Life Sentences (12 page)

Nietzsche made an emotional machine of the syllogism. For instance, if he dislikes the consequence of some argument, he will allow his dislike to falsify the premises and make them merely an allegation. Evangelicals deal with Darwin that way. Nietzsche’s use of language is almost entirely political: he sharpens his points by shouting, which inhibits a sober response, and repeats them insistently, as if he were running for office. He maligns the opposition, impugns its past, and adopts a prophetic tone as an excuse for vagueness.

To demonstrate the inhumanity of man to man, and therefore the corruptness of any human institution, I could cite data drawn from every column of the encyclopedia, but my evidence would not support the necessity of our malfeasances, just their prevalence. Similarly, cultural relativism relies on the testimony of a thousand quarreling tribes and ubiquitous differences of opinion. Yet from what generally is, one may infer only what will generally continue to be, never what ought to be. This mistake is sometimes called the naturalistic fallacy. The step from fact to value is so popular one might think it was a step that could be taken. Saint Paul, whom Nietzsche despised, used several of these sophistical arguments to incriminate the whole of humanity—“in Adam’s fall we sinned all”—since every disobedience earns the punishment due the first. Nor should I be inclined to welcome the bearers of the rack and screw into my company simply because, as Nietzsche suggests, bloodletting leaders are needed from time to time to stir things up, and disturb the repose of the mind (a version of the view that suffering can be a tonic), for I can imagine a hundred kinder ways to rise to an occasion, and find challenges that might need my mettle yet do not endanger freedom, limbs, or life. It is also true that a noble deed might be bad luck for an innocent bystander, and an evil undertaking
bring bounty to another, but these outcomes should not dissuade us from good works, or excuse crime.

Nietzsche insisted that every philosophical position expressed a perspective—there were no absolute or especially preferable standpoints—however, Nietzsche was allowed to have several, the rest of us only one; moreover, he misused the word in the usual way, emphasizing a subjectivity that is not necessarily present, since a geometrical perspective can be precise, as can a microscopic view, or a measurement made by machine. Nietzsche accuses our angle of view of being narrow and skewed, so that he can reduce it—as the strategy intends—to “only” and “merely” ours, whereas his is clear and wide and deep and sound as a sage’s should be, standing on a mountaintop, using telescopic eyes.

Epigrams aren’t arguments. A forest of hyperbole resembles a forest of bamboo; outside one thinks only how to limit its growth, inside how one may cut a path through. Some ideas are like steroids, and Nietzsche prefers those that make us stronger. “God is dead” did that for him, but he meant that the belief, not the deity, was done for, since what has never been can never cease to be. Nor is the belief—any belief—really dead: druids still frequent the forests, witches stir their kettles, mumbos jumbo, gourds rattle. Beliefs are running wild. Faiths fall, only to reappear as green and fresh as leaves. The Garden of Good Opinions has its weeds. What Nietzsche meant, and might have said—did say, in effect—was: a belief in God is no longer tenable to an educated mind. But what can we say to those educated minds that still exercise their right to be wrong?

Nietzsche threw up his hands. He exclaimed with disgust and despair. What else is there to do?

One stands in awe before the need of man to be deceived. When there are no satisfactory reasons for some heart-held conviction, and when it persists in spite of every philosophical complaint and scientific exposure—when, in short, argument is futile—one must look—as Nietzsche and Marx and Freud did—among folly’s causes for the most vulgar, easily grasped, immediately profitable, and sanitized factors. The latter condition should not surprise us, because popular beliefs of every kind are held in a haven of unexamined premises and unacknowledged consequences. Few ask what else they must embrace if they are to hold this or that item of religious dogma or political suasion; or what, if it were indeed true, must inevitably follow from such a fact, for what will follow will be surprise, contradiction, absurdity, and confusion. These beliefs are symptoms, not systems; they are ignorantly and narrowly held; they become treasured parts of the believer’s sense of self; they are talismans to calm fears and promise hope; they tell believers they must be humble because their beliefs make them superior, and that all men are equal except the ones they are asked to shoot; they unite us as nothing else will, and reassure the mind, because there really cannot be millions of such virtuous and faithful people identically mad and mistaken.

Up against such intractability, Nietzsche sermonizes from his own stump. And he makes promises in terms his opposition will understand … from his perspective, mind you … but with certainty. Yet it is never clear, it seems to me, whether Nietzsche is angry with Christianity because it is absurd, or because it preaches
passivity and encourages acceptance. Any metaphysics or theology that denies life (those are his words), that prefers the status quo, will receive his censure. But why should one be optimistic when there is so little evidence for it? … in Nietzsche’s life as well as ours. Because, brought to bed by a burning of the eyes, aching stomach, and bands of pain across your brow, in a cold bare rented room, disheartened further by your journey to it, depending upon people you can no longer trust, yet with your head nevertheless about to burst with announcements that need posting, there is no other weapon against despair—forsaken by your own skepticism, seduced by visions of what might be, and betrayed by opportunity and your own soul—than one loud
ja-sagend
after another. But this is acceptance driven like a truck toward a checkpoint.

What is new in
Zarathustra
is Nietzsche’s emphasis on process. Opinions are stationary. They should be no more than resting moments on a journey. So also customs, habits, values, hopes. We should continuously remake ourselves, because our species is the species that defies its definition, escapes its class, and evolves inside its own seed. Man must overcome man. This is not a recipe for our present practice of buying new beliefs like sporty cars and chic clothes when we can afford them, but resembles more precisely scientific refinements, progressive moral illumination, continuous learning. Everything can be comical. Let us frolic. Let us dance. Nothing is untouchable. Nothing is so serious it cannot provoke mirth. Nothing is sacred.

Back in the world of chronic pain, depressing news, and bad weather, Nietzsche is quarreling with former friends and future enemies, and grows closer in his own frayed mind to “the crucified one” than to his Zoroastrian namesake (he will soon sign letters
Der Gekreuzigte
or sometimes
Dionysos
); yet despite the insidious depredations of syphilis, which was probably the undiagnosed cause of many of his torments, he produces some of his most esteemed books, principally
Beyond Good and Evil
and
On the Genealogy of Morals
. Nietzsche’s behavior grew more and more uninhibited, as if, with an irony too bitter to be borne, the frenzied god had taken his
body hostage, so it pranced and sang, with unthinking fingers played wild riffs on the piano, embraced strangers, or compelled him to turn on those closest to him in unrestrained fury, howling, sobbing while subsiding with weariness, then displaying a hunger for food that had not even an animal’s limits. He was placed in an asylum. Later a patron, Meta von Salis, purchased a vacant villa above Weimar where Nietzsche and his sister (now his nurse and guardian) could live. Elisabeth immediately made extensive improvements to the property, which she calmly charged to her absentee hostess, whose fury followed but whose kindness continued. Nietzsche was oblivious to the century’s turn, now nearly a sofa’d corpse whom visitors were allowed to view a little, like Lenin would be laid out later, though Lenin would be immune from the flu that slipped into Nietzsche’s lungs, where, immobile as he was, it was soon a pneumonia which prospered until a heart attack ensued.

At the funeral services, they played Brahms.

I awoke one morning to find myself transformed. I had been a man, but a man who was treated by my parents and my sister like a bug. Perhaps I was not so much an insect at my office; perhaps I was something else there, a blotter or a trash basket. Perhaps, like a bum, I was warned not to loiter when I was out on the avenue, or, while traveling on the train, I became just another newspaper or another sample case. Perhaps, to my boss, I was a worm. At home, however, a bug was what I was, a bug in a bed, a bedbug, sperm of the kind you could find hidden in my name—Gregor Samsa—for doesn’t
sam
mean seed, a descendant? And so one day I woke to find myself more than a metaphor, more than a figure of derision and indifference. I was a bug, big in my bed as my body was, with a body bigger than any ordinary bug’s, bigger than a rat’s, a dog’s, though I was small, considering what my life meant to me. To others, however, I was huge, monstrous, horrifying, all I always wanted to be, all I always dreamed.

Of course, I was so much more than they imagined, for when people treat you within the habitual range of their emotions, they leave reality out. I was a bug to them, but not with a firm shell, not with thorny legs or with furry feelers, no, I was a man, a son, a day-old breadwinner, who was, despite being poorly outfitted for it, just a
bug, indeterminate as to species, and I lived an unimportant mostly invisible life, and survived on leftovers, crumbs, windfalls, hand-me-downs, spills. I dwelled with my parents, of course, though they depended on my salary and should by rights have been the bugs. I had a small room with four doors and a view of the rain.

On the wall I had framed the photo of a dominatrix, you would say, a genital symbol, you would say, Sacher-Masoch’s lady in furs, with one arm thrust suggestively into her furry muff, how much more obvious could you be, you might say, far above my station, too, I would guess from her furs, her gaze, but who would deny a lonely little man his dreams? To be what they’ve made me be. Yes, I’ve waked from one of them a bug because my bones are all on the outside like a screened porch and I squeak—my hinges are unfamiliar to me—when my legs wave. However, my transformation is not complete, because I am still complaining about my work, work I no longer have to do now that I am a bug for all intents, though I’m not used to that yet, so I have caught myself in the middle of my metamorphosis, halfway maybe on my journey to an active bug life, when I won’t have to worry about my boss, my job, the fact I’ve missed my train, must endure the nagging of my parents and my sister, Grete—good life to her now, eh?—or long any more for my mistress from the magazine, my paper love to whom I press my face; or fret my chores, my filial duties—that I’m late for work—or fret the rain that tells me, when I hear it falling, that I hear much as I used to hear—my mother chiding me about the lateness of the hour—yes—I feel much as I used to feel, can complain as I am accustomed to complain—yes, yes, thank you, Mother, I am getting up now—and, though there is a noticeable chitter in the rear parts of my words, I am confident that I am still somewhere a man. After all, I may be a bug but I am man sized.

Did you know my father deals in muffs? Receives muffs from a manufacturer, sells those muffs—as well as carded buttons, lingerie, handbags, gloves—to retail stores? Did you know that in addition to my work as a sample salesman, taking orders here, there, and everywhere
as always, I help out late in the day at my father’s shop, and toil (yes, that is the right word) in a government agency that handles workmen’s compensations and injury claims? You have to have visible wounds and a showy limp to earn my notice. So if I brought a complaint, a petition, even my own case to my attention, I would not award a krone to myself for all my pains, the burns I have received from my father’s glares.

Before I became a bug I wasn’t the son my parents wanted, and now that I am a bug, I am more than ever a disappointment. I am somewhat surprised by my own calmness about this sudden change. I wonder now whether I shouldn’t have enjoyed it more. It is a good excuse for remaining in bed with a pillow and my plight protecting me from the noises of my daily duties. Do cockroaches cocoon? I lie here and ponder the problem, but mostly what occurs to me is to wonder how I shall make the next train. Being a bug is rather a bother—to get out of bed, to dress, to shave. What a relief to have a reason. I want to explain but only my feelers will wave.

First, through the closed door, my mother reminds me; then, on the closed door, my father pounds and shouts and chides me; finally, despite the closed door, my sister asks me if I need anything. If I opened the door (my traveler’s habit is to lock it) they would see a bug and be horrified (as they will be when it happens), but the real me is not a bug; the real me is not the me they know either; the real me is an author, though as unassuming as a bug, and out of sight the way a roach hides, with no point of view to speak of, inhuman in that way, but alert as any small creature who needs to remain unnoticed, whose life depends upon its disappearance, except when I assume the body of a snake and slither into the next room to request a little peace and quiet. Yes. True. I am often other animals. As in Aesop. As in Swift. One of my most recent biographers mentions “learned dogs and voracious jackals, psychotic moles, worldly-wise apes, and vainglorious mice.”