Antecedentes concretos, ficticios y reales

Stylistically considered, the recurrence of circular symbols is a variation of repetition.⁶⁷ Nietzsche employs the stylistic device of repetition to invoke the eternal recurrence on semantic, sentential and textual levels. Thus one finds in the text 1) repetitions of words and phrases; 2) repetitions of sentences; 3) repetitions of Zarathustra’s descent and ascent of the mountain; and 4) repetitions of the appearance of the sun and the serpent and the eagle. In Nietzsche’s Life Sentence: Coming to Terms with Eternal Recurrence (2005), Hatab gives in passing a stylistic interpretation of the eternal return by referencing repetition as a stylistic device Nietzsche

fourth part, which he wrote around a year later but chose not to publish. If one is of the three-part persuasion, the book’s structure would reflect the pre-classical symphony in three movements: a first movement in sonata-allegro form; a second, slow movement (adante or adagio) usually consisting of a theme and variations; and a third movement either ‘in the tempo of a minuet’ (sometimes minuet or scherzo and trio) or else in a faster dance-like tempo (allegro or presto). For those who include the fourth part, the form would be that of the later classical symphony in four movements, where the third would be a minuet and trio in ternary form, and the final movement dance-like in rondo.” (Parkes 2008: 13) See Parkes, “The Symphonic Structure of Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Preliminary Outline.”

67 Repetition could also be related to rhythm in Parkes’ musical reading of Nietzsche’s text, something that he or others may yet have to consider doing.

117 employs in the text for maximal creative effect. Paying attention to the relation between creativity and repetition, Hatab stresses the importance of there being “a connection between eternal recurrence and the human desire to experience artworks over and over again” (Hatab rhyme, and word/phrase reiteration. Such techniques are creative in relation to the normal absence of such patterns in ordinary language. These patterns are temporally structured recurrences that interrupt the familiar directional passage and ongoing business of speech by “re-calling” elements of the passage in different ways: metrics and rhymes infuse temporal passage with rhythmic and sonic attractions; repetition of words or phrases gives them unusual emphasis or retrieves them from temporal passage so as to spotlight something normally hidden by familiarity: their sheer happening as such. A poetic

“refrain,” therefore, is anything but tedious repetition. The word “refrain” comes from the French refraindre (to resound) and the Latin refringere (to break up and to check). A poetic refrain refrains language in the following way: it is a formal temporal structure that restrains the ordinary material business of linguistic passage; and in doing so, a refrain creates a hightened accentuation of the sheer disclosive force of language. We should note Nietzsche’s extended use of refrain in Zarathustra’s speech in “The Seven Seals,”

especially the repeated phrase “For I love you, O eternity!” In this regard, could eternal recurrence be heard as a global poetic refrain? (Hatab 2005: 137)

The answer is Yes. Indeed, the moment and sequence of eternal return exemplified by the repetition of words and phrases, rhymes and rhythm, alliteration and assonance allows for the refreshing of language, while the stylistic device, I add, becomes the vehicle for the eternal return as life affirmation through the desire to experience the joy of repeat performances of the text, especially of circular symbols. The repetition of circular symbols is redolent of the invocation of sacred time with a view to replacing profane time. In Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return (1971), Mircea Eliade recognises the distinction between profane and

68 There is a story that, in response to the woman’s question what he wanted to say in his piece Goethe played the piece again. “In this act, there is an echo of Nietzsche’s satisfaction with the nontelic, noncausal, nonexplicable immediacy of events” (Hatab 2005: ch. 7, footnote 19, p. 179).

118 sacred time in primitive culture. Profane time is time as we ordinarily perceive it. Sacred time is time perceived by archaic humans as mysterious, as behind or beneath concrete, ordinary time.

The former, as opposed to the latter, provided meaning for pre-modern humans. Acts or rites were seen as repetitions of a primordial act (Eliade 3, 4), sacred archetypes (5) posited by gods, heroes, or ancestors (22). “A rite (repetition) paradoxically transforms this moment into the mythical origin (the primordial ‘moment’); in other words, it transforms profane time (as durational, linear history) into sacred time (the circle of recurring origins)” (Hatab 1978: 120), thus giving every moment meaning derived from the past (Eliade 7). In other words, repetition transforms a mysterious occurrence into an all-the-more mysterious recurrence. Similarly, the repetition of circular symbols, especially cyclical diurnal symbols – temporal symbols – transforms one’s experience of time as figuratively linear into one’s experience of time as figuratively circular, while the reader experiences the mysterious repetition of circular symbols as reaching back to their primary occurrence, thus tying, as though retrospectively, the whole chain of cycles into one cyclical whole. Hatab, however, does not go on to explore the stylistic device of repetition in reference to the numerous symbols in the text. There is no mention on his part of the repetition of either circular or specifically diurnal symbols either, to which study this work confines itself.

Besides the eternal return being represented through the repetition (Hatab) or music (Higgins) of verbal language, there is room yet for it being manifested through the dance (Parkes) in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. While music or the music of repetition speaks through noise (sounds), dance speaks through silence (rhythmic movements and gestures). Discussion of the latter as still an acoustic (to a certain degree), yet heavily visual, phenomenon will lay the

119 foundation for the consideration of the most silent, visual (circular and solar) representation of eternal recurrence.