The Red Book, page 44
[HI 152] Why are you laughing, Oh ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ, I cannot fathom you. But do I not see the blue air of your garden? What happy shades surround you? Does the sun hatch blue midday specters around you?
Are you laughing, Oh ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ? Alas, I understand you: humanity has completely faded for you, but its shadow has arisen for you. How much greater and happier the shadow of humanity is than it is itself! The blue midday shadows of the dead! Alas, there is your humanity, Oh ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ, you are a teacher and friend of the dead. They stand sighing in the shade of your house, they live under the branches of your trees. They drink the dew of your tears, they warm themselves at the goodness of your heart, they hunger after the words of your wisdom, which sounds full to them, full of the sounds of life. I saw you, Oh ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ, at the noonday hour when the sun stood highest; you stood speaking with a blue shade, blood stuck to its forehead and solemn torment darkened it. I can guess, Oh ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ, who your midday guest was.280 How blind I was, fool that I am! That is you, Oh ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ! But who am I! I go my way, shaking my head, and people’s looks follow me and I remain silent. Oh despairing silence! 152/153 [HI 153]
Oh master of the garden! I see your dark tree from afar in the shimmering sun. My street leads to the valleys where men live. I am a wandering beggar. And I remain silent.
Killing off would-be prophets is a gain for the people. If they want murder, then may they kill their false prophets. If the mouth of the Gods remains silent, then each can listen to his own speech. He who loves the people remains silent. If only false teachers teach, the people will kill the false teachers, and will fall into the truth even on the way of their sins. Only after the darkest night will it be day. So cover the lights and remain silent so that the night will become dark and noiseless. The sun rises without our help. Only he who knows the darkest error knows what light is.
Oh master of the garden, your magical grove shone to me from afar. I venerate your deceptive mantle, you father of all will-o’-the-wisps. 153/154281 [Image 154]282
I continue on my way, accompanied by a finely polished piece of steel, hardened in ten fires, stowed safely in my robe. Secretly, I wear chain mail under my coat. Overnight I became fond of serpents, and I solved their riddle. I sit down next to them on the hot stones lying by the wayside. I know how to catch them cunningly and cruelly, those cold devils that prick the heel of the unsuspecting. I became their friend and played a softly toned flute. But I decorate my cave with their dazzling skins. As I walked on my way, I came to a red rock on which a great iridescent serpent lay. Since I had now learned magic from ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ, I took out my flute again and played a sweet magical song to make her believe that she was my soul. When she was sufficiently enchanted, 154/155 [Image 155]283 {2} [1]284 I spoke to her: “My sister, my soul, what do you say?” But she spoke, flattered and therefore tolerantly: “I let grass grow over everything that you do.”
I: “That sounds comforting and seems not to say much.”
S: “Would you like me to say much? I can also be banal, as you know, and let myself be satisfied that way.”
I: “That seems hard to me. I believe that you stand in a close connection with everything beyond, 155/156285 with what is greatest and most uncommon. Therefore I thought that banality would be foreign to you.”
S: “Banality is my element.”
I: “That would be less astonishing if I said it about myself.”
S: “The more uncommon you are, the more common I can be. A true respite for me. I think you can sense that I don’t need to torment myself today.”
I: “I can feel it, and I’m worried that your tree will ultimately bear me no more fruit.”
S: “Worried already? Don’t be stupid, and let me rest.”
I: “I notice that you like being banal. But I do not take you to heart, my dear friend, since I now know you much better than before.”
S: “You’re getting to be familiar. I’m afraid that you are beginning to lose respect.”
I: “Are you upset? I believe that would be uncalled for. I’m sufficiently well-informed about the proximity of pathos and banality.”
S: “So, have you noticed that the becoming of the soul follows a serpentine path? Have you seen how soon day becomes night, and night day? How water and dry land change places? And that everything spasmodic is merely destructive?”
I: “I believe that I saw all this. I want to lie in the sun on this warm stone for a while. Perhaps the sun will incubate me.”
But the serpent crept up to me quietly and wound herself smoothly around my feet.286 Evening fell and night came. I spoke to the serpent and said: “I don’t know what to say. All pots are on the boil.”
287S: “A meal is being prepared.”
I: “A Last Supper, I suppose?”
S: “A union with all humanity.”
I: “A horrifying, sweet thought: to be both guest and dish at this meal.”288
S: “That was also Christ’s highest pleasure.”
I: “How holy, how sinful, how everything hot and cold flows into one another! Madness and reason want to be married, the lamb and the wolf graze peacefully side by side.289 It is all yes and no. The opposites embrace each other, see eye to eye, and intermingle. They recognize their oneness in agonizing pleasure. My heart is filled with wild battle. The waves of dark and bright rivers rush together, one crashing over the other. I have never experienced this before.”
S: “That is new, my dear one, at least for you.”
I: “I suppose you are mocking me. But tears and laughter are one.290 156/157 I no longer feel like either and I am rigid with tension. Loving reaches up to Heaven and resisting reaches just as high. They are entwined and will not let go of each other, since the excessive tension seems to indicate the ultimate and highest possibility of feeling.”
S: “You express yourself emotionally and philosophically. You know that one can say all this much more simply. For example, one can say that you have fallen in love all the way from the worm up to Tristan and Isolde.291
I: “Yes, I know, but nonetheless—”
S: “Religion is still tormenting you, it seems? How many shields do you still need? Much better to say it straight out.”
I:” You’re not tripping me up.”
S: “Well, what is it with morality? Have morality and immorality also become one today?”
I: “You’re mocking me, my sister and chthonic devil. But I must say that those two that rose up to Heaven entwined are also good and evil. I’m not joking but I groan, because joy and pain sound shrill together.”
S: “Where then is your understanding? You’ve gone utterly stupid. After all, you could resolve everything by thinking.”
I: “My understanding? My thinking? I no longer have any understanding. It has grown impervious to me.”
S: “You deny everything that you believed. You’ve completely forgotten who you are. You even deny Faust, who walked calmly past all the specters.”
I: “I’m no longer up to this. My spirit, too, is a specter.”
S: “Ah, I see, you follow my teaching.”
I: “Unfortunately, that’s the case, and it has benefited me with painful joy.”
S: “You turn your pain into pleasure. You are twisted, blinded; just suffer, you fool.”
I: “This misfortune ought to make me happy.”
The serpent now became angry and tried to bite my heart, but my secret armor broke her poisonous fang.292 She drew back astonished and said hissing: “You actually behave as if you were unfathomable.”
I: “That’s because I have studied the art of stepping from the left foot onto the right and vice versa, which others have done unthinkingly from time immemorial.”
The serpent raised herself again, as if accidentally 157/158 holding her tail in front of her mouth, so that I should not see the broken fang. Proudly and calmly she said293: “So you have finally noticed this?” But I spoke to her smilingly: “The sinuous line of life could not escape me in the long run.”
[2] [HI 158] Where is truth and faith? Where is warm trust? You find all this between men but not between men and serpents, even if they are serpent souls. But wherever there is love, the serpentlike abides also. Christ himself compared himself to a serpent,294 and his hellish brother, the Antichrist, is the old dragon himself.295 What is beyond the human that appears in love has the nature of the serpent and the bird, and the serpent often enchants the bird, and more rarely the bird bears off the serpent. Man stands in-between. What seems like a bird to you is a serpent to the other, and what seems like a serpent to you is a bird to the other. Therefore you will meet the other only in human form. If you want to become, then a battle between bird and serpent breaks out. And if you only want to be, you will be a man to yourself and to others. He who is becoming belongs in the desert or in a prison, for he is beyond the human. If men want to become, they behave like animals. No one saves us from the evil of becoming, unless we choose to go through Hell.
Why did I behave as if that serpent were my soul? Only, it seems, because my soul was a serpent. This knowledge gave my soul a new face, and I decided henceforth to enchant her myself and subject her to my power. Serpents are wise, and I wanted my serpent soul to communicate her wisdom to me. Never before had life been so doubtful, a night of aimless tension, being one in being directed against one another. Nothing moved, neither God nor the devil. So I approached the serpent that lay in the sun, as if she were unthinking. Her eyes were not visible, since they blinked in the shimmering sunshine, and 158/160 [Image 159]296 159/160 {3} [1] I spoke to her297: “How will it be, now that God and the devil have become one? Are they in agreement to bring life to a standstill? Does the conflict of opposites belong to the inescapable conditions of life? And does he who recognizes and lives the unity of opposites stand still? He has completely taken the side of actual life, and he no longer acts as if he belonged to one party and had to battle against the other, but he is both and has brought their discord to an end. Through taking this burden from life, has he also taken the force from it?”298
The serpent turned and spoke ill-humoredly: “Truly, you pester me. Opposites were certainly an element of life for me. You probably will have noticed this. Your innovations deprive me of this source of power. I can neither lure you with pathos nor annoy you with banality. I am somewhat baffled.”
I: “If you are baffled, should I give counsel? I would rather you dive down to the deeper grounds to which you have entry and ask Hades or the heavenly ones, perhaps someone there can give counsel.”
S: “You have become imperious.”
I: “Necessity is even more imperious than I. I must live and be able to move.”
S: “You have the whole wide earth. What do you want to ask the beyond for?”
I: “It isn’t curiosity that drives me, but necessity. I will not yield.”
S: “I obey, but reluctantly. This style is new and unaccustomed to me.”
I: “I’m sorry, but there is pressing need. Tell the depths that prospects are not looking too good for us, because we have cut off an important organ from life. As you know, I’m not the guilty one, since you have led me carefully along this way.”
S:299 “You might have rejected the apple.”
I: “Enough of these jokes. You know that story better than I do. I am serious. We need some air. Be on your way and fetch the fire. It has already been dark around me for too long. Are you sluggish or cowardly?”
S: “I’m off to work. Take from me what I bring up.”300
[HI 160] Slowly, the throne of the God ascends into empty space, followed by the holy trinity, all of Heaven, and finally Satan himself. He resists and clings to his beyond. He will not 160/161 let it go. The upperworld is too chilly for him.
S: “Have you got tight hold of him?”301
I: “Welcome, hot thing of darkness! My soul probably pulled you up roughly?”
S:302 “Why this noise? I protest against this violent extraction.”
I: “Calm down. I didn’t expect you. You come last of all. You seem to be the hardest part.”
S: “What do you want from me? I don’t need you, impertinent fellow.”
I: “It’s a good thing we have you. You’re the liveliest thing in the whole dogma.”303
S: “What concern is your prattle to me! Make it quick. I’m freezing.”
I: “Listen, something has just happened to us: we have united the opposites. Among other things, we have bonded you with God.”304
S: “For God’s sake, why this hopeless fuss? Why such nonsense?”
I: “Please, that wasn’t so stupid. This unification is an important principle. We have put a stop to never-ending quarreling, to finally free our hands for real life.”
S: “This smells of monism. I have already made note of some of these men. Special chambers have been heated for them.”
I: “You’re mistaken. Matters are not as rational with us as they seem to be.305 We have no single correct truth either. Rather, a most remarkable and strange fact has occurred: after the opposites had been united, quite unexpectedly and incomprehensibly nothing further happened. Everything remained in place, peacefully and yet completely motionless, and life turned into a complete standstill.”
S: “Yes, you fools, you certainly have made a pretty mess of things.”
I: “Well, your mockery is unnecessary. Our intentions were serious.”
S: “Your seriousness leads us to suffer. The ordering of the beyond is shaken to its foundations.”
I: “So you realize that matters are serious. I want an answer to my question, what should happen under these circumstances? We no longer know what to do.”
S: “Well, it is hard to know what to do, and difficult to give advice even if one would like to give it. You are blinded fools, a brashly impertinent people. Why didn’t you stay out of trouble? How do you mean to understand the ordering of the world?”
I: “Your ranting suggests that you are quite thoroughly aggrieved. Look, the holy trinity is taking things coolly. It seems not to dislike the innovation.”
S: “Ah, the trinity is so irrational that one 161/162 can never trust its reactions. I strongly advise you not to take those symbols seriously.”306
I: “I thank you for this well-meant advice. But you seem to be interested. One would expect you to pass unbiased judgment on account of your proverbial intelligence.”
S: “Me, unbiased! You can judge for yourself. If you consider this absoluteness in its completely lifeless equanimity, you can easily discover that the state and standstill produced by your presumptuousness closely resembles the absolute. But if I counsel you, I place myself completely on your side, since you too find this standstill unbearable.”
I: “What? You take my side? That is strange.”
S: “That’s not so strange. The absolute was always adverse to the living. I am still the real master of life.”
I: “That is suspicious. Your reaction is far too personal.”
S: “My reaction is far from personal. I am utterly restless, quickly hurrying life. I am never contented, never unperturbed. I pull everything down and hastily rebuild. I am ambition, greed for fame, lust for action; I am the fizz of new thoughts and action. The absolute is boring and vegetative.”
I: “All right, I believe you. So—just what do you advise?”
S: “The best advice I can give you is: revoke your completely harmful innovation as soon as possible.”
I: “What would be gained by that? We’d have to start from scratch again and would infallibly reach the same conclusion a second time. What one has grasped once, one cannot intentionally not know again and undo. Your counsel is no counsel.”
S: “But could you exist without divisiveness and disunity? You have to get worked up about something, represent a party, overcome opposites, if you want to live.”
I: “That does not help. We also see each other in the opposite. We have grown tired of this game.”
S: “And so with life.”
I: “It seems to me that it depends on what you call life. Your notion of life has to do with climbing up and tearing down, with assertion and doubt, with impatient dragging around, 162/164 [Image 163]307 163/164 with hasty desire. You lack the absolute and its forbearing patience.”
S: “Quite right. My life bubbles and foams and stirs up turbulent waves, it consists of seizing and throwing away, ardent wishing and restlessness. That is life, isn’t it?”
I: “But the absolute also lives.”
S: “That is no life. It is a standstill or as good as a standstill, or rather: it lives interminably slowly and wastes thousands of years, just like the miserable condition that you have created.”
I: “You enlighten me. You are personal life, but the apparent standstill is the forbearing life of eternity, the life of divinity! This time you have counseled me well. I will let you go. Farewell.”
[HI 164] Satan crawls deftly like a mole back into his hole again. The symbol of the trinity and its entourage rise up in peace and equanimity to Heaven. I thank you, serpent, for hauling up the right one for me. Everyone understands his words, since they are personal. We can live again, a long life. We can waste thousands of years.
[HI 164/2] [2] Where to begin, oh Gods? In suffering or in joy, or in the mixed feeling lying between? The beginning is always the smallest, it begins in nothing. If I begin there, I see the little drop of “something” that falls into the sea of nothingness. It is forever about beginning again down where the nothingness widens itself to unrestricted freedom.308 Nothing has happened yet, the world has yet to begin, the sun is not yet born, the watery firmament has not been separated,309 we have not yet climbed onto the shoulders of our fathers, since our fathers have not yet become. They have only just died and rest in the womb of our bloodthirsty Europe.
