's distinction between sexuality and eroticism, instinctive impulse and postponement. Nietzsche's gesture, which when confronted with prostitutes dressed in the cheapest trimmings, approaches the piano in the hope that playing a few chords will "restore his freedom", is nothing more than a desperate gesture of saving eroticism as a refuge of subjectivity and autarky, precisely in the context that offends him more than any other. Musical improvisation takes the place of absent eroticism (replaced and superseded by paid ersatz) as a form of autonomous action. Well, the whole problem of Nietzsche boils down to the fact that the Cologne brothel was not erotic at all (he was supposed to report this to people who knew little about eroticism). The brothel is a product and manifestation of the City's order, while only the Desert is truly erotic. The availability of a substitute and the unavailability of the proper thing are therefore tragically contrasting. Putting eroticism as a "twin jewel" of philosophy is based on the assumption that it offers a "free", undeserved, undeveloped, given unexpectedly suddenness of insight. The long-awaited erotic lightning penetrates the areas beyond the reach of the diligent duration of reflection. Karl Heinz Bohrer drew attention to the special meaning of the concept of suddenness in Nietzsche's writings, but focusing primarily on the importance of suddenness as a specific "temporal structure" of aesthetic experience, in which "the point is not to plunge the viewer into the view of eternal ideas or significance, but to dominate the currently perceived Now ”2. The importance of urgency as a key concept in Nietzsche's work, however, can be seen more broadly. He has a vague awareness of the existence of areas adjacent to philosophy, but lying outside its limits, inaccessible, and at the same time, in a sense, "more true" than it. The key to them can be as much music as eroticism as a form of experiencing suddenness as the topicality of "real life", which is terrifying due to the risk of disindividuation, the "I" dissolving in an instant insight into the essence of things. The possible superiority of philosophy over the experience of actualization (Bohrer's "Now") would consist solely in the fact that only philosophy is sufficiently compliant, offering continuity, duration, or rootedness to enable some kind of settlement. Although Nietzsche desires an instantaneous "seeing" or "sight" (Anblick), complementary and superior to the time-extended "seeing" (Sehens), an illumination higher than philosophizing, but at the same time he constantly struggles with a specific post-coital (post-instantaneous) problem. ). Safranski wrongly narrows it down to the question of life after the concert: "There is some life after music, but can you endure it?" Likewise, one should ask about life after all other forms of "instant" fulfillment experiences that cannot be made lasting. Philosophy is thus situated as a permanent ersatz in the face of the instantaneous sensations, but, as the biographer concludes, "the feeling of insufficiency remains of course", and with it "there is also sadness" 3.
It is not for nothing that Aristotle comes from the Latin adage that post coitum omne animalium triste est, with various - probably apocryphal - additions about creatures that allegedly sing after the act. Post hoc is also sung by this wanderer, who calls himself the Shadow of Zarathustra, and it is no coincidence that he calls his song "the post-dinner psalm", that is, it seals some consumption which the appearance of the moral lion apparently did not ultimately thwart or suppress. It is a different, metaphorical kind of food, remaining, as we remember, in opposition to the macabre nibbling of a dancer's leg. Well, this eroticism, which is a kind of consumption by abandoning consumption, a fulfillment without fulfillment, an escape to the side, a musical improvisation in a brothel. Here, however, there is this strange and disturbing loop: what is left in the stomach after such consumption? Is it not less macabre, swelling and growing death, which the wanderer takes with him as a memento of his adventure in the Desert like a syphilis brought from a brothel? But let's try to discern this confusion around the issue of empty and full belly. In Socrates, the begetting of souls was a sexuality that hardly saw the possibilities of eroticism as a side path, avoidance, and escape. The majesty thus appeared as a necessary complement. In the case of "pregnant women", sooner or later labor had to take place, as much painful as, above all, diligent, requiring effort and pressure. But the truth that was born had some solidity, the effects of philosophy were tangible. Nietzsche, on the other hand, sees the potential of eroticism in its fullest. Complementary to weight, heaviness and strenuous pressure, or perhaps more precisely than him, he is interested in lightness, voidness and lightning-fastness. He prefers ejaculation over childbirth. But both remain equally problematic. The duration of childbirth is repulsive, but the timing of ejaculation also puts us in front of a deficiency, an empty stomach that has nothing to fill. For even the eternal return and repetition does not break the essential moment of experience. There is a challenge of making yourself at home in the void, living in the desert, accepting a nomadic life with an empty belly, dates instead of meat.
Nietzsche got the fame of a philosopher-misogynist, who was bad at dealing with women. In view of this common view, then it might surprise us to dwell on its erotic sensitivity; it may seem exaggerated to emphasize the importance Nietzsche might ascribe to erotic experience as an area outside of philosophy and as a counterweight to it. In an 1877 note listing "things by degree of pleasure," he placed bodily pleasure below music, certainly not at the top of the hierarchy. Safranski juxtaposes this with an episode in the Cologne brothel where "just a few chords allow him to escape into another space" 1. It seems, however, that much of the confusion here results from the blurring of the very notion of eroticism. The eroticism that we are dealing with here is fulfilled precisely in the escape, and not in the full use of the opportunity that arose from accidentally hitting a brothel while exploring the city. It is worth recalling here once again Bataille's distinction between sexuality and eroticism, instinctive impulse and postponement. Nietzsche's gesture, which when confronted with prostitutes dressed in the cheapest trimmings, approaches the piano in the hope that playing a few chords will "restore his freedom", is nothing more than a desperate gesture of saving eroticism as a refuge of subjectivity and autarky, precisely in the context that offends him more than any other. Musical improvisation takes the place of absent eroticism (replaced and superseded by paid ersatz) as a form of autonomous action. Well, the whole problem of Nietzsche boils down to the fact that the Cologne brothel was not erotic at all (he was supposed to report this to people who knew little about eroticism). The brothel is a product and manifestation of the City's order, while only the Desert is truly erotic. The availability of a substitute and the unavailability of the proper thing are therefore tragically contrasting. Putting eroticism as a "twin jewel" of philosophy is based on the assumption that it offers a "free", undeserved, undeveloped, given unexpectedly suddenness of insight. The long-awaited erotic lightning penetrates the areas beyond the reach of the diligent duration of reflection. Karl Heinz Bohrer drew attention to the special meaning of the concept of suddenness in Nietzsche's writings, but focusing primarily on the importance of suddenness as a specific "temporal structure" of aesthetic experience, in which "the point is not to plunge the viewer into the view of eternal ideas or significance, but to dominate the currently perceived Now ”2. The importance of urgency as a key concept in Nietzsche's work, however, can be seen more broadly. He has a vague awareness of the existence of areas adjacent to philosophy, but lying outside its limits, inaccessible, and at the same time, in a sense, "more true" than it. The key to them can be as much music as eroticism as a form of experiencing suddenness as the topicality of "real life", which is terrifying due to the risk of disindividuation, the "I" dissolving in an instant insight into the essence of things. The possible superiority of philosophy over the experience of actualization (Bohrer's "Now") would consist solely in the fact that only philosophy is sufficiently compliant, offering continuity, duration, or rootedness to enable some kind of settlement. Although Nietzsche desires an instantaneous "seeing" or "sight" (Anblick), complementary and superior to the time-extended "seeing" (Sehens), an illumination higher than philosophizing, but at the same time he constantly struggles with a specific post-coital (post-instantaneous) problem. ). Safranski wrongly narrows it down to the question of life after the concert: "There is some life after music, but can you endure it?" Likewise, one should ask about life after all other forms of "instant" fulfillment experiences that cannot be made lasting. Philosophy is thus situated as a permanent ersatz in the face of the instantaneous sensations, but, as the biographer concludes, "the feeling of insufficiency remains of course", and with it "there is also sadness" 3.
It is not for nothing that Aristotle comes from the Latin adage that post coitum omne animalium triste est, with various - probably apocryphal - additions about creatures that allegedly sing after the act. Post hoc is also sung by this wanderer, who calls himself the Shadow of Zarathustra, and it is no coincidence that he calls his song "the post-dinner psalm", that is, it seals some consumption which the appearance of the moral lion apparently did not ultimately thwart or suppress. It is a different, metaphorical kind of food, remaining, as we remember, in opposition to the macabre nibbling of a dancer's leg. Well, this eroticism, which is a kind of consumption by abandoning consumption, a fulfillment without fulfillment, an escape to the side, a musical improvisation in a brothel. Here, however, there is this strange and disturbing loop: what is left in the stomach after such consumption? Is it not less macabre, swelling and growing death, which the wanderer takes with him as a memento of his adventure in the Desert like a syphilis brought from a brothel? But let's try to discern this confusion around the issue of empty and full belly. In Socrates, the begetting of souls was a sexuality that hardly saw the possibilities of eroticism as a side path, avoidance, and escape. The majesty thus appeared as a necessary complement. In the case of "pregnant women", sooner or later labor had to take place, as much painful as, above all, diligent, requiring effort and pressure. But the truth that was born had some solidity, the effects of philosophy were tangible. Nietzsche, on the other hand, sees the potential of eroticism in its fullest. Complementary to weight, heaviness and strenuous pressure, or perhaps more precisely than him, he is interested in lightness, voidness and lightning-fastness. He prefers ejaculation over childbirth. But both remain equally problematic. The duration of childbirth is repulsive, but the timing of ejaculation also puts us in front of a deficiency, an empty stomach that has nothing to fill. For even the eternal return and repetition does not break the essential moment of experience. There is a challenge of making yourself at home in the void, living in the desert, accepting a nomadic life with an empty belly, dates instead of meat.
the place of Eros is therefore not taken by Thanatos, but by Erros
V.
The place of Eros is therefore not taken by Thanatos, but by Erros, the wandering spirit of the desert, in Agata Bielik-Robson renouncing eternity ("infinite life") in favor of "an infinite thirst for life" (a life that in itself could remain finite, "stabbed by death ") 1. Once again this pattern of intersecting axes emerges: horizontal infinity, eternal duration, turns out to be complementary to the instantaneous verticality of infinite desire. The death that the wanderer carries within himself is not the mors syphilitica, but the death of non-procreation, the emptying of the world, which would have to be the result of a consistent choice of eroticism every time, staying at the moment and at the vertical axis. It is not by coincidence that the association with the Gnostic context and the old dream of leaving the material condition, of spiritual liberation by ceasing to beget emerges here. For Agata Bielik-Robson, it is about “a life that knows that it is finished, and yet it refuses to accept its ontological annulment in a dimension where, apparently, only infinite and eternal qualities count. […] It is a life that boldly invests in Error against the Truth, opposing the seemingly iron logic imposed by its finiteness ”2. Putting on the vertical axis of infinite desire is also an escape to the side, an avoidance towards eternity closed by individual death. The specter of individual death has always been averted by seeking some non omnis moriar, leaving a legacy such as philosophy. It would also be possible to avoid the specter of death thanks to the idea of the eternal return, the belief in the cyclicality of time, and thus the return of life multiplied by begetting. But there is this side perpendicular path, the wisdom of the traveler who calls himself the Shadow of Zarathustra. Note the returning perpendicular: here is, on the one hand, Zarathustra discovering that bliss "wants" eternity, though unable to annex it, to extend into the dimension of infinite duration; here, perpendicular to it, the Shadow of Zarathustra with its "after-dinner song", coming in delight and setting the problem in an unexpected light, turning the whole system ninety degrees. So here is, on the other hand, the verse repeated in the finale, taking on a new meaning, about the expanding desert. Once as a threat, once as a promise to be boulder, emptiness and death. Ultimately, the stake and consequence of eroticism is taking the duration of the Desert within, taking it into one's belly. It is no coincidence that the Dionysian dithrambs, created in the years 1884-1888, come post hoc, in reference to So Spoke Zarathustra, parts I-III of which appeared in the years 1883-1884. But perhaps it should be seen as a transcendence of a work that would eventually be included in Among the Daughters of the Desert as part of part IV, published by its own expense in 18853. One might think that the poetry of philosophers is, above all, juvenilia, youthful texts that precede the actual philosophical experience that can only be read in them as an inclination, anticipation, and a path to travel in the future. Meanwhile, this poetic postscript to Zarathustra comes after philosophy. It may not seal the end of philosophizing, but it does testify to the emerging awareness of the existence of the limit of philosophy.
The place of Eros is therefore not taken by Thanatos, but by Erros, the wandering spirit of the desert, in Agata Bielik-Robson renouncing eternity ("infinite life") in favor of "an infinite thirst for life" (a life that in itself could remain finite, "stabbed by death ") 1. Once again this pattern of intersecting axes emerges: horizontal infinity, eternal duration, turns out to be complementary to the instantaneous verticality of infinite desire. The death that the wanderer carries within himself is not the mors syphilitica, but the death of non-procreation, the emptying of the world, which would have to be the result of a consistent choice of eroticism every time, staying at the moment and at the vertical axis. It is not by coincidence that the association with the Gnostic context and the old dream of leaving the material condition, of spiritual liberation by ceasing to beget emerges here. For Agata Bielik-Robson, it is about “a life that knows that it is finished, and yet it refuses to accept its ontological annulment in a dimension where, apparently, only infinite and eternal qualities count. […] It is a life that boldly invests in Error against the Truth, opposing the seemingly iron logic imposed by its finiteness ”2. Putting on the vertical axis of infinite desire is also an escape to the side, an avoidance towards eternity closed by individual death. The specter of individual death has always been averted by seeking some non omnis moriar, leaving a legacy such as philosophy. It would also be possible to avoid the specter of death thanks to the idea of the eternal return, the belief in the cyclicality of time, and thus the return of life multiplied by begetting. But there is this side perpendicular path, the wisdom of the traveler who calls himself the Shadow of Zarathustra. Note the returning perpendicular: here is, on the one hand, Zarathustra discovering that bliss "wants" eternity, though unable to annex it, to extend into the dimension of infinite duration; here, perpendicular to it, the Shadow of Zarathustra with its "after-dinner song", coming in delight and setting the problem in an unexpected light, turning the whole system ninety degrees. So here is, on the other hand, the verse repeated in the finale, taking on a new meaning, about the expanding desert. Once as a threat, once as a promise to be boulder, emptiness and death. Ultimately, the stake and consequence of eroticism is taking the duration of the Desert within, taking it into one's belly. It is no coincidence that the Dionysian dithrambs, created in the years 1884-1888, come post hoc, in reference to So Spoke Zarathustra, parts I-III of which appeared in the years 1883-1884. But perhaps it should be seen as a transcendence of a work that would eventually be included in Among the Daughters of the Desert as part of part IV, published by its own expense in 18853. One might think that the poetry of philosophers is, above all, juvenilia, youthful texts that precede the actual philosophical experience that can only be read in them as an inclination, anticipation, and a path to travel in the future. Meanwhile, this poetic postscript to Zarathustra comes after philosophy. It may not seal the end of philosophizing, but it does testify to the emerging awareness of the existence of the limit of philosophy.
Zarathustra and the Shadow of Zarathustra
The last word, however, belongs to Zarathustra singing his Rundgesang, that speaks of bliss that demands eternity (Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit), discovered at the final, culminating moment of midnight. Tired of the joyful noise of "higher people", he leaves his guests to take refuge in the company of his animals. It is among them, in the midst of silence and wordlessness, that the final fulfilment of midnight comes. Once again, the logic of the poetic imagination allows us to capture things that are difficult to translate into the discursive logic of philosophy. Now, also midnight, a moment of Zarathustra's insight, translated into the point at which the hands of the clock, usually forming one angle or another, overlap. Zarathustra and the Shadow of Zarathustra, telling complementary truths about eternity (the "living" eternity of bliss, the "dead" eternity of the Desert?), overlap in a vertical flash from beyond time, symbolized by the overlapping - and rapidly diverging again - hands of the chiming clock. This clock is at the same time a metaphor for the cyclical striving to repeat the culmination, as well as the emerging possibility of an ecstatic jump to the side, out of time, up, in the direction indicated in the finally overlapping arrows, signifying both the rise and the inverted fall into bottomless depth (Die Welt ist tief / Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht).
These conclusions belong entirely to the domain of poetic imagination, governed by the subtle laws of non-contradiction and momentality, which translates here into the order of association and coincidence, complementary to the philosophical argumentation, extended and unfolding over time as a succession of assumptions and conclusions, understood as material causes and effects. Philosophy in the Socratic tradition was conceived as a dialogical work, taking place between the maieutic of the midwife and the urge of the woman in labour. Nietzsche longs to philosophize with friction movements and to think by orgasms and lightnings, sudden enlightenments, that happen (sometimes simultaneously), but remain essentially non-communicable. These are insights that prescind any words. In the end, there remains nothing else but to keep silent.
These conclusions belong entirely to the domain of poetic imagination, governed by the subtle laws of non-contradiction and momentality, which translates here into the order of association and coincidence, complementary to the philosophical argumentation, extended and unfolding over time as a succession of assumptions and conclusions, understood as material causes and effects. Philosophy in the Socratic tradition was conceived as a dialogical work, taking place between the maieutic of the midwife and the urge of the woman in labour. Nietzsche longs to philosophize with friction movements and to think by orgasms and lightnings, sudden enlightenments, that happen (sometimes simultaneously), but remain essentially non-communicable. These are insights that prescind any words. In the end, there remains nothing else but to keep silent.
in the end, there remains nothing else but to keep silent
F. Nietzsche, Nietzsche Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. G. Colli and M. Montinari, vol. 3, Berlin 1967, p. 379-385.
F. Nietzsche, Nachgelassene Fragmente Juli 1882 bis Winter 1883-1884, ed. G. Colli i M. Montinari, t. 1, Berlin – New York 1977, p. 107.
F. Nietzsche, Nachgelassene Fragmente Juli 1882 bis Winter 1883-1884, ed. G. Colli i M. Montinari, t. 1, Berlin – New York 1977, p. 107.
