Exámenes Complementarios

In fact, it was not until the autumn of 1888, only weeks before sending Cosima the famous love-note, that Nietzsche first posed, in the pages of Ecce Homo, the riddle of Ariadne in its explicit form. In the midst of a section dedicated to the retrospective appraisal of Zarathustra, we discover the following, inscrutable remarks: “Nothing like this has ever been composed, ever been felt, ever been suffered before, this is how a god suffers, a Dionysus. The answer [Antwort] to this sort of dithyramb of solar solitude in the light would be Ariadne…Who besides me knows what Ariadne is!...Nobody until now has been able to solve riddles [Räthseln] like this.”102 _{Like most passages in}

Nietzsche‟s oeuvre, the significance of what is written here is entirely lost if we fail to consider the context in which it appears. These are not isolated, fragmentary remarks. On the contrary, they constitute a brief, though

101 Ibid.

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nonetheless scintillating, commentary on a specific passage from Nietzsche‟s own “Night Song” – that unforgettable interlude from Part II of Zarathustra. It is this song, redolent of a great nostalgic lament, which elicits from Nietzsche the boast that nothing similar had ever been composed, ever been felt, ever been sufferedbefore.

What is initially so striking about the passages cited above, is the manner in which Ariadne – this unparalleled avatar of esotericism – is presented, rather ambiguously, as the answer to Nietzsche‟s dithyramb of solar solitude even whilst her own meaning remains hopelessly enshrouded in obscurity. Indeed, it is on the basis of this very tension between Ariadne‟s status as both an answer and a riddle, that Nietzsche‟s remarks derive both their hermeneutical depth and their enigmatic allure.

Despite assuring us of her crucial importance, Nietzsche nevertheless refuses to tell us precisely who or what Ariadne is. Instead, he offers us a clue: Ariadne is the answer to a particular type of “solar solitude in the light” which has never been felt or suffered until now. Her significance, therefore, is utterly dependent upon the scenography of suffering that we encounter within “The Night Song.” But how, precisely, are we to characterise the nature of this suffering? And what might its broader philosophical significance be?

The thread of Ariadne, it seems, lies entangled around these very questions, and so it is here that we must attempt, with care and sobriety, to begin loosening Nietzsche‟s knot. In attempting to do so, we are greatly aided by Nietzsche‟s own, invaluable comments on the “Night Song” in those passages which both immediately precede and follow its citation within Ecce Homo. According to these comments, the “Night Song,” which Nietzsche composed in May of 1883, was originally intended as “an immortal lament at being condemned never to love by an excess of light and power, by a sun-like

nature.”103 _{One might assume, on the basis of this statement, that the dolorous}

rhetoric which so extensively permeates the scenography of the “Night Song” is a direct consequence of this mysterious injunction which condemns

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Zarathustra never to love. But if this were indeed the case, then should we not expect to find, quite naturally, any number of textual references within the song itself suggesting a correlation between the suffering undergone by Zarathustra and the persistence of an inexorably stifled eroticism?

Indeed, upon reading the “Night Song” and studying its imagery, this is precisely what we do find. Moreover, there is arguably no section in the entire text of Zarathustra which is more explicitly and unmistakably pervaded by erotic longing. Already in the song‟s first several lines we encounter the following confession: “Something unstilled, unstillable [Unstillbares] is within me, that wants [will] to become loud [laut]. A desire [Begierde] for love is within me, that itself talks in the language of love.”104 _{Having previously}

compared his soul to “the song of a lover [das Lied eines Liebenden],”105

Zarathustra here begins to express, for the first time, a desire not only to make this love manifest, but also to communicate it openly and publicly. In order to do so, however, he must wait for the appropriate moment – a moment which is marked, just as in Wagner‟s Tristan, by the coming of nightfall. For it is only then, amidst the billowy darkness, that the “lover‟s song may at last awaken.”106

And yet, as we soon discover, the arrival of twilight ultimately brings Zarathustra, like Tristan, neither the satisfaction, nor the release, which he desires – but only the sorrow of an ever-renewed longing. His hopes of erotic fulfilment are continually frustrated, as Nietzsche explains, on account of the luminosity which envelopes him. “I am girded round with light,” Zarathustra laments, “ah, if only I were dark and night-like!”107 _{This desire for the night}

expresses, in symbolical terms, a hunger for love‟s enduring embrace. And yet, to the extent that Zarathustra‟s luminous, sun-like nature prevails, the sensual darkness of erotic bliss is perpetually denied him.

103 Ibid. 131. 104 Ibid. 131. 105 Ibid. 106 Ibid. 107 Ibid.

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Zarathustra‟s problem is not that he is somehow incapable of loving – quite to the contrary, his heart, like the sun, “never rests from bestowing.”108 _{At every}

moment, his love seeks to flow forth from an over-full heart. The problem is that he knows no otherheart capable of loving him in the same manner. The roots of Zarathustra‟s suffering reside in the fact that he experiences “none of the happiness”109 _{felt by the lover whose ardour is reciprocated. He incessantly}

seeks to illumine, and then to grow dark in love – but all of this is denied him. In spite of all Zarathustra‟s amorous longing, his inescapable solar-solitude ultimately condemns him to a love which is hopelessly unrequited and bereft of fulfilment.

As a result, the scenography of Nietzsche‟s “Night Song” comes to be pervaded not by depictions of intimacy or erotic consummation, but by the resounding pathos of a cruel and irreducible regimen of distanciation which returns, incessantly, to separate the willing lover from the object of his yearning. Nietzsche himself provides us with a helpful illustration of this eroticism, predicated upon dissymmetry, when he writes: “There is a chasm [Kluft] between giving [Nehmen] and taking [Geben]…and the smallest chasm [die kleinste Kluft] is the last to be bridged.”110 _{In Zarathustra‟s case, love is}

continually offered, but never requited – and thus, over time, “it grows weary of itself in its overflow.”111 _{It is this very weariness, endured by a lover}

incessantly thwarted on account of die kleinste Kluft, that so thoroughly pervades the scenography of the “Night Song.”

●

108 Ibid.

109 The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings. 132. 110 Ibid.

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To understand how this eroticism of futility and distanciation came to populate the Zarathustrian image repertoire, one need look no further than to Nietzsche‟s own letters during the period immediately preceding the song‟s composition. These letters depict, almost without exception, a man struggling against all odds to overcome an oppressive and irremissible loneliness. “I have suddenly become poor in love and consequently very much in need of love,”112 _{Nietzsche writes, only months before composing “The Night Song.”}

The subtext for these comments is ostensibly Nietzsche‟s abandonment, in November of 1882, by his closest friends, Lou Salomé and Paul Rée.

Having shared with them, throughout the summer of that year, a relationship of the deepest trust and intellectual complicity, Nietzsche found himself, only months later, utterly forsaken and alone. Though it is unquestionable that Nietzsche himself was at least partially responsible for precipitating this crisis, he nevertheless appeared to emerge from it all “insulted and degraded to the limit of his endurance.”113

By the winter of 1882-3, his despondency had taken an increasingly morose turn, as evidenced by the following lines which he addressed to Rée in mid- December: “If I should happen one day to take my life because of some passion or other, there would not be much to grieve about. What do my fantasies matter to you?”114 _{The possibility of suicide is mentioned again, only}

weeks later, in a letter to Overbeck: “The barrel of a revolver is for me now a source of relatively pleasant thoughts.”115

111 Ibid..

112 The Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche. 196.

113 Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity. 72. 114 The Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche. 198.

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Though Nietzsche remained, for the most part, characteristically taciturn about the precise reasons for his sorrow, he complains, in at least two separate instances of “tormenting and horrible memories.”116 _{The past, it seems, had}

become inextricably bound up for him with the imagery of disappointment and loss. As a result, Nietzsche came to experience “a sort of instability such as he had never known before.”117 _{And all of this was only further exacerbated}

in February of 1883, when Nietzsche heard the sudden and unexpected news of Wagner‟s death in Venice – an event which elicited from him, once again, an evocation of tortuously stifled eroticism.

“You served that which does not die with a man even though it is born in him,” Nietzsche wrote to Cosima, “Thus today I look upon you, and thus I looked upon you in the past, although from a great distance, only upon you, as the most honoured woman who could ever be in my heart.”118 _{On the day}

Nietzsche penned these words, it had been less than two months since his relationship with Lou had passed through “its last agonising throes.”119

What is both fascinating and eminently instructive about his note of condolence to Cosima, is the manner in which Nietzsche claims to accord her a place of utmost honour within his heart, telling her of his profound love for her, whilst at the very same time stipulating and even reinscribing the irreducible distance, the interval of separation, which necessarily keeps them apart. Indeed, it is almost as if this “great distance” of which Nietzsche writes, this interval of separation, had come to comprise the very condition of his love for her. As if it were within the very nature of his longing and his love to remain – not unlike Tristan‟s passion – hopelessly unconsummated.120

116 Ibid. 206 & 198.

117 Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity. 72. 118 Wagner and Nietzsche. 227.

119 The Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche. 199.

120 Remember, it had been during a visit to Tribschen, of all places, that Nietzsche had elected to propose (unsuccessfully) to Lou in May 1882. Why had he chosen this site? Was it to purge the memory of an unfulfilled romance with Cosima? Or (as we suspect) to relive, on the contrary, a failure and dissatisfaction which had become perhaps more valuable to him than any triumph?

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With all possibilities of intimacy seemingly foreclosed, Nietzsche‟s sense of loneliness and bereavement, in the weeks immediately preceding his composition of “The Night Song,” became ever more intense.121 _{“With all the}

people I love, everything is over, it is the past…forbearance,”122 _Nietzsche

would write. Indeed, on the basis of the preceding remarks, it would not be implausible to suggest that, by the time of its composition, Nietzsche may very likely have seen this “immortal lament,” this dithyramb of solar solitude, as a perfect opportunity to excise the very feelings of erotic frustration which he himself had so recently undergone.123

What is so remarkable, however, is the fact that Zarathustra, at no point

within the “Night Song” seeks to restrain or curtail his yearning simply on account of the impossibility which fetters him. On the contrary, it is this very impossibility, this distance itself, which seemingly draws him onward, ever deeper into the labyrinth of longing. Consequently, what we encounter, within the scenography of his lament, is an account not of desire‟s alleviation or diminution, but rather, of its gradual and irreversible intensification. Indeed, what begins as mere Begierde in the opening lines of the song has become Sehnsucht by its mid-point.124 _{And when the former term returns once}

more, several lines later, it is doubled into the phrase Begierde nach Begehren

[“desire for desiring”]. This movement of intensification culminates in the song‟s closing lines where Nietzsche elects to eschew both Begierde and

Sehnsucht – in favour of Verlangen, a word which suggests, rather forcefully, a longing which has become transmuted into an exigency or demand. “Like a spring, my longing [Verlangen] flows forth from me,” Zarathustra remarks, “And I long [verlangt] for speech.”125 _{Whilst these words evoke, in a manner}

which is undeniably heart-wrenching, the tragedy of Zarathustra‟s failure to

121 Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity. 73. 122 The Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche. 220.

123 In a letter to Peter Gast from August of 1883, Nietzsche admits that the thematic content of Part II of Zarathustra is largely drawn from his own past. “The detail contains an incredible amount of personal experience and suffering which is intelligible only to me,” he writes. The Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche. 218.

124 As Heidegger helpfully instructs us, the etymological root Sucht carries the meaning illness, suffering, and pain (as in

Gelbsucht, “jaundice,’ and Schwindsucht, “consumption”). It is in this sense that the word Sehnsucht can be considered a yearning which is a kind of affliction more extreme than ordinary desire. Nietzsche: Volume II: The Eternal Recurrence of the Same. 217. 125 The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings. 133.

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secure the intimacy he so passionately seeks, they also suggest, at the same time, an overpowering exigency to bear witness, if not to love‟s attainment, then at least to love‟s deferral.

But could it be that Nietzsche, through the mediatory voice of Zarathustra, speaks of love‟s deferral most eloquently at precisely that moment when he avows, with utmost restraint, the absolute deferral of speech? And might this be the reason why Ariadne‟s identity must remain perpetually enshrouded in secrecy?

A rather intriguing suggestion. And indeed, it is along these very lines that we shall now offer a reading of Nietzsche‟s most famous riddle which will come to illumine, in an unprecedented manner, the erotic scenography in question – and lead us, moreover, to the threshold of a newfound appreciation for Nietzsche„s most challenging and illustrious of thoughts.