The Red Book, page 37
“Well, hardly.”
“If I read Thomas à Kempis, I do so for the sake of prayer, or something similar, rather than out of scholarly interest.”
“Are you that religious? I had no idea.”
“You know that I value science extraordinarily highly. But there are actually moments in life where science also leaves us empty and sick. In such moments a book like Thomas’s means very much to me since it is written from the soul.”
“But somewhat old-fashioned. We can no longer get involved in Christian dogmatics these days, surely.”
“We haven’t come to an end with Christianity by simply putting it aside. It seems to me that there’s more to it than we see.”
“What is there about it? It’s just a religion.” 98/99
“For what reasons and moreover at what age do men set it aside? Presumably, most do so during their student days or perhaps even earlier. Would you call that a particularly discriminating age? And have you ever examined more closely the grounds on which people put aside positive religion? The grounds are mostly dubious, such as that the contents of belief clash with natural science or philosophy.”
“In my view, such an objection should not necessarily be rejected out of hand, despite the fact that there are better reasons. For example, I consider the lack of a true and proper sense of actuality in religion a disadvantage. Incidentally, a host of substitutes now exists for the loss of opportunity for prayer caused by the collapse of religion. Nietzsche, for example, has written a more than veritable book of prayer,161 not to mention Faust.”
“I suppose that’s correct in a certain sense. But especially Nietzsche’s truth strikes me as too agitated and provocative—; it’s good for those who are yet to be set free. For that reason his truth is good only for them. I believe that I’ve recently discovered that we also need a truth for those who are forced into a corner. It’s possible that instead they need a depressive truth, which makes man smaller and more inward.”
“Forgive me, but Nietzsche interiorizes man exceptionally well.”
“Perhaps from your standpoint you’re right, but I can’t help feeling that Nietzsche speaks to those who need more freedom, not to those who clash strongly with life, who bleed from wounds, and who hold fast to actualities.”
“But Nietzsche confers a precious feeling of superiority upon such people.”
“I can’t dispute that, but I know men who need inferiority, not superiority.”
“You express yourself very paradoxically. I don’t understand you. Inferiority can hardly be a desideratum.”
“Perhaps you’ll understand me better if instead of inferiority I say resignation, a word that one used to hear a lot of, but seldom anymore.”
“It also sounds very Christian.”
“As I said, there seem to be all sorts of things in Christianity that maybe one would do well to keep. Nietzsche is too oppositional. Like everything healthy and long-lasting, truth unfortunately adheres more to the middle way, which we unjustly abhor.”
“I really had no idea that you take such a mediating position.”
“Neither did I—my position is not entirely clear to me. If I mediate, I certainly mediate in a very peculiar manner.”
At this moment the servant brought the book, and I took my leave from the librarian.
[2] The divine wants to live with me. My resistance is in vain. I asked my thinking, and it said: “Take as your model one that shows you how to live the divine.” Our natural model is Christ. We have stood under his law since antiquity, first outwardly, and then inwardly. At first we knew this, and then knew it no longer. We fought against Christ, we deposed him, and we seemed to be conquerors. But he remained in us and mastered us.
It is better to be thrown into visible chains than into invisible ones. You can certainly leave Christianity but it does not leave you. Your liberation from it is delusion. Christ is the way. You can certainly run away, but then you are no longer on the way. The way of Christ ends on the cross. Hence we are crucified with him in ourselves. With him, we wait until we die for our resurrection.162 With Christ the living experience no resurrection, unless it occurs after death.163
If I imitate Christ, he is always ahead of me and I can never reach the goal, unless I reach it in him. 99/100 But thus I move beyond myself and beyond time, in and through which I am as I am. I thus blunder into Christ and his time, which created him thus and not otherwise. And so I am outside my time, despite the fact that my life is in this time and I am split between the life of Christ and my life that still belongs to this present time. But if I am truly to understand Christ, I must realize how Christ actually lived only his own life, and imitated no one. He did not emulate any model.164
If I thus truly imitate Christ, I do not imitate anyone, I emulate no one, but go my own way, and I will also no longer call myself a Christian. Initially, I wanted to emulate and imitate Christ by living my life, while observing his precepts. A voice in me protested against this and wanted to remind me that my time also had its prophets who struggle against the yoke with which the past burdens us. I did not succeed in uniting Christ with the prophets of this time. The one demands bearing, the other discarding; the one commands submission, the other the will.165 How should I think of this contradiction without doing injustice to either? What I could not conjoin in my mind probably lends itself to living one after the other.
And so I decided to cross over into lower and everyday life, my life, and to begin down there, where I stood.
When thinking leads to the unthinkable, it is time to return to simple life. What thinking cannot solve, life solves, and what action never decides is reserved for thinking. If I ascend to the highest and most difficult on the one hand, and seek to eke out redemption that reaches even higher, then the true way does not lead upward, but toward the depths, since only my other leads me beyond myself. But acceptance of the other means a descent into the opposite, from seriousness into the laughable, from suffering into the cheerful, from the beautiful into the ugly, from the pure into the impure.166
Nox secunda 167
Cap. xv.
[HI 100] On leaving the library, I stood in the anteroom again.168 This time I look across to the door on the left. I put the small book into my pocket and go to the door; it is also open, and leads to a large kitchen, with a large chimney over the stove. Two long tables stand in the middle of the room, flanked by benches. Brass pots, copper pans, and other vessels stand on shelves along the walls. A large fat woman is standing at the stove—apparently the cook—wearing a checkered apron. I greet her, somewhat astonished. She too seems embarrassed. I ask her: “May I sit down for a while? It’s cold outside and I must wait for something.”
“Please have a seat.”
She wipes the table in front of me. Having nothing else to do, I take out my Thomas and begin to read. The cook is curious and looks at me furtively. Every once in a while she goes past me.
“Excuse me, are you perhaps a clergyman?”
“No, why do you think so?”
“Oh, I just thought you might be because you are reading a small black book. My mother, may God rest her soul, left me such a book.”
“I see, and what book might that be?”
“It is called The Imitation of Christ. It’s a very beautiful book. I often pray with it in the evenings.”
“You have guessed well, I too am reading The Imitation of Christ.”
“I don’t believe that a man like you would read such a book unless he were a pastor.”
“Why shouldn’t I read it? It also does me good to read a proper book.”
“My mother, God bless her, had it with her on her deathbed, and she gave it to me before she died.”
I browse through the book absentmindedly while she is speaking. My eyes fall on the following 100/101 passage in the nineteenth chapter: “The righteous base their intentions more on the mercy of God, which in whatever they undertake they trust more than their own wisdom.”169
This is the intuitive method that Thomas recommends, it occurs to me.170 I turn to the cook: “Your mother was a clever woman, and she did well to give you this book.”
“Yes, indeed, it has often comforted me in difficult hours and it always provides good counsel.”
I become immersed in my thoughts again: I believe one can also follow one’s own nose. That would also be171 the intuitive method. But the beautiful way in which Christ does this must nevertheless be of special value. I would like to imitate Christ—an inner disquiet seizes me—what is supposed to happen? I hear an odd swishing and whirring—and suddenly a roaring sound fills the room like a horde of large birds—with a frenzied flapping of wings—I see many shadowlike human forms rush past and I hear a manifold babble of voices utter the words: “Let us pray in the temple!”
“Where are you rushing off to?” I call out. A bearded man with tousled hair and dark shining eyes stops and turns toward me: “We are wandering to Jerusalem to pray at the most holy sepulcher.”
“Take me with you.”
172“You cannot join us, you have a body. But we are dead.”
“Who are you?”
“I am Ezechiel, and I am an Anabaptist.”173
“Who are those wandering with you?”
“These are my fellow believers.”
“Why are you wandering?”
“We cannot stop, but must make a pilgrimage to all the holy places.”
“What drives you to this?”
“I don’t know. But it seems that we still have no peace, although we died in true belief.”
“Why do you have no peace if you died in true belief?”
“It always seems to me as if we had not come to a proper end with life.”
“Remarkable—how so?”
“It seems to me that we forgot something important that should also have been lived.”
“And what was that?”
“Would you happen to know?”
With these words he reaches out greedily and uncannily toward me, his eyes shining as if from inner heat.
“Let go, daimon, you did not live your animal.”174
The cook is standing in front of me with a horrified face; she has taken me by the arm and grips me firmly. “For God’s sake,” she calls out, “Help, what’s wrong with you? Are you in a bad way?”
I look at her astonished and wonder where I really am. But soon strange people burst in—among them the librarian—infinitely astonished and dismayed at first, then laughing maliciously: “Oh, I might have known! Quick, the police!”
Before I can collect myself, I am pushed through a crowd of people into a van. I am still clutching my copy of Thomas and ask myself: “What would he say to this new situation?” I open the booklet and my eyes fall on the thirteenth chapter, where it says: “So long as we live here on earth, we cannot escape temptation. There is no man who is so perfect, and no saint so sacred, that he cannot be tempted on occasion. Yes, we can hardly be without temptation.”175
Wise Thomas, you always come up with the right answer. That crazy Anabaptist certainly had no such knowledge, or he might have made a peaceful end. He also could have read it in Cicero: rerum omnium satietas vitae facit satietatem—satietas vitae tempus maturum mortis affert [satiety of all things causes satiety of life—one is satiated with life and the time is ripe for death].176 This knowledge had evidently brought me into conflict with society. I was flanked by policemen left and right. “Well,” I said to them, “you can let me go now.” “Yes, we know all about this,” 101/102 one said laughing. “Now just you hold your peace,” said the other sternly. So, we are obviously heading for the madhouse. That is a high price to pay. But one can go this way too, it seems. It’s not so strange, since thousands of our fellows take that path.
We have arrived—a large gate, a hall—a friendly bustling superintendent—and now also two doctors. One of them is a small fat professor.
Pr: “What’s that book you’ve got there?”
“It’s Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ.”
Pr: “So, a form of religious madness, perfectly clear, religious paranoia.177—You see, my dear, nowadays, the imitation of Christ leads to the madhouse.”
“That is hardly to be doubted, professor.”
Pr: “The man has wit—he is obviously somewhat maniacally aroused. Do you hear voices?”
“You bet! Today it was a huge throng of Anabaptists that swarmed through the kitchen.”
Pr: “Now, there we have it. Are the voices following you?”
“Oh no, Heaven forbid, I summoned them.”
Pr: “Ah, this is yet another case that clearly indicates that hallucinations directly call up voices. This belongs in the case history. Would you immediately make a note of that, doctor?”
“With all due respect, Professor, may I say that it is absolutely not abnormal, but much rather the intuitive method.”
Pr: “Excellent. The fellow also uses neologisms. Well—I suppose we have an adequately clear diagnosis. Anyway, I wish you a good recovery, and make sure you stay quiet.”
“But professor, I’m not at all sick, I feel perfectly well.”
Pr: “Look, my dear. You don’t have any insight into your illness yet. The prognosis is naturally pretty bad, with at best limited recovery.”
Superintendent: “Professor, can the man keep the book?”
Pr: “Well, I suppose so, as it seems to be a harmless prayer book.”
Now my clothes are inventoried—then the bath—and now I’m taken off to the ward. I enter a large sickroom, where I’m told to get into bed. The person to my left is lying motionless with a transfixed gaze, while the one to the right appears to possess a brain whose girth and weight are shrinking. I enjoy perfect silence. The problem of madness is profound. Divine madness—a higher form of the irrationality of the life streaming through us—at any rate a madness that cannot be integrated into present-day society—but how? What if the form of society were integrated into madness? At this point things grow dark, and there is no end in sight.178
[2] [HI 102] The growing plant sprouts a sapling on its right-hand side, and when this is completely formed, the natural urge to grow will not develop beyond the final bud but flows back into the stem, into the mother of the sprig, paving an uncertain way in the dark and through the stem, and finally finding the right position on the left where it sprouts a new sapling. But this new direction of growth is completely opposed to the previous one. And yet the plant nevertheless grows regularly in this way, without overstraining or disturbing its balance.
On the right is my thinking, on the left is my feeling. I enter the space of my feeling which was previously unknown to me, and see with astonishment the difference between my two rooms. I cannot help laughing—many laugh instead of crying. I have stepped from the right foot onto the left, and wince, struck by inner pain. The difference between hot and cold is too great. I leave the spirit of this world which has thought Christ through to the end, and step over into that other funny-frightful realm in which I can find Christ again.
The “imitation of Christ” led me to the master himself and to his astonishing kingdom. I do not know what I want there; I can only follow the master who governs this other realm in me. In this realm other laws are valid than the guidelines of my wisdom. Here, the “mercy of God,” which I had never relied on, for good practical reasons, is the highest law of action. The “mercy of God” signifies a particular 102/103 state of the soul in which I entrust myself to all neighbors with trembling and hesitation and with the mightiest outlay of hope that everything will work out well.
I can no longer say that this or that goal should be reached, or that this or that reason should apply because it is good; instead I grope through mist and night. No line emerges, no law appears; instead everything is thoroughly and convincingly accidental, as a matter of fact even terribly accidental. But one thing becomes dreadfully clear, namely that contrary to my earlier way and all its insights and intentions, henceforth all is error. It becomes ever more apparent that nothing leads, as my hope sought to persuade me, but that everything misleads.
And suddenly to your shivering horror it becomes clear to you that you have fallen into the boundless, the abyss, the inanity of eternal chaos. It rushes toward you as if carried by the roaring wings of a storm, the hurtling waves of the sea.
Every man has a quiet place in his soul, where everything is self-evident and easily explainable, a place to which he likes to retire from the confusing possibilities of life, because there everything is simple and clear, with a manifest and limited purpose. About nothing else in the world can a man say with the same conviction as he does of this place: “You are nothing but. . . ” and indeed he has said it.
And even this place is a smooth surface, an everyday wall, nothing more than a snugly sheltered and frequently polished crust over the mystery of chaos. If you break through this most everyday of walls, the overwhelming stream of chaos will flood in. Chaos is not single, but an unending multiplicity. It is not formless, otherwise it would be single, but it is filled with figures that have a confusing and overwhelming effect due to their fullness.179
These figures are the dead, not just your dead, that is, all the images of the shapes you took in the past, which your ongoing life has left behind, but also the thronging dead of human history, the ghostly procession of the past, which is an ocean compared to the drops of your own life span. I see behind you, behind the mirror of your eyes, the crush of dangerous shadows, the dead, who look greedily through the empty sockets of your eyes, who moan and hope to gather up through you all the loose ends of the ages, which sigh in them. Your cluelessness does not prove anything. Put your ear to that wall and you will hear the rustling of their procession.
Now you know why you lodged the simplest and most easily explained matters in just that spot, why you praised that peaceful seat as the most secure: so that no one, least of all yourself, would unearth the mystery there. For this is the place where day and night agonizingly merge. What you excluded from your life, what you renounced and damned, everything that was and could have gone wrong, awaits you behind that wall before which you sit quietly.
