Goethe, Nietzsche, and Wagner

Goethe, Nietzsche, and Wagner

Their Spinozan Epics ofLove and

Power

T. K. Seung

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Seung, T. K., 1930-
Goethe, Nietzsche, and Wagner: their Spinozan epics of love and power / T.K. Seung.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-1127-7 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN-I0: 0-7391-1127-2 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-1128-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-I0: 0-7391-1128-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Superman (Philosophical concept) 2. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832.
Faust. 3. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900. Also sprach Zarathustra. 4. Wagner,
Richard, 1813-1883. Ring des Nibelungen. I. Title.
BL465.S325 2006
830.9'384--dc22 2005037918

Printed in the United States of America

TN

8 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
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For my winsome grandchild

Alexander Joonjai Kim

 Contents

Preface ix

Abbreviations xxiii

1 The Superman in Estrangement (Faust, Prologue and Part One)

2 The Superman in Fantasy (Faust, Part Two, Acts 1-3) 48

3 The Superman in Defiance (Faust, Part Two, Acts 4-5) 90

4 Redemption of the Superman (Faust, Epilogue) 118

5 Nietzsche's Superman (Zarathustra, Prologue and Part One) 163

6 The Suffering Soul (Zarathustra, Part Two) 181

7 The Twofold Self (Zarathustra, Part Three) 206

8 The Dionysian Redemption (Zarathustra, Part Four) 233

9 Mystical Naturalism (from Goethe to Nietzsche) 269

10 Wagner's Superhero (The Ring ofthe Nibelung) 298

Selected Bibliography 368

Index 371

About the Author 377

 Preface

Spinoza's pantheism was the chief inspiration for the Romantic concep-
tion of Nature. Goethe advocated it not only as a naturalist, but also as a
poet. In Faust's words, Nature is the all-embracing reality and the foun-
tain of infinite creativity. For Spinoza, Nature is indeed the all-embracing
reality. Although he does not talk about the creativity of Nature, he says
that the power of Nature is its essence and that its power is infinite.
Goethe reformulated the power of Spinoza's Nature as its creative power.
The Christian God is gone from Spinoza's natural world because there
can be nothing beyond the all-embracing Nature. But Mother Nature is
Spinoza's God. He has transferred to this new deity all the divine attrib-
utes from the Christian God, especially the attributes of infinitude and
eternity. Thus he has formulated his conception of Nature as the infinite
substance. This new conception requires a new response to the traditional
question: What is human destiny? This was the central question for the
Christian epics, which had replaced the pagan epics of ancient Greece
and Rome and envisioned human destiny as an arduous voyage from the
natural to the supernatural world. But this supernatural aspiration only
aggravated the human alienation from the natural world. As a remedy for
this alienation, Goethe wrote Faust and tried to redesign the destiny of
humanity as the children of Mother Nature. This ambitious poetic ven-
ture was sustained by Wagner and Nietzsche. Thus a new epic tradition
was born under the inspiration of Spinoza's naturalism.
Spinoza provided not only the inspiration but also the model for this
new epic tradition. Goethe kept "my Spinoza" always at hand during the
writing of his Faust. In his instructive essay, "Goethe's Faust and Phi-
losophy", Charles Hendel shows that Spinoza's Ethics is written like an
epic. That is, the five Parts of this book read like the five Acts in a play.
These five Acts are the five stages in the epic journey of a soul from suf-
fering to redemption, and this journey is Spinoza's schema for the uni-
versal drama of human existence. Hendel says that Goethe wrote Faust
by transposing this epic schema from Spinoza' s philosophical language
x Preface

to his own poetic language. With this transposition, Goethe reshaped the
question of human destiny in terms of Spinoza's naturalism.
In my investigation of the Spinozan epic tradition, Faust is the be-
ginning and the center. Goethe finds his epic hero in a Renaissance ma-
gician, who is helplessly trapped in his Gothic study. His most urgent
problem is his alienation from Mother Nature, which has been induced
and imposed by medieval Christianity in its disdainful renunciation of
the natural world for the sake of supernatural bliss. He is burning with
his desperate wish to overcome this alienation and become one with
Mother Nature. But he cannot think of crawling back to her as one of her
humble children because he cannot free himself from the disdainful atti-
tude toward the earth that he has inherited from medieval Christianity.
By using his magic, he imperiously summons the Earth Spirit and tries to
meet her as her equal. When the mighty Spirit appears, she frightens and
ridicules him by calling him "superman." Then she vanishes after re-
minding him that he is only a miserable earthworm. With this humilia-
tion, he begins his epic journey for the ultimate end of getting even with
the Earth Spirit. Whatever he does is only a means for fulfilling this ul-
timate end. He makes the pact with Mephisto for this end. Mephisto has
been called Faust's alter ego or his lower self. Faust's pact with him is
his recognition of his earthly self, whose cooperation is essential for his
project of becoming a full-fledged earthling. For the same project, he
also gets involved in erotic affairs with Gretchen and Helen of Troy. But
these women are only his proxies for the Earth Spirit. His ultimate
woman is Mother Nature. In the final stage of his career, he tries to ~on­
trol the raging sea by his reclamation project, thereby elevating himself
from a powerless earthworm to the mighty lord of the earth. He dares to
rise to the title of superman that the Earth Spirit once imposed on him in
derision. This is his imperial defiance of Mother Nature, which eventu-
ally leads to his showdown with Care, her primary agent in earthly af-
fairs. She pronounces her curse, makes him blind, and then leaves him to
die shortly thereafter. After his death, Mephisto and his cohorts are ready
to pounce on his soul when it comes out of his body. But the heavenly
host descends, snatches his soul away from the devils, and takes it to the
Virgin Mary in heaven for his redemption.
This happy outcome is unacceptable for a Spinozan epic because it
goes against Spinoza's naturalism on two counts. First, the epic hero has
 Preface Xl

not fulfilled his ultimate aim of overcoming his alienation from Mother
Nature. Second, the redemption of Faust stands on the separation be-
tween the natural and the supernatural worlds, which is incompatible
with Spinoza's naturalism. This second point ravages the thematic integ-
rity of the entire epic. For its thematic integrity, I propose in this volume
that Faust's redemption should be read as a psychodrama of what was
taking place in his psyche during his utopian vision just before his death.
In this vision, he wakes out of his blinding obsession with power and
gains the inner light to envisage a beautiful community. This is the mo-
ment of peripeteia in Faust's long career. It is the awakening of his
communal self that has been smothered by his individual self. The com-
munal self is the self that belongs to a community, whereas the individ-
ual self is the self that totally disregards the communal bonds. Faust him-
self calls such an individual a homeless monster. There are many kinds
of community, large or small. In the psychodrama of Faust's redemption,
his communal self belongs to the cosmic community presided over by
the Mater Gloriosa, the cosmic mother. This allegorical account is given
in the last of the first four chapters of this book, which are devoted to
Goethe's Faust.
While Goethe's Faust struggles to break out of the spiritual prison of
medieval Christianity at the dawn of the new secular culture, Nietzsche's
Zarathustra emerges after the secular movement has run its course for
half a millennium. When he descends from his mountain cave, he faces a
market crowd, which appears to have fully realized Faust's dream of be-
ing at home in the natural world. But he cannot stand their secular culture
because it is horribly debased. In their "wretched contentment," the
Faustian spirit has died out together with God. The death of God is not
Nietzsche's solution for our age as many have taken it, but its most criti-
cal problem. For its solution, he hoists the idea of superman. But he in-
herited it not from Goethe, but from Richard Wagner, who had in turn
adopted it from the Young Hegelian Ludwig Feuerbach. In his adaptation
of Hegel's philosophy, Feuerbach taught that God had been created by
perfecting and projecting human attributes to an external object during
medieval Christianity and that this was the alienation of humanity from
the natural world. He also taught that the Protestant Reformation has
been the movement to reappropriate those alienated attributes. When
human beings take over divine attributes and make them their own, they
xii Preface

become supermen. That was his conception of the superman, which was
shared by many other Young Hegelians. This Young Hegelian version
was remarkably similar to Goethe's conception of the superman because
both of them had grown out of the German Lutheran tradition.
The burning spirit of these superhuman aspirations has died out in
the secular culture of the marketplace by the time Zarathustra comes
upon the scene. He tries to rekindle it by proclaiming his message of su-
perman, but he can make no headway with the market crowd. So he de-
cides to recruit disciples and launch a spiritual campaign for the realiza-
tion of his superhuman ideal. Among other things, the superman should
have the absolute sovereignty of his will because God is the absolute
sovereign. Hence Zarathustra preaches the creative autonomous will as
the most important prerequisite for the advent of the superman. But such
an individual will is impossible in the Spinozan world, in which every
individual is governed by cosmic necessity. Thus Zarathustra's campaign
of spiritualization becomes as relentless a war against Mother Nature as
Faust's war against the Earth Spirit. Just as Faust's war led to his show-
down with Care, Zarathustra's war leads to his showdown with the mon-
ster from the Abyss in "The Convalescent" of Part III. This monster, who
is called the spirit of gravity, is the counterpart to Faust's Care. In the
showdown, Zarathustra is clobbered by the monster, but he recognizes
and accepts the monster as his ultimate self. This is the moment of his
peripeteia, which reveals the monster from the Abyss as his cosmic self.
He finds his redemption in the union of his individual self with his cos-
mic self, which is coextensive with the ring of eternal recurrence. The
relation of these two selves is quite similar to the relation between
Faust's individual self and his communal self. Thus their epics are the
long journeys of self-discovery.
In chapters 5 through 8, I give a thematic account of Nietzsche's epic.
I presented a far more elaborate version in my Nietzsche's Epic of the
Soul: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. My thematic account is a quadripartite
reading of Zarathustra. It takes all four Parts as equally important, going
against the conventional tripartite reading, which has taken the last Part
as an embarrassing addition. But Part IV is the most important part be-
cause it provides the denouement of Zarathustra's enigmatic journey in
his mystical union with the eternal ring. This mystical resolution is again
quite similar to the mystical conclusion of Faust by the Chorus Mysticus.
 Preface XIII

Both resolutions are based on mystical naturalism. Goethe had no prob-

lem in finding it in the prevalent Romantic view of Nature. But
Nietzsche could not find it so easily because the Romantic view had been
dissolved by the rise of scientific materialism. In fact, he began his career
in classical studies with mythical naturalism, which was a part of the
Romantic view of Nature. But it was also swept away by the rise of sci-
entific materialism, which conceived the world as composed of dead
matter. This highly depressing picture drove him into pessimism espe-
cially because it crushed the Romantic view that had looked upon Nature
as full of living force. He had to go through a long struggle to overcome
scientific pessimism by finding his own version of mystical naturalism.
In chapter 9, I recount this protracted struggle as reflected in his three
scientific writings, Human, All Too Human, Daybreak, and The Gay Sci-
ence. Through this struggle, Nietzsche comes to appreciate the existential
gravity of Spinoza's naturalism and lays the ground for constructing
Thus Spoke Zarathustra as his epic of love and power. Chapter 9 is also a
bridge from Nietzsche to Richard Wagner because those scientific reflec-
tions record Nietzsche's painful experience of breaking away from Wag-
ner's mesmerizing influence and his Romantic naturalism. Nietzsche is
supposed to have made a clean break with Wagner. But that is an unfair
simplification. For Nietzsche, there are two Richard Wagners, the pessi-
mist and the naturalist. Nietzsche clearly repudiates the pessimist, but
deeply cherishes the naturalist. Wagner's naturalism is the important
Spinozan legacy that he has tried to appropriate to the end of his life.
In the last chapter of this book, I come to grips with Wagner's The
Ring ofthe Nibelung. I have placed it at the end because this monumental
work is even more stupendous and more difficult than the other two.
Thematically, this work precedes the other two. It is based on Feuer-
bach's naturalistic historicism: The age of the gods will be superseded by
the age of the humans when the human beings come of age and over-
throw the reign of the gods. This transition is never thematically tackled
either in Faust or in Zarathustra, although it is implicitly presupposed in
these two works. Wagner takes it as his central theme. Wotan is the
highest god, who has built up his reign of power for the religious age,
and Siegfried is the superhero that is supposed to supplant Wotan's cor-
rupt reign with his new social order for the secular age. That was Wag-
ner's original plot conceived under Feuerbach's optimistic historicism.
xiv Preface

He appears to begin The Ring where Faust left off, but his epic ends with
a tragic ending. Instead of redeeming the world from Wotan's corrupt
rule, Siegfried is destroyed by Hagen, the son of the dwarf Alberich, Wo-
tan's archenemy. Wagner encountered enormous difficulty in explaining
this ending and tried out many different versions. One of them was the
Feuerbachian optimistic ending: The reign of gods passes away and Bru-
ennhilde bequeaths the reign of love in the immolation of herself and
Siegfried. But he discarded this ending when he came under Schopen-
hauer's influence and adopted a Buddhist ending: Bruennhilde and Sieg-
fried are released from the land of desire and delusion and depart for the
holiest land free from desire and delusion. But he has not retained it in
the final version because I believe it is incompatible with naturalism. In
the natural world, there is no land free from desire and delusion. In the
final version, Bruennhilde bums herself and Siegfried on the funeral pyre
and returns to Mother Nature by becoming one with Erda. This is the
only way to overcome the agony of individuation and become one with
Erda, the eternal goddess of all that has been, that is, and that will be.
This cosmic union stands beyond optimism and pessimism. This is the
ultimate test for going beyond good and evil. For the difference between
optimism and pessimism is the ultimate outcome of the distinction be-
tween good and evil. Hence to stand beyond optimism and pessimism in
union with the cosmic mother is truly a Spinozan ending.
In The Gay Science 382, Nietzsche says that Thus Spoke Zarathustra
is meant to be not only a tragedy but also a parody. In the preface to the
second edition of The Gay Science, he says that the parody contains
something utterly wicked and mischievous. These remarks have encour-
aged many commentators to interpret a number of passages in Zarathus-
tra as parodic statements. But a few parodic passages cannot make the
whole work a parody. Nietzsche is offering not a few passages, but the
entire work as a parody. But he does not say what work is the target of
his parody. It is my thesis that Zarathustra is written as a parody of
Richard Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung. In the last chapter of this
book, I show how the four Parts of Zarathustra thematically correspond
to the four parts of The Ring. I further believe that Nietzsche has read
Wagner's work as a parody of Goethe's Faust. Therefore, Zarathustra
comes out as a parody of Faust as well. This is my threefold parody the-
ory. But there is a serious danger for misunderstanding the function of
 Preface xv

these parodies, because the word 'parody' nowadays carries the overtone
of satire and derision. But the original meaning of this word' is derived
from the parody mass of the Renaissance, a solemn and reverent imita-
tion of the Roman Catholic Mass. The parody mass is solely motivated
by the ambition to improve upon the musical rendition of the traditional
mass. Likewise, the line of parodies from Goethe through Wagner to
Nietzsche is a series of struggles to improve upon the poetic rendition of
Spinoza's conception of human destiny in the care of Mother Nature.
The central theme for this epic tradition is the Faustian individual,
who is born as a child of Mother Nature, but strives to become like a god
to overcome the misery of earthly existence. He struggles to be an abso-
lutely sovereign individual-as sovereign as the Christian God is as-
sumed to be. The nature of this radical individualism is poetically spelled
out by our three Spinozan poets. Faust shows that such a superhuman
individual can amass his power and lord it over other human beings. This
is the model of a Faustian tyrant, whose absolute power invariably turns
the world into a hell for himself and others. He can be saved from this
self-imposed hell only by his communal self that can awaken only with
the love of the Eternal Feminine. The Ring portrays a world so savagely
tom apart by warring individuals that it allows no possibility of a decent
community. All of those individuals may be Faustian, but none of them
is strong enough to impose a durable social order. This is the model of
perpetual war, in which the individuals can be saved from their misery
only by returning to and becoming one with the cosmic mother Erda.
Nietzsche's epic advocates the shift of attention from the external to the
internal world, from others to one's own self. For the protection of his
precarious selfhood, Zarathustra flees from others-his friends and foes,
his neighbors and strangers, the rabble and the flies of the market-to his
own solitude. This is the model of isolation that enables Zarathustra to
avoid the Faustian and Wagnerian problems of dealing with others. By
isolating and insulating himself from all others, he can secure the abso-
lute sovereignty over his existence. But he soon feels suffocated in his
castle of absolute sovereignty and pours out his sorrow in "The Night
Song" of Part II. His absolute sovereignty is sustained by his absolute
isolation, which drives him into existential solipsism. He breaks out of it
by recovering his cosmic self and secures his redemption in the mystical
union of his Faustian self with the Spinozan world.
xvi Preface

In these three epic models, the Faustian individuals come to learn

through the agony of their self-assertion that the pursuit of individual
sovereignty is self-defeating and self-destructive. For the absolute sover-
eignty can be secured only by cutting off the lifeline to Mother Nature.
The Faustian individuals have to go through the trial of individuation to
realize that the individual self can be fulfilled only in a greater self,
whether it be the cosmic self, the communal self, or the cosmic mother.
The greater self plays the role of God in the Christian epics. Thus the
Faustian individuals come to rediscover the central point in Spinoza's
pantheistic naturalism: the infinite substance of Nature is the new God
and a finite being can exist only as a mode of this infinite substance. In
that regard, the Faustian ideal of absolute individual sovereignty bla-
tantly defies Spinoza's central thesis that Mother Nature alone is abso-
lutely sovereign. But the concept of sovereign individual emerged centu-
ries before Spinoza in the development of medieval Christian ethos. This
point was elaborated in my Cultural Thematics: The Formation of the
Faustian Ethos (1976). I will now give a brief summary of my account.
The imitation of Christ had been the central ideal governing the life
of medieval Christians. This Christian ideal was originally conceived as
the imitation of Christ in weakness and suffering. Its target was Christ as
the model of divine humility. But the imitation of Christ could also mean
the imitation of God in power and glory because Christ is God. In this
case, Christ becomes the model of divine power. Though the medieval
monks sought the imitation of Christ in weakness and suffering, some of
them gained immense power and glory. For example, St. Bernard of
Clairvaux was an austere monk, who gained enormous power and influ-
ence in the agricultural project of reclaiming vast wilderness, the military
enterprise of sponsoring a Crusade, and in the political intrigue of mak-
ing and unmaking popes. St. Dominic and St. Francis founded and
fielded the two powerful orders of friars, the Dominicans and the Fran-
ciscans, for the gigantic task of rejuvenating their withered Church. The
incredible shift from the imitation of divine humility to that of divine
power was neither intentional nor accidental. In their imitation of divine
humility, the medieval monks did not only recognize the misery of their
powerlessness, but developed remarkable power over their own selves.
This was a notable dialectical reversal: the acceptance of powerlessness
led to the acquisition of power. This dialectical reversal in turn gave
 Preface XVII

them the confidence that they could realize the Christian ideals in this
world. This optimistic outlook was joined by a dramatic change in the
Christian historical perspective, which had been dominated by the Au-
gustinian pessimistic view of this world. After witnessing the traumatic
sack of Rome, St. Augustine wrote The City ofGod, propounding human
history as a continuous war between the City of God (Jerusalem) and the
City of the Devil (Babylon). In this cosmic historical perspective, even
the best secular city, Rome, deserved to be destroyed because it belonged
to the Devil. The natural order had been so corrupted by Adam's fall that
St. Augustine could not see any prospect of a decent social order on earth
until the second coming of Christ. Till then, he believed, the miserable
earth was only fit to be the jail for the unfortunate heirs of Adam's origi-
nal sin. This pessimistic view, which amounted to conceding the natural
order to the reign of the devil, induced the Christian monks to build mo-
nastic cloisters and walls against the overwhelming evil force of the
Devil. But this old pessimism began to be replaced by a new optimism in
the twelfth century.
The new optimism emerged with the revival of Pseudo-Dionysius's
Christian Neoplatonism in the twelfth century. His conception of the
natural order is the polar opposite to Augustine's. Whereas the latter
conceives the natural order as corrupt and chaotic, the former under-
stands it as an orderly hierarchy. Highlighting this theme of order, the
Pseudo-Dionysians of the twelfth century proclaimed that the divine
creative order permeates even the lowest level of corruptible matter. The
Pseudo-Dionysian spirit of cosmic order reshaped the Christian under-
standing of world history. Whereas Augustine had looked upon the Ro-
man Empire as a work of the Devil, the Pseudo-Dionysians recognized it
as a significant medium for Christ's redemption of humanity. This point
was later fully elaborated by Dante's claim in his Monarchia and Com-
media that the Roman Empire had been instituted by the Holy Spirit in
preparation for the Incarnation. Above all, the Pseudo-Dionysians firmly
believed that the City of God would be realized on the earth. The new
Christian conception of history received its consummate formulation in
Rupert of Deutz's theory of three ages: the Age of the Father, the Age of
the Son, and the Age of the Holy Spirit. This Trinitarian schema was
revolutionary. In the old binary schema of the Father's Creation and the
Son's Redemption, the Holy Spirit played the role of Sanctification. But
xviii Preface

this role was played in the final phase of the redeemed soul's ascent to
heaven. This vertical schema was converted to a horizontal one and be-
came the Age of the Holy Spirit, which was to bring the Ages of the Fa-
ther and the Son to fruition on earth rather than in heaven. This historical
role of the Holy Spirit was inconceivable in the Augustinian historical
framework. It was the Revolution of the Holy Spirit.
The Age of the Holy Spirit was reaffirmed by Joachim of Floris in
his theory that the reign of the Son was to be succeeded by the reign of
the Spirit, which would establish the Kingdom of God on earth. This
function had been assigned to the second coming of Christ by Augustine.
Joachim urgently proclaimed that the Age of the Holy Spirit had been in
preparation for a long time and was about to burst forth into the open.
This proclamation became the clarion call to take Christianity out of the
'monastic cloisters to the secular world. The Benedictine tradition of
building walls against the world for religious life had been dictated by
the Augustinian pessimism. But those walls were tom down by the
Pseudo-Dionysian optimism for the emergence of a new breed of this-
worldly monks, the Franciscans and the Dominicans. These friars came
on the scene as the warriors for the Revolution of the Holy Spirit. For
Joachim of Floris, the reign of the Son was only a figure to be fulfilled in
the reign of the Spirit, just as the reign of the Father was only a figure to
be fulfilled in the reign of the Son. This Trinitarian schema dictated that
God could be imitated for His power and glory in the Age of the Spirit,
whereas He was imitated for his weakness and suffering in the Age of
the Son. This is exemplified in the Paradiso of Dante's Commedia,
which displays the enormous power and glory the saints had gained and
exercised on earth with divine grace, for example, Bonaventure's and
Aquinas's eulogies of Saints Francis and Dominic for their magnificent
work with the armies of friars for the revitalization of Christianity. Dante
does not dispense with the imitation of God in weakness and suffering;
he retains it for his Purgatorio. The imitation of God in power and glory
eventually paved the way for the emergence of a sovereign individual,
when it was transposed to the secular context. Its most notable literary
manifestation was Scipio Africanus Major, the hero of Petrarch's epic
Africa. In this epic, Scipio behaves like God in dealing with his enemies
and friends alike. He is the absolute sovereign; he is the incarnate Jupiter.
But his sovereignty cannot be taken as his private attribute because he
 Preface XIX

exercises it as the commanding general of a Roman army. It is in Boc-

caccio's Decameron that individual sovereignty is celebrated as the su-
preme virtue of all citizens whether they are private or public figures.
The first story of the Decameron features Ser Ciappelleto, a lowly
and shady notary, who exercises fiendish power in manipulating others.
During one of his business trips, he becomes critically sick and is about
to die in the house of two Florentine usurers. They can foresee and dis-
cuss the distasteful consequence of his impending death. He is such a
godless man that he is likely to die without confession. Even if he wants
to confess himself before his death, he has committed so many horrible
sins that he is not likely to be absolved. In either event, no church will
receive his body. His hosts will be forced to dump it into a ditch, which
will surely provoke the ire of his neighbors. When Ciappelleto happens
to overhear the worried conversation of his hosts, he calls them and gives
his promise to get them out of their predicament. Following his request,
the hosts fetch a friar from a nearby convent for his last rite. In his con-
fession, Ciappelleto paints his life as an impressive record of piety. The
falsification of his entire life is accomplished in such a grand style that
the innocent friar is convinced of his sainthood. On his death, Ciappel-
leto's body is eagerly welcomed to the convent church with all the ven-
eration due a saint. His body is mobbed by the crowd seeking his favor,
the fame of sanctity is spread, and even God performs many miracles on
behalf of Saint Ciappelletto. This is the story of a sovereign will. But the
narrator does not present it as a simple case of fraudulent manipulation.
He concludes the story by conceding the possibility that Ciappelleto be-
came sincerely repentant and achieved sainthood. The nature of his sov-
ereign will is completely hidden in the abysmal sphere of his interiority.
Furthermore, his will is never separated from the sovereign divine will. If
he became repentant, he could have done so only with divine grace. Even
if he was fraudulent in his confession, his sainthood cannot be a forgery
imposed on God against His will because he is omnipotent and omnis-
cient. He has the power to bring good out of evil. He can surely use a
fraudulent saint as an instrument for promoting the devotion of Chris-
tians. Whatever Ciappelleto does only reflects God's omnipotent will.
But His sovereign will is far more deeply concealed than that of Ciappel-
leto. The latter is a replica of the former. For the sovereign will of a crea-
ture was achieved by the imitation of the Creator's sovereign will.
xx Preface

As the Decameron unfolds over the period of ten days, the stories of
individual sovereignty are gradually disengaged from the religious cul-
ture and thrust upon the secular world. The secular version of a sovereign
self culminates in the last story of the last day, which features Gualtieri,
the tyrannical husband of the patient Griselda. He was the marquis of
Saluzzo. For a long time, he refused to give up his bachelorhood because
he was fully aware of the difficulties of married life. But his subjects beg
him to take a wife and leave them an heir and ruler after his death. When
he gives in to their entreaty, he insists on making his own selection of a
suitable woman for his marriage. Through careful scouting, he settles on
Griselda, an obedient girl born and raised in poverty. After preparing the
wedding feast, he goes to Griselda's house without notice and exacts an
oath of wifely obedience from her in front of the father. In the presence
of all his company, he strips her naked and brings her home, dressed in
the clothes he has brought for her. After the wedding, he torments her by
a series of cruel tests for her absolute obedience. But Griselda endures
the extraordinary pain and humiliation of these tests without any com-
plaint. In the final test, he pretends to divorce Griselda to marry a lady of
noble birth. He commands Griselda to go back to her father in the same
way as she came to his house. Griselda replies that she will go away na-
ked because she came to him naked. Her reply is couched in the language
of Job's reply to the thundering voice of his heavenly Lord. When
Griselda survives the final test, her earthly lord rewards her just as God
rewarded Job after his trial. Gualtieri's treatment of Griselda is a parody
of Job's story, and his sovereignty is an imitation of divine sovereignty.
Petrarch, who regarded the Decameron as a frivolous work, was awe-
stricken by Griselda's story. He took the trouble of translating it into
Latin to give it a greater dignity and authority than it could have in its
original vernacular. But he warned that Griselda's virtue should never
serve as a model for human behavior, but only for serving God. He had
every reason to be distressed over the Gualtieri-Griselda relationship be-
cause it is derived from his epic Africa. Scipio maintains absolute sover-
eignty over his subordinates and demands their total submission. Boc-
caccio only transferred Petrarch's story of absolute sovereignty from the
public to the private domain.
I have cited only the first and the last stories of the Decameron. The
rest of its one hundred stories are just the fillers for displaying the power
 Preface XXI

and cunning of Boccaccian individuals. Like Petrarch, most readers have

regarded Boccaccio's work as a collection of frivolous bawdy stories in
contrast to the solemnity and gravity of Dante's Divina Commedia. But
the two works are equally solemn and serious, so I have argued in my
Cultural Thematics. One of them elucidates the gravity of God's sover-
eignty; the other celebrates the ingenuity of sovereign individuals. Fur-
thennore, these two themes are not separate but contiguous because the
sovereign individuals have emerged in the imitation of the sovereign God.
The obsession with individual sovereignty completely eradicates the
sense of friendship in Boccaccio's masterpiece. One of the notable
themes in ancient and medieval literature was the enduring and endearing
relationship between friends, for example, Achilles and Patroclus,
Damon and Pythias, and Roland and Oliver. But that sort of friendship
becomes totally extinct in the Decameron. For all the impressive variety
of its one hundred stories, this work contains not a single heartwarming
story of friendly trust and devotion. The protagonists and the antagonists
alike are so fearfully jealous of their own autonomy that they are incapa-
ble of deep friendship. Even the erotic relation becomes a game and play
of power between the two lovers, and it further deteriorates in Ariosto's
Orlando Furioso. Orlando and Angelica cannot fulfill their love for each
other because it is perpetually frustrated by their sovereignty. Angelica
eventually comes to experience true love only in her maternal care for
the helplessly wounded young foot soldier, Medoro. The same problem
arises in the love of Bradamante for the adolescent hero Ruggiero. She
pursues and rescues him with maternal love. Maternal instinct appears to
be the only power to redeem sovereign individuals from their devastating
conflict. This is the forerunner of Goethe's Eternal Feminine.
In the Decameron, the Boccaccian individuals usually have the inge-
nuity to prevent their conflict from deteriorating to a brutal war. When
the sovereign individuals lack such ingenuity or when their ingenuity
fails them, their world becomes Machiavellian and their problem can be
resolved only by a Machiavellian prince, who can subjugate all the con-
tending sovereign individuals to his absolute rule. This Machiavellian
model was exemplified by Scipio's dictatorship in Africa and Gualtieri's
tyrannical rule over his wife Griselda. Tasso adopted the same solution in
his epic Jerusalem Delivered, and Goethe's Faust achieves the same
autocratic power toward the end of his career. When such a powerful
xxii Preface

dictatorship cannot be secured, the Machiavellian world turns into a cha-

otic theater of perpetual war. This was the condition of Italian power
politics during the Renaissance, and a similar condition sets the stage for
Wagner's Ring. There was a third alternative, which was adopted by Pet-
rarch. For the protection of his absolute independence of others and for-
tune, Petrarch left the public world and shut himself up in seclusion. The
same solution is adopted in Nietzsche's Zarathustra. This is my story of
how Boccaccian sovereign individuals burst forth like a cultural cyclone
in Renaissance Italy. They were born out of medieval Christian ethos and
later became Machiavellian and Faustian individuals. This new breed of
audacious individuals engineered the explosive cultural movements
known as the Renaissance and the Reformation. The Renaissance poets
groped with their existential problem without fully articulating the nature
of their world. At most, they attributed the running of the world to the
Wheel of Fortune. They were still saddled with the problem of providing
a proper matrix for their heroes. Goethe solved this problem by enclosing
Faust, a renowned Renaissance magus, in the Spinozan world of panthe-
istic naturalism. By this astute move, he has revived the defunct Renais-
sance epic tradition and refashioned it as the Spinozan epic tradition.
In the course of writing this book, I have talked with many people. I
will cite only a few of them, whose generous assistance has been indis-
pensable. Chul Bum Lee read every draft of my entire manuscript and
made critical comments with his extraordinary poetic sensitivity. Walter
Wetzels patiently guided me through the tangled field of Goethe scholar-
ship and rescued me from a number of mistakes. I am deeply grateful for
his encouragement and endorsement of my unconventional reading of
Faust. Kathleen Higgins helped me with the Nietzsche section of this
book with her patient counsel. Greg Whitlock also read the Nietzsche
section and sent me many incisive comments. He opened my eyes to the
critical influence of Ludwig Feuerbach on Nietzsche and Wagner. I had
frequent talks with Edwin Allaire on Spinoza. Paul Heise generously
showed me his unpublished papers on Wagner's Ring cycle and allowed
me to use them in my last chapter. Katie Arens helped me decipher a
number of tricky passages in Wagner's librettos. For Greek philosophy
and religion, I relied on Erwin Cook, John Kroll, Alexander Mourelatos,
and Paul Woodruff. For the history of religion, I relied on Michael White.
 Abbreviations of Nietzsche's Works

A Anti-Christ in Twilight ofthe Idols and The Anti-Christ. Trans. R.

J. Hollingdale. London: Penguin, 1968.
BGE Beyond Good and Evil. Trans. Judith Norman. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002.
BT The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. Trans. Ronald Speirs.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
CW The Case of Wagner. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. In The Birth of
Tragedy and The Case of Wagner. New York: Random House,
1967
D Daybreak. Trans. R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997.
EH Ecce Homo. Trans. R. J. Hollingdale. London: Penguin Books,
1979.
GS The Gay Science. Trans. Josephine Nauchhoff. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001.
GM On the Genealogy of Morals. Trans. Douglas Smith. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1996.
HH Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits. Trans. R. J.
Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
TI Twilight of the Idols. Trans. R. J. Hollingdale. In Twilight of the
Idols and The Anti-Christ. London: Penguin, 1968.
WE "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth" in Untimely Meditations. Trans.
R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
WP The Will to Power. Trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J.
Hollingdale. New York: Random House, 1967.
Z Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York:
Penguin Books, 1978. Quotations from this edition are indicated
by the notes, which begin with Z, e.g., (Z, 24).
 Chapter One

The Superman in Estrangement

(Faust, Prologue and Part One)

The Prologue in Heaven opens with three Archangels singing the splen-
dor of the natural world ranging from the radiant sun to the awesome
night of the earth. Then the devil Mephisto appears to mock the Lord in
Heaven for the miserable condition of humanity. He calls man the little
god of the world. Though he has nothing to say about the sun or planets,
which have been praised by the Archangels, he wants to voice his scath-
ing criticism of the Lord's favorite creation on earth. The little god of the
world is still as miserable as he was on his first day. His life would be a
little better if the Lord had not shown him the light of heaven. He calls it
reason and uses it to be more bestial than any other beasts. He behaves
like a grasshopper, who ever tries to hop and fly, but always drops back
into the grass to sing its old ditty. If only he could just stay in the grass.
But he sticks his nose into every trash. In response to this jeering criti-
cism of His creation, the Lord asks Mephisto, "Is there anything right for
you on the earth?" The devil's answer is a resounding No. Then the Lord
asks whether he knows his servant Faust. The devil replies that Faust is
indeed strange. He is never content with the earthly food or drink; some
ferment makes him seek what is far away. He demands the brightest stars
from the heaven and the highest joys from the earth, but his restless
breast is satisfied neither by all that is near, nor by all that is far. The
Lord admits that Faust is groping in confusion, but predicts that he will
come out fine in the end. This prediction provokes Mephisto's challenge:
With the Lord's permission, he can lead Faust astray. The Lord grants
him the permission to do whatever is necessary to divert Faust from his
primal source. Although man errs so long as he strives, the Lord says, a
good man still knows the right course of action even in his dark impulses.
2 Chapter One

So He is confident of winning the wager. Mephisto is equally sure of his

victory. Thus the wager on Faust is concluded in the Prologue.
This scene is usually taken for the Christian Heaven. But there is no
hint of the other world, which is separated from the natural world. This
one-world view is not Christian. The wager is adapted from a similar
story in the Book of Job, and this book of the Old Testament says noth-
ing about the other world, either. The separation of the Christian Heaven
from this world came much later. But the natural world of the Prologue is
still different from the world of Job. The Archangels say that their world
still has the splendor of the primal day. That goes against the biblical
dogma that the original sin has corrupted all of Nature. The Lord in
Heaven says that a good man is well aware of the right course of action
even in his dark impulses. This is again incompatible with the original
sin, which has allegedly corrupted the human faculty of moral judgment.
But the Prologue in Heaven shows no trace of sin or sinfulness. Instead
of sin, it knows only error. Even the devil, who comes to talk with the
Lord, shows no trace of his rebellion and damnation. The devil who
comes to talk with God in the Book of Job is Satan, who will mercilessly
destroy all of Job's children and properties. But Mephisto shows no such
Satanic streak. On the contrary, he will help Faust with his needs and
desires. Mephisto is roguish and playful, but never malicious and resent-
ful. He is treated like the Lord's domestic servants (Faust 274). The
natural world of the Prologue has no room for malicious devils because it
is not corrupted by the Satanic rebellion or the original sin. The Lord
refers to this world of innocence by the enigmatic phrase: Das Werdende,
das ewig wirkt und lebt (Faust 346), which means "the world of becom-
ing that forever works and lives." This is the world of innocent becoming.
There is only one passage in the Prologue in Heaven that may imply a
two-world view. Mephisto says that Faust is never content with the
earthly food or drink and demands the brightest stars from heaven and
the highest joys from earth. Faust is caught between two conflicting aspi-
rations: one for heaven and the other for the earth. The conflict of these
two aspirations was one of Goethe's own fundamental polarities. Here is
his description of this conflict:

The capacity to ennoble everything sensual and give life even

to the deadest material by wedding it with the idea, is the fin-
 The Superman in Estrangement 3

est warrant of our supernatural origins. Man, however much

the earth attracts him with its thousands and thousands of phe-
nomena, still raises his eyes to the heavens arched above him
in immense space, because he feels deeply and clearly within
himself that he is a citizen of that spiritual domain, the belief
in which he can neither repudiate nor abandon. 1

"The idea" in the first sentence of this quotation refers to the Platonic
Idea (or Form) in the eternal domain. The whole quotation reveals a Pla-
tonic outlook that human beings are inspired by the Ideas in the super-
natural realm though they are placed in the natural realm. This proves the
supernatural origin of human beings. But this Platonic outlook does not
always entail a two-world view. Though Plato advocates a two-world
view in his early and middle dialogues, he repudiates it for a one-world
view in his late dialogues and assumes its compatibility with his theory
of Ideas. The same transition takes place in Gennan Idealism. Kant re-
vives Plato's doctrine of Ideas as transcendent entities in the first Cri-
tique, but he renders those Ideas immanent in the third Critique and his
other late writings. Those immanent Ideas then become the mainspring
for the development of German Idealism. Hence there is no reason to
assume that Faust's heavenly aspiration requires the separation of heaven
from the natural world. But I have quoted the long passage because
Goethe's Platonism will be an integral feature of Faust from the begin-
ning to the end in spite of its allegiance to Spinozism.
The natural world of the Prologue, however, is not Spinoza's panthe-
istic world. The Lord in Heaven is a monotheistic God. In that regard, the
Prologue does not diverge from the Book of Job. But the character of his
servant Faust is different from that of Job, a faithful and favored servant
of God. He is blameless and upright. The Lord calls Faust his servant,
but he recognizes no master. That makes him a servant who does not
even know his master. For this reason, Eudo Mason says not only that
Faust is different from Job, but also that the Lord of Faust is equally dif-
ferent from the Lord of Job. The Lord of Faust does not demand humility
and self-denial from His servant, as the Lord of Job does. Instead, Mason
says, the Lord of Faust encourages self-assertion by stressing ceaseless

1. From Goethe's talk of April 1818 with Kanzler von Muller and Karoline
von Egloffstein. Quotated and translated by Eudo Mason (Goethe 's Faust, 177).
4 Chapter One

striving and activity (Mason, Goethe's Faust, 280). This is the essence of
Faustian individualism, which has also been known as Promethean titan-
ism. As a favorite of God, Job lives in boundless prosperity. On the other
hand, Faust is mired in misery as Mephisto says. But we do not know
what sort of life he is leading on moral grounds because Mephisto uses
no moral terms in his description of Faust. Neither do the Archangels use
moral terms in their praise of the Lord's works. The Prologue in Heaven
is situated beyond good and evil; even the wager between the Lord and
the devil contains no moral terms. The Lord says that human beings err
so long as they keep striving. The concept of error is not a moral concept.
But the Lord gives no indication of what sort of error He has in mind.
Hence we can never tell what it really means for humans to err.
We have the same problem with the Lord's challenge to Mephisto to
divert Faust from his primal source because He does not explain what the
primal source (Urquell) is. In the case of Job, to divert from the primal
source meant to tum away from God. But the Lord of Faust never de-
mands obedience and submission from his servants, as we just noted.
Furthermore, there is no indication that He is the primal source. Though
He is a monotheistic god, He is never described as the Creator of heaven
and earth. The Archangels praise the glory of His works, but they never
say that his works are the works of creation. The Lord compares Himself
to a gardener (Faust 310). But the role of a gardener is not to create eve-
rything from nothing. Whatever products a gardener may produce, he
cannot be the ultimate source of his production. Hence the monotheism
of the Prologue may not be the same type as that of the Old Testament.
For these reasons, we have to place a big question mark on the very idea
of primal source.
Even if the Lord is the primal source, Faust cannot be diverted from
Him because he has never been attached to Him. Unlike Job, Faust does
not even know the Lord in Heaven. Since his diversion from the primal
source can make no sense in his relation to the Lord, most scholars have
assumed that his degradation under Mephisto should be understood as his
moral perdition. But his moral perdition cannot be accepted as his falling
away from his primal source because this source is never morally con-
ceived. The moralistic expectation of Faust's development is out of tune
with the amoralistic wager between the Lord and Mephisto. Probably out
of desperation, Eudo Mason assumes that the primal source "can only be
 The Superman in Estrangement 5

the higher, celestial world represented by the Archangels and by the Lord
himself' (Goethe 's Faust, 284). He further assumes that the celestial
world of the Lord and the Archangels serves the same function as the
Platonic Heaven of Eternal Ideas. He supports this identification by re-
ferring to Goethe's talk on our heavenly aspiration that we just quoted.
He is conflating Faust's world with Goethe's and Plato's. Unfortunately,
the Heaven of the Prologue shows no trace of Eternal Ideas or any other
nonnative principles. It stands beyond good and evil. Hence the primal
source cannot be identified with the Platonic Heaven. Without clarifying
the nature of primal source, we can never tell whether Faust is going
straight or astray in the course of his epic journey.
After concluding the wager with Mephisto, the Lord says that He
likes to give Faust the devil as his companion to excite and goad him to
work because human beings in general have the tendency to slacken too
easily and seek easy comfort. This remark may imply that to divert from
the primal source is to lose the Faustian spirit of ceaseless striving. This
should be the case if the primal source is taken to be the primal energy of
the universe. Probably for that reason, the Lord does not regard Mephisto
as an agent of degradation. On the contrary, he will perform the positive
task of preventing Faust from stagnation. When the Lord assigns this
positive task to the devil, He is evidently doing a big favor for his servant
Faust, and his perpetual striving may be the only service He expects from
him. But He never explains what Mephisto's positive task has to do with
diverting Faust from the primal source. Thus the role of Mephisto in
Faust's career is never clearly defined. It is as uncertain and mystifying
as the nature of the monotheistic deity and the primal source in the Pro-
logue. The wager on Faust's soul is hatched in this tangle of mysteries
and uncertainties. To unravel this devilish tangle is the key to under-
standing Faust's strange epic journey.

The Superman and the Earthling

Faust is a renowned magician of the Renaissance. Europe has just seen

the birth of a new secular culture from medieval Christianity. The re-
nowned magician is a champion of this new culture, but his study is still
enclosed in an old Gothic building. In this critical juncture of new and
6 Chapter One

old cultures, he launches his epic venture. But the beginning of his epic
is singularly different from the established pattern. The traditional epic
opens by posing the ultimate mission for the epic hero, for example, the
task of returning to his home in Ithaca for Ulysses after the Trojan War
and the mission of founding Rome for Aeneas after the destruction of his
home in Troy. In the opening scene of Part One, Faust is all alone in his
study, a vaulted Gothic room, and faces no such grand epic mission. He
only tries to cope with two immediate impulses without knowing where
they will take him eventually. As the Lord in Heaven says, he is just des-
tined to be driven by his own dark impulses (Faust 328). One of his two
burning impulses is to know the whole world in an intuitive vision, and
the other is to be united with Mother Nature by overcoming his long
alienation from her. These two impulses were highly unusual. In the tra-
ditional societies, the alienation from Mother Nature is seldom known
and nobody feels the need to be reunited with the natural environment. It
is equally unusual to aspire to know the world as a godlike intuitive vi-
sion. Most human beings cannot even think of any other way of knowing
the world than the way they normally do. Hence Faust's driving impulses
are singularly different from the motivation of most human beings under
normal circumstances.
Faust's strange impulses have been generated by medieval Christian-
ity. The medieval Christians were taught to sever their link to the earth
for the bliss in the kingdom of heaven. To this end, they tried their best
to starve natural desires and stifle natural instincts. Their pious religious
practice demanded a perpetual battle against their own bodies. This led to
their alienation from Mother Nature and their most devastating sickness.
But this was only the negative side of medieval Christianity. Its positive
side was the superhuman ideal of transcending the limits of humanity
and becoming like God. For this supernatural ideal of deifying human
beings, the Christians were called upon to sacrifice their natural exis-
tence. For the medieval Christians, the ideal of becoming like God was
expressed in the mystery of transubstantiation: Humanity will be trans-
formed to divinity just as the bread and wine of the Eucharist are
changed to the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. The pious Christians tried
to live up to this ideal in the popular religious practice called the imita-
tion of Jesus Christ. But the ideal of becoming like God started to take on
far greater urgency during the Reformation, Whereas the medieval Chris-
 The Superman in Estrangement 7

tians hoped to realize this ideal in the other world, Martin Luther taught
his followers that the deification of humanity could be achieved in this
world. This was his understanding of the Incarnation, the ideal of God-
man. The Incarnation was not to be restricted to one miraculous event,
but it was meant to be a universal model for the life of all Christians.
Thus the deification of humanity was fast becoming the universal ideal
for the entire European culture. Even the secularists who had deserted
Christianity like Faust were obsessed with the superhuman project.
There were two versions of the superman: religious and secular. The
religious version inspired the zealous followers of Martin Luther's Ref-
ormation. The magicians like Faust were captivated by the secular ver-
sion. In either case, the superman was generated by transferring the di-
vine attributes from God to human beings. For example, to see the whole
world in one intuitive vision was assumed to be a divine attribute, but
Faust is trying to make it his own. This is his aspiration to be a superman,
and he will be so addressed later by the Earth Spirit. Though he does not
follow Christianity, he is hopelessly alienated from Mother Nature, too.
He has lost the natural mode of existence as a common legacy of medie-
val Christianity. Thus his two basic impulses-for the superhuman ideal
and the union with Mother Nature-arise from the cultural legacy of me-
dieval Christianity. The first impulse is cerebral; the second one is vis-
ceral. The cerebral aspiration is heavenly and divine; the visceral aspira-
tion is earthly and human. Faust will find out how hard it is to fulfill ei-
ther of them. But they will become even more frustrating when he finds
out that these two aspirations pull against each other. This is his agony
and torment that will govern his epic struggle.
Let us consider Faust's superhuman aspiration for knowledge. In his
study, he describes his frustration with this aspiration. For the sake of
knowledge, he has mastered the four medieval sciences of philosophy,
jurisprudence, medicine, and theology. But he is no more than a poor
fool. He has become Master and Doctor and has led his students by the
nose for ten years only to find that he can know nothing. He is shrewder
than all the scholars, teachers, and scribes, and fears neither hell nor the
devil. But he has no joy with anything and can teach nothing that can
make human beings better. He has no money and no honors. This is his
despairing existence that cannot be tolerated even by a dog, Faust says.
That is why he says he turned to magic to solve many mysteries and stop
8 Chapter One

talking about what he does not know. By the power of magic, he wants to
find out above all what holds together the whole world by perceiving the
innermost working of all its seminal powers. He is seeking direct percep-
tion of the cosmos, which is presumably possible only for God and tran-
scends even the power of angels. In the Prologue, Archangel Raphael
says that no one can comprehend God's vision and His great works of
surpassing might (Faust 247-50). In his aspiration for intuitive knowl-
edge of the universe, Faust dares to fare better than the Archangels and
transcend the limits of human sciences.
This inordinate intellectual ambition is the source of Faust's misery.
But this is not his only problem. He has a ravaging sickness that is con-
suming his entire existence. His sickness lies in his total isolation and
alienation from Mother Nature, which is indicated by his high-vaulted
Gothic room. The Gothic architecture marks the high point in the strug-
gle of medieval Christianity to build a spiritual fortress against natural
impulses. Faust is trapped in this fortress, which he calls his prison and a
musty hole of stone. He is enclosed in his Gothic study just like a medie-
val.monk in a monastic cell. Both of them are suffering from their isola-
tion and alienation from Mother Nature. This is their common cultural
legacy from medieval Christianity. But Faust's isolation is even more
suffocating than that of a cloistered monk. The latter has severed his ties
to the world of natural impulses for the sake of a new lifeline to the su-
pernatural world. But Faust has disowned this part of Christianity.
Whereas the Christian icons would adorn the monk's cubicle, Faust's
prison is stuffed with moldy books and grimy papers. He laments over
the fact that he is surrounded not by living Nature, but by dead bones and
skulls. Unlike the Christian monks, Jane Brown says, Faust does not as-
pire to make a vertical move to heaven, which is expressed by the strong
vertical lines of Gothic architecture (Goethe's Faust, 48). He is eager to
make the horizontal move to Nature. When a full moon appears, he calls
her his melancholy friend and expresses to her his longing for the healing
and recovery from his sickness:

Ah, could I on some mountain height

Rove beneath your mellow light,
Drift on with spirits round mountain caves,
Waft over meadows your dim light laves,
And, clear ofleaming's fumes, renew
 The Superman in Estrangement 9

Myself in baths of healing dew!

(Faust 392-97, trans. Charles Passage)

Locked in his study, Faust is suffocating from learning's fumes and

is longing to recover his lifeline with the living nature represented by the
moon. He curses the prison of his study, his books and papers, and his
instruments. He has to break out of his study. But his prison is not simply
physical or institutional, but cultural and spiritual. It has been fortified
over a thousand years by medieval Christianity. If his study were merely
a physical prison, he could just walk out of it into the natural environ-
ment. But there is no easy way to walk out of a spiritual prison cell. In
desperation, Faust turns to the magic book of Nostradamus. This is a
typical bookish way for a scholar to cope with the problem of his natural
impulses. He does not know how to reconnect himself with Mother Na-
ture except through a book. He says that he can learn from this book
what Nature can teach him. This magic book contains a number of astro-
logical diagrams, called Signs. When he gazes upon the Sign of the Mac-
rocosm, he feels as though the powers of Nature were revealed all around
him. This is the first indication that he is subscribing to Spinoza's under-
standing of Nature: The power of God is his essence (Ethics, pt. 1, prop.
34). He describes his ecstatic cosmic vision:

How all things interweave to form the Whole,

Each in another finds its life and goal!
How each of heaven's powers soars and descends
And each to each the golden buckets lends;
On fragrant blessed wings
From heaven piercing to earth's core
Till all the cosmos (das All) sweetly rings!
(Faust 447-53, trans. Charles Passage).

The whole is the universe, the infinite substance or the all-embracing

reality, which is often referred to as the All (das A/f).
With the vision of the Macrocosm, Faust feels like a god in his mys-
tical joy. But this feeling is not real, but only a game with the magical
diagram. When this disheartening realization comes over his momentary
excitement, Faust desperately longs to get hold of the real Nature. In
talking about the real Nature, he thinks of her nurturing breasts and the
source of life before anything else:
10 Chapter One

Where can I grasp you, Nature without end?

You breasts, where? Source of all our lives,
On which both heaven and earth depend,
Toward you my withered heart strives-
You flow, you swell, and must I thirst in vain?
(Faust 455-59, trans. Charles Passage)

"Nature without end" is again from Spinoza's understanding of Mother

Nature as the infinite substance. For Faust, she is the cosmic mother, the
source of all lives. Though the source of all lives (Ihr Quellen alles Le-
hens) may not be exactly the primal source (der Urquell) of the Prologue,
the former comes very close to the latter especially because both heaven
and earth are said to depend on it. Faust's longing to be connected to the
source of all lives can never be satisfied by his Sign of the Macrocosm.
At most, it can give him some intellectual fantasy, but not the pleasure of
feeding on the breasts of Mother Nature. Faust's withered heart is still
seeking her breasts in vain and he keeps turning the pages of the magic
book until the Sign of the Earth Spirit turns up. Then he immediately
senses its magic power. He feels that the Spirit of the Earth is close to
him and that his own powers are growing as though he were drinking
new wine. He feels the courage to plunge into the world and take on the
woe and the bliss of the earth. But this sense of triumphant courage is
overwhelmed by a sudden change of his surroundings.
The sky becomes overcast, the moon hides its light, the lamp dies
down, mists arise, red fire flashes around his head, and a chill blows
down from the vault and makes him shudder with fear. Feeling the pres-
ence of the Spirit, Faust bids it to reveal itself. When he summons it by
using the magic sign, the Earth Spirit finally appears in frightful flames.
He is too scared even to look at the Spirit. She mercilessly taunts the
cowering Faust and addresses him as "superman" in a mocking tone. She
says that the once strong and proud Faust is now crushed to a miserable
writhing worm by her breath and terror. But he protests that he is equal
to her. In response to this preposterous claim, she describes her mighty
works in Nature. In protest, he says that he feels close to her. But the
Spirit dismisses him with insult: "You are equal to the spirit you com-
prehend, / Not me!" (Faust 512-13). Then the Spirit vanishes. Faust
fumes, "Not you? / Whom then? / I, image of the godhead! Not even
 The Superman in Estrangement 11

rank with you!" (Faust 515-17). Thus he is hopelessly outranked and

humiliated by the Earth Spirit.
The Sign of the Macrocosm and the Earth Spirit have been taken as
two pantheistic symbols. But they have generated one thorny question:
Why are there two such symbols rather than one and how are they related
to each other? Eudo Mason says that the Macrocosm corresponds to the
principle of contemplation and the Earth Spirit to the principle of action
(Goethe's Faust, 141). These two principles correspond to Faust's own
two impulses: the cerebral impulse to know the whole world and the vis-
ceral impulse to be united with Mother Nature. Mason stresses that the
Earth Spirit is Goethe's invention to express his devotion to the earth
(Goethe's Faust, 148-50). The poet loaded the Earth Spirit with two
symbolic functions. Its first function was to stand for this world against
the other world. This is to end the alienation from the natural world by
repudiating the supernatural world. The second function of the Earth
Spirit was to clarify Goethe's own version of pantheism. With the revival
of Spinoza's philosophy, naturalistic pantheism became a groundswell
for the German intellectuals of Goethe's generation. Although they re-
jected the other world, many of them subscribed to an idealistic or Ro-
mantic view of Nature, which Goethe regarded as an unreal view of real-
ity and as a new escape from this world of brutal force, where all things,
good and evil, beautiful and ugly, significant and insignificant, exist side
by side with equal right for survival, fighting against each other and de-
vouring one another. This is Hobbes's nasty and brutish state of nature.
This frightful condition of the earth is represented by the appearance of
the Earth Spirit in frightening red flames and the equally frightful atmos-
pheric turbulences that accompany her appearance.
Goethe adopted the word Erde (earth) as his own logo to highlight
his chthonic emphasis on naturalism against its ethereal version. To-
gether with Herder, Mason says, he formed many compound words that
begin with Erde such as Erdenatur (earth-nature), Erdegebilde (earth-
forms), Erdegesetze (earth-laws), Erdeschranken (earth-limitations), and
Erdenursprung (earth-origin). His favorite was Erdensohn (earthling),
which is repeatedly used in the composition of Faust (Goethe's Faust,
154). Whereas the Sign of the Macrocosm represents the idealistic pan-
theism, the Earth Spirit represents the realistic pantheism. The latter is
earth-centered; the former is heaven-centered. In the Sign of the Macro-
12 Chapter One

cosm, the creative force flows downward from heaven to earth as it does
in the Prologue, where the praise of Archangels moves from the glory of
heaven down to the elemental forces of earth. In the other astrological
Sign, the Earth Spirit arises from the depth of the earth. Her power
moves upward from the bowel of Nature. She appears in response to
Faust's longing for the real Nature, which means the realistic Mother
Nature. The Sign of the Macrocosm has given him only an idealistic pic-
ture of Nature. When he moves from the Sign of the Macrocosm to the
Sign of the Earth Spirit, he can be taken to make the move from the un-
realistic version of pantheism to the realistic version.
In referring to the Earth Spirit, I use the feminine pronoun 'she'. But
this is grammatically wrong because the grammatical gender of Erdgeist
is masculine. But the Earth Spirit is associated with the breasts of Nature.
Furthermore, the grammatical gender of Erde is feminine. If the Earth is
feminine, her spirit cannot be masculine. Ontologically, the Earth Spirit
must be feminine because it belongs to the Earth. This is the difference
between the grammatical and ontological rules of gender. Goethe's in-
vention of the Earth Spirit transforms Spinoza's pantheism. The idealistic
version is Spinoza's original pantheism. Faust's vision under the Sign of
the Macrocosm shows only the world, but no presence of God as its mas-
ter. This is the way Spinoza understands God: He is identical with Nature.
Spinoza's natural world has nothing like the Earth Spirit, who functions
as the principle of activity and the source of all life. Just before summon-
ing the Earth Spirit, Faust says that the breasts of Nature are the source
of all life, on which heaven and earth depend. This statement contradicts
the Archangels' praise of heaven and earth as the glorious works of the
Lord in Heaven. The first strophe of their song praised the splendor of
heaven; the next two strophes described the stormy phenomena of the
earth. The content of these two strophes is restated in the Earth Spirit's
description of her own activities to Faust:

In life like a flood, in deeds like a storm

I surge to and fro,
Up and down I flow!
Birth and the grave
An eternal wave,
Turning, returning,
A life ever burning:
 The Superman in Estrangement 13

At Time's whirring loom I work and play

God's living garment I weave and display
(Faust 501-9, trans. David Luke)

The Earth Spirit now claims as her own work what was praised as
the work of the Lord by the Archangels. She claims to create all things
that happen in the temporal world, and those things constitute the living
garment of Godhead. In that case, the Lord in Heaven does not create his
own garment, but only wears it. We have already questioned His creative
role. Neither the Lord nor the Archangels said anything about it. But the
Earth Spirit openly proclaims that she is the creator of all natural phe-
nomena. By this proclamation, she is designating as her own what was
praised as the power and work of the Lord in Heaven by the Archangels.
This move is similar to what Spinoza has done in elevating Nature to the
only God of the world. In this move, he has dismantled the Judeo-
Christian God by transferring all His divine attributes to Mother Nature.
Those attributes are eternity, necessity, and sovereignty, and they origi-
nally belonged to Mother Nature. In ancient Greece, Nature alone was
the only eternal and necessary being, while the gods and goddesses were
her contingent products. But those divine attributes of Nature had been
transferred to the Christian God by the Church Fathers. Spinoza has re-
stored those stolen attributes to Nature by taking them away from the
Christian God. Faust is doing the same thing by transferring the power
and work of the Lord in Heaven to the Earth Spirit. Just as Spinoza has
naturalized the Christian God, Faust is naturalizing the Lord in Heaven.
In this endeavor, Faust adds one vital element, the notion of life, which is
never stressed in Spinoza's philosophy. The Earth Spirit is the source of
all life. With this great Spirit, Goethe founded the German chthonic dy-
nasty. His notion of the Earth Spirit will be reformulated as Erda by
Richard Wagner in The Ring ofthe Nibelung, though she does not retain
the awesome power and appearance of the Earth Spirit. In Nietzsche's
Zarathustra, she will appear as Life, a wild woman, whose inexhaustible
power of creation and destruction matches that of the Earth Spirit.
For a few years, Eudo Mason says, Goethe had neglected his original
conception of the Earth Spirit and used the expression "the World Spirit"
(Goethe's Faust, 149). This expression was popular with Hegel and his
followers. Both the Lord in Heaven and the Earth Spirit can be called the
14 Chapter One

World Spirit. But their origins are different. One rules from the top of the
heaven; the other arises from the depth of the earth. Faust is bringing
together these two World Spirits by making the Earth Spirit the real
power behind the throne of the Lord in Heaven. She weaves the garment
for the body of Godhead. The earthy Nature is the body of the Lord in
Heaven, and this body is animated by the primal energy of the Earth
Spirit. The Lord is only a figurehead; the Earth Spirit is the ultimate
power. Thus the monotheism of the Prologue in Heaven is absorbed into
Faust's pantheistic naturalism. This is what is meant by the naturalization
of Christianity. The Spirit of Earth is also the ultimate source of energy
for Faust and all other creatures. He is ceaselessly striving because he is
made in the image of the Earth Spirit. Hence he is really her agent and
her servant although the Lord in Heaven called him his servant. There is
a complex and subtle irony in Faust's protest for his equality to the Earth
Spirit. He bases his protest on the ground that he is made in the image of
Godhead (Faust 516). But this metaphor is open for two interpretations.
If he is made in image of the Lord in Heaven, he cannot command an
imposing stature against the Earth Spirit because the Lord himself carries
little weight against her. On the other hand, if he is only an image of the
Earth Spirit, he can never be equal to her. He can be no more than a
writhing worm as the Earth Spirit says.
When Faust is crushed by the Earth Spirit's insult and dismissal, he
is briefly relieved by a short visit from Wagner. After his departure,
however, Faust dwells over his magic vision and his encounter with the
Earth Spirit. He ruefully recalls the time when he fancied he was close to
the mirror of eternal truth and reveled in celestial clarity as though he
had freed himself of his earthling status. He felt he was even better than
Cherub because he thought he had the power to flow freely through the
veins of Nature and participate in the creative life of gods (Faust 614-20).
This was his hopeful illusion of being a superman, which is now shat-
tered by the Earth Spirit's word of thunder. For his superhuman arro-
gance, he feels, the Earth Spirit just punished him by making him feel
like a dwarf (Faust 613-21). He recognizes the violent conflict between
his two. impulses, intellectual and existential. In his vision of the Macro-
cosm, he wanted to see the world as God sees it. Intellectually, he was
trying to be a superman. But the astrological diagram was not real
enough to satisfy his impulse to be united with living Nature. So he
 The Superman in Estrangement 15

summoned the Earth Spirit for his existential need, but her insulting
treatment has made him realize the obvious truth that he is only an earth-
ling, not a superman free of earthly shackles. He now concedes that he
cannot be equal to the mighty Spirit. He had the power to summon her,
but not the power to retain her. So he felt so small and so great at the
same time in his encounter with her. He is besieged with a cluster of ex-
istential questions: "Who can teach me?", "What should I avoid?", and
"Should I follow every impulse?" In this uncertain frame of mind, he
reflects on the difficulty of coping with the earthly life.
Faust laments that even the noblest things the spirit conceives are
pushed aside by the ever alien material things. When the earthly goods of
this world are secured, we call the better things deceit and illusion. What
gave our life the noble feelings is petrified in the earthly bustle (Faust
634-39). This is a Platonic' complaint against the earthly existence par
excellence, which goes together with Goethe's Platonic outlook cited at
the beginning of this chapter. When our fantasy soars in its glorious
flight and hopefully waxes for the eternal world, Faust says, we can still
find a little space for contentment even after joy after joy is shattered in
the whirlpool of time. But even this little contentment cannot survive the
assault by Care, who builds her nest deep in the heart, creates secret sor-
rows, and restlessly disrupts joy and peace. She can wear many different
masks: house and home, wife and child, fire and water, dagger and poi-
son, and many other countless sources of our worries and anguishes.
Consequently, we always live in the dread of things that do not even
happen. There is no way to escape from the grip of Care, an offspring of
the Earth Spirit. This is the fate of an earthling. After this long reflection,
Faust painfully admits that he is not like the gods. Thus he repudiates his
pretension of being a superman, He bravely accepts his lowly status: He
is like the worm that burrows in the dust (Faust 653). Everywhere in his
existence, Faust feels overpowered by the Earth Spirit, lord of the dusty
world. He is made of dust and surrounded by dust-the walls of dust, the
moldy books, and his scientific instruments. Those instruments are now
mocking him. They were supposed to be the key to open the secret of
Nature. But the world of dust has never allowed itself to be unveiled.
Thus his superhuman aspiration for unlocking the secret of the dusty
world has been totally frustrated. This may be another reason for feeling
16 Chapter One

that he is humiliated by the Earth Spirit. It surely vindicates her conten-

tion that he is not her equal.
In this desperate moment, Faust sees the poison bottle and thinks of
killing himself. Strangely, he considers suicide not as the termination of
his existence, but as its liberation from earthly shackles. He fancies shed-
ding his earthly garb and riding a fiery chariot on a new path through
ether to the new sphere of pure activity. Here again he is stating a Pla-
tonic longing. In the Phaedrus, Plato compares the soul to a chariot that
can fly to the heavenly realm of Forms. Faust is dreaming of the same
Platonic flight. But he asks himself, "Do you, now only a worm, deserve
it?" (Faust 707). He is still caught in the conflict of his own self-images
as earthling and as superman. He is detennined to resolve this conflict by
liquidating his earthly existence and prove by his deed that human dig-
nity does not fall short of divine height. Just then he suddenly hears the
Easter bell and the choral music of Christ's resurrection. Though he no
longer believes in Christ, he recalls his youthful joy of Easter, which
prevents him from taking his life. While his tears are flowing, he says,
"The Earth has taken me back" (Faust 784). In this temporary union with
the earth, Faust goes outside the city gate and runs into the Easter prome-
nade. The girls are talking about the boys, and the soldiers are singing
about their battle for girls and castles. It is the revelry of love and war,
the two basic means for sexual reproduction. One old woman talks about
matchmaking and offers her service to pretty girls. Sexual reproduction
is for the renewal of life. The promenade is the spring festival celebrating
the renewal of natural forces after a long winter. The Christian feast of
Easter has been so naturalized that it can be taken for a pagan festival of
nature-religion. The resurrection of Christ is now being celebrated as the
revival of Mother Nature. Easter has clearly become a big feast of earth-
lings. In this season of revival and renewal, Faust says, everything is
striving and growing. Merry voices of the village people make him feel
that he is in the middle of their paradise. The great and the small alike
shout joyously: "Here I am human, here I am allowed to be really hu-
man" (Faust 940).
In the bustle of the Easter promenade, Faust seems to have com-
pletely forgotten his superhuman aspiration and really come back to the
earth, living up to his earlier statement, "The Earth has taken me back."
But he is not a wholesome earthling yet. His longing to be like a god and
 The Superman in Estrangement 17

see the whole world from a divine perspective comes right back to haunt
him when he sees the sun on his way home from the promenade. For
Faust, the sun is not merely a physical object, but a goddess. She is the
divine model for his superhuman ideal of being able to see, in an unbro-
ken vision, the whole world from the top of mountains to the bottom of
oceans. He can never free himself from this divine self-image any more
than he can stop being an earthling. This is the essence of his famous
speech on his two souls to Wagner:

Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast,

And either would be severed from its brother;
The one holds fast with joyous earthly lust
Onto the world of man with organs clinging;
The other soars impassioned from the dust,
To realms of lofty forebears winging.
(Faust 1112-16, trans. Walter Arndt)

One of the two souls is earth-bound; the other is heaven-bound. The con-
flict of these two souls is none other than Goethe's own fundamental po-
larity, which I cited at the beginning of this chapter. To resolve this con-
flict is the momentous task not only for Faust, but also for Goethe's spiri-
tual heirs, especially Richard Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche.

The Earthling and the Devil

Right after his speech on his two souls, Faust appeals to the spirits in the
air and ask them to transport him to higher life. Though they do not re-
spond to his call, a poodle appears. The dog keeps running around Faust
and Wagner in a spiral, making an eddy of fire. The fiery movement of
the poodle echoes back to the fiery appearance of the Earth' Spirit. Their
connection will be revealed later. Faust returns to his study with the poo-
dle and gets absorbed again with his question on the source of life. For
some revelation on this question, he opens the New Testament and reads
the first sentence of St. John's Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word."
This is surely a statement about the primal source. But Faust cannot be-
lieve that the Word was the original source of the world. So he decides to
write his own version of the first line of John's Gospel. As his altema-
18 Chapter One

tives to the Word, he tries out the Sense, the Power, and the Action.
There is a logical progression in the trial of these alternatives. The Sense
should naturally follow the Word because every word has a sense. Later,
Mephisto in his disguise as Doctor Faust will describe to a student the
science of theology as a dubious game of empty words. The student will
reply that a word must have a concept (Faust 1993). The concept is the
same as the sense or meaning of the word. The German word Sinn is in-
variably rendered as the Mind in English translations. But that breaks up
the logical progression in Faust's thought for his revision of the first sen-
tence of John's Gospel.
What must be the Sense (meaning) of the Word, if it is to mean the
primal source, or rather what was in the beginning, as the Gospel puts it?
Faust settles on the Power as its Sense. But power cannot be mere power
any more than a word is a mere word. The Power is related to its Action,
just as the Word is related to its Sense. This is the chain of reasoning be-
hind Faust's revision scheme, by which Faust replaces the Word/Sense
with the Power/Action. This replacement is in tune with the replacement
of the Lord in Heaven, the God of Logos, with the Earth Spirit, the God-
dess of Power. This outcome should be understood as continuation of the
theological investigation that began in the Prologue. The Lord in Heaven
introduced the notion of the primal source and later His monotheism was
absorbed into the pantheism of the Earth Spirit. When Faust replaces the
Word with the Action, he claims to act on the prompting from the Spirit
(Faust 1236). He must be thinking of the Earth Spirit's display of power
and her statement that she weaves the garment for Godhead in the 100m
of time. Her weaving is the act for the manifestation of her power. Faust
is treating the Word of John's Gospel as a typical meaningless word of
theology and pouring his own meaning into this cipher. This is almost
the same operation as that of installing the Earth Spirit as the real power
behind the throne of the Lord in Heaven. Both cases involve the opera-
tion of providing some real content for an empty form.
Right after the translation, the poodle transforms itself into a huge
beast with fearsome jaws and fiery eyes, which are again reminiscent of
the Earth Spirit. Faust tries to control the beast with his magic, and the
beast presents itself in the form of a wandering scholar. This is Mephisto.
Faust asks him, "What is your name?" Mephisto makes a witty reply:
Faust should not ask for the name if he wants to know the essence, be-
 The Superman in Estrangement 19

cause he has just expressed his contempt for the Word in his revision of
St. John's Gospel. Faust defends himself by saying that the name usually
indicates the essence. Mephisto then describes himself as one part of that
power that ever wills evil and yet always creates the good (Faust 1336-
37). This enigmatic answer is also a witty move in a word game he is
now playing with Faust. It involves the three words that Faust used for
his alternative translations of the Word: the Sense, the Power, and the
Action. It begins with the Power ("one part of that power"). The phrase
"creates the good" refers to the Action, namely the action of creation.
The phrase "ever wills evil" refers to the Sense. To will belongs to the
mental domain of the Sense. What one wills to do is what one means to
do. The intention of an act belongs to the domain of meaning or sense.
Faust began his question about Mephisto's name, and he replied by using
the three words Faust had just used in his revision of the biblical passage.
Thus their exchange goes through the chain of four words-the Word,
the Sense, the Power, and the Action.
Mephisto's witty game of words is so enigmatic that it only baffles
Faust. When he demands an explication of the enigmatic reply, Mephisto
mystifies it even further by identifying himself as the spirit that continu-
ously negates. He further elaborates his act of negation as the act of de-
struction, and justifies this destructive role on the ground that everything
created is only fit to be destroyed (Faust 1338-44). Therefore, he says,
his proper element is evil. He is now describing himself as the agent of
destruction, whereas he just described himself as the agent of creation.
But there is no real contradiction. He said that he was the agent of crea-
tion against his will. He is now explaining what he meant by "willing
evil" in his previous statement. It means to negate, to sin, and to destroy.
But he is presenting this principle of negation as an essential complement
of the principle of creation. There can be no creation without destruction.
This will become Zarathustra's favorite teaching on the will to power.
Every moment in the world of phenomena is a moment of simultaneous
destruction and creation. This is the roaring loom of time, where the
Earth Spirit said the eternal sea brewed the turbulent wave and the glow-
ing life from birth to death (Faust 504-8). It is also what the Lord in
Heaven called the world of Werdende (Becoming), which is subject to
perpetual fluctuation. Still baffled by the devil' s enigmatic statements,
Faust wants to know why Mephisto describes himself only as a part. He
20 Chapter One

replies that no one is a whole although man is foolish enough to think of

himself as a whole. But there is only one whole and everything else is a
part of this whole. This is again Spinoza's doctrine of one infmite sub-
stance: there are no finite substances. Individuals are only the modes of
the infinite substance. Mephisto explains his relation to the whole:

I am part of the part that once was everything,

Part of the darkness that gave birth to light,
That haughty light which envies mother night
Her ancient rank and place and would be king-
Yet it does not succeed: however it contend,
It sticks to bodies in the end.
It streams from bodies, it lends bodies beauty,
A body won't let it progress;
So it will not take long, I guess,
And with the bodies it will perish, too.
(Faust 1349-58, trans. Walter Kaufmann)

This passage should be read as an elaboration and modification of

the praise of the world by the Archangels in the Prologue. They began
with their praise of the sun and its light in heaven and then moved down
to the earth and the turbulent motion of its material elements. They never
say where the sun and its light come from. On the contrary, they give the
impression that the brightness of heaven descends to the darkness of the
earth, that is, the power of creation originates in heaven and radiates
down to the material sphere. This cosmological view is reversed by Me-
phisto's account, which recognizes three elements: the Darkness, Matter
(bodies), and Light. The Primal Darkness is Mother Night, the ultimate
ground of reality, which gave birth to Light. The haughty Light now
challenges the ancient rank of its Mother, but it can never succeed. Light
streams from bodies and makes them beautiful. Light cannot operate
without Matter. Before long, Light will perish together with Matter. Only
the Primal Darkness is eternal. Both Light and Matter are destined to per-
ish because they are not original. This is Mephisto's cosmology, which
continues and completes the Earth Spirit's modification of the cosmol-
ogy of the Prologue. Mephisto has introduced one new element, the Pri-
mal Darkness as the ultimate ground of all reality. This is the primal
source (Urquell) that was mentioned by the Lord in Heaven, and it was
understood as the Power by Faust in his revision of John's Gospel. Now
 The Superman in Estrangement 21

Mephisto locates the ultimate source of this Power in the Primal Dark-
ness. His account also revises the biblical story of creation, according to
which the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the
deep before the creation. In this primal state, God first created light (Gen.
1:2). On Mephisto's account, the primal state is the ultimate ground of all
creation. The formless void and darkness are combined into the Primal
Darkness, which is even more ultimate than the Lord in Heaven and the
Earth Spirit. These two deities are only temporal or phenomenal manifes-
tations of the Primal Darkness.
The Primal Darkness is the ultimate depth of the earth. Because it is
unnamable and ineffable, it is also called Chaos. The word chaos is not a
name; it indicates something that cannot be named or described by the
use of words. Faust calls Mephisto "strange son of Chaos" (Faust 1384).
He will identify himself as "Chaos' well-beloved son" when he meets the
Phorkyads, the horrible daughters of Darkness (Faust 8027). Chaos is
also called the Abyss (Abgrund), which means the groundless ground or
the chaotic ground (Faust 10108). Zarathustra will adopt "the Abyss" as
his favorite expression for the ultimate ground of the world. Mephisto
describes the ultimate depth of the earth as Nothingness (Nichts), which
lies beyond space and time, when he sends Faust down there to see the
Mothers in Act 1 of Part Two. But Faust says that he will find the All in
that Nothingness (Faust 6256). The All is the totality of phenomena in
the temporal world, but it arises from the Nothingness of the Primal
Darkness beyond space and time. It is called Nothingness because it is
indescribable and incomprehensible. If there is anything that can never
be named or described, it is as good as nothing. Nothingness as the ulti-
mate fountain of the universe is similar to Lao Tzu's conception of Tao
as the beginning of the whole world. He says, "Tao is non-being, but its
nothingness is the origin of all things" (Tao Te Ching 4).
Goethe's conception of the ultimate ground of all reality as the inef-
fable and indescribable Nothing or Chaos leads to his mysticism of Na-
ture, which is different from the mysticism of God. In his mysticism, Na-
ture itself is the domain of mystery. But he does not inherit these mysti-
cal expressions from Spinoza, who never used them in his own account
of Nature. The use of these mystical expressions is one of the significant
features in Goethe's transformation of Spinoza's pantheism. His mystical
expressions may have been derived from Kant's notion of the thing-in-
22 Chapter One

itself, which is said to be indescribable and incomprehensible because it

lies beyond space and time and transcends our words and concepts.
Therefore, it has been treated as Nothing by some Kant scholars. But it is
the ultimate ground of all phenomena. In the Prologue in Heaven, the
world of phenomena is also described by Kant's technical term, Er-
scheinung, which is usually translated as "appearance" (Faust 348).
By using the mystical expressions, Goethe highlights the inexhausti-
ble power of Mother Nature, which he takes as the heart of her infinitude.
Mephisto attests to this inexhaustible power when he admits his inability
to extinguish the endless breeding of beasts and humans. Although he
keeps on burying the enumerable number of the dead, they are always
replaced by the fresh flow of new living things, which unfold in dryness
and wetness, heat and cold. Faust says to him that he is waving his
clenched fist against the creative power, because he is posing himself as
the agent of destruction. But Mephisto has already said that his destruc-
tive role is only an instrument in the creative role of Nature. In opposing
the Something against his Nothingness, he takes Something as the sym-
bol of creation and Nothingness as the symbol of destruction (Faust
1363-64). But Nothingness is the mother of every something. If the ulti-
mate ground of reality were Something, it would be finite and be ex-
hausted. Because it is Nothingness, it can never be exhausted. The Taoist
sage says that Tao can never be exhausted because it is empty and non-
being (Tao Te Ching 4). Tao is like Goethe's Nothingness. Hence Noth-
ingness is the symbol of not only destruction but also of the ultimate
ground of all creation. When the phenomenal entities are destroyed, they
may appear to be reduced to Nothingness. But that is their return to the
empty womb of Nature. On the other hand, the world of phenomena has
no empty room because it is filled with countless somethings. Hence the
creation of something new requires the destruction of some old things.
Without their destruction, there can be no room for the new entity in the
world. Especially the creation of a living thing involves the assertion of
its will. But the will of one living being can be asserted only at the ex-
pense of some other living beings. Hence the principle of individuation
involves the act of negation as well as affirmation. Thus the inexhausti-
ble creative power of Nature entails the endless struggle of power and
destruction for her countless creatures. This is the frightful essence of
Nature that was already displayed to Faust by the Earth Spirit in scary
 The Superman in Estrangement 23

red flames. Mephisto is now explaining it further for Faust's benefit by

describing himself as the spirit of negation.
At the end of this long discussion, Mephisto offers to show Faust
what sort of sensuous pleasure his magic art can deliver. He calls out his
spirits and asks them to open up all of Faust's physical senses. With a
rapturous song of beautiful natural scenery, they send Faust to sleep.
Mephisto says that Faust has plunged into the sea of sweet dreams and
illusions. The importance of this point cannot be fully appreciated until
we remember that the medieval Christians had deliberately dulled and
choked their carnal senses to open up their spiritual sense. The withering
of carnal senses must have been the chief cause for Faust's alienation
from the natural world. Hence to open up his carnal senses is the first
step for the recovery of his natural instincts. Finally, Mephisto acts as the
lord of rats and mice, frogs and flies, bugs and lice, and asks them to nib-
ble away the magic signs that are blocking his exit from Faust's study.
He is fully displaying himself as the agent of natural force that is shared
by all animals. Unlike the Christian devil, Jane Brown says, he is a na-
ture spirit (Goethe's Faust, 67). Carnal senses belong to natural force.
When Mephisto comes back on his next visit, he offers to free Faust from
bondage so that he can find out what life is really like. By "life" he
means the life of natural instincts. Faust bitterly complains of his being
cramped in the pain of earthly life. When morning comes, he always
wakes up in terror. All day long, he lives with endless anxiety and appre-
hension. At nightfall, he is frightened with wild dreams. He describes the
root cause of all his endless troubles as follows:

The god that dwells within my heart

Can stir my depths, I cannot hide-
Rules all my powers with relentless art,
But cannot move the world outside;
And thus existence is for me a weight,
Death is desirable, and life I hate.
(Faust 1565-71, trans. Walter Kaufmann)

There is something outlandish about Faust's pain of existence. It in-

volves neither natural disasters such as famines and crippling diseases,
nor political and social oppressions such as religious persecution and
economic exploitation. It arises from the simple fact that he has no con-
24 Chapter One

trol over the outside world. This is the basic fact of life, which is ac-
cepted as a normal feature of human existence by most people. But Faust
has turned it into his hell. Why? Because of the god in his heart. Unlike
mortals, every god surely expects, by right, to rule over the outside world.
The god within Faust's heart is his superhuman ego. This god has trans-
formed his harmless natural existence into a painful prison of despair. He
is suffering in his self-imposed torture chamber. Thus he has developed
his unbearable hatred of life.
Faust says that he would welcome death as his relief because he de-
tests life. Then he curses everything in the world, one after another. This
is his famous universal curse (Faust 1583-606). This curse of despair is
followed by the Chorus of Spirits, whose song opens with:

Woe! Woe!
You have destroyed
The beautiful world
With mighty fist;
It crumbles, it collapses!
A demigod has shattered it!
(Faust 1606-12, trans. Charles Passage)

The phrase "with mighty fist" echoes back to Faust's earlier taunting re-
mark that Mephisto was waving his clenched fist against the creative
power. The clenched fist expresses the spirit of defiance. The spirits say
that a demigod has made the destruction. The demigod is the god in
Faust's heart, his superhuman ego. The earth has become unbearable and
detestable for Faust because he has been captivated by his superhuman
dream and imprisoned in his own titanic defiance. This is the cause of his
alienation from Mother Nature, which has afflicted him all his life. Ad-
dressing Faust as the mighty son of the earth, the spirits ask him to re-
build the beautiful world in his bosom and a start a new life. They are
exhorting Faust to be reborn as a child of the earth. This is the only way
to overcome his despair over earthly existence.
Mephisto simplifies the counsel of the spirits for Faust: they are urg-
ing him to move out from his solitude to the wide world for the sake of
pleasure and action (Faust 1627-34). Mephisto tells Faust to stop playing
with his grief that devours his life like a vulture. This is an important
point. Faust is really playing with his grief. There is no way to play with
 The Superman in Estrangement 25

grief when it comes from natural disasters. But his grief is highly artifi-
cial because it comes from the frustration of his superhuman aspiration.
It is the vulture that devours his life from inside. He can stop it only by
getting out of his isolation. Hence Mephisto exhorts him to seek the
company of some human beings. This should be the first step for ending
his isolation and alienation and becoming a healthy son of the earth. To
become a full-fledge earthling has now become Faust's central ambition.
For this endeavor, Mephisto offers to be Faust's companion. Thus they
come to sign the pact: Mephisto will be Faust's servant in this world. In
return for this service, Faust will be his servant in the other world. Faust
replies that he does not care about what will happen to him in the other
world because the earth is the only source of his joys and sorrows. In that
case, Mephisto says, he can accept the pact and peacefully feast on the
good things that his skills can provide. But Faust responds with his
Faustian reply: If he ever reclines on a bed of sloth, he will be done then
and there. Then he offers the famous wager: If he says to any single mo-
ment, "Stay a while, you are so fair!", then the devil may fasten him in
fetters. Faust says that he will be a slave if he stagnates. If he is a slave,
he does not care whose slave he is. This is the Faustian spirit. To be the
master of one's own existence is to be the master of one's perpetual
striving. The wager depends on the Faustian striving, whereas the pact
only concerns the exchange of services. The wager is Goethe's invention,
whereas the idea of signing a pact with a devil comes from the Faust leg-
end. Although Faust and Mephisto sign these two agreements together,
they never specify their relation.
Though the traditional pact reflects the traditional notion of devils, it
does not go well with Mephisto. Unlike traditional devils, Mephisto said
in the Prologue that he did not care at all about the dead and that he was
interested only in playing with living souls. In that regard, he shares the
same disdain for the dead and the other world as Faust does. For this rea-
son, it has been said that Goethe retained the pact only because it had
come down from the Faust legend. But it cannot be simply retained be-
cause of its conflict with the Prologue. To resolve this conflict, Eudo
Mason has proposed that he substituted the wager for the pact (Goethe's
Faust, 299). But there is no textual evidence for the substitution. When
Faust dies in Act 5 of Part Two, Mephisto will claim his soul. But this
claim can be staked not on the wager, but on the pact. Mephisto evi-
26 Chapter One

dently believes that the pact is still binding. If he thinks so, it could not
have been substituted with Mephisto's consent. If both the pact and the
wager are in effect, we had better assume that they are two independent
agreements. This is the standard view in Faust scholarship. For example,
John Williams says that the wager is just added to or superimposed on
the pact (Goethe's Faust, 88).
Let us now consider the relation of the wager to the Prologue in
Heaven, where the Lord makes a wager with Mephisto. The Lord's wa-
ger is different from Faust's wager. The former says nothing about any
fair passing moment or restless striving, which is stipulated in Faust's
wager. After making His own wager, the Lord indeed says that He has
given Faust the devil as his companion to prevent his slackening. But this
is not a part of His wager, in which the Lord simply bets on His convic-
tion that the devil cannot divert Faust from the primal source however he
may try. As we noted earlier, the Lord never explains what it means to be
diverted from the primal source. For this reason, the terms of the wager
were never clearly defined. We have entertained the conjecture that to be
diverted from the primal source is to lose the Faustian temperament of
ceaseless striving. In his wager, Faust is spelling out the unspecified
terms in the Lord's wager. In that case, he is taking over the Lord's in-
complete wager with Mephisto and completing it to his own satisfaction.
In short, Faust is playing the role of the Lord. He has also become the
devil's master by his pact with Mephisto, which makes the devil his ser-
vant for life. His relation to Mephisto is analogous to the Lord's relation
to the devil. We have already noted that the power and work of the Lord
were transferred to the Earth Spirit. Faust is now taking over the role of
the Lord. This is the essence of his wager. Like the Lord in Heaven,
Faust has the confidence to contest the power of the devil in a wager. He
is living up to his title, the little god of the world, which Mephisto gave
him in the Prologue in Heaven.
So far we have mainly talked about the terms of the wager, but we
should never forget that its function is to reorient Faust's concern from
heaven to earth, from theory to practice, from thought to action. This
point was already suggested by the spirits, who exhorted Faust to be re-
born as a child of the earth. Mephisto can assist him for this rebirth be-
cause he is a spirit of the earth or nature spirit, who prefers action to the-
ory, deed to word, earth to heaven. He demonstrates this point in his talk
 The Superman in Estrangement 27

with a student after signing the pact with Faust and sending him away
from his study. He gives the student his satirical comments on logic,
metaphysics, jurisprudence, theology, and medicine. These five sciences
are coextensive with the four human sciences, over whose emptiness and
futility Faust despaired in the opening scene of Part One. Logic and
metaphysics are equivalent to philosophy, one of the four sciences. In his
satirical comments, Mephisto shows why these sciences are empty and
futile. His talk with the student begins with the latter's thirst for knowl-
edge and ends with Mephisto's verdict: "Grey, my friend, is every theory
/ And green is Life's golden tree" (Faust 2038-39). This verdict confirms
Faust's negative verdict on the intellectual pursuit and offers the golden
tree of life as the positive alternative. Although Faust does not participate
in this talk, he has come to the same conclusion as Mephisto's by the
time the pact is signed. During the talk, the devil acts as Faust's alter ego.
The student assumes that he is Professor Faust because he is wearing
Faust's gown. As an alter ego, he is not merely impersonating Faust, but
expressing Faust's own thought.
Just before Mephisto's talk with the student, Faust had decided to re-
pudiate his superhuman intellectual aspiration:

I puffed myself up far too grand;

In your class I deserve to be.
The mighty Spirit spumed me and
Nature locks herself from me.
The thread of thought is snapped off short,
Knowledge I loathe of every sort.
Let us now sate our ardent passion
In depth of sensuality!
(Faust 1744-51, trans. Charles Passage)

Faust has gained a better understanding of his past and future. He was
indeed puffing himself up with an inordinate self-esteem. He behaved
like a superman when he summoned the Earth Spirit. But the great Spirit
spumed him and Nature was locked against him. He now loathes knowl-
edge of all sorts and places himself in the same earthly rank with Mephi-
sto. Abandoning his heavenly dreams, he has determined to be a full-
blooded earthling and plunge into the depth of sensuality. He tells Me-
phisto that he is not merely seeking pleasure, but thirsting for the full
28 Chapter One

spectrum of human experience-the flood of time and chance, success

and failure, gratification and frustration, joys and woes, the heights and
depths in the common lot of all human beings. Faust is not really aban-
doning his superhuman aspiration, but only reorienting it from heaven to
earth. His Promethean titanism is still intact. He has decided to become a
Titan on the earth instead of flying away from it. That is why he wants to
experience the entire spectrum of earthly existence, including the woes
of failures and frustrations.
This new superhuman posture of Faust greatly amuses Mephisto; it
only shows how little Faust understands earthly existence. He tells Faust
that this world is the tough morsel he has been chewing for many thou-
sand years and that it is made only for a god who dwells in eternal splen-
dor. No mortal can ever digest this old sour dough. If Faust wants to ful-
fill his superhuman dream on the earth, he should get a poet to write up a
glorious fiction as his life. Then he will give Faust the title of Sir Micro-
cosm. Someone whose life can encompass the full spectrum of human
existence is indeed a microcosm that reflects the macrocosm. Undeterred
by this mocking, Faust still cannot give up the crowning heights of hu-
manity. Mephisto tells him, "You are in the end-just what you are"
(Faust 1806). Whether Faust puts on wigs with millions of locks or
wears elevated shoes, he will be just what he is, and no more and no less.
Mephisto is trying to give the basic lessons about earthly existence,
which he believes is still beyond Faust's comprehension. Faust finally
admits that his stature has not grown a whit and that he is no closer to the
Infinite. He is still concerned with the Infinite. As a fully committed
earthling, he may reconceive the Infinite in terms of the earth. But he can
never get it out of his mind. That is his Promethean titanism in the
earthly mode. Mephisto advises him to be like ordinary people and enjoy
the green pastures around him instead of worrying about the Infinite. But
Faust does not know how to do it and asks Mephisto where to start. For
the first step, Mephisto will shove Faust out of his torture chamber and
take him on a glorious expedition. When Faust leaves the study to get
ready for the expedition, Mephisto feels that he has finally got Faust on
the hook. When a human being scorns learning and reason and falls for
magic and illusion, Mephisto says, the devil can drag the poor mortal
through a tangle of inanities until he writhes and suffocates. This is Me-
phisto's plan for roasting his prey.
 The Superman in Estrangement 29

Erotic Love and its Bestial Power

After signing the pact with Faust, Mephisto takes him to a tavern, where
the young folk are singing and drinking. There the devil performs the
miracle of drawing wine from the holes drilled into a wooden table.
Drunk with the devil's wine, the young people sing that they feel like
five hundred sows, and Mephisto says that their bestiality will soon ap-
pear in full splendor. He is the master of beasts, who has already demon-
strated his lordship over rats and mice, frogs and flies, bugs and lice in
Faust's study. His bestiality belongs to the reproductive power of Nature
because he is a nature spirit. When the wine is spilled on the floor, it
turns into flames. The fiery passion of reproductive power is flaring up.
The first indication of this beastly power was given when Mephisto ap-
peared in the form of a dog and spiraled around Faust in an eddy of fire.
But Faust fails to get involved in the little fire festival of the tavern. His
body is too old; his libido is too wilted. His old shriveled self has to be
rejuvenated and revitalized before he can have his own fire. To this end,
Mephisto takes Faust to a witch's kitchen, a filthy joint where a bunch of
apes are tending the cauldron of the witch's brew. This scene again
shows the inseparability of bestiality and sensuality. In a mirror, Faust
sees the picture of a most beautiful woman. He is so entranced with her
that he calls her beauty divine. Mephisto tells him that he can easily get a
woman like that for Faust. When Faust is about to drink the horrible
brew to make him thirty years younger, he can see a flame arising from it.
It is again the reminder of the fiery power of passions. Mephisto tells
Faust that the drink will make him see a Helen of Troy in every woman.
Beauty is a by-product of overcharged sensuality.
When the rejuvenated Faust goes out to the street, he immediately
finds a beautiful girl in Gretchen, a young country maiden barely over
the age of fourteen. She is coming away from her confession. As Mephi-
sto predicted, Faust feels instant attraction to Gretchen and asks the devil
to procure the girl for him. But the devil replies that he has no power
over her because she is innocent. That is, he cannot get her by his magic.
Although Faust is much older than Gretchen, he does not even think of
getting the girl by himself because he is not any more experienced in
dealing with the opposite sex than she is. In all probability, he has never
had any sexual encounter with a woman in his life. Since magic can have
30 Chapter One

no effect on Gretchen, Mephisto tells Faust that he should make his own
effort to pluck the pretty flower. Faust threatens to break up their part-
nership unless he can have the young thing lying in his arms that very
evening. Mephisto replies that it will take at least two weeks. This pro-
vokes an outrageous remark from Faust. Ifhe had only seven quiet hours,
he says, he would not need the devil to seduce the little thing. John Wil-
liams takes this remark to show that Faust does not rely on the devil in
his seduction of the little girl (Goethe's Faust, 98). By "seven quiet
hours," I suppose, Faust means seven hours alone with Gretchen. But he
has no idea of how to get seven hours alone with a woman. He could not
hold Gretchen even for seven minutes on the street. Even if he were
given seven hours with a woman, he would not know what to do with
them. In fact, he rarely appears alone when he meets Gretchen again. For
every move he makes for her seduction, Faust has to depend on Mephi-
sto's arrangement and guidance. This is largely due to his inexperience
and ineptitude in the world of sensuality. In the matters of sex and
women, he is a clumsy novice. That is why he makes the demand to Me-
phisto for the immediate delivery of Gretchen into his arms. Though he
is burning for the gratification of his sexual impulse, he does not look for
the excitement of seduction like an experienced adventurer.
Mephisto takes Faust into Gretchen's room while she is away. The
poor cottage room looks like a paradise to Faust. While looking over the
cozy room, he says,

Here, Nature, you with your creative powers

From light dreams brought the angel forth to be;
Here lay the child, her bosom warm
With life; here tenderly there grew
With pure and sacred help from you
The godlike image of her form.
(Faust 2711-16, trans. Charles Passage)

Faust looks upon Gretchen as a gift of Nature, whose creative powers

freely flow in this room. In his own study, he had felt the total frustration
of creative powers. Faced with the godlike image, he feels that the sacred
room is desecrated by his intrusion for the satisfaction of his sensual im-
pulse. He is approaching Gretchen not simply as a girl, but as the vital
medium for reuniting himself with Mother Nature. This is the most im-
 The Superman in Estrangement 31

portant point for understanding his relation with Gretchen and the ensu-
ing tragedy.
Just then the little girl is returning to her room and Mephisto and
Faust leave before her arrival. When she enters the room, she sings the
ballad of "The King of Thule," thereby expressing her fear of being
abandoned by her lover. She finds the casket of jewelry left behind by
Faust and Mephisto. In the next scene, Mephisto tells Faust that
Gretchen's mother took the gift ofjewelry to the priest. Faust orders Me-
phisto to get another set for Gretchen. She is determined to keep this one
for herself and goes to her neighbor Martha for advice. While they are
talking about the jewelry, Mephisto appears and pretends to bring Martha
the news of her deceased husband. He promises to bring the deposition
of his death and his friend as the second witness and secures Gretchen's
promise to be at the next meeting. Thus he arranges the meeting of Faust
with Gretchen. Faust is all excited about this arrangement. But when he
is told that he has to commit perjury for the deposition, he feels uneasy.
Mephisto mocks his scruple and his naivete, and Faust calls him a liar
and a sophist for his unscrupulous approach. But Mephisto says that
Faust will be lying when he swears the profoundest love of his soul to
deceive Gretchen. Faust feels that his love is defiled by this remark be-
cause he cannot find a suitable name in all the noblest words for the
blaze of his heart, which he says flames eternally. Faust asks Mephisto,
"Is this only a game of devilish jugglery?" (Faust 3066). Mephisto an-
swers that he is still right about the deceptive feeling of love. This is an
intriguing exchange on the nature of erotic feelings. Faust believes in the
sincerity of his love only because he is an innocent novice who has not
yet experienced its betrayal. But Mephisto knows better because he is a
veteran who has seen all the shady and shallow sides of love. Most im-
mature lovers do not deliberately lie when they swear their eternal love.
But this feeling of truly sincere love is only a tricky scheme of erotic
passion for its own gratification. Faust saw Gretchen's room as a holy
shrine largely because he had taken her for a young girl of innocence and
purity. But this naive assumption is belied by her excitement over the
second casket of gifts and her conspiracy with Martha to keep it hidden
from her mother. Because Faust is still an inexperienced novice, he does
not know the difference between reality and appearance in the erotic
32 Chapter One

world. He cannot recognize that the beautiful woman in the mirror and
the filthy witch's kitchen are two manifestations of the same erotic force.
When the two couples get together in Martha's garden, they show
the difference between novices and veterans in the affairs of erotic pas-
sion. Faust praises Gretchen's artless innocence and humility. She de-
scribes her modest family. Her father is long dead and her brother is a
soldier. After the death of her father, her baby sister was born. But her
mother was too sick to nurse her and she had to raise the baby sister like
her own child. She had to take care of not only the baby, but the whole
house. Unfortunately, the baby is now dead. But Gretchen still has to
cook, sweep, knit, and sew for the family all day long. Her angelic do-
mestic devotion seems to fill the sacred shrine that Faust saw in her
empty room. He calls her an angel. When he holds her hand and tells her
that he loves her, she trembles allover. As Mephisto had predicted, Faust
declares his eternal love. While this innocent couple feels the excitation
of their erotic passions, the other couple feels no such titillation. Though
Gretchen fears that Faust may forget and abandon her, she still ardently
hopes that he will be true to his love like the King of Thule. But Martha
knows better and suffers from no such romantic illusion because she has
long been abandoned by her wayward husband. She is a realistic oppor-
tunist, who recognizes a replica of her husband in the perpetually wan-
dering bachelor Mephisto. She works on him not by her erotic appeal but
by her practical argument. She tries to persuade him to settle down with a
good wife by talking about the scary prospect of living alone in his old
age. Mephisto acknowledges the merit of all her arguments, but he re-
mains as elusive as ever to the end of the party. Thus the experienced
couple never become emotionally involved because their erotic sensibil-
ity is jaded. But the inexperienced couple exchange their vows of eternal
love because their erotic impulses are still fresh. Here is the difference
between innocence and experience. Innocence comes from inexperience.
After declaring his eternal love to Gretchen, Faust takes himself into
a cavern in a forest. Outside the cavern, a stonn is roaring in the forest
and a giant fir tree falls down and crushes its neighbors. Faust is taking
refuge in the cavern and expresses his profound gratitude for this refuge:

Spirit sublime, all that for which I prayed,

all that you now have granted me. In fire
 The Superman in Estrangement 33

you showed your face to me, but not in vain.

You gave me for my realm all Nature's splendor,
with power to feel and to enjoy it. You grant
not only awed, aloof acquaintanceship,
you let me look deep into her heart
as if it were the bosom of a friend.
You lead the ranks of living beings past me,
and teach me thus to know my fellow creatures
in air and water and in silent wood.
(Faust 3217-27, trans. Stuart Atkins)

The Spirit sublime must be the Earth Spirit because she is said to have
appeared in fire. Faust is thanking her for the intimate friendship she has
granted him. But this is a big surprise because she has never appeared
again after the humiliating encounter and there has been no indication
that he was developing this new friendship with her. It is generally as-
sumed that Faust just acquired a totally new rapport with the Earth Spirit
after entering the cavern and that he is expressing his gratitude for this
newly acquired relation. That still does not explain why and how the
frightful Earth Spirit has suddenly become friendly to Faust in the cavern.
This puzzle can be solved by the hypothesis that Faust is expressing his
gratitude for his love of Gretchen. I have already said that Faust has
looked upon this love as the vital medium for his union with Nature.
Through this love, he has opened up his senses for the splendor of Nature
and gained the "power to feel and to enjoy it." Through the same love,
the Earth Spirit let him "look deep into her heart as if it were the bosom
of a friend." Faust has been allowed to know the depth and splendor of
Nature by experiencing Gretchen's love. He goes on to thank the Earth
Spirit for having given him Mephisto as his companion because he has
initiated Faust into the world of erotic love. To experience erotic love is
to know the heart of Nature because reproduction expresses her basic
power. Mephisto has been indispensable for this erotic experience. Faust
refers to this point when he says that he cannot do without his devilish
companion though he is insolent and scornful.
Faust's statement that the Earth Spirit has given him Mephisto as his
companion is a big surprise, too, because the Lord in Heaven claimed to
give Faust the devil as his companion. We have earlier noted that the
Earth Spirit is the real power behind the throne, and this point is sup-
34 Chapter One

ported by Faust's designation of Mephisto as the emissary from the Earth

Spirit. When Faust signed the pact with Mephisto, he was determined to
become a single-minded and full-fledged earthling. To this end, Mephi-
sto initiated him into the erotic world. His alienation from Mother Nature
goes back to the opening scene, where he regarded it as his ravaging
sickness and expressed his wish for recovery to the melancholy moon.
That dear wish has been fulfilled. Instead of the melancholy moon, he
can now see the soothing moon rise and soften meditation's somber
pleasure (Faust 3235-39). When he was imprisoned in his Gothic study,
he summoned the Earth Spirit to heal his alienation from Mother Nature.
He wanted to feel her breasts and their power. Those nurturing breasts
have now materialized as Gretchen's. Just compare the cavern with his
old study. He is now imprisoned in the cavern as he was in his study.
Whereas his study was in a Gothic building, the cavern is deeply hidden
in the ground. The Gothic architecture is a phallic symbol, especially a
Gothic tower, that proudly soars toward heaven and disdainfully looks
down to the earth. It stands for the human existence that has shriveled in
its alienation from Mother Nature. The cavern is a virginal symbol of the
maternal womb that nurtures all earthlings without discrimination. That
is why Faust says that the Earth Spirit has shown him the ranks of all
living beings and taught him to know them as his brethren (Faust 3225-
27). In the cavern, Faust is reflecting on his erotic involvement with
Gretchen as the culmination of his long struggle to be reunited with
Mother Nature. If his cavern experience is not connected to his erotic
affair, then they appear to be two separate events in his life. They are
indeed so treated by Mephisto. He thinks that Faust left the love-stricken
girl and came to the cavern to immerse himself in a cheap mystical union
with the All.
If Faust really achieved his reconciliation with the Earth Spirit, why
does he celebrate it in the cavern? Why does he not do it with the raging
storm in the open? Why does he not do it together with Gretchen and her
blazing erotic passion? He does it alone in the cavern, I propose, because
he has not fully achieved the reconciliation. He is still insulated and pro-
tected from the storm raging outside by the cavern. The same is true of
his erotic passion, which is now raging in his inner self like the storm
outside. But he is not ready to plunge into that storm of erotic passion.
Mephisto brings out this point by saying that Faust left Gretchen after
 The Superman in Estrangement 35

kindling her mad passion, which came into her soul like the floods from
melting snow. While they are talking, in fact, Gretchen's bosom is surg-
ing with the rage of her love in "Gretchen's Room". The devil suspects
that the flood of Faust's own passion has become shallow. He is wrong
on that point. In reliance on this faulty judgment, Eudo Mason says that
Faust is deserting Gretchen when he comes to the cavern (Goethe's Faust,
333). On the contrary, Faust's erotic passion is raging as fiercely as
Gretchen's. He has taken refuge in the cavern to avoid the terrible explo-
sion that is bound to occur in the union of two erotically charged bodies.
He is trying to cope with this pre-coital fear and trembling. Whenever
Mephisto mentions Gretchen, Faust is overpowered by his frenzied lust
for her body. He is so obsessed with her sweet body that he cannot even
think of her lips touching the body of the Lord in the Eucharist without
jealousy. But his sexual assault on that sweet body will lead to dreadful
consequences that will ravage her world. This is the source of his fear
and trembling. All this is only amusing to Mephisto. He only laughs at
Faust's ranting and fear and tries to persuade him to return to his sweet-
heart for the physical union and the consummation of his love.
When Faust finally gives in to Mephisto's exhortation, he recognizes
what terrible things he will be doing to the poor little girl. He says that he
is a homeless monster without aim and without rest. Picking up Mephi-
sto's metaphor of the floods from melting snow, he compares his raging
passion to a cataract that will smash Gretchen like a cottage on an alpine
meadow. The homeless monster is going to destroy the little girl's home-
bound existence, which he had adored and envied in her empty room.
But he accepts it as the sacrificial demand from hell and the devil:

You, hell, desired this sacrifice upon your shrine.

Help, Devil, shorten this time of dread.
What must be done, come let it be.
Let then her fate come shattering on my head,
And let her perish now with me.
(Faust 3361-65, trans. Walter Kaufmann)

This passage is often taken to mean that Faust is evading his own respon-
sibility by appealing to determinism. But he is recognizing his own pow-
erlessness against the raging erotic passion. He cannot hold it up any
more than he can hold up a waterfall. Mephisto has continuously indi-
36 Chapter One

cated that erotic passions are fiery and bestial. But only now the shatter-
ing truth of this devilish warning is sinking into Faust's heart. But he
cannot hold himself back from that bestial fire and still achieve a com-
plete union with Mother Nature. He finally accepts Gretchen's sacrifice
for his fullest reconciliation with the Earth Spirit.
The sense of union that he experienced with Mother Nature in the
cavern was only a sentimental illusion, and the Earth Spirit was still as
terrifying as the raging storm, But to stay in the cavern would be his re-
fusal to face the Earth Spirit on her own ground. So he finally decides to
come out of the cavern and plunge into the raging storm, That is the only
way to achieve a real union with the Earth Spirit, and this risky venture is
the bliss that brings him nearer and ever nearer to the gods (Faust 3242).
To achieve this bliss has been his ultimate goal. Faust believes that he
has been given Mephisto as his indispensable companion to fulfill this
goal. But he also knows that human beings are granted nothing perfect
(Faust 3240). This may sound like a familiar adage of common sense,
but he is talking about his union with Mother Nature. It is obviously im-
perfect as long as he abstains from the physical union with Gretchen. But
it will still be imperfect even with the physical union because he can gain
it only by shattering the little girl. There is no way to fulfill his ultimate
goal without terrible sufferings. Faust was referring to these sufferings
when he said, "You, hell, desired this sacrifice upon your shrine." This
hellish sacrifice was already written into his pact with the devil. When he
was signing it, he told Mephisto that he was not merely seeking pleasure,
but thirsting for the full spectrum of human experience-the flood of
time and chance, success and failure, gratification and frustration, joys
and woes, the heights and depths in the common lot of all human beings.
For the full spectrum of human experience, Faust must go through the
suffering of not only himself but of Gretchen. Thus he gives in to Mephi-
sto's urging and decides to go back to Gretchen. This is what it means
for Faust to accept determinism and his fate of being an earthling.
When Faust rejoins Gretchen in Martha's garden, he is driven more
than ever by his dream of complete union with Mother Nature. When he
is questioned on his religious faith by Gretchen, he gives his pantheistic
view of God: the All-Embracing and the All-Sustaining Being, who em-
braces and sustains Gretchen and himself together with heaven and earth
and whose mystery can be seen all around in the eternal stars and the
 The Superman in Estrangement 37

eyes of each other. He urges Gretchen to feel the mystery, saying that
feeling is all and names are only sound and smoke. He is projecting his
idea of total union with the all-embracing reality. He is eager to experi-
ence the same fulsome union with Gretchen. He tells her that he would
like to lie with her breast to breast and mingle soul with soul. When
Gretchen says that her mother's light sleep is the obstacle for their sexual
union in her room, he gives her the sleep potion to take care of this ob-
stacle. By then she confesses that she is completely under the control of
his will. She will do anything to please him. After the physical union,
Gretchen goes through the misery of a deflowered maiden. At the well,
she is pierced by Lieschen's gossip on Barbara's humiliation for her il-
licit love with the boys. Although Gretchen used to condemn this sort of
sin in others, she suddenly realizes that it has become her own. But she
still tells herself that her sweet love was good. She goes to the shrine of
the Virgin and shares her sorrow with the Mater Dolorosa. Now she un-
derstands the sorrow of the Virgin Mother over her son. She must be
thinking of her own baby in the womb. But her misery does not end there.
Her brother Valentine gets killed by Faust during his attempt to defend
his sister's honor. The dying brother tells her that she will be abhorred by
all decent folk. In the requiem mass, the Evil Spirit whispers to,her about
the mother's death from the sleep potion. Thus she has lost all her family
because of her love. But that is not the end of her tragedy yet. She will
drown her baby and get executed for the infanticide.
Prior to the final outcome of this tragedy, Mephisto takes Faust to the
witches' carnival on the Brocken ("Walpurgis Night"). The carnival is an
exuberant revelry of sexual impulses. I have already said that Mephisto
stands for the power of natural impulses. The witches are the Nordic
counterpart to the Christian devils. They are the celebrants in the revelry
of sexual impulses, Nature's power of reproduction and self-renewal. It
is their spring festival, which displays both the seductive and repulsive
features of reproductive drives. Mephisto has brought Faust to this rev-
elry to let him see the full display of erotic forces that have embroiled
him in the Gretchen tragedy. The witches talk about copulations and
abortions. Their revelry fully demonstrates the obscenity and bestiality of
sexual impulses. John Williams says that the revelry shows the perverted
distortions of Nature (Goethe's Faust, 116). But I would rather say the
opposite: the revelry fully exposes the true character of Nature in its na-
38 Chapter One

kedness. On the Brocken, the witches enjoy absolute freedom to gratify

their natural impulses, which are suppressed and inhibited by social con-
ventions under the normal circumstances. By their nature, sexual im-
pulses are obscene and bestial. The human copulations cannot be any less
obscene and bestial than the bestial copulations. But the concepts of ob-
scenity and bestiality are alien to natural impulses in their nudity; these
concepts are the human inventions and conventions for their control in
civilized societies.
The obscene world of witches is also a chaotic world, which reflects
the Pristine Darkness or Chaos, which Mephisto claimed to represent in
his self-introduction to Faust. There are many ways to understand the
nature of the Pristine Darkness. On Brocken Mountain, it can be taken to
be the chaotic ground of procreative energy that sustains the fertility of
earth and the reproduction of living things. Baubo is a nursemaid of De-
meter, the goddess of fertility. She is riding a fat sow, a sign of bulging
fertility. In the darkness of the Walpurgis Night, procreative energy is let
loose from the Pristine Darkness or Chaos. In general, the festivals of
primitive religions freely release the tightly controlledreproductive im-
pulses. When these powerful impulses are released, they are bound to
create a wild revelry of profusion and confusion. This is happening on
the Brocken. In this regard, there is a basic affinity between Nordic
witches and the Christian devil Mephisto, who associates himself with
the serpent, a symbol of fertility and sexuality. The Christian devil has
been assimilated to the Nordic world via his naturalization. Jane Brown
says that the earlier parts of "Walpurgis Night" are strongly reminiscent
of "Auerbach's Tavern" and "Witch's Kitchen" (Goethe's Faust, 133). In
the tavern, Mephisto drew wine from a wooden table that made the tav-
ern customers feel and behave like a bunch of beasts. He was letting
loose natural impulses. The witch's kitchen smelled foul and looked
filthy. It was a beastly den and the witch's cauldron was attended by apes.
But this beastly den induced Faust's erotic vision of the most beautiful
woman. The tavern and the kitchen had given him a foretaste of what he
is now experiencing on the Brocken. Faust is eager to get to the summit
and see Satan sitting on the throne, but Mephisto never takes him there.
Why does he not? This question has provoked many theories. But I find
none of them convincing. So I propose my own conjecture. To show
Mephisto on a royal throne would provide a strong sense of order in his
 The Superman in Estrangement 39

kingdom. This is what happens in the bottom of Dante's hell. Lucifer is

at the center of his kingdom, which is composed of three concentric cir-
cles. There is a clear sense of rigid order in his kingdom. But there is no
reason even to assume the existence of such a Satanic kingdom on the
Brocken or anywhere else in Faust's world. Mephisto has never associ-
ated himself with Satan. He has always acted as a nature spirit, who
freely roams allover the world. When he first appeared to Faust, he iden-
tified himself as a part of the Darkness, which lies in the deepest depth of
Mother Nature. This self-description of Mephisto would blatantly be
contradicted by the presentation of Satan, who acts as Mephisto's master
on the top of the mountain. Because there is no Satanic rule, the revelry
on Brocken Mountain is wild and chaotic. Witches and warlocks are to-
tally free and absolutely equal; they feel no intrusion or oppression from
above or from below. This produces the untrammeled expression of
erotic impulses. The Brocken is the land of absolute freedom that can
allow no Satan on its top. That is why Mephisto does not take Faust to
the top of the mountain.
While Faust is dancing with a young pretty witch and she is singing,
a small red mouse leaps out of her mouth. He immediately breaks off the
dance, evidently feeling revulsion. Right after this event, Faust sees an
image of a girl, who looks like Gretchen. He recalls the breast that she
offered him and her sweet body that he possessed. By this sequence of
events, he recognizes the fundamental similarity between Gretchen and
the young witch. Though Gretchen appeared innocent and demure, he
now realizes that her love and lust are basically the same as those of the
young witch. She is far from as pure and as innocent as she may have
appeared. Many commentators have taken her as an innocent victim of
Faust's egotistic passion and Mephisto's ruthless scheme. But Eudo Ma-
son has adduced ample textual evidence that she was burning with her
own erotic passions and cleverly connived in the game of seduction
(Goethe's Faust, 187-245). The poor girl is now overtaken by her own
brutal erotic passion, which has fallen upon her like a waterfall. In "For-
est and Cavern", Faust used this metaphor to describe his own passion.
But it now applies to Gretchen's as well. Right after recalling Gretchen's
breast and her sweet body, he sees a red string tied around her neck,
which represents her impending execution. The Brocken is now an-
nouncing the dismal outcome of her tragedy. In "Dismal Day", Faust
40 Chapter One

blames Mephisto for Gretchen's misfortune and calls him "dog" and
"abominable monster." This outburst is often taken as his shameless ploy
to shift the blame from himself to Mephisto. But we can make a better
sense out of it by taking Mephisto and his dog-shape as symbols of the
bestial drives that have driven Faust and Gretchen to their tragedy. He
has learned this point in "Walpurgis Night" and is outraged over those
bestial forces.

Death on the Trail of Hope

Faust goes to the prison to save Gretchen, but she refuses to escape with
him. She does not want to leave because there is no more hope for her.
She is racked with her remorse and guilt over the death of her baby, her
brother, and her mother. He even tries to carry her away by force, but she
resists that, too. She sternly orders him to take his hands off her. She
loathes his attempt to save her from prison and execution. She would not
budge from her jail cell because she has placed her trust in divine justice.
So he is forced to leave the prison without her. Part One of Faust, which
opened with his desperate desire to be freed from his prison, ends with
Gretchen's resolute decision to stay in her jail cell. She has surrendered
herself to her Christian faith, while he has done his best to liberate his
spirit from the Christian cultural imprisonment. This is the irony of his
career up to this point. He has indeed succeeded in getting initiated into
the world of Nature, but he is nowhere near to the union of love and
brotherhood he dreamed of in "Forest and Cavern". Though his lust has
been indispensable for his initiation into the world of Nature, it has not
only destroyed Gretchen, but irredeemably alienated him from his be-
loved. The power of lust can never unite two persons in a loving union
because lust is always self-seeking. Just before signing the pact with Me-
phisto, Faust said to him, "The devil is an egoist" (Faust, 1651). This is
the reason why he calls himself the spirit of negation. He can seek his
own gratification only at the expense of others; he can affirm himself
only by negating others. By their mutual negation, the egoists produce
conflict and chaos.
Is there any hope of getting over the chaotic world of natural im-
pulses and avoiding the tragedy of blind passions? This question is taken
 The Superman in Estrangement 41

up in "Walpurgis Night's Dream". At the end of "Walpurgis Night",

Mephisto and Faust find a theater on Brocken Mountain and see the per-
formance: The Golden Wedding of Oberon and Titania, King and Queen
of the Fairies. The fiftieth anniversary of their wedding is celebrated by a
masque. Oberon announces his reconciliation with his queen. This refers
to Shakespeare's romance, A Midsummer Night's Dream. This play is a
comedy of erotic entanglements. Theseus, duke of Athens, is planning to
marry Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons. A group of Athenians are in-
structed to put on a play for the celebration of their wedding. They get
together for the rehearsal of the play in a nearby forest, which is haunted
by the fairies, who have come from India to bless the wedding. But there
is a constant bickering between King Oberon and Queen Titania over
trivial matters. When their quarrel escalates, she accuses him of philan-
dering and enjoying Hippolyta as his mistress. In response, he blames her
for having affairs with Theseus and other men. To control and embarrass
his queen, Oberon tells Puck to obtain the magic potion of love. It is used
to make Titania fall in love with Bottom, who has put on the ass's head
for the rehearsal. Under the spell of the potion, she implores him to stay
with her in the forest. Two boys and two girls in the rehearsal group also
get involved in erotic entanglements. Demetrius loves Hermia and has
secured her father's approval to marry her, but she has been bewitched
by Lysander. In order to avoid Hermia's marriage to Demetrius, she and
Lysander decide to elope. In the meantime, Demetrius is chased by the
lovesick Helena. Moved by her condition, Oberon asks Puck to use the
potion to make Demetrius fall in love with Helena. But Puck uses the
potion on Lysander by mistaking him for Demetrius. Under the spell,
Lysander abandons Hermia and madly chases Helena. These two girls
get into a fi.ght over Lysander. To correct. the mistake, Puck uses the po-
tion on Demetrius and makes him enamored with Helena. When she be-
comes the common object of erotic attraction for both young men, they
decide to settle the issue by a duel. But the duel is averted by Oberon's
magic. He also dissolves the spell on Titania. Thus Oberon secures his
reconciliation with Titania and the marriage of Demetrius to Helena and
of Lysander to Hermia at the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta.
In A Midsummer Night's Dream, none of the participants are in con-
trol of their erotic passions. They are either enslaved to their passions or
captivated by the magic spell of others. Their emotional conditions are as
42 Chapter One

chaotic as those of the witches on Brocken Mountain. In Shakespeare's

play, however, order prevails over chaos in the end. Order also prevails
in the theatrical performance of "Walpurgis Night's Dream". It is an or-
ganized performance. Even its orchestra is well-ordered although it is
made of insects. To be sure, the masque in the theater is a parade of end-
less squabbles and disputes involving people from all social strata. A
young witch argues with an old witch; an idealist disputes with a realist.
They talk about the devils, too. But they maintain an orderly atmosphere
in a dramatic contrast to the disorderly atmosphere on Brocken Mountain.
Thus the masque in the theater ends with the hope of a true community
that can prevail over the chaotic world of erotic passions. The theatrical
performance concludes with Ariel's quatrain on the trail to the hill of
roses:

The gift of loving Nature,

The Spirit gave you the wings,
Follow my airy trail,
To the hill of roses!"
(Faust 4391-94, my translation).

John Williams says that the wording of Ariel's quatrain might recall
the third stanza of Schiller's "Ode to Joy". This is perhaps Goethe's trib-
ute to Schiller, he adds (Goethe's Faust, 115). We can be more specific
than Williams and show that it may be more than a tribute to Schiller.
The first quatrain of Schiller's third stanza runs as follows:

Joy is drunk by all beings

At the breasts of Nature;
All good people, all bad people
Follow their trail of roses.
(My translation)

Compare this quatrain with that of Ariel. The loving and nurturing Na-
ture is their common ground. "Follow" is their common exhortation.
"Their trail of roses" in Schiller's quatrain is expanded to "my airy trail,
to the hill of roses" in Ariel's quatrain. Prior to the quatrain, "The Ode to
Joy" celebrates the joy of universal brotherhood for all natural beings.
The hill of roses is Ariel's metaphor for a community of brotherhood. In
"Walpurgis Night's Dream", the fairies, the pristine natural beings, are
 The Superman in Estrangement 43

trying to secure a community of universal brotherhood by replacing con-

flict and discord with peace and harmony. That means to follow the trail
to the hill of roses. But the beautiful rose blossoms are inseparable from
their thorns. Schiller and Ariel probably want to say that the joy of uni-
versal brotherhood may be inseparable from the pain of universal conflict
and discord. Even then, the bloom is a triumph over the thorn. In the Pro-
logue in Heaven, the Lord says, "The gardener knows, when the small
tree turns green, / That bloom and fruit adorn its future years (Faust,
310-11, my translation). In that case, we may still hope that chaos is Na-
ture's matrix for generating cosmos just as the thorns prepare for the
blossoms. That is to say, Nature can breed a community of love out of
her brutal forces.
Ariel does not appear in A Midsummer Night's Dream. He is a fairy
that works great wonders with his magic for Prospero in The Tempest.
He foils and defeats all the evil schemes against Prospero and helps him
regain his lost dukedom. Like Oberon and Puck, he represents the magic
power that prevails over the destructive force of human passions. But he
is far more powerful and resourceful than Puck. Unlike Puck's magic,
Ariel's is not limited to the small province of erotic affairs. It can thwart
the evil schemes in the political world and calm the waves and gales of a
big ocean. At the end of the play, most important of all, he is freed by
Prospero from the magic spell of the dead witch Sycorax, who used to
live on the island. He then stands freely above the spell of magic and
passions. Ariel's freedom stands against the freedom of witches on the
Brocken. The witches' individual freedom resulted in social chaos, but
Ariel's individual freedom restores social order. Therefore he has the
authority to lead others out of the cauldron of passions to the hill of roses.
This is only a hope and dream of "Walpurgis Night's Dream". But it is
the only hope for the chaotic world of natural impulses. Hence it will
become the central topic in Part Two of Faust, in which Mephisto intro-
duces Faust to the great world.
Before moving over into this great world, let us consider the critical
question concerning the place and role of "Walpurgis Night's Dream" in
Faust. Why is it placed right before the climax of the Gretchen tragedy?
It is clearly out of place because it is a light-hearted entertainment or in-
termission, as many critics have argued. In fact, most of this piece was
originally written not for Faust, but for Schiller's Musenalmanach of
44 Chapter One

1797. But it was not printed in that volume. On this ground, some have
thought that Goethe saved it by injecting it into his own Faust. Hence
many critics have regarded it as an irrelevant injection and distraction.
As John Williams notes, some critics have tried to justify its presence by
taking it as a satyr play, namely, as a relief after the tension on the
Brocken (Goethe's Faust, 116). But this view is implausible. A satyr
play comes not before but after a tragedy. If "Walpurgis Night's Dream"
is to be a satyr play, it should be placed after the wrenching conclusion
of the Gretchen tragedy. It is equally difficult to make a case that the al-
leged satyr play is meant to release the tension of the Brocken episode.
The witches' revelry is amusing and sometimes disgusting, but that is no
cause for generating tension. Jane Brown offers another account: the
light-hearted performance is meant to transform the Gretchen episode
from a sentimental tragedy to a comic opera (Goethe's Faust, 134). But
the denouement of the Gretchen episode after "Walpurgis Night's
Dream" is too tragic and too brutal to be seen as a comic opera. Hence
the thematic relevance of "Walpurgis Night Dream" remains an unre-
solved problem. This section squats in Faust like an unwanted child.
We may find the solution in Ariel's quatrain and its hope for recon-
ciliation and universal brotherhood. He is the spirit of reconciliation that
stands against Mephisto, the spirit of negation and dissension. As we
noted earlier, Mephisto is the spirit of negation because he stands for the
self-seeking natural impulses. Those impulses have.to negate and destroy
everything that stands in their way, thereby turning children against par-
ents, brothers against sisters, and eventually lovers against each other.
But Ariel invites his fellow creatures to overcome their divisive selfish
impulses and get out of their internecine warfare for a community of har-
mony. This can be achieved only by becoming true children of Mother
Nature. There are two ways of being a child of Nature: the egoistic and
the cosmic way. The egoistic way is to assert one's natural impulses and
gratify them at the expense of all others. The cosmic way is to be one
with Nature and all her creatures. Even Faust said in the cavern that the
great Spirit had shown him the brotherhood of all living beings. These
two ways stand on two views of substance in Spinoza's language. We
should not forget that Faust's world is Spinozan. The egoistic way as-
sumes that every individual is a substance and that every substance is its
own sovereign. But that is a faulty view in Spinoza's philosophy. No
 The Superman in Estrangement 45

finite individual can be a substance because it can never exist all by itself.
There is only one substance, namely, the infinite Nature. It is called the
infinite substance because it is the self-contained reality. Individuals are
only parts of the substance; they are its modes. The way of egoism is to
mistake a part for the whole. In their folly, Mephisto told Faust, humans
mistake themselves as wholes. The cosmic way is to recognize this
common mistake and accept oneself as a part of Nature. This is the only
way to the hill of roses, the world of universal brotherhood. Ariel's idea
of community is based on Spinoza's idea of infinite substance.
By their blind egoism, natural impulses create their own hell. Hence
to get out of this hell is to be redeemed. This type of redemption is
achieved by Gretchen, when she is pronounced as "saved" at the end of
Part One. Most commentators have taken her salvation as Christian be-
cause she prays to the Father to save her just before this pronouncement
and because she is a pious Christian. But there is no indication that the
message of salvation is coming from the Christian God. There is no in-
tercession of the Christian Church or the use of its sacraments for the
sake of her salvation. It may be better to understand her salvation in
terms of Ariel's sense of community, because it is secured by her con-
nection with her family, her only community. From the beginning to the
end of Faust's visit to her jail cell, her thought keeps shifting between
herself and her family. When he is about to unlock the jail door, he can
hear her song of a little dead child, who talks about having been killed by
the mother and eaten by the father. Her thought is with her dead child.
When Faust enters her room, she mistakes him for a jailor who has come
to take her to the execution. She cries that she is still too young to die
and begs him to spare her life. Her thought has come back from her dead
child to herself. But when she realizes that she will be taken away from
her cell, she begs to hold and nurse her baby for the last time. Her
thought has gone out to her child again. When she recognizes Faust as
her lover, who has come to rescue her, she exclaims, "It is you! You
have come to save me. / I am saved!" (Faust 4473-74). Her thought and
feeling are back with her own salvation. When he takes off her chains
and she becomes free to go, she is besieged with the sense of irredeem-
able guilt for having killed her mother and drowned her child. Then hold-
ing his hand, she says that there is blood on it. She is recalling his murder
46 Chapter One

of her brother. Her thought is again back with her family. Her thought
shifts endlessly between herself and her family
When Faust begs her to leave the past behind, she replies, "No, you
must outlive us." He can save himself, but she refuses to be saved with-
out her family. This is the basic difference between the homeless monster
and the little girl devoted to her family. Then she lays out her plan for the
graves of her mother, her brother, her baby, and herself-all next to one
another. She is looking forward to the graveyard, where she can be re-
united with her beloved family. The graveyard will be her hill of roses,
where she will be saved in her reunion with her family. When Faust tells
her to follow him for freedom, she says,

If the grave is there,

If death awaits, then let it come!
From here to the bed of eternal rest,
But not a single step further.
(Faust 4538-40, my translation)

The graveyard is the only hill of roses left for Gretchen. She can see no
point in running away with Faust because he is going to take her away
from her only community. She has nothing to gain and everything to lose
by escaping from her execution. She only asks Faust to save his child.
She can still see the poor baby struggling to come out of the water. She
cries, "Save! Save!" She is repeating the agony of Mater Dolorosa, who
had to suffer at the crucifixion of her son. Only a short while ago,
Gretchen shared her maternal sorrow at her shrine. The Virgin Mother is
the symbol of maternal love that held together the holy family and the
universal family of all humanity. Now Gretchen sees her own mother
sitting on a rock shaking her head. She says that the mother slept too
long to let them have their happiness. It is the basic instinct of a mother
to sacrifice herself for the happiness of her children. Maternal instinct is
the only countervailing force against the egoistic passions. It is the foun-
dation of family and community, Ariel's hill of roses.
When Faust reminds her that they must run away because the day is
breaking, she says that her day of wedding has turned into her day of
death. But Faust has never set the wedding, nor had the intention of mar-
rying Gretchen. She is thinking of her wedding because it is the sacra-
ment for bringing man and woman together for the formation of a family.
 The Superman in Estrangement 47

Waking out of this momentary illusion, she foresees the scene of her
execution and the world that will become silent like a grave thereafter.
The day is breaking and.Mephisto can wait no longer. He appears before
her cell and tells them that both of them are lost. When she hears his
voice, she is horrified at his appearance. She screams to Faust to send
him away. Mephisto is an abominable horror to her because he represents
the egoistic drive that crushes the family and tears apart the communal
bond of human beings. He is the most ruthless homeless monster in the
whole world. Gretchen finally appeals to the Father in heaven for her
salvation. It is important to note that she talks to the Father rather than
God or the Lord in Heaven. She is appealing to his parental instinct,
which is as protective as maternal instinct. By calling upon the Father
and his heavenly host, she is taking her petition to the divine family.
Thus her redemption is linked first to her own family and then to the di-
vine family. Just before her salvation is announced, Mephisto says, "She
is judged!" But this verdict is incomplete. It does not say whether the
judgment is for her condemnation or redemption. The voice from above
says, "Is saved!" This announcement is also incomplete because there is
no subject for the sentence. By combining these two incomplete sen-
tences, we can get the complete pronouncement: "She is judged and
saved!" The voice from above completes Mephisto's incomplete pro-
nouncement.
Faust came to the prison with the scheme of saving Gretchen from
execution. But that scheme is again the assertion of egoistic impulses.
Hence the proffered salvation will be her further condemnation. Gretchen
can no longer see any value in those egoistic impulses and schemes be-
cause those impulses have wrecked her life and her family. She can no
longer feel her old love for Faust; she can only see blood on his hand. By
her tragic experience, she has transcended her egoistic self and is now
reaching out for a larger self. She longs to be united with her dead
mother, child, and brother even if it can be done only in the graveyard.
At the same time, she detests the presence of Faust and Mephisto, who
have ripped her away from her mother, child, and brother. Here lies her
redemption in the Spinozan sense. It no longer matters for her whether
she is in jail or out of it because her larger self is everywhere. Nor does it
matter whether she is to be executed or not because her larger self is
eternal. This point will be demonstrated at the end of Part Two.
 Chapter Two

The Superman in Fantasy

(Faust, Part Two, Acts 1-3)

In the opening scene of Part Two ("Pleasant Region"), the tired and rest-
less Faust goes to sleep in the open field. Ariel instructs his nature spirits
to heal Faust's broken heart by purging it of all sense of horror and re-
moving its remorse. His mind is to be bathed in the dew of Lethe's water
and his body is to regain its vigor from sleep. After the long night, the
sun rises tumultuously and awakens all things from their slumber. When
Faust wakes up, he is fully recovered from the Gretchen tragedy and
feels the pulse of life in its new vitality. He knows that this is the gift of
Mother Nature he has received during the night from her healing and
nurturing hand. He thanks the Earth for having roused his resolve to
strive for the highest existence. The world that is unveiled by the light of
dawn surrounds him like a paradise. When he looks up the mountain
peaks, he feels blinded by the blazing radiance of the rising sun and turns
his gaze away in pain. He is content to have the sun behind him and
watch the waterfall storming through the cliff, swirling and gushing forth
in countless streams, and tossing sprays and foams. From this turbulence,
the rainbow forms its arch of ever changing permanence. Faust says that
this mirrors human striving: We have our life in the colorful rainbow.
What does he mean by this metaphorical statement? What is represented
by the sunlight that is too blazing for the naked eye?

The Bond of Community

By the metaphor of the sun, John Williams says, Faust is recalling his
driving ambition for the intuitive knowledge of all Nature in "Outside the
 The Superman in Fantasy 49

City Gate", where he followed the godlike flight of the sun over the
whole earth. Now he accepts the sun at his back and is content to see its
light in the reflection of a rainbow. Faust is no longer the titanic magus
figure who conjured up the Macrocosm and the Earth Spirit in an imperi-
ous quest for revelation (Goethe's Faust, 125). Jane Brown concurs with
this view. The blazing sunlight means the direct knowledge of the Abso-
lute. For some unknown reason, she uses the Hegelian expression "the
Absolute" to refer to the ultimate reality in Faust's world. She identifies
the Absolute with the Neoplatonic One (Goethe's Faust, 42). Hegel's
Absolute Spirit is meant to be not only the equivalent of the Neoplatonic
One, but also his version of Spinoza's infinite substance. But the Neopla-
tonic One and Hegel's Absolute Spirit are equally too idealistic to cap-
ture Faust's conception of the ultimate reality as Mother Nature. Nature
is neither the beginning nor the end, but only a stage in the cosmic ema-
nation from the One and in the dialectical development of Hegel's Abso-
lute Spirit. Brown says that Faust has now gained a better understanding
of the Absolute. That is, he concedes that it can never be known directly,
but only through the mediation of the world. This is what it means to see
the sunlight in the reflection ofa rainbow (Goethe's Faust, 137). Faust is
only reaffirming his previous decision not to seek a direct intuition of the
ultimate reality. He will settle for the piecemeal knowledge of Nature. In
that case, he is still struggling with the question of knowledge. But this
type of struggle is really out of place at this point of his career.
Let us go over Faust's struggle with the problem of knowledge. In
the early stage of his career, he was obsessed with it. In the opening
scene of Part One, he despaired over the fact that he was still a fool even
after mastering the four medieval disciplines of philosophy, medicine,
jurisprudence, and theology. To get out of this despair, he turned to
magic and summoned the Earth Spirit. But she only ridiculed him for his
arrogant superhuman posture. Even after this humiliation, he still longed
for the godlike knowledge and wished to be like the sun, which had the
commanding view of the whole world. By the time of his pact with Me-
phisto, however, his attitude to knowledge completely changed. He had
become sick and tired of all knowledge (Faust 1749). Then and there, he
turned his back against knowledge and plunged into the world of wild
passions to experience all joys and pains. He abandoned the cognitive
mode of existence and embraced its affective mode. Hence there is no
50 Chapter Two

reason for him to be concerned with the cognitive mode in the opening
scene of Part Two. Whereas the sun in this scene is too blazing for his
gaze, in "Outside the City Gate" he gazed on it for a long time until it set
in the evening sky. The sun's metaphorical significance has changed. In
the earlier scene, the sun was a symbol of the cognitive subject: she was
the goddess who could see the entire earth from the mountaintop to the
bottom of oceans. In "Pleasant Region", the sun is a symbol of not the
subject, but the object of Faust's perception and experience. But what
sort of experience is intimated by the sun and its blinding radiance? This
is the critical question for understanding the central theme of Part Two,
which is set in its opening section.
When Faust turns his gaze away from the blinding sunlight, he says
that the same thing happens with our yearning hope when it reaches out
for the highest goal.

Then breaks out from those eternal grounds

An excessive flame, we stand confounded;
We wanted to light the torch of life,
A sea of fire engulfs us, but what a fire!
Is it love? Is it hate? Its burning encircles us
With pain and joy monstrously alternating,
So that we look once more toward the earth,
To seek our shelter under the veil of our youthful days.
(Faust 4707-14, my translation)

Faust is talking about love and hate, joy and pain. He is relating the
metaphor of the sun to his emotional experience rather than his intellec-
tual aspiration. Did he ever seek the infinite for his emotional experience
as he did for his intellectual experience? Stuart Atkins says that he did in
making his pact with Mephisto (Goethe's Faust, 104).

Henceforth my heart, cured of its thirst for knowledge,

will welcome pain and suffering
and I'm resolved my inmost being
shall share in what's the lot of all mankind,
that I shall understand their heights and depths,
shall fill my heart with their joys and griefs,
and so expand my self to theirs
and, like them, suffer shipwreck too.
(Faust 1768-75, trans. Stuart Atkins)
 The Superman in Fantasy 51

This is what Faust said when Mephisto offered pleasure as his service.
Indeed, he decided to experience all instead of knowing all. He said that
he was not merely seeking pleasure, but thirsting for the full spectrum of
human experience. As we note in the last chapter, Faust was not aban-
doning his superhuman aspiration, but only reorienting it from heaven to
earth. He decided to become a Titan on the earth instead of flying away
from it. This is what it means to experience the All instead of knowing
the All.
Faust aspired to experience the All in "Forest and Cavern", where he
felt a sentimental union with Mother Nature and the universal brother-
hood with all her creatures. But Mephisto saw through the superficiality
of his sentimental approach and ridiculed his pretension of merging with
the All (Faust 3282-90). The devil's needling made Faust realize that he
had to seek a physical union (breast to breast) with Gretchen for a full-
fledge encounter with Mother Nature. So he overcame his pre-coital fear
and trembling and went through his seduction of the poor little girl with
his full know ledge that he would destroy her like a waterfall falling upon
a little hut. His affair with Gretchen was a titanic ploy in his direct en-
counter with the frightful Earth Spirit. But it began as a simple love af-
fair; he just wanted to light a torch of life. But he was soon engulfed in a
sea of fire, whose power is now represented by the blazing radiance of
the sun. Through the Gretchen experience, Faust has learned that he can-
not cope with the sun directly. But its blazing radiance can become a
beautiful rainbow when it is reflected on the waterfall. The sun stands for
the primal energy of Nature that arises from her eternal depths. Her pri-
mal energy is also the ultimate source for the passions that Faust experi-
enced in the Gretchen tragedy. In "Forest and Cavern", he compared his
overwhelming passion to the torrent of a waterfall. He concludes his so-
liloquy in "Pleasant Region" by using the same metaphor for a different
signification. Whereas he saw the waterfall shattering Gretchen's cottage
in "Forest and Cavern", its shattering streams produce a rainbow in
"Pleasant Region". In the land of Ariel and the nature spirits, the torrent
of a waterfall has been transformed from a destructive force into a con-
structive one.
The rainbow is an analogue of Ariel's rose hill, his symbol of com-
munity. Just as the hill of roses is formed by many roses, each of which
52 Chapter Two

draws its energy from Nature, so the rainbow is formed by countless wa-
ter drops, each of which reflects the blazing sunlight. The reflection of
sunlight on the rainbow does not represent the indirect way of under-
standing the ultimate reality, as many commentators have said. It stands
as the symbol of transforming the fiery primal energy into the communal
existence of human beings. Recovering from his fatigue and sleep, Faust
says to the Earth, "You rouse and stir a mighty resolve, / To strive for-
ward to the highest existence" (Faust 4684-85). The highest level of ex-
istence is the communal existence. In "Forest and Cavern" of Part One,
Faust said that human beings are granted nothing perfect (Faust 3240).
This dictum may appear to go against the mighty resolve to strive for the
highest level of existence. But the distinction between perfection and
imperfection can obtain on any level of existence. In Part One, Faust
tried to achieve perfection in the lowest level of existence, namely, the
level of egoistic satisfaction. In Part Two, he will try to ascend to the
highest level even if he may not achieve perfection there. Thus he drasti-
cally reorients his striving from the lowest to the highest level and calls it
"the mighty resolve." This is the consequence of the Gretchen tragedy.
At the end of Part One, Gretchen could find her hill of roses only in
the graveyard after her wreckage under the waterfall, but Ariel is opening
Faust's eyes for the rainbow forming right on top of the waterfall's shat-
tering streams. This is his understanding of how to achieve the highest
existence. Its successful achievement is assured by the ending of the elfin
chorus: "All can be achieved by the noble minds / That understand and
quickly seize the opportunity" (Faust 4664-65). The vision of a rainbow
or a rose hill can be realized only if Faust can reorient his existence from
an individual to a communal mode. One raindrop cannot make a rain-
bow; one rose cannot make a hill of roses. A rainbow and a hill of roses
are symbols of many individuals coming together in a community. In
Part One, Faust lived his life as a lone individual without any communal
bonds. He had no family and no social ties. Even in dealing with
Gretchen, he never intended to marry her and to start a family. He was
solely concerned with the gratification of his individual passions. Such a
person with no social bonds is either a god or a monster, according to
Aristotle. Indeed, Faust behaved sometimes like a god and sometimes
like a monster. In a reflective moment in "Forest and Cavern", he called
himself "the homeless monster without purpose and rest" (Faust 3348-
 The Superman in Fantasy 53

49). Under the spell of love, even Gretchen behaved like Faust in spite of
her strong family ties. She looked after her baby sister with maternal de-
votion during her own mother's long illness. Maternal instinct is the
strongest blood tie that holds together a family. For her love of Faust,
however, she brutally severed all her blood ties by killing her mother and
baby. This is the heart of her tragedy. She longed to recover those sev-
ered ties by being buried together with the other members of her family
in the same graveyard. Even Faust now recognizes the importance of
social connections. He can see it in the rainbow. But he can realize
Ariel's ideal only in the context of a community, whether it is a family or
an empire. This is what is meant by his initiation into the great world in
Part Two. The distinction between the small and the great world is not
determined merely by their sizes. The small world is the domain of indi-
vidual desires; the great world is the domain of communal bonds.
One can enter a community only by recognizing one's finitude. An
infinite being needs no community because it is sufficient to itself. But to
be finite means to be dependent on others. In Part One, Faust behaved as
though he were an infinite being. He aspired for infinite knowledge and
indulged himself in infinite passions. In "Forest and Cavern", Mephisto
said to him in teasing that he was puffing himself up to be a god (Faust
3285). His infinite approach to life resulted in the Gretchen tragedy.
Through this tragic experience, he may have recognized his own finitude.
By the end of "Pleasant Region", Stuart Atkins thinks, "Now he accepts
human finiteness not merely gracefully ... but with heroic confidence in
man's power to place himself in a harmonious relationship with the lar-
ger design of infinite God-Nature" (Goethe's Faust, 104). Faust's transi-
tion from the infinite to the finite mode of human existence is indicated
by Ariel. He sang ~f the trail to the hill of roses at the end of "Walpurgis
Night Dream". The light comedy could have been written without him,
because it is a parody of A Midsummer Night's Dream. But Goethe has
imported him from The Tempest because he has the power to bring to-
gether free individuals in a harmonious community. For the same reason,
Goethe installs him to sing the opening song for Part Two. Ariel is the
spirit who can show the trail to the rose hill and the rainbow. By this the-
atrical device, the poet indicates the connection between the end of Part
One and the beginning of Part Two.
54 Chapter Two

The difference between the finite and the infinite mode is dramati-
cally demonstrated by the difference between the opening scene of Part
One and that of Part Two. In the opening scene of Part One, Faust was
totally isolated from Nature. In fact, his total isolation induced him to
behave like a god and a monster. In desperation, he longed to be con-
nected to Nature and plunged into the world of sensuality. That was in-
deed the most effective way for reviving his connection with Nature. But
it was a shattering experience, like being suddenly hooked up to a high-
voltage live wire. His shattered self is nurtured and restored by Mother
Nature in the opening scene of Part Two. He has fully secured his con-
nection with Nature. Thus he has fulfilled his driving passion to be one
with Nature by the opening of Part Two. John Williams calls Faust's re-
newal by Nature the Antaeus experience after the giant who draws his
invincible force from the earth (Goethe's Faust, 124). Antaeus was a gi-
ant and son of Earth, who could not be defeated in wrestling as long as
he was standing on the ground. But Heracles crushed him to death by
lifting him high and separating him from his mother Earth. Faust is now
reborn as an Antaeus. This scene of rebirth resembles the revival scene
of Nature in the Easter festival. But Faust was only an observer who
could not fully participate in the Easter festival. He was still ruing over
his humiliation by the Earth Spirit. In "Forest and Cavern", he felt a sen-
timental communion with the sublime Spirit, but he was still insulated
from the raging storm outside the cave. For the first time in "Pleasant
Region", he is fully at peace with Mother Nature. But he does not call
upon the Earth Spirit. Instead, he greets the Earth and thanks her for his
new vitality. The Earth is the tangible manifestation of the great Spirit.
He is now dealing with the rainbow rather than the blazing sun. Thus he
begins his life anew as an Antaeus with Ariel's assistance. He now real-
izes that his union with Mother Nature cannot be complete without his
union with her offspring. This is the dialectical thrust for the transition
from the small to the great world, which Mephisto promised Faust.

Order out of Chaos

When Mephisto appears in the imperial palace, the Holy Roman Empire
is on the brink of disintegration. Though there is no hot war in sight, the
 The Superman in Fantasy 55

divisive natural forces are working on the petty level of seeking private
comfort and luxury and tearing apart the entire fabric of the alleged suc-
cessor to the Roman Empire. In the Imperial Council, the ministers re-
port this chaotic condition of the Empire to the Emperor. The Chancellor
says that the fever of greed rages rampant in the state. The Field Marshall
says that violent crimes overwhelm the land and that citizens pay no at-
tention to orders. The mercenaries threaten to leave because they are not
paid. The people are plundered by the forces that are supposed to protect
them. The Treasurer says that the imperial treasury is empty. The Lord
Steward says that the imperial household is outspending its budget. Fi-
nally, when the Emperor turns to Mephisto for his counsel, he says that
he can see nothing wrong under the Emperor's majestic rule and that
money is the only thing lacking. He assures that the money problem can
be easily solved by excavating the treasures and gold buried underground.
The vast underground wealth belongs to the Emperor by his right. Me-
phisto captivates not only the Emperor, but also the Treasurer with his
scheme of quick wealth, but the Chancellor, who is also Archbishop,
warns that Satan is laying a golden snare for them. He seems to recog-
nize that Mephisto's diabolical scheme is playing on their cupidity. Then
Mephisto manipulates the Astrologer to endorse his gold scheme. Saying
that the sun itself is pure gold, the Astrologer says that the most propi-
tious time for extracting the underground gold will be when the sun and
the moon are conjoined. He concludes his astrological counsel by saying
that the most propitious moment can be discerned only by the learned
man whose wisdom surpasses that of all those in the imperial court. This
opens the way for Mephisto to introduce Faust later as that learned man
to the Emperor. For the moment, Mephisto goes into his devilish game of
extolling the inexhaustible subterranean wealth. It is hidden allover un-
derground. With his greed enflamed, the Emperor wants to take on Me-
phisto's golden project as soon as possible. But the Astrologer calms
down his ambition and persuades him to celebrate Mardi Gras until Ash
Wednesday.
The festival of Mardi Gras is a long masquerade, whose interpreta-
tion has been controversial because it appears to have no thematic con-
nection with the rest of Act 1. The Masquerade packs in so many things
ranging from the Flower Girls and the Gardeners to the Fates and the
Furies that Stuart Atkins calls it the Pageantry of Life (Goethe's Faust,
56 Chapter Two

117). Goethe appears to indulge in a wild poetic fantasy and to have for-
gotten the central theme of his epic. Friedrich Gundolf calls the Mardi
Gras Masquerade the nadir of Faust's career and the deepest humiliation
of Goethe's genius (Goethe, 763). A number of scholars have tried to
save the Masquerade from this merciless dismissal by finding allegorical
connections to the thematic development of Faust. John Williams re-
counts some of them (Goethe's Faust, 129). But none of them is convinc-
ing. So I dare propose my thesis that the Mardi Gras Masquerade is an
allegorical representation of the imperial economic system. This may
sound like Heinz Schlaffer's thesis that the Masquerade is a historical
allegory of the development of modern economy from a simple barter
system to a complex industrial society (Faust Zweiter Teil, 79-98). But I
do not recognize any sign of historical development in the procession. To
be sure, it begins with the Flower Girls and the Gardeners, the Fishermen
and the Bird Catchers, the Woodcutters and the Charcoal Burners. But
they are not bartering with one another. They are looking for buyers for
their merchandize. They represent the producers and providers who con-
stitute the basis of the imperial economic system. The procession begins
with them, but ends with the appearance of the Emperor, who sits on the
top of the imperial economic system. The procession is an allegory of the
economic hierarchy rather than the economic development.
In this economic allegory, the relation between sellers and buyers is
associated with the relation of sexual partners. The Rosebuds talk about
the flaming of the libido and its promise and fulfillment (Faust 5152-57).
The Gardeners, who are competing against the Flower Girls, claim that
their fruits are better than the flowers. But they invite the girls to pair up
with them in erotic language:

Let us join you now in pairs

In your show of flowery youth
And display our ripened wares
Booth by friendly neighbor booth.
(Faust 5170-73, trans. Charles Passage)

The pairing relation of male and female is analogous to the pairing rela-
tion of seller and buyer. Both relations are governed by the law of supply
and demand. The Mother tries to peddle her daughter and tells her: "To-
day, fools are on the loose, / Spread your lap, my dear! / You can surely
 The Superman in Fantasy 57

catch one" (Faust 5196-98, my translation). The way to catch a suitor is

no different from the way to catch a buyer by laying out the flowers or
the fruits. The producers and sellers also attract parasites and drunkards,
who have no productive resources to fulfill their own needs. They are
followed by three Graces to talk about giving and receiving gracefully,
but their lines are shortest because there is little room for graceful giving
and receiving in the market economy. Then come the three Fates: The
market economy is always subject to their power of good and bad for-
tunes. They are followed by the Furies, who look like doves but sting
like snakes. They poison the relation between lovers by slander, ruin the
marital relation by perpetual disaffection, and even make the sexual part-
ners kill each other with vengeance.
With the Furies, the allegorical theme of the Masquerade seems to
shift from the economic relation to the erotic relation. But as I said ear-
lier, the partnership in sex is basically similar to the partnership in trade.
The Furies can poison business relations in the same way they wreck
erotic relations. The Fates and the Furies are followed by Fear and Hope,
the two emotional responses to the Fates and the Furies. But they are
chained by Prudence, who calls them the two greatest foes of humankind.
By his mastery of Fear and Hope, Prudence has secured his victory. His
entrance is a triumphant procession with the Goddess of Victory. But the
Goddess is derided by the nasty backbiting slanderer, Zoilo-Thersites. A
huge business success always invites cheap downgrading. When the ma-
licious critic is slashed by the Herald, it turns into an adder and a bat.
One is venomous and the other is blind. The slanderous backbiting ex-
presses the venomous blindness.
Then Faust appears as Plutus on a chariot with two companions. One
of them is the Boy Charioteer, who guides the chariot, and the other is
the Starveling, who turns out to be Greed played by Mephisto. Plutus is
the god of wealth and his treasure chest is on the chariot. The Boy
Charioteer identifies himself as lavishness and poetry and as a poet. As
Plutus's peer, he says, he can afford to be lavish because he is rich be-
yond measure. He boastfully says that he enlivens and adorns Plutus's
dance and banquet and that he provides what Plutus lacks (Faust 5576-
79). He has been taken as the symbol of poetry and his relation to Plutus
as the relation of a poet to a rich patron. Since the poet received eco-
nomic support from his patron, their relation belongs to the imperial eco-
58 Chapter Two

nomic system that is represented by the Masquerade. But the Charioteer

represents something more important than poetry. I propose that his rela-
tion to Plutus can be better understood if it is seen in reference to Plato's
allegory of the chariot in Phaedrus (253c-e). This is the chariot that
Faust alluded to in his suicide speech in the opening scene of Part One.
Plato compares the tripartite soul to a chariot of two winged horses
driven by a charioteer. One horse is white and the other is black. The
white steed is good; the black steed is bad. The white steed represents the
spirited element of the soul; the black steed represents the appetite and
greed. The white steed is honorable and upright and naturally aspires to
fly up for the vision of beautiful Platonic Forms. But the black steed is
ugly and unruly and resists the charioteer's command because it is natu-
rally compelled to fly downward for earthly pleasure and wealth. When
the black steed is too strong and too unruly for the charioteer's control,
the chariot will crash to the ground. When the black steed is under the
control of the charioteer, the white steed can take the chariot on its heav-
enly flight. The direction of the chariot's journey is determined by the
struggle of these two steeds. Their struggle is the same as the struggle of
Faust's two souls, which in turn reflects Goethe's own Platonic view of
human existence trapped between the two worlds of heaven and earth,
which we quoted in the opening of chapter 1.
The chariot. of Plutus may be Goethe's adaptation of Plato's chariot.
In that case, the Boy Charioteer and the Starveling correspond to the
white and the dark steeds in Plato's allegory. They want to guide the
chariot of Plutus in two opposite directions. Plutus is the god of wealth.
But he is also Pluto, the god of the underworld. Just before the Masquer-
ade, Mephisto attributed the immense subterranean wealth to the hidden
operations of the eternally ruling Nature (Faust 4985-92). Hence Plutus
and Pluto are the same god of the inexhaustible wealth of the earth,
which is the economic expression of the primal power and energy, the
essence of Nature. There are two ways of seeking the boundless treasure
of Nature. One of them is represented by the Boy Charioteer, who seeks
beauty. The other way is represented by the Starveling and Greed, who
seeks wealth. The natural products are beautiful as manifested by the
flowers and fruits when they are brought to the market. But they become
ugly when they are converted to economic wealth by haggling and cheat-
ing. This sequence from the beautiful products of Nature to the ugly eco-
 The Superman in Fantasy 59

nomic wealth is represented by the sequence from the Boy Charioteer to

Greed (Mephisto). The Boy Charioteer guides the chariot of Plutus and
announces their arrival in the pageant, while Mephisto-Greed is crouch-
ing as the emaciated Starveling behind the Charioteer. Only after the de-
parture of the Charioteer from the Masquerade, Mephsito-Greed gets into
his act. Beauty as the Boy Charioteer's immeasurable wealth is clearly
different from economic wealth. Stuart Atkins calls the former the spiri-
tual things and the latter the material things (Goethe's Faust, 125). But
"the spiritual things" has nothing to do with the spirit; it simply means
beautiful things. When the Boy Charioteer hands out his gifts to the mar-
ket crowd, those beautiful gifts take wing and flyaway, or tum into
wriggling beetles and wanton butterflies in their hands (Faust 5595-609).
The Herald calls it "the new tricks of the rogue," who bestows as gold
what merely glitters. This is what happens to beautiful things when the
greedy grab them for gold.
When the Charioteer is about to leave, Plutus tells him, "You are the
spirit of my spirit. / You always act in accordance with my thought"
(Faust 5623-24). Plutus has the same spiritual rapport with the Chario-
teer that the Platonic charioteer has with his white steed. Plutus ends his
farewell speech by calling the Charioteer "My beloved son, with whom I
am well pleased" (Faust 5629). The relation ofPlutus to the Charioteer is
similar to the relation of God the Father to His Son, who sits at the right
hand of the Father. So is the relation of the Platonic charioteer to his
white steed. Plutus also says to the Charioteer, "You are richer than my
own self. / To reward your service, I cherish your green branches more
than all my crowns" (Faust 5625-27). The Charioteer is richer than Plu-
tus because he possesses the heavenly wealth of beauty rather than the
earthly wealth. This point comes out in his talk to the crowd about the
great gifts he just handed out: They kindle flames on some heads, some
of them skip from one head to another, and some of them even flare up.
But, he says, most of them become feeble and die out. Disgruntled with
this speech, the Women denounce the Charioteer as a charlatan and be-
come abusive even with the Starveling perched as the Fool behind the
Charioteer. The Starveling threatens the Women and introduces himself
as Greed. When they are about to get into a fight with Greed, they are
scared away by the dragons, who are pulling the chariot and spewing fire
through their scaly jaws. Then Plutus descends from the chariot and the
60 Chapter Two

dragons bring down the chest of gold with Greed still crouching on it.
Plutus says that the unloading of the treasure chest is to relieve the Boy
Charioteer of the heavy weight. Now that he is free, Plutus tells him, he
can go off to solitude and create his own world of beauty and goodness.
With this blessing, the Boy Charioteer leaves with his lightened chariot.
Before his departure, he clearly sets out the difference between the treas-
ure of beauty and the treasure of wealth. The votaries of Plutus can have
abundance and live in idleness, but his votaries can gain glorious win-
nings and never rest at ease. The Boy Charioteer says that people are of-
ten tom between these two courses of life. Plato illustrated these two al-
ternative ways of living with his allegory of the heavenly chariot, and
Faust expressed their conflict in his speech on his two souls.
Right after the departure of the Charioteer, Plutus opens his treasure
chest by smiting its locks with the Herald's rod, and the molten gold
breaks out and its seething heat almost melts down all the treasures in the
chest. The crowd frantically tries to grab the precious objects that are
burrting in the golden fire. All of them go crazy because they want to
become rich even at the risk of getting scorched by the sparks of the fire
that is now spreading on the ground. The Herald calls them dolts, who
are too greedy to tell the difference between illusory and real gold. Plutus
brings them under control by brandishing his flaming sword. Greed-
Mephisto kneads the soft gold into a phallic shape and shocks the women
in the crowd. His obscene play is to show that the greed for gold is fun-
damentally the same earthly passion as the lust for sex. We earlier noted
that the trading relation between the seller and the buyer is the same as
the mating relation between male and female. Both of them are the rela-
tion of demand and supply, need and fulfillment, which operates as the
basic principle of all natural desires and their satisfaction. These natural
desires are represented by the Fauns, the Satyr, the Gnomes, the Giants
and the Nymphs, who appear after the appearance of Plutus and his char-
iot. They constitute the parade of the Great Pan, the God of all Nature,
who is called the All of the World and played by the Emperor. The
Gnomes guide him to Plutus's gold chest, which is now called the fire
fountain. When he stoops to see the inside of the fire fountain, his beard
drops and catches fire. The beard turns into flame and sets fire to his
crown and his torso. The ensuing conflagration engulfs the entire palace
in a sea of fire. Thus the Masquerade ends in the panic of a fiery explo-
 The Superman in Fantasy 61

sion, which is subdued by Faust-Plutus when he produces soothing rain

and moisture by his magic.
While the Emperor is led to the fire fountain, the fire is described as
boiling up from the deepest chasm and sinking back to the bottom (Faust
5922-25). This is the same fire that scorched and scared the crowd when
Plutus opened his treasure chest. The Emperor is getting burned the same
way the crowd was. In the next section ("Pleasure Garden"), Faust asks
for the Emperor's forgiveness for the fiery accident he had to go through
in the Masquerade. To his surprise, the Emperor would love to have
more pranks like that. Then he describes what he saw in the fire fountain
as follows:

There I was suddenly inside a realm of fire-

almost like Pluto, was what came to mind-
and saw a floor of coal-black rock
that glowed with tiny flares. From various abysses
myriads of savage flames swirled up
and merged as one to form a vault of fire
whose lofty cupola, the tongues of all these flames,
was always taking shapes that never stayed the same.
(Faust 5989-96, trans. Stuart Atkins)

The Emperor associates the fire with Pluto, the god of the underworld.
The fire represents the primal energy of Nature and Mephisto's under-
ground gold. The Emperor's description of the fire fountain is reminis-
cent of Faust's description of the rainbow at the end of "Pleasant Re-
gion". The lofty cupola of fire is formed by a countless number of flames,
just as the rainbow is formed by a countless number of shining water
drops. Furthermore, the vault of fire represents the same primal energy of
Nature as the blazing sunlight does. The central theme of Act I is the
problem of how to control the fiery primal energy. The vault of fire vio-
lates Ariel's spirit of community that is embodied in the rainbow because
it is the sizzling cauldron of individual greed. But it is momentarily satis-
fied by the sudden prosperity that has been ushered in by Mephisto's pa-
per currency.
The Emperor cannot believe that people value paper currency just
like true gold. Paper money is as illusory as the make-believe precious
objects that the crowd had taken as seriously as the real treasure in the
62 Chapter Two

Masquerade. But it has brought immense prosperity, for which the Em-
peror thanks Mephisto and Faust. Mephisto assures the Emperor that the
fabulous prosperity is the proof that the natural element of fire is his ser-
vant. Mephisto further flatters the Emperor by calling him the master of
the sea and its water. But the Masquerade has shown that he is the master
of neither fire nor water. The Emperor does not even remember that he
authorized the issuance of paper money as the Great Pan of the Masquer-
ade. With paper money, he is riding the illusory chariot of prosperity just
as he did in the Masquerade. The Emperor is now loved by his people
more than ever before. The Treasurer assures him that all men can find
salvation in the imperial signature that has authorized paper money. This
is a sacrilegious reference to Constantine the Great's vision of the Cross:
"In this sign thou shall conquer." Out of his own share of the prosperity,
the Emperor distributes his generous gifts to the servants of the imperial
court. When he asks them how they are going to use those gifts, all of
them say that they will spend it one way or another for private pleasures.
The Emperor says to the recipients of his gifts that the miraculous pros-
perity has not changed them at all. By the end of "Pleasure Garden", it
becomes clear that the sudden prosperity under paper money has en-
flamed the selfish desires of all people and turned the entire Empire into
a huge cauldron of burning desires, which looks like the fire fountain that
the Emperor saw in the treasure chest ("myriads of savage flames swirled
up / and merged as one to form a vault of fire"). Thus the Empire shows
no sense of community advocated by Ariel. The fiery disaster at the end
of the Masquerade may be the ominous sign that the momentary prosper-
ity will explode in an economic catastrophe at any moment.
In "Dark Gallery", the Emperor wants to see Helen and Paris of Troy,
the paragons of female and male beauty. Faust has to fetch them from the
underworld. Mephisto tells him that he has to plumb the lowest depths
beyond space and time, where the Mothers are enthroned in their eternal
abode of solitude. To Mephisto's surprise, Faust shudders even to hear
the word 'Mothers'. Mephisto asks him, "Does it terrify you?" Faust re-
plies, "The Mothers!-Mothers!-it sounds so strange" (Faust 6218-19).
When Mephisto explains to him how to descend to the Mothers, Faust
again shudders and says, "The Mothers! It strikes me like a blow! What
is this word I cannot bear to hear?" (Faust 6265-66). Why does he feel
such awe and terror for the Mothers? Instinctively, Faust may be thinking
 The Superman in Fantasy 63

of the Earth Spirit, whom he had associated with the breasts of Nature
when he summoned her by using his magical sign. The breasts are the
symbol of maternity. The Earth Spirit surely terrified and humiliated him.
Faust appears to be sensing some connection between the Mothers and
the Earth Spirit. Mephisto said that the eternal Mothers were in the low-
est depth of the world, which lies beyond space and time. He calls this
mysterious region the true infinite, which he further equates with Noth-
ingness. But Faust says to him, "In your Nothingness I hope to find my
All" (Faust 6256). The amorphous abode of the Mothers is none other
than the Primal Darkness that Mephisto mentioned in describing himself
to Faust as "part of the darkness that gave birth to light" (Faust 1347-48).
It has also been called Chaos, the Abyss, Nothingness. When he talks
about the eternal abode of the Mothers, he is describing his own origin.
But Harold Jantz says that Mephisto's story is unreliable because he is
not trustworthy and that Faust has to overcome his initial suspicion about
its credibility (The Mothers in Faust, 63). This is a typically faulty as-
sessment of Mephisto's character that has developed under the prejudice
that he is the devil who lies, cheats, and traps innocent people. Mephisto
rarely lies or tries to deceive Faust. On the contrary, he is the one who
often rudely wakes Faust out of his own self-deception and sentimental
illusions. There is no better authority than Mephisto to say anything reli-
able about Chaos and the Mothers, and his story is never questioned by
Faust. Even Faust understands Chaos as the primal source of Nature.
That is why he hopes to fmd his All in its Nothingness because it is the
foundation of all phenomena.
Mephisto gives Faust a key to guide his journey down to the under-
world and tells him that a glowing tripod will show the Mothers. Then
Mephisto describes what Faust will find there: The formation and trans-
formation of the forms of all creatures (Faust 6287-89). What is meant
by this enigmatic passage? Harold Jantz reads it as the description of the
Mothers as the matrices of all forms, The Mothers are the originating
womb "where chaos is transmuted into cosmos and whence the forms of
creation issue forth into the world of place and time" (The Mothers in
Faust, 37). The Mothers are indeed situated in Chaos. Mephisto also re-
fers to the Mothers as the goddesses revealed in higher mystery (Faust
6213). Those goddesses are shaping and reshaping forms in Chaos. This
sounds similar to the process of creation in Plato's Timaeus, where the
64 Chapter Two

Demiurge creates cosmos out of chaos. This is another trace of Platonic

influence on Act 1 of Part Two. We have already noted the Platonic in-
fluence in the Boy Charioteer.
Though the Mothers are as terrifying to Faust as the Earth Spirit,
their awesome roles are different. Whereas the Mothers are situated be-
yond space and time, the Earth Spirit works the cosmic 100m within the
limit of space and time. The Earth Spirit is the principle of immanent
power; the Mothers are its transcendent source. Harold Jantz says that the
Mothers reside in the disembodied realm of images and that the forms
they create are immaterial, that is, they involve no matter (The Mothers
in Faust, 62). But that is highly unlikely. The concept of disembodied
forms is ambiguous. It may mean the forms without living bodies or the
forms free of all material elements. The former is meant when those
forms are called "the forms of life without life" (Faust 6430). They are
only phantoms of living beings such as Helen or Paris. But those phan-
toms cannot be immaterial. If they were, they would be invisible. So we
had better assume that Chaos is the domain of formless matter and that
the Mothers are creating forms out of this formless matter. This notion of
Chaos is in tune with the description of the Primal Darkness and matter
that Mephisto gave in Faust's study just before signing the pact. This
brings the creative process of the Mothers even closer to that of Plato's
Demiurge. But the forms created by the Demiurge or the Mothers are not
the same as the Forms in Platonic Heaven. The Platonic Forms are truly
immaterial and never created. Moreover, they are the universal forms
that transcend the individual objects and phenomena. On the other hand,
the Mothers create the individual forms, that is, the phantoms of such
individuals as Helen and Paris. These lifeless forms evidently gain their
life and power when they are dispatched to the domain of the Earth Spirit.
Faust makes his fearful trip to the Mothers and brings the phantoms
of Helen and Paris for display in the imperial court. The show of Helen
and Paris is designed as the counterpart to the Masquerade. The latter
was Mephisto' s show of fabulous wealth. The former is the show of
stunning beauty. When Helen steps on the stage, the Astrologer says,
"Who sees her is entranced, / who possesses her is highly blessed"
(Faust 6485-86). Then Faust gives his paean of her beauty, in which he
says that his inmost mind is deeply flooded by the fountain of beauty and
that the lovely form in the magic mirror that once enthralled him is only
 The Superman in Fantasy 65

a pale copy of this ravishing beauty. He concludes the paean: "To you I
dedicate the movement of all my power, / The substance of my passion, /
My drive, love, adoration, and madness" (Faust 6498-500). As Charles
Passage points out, the Astrologer's statement and Faust's paean restate
what Socrates says about the vision of the Form of Beauty in Phaedrus
249c-e (His translation of Faust, 225). Socrates says that the Form of
Beauty is the fountain of all beautiful things and that the vision of this
fountain is the source of rapture, love, and madness. In Faust's paean, the
Form of Beauty is replaced by the beauty of Helen. We have already
compared the Boy Charioteer to the white steed of Plato's chariot in the
heavenly flight to the beautiful Platonic Forms. When the Boy Charioteer
was leaving the Masquerade, he was headed to solitude. When Faust
travels to the Mothers for the beautiful forms of Helen and Paris, he says
that they reside in eternal solitude. He replaces the Boy Charioteer in his
descent to the Mothers. Mephisto played the role of the black steed in the
Masquerade. That was the first leg of the chariot ride. Its second leg be-
longs to the white steed, who was represented by the Charioteer. If Me-
phisto is Faust's lower self, the Charioteer is his higher self. Faust called
him his beloved son. Faust has absorbed the role of the Charioteer for the
second leg of his chariot ride. Without this Faust-Charioteer link, the
Charioteer would disappear into Nothingness after his brief appearance
in the Masquerade. That sort of disappearance makes no sense for the
thematic development of the play. It is my thesis that Faust does not only
begin the second leg of the chariot ride in his descent to the Mothers, but
will continue it in the Classical Walpurgis Night of Act 2 and in his cas-
tle of Arcardia in Act 3. This is his chariot ride for heavenly beauty with
the white steed.
In the Platonic fable, one has to ascend to see the beautiful Forms.
But one has to descend to them in Faust's world because it is the Spino-
zan world, the infinite Nature, whose ultimate source is its Nothingness,
Chaos. This is Goethe's naturalization of Platonism. The Mothers blend
into the Nothingness of Chaos. They never appear as individuals. They
are referred to in the plural form of the noun 'mother', but that is dictated
by the grammatical rule of German language that requires 'mother' to
take either the singular or the plural form. The singular form cannot be
used because it implies an individual. So Goethe uses the plural form.
But he gives no indication of how many Mothers there are. It is impossi-
66 Chapter Two

ble to tell whether they are really one or many. Chaos is too amorphous
to admit any numerical distinctions. On the other hand, the Earth Spirit is
presented as one individual because she operates in the concrete world of
space and time. Both the Mothers and the Earth Spirit are rooted in the
Primal Darkness, but they operate on different levels of Nature. But the
same subterranean realm is involved in the two shows of Act 1, the show
of wealth and the show of beauty. While Faust's show of beauty has
brought forth beautiful forms from the Mothers, Mephisto's show of af-
fluence has revealed the subterranean fire as the fountain of all material
wealth. Mysteriously, however, the beautiful forms and the fiery primal
energy come from the same Chaos, the Darkness of Nature, and both of
them return to Nothingness. The show of beauty ends with a fiery explo-
sion. When Paris grabs Helen for abduction, Faust rushes to take her
away from his grip. This is followed by an explosion that knocks down
Faust unconscious and the beautiful forms of Helen and Paris are dis-
solved to Nothingness. The beautiful forms are made of the same fire
that has gone into the making of precious objects and other economic
goods, which will also be returned to Nothingness in due course. Just as
the Emperor and his Masquerade were caught in the conflagration be-
cause of their greed, so Faust is clobbered by the fiery explosion because
of his lust for Helen. He had made the same mistake in the Gretchen
tragedy. He has not yet learned Ariel's lesson given in the opening scene
of Act 1. He has not taken a meaningful step to become a member of the
great world. He is back to Square One. So Mephisto takes him back to
his old study, where he was initially trapped in his lonely existence and
where he will start his journey of development allover again.

The Voyage of Evolution

Act 1 demonstrated that the primal energy of Mother Nature is fiery and
explosive. Hence its central question was: "How can the fiery primal en-
ergy be ordered?" It can be ordered only by being molded into beautiful
forms. "How can the fiery energy be embodied in beautiful forms?" This
will be the central question of Act 2. This question was metaphorically
stated in Act 1: "How can the blinding sunlight become the beautiful
rainbow?" The ultimate question is: "How can order arise out of Chaos?"
 The Superman in Fantasy 67

This question is Goethe's reformulation of Plato's central question in the

Timaeus, where the Demiurge creates an orderly world out of chaotic
matter. Goethe tries to answer this question with his theory of evolution
in the Classical Walpurgis Night: Order emerges in the evolution of cha-
otic primal energy.
In the opening scene of Act 2, when Mephisto takes the unconscious
Faust to his old study, he finds it as it was left by Faust except for two
things. The young student whom Mephisto had teased, as Professor
wearing Faust's gown, has now matured. Whereas he approached the old
professor with awe and reverence, he now faces the same old man with
contempt and arrogance. He claims to see through the teacher's shallow
game. He has grown up. There is a clear sense of progress in Faust's old
study, which prefigures the sense of immense evolution in the Classical
Walpurgis Night. Another surprise is Wagner's scientific invention. He
has created Homunculus, an artificial human being, which can be seen as
a shining light in a vial. It is a human being without a body. By scientifi-
cally creating it in a laboratory, Wagner has replicated the work of the
Mothers. Homunculus has been a controversial topic. In his talk with
Eckennann, Goethe is supposed to have said that Homunculus is virtu-
ally the same as the Leibnizian entelechy or monad, according to John
Williams (Goethe's Faust, 144). Leibniz's idea of a monad is his theory
of the soul. It is said to be the spiritual atom in analogy to the physical
atom. Because the monad is completely immaterial, it is different from
Homunculus, a physical entity that has been synthetically constructed by
the crystallization of matter. The former is immortal and eternal because
it is immaterial. But the latter is subject to the process of construction
and destruction because it is material. Nevertheless, they perform the
same soul-function of animating the body. It may be better to compare
Homunculus to the forms of life created out of Chaos by the Mothers.
Those forms are lifeless. Likewise, Homunculus lacks real life because it
is without a body. Both the forms of life and Homunculus are generated
in the matrix of the physical world. Therefore they belong to the natural
world of Spinoza's substance and Goethe's Mother Nature, whereas the
Leibnizian monads belong to the supernatural world of God.
Although Homunculus has no body, he is intellectually precocious.
He can read what is going on in the mind of Faust, who has not yet re-
covered his consciousness. He says that Faust is dreaming of Leda's mat-
68 Chapter Two

ing with Zeus in the form of a swan, which will lead to the birth of Helen.
So he is still obsessed with Helen. For a cure of his consuming passion,
Homunculus proposes to Mephisto that they take him to the Classical
Walpurgis Night, which is taking place that night. By this educational
trip, Faust will get to know better ancient Greece, the world of Helen.
The Classical Walpurgis Night opens with an ancient witch, Erichtho,
who appears in darkness and describes the eerie scene of the fateful bat-
tle between Pompey and Caesar in Pharsalus. She laments over the per-
petual struggle of power,

How often it has been repeated! And it must

recur eternally. Each wants to rule alone
and, holding power gained through power, neither yields
it to the other. - Those not competent rule
their own unruly selves, with e~ger arrogance
seek to impose their will upon their neighbor's will.
(Faust 7012-17, trans. Stuart Atkins)

Like a meteor, Mephisto and Homunculus land on this ancient battlefield

and bring the still unconscious Faust to begin their voyage of evolution.
Why should they begin it on the Pharsalian fields? Harold Jantz says that
Pharsalus is located in Thessaly, which is "both the cradle and the grave
of classical civilization" (The Form of Faust, 161). But Erichtho's solilo-
quy says nothing about the birth or the death of classical civilization. It is
focused on the perpetual power struggle. She goes on to say that it is
eternally repeated because power always meets some greater power. We
can connect this theme of eternal struggle to the theme of fiery primal
energy introduced in Act 1. The battle of Pompey and Caesar is a dra-
matic illustration of the subterranean power exploding on the surface of
the earth. In fact, we will see that the Classical Walpurgis Night is a pag-
eant of endless wars and power struggles, which demonstrates Spinoza's
conception of Nature and her essence as power. This theme of power
announced by Erichtho will be the central theme of evolution in the Clas-
sical Walpurgis Night, because natural evolution is the working of Na-
ture's power to generate beautiful forms out of Chaos.
As soon as Faust wakes up, he asks for Helen. But he is amazed to
find himself in ancient Greece. Faust and his company are greeted by
ancient monsters-the Griffins, the Giant Ants, the Sphinxes, and the
 The Superman in Fantasy 69

Sirens. Whereas Mephisto feels uncomfortable with these strange beasts,

Faust senses new strength and grandeur in their ugly forms. He asks the
Sphinxes about Helen, but none of them has seen her because she was
born well after their time. They advise him to consult Chiron, who has
seen the heroic age of Paris and Helen. Faust and company will journey
from Pharsalus along the stream of the Peneus down to the Aegean Sea.
Thus they will leave the fiery battlefield and travel with the graceful flow
of cool water to the ocean. In this voyage, they will find out how the liv-
ing beings have evolved from the fiery subterranean energy. But they do
not stay together in their journey because they are striving for different
objectives. Faust's objective is to find Helen. After leaving the ancient
monsters on the upper region of the river and moving down to its middle
region, he runs into the river god Peneus and the Nymphs. When he sees
the beautiful girls bathing and playing in the water, he again has the vi-
sion of Leda's mating with the swan. Just then he meets Chiron, the cen-
taur who cannot stop galloping. But he invites Faust to get on his back
for a ride, during which Chiron talks about the warriors of the heroic age
and Helen. When he says that he once carried her on his back, Faust con-
fesses his consuming passion: "I am enthralled to her." Noting that he
has become insane over Helen, Chiron offers to take him to the ancient
sibyl Manto, the daughter of Asclepius, who can cure his mad sickness.
As I said earlier, this is Faust's chariot ride for heavenly beauty. In
Phaedrus Socrates says that the love of beauty is divine madness. Manto
lives in her temple located between the Peneus and Olympus. When the
ever-moving Chiron greets her, she says that she stays put while time
circles around her. She is the polar opposite to the ever-moving Chiron.
After asking her to help Faust find Helen, he gallops away. For the re-
covery of Helen from Hades, Manto promises to take Faust through the
tunnel at the base of Olympus to Persephone just as she smuggled Or-
pheus to Hades for the release of wife Euridyce.
John Williams says that Goethe originally planned an elaborate scene,
where Faust secures the release of Helen from Hades by the permission
of Persephone (Goethe's Faust, 150). Why was this original plan aban-
doned? This question has puzzled many critics. Some of them say that
Goethe felt unequal to the task. Others say that he expected his readers to
supply this episode with their own imagination. Harold Jantz says that
the original plan has been assimilated into the scene of the Mothers in
70 Chapter Two

Act 1 (The Mothers in Faust, 55). Faust indeed traveled down to the
deepest depth of the earth to bring up the phantom of Helen, but that was
only a lifeless phantom. Faust is now trying to retrieve Helen as a living
woman. She will emerge in the opening scene of Act 3, that is, as the
outcome of the long evolution that will be displayed in the Classical
Walpurgis Night. Hence some scholars have said that Goethe's original
plan has been substituted by the marine pageant. But the substitution the-
sis can work out well only if the marine pageant can be linked to Manto's
descent to Hades. If she descends through the tunnel to Hades to help
Faust, she will reach the Primal Darkness of the Mothers, which is time-
less and placeless. Her temple is already beyond time. She said that time
revolved around her. Persephone is another name for the Mothers, the
ultimate source of life and power. Manto's descent to Hades is similar to
Faust's descent to the Mothers in Act 1. But they yield different results.
Whereas Faust found only the lifeless forms of Helen and Paris, Manto
will release their living forms from the Primal Darkness. This miraculous
process will be accomplished by natural evolution, whose final outcome
will be displayed in the marine pageant. But its beginning is displayed in
the deepest depth of the ocean well before the pageant of marine life.
Right after the exit of Manto, the Sirens appear and praise the power
of water for life. Then they are frightened by the violent earthquakes of
Seismos, who then boasts his enormous power of pushing up the majestic
mountains from the abyss. This is the primal power from the abyss, the
original source of evolution. The Griffins see flakes and foils of gold
glitter in crevices and urge the Giant Ants to mine those gold pieces.
Gold excites the greed of ants as fiercely as it inflames human greed.
Those gold pieces are from the underground gold that Mephisto talked
about in Act 1. They are linked to the subterranean fiery energy. But they
also attract the Pygmies and the Dactyls and lead them to war. The Pyg-
mies enslave the smaller Dactyls and Ants to build forges and make
weapons. They shoot the Herons to decorate their helmets with the
plumes of those birds. The slaughter of Herons is avenged by the Cranes
of Ibycus. This incident of Seismos's upheaval and the consequent war
have been interpreted as an allegory of the French Revolution. But it
makes better sense thematically to link them to Erichtho's theme of per-
petual war and power struggle. This theme is now being extended from
human beings to other animals. Even the small Pygmies and the Cranes
 The Superman in Fantasy 71

exemplify the primal fiery power. Seismos has expanded Erichtho's

theme of power and war to the cosmic cycle of fiery power, subterranean
gold, and universal war. It takes this process of perpetual war to sustain
the long evolution of living things out of the primal fiery energy.
Unlike Faust, Mephisto has no burning ambition of his own in this
journey along the Peneus. His mission is to be a helpful companion for
Faust and Homunculus. After his separation from them, he appears on
the plain before Seismos's mountain and runs into the Lamiae, who try to
entice him. They are joined by an Empusa, who announces herself as his
cousin. He suddenly realizes that he is in the world of his kin. But the
Lamiae tell him that the Empusa's ugly face scares away whatever looks
beautiful and lovely. That shows that Mephisto has a deep kinship with
Ugliness, while Faust feels his kinship with Beauty. We should not for-
get that Faust corresponds to the white steed of Plato's chariot and Me-
phisto to its black steed and that the white steed is pursuing beauty while
the black steed is attached to material wealth. The Lamiae look lovely
and delicate enough to engage Mephisto's attention. When he manages
to catch them, however, these vampires change into broomsticks, lizards,
thyrsus wands, and puffballs. This episode is only Mephisto's initial in-
troduction to ugly creatures. He runs into the ultimate ugliness when he
meets the Phorkyads. Horrified at these repulsive creatures, he says, "We
wouldn't have them by the doors / Of our hells' most appalling floors"
(Faust 7976-77, trans. Charles Passage). The three Phorkyads live in a
dark cave and share only one eye and one tooth. By closing one of his
own eyes, he pretends to be like them and says, "Here I stand, Chaos's
well-beloved son." They respond, "We are indisputably daughters of
Chaos" (Faust 8028). The Phorkyads are his siblings, children of the
Primal Darkness. Mephisto identified himself as a part of the Primal
Darkness when he appeared to Faust for the first time. Mephisto sud-
denly finds himself in his native home although he initially felt uncom-
fortable with the ancient Greek world. Even the ugly mythical beasts,
Griffins and Sphinxes, are close kin to the Phorkyads and himself.
The dark cave of Phorkyads, where neither the sun nor the moon
shines, is called a temple. It is similar to Manto's temple in its proximity
to the Primal Darkness or Chaos. They live in solitude and silence just
like the Mothers. But unlike the Mothers, the Phorkyads do not create
forms. On the contrary, they are the most primitive forms of life to
72 Chapter Two

emerge from Chaos. They are the daughters of Phorcis, the old man of
the sea. Life begins in the deep water of the sea. Those creatures of the
Primal Depth are as ugly as Mephisto because their primitive forms are
very close to the formlessness of Chaos. Beauty lies in form and ugliness
in formlessness. When Mephisto mimics the Phorkyads, he says that he
will be called hermaphrodite. That is even a more primitive form on the
scale of natural evolution because it precedes sexual differentiation. In
his poetic assessment of Mephisto' s ugliness, John Williams says, "As a
figure of sublime ugliness, he will represent the negative polarity to
Helen's sublime beauty" (Goethe's Faust, 153). But the concept of polar-
ity or contrast is not the right way to understand the relation between the
beauty of Helen and the ugliness of Mephisto. In Faust's world, beauty
arises by the creation of complex forms, which will require the evolution
of formless matter. But the evolution of beautiful forms begins with ugly,
primitive forms. When Mephisto joins the Phorkyads and makes a new
triad by adding one eye and one tooth to their one eye and one tooth, the
Phorkyads say, "What beauty in our new-formed triad lies! / We sisters
now have two teeth and two eyes" (Faust 8030-31, trans. Charles Pas-
sage). The additional eye and tooth have created a more complex form
than their original one eye and one tooth, thereby enhancing their beauty.
The horrible ugliness of Mephisto and the Phorkyads is not merely a
negative polarity to Helen's sublime beauty. It is really the positive base
for building the ladder of beauty that will support the beauty of Galatea
on its top. Helen's sublime beauty is an offshoot of Galatea'S, which will
emerge as the outcome of the marine pageant, the apex of natural evolu-
tion in the ocean. This marine evolution, which begins in the darkest
depth of the ocean, has replaced Goethe's original plan to send Faust
with Manto's help down to Hades and secure the release of Helen with
the permission of Persephone.

Spirit in Search of Body

Between his visits with the Lamiae and the Phorkyads, Mephisto is re-
joined by Homunculus, who is still seeking his own evolution. They lis-
ten to the discussion between Anaxagoras and Thales. Anaxagoras is a
vulcanist, champion of fire. He holds that the Plutonian fire is the crea-
 The Superman in Fantasy 73

tive force of Nature. Thales is a neptunist, champion of water. When he

says that all living things evolve in water, Homunculus expresses his
own eagerness to evolve. Thales describes the orderly process of Nature:

Nature, and Nature's living fluxes,

have never counted days and nights and hours.
She fashions forms according to set rules,
and even when they're huge, there is no violence.
(Faust 7861-64, trans. Stuart Atkins)

Against this peaceful view of Nature, the vulcanist tries to vindicate his
violent view by pointing at the mountain just created by Seismos and the
teeming Myrmidons of Pygmies, Ants, and Dactyls busily working on it.
When he offers to crown Homunculus as king over this army of midgets,
the neptunist advises against it and recounts the terrible war between the
Cranes and the Pygmies. This story of the horrible war frightens the vul-
canist. Anaxagoras, who has praised the subterranean powers till now,
becomes conscious of the threat of power from above, the triple goddess
Moon (Dina, Luna, and Hecate). He feels that the Moon comes nearer
and nearer, suddenly becomes dark, and finally explodes with the shower
of flares and sparks. The vulcanist now believes that he has caused this
disaster and throws himself to the ground and asks the goddess for for-
giveness. That is the end of his debate with Thales.
Thales and Homunculus move on, leaving Anaxagoras behind. Does
it mean that the neptunist won the debate? That is unlikely. The idea of
Plutonian fire was already introduced in the Mardi Gras Masquerade, and
Anaxagoras is only restating it as the thesis of his vulcanism. We also
noted that the Plutonian fire is the force behind the perpetual war and
power struggle of not only humans but also all other animals. The forces
of Nature are not so peaceful and gradual as Thales has depicted. Nature
is full of violence, as Anaxagoras claims, because it is the cauldron of
explosive power. There is no way to refute the idea of the fiery primal
power, but that does not refute Thales's idea that water is the source of
life. Seismos may look like the father of life, when the mountain thrown
up by him is immediately teeming with a mass of creatures and the Pyg-
mies praise the reproductive power of Mother Earth. Though their repro-
duction attests to the subterranean power of Mother Nature, living things
cannot be generated and nourished by Seismos's violent power alone.
74 Chapter Two

Water is the source of life and its evolution. Neptunism and vulcanism
describe two sides of the same Nature's creative power. When Thales
dismisses Anaxagoras as a victim of his own lunatic fantasy about the
moon hurtling down to the earth, Homunculus tries to retrieve the hardy
grain of truth in his fantasy by pointing at the abrupt change that has
taken place on the Pygmies' mountain and saying that it may have been
produced by the meteor just fallen from the moon. While defending
Anaxagoras, he still sticks to Thales for his own evolution. He accepts
both neptunism and vulcanism in his understanding of natural forces.
For our understanding of the relation between neptunism and vulcan-
ism, we should remember that Poseidon is the god of not only the ocean,
but also the earthquake. Therefore, Seismos is an agent of Poseidon,
whose power is none other than the power of Pluto, which arises from
Chaos, the Primal Darkness. Likewise, the triple goddess of Luna, Diana,
and Hecate, who is invoked by Seismos at his frightful hour, is the
epiphany of the Primal Darkness. Just as Plutus brought up the Plutonian
fire from the underground during the darkness at the Masquerade of Act
1, so the power of Poseidon is on display under the moonlight in the
Classical Walpurgis Night. When the Sirens were praising the life-
generating power of water on the banks of the upper Peneus, they were
frightened by Seismos's violent upheaval and ran away to the Aegean
Sea (Faust 7501). They are now in the rocky inlets of the Aegean Sea
and send their prayer to Luna, as Anaxagoras did. Again like him, they
refer to the Thessalian witches, recalling Erichtho's theme of perpetual
violence, which arises from the Plutonian fire. The Nereids and the Tri-
tons also run away from the stormy waves of Seismos's quakes. But the
sea water cannot be a refuge from Seismos. His violent force not only
afflicts the land, but also permeates the ocean because he is an agent of
Poseidon. His violent power is indispensable to the life of all marine
creatures, which have to fight for their survival and reproduction. Thus
vulcanism is an essential complement to neptunism; one cannot operate
without the other for the genesis and maintenance of life. No doubt, wa-
ter is essential for nurturing life, but it can also be destructive. In the
opening scene of Act I, a waterfall produced a beautiful rainbow. In
"Forest and Cavern" of Part One, the same waterfall was used to describe
the destructive force of Faust's erotic passion. The same natural element
of water can be an agent of both neptunism and vulcanism.
 The Superman in Fantasy 75

When the Nereids and the Tritons appear, the Sirens tell them to
prove that they are more than fish, and they will do so by fetching the
Cabiri. In the meantime, Thales brings Homunculus to Nereus for advice.
But the ancient sea god is enraged at the approach of human beings and
denounces them as those creatures who strive to be like gods but are for-
ever doomed to be no more than what they are (Faust 8094-97). He rue-
fully recounts his advice wasted on humans like Paris and Ulysses.
Against his advice, Paris got entangled with Helen and brought disaster
to Troy, and Ulysses got trapped by Circe and lost his way to his home in
Ithaca. Father of beautiful daughters, Nereus knows that the evolution of
beauty has enflamed human passions and perpetuated war~. The fiery
primal energy may take on beautiful forms by evolution, but it has only
intensified its violence as manifested in the Trojan War. This is what
Nereus has in mind in his contemptuous remark on Paris and Ulysses. He
does not want to spoil his mood by giving advice to Homunculus because
he is waiting for the annual visit from his daughter Galatea with her ma-
rine pageant. So he sends away Thales and Homunculus to Proteus. After
their departure, the Nereids and the Tritons come back with Cabiri on a
great tortoise shell. They are the most primitive forms of deity, who look
so misshaped that Homunculus says they look like poorly formed clay
pots. Like the ugly Phorkyads, these unsightly primitive gods may be-
long to the most basic level of life. But they are more mysterious than the
Phorkyads. The Sirens sing:

They are gods! Uniquely strange,

They continuously beget themselves,
And never know what they really are.
(Faust 8075-77, my translation)

This is the secret of their evolution. The principle of evolution is the

principle of self-generation and self-transformation. It is impossible to
tell what a living being is at any given moment because it is in the con-
tinuous process of self-transformation. This principle of perpetual trans-
formation is not limited to the Cabiri because it is the basic principle of
all evolution. The Cabiri only instantiate this universal principle more
dramatically than any other living beings.
Though only three of the Cabiri are brought, there are a few more.
The one who has refused to come is said to do the thinking for those
76 Chapter Two

three who have come. This shows the absence of clear individuation
among them, as it is with the Mothers. The Cabiri share their thought just
the way the Phorkyads share their one eye. One of them is supposed to
be on Olympus, but nobody knows exactly where. This further highlights
their indistinct individuation, which indicates their close proximity to
Chaos. The primitiveness of their forms is further intimated by their re-
semblance to ill-shaped clay pots. Clay is the easiest material for shaping
forms. The arrival of the Cabiri is greeted with great fanfare. In congratu-
lating the Nereids and the Tritons, the Sirens say that their winning of the
Cabiri is even more glorious than the winning of the Golden Fleece. Why
is this event ranked so high? Though the Cabiri are small in size, the Si-
rens say, they are great in power. But what sort of power? The Nereids
and the Tritons say that the Cabiri can secure peace for their festival be-
cause their presence can make Poseidon friendly (Faust 8178-81). This
explains their role in the scheme of evolution. We have already noted
that life cannot be formed and nurtured by the violent force alone and
that the violence force is present both on the land and in the ocean wher-
ever Poseidon rules. By calming down Poseidon, the Cabiri must have
created the peaceful condition for the formation of life and its evolution.
In that case, they are the starting point for the evolution of all living be-
ings. The Cabiri are the gods of peace in the violent world of Poseidon,
and they aspire to shape his fiery energy into orderly forms, This is their
perpetual creative impulse, which is never finished but always striving.
The Nereids and the Tritons say that these incomparable gods who aspire
higher and ever higher are always longing hungrily for the unattainable.
The spirit of the Cabiri is the cosmic spirit of evolution. This perpetual
impulse for reaching the unattainable underlies the human aspiration to
become like gods, which was condemned as human folly by Nereus. It
has also empowered Faust's superhuman striving. The Faustian impulse
is not an exception for one special individual or for the human species,
but the universal principle of all living beings ranging from the ugly
Phorkyads and Empusa to the beautiful swan and Leda.
When Proteus appears and takes Homunculus under his wing, he lays
out his course of evolution: He must start as a small creature in the wide
sea and grow up by devouring the smallest creatures. This is the harsh
reality of evolution. It can be achieved by the strong only at the expense
of the weak. This harsh reality is one with the reality of perpetual wars,
 The Superman in Fantasy 77

which has been repeatedly stressed by Erichtho on the Pharsalian fields,

by the war of small creatures such as the Pygmies, Dactyls, and the Ants,
and by Nereus's reference to the Trojan War. The world of water is not
any less ferocious than the world of land. Both worlds manifest the same
fiery primal energy of Mother Nature. Proteus announces the approach-
ing marine pageant, but the Telchines appear ahead of it. They are the
artisans who have forged Poseidon's trident, with which he quiets the
tumultuous seas. He even counters the horrible rumbling of Zeus's thun-
derous clouds. This is the horrible clash between the two gods of power
that is described by the Telchines. The Sirens greet them as the devotees
of Apollo and his Light and ask them to join the adoration of their god-
dess Diana. In responding to this invitation, they say that Diana has al-
ways graciously listened to the praise of her brother Apollo. On this pre-
text, they pour out their praise of Apollo. In this praise, Apollo comes out
as the most beautiful god. His beauty is not limited to his own being; it
radiates over the whole world-our mountains, our cities, our shore, and
our sea. The high god shows himself in a hundred forms, as a youngster,
as a giant, the great and the gentle (Faust 8229-300). The Telchines'
praise is addressed to the summit of beauty that has evolved from the
dark cave of the Phorkyads. The ladder of beauty ascends from the dark
cave to the loveliest goddess Luna and finally to the most radiant beauty
of Apollo (the sun). The sun is the beautiful gold that has been elevated
from the subterranean darkness to the radiant heaven.
So far, the Classical Walpurgis Night has mainly revealed the subter-
ranean power of Poseidon. The only other important deity that has ap-
peared is the triple goddess of Luna, Diana, and Hecate to indicate that
the Primal Darkness is the ultimate source of Poseidon's power. Zeus
was neither seen nor mentioned even in Faust's vision of Leda and the
swan. The Telchines are now rounding out Helen's world of ancient
Greek deities by juxtaposing Zeus to Poseidon, and Apollo to Diana. But
Proteus is not impressed with their praise of the sun. He says that their
works are lifeless and that one earthquake toppled their statues of gods.
He admits that terrestrial life in any form is nothing but perpetual grief,
but affirms Thales's thesis that water is beneficial to life. He is naturally
biased in favor of his forebear Poseidon and the power of water. But the
ultimate force of life is not water, but fire, that is, the subterranean fiery
energy. Water is only the nurturing medium for this fiery energy, which
78 Chapter Two

eventually becomes the beauty of the sun at the end of its evolution. That
is why Apollo stands on the top of the ladder of beauty and radiates its
beauty allover the world. By transforming himself into a dolphin, Pro-
teus offers to take Homunculus on his back to his wedding with the
ocean. Thales bids farewell to him by wishing his evolution through
eternal norms and countless forms until he becomes fully human. Proteus
assures Homunculus that he will have complete freedom for his evolu-
tion in all directions and on all levels in open waters.
When the moon is surrounded by a great ring of doves, Nereus tells
Thales that the doves will escort Galatea's sea-borne conch. She is a lu-
nar heroine and arrives under the moon at zenith. She is an elemental
nymph, who has evolved out of the elements in the ocean. She rides on
the scallop-shell chariot of Aphrodite, which is pulled by the Psylli and
Marsi, a priestly caste of Cyprus, the home of Aphrodite. They are never
disturbed by natural disasters or social upheavals. They are protected by
the power of Eros, which rules over the ocean. Galatea's appearance is
the procession of Eros. But she cannot stop for her father Nereus even for
a moment because Eros can never come to rest. Because the ocean is the
world of Eros, it can generate the perpetually changing forms of life. As
she passes by, Thales offers his paean to the ocean:

All things have their beginning in water!!

Water sustains all things that exist;
'May you, Oceanus, rule us forever!
(Faust 8435-47, trans. Stuart Atkins)

While Galatea's conch is receding in the distance, Nereus can still

see it like a shining star, which he calls the beacon of love. Under this
beacon, Homunculus can see grace and beauty everywhere. When he
smashes his vial against Galatea's shell, it explodes as a flame of love.
John Gearey says that this event is described in the imagery of orgasm:
The vial of Homunculus throbs with pulses of love, glows, flashes, and
finally spills its content by smashing itself against the shell of Galatea
suggestive of the female sexual organ (Goethe's Other Faust, 103). By
this marine copulation, Homunculus will gain his body and .start on a
long journey of his own evolution. From afar, Thales can almost hear the
loud groans of its travail. Even love takes violence in the violent world of
Poseidon. But the fire of love transfigures the waves; the whole ocean is
 The Superman in Fantasy 79

engulfed in eddies of fire. Thus fire and water are united in the bond of
love. The Sirens say, "Let Eros now rule, the creator of all!" (Faust
8479). The Plutonian fire is the fire of Eros. That erotic fire was the es-
sence of Homunculus, which showed itself as a burning light in the vial.
It is now merged with the ocean in the copulation of fire with water. The
ocean is the cooling system for the primal fire. The Sirens sing "Hail to
Water! Hail to Fire!" Even air and earth are not left out of this union. It is
the power of Eros that brings them all together for the genesis of life.
Thus the Classical Walpurgis Night ends with the celebration of Eros and
her reproductive power. This is the Platonic theme from the Symposium,
Plato's earlier dialogue on love than his Phaedrus.
I said earlier that Plutus's chariot in the Mardi Gras Masquerade was
an adaptation of Plato's chariot of Eros, which flies on two winged
steeds, one black and one white. We noted that the Boy Charioteer corre-
sponded to the white steed and Greed-Mephisto to the black steed. After
the departure of the Boy Charioteer, Greed-Mephisto took charge of Plu-
tus's chariot and turned it into an obscene show of wealth. The Boy
Charioteer has gone to his solitude for beauty. His journey to the land of
beauty has been played out in the Classical Walpurgis Night. The Mas-
querade has shown the conversion of the primal fiery energy to economic
wealth; the Classical Walpurgis Night has shown the evolution of beaut i-
ful forms from the same primal energy. The former is the black steed's
flight down to the land of wealth; the latter is the white steed's flight to
the sea of heavenly beauty, in which Plutus's chariot has taken the new
form as Galatea's conch. Both of them are the flights of Eros. For the
flight of beauty, the Charioteer has been replaced by Faust. Mephisto has
played different roles in these two flights. He is the principal figure for
the earthly flight, but plays the supporting role for the marine journey, in
which he associates only with the most primitive forms of life, which has
initiated the long journey of evolution. By this journey, the primal fiery
power becomes beautiful. This long process of evolution is Goethe's
modification of Spinoza's conception of Mother Nature. The fiery primal
energy can be taken as Goethe's poetic metaphor for Spinoza's idea that
power is the very essence of Nature. But the evolution of this primal
power was beyond Spinoza's understanding. In Goethe's scheme of Na-
ture, a long history of evolution lies behind not only the beauty of living
beings, but also the material wealth of human beings. In the Mardi Gras
80 Chapter Two

Masquerade, agricultural produce and market prosperity come from the

evolved products of Mother Nature. Thus beauty and wealth are two
ways of realizing her primal energy.

The Marriage of Faust and Helen

Faust's journey in search of beauty does not end with Act 2 of Part Two,
but will be consummated in Act 3 with his marriage to Helen and their
life together in Arcadia. In the opening scene of Act 3, Helen of Troy has
returned to Sparta after the Trojan War. Her beauty may be a product of
marine evolution, but her involvement in war is a process in human his-
tory. Her appearance will mark the second stage in Faust's journey to the
land of beauty. The first stage was biological; the second stage will be
historical. Helen's beauty is the culmination of the long evolution in the
Classical Walpurgis Night, in which Faust had the vision of Leda and the
swan, whose mating led to Helen's birth. But her beauty is associated
with the lofty sun, who stands on the top of the ladder of beauty as we
noted earlier. Hence her beauty is different from the beauty of Galatea,
which was displayed in the domain of Luna, the Goddess of Darkness.
But there is a persistent reminder that Helen's beauty has evolved from
the Phorkyads in the dark cave. She is threatened by the invisible pres-
ence of Orcus (Faust 8762, 8815, 8836). He is the Roman god of under-
ground and corresponds to the Greek Pluto and Hades. Moreover, Helen
is intimidated and manipulated by the Phorkyad-Mephisto, who plays the
old stewardess of Menelaus's palace. Nevertheless, the beauty that has
evolved under water has finally emerged on land like the sun. But the
land belongs to the Pharsalian fields, the perpetual battleground. We al-
ready noted that even the ocean of Poseidon was not peaceful but turbu-
lent. What looks like a peaceful ocean is really a watery Pharsalian field.
Helen herself was the cause and victim of the Trojan War. When she re-
turns to Sparta ahead of Menelaus, she is not even sure whether she is
there as the queen, a prize of war, a captive, or even a victim to be sacri-
ficed on the altar. By exploiting this uncertainty and her consequent
anxiety, the Phorkyad-Mephisto persuades her to flee to Faust's castle
for protection. In the next scene, Faust receives Helen and elevates her to
 The Superman in Fantasy 81

his consort and co-regent. In Arcadia, he finally achieves perfect happi-

ness with Helen.
When Faust gains his bliss in Arcadia, many commentators say, Me-
phisto has finally won the wager on his soul. Faust had told Mephisto
that the devil could place him in fetters if he ever says to any single mo-
ment, "Please stay for a while, you are so fair" (Faust 1700). That su-
preme moment appears to have arrived in line 9418, according to John
Williams, because "Faust has effectively, if not literally, bid the passing
moment stay" (Goethe's Faust, 172). But line 9418 does not sing the
beauty of any moment: "Existence is duty, even if it were for a moment."
Faust makes this statement to Helen, who is bewildered over her light-
ning dislocation from ancient Sparta to Faust's medieval castle. He first
tells her not to be overly concerned with her unusual fate and then says
the quoted line. He is encouraging the disoriented woman to accept her
fate in stride. Nor is he himself ecstatically happy. He is still trembling
with the excitement of finding Helen in his own palace, and he is not
even sure whether this excitement is real or only a dream (Faust 9414).
Eudo Mason says that the supreme moment of Faust's happiness comes a
little earlier than line 9418 (Faust 325). He locates it in lines 9381-82:
"Now the mind looks neither forwards nor backwards, / The present
alone is our happiness" (Mason's own translation). Although this state-
ment is made in a descriptive mode, its real tone is advisory. Faust is urg-
ing Helen to be involved with the present and not worry about the past
and the future instead of being distressed over her abrupt transposition.
"The present alone is our happiness" really means "We should seek our
happiness in the present alone."
Faust's happiness comes later when he settles down with Helen in
Arcadia, whose universal harmony admits no distinction between the god
Apollo and shepherds. He lives with them and passes for one. Faust sings
a beautiful idyll of Arcadia. As far as his own happiness is concerned, he
talks about it only in the last two quatrains,

Nor shall a fortress hold you bound!

For us and for our bliss henceforth
In youthful strength still closes round
Arcadia, Sparta's neighbor to the north.

Lured to dwell in that blessed land,

82 Chapter Two

You flee to brightest destiny,

Change we these thrones for bowers and
For happiness Arcadian-free!
(Faust 9566-73, trans. Charles Passage)

In these two quatrains, Faust's happiness is still projected to the future

tense. The joint happiness of Faust and Helen finally comes with the ar-
rival of their child Euphorion. When the child says to them that the joy of
children is the joy of their parents, Helen says that Love brings a worthy
pair together to make humans happy and then creates a precious Three
for their divine bliss. Faust responds to this exchange,

All things are then found:

I am yours and you are mine;
And so we stand bound together
It should never be otherwise!
(Faust, 9703-6, my own translation)

This is clearly the supreme moment, which Mephisto must have been
waiting for. Faust's happiness is even stronger than the one he had stipu-
lated in the wager, namely, only a single moment so beautiful that he
would ask it to stay for a while. He now wishes his present bliss not sim-
ply to stay for a while, but to last forever without any change. Why then
does not Mephisto step in at this moment and collect his wager? There is
no need for him to do so. The endless Arcadian bliss would amount to
placing Faust irrevocably in Mephisto's fetters because he would have
lost his perpetually striving soul for eternity. Without that Faustian soul,
Faust would never be truly free and alive. When he made the wager, he
said that he would be a slave the moment he were enthralled to ease and
comfort and that it did not matter whose slave he was.
The Faustian spirit is dead in Arcadia until it is revived with the birth
of Euphorion in the final scene. By asserting his aggressive Faustian will,
he endangers the unity of his family that Helen has cherished together
with her child. She tells him that he belongs to his family and that he is
destroying the threefold unity of mine, yours, and his. The Chorus says,
"Their unity, I fear / Will soon dissolve" (Faust 9735-36). This prophecy
is fulfilled with his tragic death. But what does Euphorion stand for? He
has been taken by many to represent Byron largely under the influence of
 The Superman in Fantasy 83

Goethe's private communication to his secretary Eckermann. But he also

told Eckermann that the identification of Euphorion with Byron was not
his original plan, but only an afterthought provoked by the news of the
poet's unfortunate death in 1824. What then was Goethe's original idea
for Euphorion? Let us settle this question by considering his genealogy.
His mother Helen is presented in the setting of Greek tragedy, and his
father Faust in the setting of medieval chivalry. These dramatic settings
have been taken to mean that Helen and Faust respectively represent the
poetry of ancient Greece and medieval Europe. But their representational
function should be much broader: the medieval Faust stands for the me-
dieval European culture and Helen of Troy for the ancient Greek culture.
Euphorion appears in the operatic setting, which should be associated
with the Renaissance opera. Hence he should represent the Renaissance
culture. Renaissance Europe was born by the long appropriation of clas-
sical Greek culture by medieval Europe, which is represented by the mar-
riage of Faust to Helen. As the paragon of modem Europe, Euphorion is
the Faust of the Renaissance, who should be distinguished from the Faust
of Arcadia, the paragon of medieval culture. For the substantiation of this
idea, I will show that Euphorion's career is a replica of Faust's career in
Goethe's epic.
Right after Euphorion's birth, the Phorkyad-Mephisto describes him
as faunlike but not bestial and a true wingless genius. He bounces all
over massive cliffs and mountaintops. His mother warns him against the
danger of flying, and his father urges him to draw his strength from the
Earth like Antaeus. He is caught in the struggle between the two souls
that tormented Faust in "Outside the City Gate" of Part One. One of the
two souls clings to the Earth, while the other soul tries to flyaway from
it. One is the soul of an earthling; the other is the soul of a superman. As
an earthling, Euphorion is like a faun; as a superman, he is a genius
without wings. Euphorion suddenly disappears into a gorge, which may
correspond to Faust's ten years in his Gothic study. When Euphorion
emerges from his hiding, he is well dressed and decorated and looks like
a miniature Apollo. On this occasion, the Chorus compares him to Her-
mes, the rascal and thief, who stole the trident from Poseidon, the sword
from Ares, the bow and arrow from Phoebus, the tongs from Haephaes-
tus, the lightening from Zeus, and Aphrodite's girdle from Eros. By this
massive theft, Hermes gains all divine attributes of the mightiest Olym-
84 Chapter Two

pians. In chapter 1, we noted, the superman emerged by transferring di-

vine attributes from the Christian God to human beings. This was a theft
from God like Hermes's theft from the Olympians. By this audacious
move, Euphorion has outgrown the old god and become godlike himself.
This momentous occasion is marked by the Phorkyad-Mephisto state-
ment that the old gods are finished (Faust 9681-82). This incident corre-
sponds to Faust's project to pose himself as a superman.
As Euphorion grows up, he feels a strong urge to jump up high in the
sky and his parents try to restrain him. For a while, he limits himself to
dancing with girls. This event corresponds to Faust's excursion to the
Easter promenade, in which young boys and girls sang and danced. Then
Euphorion goes hunting and brings back a wild girl. When he tries to
force his will on her by grasping her breast and kissing her mouth, she
bursts into flame and flares up to the sky. This incident has long baffled
many scholars. John Williams says, "No commentator has, to my knowl-
edge, given a full or entirely satisfactory explanation of the following
episode, of Euphorion's rape of the Young Girl, and in particular of her
apotheosis and her enigmatic treatment of lines 9808-10" (Goethe's
Faust, 177). Williams then enumerates a few attempted but unsatisfac-
tory explanations of this baffling event as portraying love in modem po-
etry, the expression of nostalgia for a lost ideal, Euphorion's immature
confusion of the playful hunt with serious issues, the realistic intrusion of
death into Arcadia, an ominous prefiguration of Euphorion' s own de-
struction, and the passionate impulse of Sturm and Drang and of subse-
quent romantic poetry. As Williams notes, it is obvious that there is little
or no textual evidence to support any of these fancy theories. But we may
find a solution to this problem by taking Euphorion's life as a replica of
Faust's career in Goethe's epic. Euphorion's affair with the Young Girl
may correspond to the combination of three events in Faust's search for
love and beauty: (1) his seduction of Gretchen, (2) his attempt to take
Helen away from Paris, and (3) his love with Helen in Arcadia. In his
Gretchen tragedy, Faust overpowered the girl and she was extinguished
in the flame of love. When Faust tried to impose his will on the phantom
of Helen in his attempt to take her away from Paris in the imperial court,
she disappeared in an explosion. To be sure, the Helen from the Trojan
War did not come to his castle and marry him by his coercion. But there
was a hidden coercion behind their marriage. Mephisto manipulated the
 The Superman in Fantasy 85

scared Helen and magically transported her to Faust's castle. He imposed

his will on her through Mephisto's devilish maneuver. She will also van-
ish into thin air after the death of her son. So these three events appear to
be rolled into Euphorion's wild affair with the Young Girl.
We have not yet accounted for the most baffling feature of that epi-
sode: While bursting into flame and rising out of sight, the Young Girl
tells Euphorion: "Follow me into the thin air, / Follow me into the chilly
tomb" (Faust 9808-9). This incident is the most obvious obstacle to iden-
tifying Euphorion with Lord Byron. The British aristocrat was indeed
wild and strange in his sexual behavior, and he even had an incestuous
relation with his sister. But none of his erotic affairs ended with anything
that remotely resembles the disappearance of the Young Girl, especially
her enigmatic command to Euphorion to follow into the thin air and into
the chilly tomb. Her command is enigmatic, first of all, because she ap-
pears to be in no position to issue such a command to him. The Young
Girl is only a stranger that Euphorion has brought to the dance. But she
can gain the stature to issue the command if she stands for both Gretchen
and Helen and if Euphorion stands for Faust. The phantom of Helen
burst into flame in the imperial court and the real Helen vanished into air
in Arcadia. The latter could have said, "Follow me into the thin air." Af-
ter her disappearance, in fact, Faust follows her by riding on her robe to
the summit of a high mountain at the opening of Act 4. When Gretchen
died, she could or would have said to Faust, "Follow me into the chilly
tomb." Before her death, he had sworn his eternal love to her and told
Mephisto that he was determined to share her tragic fate. When he came
to rescue her from prison, she refused to run away with him. She was
determined to join her family in the graveyard. She even laid out her bur-
ial plan. If he had been faithful to his love and oath, he should have fol-
lowed her to her chilly tomb. Instead, he wanted to save his own skin. So
he urged her to follow him to freedom. Her natural, though unspoken,
response must have been: "Follow me to my tomb if you really love me
and want to remain faithful to your own word." The Young Girl's fare-
well message to Euphorion is enigmatic because it combines the mes-
sages of two women in Faust's love life. It contains two conflicting
commands that cannot be jointly obeyed. It is impossible to follow her
into the thin air and into the chilly tomb at the same time. This is the en-
igmatic feature of her commands. But this enigma disappears as soon as
86 Chapter Two

the two commands are understood to have come from two separate
women on two separate occasions.
After his love affair with the Young Girl, Euphorion cannot endure
peaceful mountains and forests. He becomes militant and hungers for
war and climbs high mountains as a warrior in brazen armor and wield-
ing weapons. This event prefigures Faust's appearance on high moun-
tains in the opening scene of Act 4 to wage a perilous war for the Em-
peror. By then, like Euphorion, Faust has outgrown his erotic life. Finally,
Euphorion dares to fly from a high mountain and crashes to his death. He
is a daredevil, who is not afraid of death. The Chorus compares him to
Icarus, who defied Nature and dared to be like Apollo. When Euphorion
was a boy, he was called a miniature Apollo. Now that he has grown up,
he tries to behave like the real Apollo. He has changed from an incipient
superman to a full-grown one. Faust began his career as an incipient su-
perman, whom the Earth Spirit mocked by calling him "superman." In
Act 5, he will defy the Earth Spirit by his daring attempt to control the
power of Nature. This defiance will crush him to death just as Euphorion
is killed by his defiance of natural forces. The connection of these two
events appears to be suggested by Euphorion. Just before his daring at-
tempt to fly without wings, he says that he is responding to the thunder-
ous waves on the sea (Faust 9884-86). In his reclamation project, Faust
will try to conquer the waves of the sea.
Those who identify Euphorion with Byron take his death as the
poet's death in the war of independence for Greece. But Euphorion dies
not in a war, but on his way to it. Prior to his departure for the war, he
spells out his spirit of fighting,

Those this land bore,

From danger to danger,
Have stood free and courageous
In lavishing their blood.
(Faust, 9843-46, my translation)

The spirit of freedom and courage expressed in these four lines is exactly
the same militant spirit that Faust hopes will animate the people of his
future utopia in defending their existence against all hostile forces. But
Faust will die before realizing his utopia; likewise Euphorion is killed
before getting to his war. In the dirge on Euphorion's death, the Chorus
 The Superman in Fantasy 87

praises his high lineage. This is also taken as evidence for his identifica-
tion with Byron, whose background was aristocratic. But Euphorion is
also a scion of illustrious parents, a German feudal lord and a Spartan
queen. His parents are equally illustrious even when they are taken to
stand for medieval German culture and ancient Greek culture. When Eu-
phorion falls to the ground and dies, the stage description says, "One be-
lieves to recognize a well-known figure in the corpse" (Faust 9900-03).
This well-known figure is identified as Byron by almost every English
translator of Faust. But this identification is too hasty. Euphorion does
not have to be Byron to be well-known. He can also be a well-known
figure as a replica of Faust or as an emblem of the Renaissance culture.
There is no textual evidence that can go against my symbolic identifica-
tion of Euphorion.
In one respect, Faust's blissful union with Helen of Troy is different
from his ecstasy with Gretchen. As we earlier noted, Faust approached
Gretchen like a monster. He never thought of marrying her and having a
family with her. He was driven by his lust alone. He was the same selfish
monster when he tried to take Helen away from Paris's abduction in Act
1. In that regard, Helen was not any better. She was the seductress who
provoked Paris's attention in that scene. She broke up her own family in
Sparta to follow Paris to Troy, just as Gretchen did for her love of Faust.
But Faust and Helen have changed in Arcadia; they are now celebrating
the togetherness of their family with their son. They are devoted to each
other and to their son. This was inconceivable with the Faust of Part One
or with the Helen of the Trojan War. When Helen and Faust celebrate
their union with each other and with their son, the Chorus marvels how
touching it is to see their togetherness. Faust has realized the ideal com-
munity that Ariel espoused at the end of "Walpurgis Night's Dream" and
at the opening of Act 1. This was what he called the highest level of hu-
man existence, which turned out to be the summit of beauty at the end of
the long Platonic journey he had undertaken in place of the Boy Chario-
teer. In the Platonic scale, the beauty of a community far outweighs the
beauty of individuals (Symposium 2IOcd). But the beautiful bliss of his
family is shattered by Euphorion's tragic death. Faust strove to be an An-
taeus, but his son dared to be an Icarus. So there are two modes of exis-
tence-Antaeus and Icarus. These two modes have developed out of the
two warring souls in Faust's heart. He had resolved their conflict by his
88 Chapter Two

decision to be a complete earthling. But there are two ways of being an

earthling: by submitting to or defying the power of the Earth. One is to
be an Antaeus; the other is to be an Icarus. Euphorion does not want to
flyaway from the Earth as his father once dreamed of doing it. He wants
to fly over it.
There is one thing truly baffling about Faust's Arcadia. It shows no
trace of Christianity. How then can it be taken as a replica of medieval
Germany, which was steeped in Christianity? It may be said that Arcadia
is untouched by Christianity because Faust is not a Christian. But the
Faust of Arcadia is meant to be not the Faust of the Renaissance, who
was definitely an atheist, but a feudal lord of medieval Germans, which
had lived in Christian faith over a thousand years. There may be only one
way to connect Faust's Arcadia to medieval Christianity. That is to take
Arcadia as the paradise of illusion that has been created by the Christian
devil Mephisto's deceitful manipulation. When Arcadia is dissolved,
Panthalis attributes the magic enchantment to the Thessalian hag's spell.
She cannot mean Erichtho because this Thessalian witch left the Phar-
salian fields when she was scared by the arrival of Mephisto and his
company by air. After his landing there, he took over the Thessalian field
of magic and started casting his spell that has eventually taken Faust
through the Classical Walpurgis Night and to Arcadia, where he has spun
out Faust's idyllic life with Helen in the guise of a Phorkyad. Under this
devilish spell, Faust has run away from the real world to Arcadia. In this
regard, Faust's Arcadia is a replica of medieval Christianity as the age of
romance, when people ran away from the real world to the world of fan-
tasy. The peaceful union of "a precious Three" that is praised by Helen is
only an unreal romance and wishful fantasy. It alludes to the blissful un-
ion of the Holy Trinity and the Holy Family (Jesus Christ with his par-
ents). When the union of her family is about to be broken by Euphorion,
Helen says to him, "Are we then / Nothing to you? / Is the lovely bond
only a dream?" (Faust 9881-83). The blissful union of the Holy Trinity
and the Holy Family may have been only a dream, which can be main-
tained only by running away from the real world. By this poetic device,
Goethe may be expressing his own version of the Hegelian thesis that
medieval Christianity was a protracted alienation of human beings from
the natural world and an escape to the world of fantasy.
 The Superman in Fantasy 89

Euphorion is the self-asserting individual who shatters the Arcadian

bliss. He stands for the Renaissance individualistic ethos that breaks up
the medieval communal dream. But this individualistic ethos is not born
for the first time in the Renaissance, but revived from ancient Greek leg-
acy. This point is highlighted by Nereus's lament over the Homeric he-
roes and Helen's old world of warfare and piracy. The real world is a
Pharsalian field of perpetual war that cannot sustain a perfect harmony of
individuals. Euphorion dies in his return to this field of perpetual war.
Therefore his death is the dissolution of Ariel's dream of perfect har-
mony. But it cannot be the end of the world. On the contrary, it will be a
return to the real world. The Chorus ends their dirge with a clear sense of
new life and new beginning:

Now strike up new songs once more,

be no longer deeply bowed:
earth will engender songs again
as it always has before.
(Faust 9935-38, trans. Stuart Atkins)

This sense of renewal is further highlighted by Helen's return to Hades,

the world of the dead, from which she can come out only in fantasy. The
members of the Chorus return to Nature as its elements and resume the
function of nourishing all living things, which will be celebrated in the
revelry of Dionysus, the god of perpetual death and renewal, whose exu-
berant force of life rules the real world of Nature and makes life survive
even the perpetual killing in the endless wars.
 Chapter Three

The Superman in Defiance

(Faust, Part Two, Acts 4-5)

Before the opening of Act 4, Faust is flown to a mountaintop by Helen's

robe, which turns into a cloud. When he steps forth from the cloud, it
divides into two. The greater part is shaped like a woman resembling
Juno, Leda, and Helen. While this towering cloud is drifting away from
him, one bright streak of cloud hovers around him. It assumes the shape
of the dearest and earliest but long-lost treasure of his youth. This associ-
ates the second cloud with his love of Gretchen. Hence it is called the
Gretchen cloud, while the other is called the Helen cloud. He ends the
opening soliloquy by observing the magical impact of the Gretchen cloud
on himself: It draws the best part of his inner self upward. For Faust, the
cloud is a symbol of ascent and aspiration. The two clouds represent the
two women who have uplifted him, Gretchen and Helen. What was their
respective significance for Faust? Faust exploited Gretchen only for his
egoistic satisfaction, but he accepted Helen as his partner for raising a
family and ruling over the Arcadian community. He encountered
Gretchen as a petty individual of the small world and destroyed not only
her but even her family. But he married Helen after going through the
evolutionary voyage of the great world and assisted her transformation
from a selfish woman to a caring mother. Whereas Gretchen had to
drown her baby, Helen experienced the bliss of raising her son though he
eventually destroyed himself. But his relation with Helen was a fantasy
show, whereas his relation with Gretchen was a reality show. Therefore
the latter was a tragedy of reallife; the former was only an ideal aspira-
tion, which could be only an escape from life unless it could be brought
back to the real world.
 The Superman in Defiance 91

In Part Two, Faust started his career as an earthling over by accept-

ing Ariel's lesson and affirming the communal bond as a higher ideal of
existence than the individual satisfaction. He fulfilled the higher ideal in
the Arcadian community, which turned out to be the pinnacle of beauty
he had sought in his Platonic voyage. After the dissolution of his Arca-
dian community, he faces the question of whether he can achieve the
same higher level of existence in the real world. If he can, he can take the
Gretchen cloud even higher than the Helen cloud. This aspiration is rep-
resented by the Gretchen cloud drawing his inner self upward, while the
Helen cloud is drifting away. According to his secretary Eckermann's
testimony, Goethe said (June 6,1831) that Faust always moves to an ever
higher level of activity. Ifhe can follow the Gretchen cloud, he can reach
a level of existence even higher and fuller than his love of Helen. The
Faustian struggle is not just ceaseless striving, but also endless ascending.
Let us see how this Faustian ascent develops in Acts 4 and 5.

War against Nature

When Mephisto lands on the mountaintop to join Faust, they get into a
heated debate on how the high mountains have been formed. Mephisto
says that they were pushed up by the sulphuric fumes exploding from the
devils when they were thrust down to hell. Against this chaotic view of
Nature, Faust presents his orderly view:

When Nature's reign began, pure and self-grounded,

Then this terrestrial globe it shaped and rounded.
Glad of their peaks and chasms, it displayed
Mountains and mountains, rocks and rocks it made;
The soft curved hills it shaped then, gentling down
Into the valleys; there all's green and grown.
Thus Nature takes her pleasure, never troubling
With all your crazy swirl and boil and bubbling.
(Faust 10097-105, trans. David Luke)

These two competing views of Nature may appear to repeat the debate
between the vulcanist and the neptunist in Act 2. But it is the dispute be-
tween the Christian creationist and the natural evolutionist. Mephisto's
92 Chapter Three

story stands on the premise that Nature has been created by God. Faust is
countering the devil' s version of creationism with his thesis of naturalism,
that is, Nature is self-grounded and takes pleasure in self-creation.
Mephisto does not easily give up his chaotic view of Nature. He in-
sists that he has witnessed the eruption of mountains and floods from the
Abyss and that his theory can explain the colossal upheaval and violence
of the world better than Faust's theory. Faust admits that the devil's the-
ory is interesting. Setting aside this debate, he voices his suspicion that
Faust can fmd nothing desirable in the whole world. But he replies that a
great idea has just occurred to him and demands Mephisto to guess what
it is. Mephisto's guess includes beautiful women, a gorgeous palace, and
all the luxuries and pleasures in the world. But Faust dismisses all of
them as too trivial for his consideration. Now Mephisto says that Faust
must be nursing the sublimely daring ambition to fly up to the moon.
Faust rejects that one, too, and says that the earthly sphere still offers
room for great deeds. He wants to win dominion and possession by sub-
duing the raging sea. He is vexed with its surging waves because their
unbridled arrogance tramples laws and justice. He takes special offense
with the barrenness and the wastefulness of the sea:

Up to uncounted shores it finds access,

Barren itself and bringing barrenness;
It swells and surges, rolls and overwhelms
The desolation of those wasted realms.
There wave on wave on blind-willed wave, one after one,
Rules and withdraws-and nothing has been done.
This could drive me to sheer despair, to sense
Unpurposed strength of untamed elements!
My spirit ventures to outfly its sphere:
Here I would fight, achieve my triumph here.
(Faust 10213-21, trans. Charles Passage)

This is a declaration of war against the elements of Nature. Only a short

while ago, Faust protested to Mephisto that Nature was orderly and per-
fect. All of a sudden, now he says that she is wild and chaotic. The
charge of barrenness against the sea is even harder to justify. In the Clas-
sical Walpurgis Night, he celebrated the fecundity of the sea. He may be
trumping up these charges to justify his declaration of war against the
Earth Spirit. His defiant posture against Mother Earth shows how much
 The Superman in Defiance 93

he has changed since the Gretchen tragedy. He was then chiefly obsessed
with his sensuous passions and sought Mephisto's help for their satisfac-
tion. Assuming that he is dealing with the same Faust, Mephisto has just
offered all the pleasures of the world. But those things can no longer en-
gage Faust's interests because he has developed his new lust for power.
This is the dramatic transformation in his character-as dramatic as the
transformation of the intellectual Faust to the sensuous Faust in Part One.
This radical change in Faust's character should be understood as a
decisive step in the development of his original project to be one with
Mother Nature. When he summoned the Earth Spirit by his magic, he
was humiliated by her overbearing posture. Thereafter, he renounced his
superhuman aspiration for divine knowledge and tried to be a faithful
earthling by throwing himself into the sensuous world. In "Forest and
Cavern", he felt a sentimental union with the sublime Spirit. But that was
a deceptive appearance. As Mephisto ridiculed, the son of Earth was only
getting dissolved in his own swoon. Mephisto reminded him that he had
left Gretchen in tears and despair. With her in that condition, he could
have no real union with the Earth Spirit because Gretchen was the sensu-
ous medium for the projected union. So he accepted the harsh reality that
he could fully engage Mother Nature only by destroying the little girl
like a cataract falling upon a little cottage. Thus he went back to
Gretchen and lived out the terrible tragedy. In Arcadia, where he enjoyed
the beauty and harmony of Mother Nature, Faust fared much better with
Helen than he had done with Gretchen. He was happy to be an Antaeus.
This was the progress he made in his reconciliation with Mother Nature
after the Gretchen tragedy. But the progress was only in fantasy. It was
as illusory as the sentimental union he had experienced with Mother Na-
ture in the cavern. His exit from Arcadia performed the same function as
his exit from the cavern. On both occasions, he was getting out of the
world of sentimental fantasy to the harsh world of reality to realize in the
real world what he had only dreamed in fantasy. When he landed on the
mountaintop, he was preparing himself to face Mother Nature without
illusion. As a part of this preparation, he engaged himself in the debate
on the ultimate character of Nature. This time, however, he is determined
to approach Nature with a radically different posture. In the Gretchen
tragedy, he surrendered himself as a helpless instrument for the powerful
natural forces. He was only a slave. But he was a master in Arcadia,
94 Chapter Three

where he had enjoyed the dominion and possession of his fief as a feudal
lord. Now he wants to seek the same dominion and possession in the real
world. This is his new project.
This new project requires a vast tract of land and sea. But Mephisto
has a devilish scheme to obtain it. The Empire is thrown into turmoil by
the Anti-Emperor's uprising, and Mephisto helps the Emperor win the
war against the Anti-Emperor and his rebels. As a reward for this critical
service, Faust is granted a vast tract of land under the sea water by an
imperial decree. By reclaiming this land, he will become the absolute
ruler of his own realm. But this is not simply a reclamation project. This
is Faust's project to reclaim the Earth Spirit as his third woman after
Gretchen and Helen. He had gained his dominion and possession of
Helen as the feudal lord in Arcadia. He had also enjoyed the same power
and control over Gretchen. She was willing to do whatever he desired.
But these two women were only his proxies for the Earth Spirit.
Gretchen awakened his shriveled sensuality and revived his connection
with Mother Nature. His encounter with Helen gave him a far more ex-
tensive exposure to the natural world. He came to know her not simply as
a sensuous woman, but as the high point in the long evolution of Mother
Nature on both the biological and cultural levels. But these two pro-
tracted affairs are only the stepping stones for Faust's encounter with the
third woman, the ultimate one. As a matter of fact, she is the original
woman, the Earth Spirit, whom he had confronted well before Gretchen
and Helen. He was then seeking the breasts of the Earth Spirit like an
infant. But he is now forcibly grasping those breasts as Euphorion did
with the wild girl in Arcadia of Act 3. In the last chapter, I interpreted
Euphorion as an allegorical replica of Faust. Faust's forcible approach to
the Earth Spirit is to subdue her tempestuous seas and open up her unruly
land for his use. In the reclamation project, Faust is not trying to be a real
estate developer and proprietor as some commentators have claimed. Nor
is he trying to acquire a massive piece of land and build a gorgeous pal-
ace for luxury and glory. That was the sort of temptation Mephisto of-
fered at the opening of Act 4. But Faust spumed it because he was
scheming for a far more awesome project. He was burning with the am-
bition to settle the old score with his original woman.
Because Faust summoned the Earth Spirit with the arrogance of a
magus and lord, she humiliated him and addressed him as "superman" in
 The Superman in Defiance 95

derision. In spite of his superhuman pretense, she told him that he was
only an earthworm. But he is now prepared to approach her as the real
lord over her wild territory and elemental forces. By this defiant move,
he can avenge the humiliation he had suffered from the overbearing
Earth Spirit. He will transform himself from one of her abject earth-
worms to her mighty master. Then he can bring himself up to the title of
superman that she had contemptuously thrust on his head like a crown of
thorns. In announcing his war against the raging seas, Faust does not say
that he is trying to settle the score with the Earth Spirit. But his hidden
intent is revealed by the description of the sea he wants to subdue:

It surged and swelled, mounted up more and more,

Then checked, and split its waves tempestuously,
Venting its rage upon the flat, wide shore.
(Faust 10199-201, trans. David Luke)

When the Earth Spirit appeared to Faust, she described herself in a simi-
lar imagery of the sea:

In life like a flood, in deeds like a storm

I surge to and fro,
Up and down I flow!
(Faust 501-3, trans. David Luke)

The description of the sea is more savage than the self-description of the
Earth Spirit. But she behaved as frightfully as the raging sea and scared
him to no end. Instead of in fear and trembling, he now wants to face her
with courage and in confidence.
By securing his mastery over Nature, Faust can really become a su-
perman. Along with his reclamation project, he also builds a gorgeous
palace, from which he wants to enjoy his dominion and possession. But
he is annoyed by the presence of the cottage of an old couple, Baucis and
Philemon, and their old chapel, which had been there even before his
arrival. Act 5 opens with the moving scene where the old couple is vis-
ited by a man (the Wanderer) who was rescued from the sea by them a
long time ago. On his return to the cottage, he gratefully talks about their
kindness and gentleness. He wants to kneel and pray once more, gazing
on the boundless ocean. His humble posture to the ocean makes a dra-
matic contrast with Faust's arrogant posture to subdue the same ocean. In
96 Chapter Three

fact, Philemon tells the Wanderer how the fierce seashore has recently
been turned into a paradise. He describes the massive construction of
ditches and dams. He says that the ocean's sovereign rights have been
curbed to make green fields, gardens, woods, villages all around, and a
huge harbor for sailing ships. He tells the visitor that the man in charge
of the construction project was proclaimed as the feudal lord of the
whole coast by the Emperor. But Baucis expresses her sinister impres-
sion of the construction. In the daytime, the workmen hacked and shov-
eled all in vain. But there was a dam the following day. She suspects that
they used magic and even human sacrifices. She says that the man in
charge is a godless man who covets her cottage and grove. But her hus-
band says that the man has offered a new house built on the reclaimed
land in exchange for their cottage. But his wife would not move to the
lowland reclaimed from the sea. With this resistant note, they go to their
chapel to ring the bell and pray to God.
Just then Lynceus announces the return of Mephisto's fleet back to
the harbor from a profitable trip under the setting sun. But Faust does not
care about the good news because he is driven crazy by the ringing of the
bell in the .old chapel. He curses the bell. This is the unbearable vexation
in his boundless kingdom because it reminds him that his great estate is
not completely his own. The brown hut and the crumbling chapel are
spoiling his dominion and possession. At that point, Mephisto comes to
Faust and reports the result of his expedition with the three Mighty Men.
They went off with two ships and came back with twenty loaded with
treasures, which they gained by the trinity of war, trade, and piracy in the
lawless world of the ocean. But Faust does not say a word of thanks for
their service because he is still seething with his vexation. Mephisto tries
to cheer him up by pointing out his extraordinary power and possessions.
But Faust pours out his vexation with the old cottage. He is throwing a
temper tantrum like a little kid, and this is coming from a very old man
who is ruling over a vast territory from a gorgeous palace. Mephisto is
highly amused with this childish outburst and says in a mocking tone,

And yet that damned ding-dong-ding-dong,

Casting its damp pall on serenest evening skies,
Intrudes itself upon whatever happens
From first immersion to interment,
As if, between that ding and dong,
 The Superman in Defiance 97

Life were a dream to be forgotten.

(Faust 11263-68, trans. Stuart Atkins)

But Faust does not even recognize Mephisto's mocking tone. Faust's
vexation is very much like the torment and misery he suffered in his
study just before signing the pact with Mephisto. In chapter 1, we noted
that his misery involved neither natural disasters such as famines and
crippling diseases, nor political and social oppressions such as religious
persecution and economic depravation. It rose from the basic fact of nor-
mal life that he had no control over the outside world. But this basic fact
was turned into his hell by the god within Faust's own heart, his super-
human ego. When he was briefly released from the grip of this demon
during the Easer parade, he found the people's true heaven in this world
(Faust 938). But when the same demon took over his soul the same eve-
ning, he cursed everything in the world. Then the Chorus of Spirits said
that the demigod shattered the beautiful world (Faust 1607-12). Though
he could not rebuild it, he found a natural paradise in the fantasy land of
Arcadia. After its dissolution, he has built his own paradise by curbing
the sovereign right of the ocean, as Philemon said. But this new paradise
has turned into Faust's new hell by the little cottage and chapel of an old
couple. For the protection of his own paradise, he is willing to liquidate
the world of the old couple. Faust's lifelong struggle with the Earth Spirit
can be understood as his attempt to build a paradise on his own terms
because only such a paradise can secure his peaceful existence on earth.
By removing the old cottage and chapel, Faust wants to build a plat-
form that can give him an unobstructed view of all he has accomplished,
the masterpiece of human spirit. He is reviving his old dream of being
like the sun, who enjoys the commanding view of the whole world. That
was the superhuman dream he had entertained before humbling himself
as an earthling to the Earth Spirit. He is now vexed over the fact that his
superhuman project is blocked not by the great Earth Spirit, but by an old
nameless couple and their shabby cottage. He tells Mephisto that the
ringing of the bell is breaking his invincible will. He frantically begs
Mephisto to get rid of his vexation: the bell, the chapel, and the cottage.
He blames the old couple for their willful resistance because it ruins his
most glorious accomplishment. He says that he is now getting tired of
being just. He instructs Mephist to move the old couple to the property
98 Chapter Three

he has already selected for their relocation. Before his departure for the
mission, Mephisto says to the audience that here is an old story of
Naboth's vineyard again (1 Kings 21). King Ahab of Samaria wanted to
buy up a vineyard from Naboth, but he refused to sell it. Thereupon
Queen Jezebel had Naboth falsely accused of a crime and executed so
that Ahab could take possession of the vineyard. Though Mephisto rec-
ognizes the injustice of his mission, he carries it out. The news of his
execution reaches Faust through the watchman, who announces the ex-
plosion of blazing flames on the cottage and the linden grove. On hearing
this monstrous news, the first thing Faust thinks of is the tower he wants
to build for the boundless view. Then he says that he will give the old
couple a new shelter and that they will spend their final days in gratitude
for their happiness. He thinks he is doing a big favor for the poor old
couple. But Mephisto returns and tells him that he and his three Mighty
Men tried to move the old couple out of their cottage, but they would not
comply with the order. The old couple died in fright when Mephisto and
company began to use force. The Wanderer took up his sword and was
killed by Mephisto's men. During the struggle, fire broke out and burned
down the whole place and the three bodies. Indignant about the savage
outcome, Faust says that he wanted only an exchange, not a theft. He
curses Mephisto and his crew for the miscarriage of their mission. He
tells them that each of them should bear his share of the responsibility.
But he never mentions his own share.
The burning down of the old couple's cottage together with their
bodies and their visitor is by far the most appalling event in Goethe's
long epic. This event is even more terrifying than all the terrible things
Faust did to Gretchen and her whole family. He is not simply a terrible
person, but also incredibly petty and mean. He is inordinately upset by
the presence of a cottage and a chapel. Even Mephisto cannot understand
what is happening to him. His petty behavior is especially ironic because
it is coming out of his heroic battle against the elemental forces of Nature.
How should we understand this strange event? Did Goethe have some
special reason to make him behave so? Eudo Mason says, "it looks as
though Goethe had gone out of his way to show us Faust at this last stage
of his career falling very low-lower than in his desertion of Gretchen"
(Goethe's Faust, 333). There have been a number of conflicting accounts
of Faust's strange behavior. The easiest one is to say that the tragedy of
 The Superman in Defiance 99

the old couple was the mistake of Mephisto and his crew rather than of
Faust's own. But that does not explain why Faust was so petty in being
upset with their cottage. Another theory is to say that the tragedy of the
old couple allegorically represents the ravaging impact of nineteenth-
century industrialization. John Williams says, "They [Philemon and Bau-
cis] serve the exposition of the fifth act, and in quite specific terms may
well represent a pre-industrial idyll, even a whole class of peasant small
holders forced from their land by the Agricultural and Industrial Revolu-
tions" (Goethe's Faust, 198). In support of this thesis, he further claims
that Faust's grandiose palace is not that of a feudal lord but that of a
nineteenth-century merchant prince or industrial baron. He also says that
Faust has become the paradigm of a mercantile entrepreneuer of nine-
teenth-century Europe. But he ignores the available textual evidence.
Philemon says that Faust was proclaimed as the feudal lord of the whole
coast by the Emperor. He was given the land as a feudal fief. There is no
textual indication that his palace is any different from the old feudal pal-
ace. Even more important, Faust is neither a capitalist, nor an entrepre-
neuer. He neither builds nor runs factories for the production of goods. In
Act 4, he participated in a war, a typical profession of a feudal lord. In
Act 5, he acts as a feudal lord of the Renaissance. He hires workmen for
the reclamation project. But that does not make him a capitalist. It was a
common practice in the Renaissance. Neither does Mephisto's fleet show
any clear sign of nineteenth-century capitalism. His naval crew performs
the same activities as those of the merchants of Renaissance Italy,
namely, war, trade, and piracy. Faust has been transformed from a magus
of the Renaissance to a feudal lord of the Empire. But he still operates in
the social milieu of Renaissance Europe.
Largely under the influence of Nietzsche, some commentators have
tried to tum the lowest point of Faust's career into its highest point. In
his ruthless destruction of Philemon and Baucis, they hold, Faust is ex-
pressing his will to power to the fullest. This is his greatness that stands
beyond good and evil and proves him to be truly a superman. This cruel
view of Faust may be closer to the truth than any other competing views.
Let us go back to Faust's ultimate motive. He was determined to estab-
lish his dominion and possession over his reclaimed land. But he was
upset because his dominion and possession were impaired by the cottage
of the old couple and the ringing of their bell. That seems to show his
100 Chapter Three

pettiness. But there is another way of understanding it. This is to take it

as the syndrome of his absolute perfectionism. In "Forest and Cavern",
he was willing to accept the harsh fact that nothing could be perfect in
this world. That was the concession he was making to the sublime Earth
Spirit. He had to make it because he was then facing the mighty Spirit as
a humble suppliant. But he had abandoned that old humility when he de-
clared his war against the Earth Spirit. Now he has the courage not only
to conquer the elemental forces of Nature, but also to secure his domin-
ion over them in the most perfect form, Any imperfection in this en-
deavor will be the imperfection in his conquest of Nature. Faust says that
even the shadow of the old cottage on his estate is a thorn to his foot and
to his eye (Faust 11160). His absolute perfectionism cannot tolerate even
the intrusion of a shadow. This is his perfectionist complex, a neurosis
common to all tyrants who can allow nothing against their will to power.
Adolf Hitler suffered from this neurosis and used to throw his temper
tantrum like Faust whenever something went against his will.
Driven by his perfectionist complex, Faust feels that his dominion
and possession cannot be perfected until his territory is transformed into
a perfect paradise on his own terms, Only then may he feel that he has
substantiated and validated the superhuman posture he had taken against
the Earth Spirit. The ultimate target for Faust's will to power may not be
the old couple, but the mighty Earth Spirit. He may be still trying to re-
cover from the humiliation he had suffered under her overbearing treat-
ment a long time ago. He may look upon the old couple as his irritants
because they deal with Mother Nature with reverence and humility in
opposition to his insolence and defiance. That automatically places them
in the formidable camp of his declared opposition and tempts him to use
brutal force against them. I "have tried to link Faust's harsh treatment of
Philemon and Baucis to his earlier humiliation by the Earth Spirit to
strengthen the case for the Nietzschean commentators. In my view, ev-
erything that happens in Act 5 up to Faust's death isa continuation and
escalation of the war of love that he launched against the third woman in
his life in Act 4. Without such linkage, his treatment of the old couple
can show him only as a petty tyrant. Even the Nietzscheans would find it
too shameful to glorify the will to power of such a petty despot. That
cannot be the highest point in his career as many Nietzscheans claim. If it
were, Goethe would have ended his career in that despotic posture. But
 The Superman in Defiance 101

his despotic arrogance only sets him up on a plane just high enough for
the greatest challenge in his life and for the consequent peripeteia in the
next scene when the four grey women materialize from the smoldering
fire of the burned-down cottage and move over to Faust's heavily
guarded palace.

Showdown with Care

The four crones are called Want, Debt, Care, and Need. But Faust's
wealth is his fortress against their invasion except for that of Care. In this
regard, the allegorical meaning of Debt has been controversial. The Ger-
man word Schuld means guilt as well as debt. Some commentators have
insisted that it should be translated as Guilt rather than Debt. Emil
Staiger says that to take Schuld as Debt gives the word a trivial meaning
because its meaning is almost identical with that of Want (Goethe 3:435).
This contention is largely based on misunderstanding of the distinction
between Want and Debt. Want belongs to the present; Debt comes from
the past. It is possible to have Want without Debt. You may want or lack
a house, though you may have no debt. The liability of Debt can be more
serious than that of Want. One can be thrown into jail for defaulting the
payment of a debt. You do not have to go to jail for wanting or lacking a
house. To be debt-free is one of the most important conditions of finan-
cial health. To be sure, Want and Debt are closely linked in the life of the
poor. But their proximity is not any closer than that of Want and Need.
For these reasons, the crone called Schuld should be understood as Debt.
Her entry into Faust's house is blocked by his wealth; Guilt cannot be
blocked out by the wall of wealth.
Those who want to take Schuld as Guilt have their own reason.
Since those crones are coming over from the cottage that was just burned
down by Faust, they must include Guilt. Faust should be assaulted by the
sense of guilt for the terrible deed. How can they explain the fact that she
cannot get into Faust's house? Eudo Mason offers one explanation in
terms of Faust's personality: "The point of Schuld having to withdraw is
not that Faust is free from guilt-he most certainly is not-but that he
refuses to admit his guilt, that he is incapable of seeing and feeling him-
self as guilty, or, in other words, that he is incapable of repentance"
102 Chapter Three

(Goethe's Faust, 336). Mason says that Faust has been immune to the
sense of guilt all his life. He disclaimed his responsibility for the fate of
Philemon and Baucis by thrusting all the blame on Mephisto and his
men. He did the same thing for the Gretchen tragedy by shifting his re-
sponsibility to Mephisto. Mason is making Faust into a Nietzschean
monster. To be incapable of feeling guilt is to be a monster. But this pic-
ture of Faust goes against Goethe's text. When Faust hears Lynceus's
announcement of the terrible news on the cottage, he says that his inmost
being is vexed with the impatient deed of his men (Faust 11340-41).
That is clearly a sign of his guilt. In "Forest and Cavern", he agonized
over the tragic impact of his seduction on Gretchen. He went to her jail
to set her free. None of these things could have been done without the
sense of guilt. To paint him as a monster totally immune to the sense of
guilt creates one technical problem for the development of Faust as a
tragic hero. Aristotle says that neither a perfectly good person nor an ex-
tremely evil one is fit to be a tragic hero. The tragic fate of the former is
simply offensive; that of the latter cannot move us to either fear or pity
(Poetics 1142b33-1143a5). There can be no peripeteia for either of them.
A perfectly good person does not need one; a terribly wicked person can-
not make one. For the sake of Faust's impending peripateia, we had bet-
ter refrain from demonizing Faust.
If Frau Schuld is not Guilt, how can we account for Faust's sense of
guilt? The sense of guilt is included in Care. She is not just one of the
four crones; she is their master. The other three belong to her jurisdic-
tion. To suffer from Want, Debt, or Need is to be subject to Care. Surely,
the terrible sense of guilt cannot lie outside her province. When Faust
was vexed with her power in the earliest stage of his career, he said that
Care can wear many different masks: house and home, wife and child,
fire and water, dagger and poison, and many other countless sources of
worries and anxieties. He also said that she builds her nest deep in the
heart. (Faust 644-51). These two points are now declared by Care herself
when she comes into Faust's house and announces her arrival: Even ifno
ear hears her, she roars in the heart, and she wields her vengeful, ever-
changing forms (Faust 11424-27). Because Care builds her nest deep in
the heart, there is no fortress to keep her out. If she is in Faust's heart, the
sense of guilt must be there, too. Eudo Mason says, "Care is the most
rudimentary form of conscience, which even a Faust cannot escape"
 The Superman in Defiance 103

(Goethe's Faust, 336). There is no reason why Care should be limited to

the most rudimentary form of conscience. All forms of conscience and
even bad conscience belong to Care insofar as they command the power
to torment the human heart. After describing her all-embracing power
that no one can avoid on land or sea, Care asks Faust, "Have you never
known Care?" In response to this question, he makes his famous confes-
sion, which falls into two parts. In the first part, he says to Care,

I have but raced on through the world;

I seized on every pleasure by the hair;
What did not satisfy, I let go by,
And what eluded me, I let it be.
I have but craved, accomplished my delight,
Then wished anew, and so with main and might
Stormed through my life; first grandly and with passion,
But now more wisely, in more prudent fashion.
(Faust 11433-40, trans. Charles Passage)

This is a surprisingly modest description of how Faust has coped

with Care throughout his life. With might and main, he has tried to gain
whatever he has craved, without pining over what has eluded his grasp,
and forever renewing his pleasure. When he was young, he operated with
passion. Now that he is older, he is doing it with prudence. But he never
says that he has tried to defy the power of Care. On the contrary, he has
tried to live with it. In the second part of his confession, he says,

I know enough about the world of men,

The prospect yonder is beyond our ken;
A fool is he who that way blinks his eyes
And fancies kindred beings in the skies.
Let him stand firm here and here look around:
This world is not mute if the man is sound.
Why need he stray off to eternity!
What he knows here is certainty.
So let him walk along his earthly day:
If spirits haunt him, let him go his way,
Find joy and torment in his forward stride,
And at each moment be unsatisfied.
(Faust 111441-52, trans. Charles Passage)
104 Chapter Three

This is Faust's acceptance of this earthly world and his rejection of

the other world, the most common escape from the sufferings in this
world. Instead of looking toward joy in the world of eternity, he is will-
ing to live in this world of certainty. This is the description of his attitude
toward the earth. He began his career with two souls warring against
each other. One of them was attached to the earth and the other was as-
piring for heaven. He resolved their conflict by becoming a loyal An-
taeus. In spite of his solid allegiance to the earth, he expects no real satis-
faction in this world because he knows that every moment can guarantee
only dissatisfaction. But he will never break stride in his ceaseless striv-
ing and will accept all the joys and pains that life can offer. With such a
realistic approach, he has no reason to be intimidated by Care. Whereas
he could not even think of Care and her pervasive power without vexa-
tion in his youth, he can now face her in heroic equanimity. But Care
does not respond kindly:

Once I make a man my own,

nothing in this world can help him;
everlasting darkness falls,
suns no longer rise or set-
though no outward sense has failed,
all is darkness in his heart,
and however great his treasures,
there is no joy in their possession.
Good and bad luck both depress him,
he is starving though there's plenty;
source ofjoy or spot of trouble,
it's postponed until the morrow-
caring only for the future,
he gets nothing done at all.
(Faust 11453-66, trans. Stuart Atkins)

Faust cannot stand this litany of woes and screams to Care, "Stop and be
gone." But Care spins out more of her woeful litany, which ends with the
gruesome coda: Every human being in her grip is lost in a maze, torn
between hope and despair, only to be doomed for hell. The enraged Faust
denounces the unholy specters for turning the normal days of human life
into a filthy snarl and a tangled net of pain. And he becomes defiant and
says to Care, "And yet your power, great as it may be, / 0 Care, I will
 The Superman in Defiance 105

not recognize" (Faust 11493-94, trans. Charles Passage). Then Care

curses and makes him blind. But the blinded Faust says, "The night
seems to invade me deeper and deeper / But bright light shines in my
inner being" (Faust 11499-500). He hastens to fulfill his plans by calling
up his workmen for the completion of his reclamation project.
This is the showdown between Faust and Care. There is no way for
him to resist her awesome power, but he will not easily succumb to her
intimidation. Though she has blinded him, his will is not broken. He re-
fuses to recognize her power. But we have not touched on one remark-
able thing in this event. Just before Care's entrance into his house, he
senses the approaching crones and becomes sick of getting entangled in
their snares. He realizes that he has not fully secured his freedom in spite
of his dominion over the coastal land. The spectral presence is a far more
corrosive and pervasive intrusion into his dominion and possession than
the cottage of the old couple. But he knows that those specters cannot be
so easily removed as the cottage. Hence his wish to exorcise those trou-
blesome specters is much more desperate. He says to himself,

If I could sweep my path from magic free

Quite unlearn the spells of sorcery,
If I could stand alone before you, Nature, as a man,
It would then be worth while to be a man.
(Faust 11404-7, trans. Charles Passage)

This is known as Faust's renunciation of magic. It has provoked the

controversial question whether he has really renounced magic. Jane
Brown says that he renounces magic (Goethe's Faust, 237). But she of-
fers no textual evidence beyond mentioning his wish to face Nature as a
man. But his wish cannot be taken as his resolution to renounce magic
because it is stated in the subjunctive mood. If Faust is really renouncing
magic, Eudo Mason says, he should dismiss Mephisto, but there is no
real breakup of their partnership (Goethe's Faust, 339). Mason believes
that the reclamation project is really the work of Mephisto with his un-
canny assistants. He is influenced by Baucis's suspicion of magic in
Faust's reclamation project (Faust 11127-30). But she offers no evidence
to validate her suspicion. Her fear and suspicion may have been induced
by the fiendish speed of Faust's construction. At any rate, her observa-
tion and suspicion are immaterial because they had taken place before
106 Chapter Three

Faust's renouncement of magic. Our only question is whether or not

Faust has adhered to his renunciation after announcing it. He adhered to
it in his decision to use no sorcery in his showdown with Care. After her
departure, Faust summons his workers to finish his reclamation project.
Those workers would be gratuitous, if Faust were relying on Mephisto's
magic. Furthermore, Mephisto himself is demoted to the foreman of the
working crew (Faust 11551). His function has been transformed from
providing magic to supervising human labor. So we can say that Faust
has truly renounced magic ..Even Mason says that Faust is bent on dis-
pensing with Mephisto's magical aid and using only human labor for his
final project of building an ideal community (Goethe's Faust, 344).
Just before the showdown with Care, Faust expressed his dear wish
to stand before Nature without the aid of magic. Then he confronted Care
instead of Nature and abjured the use of magic in the showdown. The
sequence of these two events indicates that the showdown is linked to his
encounter with the Earth Spirit. When he summoned her in his study, he
tried to deal with her as an equal, but she reduced him to an earthworm.
He vehemently insisted on his equality to her, all in vain. Later that
night, he admitted to himself that it was arrogance to claim that he was
her peer and that he was humiliated and punished for that arrogance.
Then he reflected on the endless misery of being an earthling and espe-
cially the oppressive power of Care. Thus Care was already closely
linked to the Earth Spirit. I already said that Gretchen and Helen were the
proxies of the Earth Spirit. Care is more than a proxy. She is the projec-
tion of the Earth Spirit onto human existence. Her assault on Faust is the
response of the Earth Spirit to his assertion of power against the sea and
the cottage of Philemon and Baucis. Care arises from the smoldering fire
and smoke in the darkness, just as the Earth Spirit came up from the Pri-
mal Darkness. When Care asks Faust whether he has ever known her, he
does not give a simple straight answer. He does not say that he has
known her. Nor does he say, "I have known you." He does not even
mention her name in his confession until his defiant stand at the end. In-
stead he describes how he has coped with his earthly existence. This is a
highly circuitous reply to Care's direct question. But the circuitous reply
becomes directly relevant to Care's question if Care is taken to be the
projection of the Earth Spirit. In facing Care without the aid of magic, he
is now trying to fulfill his lifelong ambition to deal with the Earth Spirit
 The Superman in Defiance 107

truly as her equal. Eudo Mason says, "In renouncing magic he [Faust] is
above all renouncing his superhuman pretensions" (Goethe's Faust, 339).
But Faust never renounces his superhuman pretensions. Those preten-
sions go through three stages. In the first stage, he summoned the Earth
Spirit by his own magic only to be ridiculed for his superhuman posture.
In the second stage, he enlisted Mephisto's help to be a full-fledged
earthling. In this endeavor, he never abandoned his superhuman aspira-
tion, as we noted in the last two chapters. But he can now see that Me-
phisto's servitude has enslaved him to the Earth Spirit. In the third stage,
he regains his independence by renouncing the devil's magic. By this
defiant move, he can face the Earth Spirit truly as her equal and tum his
superhuman pretension into a solid reality.

The Turning Point and the Final Vision

When Faust was blinded by Care's curse, he said that bright light shone
in his inner being. But he does not explain what he sees by this new inner
light. Hence his alleged new insight has been a controversial question.
Without explaining his new insight, he hastens to round up his workmen
for the completion of his reclamation project. When the blind Faust hears
the digging sound, he assumes that the workmen are digging his ditches.
But they are the Lemures, who are digging his grave under Mephisto's
direction. In an aside, he mocks Faust's whole project for its futility by
branding it as an offering for a grand feast for the water-demon, Neptune.
But Faust only looks forward to his crowning achievement. After clear-
ing the infected swamp, he wants to build an ideal community for mil-
lions. They will settle on green and fertile fields of his new land like a
paradise. But the rim of this land will still be ravaged by the raging tides
from the sea. When the dikes are broken, all the residents will join their
hands together to block the breakage. This is the spirit of their commu-
nity. There is no permanent guarantee for its safety and freedom; they
must be earned each day anew. Beset by peril year after busy year, chil-
dren, adults, and elders will lead vibrant lives in this ideal community.
Faust states his commitment to this ideal:

To this idea I am committed wholly,

108 Chapter Three

it is the final wisdom we can reach:

he, only, merits freedom and existence
who wins them every day anew.
(Faust 11573-76, trans. Stuart Atkins)

If Faust could see such a community of free people standing on free soil,
he says, he might say to that moment:

tarry a while, you are so fair-

the traces of my days on earth
will survive into etemity!-
Envisioning those heights of happiness,
I now enjoy my highest moment.
(Faust 11582-86, trans. Stuart Atkins)

After this statement, Faust falls dead. This is his final vision, in which
the monstrously inhuman hero appears to have changed into a decent
human being. Does it involve a serious reversal in his view of life? Does
it constitute a peripeteia in his tragedy? This is the controversial question
for the ending of his long career. There are many contending views on
this question. But they fall into three groups.
The first group, which is largely Nietzschean, is most forcefully rep-
resented by Wilhelm Emrich. Though Faust finally achieves his victory
over Care and magic, he believes, his victory has nothing to do with the
ethical and social question because he has completely transcended the
sense of guilt in the ordinary sense even for his brutal disposal of Phile-
mon and Baucis (Symbolik des Faust IL 418, 471). Those little people
have no significance and relevance for Faust's highest principle, the
principle of activity. Even after he was blinded, he mobilized his workers
and said that one mind could command a thousand hands (Faust 11510).
He was still in charge of his own activities. Emrich believes that Faust's
highest principle remains triumphant to the end of his life and that this
absolute principle underlies his redemption (Symbolik des Faust IL 393,
403). Hence Faust's dying monologue should be understood not as any
change of heart, but as the final affirmation of his principle of activity
without any qualifications. But this Nietzschean approach cannot account
for the inner understanding that Faust saw lightning up when he was
blinded by Care. That inner understanding appears to be a new insight,
which is reaffirmed in his dying monologue: "To this idea I am commit-
 The Superman in Defiance 109

ted wholly, / it is the final wisdom we can reach." Even if the principle of
activity is Faust's highest principle, we should note, it is an incomplete
principle because the word 'action' or 'activity' is semantically incom-
plete until the object of action or activity is specified. The incomplete-
ness of 'action' is like that of 'knowledge'. There is no knowledge with-
out an object. Knowledge is always knowledge of something. By sup-
pressing the object of knowledge in our use of the word 'knowledge', we
may gain the impression that 'knowledge' is a semantically complete
noun and the corresponding illusion that we can have knowledge without
any object. For the same reason, we can overlook the simple fact that
there can be no action or activity without some purpose. Faust did not
reclaim the marshland simply for the activity of digging ditches and
building dams. He did it for the sake of securing his dominion and pos-
session against the raging sea. That was the purpose of his activity. But
that purpose was dramatically replaced by his new vision of building an
ideal community in his dying monologue. This dramatic change cannot
be explained by Emrich and other Nietzscheans.
Going against this harshly Nietzschean view, some commentators
hold a highly humane view of Faust and say that his utopian vision is
nothing new. On the contrary, it has been presupposed and contained
implicitly in his reclamation project. Faust is only making it explicit in
his dying monologue. When Faust says, "To this idea I am committed
wholly, / it is the final wisdom we can reach," he is not making a new
commitment, but only renewing an old one. Therefore there was no re-
versal of his view in his dying monologue. In that case, his final mono-
logue cannot be the climax of his life because it only reaffirms his old
ideal. For this humane reading, Eudo Mason says, Faust's crowning
achievement should be located in Faust's renunciation of magic, which
makes him completely independent of everything (Goethe's Faust, 344).
If so, Faust's dying monologue will be read as the anti-climax rather than
the climax of his life. But this humane view of Faust goes against the
textual evidence as much as the Nietzschean view. When Faust first an-
nounced his reclamation project to Mephisto, he never mentioned the
plan of building a community of human beings. He was solely driven by
his ambition for dominion and possession. He did mention the barrenness
and wastefulness of the coastal area inundated by the raging sea water.
But he did not say what use he was planning to make of it after its recla-
110 Chapter Three

mation. Prior to his reclamation project, Philemon and Baucis were al-
ready using the land profitably. But he wanted to tear down their cottage
and chapel to build a high tower for an unobstructed panoramic view of
his vast property. He was so obsessed with his own uncontested use of
the land that he could not tolerate its use by anyone else.
The idea of community was never operative in Faust's original pro-
ject of reclamation. He was only tearing down the only community exis-
tent on his feudal property. The cottage of Philemon and Baucis houses
not only a family of two, but also a small community by the time the old
couple is joined by the Wanderer. The members of this community ,care
for one another in sustaining their simple life against the ravaging sea.
Philemon and Baucis once saved the Wanderer from drowning and
nursed him back to health. He has now come back to express his humble
gratitude. They are operating in a community animated by the spirit of
mutual care and respect. Now compare this community with that of Faust
and Mephisto supported by the three Mighty Men. They plunder the rich
and demolish the weak. They operate on the principle that might is right.
When the three Mighty Men come back from their expedition of piracy,
they demand greater rewards than their already allotted shares (Faust
11196-204). They are as greedy as their master. Their relation and atti-
tude with one another are diametrically opposed to those of Baucis and
Philemon. But all of them benefit and suffer from the same forces of Na-
ture. Mother Nature is not any kinder and gentler for the poor than for
the rich. The four crones who came to assault Faust arose from the smol-
dering fire of the cottage. Want, Debt, Need, and Care are the unavoid-
able ills for poor people like the old couple. But rich people like Faust
can protect themselves against three of them. Mother Nature is harsher
on the poor than on the rich. Nevertheless, the poor folk are reverent and
grateful to Mother Nature, whereas the insolent Faust shows no sign of
reverence and gratitude. The poor couple not only embraces each other in
their spirit of community, but extends the same communal bond to bind
themselves to Mother Nature. On the other hand, there is no spirit of
community in Faust's world, where everyone is set to take advantage of
all others. Faust has fully extended this spirit of egoistic antagonism and
exploitation to Mother Nature in his reclamation project.
In his final vision, Faust abandons the project of building a paradise
for himself alone and transforms it into the project of building it for mil-
 The Superman in Defiance 111

lions of people. He is rejecting his previous spirit of egoistic antagonism

and exploitation and replacing it with the communal spirit of mutual care
and respect that once sustained the community of Philemon, Baucis, and
the Wanderer. This tiny community is the model for Faust's utopian vi-
sion. This is why his final vision is a dramatic reversal. I am going
against the standard Faust scholarship in spiritually linking Faust's rever-
sal to Philemon's little community. It has been customary to treat them
as two unrelated events. In this regard, the eminent scholar Emil Staiger
is most representative. He recognizes no link even between the fiery de-
struction of the old couple's cottage and the assault on Faust by Care,
although the latter event takes place much closer to the former event than
his dying monologue does. Staiger holds that the two scenes of the cot-
tage and the showdown between Faust and Care were written at different
times and based on thematic ideas that had nothing to do with each other.
Their close juxtaposition is never meant to be taken for any thematic
connection by the author (Goethe 3:434-35). But I want to say not only
that this view is extremely faulty, but also that its opposite extreme is the
truth. In my view, the Wanderer's return to the humble cottage of Baucis
and Philemon is placed at the opening of Act 5 in order to set the the-
matic tone for the development of the entire Act. It performs the same
thematic function that is assigned to many opening scenes in Faust.
There is a consistent pattern in the construction of those scenes: All of
them begin with impressive soliloquies. Faust's opening soliloquy sets
the thematic tone for Part One. Ariel's soliloquy does the same for Part
Two. Helen's opening soliloquy sets the thematic stage for Act 3, and
Faust's opening soliloquy does the same for Act 4. There is no such so-
liloquy only for the opening of Act 2. Hence it may appear to be an ex-
ception to this general pattern. But it is not. The central event of Act 2 is
the Classical Walpurgis Night, and its thematic stage is set by Erichtho' s
soliloquy shortly after the opening of Act 4. This is a variation of the
general pattern rather than an exception.
True to the familiar pattern, Act 5 opens with a monologue of the
Wanderer, who is recollecting his rescue from drowning in the sea by
Philemon and Baucis. But this monologue turns into his dialogue with
the old couple as soon as he finds them. A dialogue is a sign of a com-
munity, whereas a monologue is a sign of solitude. A community is lar-
ger and less intimate than a family. Whereas a family is a network of
112 Chapter Three

blood-ties, a community includes strangers. The family of Baucis and

Philemon is expanded to a community when the Wanderer is accepted
into their network of mutual care. The tender tone of the simple dialogue
in the humble cottage is meant to express the spirit of community that
will govern the dramatic development of Act 5, especially the momen-
tous reversal in Faust's outlook. The spirit of community that Faust pro-
jects to his utopia of millions is none other than the spirit of mutual care
that operates in the community of three persons on his beach. Faust's
millions will maintain their freedom and security against the raging sea
just the way these three have done in caring for each other. Faust has not
borrowed his social ideal from the nineteenth-century sentimental utopi-
ans as some commentators have said, but adopted it from the real people
on his own beach.
Following the standard practice in Faust scholarship, Eudo Mason
does not link Faust's dying soliloquy to the spirit of community in the
little cottage. Like most commentators, he sees the cottage only as a vic-
tim of Faust's despotic greed. But that is only the negative thematic func-
tion of the cottage. Its positive thematic function is to serve as the sym-
bol of an ideal community in contrast to Faust's community of greed.
Although Mason does not recognize this positive thematic function of the
cottage, he regards Faust's final vision as the revolution that gives his
soul a fundamental change of direction (Goethe's Faust, 343-44). But
this dramatic conversion is coming out of his showdown with Care. In
this showdown, Mason says, Faust has fully recognized the limits of hu-
manity (Goethe's Faust, 337). That is why he is not boastful in the show-
down and is content with his policy of containment against Care. But he
also saw the horrendous limits of his egoistic existence because he was
forced to face the terrible specter all by himself. Mephisto and his three
Mighty Men were not there for him when he needed them most. He must
have felt the indispensability of communal bonds more than ever. This is
why I stress the link of his conversion to the tragedy of Baucis and Phi-
lemon and their spirit of community.
What kind of utopia is projected in his dying monologue? This is an-
other controversial question on his final vision. The Marxists have been
especially hard on Goethe on this question. If Faust (or Goethe) enter-
tains a socialist vision, they have held, it is conditioned by his own age.
It is at best one version of the utopian socialism of the early nineteenth
 The Superman in Defiance 113

century, which was branded and condemned as "unscientific" by Marx.

The unscientific utopian socialism is only a sentimental dream that has
no foundation on "scientific" understanding of economic dynamics,
which was disclosed only by Marx's dialectical materialism. Unfortu-
nately, Goethe was born before Marx. The Marxists in general conde-
scended to Faust's utopia with the illusory conviction that Marx provided
the scientific key to establishing a real utopia. It took them a long time
before realizing that Marx's science was a pseudo-science and that the
Russian Revolution produced not a utopia but a distopia. The dissolution
of the Soviet Union finally silenced their critique of the Faustian utopia.
Prior to this momentous event, some scholars still felt the need to defend
Faust's utopia against the charge of sentimental utopianism. To that end,
they claimed that his dying soliloquy was meant to be not a version of
utopian socialism, but his satire on the whole movement. In this interpre-
tive ploy, they had to reduce Faust's inner light to a satire. To be sure, he
does not say what he sees in his inner light when he is blinded by Care.
But his inner light is deliberately juxtaposed to two ominous lines in
Care's litany on her all-pervasive power: "With external senses whole, /
Darkness dwells in his soul" (Faust 11457-58). These two lines describe
the relation between the inner and outer conditions of the power-crazy
Faust. When he had sight, darkness smothered his soul, as Care says. But
his inner darkness is replaced by his inner light when he is blinded by
Care. This inner light is shining bright in the darkness of night. His tragic
reversal is modeled after that of King Oedipus, who gouges out his own
eyes after the recognition of his spiritual blindness. This great moment of
awakening would be erased if his dying soliloquy were read as a satire.
This is too high a price to save Faust from sentimental utopianism.
The Marxists have also talked as though the utopia had been an in-
vention of the nineteenth century. But it is as old as Plato's Republic and
as close to Faust's Renaissance as Thomas More's Utopia. I have already
objected to moving Faust from the Renaissance and situating him in
nineteenth-century industrialism. I have the same principled objection to
the supposition that he has adopted his utopian ideal from the nineteenth-
century utopian socialists. Faust derives his utopian inspiration neither
from the classical texts, nor from the nineteenth-century pamphlets. You
can never find any trace of these documents in his utopian vision because
it comes right out of his own experience, especially his long struggle
114 Chapter Three

against the terrible forces of the Earth Spirit, which he described in his
confession to Care. We already noted that his confession was surpris-
ingly modest. He does not boastfully say that he has conquered the fierce
natural forces in spite of his awesome success in his reclamation project.
Instead he modestly says that he has managed to contain those forces and
has learned to live with them. Whereas Faust began his reclamation pro-
ject as the warrior out to conquer and repel the raging sea from the land,
he describes it in a modest language after his showdown with Care. He
says that his workmen are reconciling the earth with itself, setting the
boundary to the waves, and putting a tight rope around the sea (Faust
11541-43). This is not the policy of conquest over the sea, but the policy
of containment, the same sort of policy that he took against Care. Faust
envisions that his ideal community will adopt the same policy of con-
tainment against the raging sea in maintaining their freedom and safety.
Hence the ideal community may be regarded as an extension and con-
tinuation of his own existence. But it will be fulfilled not by one individ-
ual but by a community of individuals.
The spirit of community is born when the members of a community
work for one another as though they were one individual. Because he
regards the ideal community as the extension and continuation of his
own self, he foresees that the trace of his earthly existence will be pre-
served forever in that legacy of his (Faust 11583-84). Even the freedom
of this ideal community should be understood in term of his struggle with
Care. Eudo Mason says that we should not read any democratic or other
fashionable ideals of our day into Faust's concept of freedom because
Goethe had no sympathy with them (Goethe's Faust, 345). Indeed, Faust
does not even mention social equality in his dying monologue. His con-
cept of freedom is to be free from the four crones that have arisen from
the burned-down cottage. They stand for the most common afflictions on
human existence. To be free in Faust's utopia is to be Want-free, Debt-
free, Need-free, and Care-free. The last of these four freedoms may not
be possible even in the best of utopias because no mortals can avoid the
sting of Care, as Faust has found out. John Williams says that the early
version of line 11580 ("free people standing on free soil") was "standing
on the land and soil that is truly one's own" (Goethe's Faust, 204-5). The
revision of the early version may appear to shift the emphasis from the
people's proprietorial right to their freedom. But there is no radical dif-
 The Superman in Defiance 115

ference between these two versions because to stand on one's own land
and soil is the basic condition of freedom. Baucis and Philemon had to
have their soil and cottage to secure their freedom against the raging sea.
That is why Baucis was reluctant to move from her present house on a
high ground to a new house on a low land, which can be more easily
overrun by the sea water. By explicating Faust's idea of freedom in terms
of Want, Debt, Need, and Care, I am again linking Faust's peripeteia to
the opening scene of Act 5.
I do not want to give the impression that the cottage of Baucis and
Philemon is the first occasion for introducing the thematic idea of a
community in Goethe's epic. Faust has struggled with it for a long time
because it is inseparably connected with his lifelong aspiration to be one
with Mother Nature. But he cannot easily handle the idea of forming a
communal bond with other human beings because he had grown up as a
solitary human being. In the Easter parade, for the first time in his life, he
gets momentarily involved in the communal spirit of common people.
When he signs the pact with Mephisto and decides to plunge into the
world of sensuality, he is not simply seeking pleasures, but longing to
share the lot of all humanity. By understanding their heights and depths
and filling his heart with their joys and woes, he wants to expand his self
to their selves (Faust 1770-75). This fantastic project of self-expansion
had no chance of realization while he was obsessed with the satisfaction
of his erotic passion. In "Forest and Cavern", however, he thanks the
Earth Spirit for teaching him to know other living beings as his fellow
creatures (Faust 3226). Evidently he feels some form of universal broth-
erhood with all living beings, but that feeling never shows up in his be-
havior because of his erotic obsession. But he became uneasy with erotic
impulses when he saw a mouse popping out of the mouth of a young
witch during the Walpurgis Night. That incident was followed by Ariel's
lesson on the hill of roses as the symbol of a community in "Walpurgis
Night Dream". But that lesson came to him too late. He had already de-
stroyed Gretchen's little community and she could seek her reunion with
her family only in the graveyard. Thus Faust ended Part One with the
destruction of the only community he has encountered in his entire life.
Faust opened Part Two by reinstating Ariel's lesson in the form of a
rainbow, which reflects and refracts the blazing sunlight through count-
less particles of water. In Act 1, he learns how hard it is to transform the
116 Chapter Three

violent primal force of Nature into the rainbow of a community. In Act 2,

he further learns that the evolution of that violent force into beautiful
forms is inseparable from the endless war and power struggle, whose
theme is announced by the Thessalian witch Erichtho at the beginning of
the Classical Walpurgis Night. After this long journey of evolution, Faust
is married to Helen of Troy in Arcadia. This marriage transforms two
egoistic individuals into a family. Faust's egoistic personality has already
been displayed prior to this marriage, but Helen's egoistic past is even
more notorious than his. She is the emblem of the Trojan War, the great
disaster of erotic passions. In the abduction of Helen by Paris in Act 1, as
we noted in the last chapter, she is the one who instigates Paris for their
erotic affair, for which she not only breaks up her own royal family but
also destroys Paris's great family of Troy. Because of her treacherous
past, by the time she returns to Sparta ahead of her husband Menelaus in
the opening scene of Act 3, she is not even sure of whether she will be
treated as the queen, a captive, or a sacrifice to be offered on the altar.
But she became a loyal wife and a devoted mother in Arcadia. Hence her
transformation from a self-seeking individual to a nurturing mother was
as dramatic as that of Faust's own transformation.
When Euphorion was born, Faust and Helen finally formed a com-
munity of three and celebrated the oneness of three persons. In the last
chapter, I compared their family to the Holy Trinity, the medieval em-
blem of divine community, and to the Holy Family (Jesus Christ and his
natural parents), the model of all human families. For the first time in his
life, Faust participated in the life of a community. But that was only in
the land of fantasy. But the ideal of community did not fade away from
his consciousness. When he landed on the mountaintop after the dissolu-
tion of Arcadia in the opening scene of Act 4, he saw the Helen cloud
drifting away from him into distance, symbolizing the disappearance of
his Arcadian community. He also felt that the Gretchen cloud was pull-
ing him upward to a higher level of existence. At the opening of this
chapter, I read this event as the symbol for his aspiration to elevate his
existence from the lowly level of individual ambition and satisfaction to
the higher level of community. But this heavenly aspiration is completely
forgotten, when he asserts his egotistic self and seeks his dominion and
possession by declaring war against Mother Nature. This new sense of
 The Superman in Defiance 117

acquisition and dominion has smothered the sense of community he had

gained in Arcadia.
In the opening scene of Act 5, Faust encounters a community of mu-
tually caring human beings in the real world for the first time in his life
after his destruction of Gretchen's family. The community of Baucis and
Philemon with the Wanderer is not only a reminder of Gretchen's family,
but also a transposition of Faust's own community of three persons from
the fantasy land to the real world. Thus, the opening scene of Act 5 sets
the thematic task for Faust: "Which of the two Fausts will prevail in
dealing with this real community, the devoted father of Act 3 or the
homeless monster of Act 4?" In Act 5, the homeless monster smothers
the devoted father and demolishes the humble cottage; all three members
of this little community become the burnt offering to his greed. But this
gruesome offering turns into four crones and eventually awakens the de-
voted father to design the utopia as a home for his heirs. Thus, Faust re-
cants his blinding egotism and gains the inner light to see the beauty of
communal bonds. This is his heart-wrenching repentance, which retraces
Gretchen's course of repentance. She came to appreciate the value of
communal bonds only after destroying her whole family for the fulfill-
ment of her erotic passion. Now we can see that to retrace this course of
her repentance is what it means for Faust to be pulled upward. by the
Gretchen cloud. The repentant Faust realizes that the communal bond
with his fellow creatures is the only way to fulfill his lifelong dream of
becoming one with Mother Nature. There is no way to meet her as a sin-
gle person. One can meet her only through her embodiment in countless
living beings. This was the vital lesson displayed by the metaphor of a
rainbow for the radiation of the primal energy in Act 1. This is our epic
hero's final understanding and his decisive peripeteia.
 Chapter Four

Redemption of the Superman

(Faust, Epilogue)

When Faust dies, Mephisto delivers his obituary: He kept chasing the
ever-changing shapes without ever getting satisfied. But the Faustian
struggle is now finally over. So Mephisto concludes his obituary:

What's over, and mere nothing, are the same.

So what's the point of making all our effort
to snatch what has been made into nothingness!
"All's over!"-what's the inference from that?
That things might just as well have never been,
but chase around in circles as if they did exist.
I'd much prefer Eternal Emptiness instead.
(Faust 11597-603, trans. Stuart Atkins)

This is a nihilistic view of the natural world. There is no point in doing

anything because everything returns to Eternal Nothingness. Mephisto is
talking like someone who says, "Nothing is left," after a fine musical
performance. A performance is not a thing, but a process. There are two
ontological models: the object model and the process model. They are
two ways of understanding what it is to be really real. The object model
is to take solid objects as really real; the process model is to take proc-
esses as really real. By the object model, a musical performance is not
really real, but a musical instrument is really real. By the process model,
the opposite is true. The process model takes the ultimate reality to be the
Heraclitean flux; the object model takes it to be the Democritean atoms.
According to Heraclitus, everything is in flux; there is nothing permanent
in the phenomenal world. Even solid objects change every moment; their
permanence is a deceptive appearance. The solid objects are not really
 Redemption ofthe Superman 119

real because they are dead and inert, but processes are really real because
they are alive and active. According to Democritus, all mutable things
are unreal because they can perish, but the atoms are real because they
are unchangeable and indestructible.
Mephisto's Eternal Emptiness or Nothingness gains different senses
in these two models. In the object model, a process is not a thing. There-
fore it is nothing. In the process model, process is everything because it
is not a dead thing. In the object model, Eternal Nothingness or Empti-
ness is the most unreal. On the other hand, in the process model, it is the
most real. It is the ground of all phenomena, the mother of all things, as
we have seen a number of times. Mephisto' s nihilistic view of the world
is based on the Democritean object model minus the atoms in the void.
On the other hand, Faustian striving is based on the Heraclitean model of
perpetual process. That is why Faust kept chasing the ever-changing
shapes, as Mephisto just said. But that perpetual process has finally come
to an end, and the devil feels entitled to collect Faust's soul when it
comes out of his body.

The Battle over Faust's Soul

Some commentators have said that Mephisto is not entitled to Faust's

soul because he has not won the wager with Faust. Just before his death,
Faust did not say to any moment: "Stay for a while, you are so fair." He
said that he might say something like it if he could see the realization of
his utopia. But John Williams holds that the terms of his wager with Me-
phisto are broadly fulfilled, though not strictly, for two reasons (Goethe's
Faust, 205-6). First, Faust said that his anticipation of the utopia gave
him "the highest moment" in the present. Second, right after this highest
moment, the clock stopped as stipulated in the wager. But there is no as-
surance that the highest moment in Faust's life is beautiful enough for
him to ask it to stay for a while. Right after Faust's death, Mephisto him-
self said that he was never satisfied with anything in his whole life. The
clock indeed stopped, not because the terms of the wager were fulfilled,
but because Faust's life came to an end. Though Mephisto cannot collect
Faust's soul on the wager, he can claim it on the pact. Faust had agreed
to serve Mephisto after his death in return for the devil's service in this
120 Chapter Four

world. On this account, the devil is entitled to Faust's soul. To capture

his prize, Mephisto calls up a host of devils as his assistants. They come
on the stage with the hell-mouth and open its jaws, showing the fiery city
aglow with the damned wallowing in the red tides of hell. They wait with
him for Faust's soul to come out of his dead body. They are not even
sure which part of the body the soul resides in and which orifice of the
body it will use for exit. Mephisto assumes that the soul is a thing, and he
is seeking its possession like any other solid objects. He is still operating
with the object model. Even Faust operated with this model when he was
seeking his dominion and possession. But he conceived his utopia as a
perpetual process of protecting freedom. In the last chapter, we noted
that this was a revision of the earlier draft that stressed the proprietorial
right ("standing on the land and soil that is truly one's own"). This is
more closely associated with the object model than with the process
model. By the revision of this line, Goethe has completely freed Faust's
utopia from the object model.
Mephisto urges his assistant devils to be ready to seize Faust's soul
with their sharp claws when it emerges from the body. Just then the
heavenly host descends, singing the message of forgiveness and bearing
the tokens of love. Those tokens are roses. Mephisto knows that they are
coming down to snatch away his prize. When the Angels strew their
roses, they turn into flames and scorch the devils. While they are running
away, Mephisto alone holds the ground and keeps his vigil over Faust's
soul. But Mephisto is smitten with love for the young Angels and loses
control over himself. He wallows in erotic fantasy and boils break out all
over his body as on Job's. He calls them the healing rash from the plague
of love. By taking advantage of his erotic distraction and confusion, the
Angels ascend with Faust's soul. Mephisto is ashamed of himself for
having wasted his greatest investment. He admits that his defeat was his
own bungling. He cannot believe that a seasoned devil could not over-
come the silly erotic trick and madness. Thus Faust's soul was saved
from the devil's claws by angelic trickery.
The heavenly host with Faust's soul does not fly up to heaven, but
climbs up a steep mountain with woods, rocks, and lions roaming in the
sanctuary of love. They are greeted by three solitary residents of the
sanctuary, Pater Ecstaticus, Pater Profundus, and Pater Seraphicus. Each
of these three anchorites talks about the nature of love. Pater Ecstaticus
 Redemption ofthe Superman 121

describes love with four noun phrases: the eternal burning bliss, the
glowing bond of love, the simmering pain of heart, and sparkling divine
joy. He is talking about how love works within his heart. He prays that
he may be pierced by arrows of love, subdued by its lances, battered by
its cudgels, and shattered by its lightning bolts so that the All may utterly
abolish the Nothingness and shine the kernel of eternal love. He is im-
plicitly responding to Mephisto's challenge of Eternal Nothingness. His
love is a perpetual process, like the Faustian striving. Pater Profundus
describes how love works in the same perpetual process to sustain the
natural world, providing the creative force in the quiet gorge and the
surging sea. Pater Seraphicus shows the third dimension of love by his
love of the children who died before developing their sense organs. He
invites them into his own body so that they can see through his eyes. He
then encourages them to ascend higher for the revelation of eternal love
in God's own presence. That is another perpetual process of striving.
From these three anchorites' talks on the perpetual process of love natu-
rally follows the Angels' pronouncement of the formula of redemption:
They can redeem whoever strives ceaselessly. If the higher love has
taken interest in him, they add, the heavenly host will meet him with
cordial welcome. Redemption depends on two conditions: striving and
love. But love is also a process of striving. The Younger Angels explain
that they have won Faust's soul with the roses given by the penitents.
Their penitence is also a perpetual process of striving.
The More Perfected Angels explain that the eternal part of Faust was
separated from his earthly part. The two parts are so tightly welded to-
gether that only eternal love can separate them. Their separation is the
rebirth of Faust's soul, but it continues to grow even after its rebirth. The
perpetual process of striving never comes to an end even in redemption.
On the contrary, redemption is its continuation. The Blessed Boys say
that Faust is in the pupa stage and begin to take him out of his cocoon.
Then Doctor Marianus appears in the highest cell of the anchorites and
petitions the Virgin Mary to help the penitent women. She floats by, fol-
lowed by three penitent women: Magna Peccatrix, Mulier Samaritana,
and Maria Aegyptica. These three penitents pray to the Mater Gloriosa
for the fourth penitent, Gretchen. Clinging to the Mother, Gretchen says
that the love of her youth has now returned. In the meantime, Faust has
grown further. The Blessed Boys say that he has outgrown them and will
122 Chapter Four

be their teacher on life. Gretchen continues her prayer to the Virgin

Mother on behalf of the newest novice for the heavenly host,

See, how he casts off

Every earthly bond of his old coverings,
And in ethereal raiment
Steps forward the first power of youth.
(Faust 12088-91, my own translation)

Faust's rebirth is now completed. As Eudo Mason notes, there are two
stages in Faust's redemption (Goethe's Faust, 365). The first stage is to
take away Faust's soul from Mephisto. The second stage is the purifica-
tion of his soul by purging away all its earthly baseness. These two
stages are the two phases in the rebirth of Faust's soul. Whereas Mephi-
sto tries to seize his soul as an object, the heavenly host treats it as a
process that never comes to an end. The second stage of this process cor-
responds to Dante's Purgatory. But purgation is not the ultimate end, but
the basis for further growth. Gretchen asks the Virgin to grant her the
permission to instruct him. She tells Gretchen to ascend to higher spheres
and that he will follow her. This ascent was prefigured by the Gretchen
cloud that pulled Faust's inner self upward in the opening scene of Act 4.
The heavenly ascent is also the perpetual process of striving. Doctor
Marianus offers his final prayer to the Virgin, and Faust's redemption
ends with the praise of the Eternal Feminine by the Chorus Mysticus.
As many commentators have noted, the redemption of Faust resem-
bles the ending of Dante's epic journey to the highest heaven, where he
gains his beatific vision through the intercession of the Virgin Mother.
Doctor Marianus performs the same function for Faust's soul that is per-
formed by St. Bernard of Clairvaux for Dante. Gretchen's role resembles
that of Beatrice. Because of these Christian vestiges, some critics have
complained of the obvious discrepancy between the secular ethos of
Faust's career and its Christian ending. But it is equally obvious that the
ending is not fully Christian. Whereas Dante sees the three Persons of the
Holy Trinity in the Empyrean, Faust's soul never reaches the highest
heaven and none of the three Persons ever appear in his redemption. His
redemption takes place not in heaven, but in the natural landscape. It
cannot be a truly Christian event. Harold Jantz calls it a loving fusion of
pagan and Christian convictions (The Form of Faust, 48). If there is a
 Redemption ofthe Superman 123

fusion, the Christian vestige of the Virgin Mother is only on the surface.
Her role in Faust's redemption is radically different from her role in
Dante's. When Dante sees Mary in the Mystical Rose of the highest
heaven, he describes her as the face that most resembles her son Christ
(Par. 32.85). She is only an image of God, albeit the best one. In Dante's
heaven, therefore, she cannot be the redeemer, but only an intercessor.
But this humble role is not played by the Mater Gloriosa in Faust's re-
demption. She is the redeemer. For the validation of this awesome role,
she is called Virgin, Mother, and Queen, and Goddess (Faust 12102).
The first three of the four titles are traditional, but the last one is heretic.
But this point is seldom taken seriously because the deification of the
Virgin Mary appears to be on a par with that of Helen, who was called
the goddess by the Poet in "Knight's Hall" of Act 1. Even Galatea was
made god-like and immortal in the marine pageant of Act 2. But their
deification was performed in the pagan context of Greek mythology,
whereas Mary's deification is made in the Christian context.
Even with their deification, Helen and Galatea are not elevated to the
rank of Zeus and Hera, Apollo and Athena. But the Goddess Mary is not
one minor deity in Goethe's heaven. Doctor Marianus addresses her as
the sovereign mistress of the world and as one equal to the gods by birth
(Faust 11997, 12012). She is born as a goddess; she is not one of the
creatures made by some god. She is the Eternal Goddess. Her exaltation
reaches the highest level when she finally appears with the Penitent
Women. They address her as "Thou Peerless Being" (Faust 12035).
There is no god or goddess who can stand on the same highest level of
being that she enjoys. Lest anyone miss this critical point, the Penitent
Gretchen repeats the salutation "Thou Peerless Being" in her petition to
the Mater Gloriosa (Faust 12070). When she was praying to the Mater
Dolorosa for her help in coping with her illicit pregnancy before her
death, she said to her, "To the Father you look up / And send your sighs"
(Faust 3593-94). She clearly recognized Mary's subordination to the al-
mighty Father. But now she mentions nobody that the peerless Goddess
can look up to. The singular position of this new goddess is analogous to
that of goddess Isis, who ruled over all the deities in ancient Egypt. In
fact, the medieval Christian adoration of the Virgin Mary as the Queen of
Heaven was an emulation of the worship of Isis as the Queen of Heaven.
124 Chapter Four

Goethe has brought this emulation to absolute perfection and elevated the
humble handmaid of the Christian God to the highest deity of the world.
Faust's redemption is secured by the maternal love of the Mater Glo-
riosa, And her maternal love is everywhere. It first shows up in the roses
that are strewn by the heavenly host against Mephisto and his cohorts.
Those roses are from the Penitent Women, who are saved by the mater-
nallove of the Mater Gloriosa. Her maternal love is also the love that is
praised by the three anchorites. She is the Eternal Feminine, whose love
moves the whole world. Although both Beatrice and Gretchen appeal to
the Virgin Mother, her maternal love operates differently in the two
worlds. In Dante's world, her love is subject to the Holy Trinity. The
Virgin Mother appeals to her own son for Dante's beatific vision. For
Faust's redemption, she never appeals to her son or any other god. Her
son is mentioned only by the three Penitent Women. In Faust's world,
there is no higher power to rule over the operation of her maternal love.
The Eternal Feminine does not simply save Faust's soul in the last sec-
tion of Act 5. She is the supreme cosmic power for the governance of the
world. What is so striking about the ending of Faust is not so much why
Faust should be saved from the devil by the Virgin, but why the Eternal
Feminine is exalted to the absolute height of the whole universe. Her
love replaces the love of the Holy Trinity in Dante's world that "moves
the sun and the other stars" as stated in the last line of the Commedia.
The exaltation of the Eternal Feminine has provoked various unfa-
vorable reactions among Goethe scholars. Some of them have thought
that it is too Christian and too Catholic. Others have thought that it is a
gross distortion and exaggeration of the Roman Catholic cult of Mariola-
try. But neither of these two criticisms is addressed to the suitability of
the Eternal Feminine for the closure of Faust. Many have contended that
the awesome role of the Eternal Feminine does not grow out of Faust's
epic struggle. Goethe has willfully tacked it on to the end of his poem
without any poetic justification. Friedrich Gundolf says that the role of
the Eternal Feminine is not grounded in the action of the play and is in-
consistent with the sensibility of the masculine Promethean hero. Al-
though the Eternal Feminine may be one of the great forces in Goethe's
life, he adds, it emerges more or less as a dea ex machina in Faust
(Goethe, 781). Gundolf admits the suitability of the Eternal Feminine for
the salvation of Gretchen, the sinful woman, who prayed to the Mater
 Redemption ofthe Superman 125

Dolorosa in her hour of need. But he says that the Gretchen-like form of
salvation does not fit the masculine figure of Faust. The love from above
is superfluous for his salvation because he already has his principle of
salvation immanent in his own action (Goethe, 782). Barker Fairley not
only endorses this criticism, but even tries to explain why Goethe took
such a drastic measure for the ending of his epic. The poet must have
seen the need for reconciliation, without which the Faustian striving
would be of no avail. But this insight grows not out of the poem. If we
wish to understand the Eternal Feminine, Fairley says, we have to go
outside Faust and read the rest of his poetry. It is the poet's eleventh-
hour thought that he has not earned in his poem (Goethe, 119).
Eudo Mason endorses the need of reconciliation. He can see no rea-
son to accept Gundolf's assumption that the Promethean principle of
striving and becoming is posited as absolute in Faust. Mason entertains
the possibility that it is all along envisaged in a "dialectical polarity to
the no less important, though seldom explicitly presented or evoked, op-
posite principle of the Eternal Feminine" (Goethe's Faust, 362). In the
last scene of the drama, he believes, this implicit principle is at last fully
expressed for the criticism and correction of the excesses and deficien-
cies of Faust which is implied throughout the poem, most forcibly in the
Gretchen and the Philemon and Baucis episodes. Because there is no re-
demption immanently in striving and becoming as such, he concludes, it
must ultimately be a "transcendental one." He recognizes that the idea of
transcendental redemption goes against the pantheism of Goethe, who
often impatiently speaks of the idea of an extramundane God. But Mason
believes that he was willing to accept the transcendental theism where
the last religious and ethical issues are concerned. In support of this view,
he quotes from Goethe's famous letter to Jacobi on January 6, 1813:

I for my part cannot, in view of the diverse tendencies of my

nature, be satisfied with one mode of thinking alone; as a poet
and artist I am a polytheist; as a scientist, on the other hand, I
am a pantheist, the one as emphatically as the other. If I need a
God for my personality as a moral being, that is a requirement
which is also provided (trans. Mason, Goethe's Faust, 362).

Mason is making two assumptions. First, the principle of Promethean

striving is never sufficient for itself and it must be supplemented by the
126 Chapter Four

principle of redemption. Second, the latter principle must come from the
transcendent world because the immanent world cannot provide it. The
second principle is the complement to the first principle. This is what
Mason means by their dialectical polarity. Because of their complemen-
tary relation, one of them may be called the masculine principle and the
other the feminine principle. But these two assumptions generate some
difficult questions. First of all, what is the ground to regard the masculine
principle of activity as insufficient for itself? Is it in the text of the poem
or in Mason's own feeling? He cites nothing from the text in talking
about the excesses and deficiencies of Faust, especially in the Gretchen
and the Philomen and Baucis episodes. He must be appealing to his own
moral sense. If so, his position is an easy target for Gundolf, who regards
the masculine principle as absolutely sufficient on the textual ground. On
the basis of this principle alone, there is no way to find any excesses or
deficiencies in Faust's handling of Gretchen and the old couple.
The principle of striving was central in Mephisto's wager with the
Lord in Heaven. As we noted in chapter 1, the divergence from the pri-
mal source was mentioned, but it carried no normative criteria because
the primal source was a blank check. The principle of activity was af-
firmed by Faust, time and again. He affirmed it in his revision of the first
sentence of John's Gospel, in his renunciation of theoretical knowledge,
in his love affair with Gretchen and Helen, and finally in his reclamation
project. Even when the Angels announce the formula of redemption in
"Mountain Gorges", they first state the principle of striving and then add
the love from above as the supplement. But they do not say that one must
strive for the right thing to receive the love from above. The principle of
striving is stated without any qualifications. It means striving, pure and
simple. There is no normative constraint ever placed on the principle of
striving and activity anywhere in Faust. This absolutely unconstrained
principle may even validate the power of a strong hero to trample upon
the weak folk, as some Nietzscheans have maintained, because he stands
above the moral laws of the weak. Absolutely beyond good and evil, they
believe, Faust only strives for ever higher and higher levels of activities
to the end. To subject his activities to any moral considerations is to
adulterate the Faustian principle of action and contaminate Goethe's text.
This textual argument must be beaten before the feminine principle can
be endorsed as complementary to the masculine principle.
 Redemption ofthe Superman 127

The Masculine/Feminine Duality

Even if the complementarity of two principles is accepted, it still leaves

open the question of their ranking. According to Eudo Mason, the femi-
nine principle is at most equal to the masculine principle. But the mascu-
line principle appears to be overpowered by the feminine principle in
Faust's redemption. Their relation appears to be asymmetrical rather than
symmetrical. What is the right way to understand their relation? This is
the hardest question for understanding the Eternal Feminine. In spite of
his general disagreement with Gundolf, Mason agrees with him on one
point, that is, the feminine principle is never explicitly stated throughout
Faust's career until the very end. That is why the Eternal Feminine looks
like a deus ex machina when it pops up at the end of the show. Mason
notes two occasions for Gretchen's manifestation of the feminine princi-
ple: her words to Faust ("We will meet again") just before her execution
and the Gretchen cloud that pulls upward Faust in the opening scene of
Act 4. But the operation of the feminine principle is far more pervasive
than this. This principle begins to appear with Faust's passionate longing
to be united with Mother Nature in the opening scene of Part One. He
sought her breasts as the fountain of all life when he summoned the Earth
Spirit. She is the concrete embodiment of the feminine principle, which
functioned as the ever-present framework for his interaction with
Gretchen and Helen. In "Walpurgis Night" of Part One, he witnessed the
full display of feminine passions in the revelry of the witches. Part Two
opened with the healing and revival of Faust by the nurturing power of
the Earth. Ariel and his elfins were the ministering agents of the feminine
principle. In Act 1, Faust encountered the Eternal Feminine in the Moth-
ers, who are truly eternal because they are beyond space and time. The
power of women was fully displayed in the Classical Walpurgis Night,
especially in the marine pageant of Galatea. Jane Brown points out that
the last line of the Mystical Chorus on the Eternal Feminine (Zieht uns
hinan) appears in the salutation of the Nereids and Tritons to the Sirens,
"Your gracious song draws us onward" (Goethe's Faust, 183). The same
word zieht was used for describing the Gretchen cloud's power on Faust:
Und zieht das Beste meines Innern mit sich fort (And draws forth the best
of my inner being). The Classical Walpurgis Night demonstrated Eros as
the feminine principle that has governed the entire history of natural evo-
128 Chapter Four

lution. In Arcadia, Helen of Troy became a salient emblem of the mater-

nal principle by her transformation from a seductress to a devoted mother.
I just do not know why such eminent scholars as Gundolf and Mason say
that the feminine principle is not present explicitly in Faust.
To be sure, the epic of Faust opens with the masculine principle: The
Lord in Heaven and his Archangels. As we noted in chapter 1, the Lord
soon becomes only a figurehead when his power is transferred to the
Earth Spirit, the real power behind' the throne. But the ultimate ground of
the feminine principle is not the Earth Spirit, but the Mothers, the eternal
genetrices in the Abyss. The Mater Gloriosa redeems what is generated
by the Mothers. These two acts of generation and redemption are the ex-
pressions of the same maternal love. The Mothers and the Mater Gloriosa
represent the same eternal principle of maternal love that creates the
forms of life in the deepest darkness and elevates them to the highest
heaven. This evolution of life was demonstrated in the Classical Walpur-
gis Night, where life emerged from the darkest depth under the
moonlight of Luna and ascended to the radiant light of Apollo. The cos-
mic evolution of life was presented as the operation of Eros. But the
same Eros works in two ways: as sexual love and matemallove. These
two ways were demonstrated by Helen of Troy. She behaved differently
as the paramour of Paris and as the mother of Euphorion. Likewise,
Gretchen was a victim of sexual love in her affair with Faust. But she
expresses her maternal love in the redemption of Faust's soul. She looks
after him like her helpless infant. Faust overpowered her before her death,
but he is now totally dependent on her love. The reversal of their roles'
represents the relation between the masculine and the feminine principles.
In Act 2, we noted, the mountains are pushed up from the Abyss by the
primal forces. The relation of the masculine to the feminine principle is
like the relation of the mountains to the primal forces. Like the moun-
tains, the masculine figures are visible and prominent. But they always
stand on the feminine principle that is usually invisible but pervasive like
the primal forces. Since the primal forces arise from the Primal Darkness,
the masculine/feminine relation can also be compared to the relation of
light to darkness, which was described by Mephisto in his introduction to
Faust. Although light was born from the Primal Darkness, it envies and
contests the ancient rank of mother night. But light can never succeed in
this rebellion (Faust 1349-58). In the same male spirit of rebellion, Faust
 Redemption ofthe Superman 129

dared to be equal to the Earth Spirit, but in vain. This is the eternal
asymmetry that prevails between the two complementary principles.
Their asymmetrical relation is like the relation of Yin and Yang in
Chinese Philosophy. Yin is the feminine principle; Yang is the masculine
principle. Yin stands for darkness; Yang stands for brightness. But Yin is
the mother of all things, The primacy of Yin over Yang is expressed by
the phrase "Yin and Yang." The Chinese never say "Yang and Yin." The
ancient Chinese belief that Yin is stronger than Yang has been validated
by biology. The female is the stronger gender than the male. Women live
longer than men. The female is better equipped biologically and psycho-
logically to cope with the stresses of hardship and disaster than the male.
The woman has to have more power than the man because she has to
gestate the fetus for nine months and nurse the baby during its infancy.
The asymmetry of the masculine and the feminine principles shows up in
the contrast between the opening and the ending of Faust. It begins with
the masculine principle, the Lord in Heaven, and ends with the feminine
principle, the Eternal Feminine. Because the play opened with Mephi-
sto's wager with the Lord on Faust, it is natural to expect the Lord to
show up at the end of the play and settle the outcome of the wager. But
the Lord does not make the appearance, thereby defeating the normal
expectation of the audience. Many commentators still say that the reap-
pearance of the Lord at the end of the play is demanded by the symmetry
and consistency of the poem. As a matter of fact, Eudo Mason says,
Goethe had considered up until 1820 the idea of concluding his poem by
bringing back the Lord for the final judgment on Faust (Goethe's Faust,
354). But he never explained why he abandoned the idea of a symmetri-
cal ending. The following is my hypothesis.
Prior to 1820, Goethe had not done much for establishing the femi-
nine principle as the pervasive force of Faust's world. Though I cited the
Earth Spirit as its manifestation, its gender is ambiguous. The grammati-
cal gender of the German word Erde (earth) is feminine, but that of Geist
(spirit) is masculine. Since the gender of a compound noun is governed
by that of its last component, the grammatical gender of the Erdgeist
(Earth Spirit) is masculine. Hence it is the standard practice to treat the
Earth Spirit as a male figure. There are some pictures that show the Earth
Spirit as a male spirit, probably because of his fearful appearance to
Faust. Some scholars refer to the Spirit by the pronoun 'it'. But I have
130 Chapter Four

used the feminine pronoun 'she' in referring to the Earth Spirit largely
because Faust associated the Spirit with the breasts of Nature just before
conjuring her up by his magic. When he expresses his gratitude to the
sublime Spirit in "Forest and Cavern", he is inside a cavern, which I
called a virginal symbol in chapter 1. But these symbolic associations are
far from explicit, and the operation of the feminine principle in Part One
remains largely implicit. Only in Acts I and 2 of Part Two, does Goethe
clearly depict the preponderance of the feminine principle and its relation
to the fiery primal force. But most of Part Two was written a few years
later than 1820. Thus the masculine/feminine asymmetry becomes full-
blown only in Part Two, where the masculine principle is clearly shown
to be sustained by the feminine principle. Therefore, it is reasonable to
say that the asymmetrical ending of Faust was largely dictated by its
thematic development in Part Two.
The masculine/feminine asymmetry is twofold. First, it is developed
throughout the play. Then, its outcome is condensed in the contrast be-
tween the Prologue in Heaven and the ending of the poem, which is also
called its Epilogue. The Prologue is much briefer than the Epilogue. The
former presents only a few dramatic personae, who present relatively
simple talks. But the latter deploys a great number of dramatic personae,
who are engaged in extended dramatic actions. But the Epilogue is not
limited to the redemption of Faust's soul. The Prologue describes Faust
as ceaselessly driven by his natural impulses, but says nothing about the
ultimate source of those impulses. The Epilogue reveals this ultimate
source as the Eternal Feminine. Doctor Marianus says that what tenderly
moves the human heart, comes from the maternal love of the Virgin
Mary. He calls it her mystery (Faust 11997-12004). This revelation has
been prepared over a long time. In his initial appearance, Mephisto intro-
duced himself to Faust as the agent of the Primal Darkness, which was
later described as Chaos and the Abyss. In Act I of Part Two, Faust's
descent to the Primal Darkness established the Mothers as the Eternal
Beings beyond space and time. Act 1 also revealed the ultimate source of
the primal energy or the subterranean fire. Then, Act 2 showed how the
primal energy generates life and sustains its evolution. Pater Profundus is
referring to this creative process when he says that all natural phenomena
from the rocky chasms to the surging sea proclaim the creative force of
Almighty Love (Faust 11866-89). The marine pageant of Act 2 ended by
 Redemption ofthe Superman 131

celebrating Eros, the matemallove that nurtures the long process of crea-
tion and evolution. The Lord in Heaven was referring to this maternal
love when He blessed God's rightful sons with the bond of love in the
world of Becoming at the end of the Prologue (Faust 346-49). Thus the
Prologue is linked to the Epilogue by the Eternal Feminine. Many com-
mentators have worried that the thematic integrity of the poem is dis-
rupted by the asymmetry between the Prologue and the Epiloque. On the
contrary, it is beautifully clarified by their ingenious and elaborate
asymmetry.
I have labored on the omnipresence of the feminine principle chiefly
to counter Mason's view that Faust's redemption is secured by a tran-
scendental force. Everything that takes place in "Mountain Gorges" can
be taken to be a natural event that manifests the immanent force. There is
no reason to introduce the supernatural world except for one thing, that is,
the two parts of Faust's soul. One part is supposed to be mortal and the
other part immortal. The redemption of his soul is to separate the immor-
tal from the mortal part and purify the former by purging away earthly
elements. When the immortal soul is purified of all earthly elements, it
must transcend the natural world that is made of earthly elements. This is
the demarcation between the natural and the supernatural domains, which
goes against my thesis that Faust's world is Spinoza's infinite substance.
It also goes against Faust's own belief that there is no other world be-
yond this world. In that case, he is being saved against his own belief.
We have earlier noted the common complaint that the ending of Faust
does not grow out of the play. But here is a far more serious problem:
The ending of the play overturns its central thematic development. To
my surprise, Eudo Mason contends that Faust's ascent from the natural to
the supernatural domain in "Mountain Gorges" grows out of the poem.
To this end, he cites two passages: Faust's contemplation on suicide in
"Night" and his speech on the two souls in his heart in "Outside the City
Gate". He surely looked upon suicide as his liberation from the earthly
shackles for the ride in a fiery chariot to the ethereal sphere of pure activ-
ity. This was a Platonic longing for the other world. He entertained the
same Platonic longing in his speech on the two souls in his heart. But he
resolved the conflict of his two souls by becoming a single-minded earth-
ling. In his confession to Care, he swore that he had lived solely for the
earth and never cared for the world beyond. But the Platonic dualism
132 Chapter Four

appears to be reinstated for his redemption without his consent. In fact,

his ascent with the heavenly host looks like the ascent of the Platonic
chariot to the heavenly world. But this Platonic flight makes a mockery
out of his lifelong struggle to become a faithful son of the Earth.
If Faust were conscious during his redemption, he would be outraged
with what the Angels are doing to his soul. But he is kept unconscious
during the entire operation. There have been a number of attempts to un-
derstand the purgation of his soul without transporting it to the super-
natural world. Wilhelm Emrich takes the purgation as a purely natural
process of rejuvenating his body and soul (Symbolik des Faust IL 412).
Faust indeed gains a new vitality through the purgation of his immortal
part as Gretchen says, but Emrich ignores the purification process that
eliminates the mortal earthly part. Albert Dauer says that purgation frees
Faust's soul from earthly limitations and imperfections (Faust und der
Teufel, 358). But to get rid of earthly limitations is not the same as to get
rid of earthly elements. Both scholars try their best to contain Faust's
redemption within the natural world. But that appears to be an impossible
project because there is no way to account for the immortality of Faust's
soul that survives the death of his body. That is surely impossible in the
natural world. If Faust's rebirth during his redemption is taken as a natu-
ral process, it should be no different from his rebirth and revitalization in
the opening scene of Act 1. In fact, the two events look alike. On both
occasions, there is no breast-beating and no fanfare of repentance for
Faust's past mistakes. They are simply forgotten for his rebirth. But the
two events differ decisively in one regard. His rebirth in "Pleasant Re-
gion" is performed by nature spirits, but his rebirth in "Mountain
Gorges" by the heavenly host. Unlike the latter, the former involves no
separation of the immortal part of Faust's soul from its earthly elements.
It is often said that Goethe adopted the idea of Leibnizian monads.
This idea is Leibniz's theory of the immortal soul. Faust's immortality
may well be based on this Leibnizian version. But this idea goes against
Spinoza, who holds that only the infinite substance is eternal and immor-
tal and that human beings are its perishable modes. On his philosophy, it
makes no sense at all to purge away the impure earthly elements for the
perfection of Faust's immortal soul because he believes that nothing
earthly is impure or imperfect. The separation of earthly elements from
the immortal soul is also incompatible with the evolutionary process for
 Redemption ofthe Superman 133

the growth of Homunculus. He was created out of matter in a test tube

and had to smash his vial to gain a body in the ocean and make his exis-
tence fully real. In that case, to eliminate those earthly elements should
make Faust's soulless real or unreal. How then can the elimination of the
earthly elements make Faust's soul perfect? To be less real should mean
not to be more perfect, but to be less perfect. The purgation of Faust's
soul goes against the wisdom of the precocious sage Homunculus, which
startled even Mephisto. It is often noted by commentators that the separa-
tion of Faust's immortal soul from the earthly elements is the reverse of
the process that gave a body to Homunculus. That is not quite accurate.
The separation of Faust's soul from its body was made naturally after his
death on earth when it came out of its body. That event did not involve
the heavenly host. The Angels say that even they do not have the power
to separate his immortal soul from the distasteful earthly elements and
that only Eternal Love can separate them (Faust 11954-65).
If the earthly elements are so distasteful, Faust can never achieve his
lifelong aspiration for the reconciliation with Mother Earth. The redemp-
tion of his eternal soul would mean his eternal separation from the earth.
He began his career with his passionate longing to overcome his alien-
ation from Mother Nature, went through a long travail for the fulfillment
of this longing, and was finally reborn as her full-fledged son in the
opening scene of Act 1. But this tortuous accomplishment will be com-
pletely undone and his alienation from Mother Nature will be made per-
manent, if his redemption is to be the separation of his immortal soul
from its earthly elements. This is the enormous price that he has to pay
for his immortality and redemption. This is why I said that his redemp-
tion completely overturns the thematic development of the whole poem.
There is no way to avoid this disastrous consequence by interpreting the
purgation of Faust's soul in purely naturalistic terms because even the
naturalistic purgation cannot ignore the textual evidence that his soul is
said to survive the death of his natural body. We can never avoid this
embarrassing consequence as long as we take Faust's redemption in lit-
eral sense. So I propose an allegorical reading of this event. Let us begin
it by considering the nature of repentance involved in his redemption.
Those who want to naturalize Faust's redemption have maintained
that his purgation has nothing to do with sin or its forgiveness because he
knows nothing about sin and guilt. But his redemption may not be so
134 Chapter Four

easily separated from the notion of sin and repentance. When the heav-
enly host descends for Faust's soul, they announce the forgiveness of
sins before anything else. His redemption culminates in the intercession
of the Penitent Women, who talk about their sins and forgiveness. Their
sins may be related to Faust's. What then are their sins? Harold Jantz
says that the common ground of their sins was the betrayal of their ma-
ternal instinct that tragically deflected and frustrated their motherhood
and that they now look up in adoration and for guidance to the blessed
Virgin, who has reached her ultimate fulfillment in becoming the Mother
of God (The Mothers in Faust, 44). As a matter of fact, all three Penitent
Women had a shady sexual history. But their sin of lust is an expression
of the same Eros that can also be expressed as maternal love. As Jantz
says, the sin of lust can deflect and frustrate the maternal instinct. Just
before her execution, even Gretchen looked upon herself as a whore,
who killed her own baby, and tried to regain her motherhood by being
buried next to her baby in the graveyard. Her repentance lies in her rec-
ognition of the perversity of her egoistic impulse and its frustration of her
maternal instinct. In "City Wall" of Part One, she appealed to the Mater
Dolorosa for her help with this misery. When Faust came to her jail, she
was more concerned with saving her dead baby than saving herself. Thus
she had already achieved repentance before her execution and expressed
it by her decision to join her family in the graveyard instead of running
away with Faust to freedom. That is why she was pronounced as saved
by the voice from above at the end of Part One. Just before his death, as I
said at the end of the last chapter, Faust was going through the same
course of repentance that Gretchen had gone through and that this was
what it meant for him to be pulled upward by the Gretchen cloud at the
opening of Act 4.
Maternal instinct is the very essence of the feminine principle. It is
the maternal spirit of caring and sharing that sustains a family and a com-
munity. This is the spirit of community that Ariel compared to a hill of
roses. On the other hand, the masculine principle is always self-seeking
and self-assertive. It is the individual spirit of action and aggression,
which underlies Faust's Promethean drive for dominion and possession.
These two principles are fully displayed even in the operation of a chim-
panzee society. It is ruled by the Alpha male, who comes from outside
and overthrows the existing ruler and who can maintain his power until
 Redemption ofthe Superman 135

he is vanquished by another young intruder. But the harmony and conti-

nuity of a chimp society are maintained by the generations of its matri-
archs, the Alpha females. The male/female difference is also illustrated
by the famous experiment on the sexual behavior of fruit flies. The more
sexually active male fruit flies produce a greater number of offspring
than the less active ones. But no such difference takes place between the
more active and the less active female fruit flies because their reproduc-
tive resources are limited by the number of eggs they can produce rather
than by their own sexual activities. Evolutionary psychology has recently
proven that the same reproduction problem equips man and woman dif-
ferently for their sexual behavior. A man can propagate his genes more
extensively by impregnating more women. But a woman cannot produce
more babies by sleeping with more men because the number of her ova
cannot be increased by her sexual activities. Therefore there is a natural
propensity for a man to be tired of one woman after impregnating her
and to seek out other women. This propensity is dictated by his genetic
endowment, not by his deliberate intentions. By deserting the impreg-
nated woman, he can make her his unpaid hatchery. This is the reproduc-
tive exploitation of a woman. Hence desertion is woman's constant fear
against man. Gretchen expresses her fear of being forgotten and aban-
doned as soon as Faust shows his interest in her (Faust 3096). Her
neighbor Martha's husband is living proof that a man is a born wanderer
and deserter of women. Men are genetically programmed to be aggres-
sive and exploitive for the domination and possession of women. Like
chimpanzees, men are genetically compelled to seek more and more
power and to secure higher and higher social status because greater
power and higher status give them reproductive advantages. On the other
hand, women are genetically endowed to nurture their offspring because
it is their most important reproductive investment. This is the genetic
foundation for the asymmetry between the masculine and the feminine
principles.
You may fear that I am taking the attention of my readers away from
the investigation of Faust to primatology and entomology by talking
about chimps and fruit flies. But I am trying to show that the male/female
asymmetry is not limited to Faust or humankind. I did the same thing in
chapter 2 by stressing that the principle of evolution displayed in the
Classical Walpurgis Night was a cosmic principle governing the struggle
136 Chapter Four

of all living beings ranging from the ugly Phorkyads and Empusa to the
beautiful swan and Leda, and that the Faustian striving was not an indi-
vidual exception but a manifestation of this cosmic principle. Let me
now point out that the two principles are not always separated by gender.
In fact, they are inseparably linked in every individual. Androgyny is the
basic psychological principle. Gretchen had a strong maternal instinct
even before she had her own baby. She cared for her baby sister like her
own child, while her mother was too sick to nurse the baby. But her
sense of family was stifled when her erotic passion erupted and surged
over her maternal instinct. The spirit of self-seeking is always in conten-
tion with the spirit of caring and sharing in the heart of every human be-
ing. One may overpower the other or be submerged under the other. But
rarely is either of them eliminated by the other. One becomes a monster
when the self-seeking spirit eradicates the sharing spirit; one becomes an
angel when the opposite happens. But there are not many monsters or
angels in the real world. Faust often behaved like a monster, especially
when he was obsessed with his erotic passion for Gretchen. Even then he
cared for her enough to attempt her rescue from prison. He became far
more caring when a son was born to him in Arcadia. Paternal love is not
any less caring than maternal love. Paternal care is the activation of the
feminine principle in the father. In Arcadia, the erotic love of Faust along
with that of Helen was transformed into parental love. As soon as Faust
stepped out of Arcadia, however, his feminine principle was completely
overpowered by his resurgent masculine principle. He became a truly
terrible monster when he was driven by his ambition for dominion and
possession in Act 5. Even then he did not intend to eject Baucis and Phi-
lemon forcibly from their cottage, but offered them a new house else-
where. His feminine principle was not totally extinguished.
Because the two principles are present in every soul, we may say that
every human being is composed of a masculine self and a feminine self.
The masculine self is the individual self, which is conscious and assertive
of its individuality. The feminine self is the communal self, which is con-
scious and protective of its communal bond with other living creatures.
The individual self is the activation of the masculine principle; the com-
munal self is the manifestation of the feminine principle, the Eternal
Feminine. By its nature, the masculine self always tries to dominate the
feminine self, and the domination becomes even more ferocious when
 Redemption ofthe Superman 137

the masculine self is obsessed with an inordinate lust for power or sex.
Such an obsessed masculine self becomes power-crazy or sex-crazy, and
its insanity blinds the feminine self and numbs its communal sensitivity.
Faust brutalized Baucis and Philemon while he was operating under the
dominance of his individual self. But his communal self was not totally
obliterated. When it woke up, he gained the inner light to recognize the
beastly horror of what he had done to the old couple and to envision a
community of caring and sharing people. This was his painful repen-
tance-as painful as Gretchen's recognition of her blind passion. There
are two types of repentance: the repentance over performance and the
repentance over perspective. We repent when we have failed to live up to
our cherished beliefs and ideals. That is the repentance over the failed
performance, which is often accompanied by breast-beating. But we can
also repent even after having fully lived up to our cherished beliefs and
ideals because we suddenly realize that those beliefs and ideals are faulty.
This is the repentance over faulty perspective. There is no point in beat-
ing one's breast over it because nobody falls into a faulty perspective by
choice and deliberation. Faust was trapped in his faulty perspective by
his erotic obsession and by the dominance of his individual self over his
communal self. He also drove Gretchen into the same faulty perspective
by arousing her erotic passion and vanquishing her communal self.
The first type of repentance is the Christian repentance of sin. One
commits sin not in ignorance, but in full knowledge of divine commands.
One does not really commit a sin unless one does it knowingly in dis-
obedience of God. There are no sins in Faust's world, not because he has
no conscience, but because there are no divine commandments. This is
the fundamental difference between his relation to the Lord in Heaven
and Job's relation to the Lord. Although Faust can commit no sins, he
can err, as the Lord in Heaven says. But to err is an act of ignorance, not
knowledge. To act out of ignorance is to act out of a faulty perspective,
and to recognize its faulty character is the second type of repentance.
Faust and Gretchen have gone through this type of perspective. After
talking with Lieschen at the well, Gretchen said that everything she had
done for Faust was so good and so dear (Faust 3586). She was repenting
not having done what was so good and so dear, but having acted on a
faulty perspective. She could recognize the faulty perspective of her in-
dividual self only when her communal self was awakened by her mater-
138 Chapter Four

nal instinct. Only then could she move up to the higher perspective of her
communal self. This was her repentance and advance at the same time.
Faust has gone through the same process by the revival of his communal
self and the recognition of his petty individual self. This type of repen-
tance is the rebirth of the soul and its ascent to the higher level of exis-
tence. I propose that this type of rebirth and ascent is Faust's redemption
and that this is allegorically represented by Faust's ascent to heaven.

The Faustian Allegory

No doubt, the principle of activity is the basic principle for Faust's epic
career. But he does not act simply for the sake of acting, as some schol-
ars have maintained. This point is made clear by Goethe to Eckennann
on June 6, 1831, according to Eudo Mason:

In Faust himself an ever higher and purer activity right to the

end, and from above the etemallove to his aid. This is quite in
harmony with our religious ideas, according to which we are
saved not by our own powers alone, but through the superven-
ing divine grace (trans. Mason, Goethe's Faust, 373).

Faust's activity is supposed to move to ever higher and higher planes.

But what is the criterion for the distinction between higher and lower
planes? Although Goethe never offered such a criterion, he talked about
the higher and the lower plane of Faust's love. According to Eudo Mason,
he placed Faust's love of Helen higher than his love of Gretchen in his
unpublished review of spring 1827 (Goethe's Faust, 326). Mason objects
to this ranking on the ground that the love between Faust and Helen is
deficient because it lacks the human warmth and immediacy that is pre-
sent in the love between Faust and Helen. But Goethe says that the love
between Faust and Helen is a relationship that emerges in a freer domain
and points to loftier views than the love between Faust and Gretchen,
which is mired in the narrow-mindedness of the middle class.
Goethe is basing his ranking of the two love affairs on ethical per-
spectives. Faust and Gretchen were solely concerned with the gratifica-
tion of their selfish erotic passions, whereas he and Helen were con-
cerned with their family. The latter stands on a higher perspective than
 Redemption ofthe Superman 139

the former, The selfish perspective is also narrower than the communal
perspective. The fonner looks after only one individual, whereas the lat-
ter looks after more than one. The difference of these two perspectives is
displayed in the battle between the heavenly host and the infernal horde
for Faust's soul. The heavenly host is animated by the spirit of commu-
nity. The Angels strew the rose blossoms, Ariel's emblem of community.
On the other hand, Mephisto is the egoistic spirit of self-aggrandizement.
He is the devil who has kindled and fanned Faust's egotistic drives. Me-
phisto fights over Faust's soul for his dominion and possession just as
Faust did before his death, whereas the angels fight to save his soul for
their community. Mephisto is abusive to his assistants and treats them
like slaves. The angels do not only triumph over the selfish impulses of
the devils, but also display the spirit of community that pervades the
kingdom of heaven. The redemption of Faust's soul is a communal en-
terprise of all humans and angels involved. His salvation will be secured
in the union with the All, the cosmic community (Faust 11807). The
heavenly spirit of community vanquishes the devilish spirit of selfish
greed when the rosebuds tum into the flames of love and scorch the in-
fernal horde. This battle should be read as an allegorical projection of the
triumph of Faust's communal self over his individual self.
I am taking Faust's redemption as a psychodrama. In this drama,
Mephisto is not an external agent, but the external projection of Faust's
individual self. He has been called Faust's alter ego or his lower self. He
represents Faust's egotistic love of himself, that recognizes no other love.
This is not to say that Mephisto hates anyone. He is too engrossed with
his own selfish outlook to care about anyone else even to hate. This is the
monstrous self-love. The sensitive Gretchen instinctively senses his de-
monic egotism. She says to Faust, "One sees, he has no sympathy; / It is
written on his face / That he cannot love a single soul" (Faust 3488-90,
my translation). She is so overwhelmed with her revulsion of Mephisto
that she feels she does not love Faust anymore whenever and wherever
he comes near them. Her revulsion of Mephisto extends to Faust because
she instinctively senses Mephisto's identity with Faust's individual self.
When Faust agonizes over Gretchen's impending execution in "Gloomy
Day" of Part One, Mephisto casually dismisses his agony by saying that
she is not the first one. He is totally callous to the suffering of others be-
cause he has no communal self. He is a sociopath incapable of feeling
140 Chapter Four

others' pain: Gretchen said that he had no sympathy. Exploding in anger

to Mephisto's callous remark, Faust calls him a dog and a monster and
begs the Infinite Spirit to change him back into a dog. Mephisto indeed
appeared in the form of a dog to Faust. He displayed the bestiality of pas-
sion in his introduction of Faust to the magic world in "Auerbach's Tav-
ern" of Part One. In "A Summer House" of Part One, Faust called him a
beast. But there are many kinds of beast and some of them like dogs are
highly capable of sympathy. The bestiality of Mephisto is that of preda-
tory beasts. They are totally immune to the suffering of their prey and
victims. Mephisto displayed this type of bestiality in his use of the three
Mighty Men for piracy ("Might is right") and his liquidation of the old
couple and their visitor in the humble cottage. The total insulation of his
feelings from others makes Mephisto the spirit of negation that abrogates
the spirit of community and the cosmic bond. This monstrous streak of
predatory egotism has all along been Faust's own individual self, but it is
vanquished by his communal self, which is represented by the heavenly
host. When Mephisto is beaten by the heavenly host, boils break out all
over his body. That is the sign that Faust has finally beaten the terrible
plague of egotistic megalomania by negating the spirit of negation.
For the psychodrama of Faust's soul, I can dispense with the immor-
tality of his soul. We can take the drama as a reenactment of what had
already taken place in his soul right before his death while he was envi-
sioning the ideal community. The battle between the angels and the dev-
ils is the external projection of his internal battle during his tragic rever-
sal. He can recognize the horror of his individual self and its egotistic
perspective only after the brutal murder of Baucis and Philemon by Me-
phisto and his crew is thrust upon his own conscience. He can see how
horrible it is to be in the position of weak people like the old couple only
after he is intimidated by the overbearing Care. Only then does he wake
out of his Promethean arrogance and recall the spirit of community he
had experienced with Helen in Arcadia. This is the revival of his com-
munal self that enables him to ascend from the egoistic to the communal
perspective. It takes tragic suffering to achieve this sort of reversal.
Gretchen went through the same tragic experience. Only after her blind
erotic passion had destroyed her whole family, was her communal self
revived and elevated her from the selfish perspective to the communal
perspective. This ascent from a lower to a higher ethical perspective is
 Redemption ofthe Superman 141

celebrated allegorically by the ascent of Faust's soul to heaven. In the

same allegorical manner, we should understand the hell-mouth that Me-
phisto brings up on the stage to show the damned wallowing in the red
tides of hell. This is what it means to be trapped and tormented in the
hellish individual self. To shed this hellish torment and move up to a
higher ethical ground is to be purified from the impure earthly elements.
This is the purgation that the Penitent Women have achieved, and this
purgation is the rebirth of a soul as a member of the heavenly community,
which is compared to the metamorphosis of a pupa. If the purification of
the soul is understood in this manner, it ceases to be incompatible with
the story of Homunculus. When he gains a body, he only becomes a pupa.
Faust is an ugly pupa turning into a beautiful butterfly. But that still does
not explain why the purgation of Faust's soul is called the separation of
its immortal part from the mortal part. The immortal part is the commu-
nal self; the mortal part is the individual self. The communal self is im-
mortal because it belongs to the infinite Eternal Feminine. But the indi-
vidual self is mortal because it is a finite existence. The distasteful
earthly elements that are purged away from the immortal part of Faust's
soul should be understood as its obnoxious egoistic elements.
What textual evidence can I offer to support my allegorical reading?
I can offer no direct textual evidence. But I will share a few considera-
tions that have driven me to this allegorical interpretation. Let us begin
with the most singular feature of Faust's redemption. He is unconscious
throughout the event. It is exceedingly strange for the heavenly host to
talk about his sins, repentance, and forgiveness, without his knowledge
of what sins he is forgiven for. There is no way of telling whether he
would be gratified or offended by what they are doing. Friedrich Gundolf
says that Faust's redemption is the betrayal of the hero's autonomy
(Goethe, 781). Surely, it is imposed on the unconscious hero without his
consent. By its nature, the act of repenting and forgiving is an interaction
between two parties. This basic point is totally ignored in Faust's re-
demption. In his attempt to explain this anomaly, Eudo Mason says,
"Faust comes into a Heaven that is still meant to be recognizably a kind
of Christian Heaven and is there united with Gretchen, without ever hav-
ing to humble himself, to repent and confess his sins, to ask or accept
forgiveness" (Goethe's Faust, 372). This is to say that Faust is forgiven
without asking for it and without repenting for his sins. That is a travesty
142 Chapter Four

of repentance and forgiveness. Mason attributes this monstrous anomaly

to the extraordinary heroic stature of Faust, that is, heroic enough to
break all the basic rules of Christian Heaven. I cannot believe that
Goethe would ever allow this sort of burlesque to disgrace the most sol-
emn event in his poem. In order to avoid this consequence, I would
rather believe that Faust's repentance is represented by the Penitent
Women. But he is kept unconscious for two reasons. First, it indicates
that his redemption is not an event that he is going through after his death,
but the projection of his psychodrama that has taken place just before his
death. Second, it also indicates that the heavenly host represents Faust's
communal self acting on his individual self.
To appreciate this point, we have to understand the basic difference
between the Protestant and the Catholic conceptions of repentance. For
the Protestants, repentance is the direct transaction between the individ-
ual believer and God. The believer stands all alone before God and asks
for forgiveness. But the Catholics have never thought that any individual
can undertake such a direct transaction with God. That is why they have
stressed the importance of intercession for repentance and forgiveness.
The Virgin Mary is not the only medium of intercession. She stands on
the top of a huge hierarchy of intercession that includes all the angels and
saints and that transmits their petitions for forgiveness to their God. This
is what is meant by the communion of saints. This Catholic doctrine is
fully demonstrated in Dante's Divine Comedy. Goethe has revised it by
transforming the Virgin from the intercessor to the redeemer, but has
kept the communion of saints and angels for the redemption of Faust's
soul. The communion of saints belongs to Faust's communal self. The
communal self is constituted by its connection to all other members of
the community, whereas the individual self gains and secures its identity
by asserting itself against all other individuals. During his redemption,
Faust is unconscious as an individual self, which has been vanquished
with Mephisto and his infernal cohorts. But he is conscious as in his
communal self, which lives and works with the heavenly host. The heav-
enly host betrays his autonomy, as Gundolf says, if he is taken to be no
more than his individual self. If we take into account his communal self,
on the other hand, his autonomy advances to a higher level of existence.
The distinction between the individual and the communal self can ex-
plain one strange thing about Gretchen in Faust's redemption. She is
 Redemption ofthe Superman 143

never called by her name. She appears only as a Penitent, who was once
called Gretchen. This name designates her former individual self, who
has been assimilated into her present communal self. The same is true of
the other Penitents.
We can also take these two perspectives of the individual and the
communal self in understanding the metaphor of pupa in describing
Faust's redemption. This is the same metaphor that was used for describ-
ing the metamorphosis of Euphorion. The little infant breaks out of
swaddling bands by his own cunning and strength and flies out of the
cocoon like a venturous butterfly (Faust 9650-61). Faust's soul is laid
out like a pupa, but it is a pathetic sight. The pupa is unconscious and
immobile. It shows no sign of breaking out of its cocoon. Blessed Boys
have to break it open for the unconscious pupa. It is surely uncertain
whether or not the pupa will tum into a butterfly. Even if it does, it is
again uncertain whether or not it can fly. The Blessed Boys can break
open the cocoon, but they cannot tum the pupa into a butterfly. The
metamorphosis of a pupa should come out of its autonomy. This was
demonstrated by Euphorion's metamorphosis. But Faust's metamorpho-
sis appears to be totally dependent on the heavenly host. But his auton-
omy is different from Euphorion's. The latter is the autonomy of an indi-
vidual self; the former is the autonomy of a communal self. If the activity
of the heavenly host is understood as the activity of Faust's communal
self, he secures his autonomy on a higher level than that of his individual
self. Euphorion's metamorphosis was the birth of his individual self,
which led to his separation from his family and eventually to his own
death. Faust's metamorphosis is the birth of his communal self that leads
to his union with the Eternal Feminine. Thus, the distinction between
mortality and immortality can be explained in terms of the individual and
the communal self. This Faustian doctrine of immortality is totally dif-
ferent from the Christian version, which is incongruent with the natural-
istic setting of not only the Epilogue, but also the Prologue in Heaven.
The only part of Faust that requires the Christian immortality of the
soul is Faust's pact with Mephisto. In chapter 1, we noted, the pact was
retained from the Faust legend and Goethe's invention was the wager. As
far as Faust was concerned, the pact was replaced by the wager because
he did not care about the afterlife. But the wager was meant to be settled
in this world rather than after his death. For these reasons, the elimina-
144 Chapter Four

tion of Christian immortality can secure the thematic integrity of Faust

from the Prologue to the Epilogue. But its retention will make Goethe's
epic incredibly incoherent. This is my argument for its elimination. And
this is the only way to safeguard Spinoza's naturalism in Faust's world.
My allegorical reading of Faust's ending may look like the deus ex ma-
china I have invented for my desperate attempt to save Spinozism in
Faust. But this allegory is consistent and continuous with the allegorical
exposition that pervades all of Part Two. The Masquerade of Act 1 is an
extended allegory; so is the journey of evolution in Act 2. The Arcadia of
Act 3 is another long allegory. In the last chapter, we noted that the Char-
iot of Plutus in Act 1 was an adaptation of Plato's allegory of a chariot
and its two horses, one black and one white. Mephisto-Greed corre-
sponded to the black steed, and the Boy Charioteer to the white steed.
The white steed of the Platonic chariot longs to ascend to heaven for its
beauty; its black steed craves to descend to the earth for its wealth. We
further noted that the Masquerade corresponded to the black steed's de-
scent for earthly wealth and that Faust took the place of the Boy Chario-
teer for the white steed's ascent for heavenly beauty.
Faust's extended journey of ascent began with his descent to the
Mothers for the phantoms of Helen and Paris, took him through the jour-
ney of evolution for the beauty of Galatea, and secured the beautiful
Helen for his wife. In his Arcadian community, he found beauty in its
highest form on earth. On Plato's ladder of love, as we noted in chapter 2,
the beauty of a community stands higher than that of any individual soul
or body. When the Arcadian community was dissolved in the tragic death
of Euphorion, Helen's robe took Faust to a mountaintop and left him
there by becoming a cloud. Thus he returned from the land of fantasy and
resumed Mephisto's journey of descent to the real world, where he won
the war for the Emperor and gained the chance to build a real community
by his ambitious reclamation project. In the execution of this project,
ironically, he brutally crushed the cottage that housed the only commu-
nity on his land. For this brutal act, he had to endure the relentless hu-
miliation by Care. Only then does he wake out of his egocentric ambition
and revive the memory of his beautiful Arcadian community, which he
now transforms into a utopian vision in the real world. This vision is fur-
ther expanded allegorically by the heavenly community, which takes care
of him during his ascent to the Eternal Feminine.
 Redemption ofthe Superman 145

In Faust's world, as we noted time and again, the fountain of all real-
ity is not Platonic Forms, but the Abyss or the Primal Darkness. Never-
theless, the Primal Darkness is like Platonic Heaven in one regard: both
of them are beyond space and time. In Faust's world, the beautiful forms
are shaped and reshaped by the Mothers. Hence the Faustian ascent to
those beautiful forms is the flight to the Mothers in their eternal solitude.
In the course of this book, we have paid special attention to Faust's fa-
mous speech on the two warring souls in his heart and the expression of
their Platonic conflict in many different forms. Its final form is the con-
flict between the individual self and the communal self, which is re-
solved in the mystical union of the individual self with the cosmic self in
the Eternal Feminine. The Chorus Mysticus celebrates this mystical
event to conclude Faust's redemption:

All that is transitory

Is only a fable;
What is insufficient;
Here becomes an event;
What is indescribable
Here becomes experienced;
The Eternal-Feminine
Draws us upward.
(Faust 12104-11, my translation)

These eight lines are usually taken as a commentary on the ultimate

mystery of the universe. But it is also a summation of Faust's redemption.
What Faust has gone through in his redemption ("All that is transitory")
is only an allegory ("only a fable"). "What is insufficient" means Faust's
individual self, who is insufficient to secure the communal bond with
others all by itself. The communal bond that he wished for in his utopian
vision becomes an event by the power of the Eternal Feminine. "What is
indescribable" is the Primal Darkness or the Abyss, namely, the mystery
of the ultimate reality, which is usually beyond the experience of mortals.
But it is now experienced by Faust in his union with the Eternal Femi-
nine. This is the mystical experience of the indescribable ultimate reality.
This is why it is sung by the Mystical Chorus. But Faust can achieve the
mystical union not by his own power, but only by the power of the Eter-
nal Feminine. But her power is not coercive and violent like masculine
146 Chapter Four

power, but gentle and tender like maternal love. You may feel that I have
done some violence to the original text in my translation of "Das Un-
beschreibliche, / Hier ist's getan" as "What is indescribable, / Here be-
comes experienced." The literal translation is "What is indescribable, /
Here becomes done" because getan is the past participle of the verb tun
(do). Charles Passage translates the two lines as "Ineffables here,
/Accomplishment." But it is hard to understand what it means to turn the
ineffable into an accomplishment. Stuart Atkins translates them as
"what's indescribable / here becomes fact." It is not any easier to under-
stand what it means to turn what is indescribable into a fact, because
what is indescribable is itself already a fact. We should note that the two
German lines play upon the divide between the word ("indescribable")
and the deed ("done") and talk about the transition from word to deed.
This transition is to experience what is indescribable. This is what Faust
has done in his union with the Eternal Feminine. It is also what has been
accomplished by the poem itself. Prior to this mystical moment, the Pri-
mal Darkness or the Abyss was only talked about. For a long time, it was
an object only of discourse, never of experience. According to Eudo Ma-
son, Goethe told Friedrich Forster, "Faust ends as an old man, in old age
we become mystics" (Goethe's Faust, 355). This casual statement is ex-
tremely perplexing because we can find no textual evidence even for a
single moment of mysticism in Faust's old age. But it can be justified on
the hypothesis that Faust's redemption is a dramatic rendition of his mys-
tical experience of the Eternal Feminine just before his death. Therefore,
the perplexing statement can be taken as the authorial encouragement for
my allegorical reading of the Epilogue.
If Faust's redemption is an inner psychodrama taking place in his
own heart, why does Goethe say that the eternal love for his redemption
comes from above ("In Faust himself an ever higher and purer activity
right to the end, and from above the eternal love to his aid.")? The eternal
love comes from the Eternal Feminine. Although the feminine principle
operates in every heart, it is not merely a private instinct, but a cosmic
principle. The awakening of maternal instinct in any individual heart is
the working of this cosmic principle. Therefore it appears like a divine
gift from above, which Goethe compared to the Christian idea of divine
grace, as we noted earlier. There has been a long debate on the question
whether Faust deserves the love that saves his soul or receives it as an
 Redemption ofthe Superman 147

undeserved gift. This question was originally raised in the context of the
Christian God and his sinful creatures. Most Faust scholars have not no-
ticed that the same question invites a different resolution when it is recast
in the context of the Eternal Feminine and maternal love. By its instinc-
tual nature, maternal love is not something to be meted out in accordance
with merit or desert. The Pelagian question of merit and desert can never
arise for the dispensation of maternal love. By stressing the role of ma-
ternal love, I do not want to ignore the masculine principle, because it is
equally important. By the power of masculine principle, individuals be-
come active agents and develop their individuality. There would be no
individuals without the masculine principle, but it can easily smother
their maternal instinct. With its awakening, the estranged individual can
return to the Eternal Feminine. In her intercession to the Mater Gloriosa
on Faust's behalf, Gretchen says that her beloved has come back (Faust
12075). This is a strange statement because he had no intention of return-
ing to her when he died and because he is not even conscious of his re-
turn. Compare their reunion with Dante's reunion with Beatrice on the
top of Purgatory. The latter was planned and prepared by Dante over a
long period of time. Furthermore, Gretchen did not say that Faust had
come back to her when he came to her prison. The magic word 'back'
was then missing; she said, "It's you. You have come to rescue me"
(Faust 4473). There was no sense of reunion. On the contrary, they
parted with a terrible sense of estrangement. Faust's return to and reun-
ion with Gretchen in "Mountain Gorges" makes sense only if it is taken
as an allegorical account of his return to the Eternal Feminine.
The feminine principle operates on two levels: the microcosm of an
individual and the macrocosm of the universe .. The same is true of the
masculine principle. The wager between the Lord and Mephisto is the
operation of the masculine principle on the level of the macrocosm. But
the same wager is enacted between Faust and Mephisto. This is the op-
eration of the masculine principle on the level of the microcosm. The
union of the microcosm and the macrocosm is one of the great fusions
Goethe has accomplished in his battle against all forms of polarity. By
this fusion, he overcomes the chasm between the divine and the human,
the transcendent and the immanent, and the internal and the external real-
ity. If this fusion is overlooked, then the Eternal Feminine appears to be a
totally transcendent force as Eudo Mason understands it. Likewise, Me-
148 Chapter Four

phisto would also appear to be a totally external agent. But that is only
one half of what is really happening in Faust's world. The other half is to
see what is happening in his heart. Once his macrocosm and microcosm
is linked, then we can see that his repentance cannot take place in the
external world without his consent. If it is taken as an internal event, then
the external event must be taken as an allegorical representation.

Mysticism beyond Polarities

Without my allegorical reading, Faust looks like the ancient monster

Chimera, which is made of a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's
tail. Some commentators have described the poem as the story of a natu-
ralistic hero that opens with the Protestant God in the Prologue and ends
with the Catholic heavenly host presided over by the Virgin Mary. Then
the heavenly host forcibly imposes immortality on the naturalistic hero
without his consent. This indecent outcome is achieved by the monstrous
sequence of monotheism in the Prologue, pantheistic naturalism in the
middle, and polytheism in the Epilogue. In defense of this thematic in-
consistency, Eudo Mason quotes from Goethe's letter of 6 January 1813
to Jacobi, which we noted earlier. In that letter, the poet says that he ac-
cepts polytheism as an artist, pantheism as a scientist, and monotheism as
a moralist. But this letter cannot take care of the theological inconsis-
tency in Faust because this is a poetic work. As a poet, Goethe should
use only polytheism, but he has used all three theological doctrines. To
cope with this sticky problem, Jaroslav Pelikan has proposed the thesis
that Faust the theologian follows his creator's lead in espousing all three
theological doctrines, that is, Faust is a pantheist in natural science, a
polytheist in the poetic art, and a monotheist in moral philosophy (Faust
the Theologian). There is no way to substantiate this claim. It is hard to
say that Faust even plays the role of a scientist, a poet, or a moral phi-
losopher. At most, it may be said that he subscribes to pantheism on
some occasions and polytheism on others. But he never advocates mono-
theism. He is not even present in the Prologue in Heaven, the only scene
of monotheism in Faust. Nor is he aware' of the polytheism surrounding
the Mater Gloriosa at the end of the play because he is unconscious. But
Pelikan says that the Mater Gloriosa resolves the conflict between mono-
 Redemption ofthe Superman 149

theism, pantheism, and polytheism at the end of the play, "not by negat-
ing either of these but by exalting each to the level of the sublime"
(Faust the Theologian, 116). He never explains how the Virgin Mother
exalts all three doctrines to the level of the sublime without negating any
of them unless his "the sublime" is taken to mean the incomprehensible.
He turns her into a magician, but refuses to explain her magical trick. He
only appeals to "that loving fusion of pagan and Christian convictions."
He is citing Harold Jantz's dubious theory of fusion, which we have al-
ready found quite shallow.
Unlike his advocates, Goethe is truly honest. He never claims to have
resolved the conflict between the three theological doctrines. He does not
even try to resolve it because he knows that it cannot be resolved. In that
case, is he not simply dishonest and disingenuous to embrace the three
doctrines with the full awareness that they are incompatible? But he can
embrace the three doctrines in all sincerity because of his mysticism. By
"his mysticism" I do not mean Goethe's mystical experience, but his be-
lief that the ultimate nature of reality is mystical. Time and again, we
have noted that the ultimate nature of Faust's world is called the Primal
Darkness, Chaos, the Abyss, and the Nothing. All these labels are meant
to indicate that the ultimate reality is ineffable and indescribable. There-
fore, it is beyond the comprehension of finite intellect. This is another
way of saying that the ultimate reality is infinite, that is, it outstrips the
finite intellect and its finite language. Goethe is taking the three theologi-
cal doctrines as no more than poetic allegories for describing the inde-
scribable. Therefore, they are neither true nor false in the normal sense of
truth and falsity. For that reason, they can produce no bona fide contra-
dictions, which can be generated only by full-blooded truth claims. For
Goethe, the three doctrines are not the theological dogmas that are sup-
posed to have full truth values. This mystical view of the ultimate reality
is perfectly compatible with Spinoza's philosophy, although he has not
advocated such a view. The God of Nature as the infinite substance is
supposed to have an infinite number of attributes. But we know only two
of them, thought and extension. There is evidently no access to all other
divine attributes. Even if we are to gain access to all the infinite attributes,
we can never hope to know all of them because our intellect is finite.
Therefore, the ultimate nature of the infinite substance must forever re-
main beyond our comprehension and description. It can be best described
150 Chapter Four

as the Primal Darkness, Chaos, the Abyss, or the Nothing. For these rea-
sons, it is more accurate to describe Goethe's view of Nature as mystical
naturalism rather than pantheistic naturalism. His epic of Faust is meant
to be an allegory of his mystical naturalism. He has this allegorical func-
tion of his poem in mind when he talks about "the wavering shapes that
once appeared to clouded eyes" in the opening lines of the Dedication of
Faust.
Beyond the traditional theological labels of monotheism, polytheism,
and pantheism, Goethe exploits the masculine/feminine asymmetry to
describe the mystery of the ultimate reality. During the past few decades,
the feminists have bitterly protested against the masculine gender of the
Christian God. The gender of deities has gone through a long, checkered
history. The goddesses of fertility constituted the first wave of divine
beings, which was followed by the second wave, the gods of warfare.
The goddesses of fertility reigned over ancient human societies, whose
economy was largely agricultural and whose social structure was usually
matriarchal. The highest of those goddesses was identified with Mother
Earth, as in the case of Demeter of ancient Greece and Isis of Egypt. The
Israeli version of these feminine deities was Asherah. The goddess of
Amaterasu is still the highest reigning deity of Japanese Shintoism. The
most popular deities of ancient China were the Spirit of Earth and the
Spirit of Grains. The chief concern of these ancient societies was the fer-
tility of the earth, but it was replaced by the problem of warfare with the
development of metallurgy and other technology, which led to the emer-
gence of warriors. The warrior culture became patriarchal and produced
the gods of warfare such as Zeus, Apollo, and Aries. The emergence of
warrior gods demoted the goddesses of fertility to the lowest positions
and sometimes to their extinction, as in the case of the mother-goddess
Asherah's disappearance with the elevation of Yahweh as the god of
warfare. The two sexes of divinity shared the same fate as the two sexes
of humanity.
Goethe restored the feminine principle that had been obliterated from
the Western religious consciousness not only in the Judeo-Christian tra-
dition, but even in the Greco-Roman pagan tradition. He revised Christi-
anity accordingly by splitting it into the masculine monotheism of the
Prologue and the feminine polytheism of the Epilogue. He adopted the
former from militant Protestantism and the latter from the Catholic cult
 Redemption ofthe Superman 151

of the Virgin Mary. The Protestants had reduced the medieval Christian
theology to Christology and exalted the naked body of Jesus nailed on
the cross without the care of his grieving mother. This was the brutal ac-
centuation of Christian masculine principle, and Goethe softens it by re-
instating mariolatry. 'Mariolatry' is a derogatory Protestant term. It im-
plies that the Catholic veneration of Mary is a sort of idolatry. Unlike
most Protestants, Goethe does not condemn the cult of Mary as a Catho-
lic superstition. Instead he looks upon it as a manifestation of the irre-
pressible longing for the feminine principle. This is his poetic and theo-
logical genius. But we should never take the masculine/feminine asym-
metry as a religious dogma because it is devised only as a poetic fable or
allegory for describing the ineffable mystery of the ultimate reality. For
those who lack the fine sensibility to appreciate this profound poetic in-
vention, Goethe's Eternal Feminine has become an easy target for their
merciless satire, beginning with Friedrich Vischer and followed by
Nietzsche. Here is Vischer's parody:

The most tasteless,

Here is tasted;
The most confounded,
Is here intended;
The unforgivable,
Here is forgiven;
The eternally boring
Draws us onward!
(my translation from the original)

This sort of tasteless satire only betrays the failure to appreciate the po-
etic function of the feminine principle in Faust. According to Eudo Ma-
son, the religious ending of Faust is dismissed as overly Christian or
Catholic by the majority of critics (Goethe's Faust, 360). Even the mi-
nority, who wholeheartedly approve of it, may not have fully appreciated
the magnitude of Goethe's restoration project.
For a better appreciation of this project, let us consider how oppres-
sive the masculine principle has been in the West. In the Catholic Church,
even those women who have taken religious vows are not allowed to per-
form the church rituals, largely due to St. Augustine's identification of
femininity with the corruptible flesh and masculinity with the incorporeal
152 Chapter Four

spirit. In the nature religions of fertility cult, the ritual function belonged
exclusively to women, the female shamans and priestesses. In the West-
ern culture, male chauvinism has not been confined to religion. Aristotle
says that the mother furnishes only the soil for the planting of the seed
from the father for reproduction. Following Aristotle, Aquinas says, what
makes a woman a woman is her inability to produce semen. A woman is
only a hatchery for the onerous task of gestation. For a long time, ancient
peoples had believed that a male had nothing to do with the reproductive
process of a female. But the West redefined reproduction as the magic
power of men that was inaccessible to all women.
Goethe does not merely restore the feminine principle as a challenge
to the uncontested power of the masculine principle, but advocates their
harmonious union under the ideal of androgyny. But this ideal is not his
invention. It was a widely shared Romantic ideal. In Hymns to Night,
Novalis hails the night as the source of life and expresses his ardent long-
ing for the androgynous fusion with her. Another champion of androg-
yny was Friedrich Schlegel, who tried to recover the infinite humanity
that had existed before the separation of male and female. Androgynous
sublimity is an important leitmotif in Byron's Don Juan. Keats con-
ceived poetry as a mysterious androgynous vocation. All these Roman-
tics try to overcome the male/female polarity in androgyny. For Goethe,
the male/female polarity is the most fundamental of all polarities. It
arches over all other polarities such as spirit and matter, natural and su-
pernatural, temporal and eternal, individual and community, because
they are generated by the assertion and separation of the masculine prin-
ciple from the feminine principle. For example, the natural/supernatural
polarity is another version of the male/female polarity because the earth
is associated with the female and heaven with the male. Goethe's way of
coping with polarities is different from the rational method of the
Enlightenment, which is the method of rational elimination. The natu-
ral/supernatural polarity is rationally resolved by eliminating the super-
natural. But this reductive resolution is unsatisfactory to Goethe because
it impoverishes the complex reality. His method is to fuse the two con-
flicting elements into one. The conflict of natural and supernatural orders
is resolved by their fusion into natural supernaturalism or supernatural
naturalism.
 Redemption ofthe Superman 153

This is the spirit of Romantic pantheism and naturalism, which is

well expressed by the title of a nineteenth-century book: Nature and the
Supernatural, as together Constituting the One System of God. The au-
thor was Horace Bushnell and the book was published in 1860. A little
more than a century later (1973), the same Romantic ethos was portrayed
by M. H. Abrams in his Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolu-
tion in Romantic Literature. Goethe's pantheism is the Romantic fusion
of naturalism and supernaturalism. This is the heart of Goethe's trans-
formation of Spinozism. As we noted in chapter 1, Spinoza created his
pantheistic naturalism by transferring divine attributes from the Christian
God to Nature. His method resembles the rationalist method of reductive
elimination. Instead of eliminating the Lord from Heaven, Goethe would
rather fuse Him into the natural world. The method of fusion is also dif-
ferent from Hegel's method of synthesis. The latter requires a third term
for synthesis. But Goethe recognizes no third term that can stand higher
than the opposition of natural and supernatural, or masculine and femi-
nine. They can be reconciled only by their union or fusion. This is his
unique method of resolving the fundamental conflict of human existence.
In this unique scheme of cosmic union, Goethe presents the two prin-
ciples of masculine and feminine as a framework for the thematic devel-
opment of his epic. This thematic framework is delineated in the Pro-
logue and the Epilogue. But these two parts function only as a poetic
frame for Faust's epic struggle, which is a complete picture in itself. As
we noted earlier, the wager between the Lord and Mephisto is not neces-
sary for understanding Faust's struggle because it is more clearly stipu-
lated in the wager between him and Mephisto. What takes place in the
Epilogue is only an external projection of what has taken place in Faust's
own heart before his death. His career begins in a Gothic study at night
and ends in a seaside grave at night. His struggle begins with the super-
human ideal that was hatched in the Gothic Christian culture. This
Gothic ideal has become the god in his heart and turned the whole earth
into his hell. His tragic suffering arises from this alienation from Mother
Nature. For his redemption from this suffering, he seeks his union with
the Earth Spirit. When his direct encounter with her goes nowhere, he
tries to gain his access to the great Spirit through her proxies, Gretchen
and Helen, until he secures his union with the Eternal Feminine. This is
the heroic struggle of an earthling who has tried to be a god, but finds his
154 Chapter Four

redemption as an earthworm in the grave. His epic can also be read as the
story of a homeless wanderer seeking a home. His story is even more
poignant than that of Odysseus's travail to return to his home in Ithaca
because Faust does not even have a home to return to anywhere in the
world. At the end of his gruesome journey, however, he finds his home
in the communal self of the Eternal Feminine. The Prologue and the Epi-
logue only provide the poetic frame for this heroic venture.

Faust for Today

I have offered my allegorical reading to save Faust from its thematic dis-
integration. I cannot think of any other way to do it. Let us now consider
how this thematic problem has been handled in the past. Eudo Mason is
one of the articulate scholars who have clearly recognized the thematic
conflict in Faust. He says that Faust portrays Goethe's lifelong tension
between his two conflicting convictions. One is his belief that Christian-
ity contains the loftiest ethical view ever devised; the other is his belief
that the great heroes like Napoleon and Faust stand beyond good and evil,
that is, above the common people's moral laws. In the redemption of
Faust, Mason says, Goethe aimed at a higher synthesis between these
two opposed views. He concludes, "But such a higher synthesis is not
possible" (Goethe's Faust, 371). But we should not be distressed over the
failed synthesis, he says, because the conflict of the two thematic ideas
has already ceased to be a serious problem for us. To be sure, the Faust-
ian hero was an object of fascination and admiration for Goethe and his
age. As late as 1950, Albert Dauer called the Faustian hero "the most
audacious image of man that was ever created (Faust und der Teufel,
371). But Mason says that there can be few people left to endorse
Dauer's pronouncement. His reasons are as follows:

We have been too alarmed and disillusioned by crude, mis-

guided attempts to put the ideal of the Faustian superman into
practice during our own lifetimes, and we are having to strug-
gle too hard to uphold far more modest traditional ideals of
human culture against the dangers of collectivization and
mechanization (Goethe's Faust, 375).
 Redemption ofthe Superman 155

After the disasters of Stalins and Hitlers, the Faustian superman has been
demoted from an idol of admiration and emulation to a target of satire
and ridicule, as is done in The Tin Drum. It is Mason's verdict on Faust
that it has already dated, unlike the works of Homer, Dante, and Shake-
speare, which can never date (Goethe's Faust, 375). This verdict is based
on his view that Faust is an extraordinary hero, whose experience lies
completely outside the narrow circle of ordinary mortals. In support of
this view, he rejects the opposite view that Faust is Everyman, the repre-
sentative of all humanity (Goethe's Faust, 374). Such a humongous hero
as Faust can no longer hold the interest of ordinary mortals in our age.
By discarding the Faustian heroism, we can easily resolve the thematic
conflict of Goethe's epic. We only have to retain its Christian ethics. To
do that, however, we do not have to wade through the long epic. We can
do it much more quickly and effectively by reading the Bible or the
Christian epics. This is the implication of Mason's verdict. This is why
he says that Faust is already out of date.
Let us consider the validity of this verdict. If my reading of Faust in
this volume is not totally off-target, it is incorrect to say that this epic is
built on the thematic contest between the Christian ethics and Faust's
heroism. Goethe enriches Christianity that has been spiritually impover-
ished by the domination of the masculine principle, by restoring its femi-
nine principle. Then he uses the two principles as two opposite pillars for
the thematic polarity of Faust's epic struggle. The epic opens at the pole
of masculine and ends at the pole of feminine principle. Faust's ceaseless
striving takes place between these two poles. It has to begin at the male
pole because striving is the manifestation of the masculine principle. But
it is sustained by the subterranean energy from the feminine principle
from the beginning to the end. In the Prologue, the Lord in Heaven
granted Mephisto the permission to do whatever was necessary to divert
Faust from his primal source. But that has turned out to be an impossible
task because the primal source is the Eternal Feminine that sustains his
perpetual striving. The Lord also said that a good man still knows the
right course of action even in his dark impulses although he is bound to
err so long as he strives. His prediction was proven right. In groping
through the dark impulses of his individual self, Faust came to recognize
his communal self and ended his lifelong striving by repudiating his
heartless egocentric megalomania and envisioning a community of mu-
156 Chapter Four

tual care and support. This is his affirmation of Christian ethics, which
Goethe regarded as the loftiest ethical view ever devised. Its spirit is best
expressed in the command: "Love thy neighbor as thyself'. This is what
it means to love in the Mystical Body of Christ, the Christian conception
of the communal self.
When you are a member of the Mystical Body of Christ, your
neighbor is not just another individual, but an extension of your self. The
same ethical view obtains in Plato's Republic. The members of his ideal
state have their properties and families in common and share the same
pleasures and pains with one another (Republic 464). To be a member of
a Platonic republic is equivalent to being a member of the Mystical Body
of Christ, and Platonic ethics is interchangeable with Christian ethics.
Both of them are affirmed in Faust's redemption. But they have nothing
to do with the immortality of an individual soul, which may be no more
than another expression of selfish individualism. Faust's immortality is
secured by the eternity of his communal self or the Eternal Feminine.
Goethe's epic does not merely celebrate Faust's heroic individual ven-
tures, but demonstrates that his heroic activism is insufficient to itself,
however awesome it may appear. Its insufficiency reflects the weakness
of the masculine principle, which can be redeemed only by the power of
the Eternal Feminine. This is Goethe's diagnosis of and verdict on the
Faustian superhuman hero. I am tempted to say that Spinoza's ethics can
also be considered as equivalent to Christian ethics on the ground that the
individual is only a part of his infinite substance, which is equivalent to
being a member of the Mystical Body of Christ. But that is to over-
extend Spinoza's Ethics because he does not even mention ethical pre-
cepts and standards in that treatise. Nor does he talk about our ethical
duties and relation with others. His Ethics is not an ethical treatise in the
standard sense, but a metaphysical treatise that spins out an iron-tight
deterministic universe that leaves no freedom for ethical choice and ac-
tion. Spinoza's world is totally dominated by the masculine principle,
and Goethe has softened it by installing the feminine principle and cre-
ated ethical space with the concept of the communal self. This is his
moralization of Spinoza's totally amoral world, the most important ele-
ment in his transformation of Spinozism.
Is Faust really an extraordinary hero? Is he a Napoleon as Eudo Ma-
son says? The Lord in Heaven does not pick Faust for his wager with
 Redemption ofthe Superman 157

Mephisto because he is an extraordinary human being. The devil did not

even mention Faust in his ridicule of human beings. To meet his criti-
cism of humanity, the Lord offers Faust for the wager. Unless Faust
represents humanity at large, the wager cannot be a meaningful response
to Mephisto's scathing criticism of humanity. What sort of heroic stature
does Faust gain through his achievements? They are too shabby even to
be compared with Napoleonic achievements. Faust never saves a nation
out of revolutionary chaos or conquers Europe like Napoleon. To be sure,
he wins the war for the Emperor in Act 4, but that is Mephisto's magic
rather than his own heroic achievement. He cannot even seduce a teenage
girl without the devil's help as Nietzsche says (HH, vol. 2, pt. 2, 124). In
chapter 1, we noted what a clumsy novice he was in the matters of love.
Even his bliss in Arcadia is arranged and managed by Mephisto. Like-
wise, he begins his reclamation project with the devil's magic. Only after
renouncing magic, does he become his own master. He can be regarded
as a true hero of independence only prior to his devilish pact with the
devil and posterior to his renunciation of magic. During those two short
periods, he accomplishes nothing that can be called heroic.
Faust's greatness lies not in his achievements, but in his superhuman
aspiration. As we noted in the last chapter, though his reclamation pro-
ject is nothing extraordinary, it is motivated by the extraordinary ambi-
tion to subdue the Earth Spirit. From the beginning to the end of his ca-
reer, he is determined to transcend the limits of humanity and become
like a god. But there is no proven track to this unprecedented destination.
So he tries to chart a new path on his own. First, he hankers for the intui-
tive knowledge of the world that the gods are supposed to have. When
that turns out to be unavailing, he considers the possibility of flying away
to the ethereal world by releasing himself from the earthly shackles by
suicide. When he cannot bring himself to go through with it, he decides
to become a superman on the earth. He tries to fulfill this superhuman
earthly ambition by subduing the raging power of the sea in his reclama-
tion project. The conquest of Mother Nature and her elemental power
becomes the ultimate form for his superhumanhood. He has shifted his
superhuman ideal from the domain of knowledge to that of power. Thus
he has become the celebrated hero of power. Since power must be dis-
played in activities, he has been praised for his activities. But power al-
ways produces arrogance. Faust's arrogance is superhuman because it
158 Chapter Four

arises from his superhuman posture. As the ancient Greeks understood

well, arrogance makes the powerful blind to their human finitude. The
ancient Greek heroes were constrained by their fear of immortals. Like-
wise, the medieval Christians appealed to the fear of the Lord to control
the powerful. Those theistic religious sanctions are not available for con-
trolling the arrogance of Faust. The theistic deities are no longer in his
pantheistic world. He is free of fear in his callous handling of the old
couple, Philemon and Baucis. Feeling the presence of no higher power
than his own, he plays God. He is constrained only by the limit of his
own power. In this regard, he is even different from the Shakespearean
heroes, who operate largely in the secular world without the fear of im-
mortals, unlike the Homeric heroes and Dante's Christians. But Shake-
speare's world still provides fairly strong moral values, which are not
available in Faust's world. That is why the Lord in Heaven says that hu-
man beings are destined to err in groping with their dark impulses. This
normative swamp is ideal for breeding not a great hero, but a dangerous
monster.
This is the most serious problem with Faust's unconstrained power.
The Nietzschean commentators have tried to glide over this terrifying
problem by loudly praising Faust's untrammeled power and activities.
But Goethe knows better and has done everything within his poetic
power to ensure that Faust always moves to an ever higher level of activ-
ity. In the world of pure power, there can be no nonnative distinction
between the higher and the lower level of activities. It can allow only the
non-nonnative distinction between the stronger and the weaker power.
But Goethe tries to control this nonnative chaos by appealing to the dis-
tinction between the higher and the lower forms of social order and by
embedding those nonnative forms in the Eternal Feminine. But those
normative forms would be useless unless they are perceived by Faust.
His Mephistophelian self is surely blind to them, but this black steed is
counterbalanced by Faust's white steed, the Boy Charioteer. This is
Faust's noble self, who strives to fly to the beautiful forms. Goethe
places the Boy Charioteer in the same eternal solitude with the Mothers,
as we noted in chapter 2. That is, Faust's noble self is also embedded in
the Eternal Feminine. Thus when his maternal instinct is awakened, his
noble self can see the noble forms of the Eternal Feminine. Those noble
forms are Goethe's transcendent norms, which stand above all positive
 Redemption ofthe Superman 159

norms and which enable us to transcend the narrow perspective of our

individual self. This power of transcendence is provided by the Eternal
Feminine and this is her power of redemption. The Chorus Mysticus is
singing its paean to this mystical power of the Eternal Feminine.
Goethe's transcendent norms serve the same function that is served
by Platonic Forms, Plato introduced them to cope with the nonnative
chaos that was generated by the demise of god-given laws. The ancient
Greeks believed that their laws were given by the gods, and those laws
were called themis. By the time Plato came upon the scene, the age of
themis was replaced by the age of nomos, the laws made by human be-
ings. As long as the people believed that their laws were given by the
gods, they obeyed those laws with reverence. Their compliance was se-
cured even without surveillance, because they believed that they could
not evade divine inspection and detection. In the age of nomos, however,
they gave up on the idea of god-given laws because they came to believe
that their laws were made not by the gods but some powerful human be-
ings for the protection of their interests. The age of nomos ushered in
nonnative relativism: The distinction of right and wrong was determined
by the laws, which were established by power politics. This was the
nonnative chaos of positive laws. There could be no other social order
than the one imposed by power. To cope with this nonnative problem,
Plato argued for the existence of transcendent nonnative standards,
which stand higher than all positive laws. As long as our hearts are open
to those beautiful Forms, he taught, we can still talk about justice and
injustice even in the world of power politics. Goethe has appropriated
this Platonic view of nonnative standards into his doctrine of the Eternal
Feminine. In the opening of chapter 1, I quoted his statement to the effect
that human beings are inspired by the Ideas in the supernatural realm
though they are placed in the natural realm. This Platonic view of hu-
manity has governed his entire life and permeated his lifelong work.
It is highly unlikely for us to follow Goethe and accept normative
Platonism. We have to face Faust's power without nonnative constraints.
Nor can we restore the old theistic constraints over human power. To be
sure, there is the strident resurgence of Christian fundamentalists' appeal
to their God for the validation of their morals and politics. But their ap-
peal to the Christian God cannot carry any greater weight than the an-
cient Greeks' appeal to their Olympians. Both appeals are addressed to
160 Chapter Four

fictional entities. By using their religious fiction, they pass off their own
commands as divine commands. This is just another form of power poli-
tics. This is proven by the fact that even the Christians are hopelessly
divided on such critical issues as Papal authority, the ordination of
women, abortion, and stem cell research. There is no way to overcome
normative relativism even within Christendom by consulting the Bible
because it has delivered diametrically opposite interpretations. The ever
intensifying dissensions in the interpretation of the Bible only show that
this ancient book has recorded not the word of God, but the word of man.
It is encoded and enshrined by humans; it is decoded and exploited by
humans. Ancient Greek humanism emerged when the god-given laws
were recognized as man-made laws. Likewise, our humanism has to rec-
ognize the word of God as the word of man. This is the death of God that
forces human beings to play God. Even the fundamentalists play this
game by posing themselves as the faithful servants of their God.
To play God is another expression for becoming a superman. This is
the scary game of Faust. This is the human destiny in the post-theistic
world. I once heard James Watson, the co-discoverer of DNA, speak
about the game of playing God. He said to his audience, "They say that
we play God. But if we don't, who will?" The explosive development of
science and technology has delivered into our hands enormous power
over the elemental forces of Nature. From molecular biology to nuclear
energy, we have gained the power to blow up the whole globe and re-
make human beings. But these enormous powers are delivered without
normative constraints. It is not any more sensible to control these fright-
ful powers by appealing to the Bible than by consulting the Homeric ep-
ics. Faust's conquest of Nature pales in comparison with what we are
doing to our oceans and atmosphere, to our mind and body, day after day.
But our relentless exploitation and contamination of Nature is nothing
other than the magnification and intensification of the Faustian project.
Hence the problem of Faustian ethos is the most fundamental one for our
scientific and industrial culture. It no longer affects only the exceptional
heroes, but all human beings. In today's world, even the average person
is a miniature Faust. Instead of being outdated, Faust is becoming ever
more urgent and relevant for our life.
So far we have talked about the relevance of only the hero. But more
important than the hero is his world because he emerges, operates, and
 Redemption ofthe Superman 161

perishes in his world. The hero is only a product of his world. I have
characterized Faust's world as the world of mystical naturalism. I have
also shown that Goethe's mystical naturalism was a transformation of
Spinoza's pantheistic naturalism. Let us consider the relevance of his
mystical naturalism for our own age. There are two chief contestants for
our understanding the physical universe: creationism and physicalism.
Creationism is the story that the world was created by God. This simple
view has taken many forms. As in the Scopes trial, many fundamentalists
take Genesis literally, whereas sophisticated Christians have taken it al-
legorically. The irreducible center of creationism is the belief in the exis-
tence of God, who designs and creates the world. But creationism is in-
compatible with the autonomy of Nature, namely, its independence and
self-sufficiency. This is Spinoza's idea of the infinite substance. As far as
today's physical sciences are concerned, the autonomy of Nature is taken
for granted. Therefore, creationism is incompatible with physical sci-
ences. This is the primary motivation for physicalism. The basic premise
of physicalism is the belief that the world is made of inert matter. Every-
thing in the world can be broken down to physical components. Although
they have no life and no consciousness, they can produce life and even
consciousness when they are combined with one another. But physical-
ism has its own problem with the question, "Why do life and conscious-
ness emerge from dead matter?"
For this question, the theists may appear to have a clear advantage.
They can say that God creates life and consciousness. But there can be
no scientific proof for this thesis. How can the physicalists explain the
emergence of life and consciousness in scientific terms? They can only
say that the emergence of life and consciousness out of inert matter is an
accident. As accidental occurrences, life and consciousness have nothing
to do with the ultimate nature of matter. This accidental view of life and
consciousness is still the Darwinian version of natural evolution. It faces
two obstacles. First, it has to admit the explanatory gap between the in-
organic and the organic levels. It is sometimes called mysterianism to
admit a similar gap between the conscious and the unconscious level. It
is simply mysterious that the living emerges out of non-living and the
conscious out of non-conscious. Mysterianism on any level is not any
more satisfactory than creationism. Second, the emergence of these mys-
terious events depends on the operation of the ultimate particles that are
162 Chapter Four

supposed to constitute the deepest stratum of the physical world. But are
there such particles? In the Sophist, Plato says that there can be no such
particles because every physical particle can be broken down to smaller
and ever smaller pieces ad infinitum. There can be no Democritean atoms,
the ultimate indivisible particles. In that case, even the superstring theory
cannot capture the ultimate constituents of the physical world if there are
no such entities. Plato holds that the atoms are neither eternal nor indi-
visible, but have been formed out of Chaos (the formless matter) by the
Demiurge, the creative force of Nature. This Platonic view of Nature is
restated in Faust by the allegories of the Primal Darkness, the fiery pri-
mal energy, and the formation and transformation of forms by the Moth-
ers in their eternal solitude. This is a poetic description of Nature as al-
ways active and eternally alive instead of being composed of dead matter.
The emergence of living things is the expression of this living Nature.
This is what is meant by Spinoza's statement that power is the essence of
Nature. The power is the power to live and act.
In Faust's world, the existence of living beings is not a fluke that
mayor may not happen in the course of cosmic history. Life is as eternal
and as necessary as Nature herself. Goethe's cosmology is very much
like Fred Hoyle's view of Nature: Eternal life produces an infinite num-
ber of biosystems on an infinite number of planets (The Intelligent Uni-
verse). This inexhaustibility of life force is the cosmic mystery. But the
mysterians locate the mystery of the world in the wrong place. Instead of
locating it in the gap between the conscious and the unconscious or be-
tween the living and the non-living, they should trace it down to the rock
bottom of Nature, the Abyss, where Goethe installs all her creative
power. Then their so-called explanatory gaps would disappear. What is
truly mysterious does not lie in the emergence of any special natural
phenomena such as life or consciousness, but in the creative power of
Nature that produces all phenomena. This is Goethe's theory of Nature
and her evolution, which we should seriously consider to break the dead-
lock between the physicalists and the creationists. In the remainder of
this book, we will see how Friedrich Nietzsche and Richard Wagner have
coped with the problem of Faust and his world.
 Chapter Five

Nietzsche's Superman
(Zarathustra, Prologue and Part One)

Goethe's Faust struggled to break out of the spiritual prison of medieval

Christianity at the dawn of the new secular culture. But Nietzsche's
Zarathustra comes upon the scene after the secular movement has run its
course for half a millennium. When he descends from his mountain cave,
he faces a market crowd, who appears to have fully realized Faust's
dream of being at home in the natural world. But he cannot stand their
secular culture because it is horribly debased. In their "wretched con-
tentment," the Faustian spirit has died out together with God. The death
of God is not Nietzsche's solution for our age as many have taken it, but
its most critical problem. For its solution, he hoists the idea of superman.
But he did. not inherit it from Goethe, but from the Young Hegelians,
who have turned Hegel's philosophy of religion into their ideal of su-
pennan. According to Hegel, medieval Christianity had been an alien-
ation of the Absolute Spirit from humanity because the Christian God
had been created by perfecting and projecting human attributes to an ex-
ternal object, but the alienated divine attributes have been appropriated
as the essence of humanity in modem Europe. It is to become a superman
for human beings to appropriate divine attributes. This is the version of
superman advocated by the Young Hegelians such as Ludwig Feuerbach,
Bruno Bauer, and Max Stirner in their battle for the secularization of
Christendom. Two ways of secularization have been in contention. One
of them is the natural way, which is to disown the Christian legacy and
dismiss all Christian ideals as illusions. This is the way of critical rejec-
tion, which makes a clean break with the religious tradition. This type of
response usually belongs to atheism that is based on natural science.
164 Chapter Five

The Young Hegelians have refused to follow the natural way be-
cause they do not want to resign themselves to the limits of humanity and
disown the Christian aspiration for limitless perfection. Bauer quotes
their master Hegel's pronouncement that human beings lying in the
trench of finiteness are only oxen (The Trumpet, 125). Feuerbach also
wants to preserve the infinite aspiration of humanity as a valuable legacy
of Christianity. This is the way of constructive retention. Instead of dis-
carding divine attributes, he wants to humanize them. He is restating
their master's doctrine of appropriating divine attributes. This is his pro-
posal to overcome the alienation of humanity that has been dictated by
the projection and objectification of human attributes in the creation of
God. He holds that the essence of humanity is never fixed once and for
all because it is potentially infinite (The Essence of Christianity, 2). Be-
cause of its potential infinitude, the human species is engaged in a per-
petual Faustian struggle to go beyond its limitations. The projection and
alienation of human attributes as divine was one stage in this perpetual
process, and the subjective re-appropriation of divine attributes will be
another stage. The former stage should not be discarded as a mistake, but
be deployed as the base for stepping up to the next stage. This is the
Faustian spirit for the secularization of Christian culture.
The Faustian spirit was not a new cultural phenomenon of the nine-
teenth century. In the Preface of this book, I discussed the emergence of
sovereign individuals in the cultural transformation of medieval Christian
ethos. By a dialectical reversal, I said, the medieval practice of imitating
Christ in weakness turned into the imitation of God in power, which
eventually produced the prodigious breed of sovereign individuals. But
the idea of superhuman individual faded away into the world of fantasy.
The power and feat of the superhuman heroes were so exaggerated in the
Renaissance epics that they could no longer be taken as real and serious.
They could be retained only in the world of fantasy. Ariosto's Orlando
Furioso was already infused with satire and irony, and the secular idea of
superman finally dissolved in the gargantuan laughter of Rabelaisian
humor. Thus the idea of supermen eventually disappeared together with
the spirit of the Renaissance, and the secularization of the West went the
way of critical rejection. But the superhuman ideal was kept alive in the
Lutheran tradition. Martin Luther took the Incarnation as the identity of
God and man and advocated it as the universal model for all Christians to
 Nietzsche's Superman 165

become like God on earth. This Lutheran legacy was later secularized by
Herder and Goethe in literature and by Hegel and his followers in phi-
losophy. In his doctrine of Absolute Spirit, Hegel restated the identity of
God and Man in philosophical language. Max Stimer takes the Lutheran
ideal as the starting point of modem ethos. The ultimate aim of modem
European secularization is not simply to get rid of God from the God-
man, but transform man into "sole God on high" (The Ego and Its Own,
139). This was the way of constructive retention.
The Young Hegelians' naturalistic humanism is different from the
standard atheistic version. The former is governed by superhuman ideals,
and the latter by mere human ideals. The latter is known as secular hu-
manism. But the former has gained no clear label because it is a rare
breed that emerged with the Young Hegelians. I propose to call it secular
superhumanism or superhuman naturalism. In his announcement of the
superman, Zarathustra is advocating his version of secular superhuman-
ism. Just like the Young Hegelians, he retains the superhuman ideal for
human perfection in the secular world. In his encounter with the market
crowd, he denounces the culture of secular humanism. He feels nothing
but contempt for their happiness and calls it "their wretched content-
ment." He regards humanity only as a bridge on the hazardous journey to
the superman. This is a degrading view of humanity, namely, human life
is not worth living for its own sake. The medieval Christians took a simi-
lar degrading view of human life because their existence was full of mis-
ery. But the people in the marketplace are situated differently. Their exis-
tence is not racked with famine and starvation, disease and torture. On
the contrary, they are content with their existence because they have the
comfort of modem material progress. His attack on secular humanism
culminates in his ridicule of the last man's claim: "We have invented
happiness" (2, 17). This statement galls him more than anything else. He
jeers at the improvement the last men make on their living conditions.
Nor can their concern for health escape his contempt. All of these things
demonstrate just one thing, that is, they have no aspiration to transcend
secular humanism.
The last man is really the best that can be hoped for by the secular
humanists, that is, the happiness they can achieve on earth after freeing
themselves from the yoke of the other world. But their human happiness
is a terrifying prospect for Zarathustra, the secular superhumanist. It is
166 Chapter Five

not easy for us to appreciate his distress over the profanity of seculariza-
tion, because we are the children of secular culture. But the nineteenth-
century Europeans had a different sensibility. In The Communist Mani-
festo, even such adamant atheists as Marx and Engels lament over the
fact that all that is holy is profaned by the bourgeoisie. The projection of
human ideals to God had originally been made because human existence
in the secular world was meaningless. The death of God should not re-
turn humanity to its original meaningless existence. That would only de-
grade the lofty ideal that human beings have developed through their
long struggle of spiritualization. The happiness of the last men is most
offensive to Zarathustra, because the secular humanists are taking it as
their ultimate victory. These cheap secular people have no idea of the
spiritual struggle of their ancestors. For this shameless sin, he reviles the
people in the marketplace. He has taken upon himself the mission to
awaken the secular people to his superhuman ideal and make them real-
ize that their present happiness is only a wretched contentment.
In the marketplace, where the crowd is snugly nestled in the secular
culture, to float the superhuman ideal appears to be as dangerous as
walking the tightrope. In fact, the tightrope walker loses his balance dur-
ing his performance and falls off the rope to the ground, when the jester
jumps over him from behind. This may be the omen of what is going to
happen to Zarathustra's risky venture. Hence he feels empathy with the
dying man because they share the same fate of living dangerously. He
realizes that his project of transcending humanity is as risky as the stunt
of walking over the tightrope. As a preacher, he is almost as dead as the
tightrope walker. There is no way for him to move the people because
they are happy in their secular life. He knows that they are beyond his
reach. After burying the dead man, he spends the dark night in despera-
tion. When he wakes up the next morning, he gains a new insight. He no
longer wants to be the shepherd for the herd. He will enlist new compan-
ions by luring them away from the herd and make them his fellow crea-
tors. They will destroy old values and create new ones, thereby showing
the rainbow and all the steps to the superman. The values he wants to
break up are the values of secular culture. The values he wants to create
belong to the ideal of superman. He is determined to imbue the secular
culture with his new spiritual values. This is his ambitious campaign for
the spiritualization of secular culture.
 Nietzsche's Superman 167

When Zarathustra formulates this new plan in his heart, the sun
stands high at noon. He can see his eagle with his serpent soaring
through the sky. The eagle stands for his pride and the serpent for his
wisdom. He would like to be wise through and through like his serpent,
but he knows that is impossible. He asks his pride to go along with his
wisdom, but that may not always be possible, either, because his wisdom
may leave him one day. In that case, he will let his pride fly with his
folly. Carl Jung says that the eagle represents the spirit and the serpent
the body (Nietzsche's Zarathustra, 18). The eagle flies in the air; the ser-
pent crawls on the ground. These two motions represent the spirit and the
body. Jung symbolically identifies the serpent not only with the body,
but also with the earth. The body belongs to the earth and the serpent
crawls on the ground. He says that the serpent stands for the terrestrial or
chthonic forces (Nietzsche's Zarathustra, 18, 227). Heinrich Zimmer has
a similar view of the serpent. He says that the serpent represents the life-
force of the earth (Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, 74).
In that case, the serpent represents the earthly force that drives the secu-
lar culture in the marketplace. Human beings cannot be any different
from other species of animals as long as they are governed by earthly
forces. The great religions tried to endow humanity with spiritual values
that cannot be gained by mere brutes. But those spiritual values have
been dissolved with the death of God. Zarathustra is now proposing the
superman as his scheme of spiritualization for the godless world. This
new scheme is symbolized by the flight of the eagle with the serpent
coiled around its neck. Without this flight, the serpent will be stuck to the
earth forever just like the market crowd. Hence its flight with the eagle
can be taken as the symbol for his campaign to spiritualize human exis-
tence in the natural world.

The Stages of Spiritual Development (Part 1.1-14)

In "On the Three Metamorphoses", Zarathustra describes the three stages

of spiritual development for humanity. These three stages constitute the
road map for the campaign of spiritualization that was formulated in the
Prologue. The spirit is the subject of this development. It first becomes a
camel, the strong reverent spirit, who bears heavy loads. In the second
168 Chapter Five

metamorphosis, it becomes a lion, which conquers his freedom and be-

comes his own master. The lion seeks out and fights his last master, the
dragon, whose name is 'Thou shalt'. The lion slays the dragon and as-
serts "I will"; it is the spirit of defiance and independence. But the lion
lacks the power to create new values. That power belongs to the child.
The transformation of lion to child is the final metamorphosis. The three
metamorphoses produce three types of will. The will of a camel is obedi-
ent and reverent; it is dependent on its master. The will of a lion is defi-
ant and independent, but it is not completely its own. It is defined by its
defiance and opposition to its master. The will of a child alone is truly its
own because it stands on its relation to itself rather than to some other
power. Because it is self-contained, it is called a self-propelled wheel.
The story of three metamorphoses is a poetic fable, whose allegorical
meaning will be developed in the remainder of the book. This poetic fa-
ble maps out the development of humanity from its original state to the
final superhuman state. In short, it is meant to be the itinerary for the
evolution of the superman.
In the next section, "On the Teachers of Virtue", Zarathustra goes to
hear a sage, who praises sleep as the ultimate end and bliss of human life.
He is talking like a Stoic sage of ancient Greece. The word "sage" was a
favorite term with the Stoics. The Stoic sage (sophos) was supposed to
be apathes (free of all passions). The Stoics advocated apatheia (tran-
quility) as the highest state of happiness, and this tranquil state is hardly
distinguishable from dreamless sleep. Although it is called happiness, it
is not an ecstatic bliss. It is the state of being free of all passions and suf-
ferings. Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, says that the quality of
sleep is the best measure for the quality of virtue and happiness (Plu-
tarch IS Moralia 1:441). The calmest sleep manifests the highest level of
virtue. So the Stoic sage of tranquility and his doctrine of virtue come
closest to the sage's lecture under Zarathustra's description. What is the
connection of this lecture to the fable of three metamorphoses? I propose
that the dreamless sleep of a Stoic sage should be taken as the original
condition of humanity prior to its spiritual development in the three
stages of the camel, the lion, and the child. The Stoic sage proposes to
resolve all existential problems by going back to this original natural
state. This is in perfect accord with the Stoic philosophy, which admits
nothing beyond the natural world.
 Nietzsche's Superman 169

In "On the Afterworldly", Zarathustra describes the first step in the

spiritual development of humanity beyond the natural state. This is the
revolutionary step of inventing the other world for the redemption from
this world. He admits that he once subscribed to such a religious view.
But he now realizes that the other-worldly religion is the escape mecha-
nism for sick and decaying bodies. In "On the Despisers of the Body", he
identifies the self with the body. When the bodily self cannot create be-
yond itself, it gets frustrated and vengeful and becomes a despiser of the
body and a creator of the other world. He continues the theme of the bod-
ily self in the next section, "On Enjoying and Suffering the Passions".
The passions are the vital forces housed in the body. When we suffer
from our passions, they are called devils. But they become angels when
they are turned into virtues. Zarathustra now calls passions the wild dogs:
All of them want to be the master of others. Thus every human being
becomes a battlefield for these wild dogs. The enormous difficulty of
coping with these wild passions explains the projection of the other
world. When the will is frustrated and defeated by those passions, it be-
comes weary of this world and longs for the other world. What is the
right way to cope with those wild dogs in this world? This will be the
topic of Zarathustra's discourse in the next few sections.
The battle of passions is the continuing theme in "On the Pale Crimi-
nal". This section is Zarathustra's criminal pathology. After describing
the pale criminal's madness, he raises the momentous question, "What is
this man?" He gives two descriptions: He is a heap of diseases and a ball
of wild snakes. "A ball of wild snakes" stands for a bundle of unruly pas-
sions, which can rarely enjoy peace because they are engaged in a per-
petual fight against one another. Their battle was called the battle of wild
dogs in the previous section. This violent battle drives the passions to'
seek their prey outside in the world, and this is the madness and disease
of those passions. Hence the ball of snakes in the pale criminal has be-
come a heap of diseases. The creative will cannot be formed by simply
letting the primitive instincts run wild. They have to be overcome. Even
the eyes of the criminal say, "My ego is something that shall be over-
come" (2,37). He can see the need to overcome himself because he feels
contempt for his present self. Zarathustra says that the pale criminal's
judgment on himself is his highest moment because it indicates his noble
desire to overcome his base self. Zarathustra urges him not to let the sub-
170 Chapter Five

lime return to his baseness. The sublime contempt in the heart of the pale
criminal is what links him to the hope for overcoming humanity and ad-
vancing toward the superman.
"On Reading and Writing" paints the condition of Zarathustra as a
man of healthy passions and instincts. He feels his elevation above the
other mortals: "I no longer feel as you dorthis cloud which I see beneath
me, this blackness and gravity at which I laugh-this is your thunder-
cloud" (2, 40). "This blackness and gravity" is the misery of suffering
from warring passions, the affliction of most people. Since he has con-
quered this misery, he can laugh at all tragedies in plays and real life. But
for those who cannot do this, "Life is hard to bear" (2, 41). In his view,
they are only butterflies and soap bubbles, who are victimized by the
spirit of gravity. The phrase "the spirit of gravity" is introduced for the
first time without any explanation. Given its context, it appears to mean a
sense of being oppressed by the burden of life ("Life is hard to bear").
The spirit of gravity is what he just called "this blackness and gravity,"
which will later tum out to be his archenemy. He wants to kill the spirit
of gravity by mastering the art of flying and dancing. By its mastery, he
has gained the power of levitation, the counterforce to the power of grav-
ity. He says, "Now I am light, now I fly, now I see myself beneath my-
self, now a god dances through me" (Z, 41). If this is truly his feeling, he
appears to have succeeded in the Feuerbachian project of humanizing
divine attributes and attaining superhuman status. As we will see later,
the spirit of gravity is the basic limitation of humanity that must be over-
come before the advent of the superman.
In "On the Tree on the Mountain", Zarathustra runs into a young
admirer, who wants to emulate him for climbing and flying high. But the
young man is still stumbling. The higher he climbs, the more weary he
becomes. Above all, his envy of Zarathustra is killing him. Zarathustra
counsels him that like a tree a human being can reach the height by send-
ing the roots downward into the dark and deep evil, that is, into one's
deep passions and instinctual forces. But the young man cannot secure
such a solid instinctual foundation for his flight because he has not
gained the mastery of his passions. Zarathustra tells him that he is not yet
free and that he is still searching for his freedom. Unfortunately, the
search is hazardous. He says to the young man, "You aspire to the free
heights, your soul thirsts for the stars. But your wicked instincts, too,
 Nietzsche's Superman 171

thirst for freedom. Your wild dogs want freedom; they bark with joy in
their cellar when your spirit plans to open all prisons" (Z, 43). In "On the
Pale Criminal", the primitive instincts and passions were called wild
snakes. The timid young man is enslaved by his own wild dogs and
snakes. Zarathustra warns him that such an enslaved soul has the danger
of becoming clever and deceitful. He has seen them become the voluptu-
aries by losing their faith in nobility. He further advises the young man,
"Do not throwaway the hero in your soul! Hold holy your highest
hope!" (Z, 44).
In the Prologue, he called the superman the highest hope. From that
we may gather that to gain the mastery over one's passions and to over-
come the spirit of gravity are the requisite steps for becoming the super-
man. These superhuman requirements are the basic themes that run
through the three consecutive sections, "On the Pale Criminal," "On
Reading and Writing", and "On the Tree on the Mountain". They are
addressed to the enormous difficulty of converting primitive instincts to a
creative will. The first of these three sections shows the danger of letting
loose the wild instincts, while the last one shows the fear of doing so.
The criminal is too bold; the young man is too timid. Either of these two
cases is a failure. But the middle section shows Zarathustra's success in
this difficult conversion. He warns the young man against the danger
facing a noble soul. It is not the danger of becoming one of the good, but
that of turning into a churl, a mocker, and a destroyer through frustration
and despair. This danger arises when the noble ones lose their highest
hope. This story of spiritual degradation is continued in the next section,
"On the Preachers of Death". The preachers of death say terrible things
against life and preach the renunciation of life. Their frustrated passions
are lusting self-laceration. Zarathustra has already shown various ways of
coping with this beast of passions. The fIrst one was the way of violence
shown by the pale criminal. The second is the way of fear and anxiety
shown by the timid young man. The third is the way of voluptuaries. He
is now showing the fourth way, the way of self-laceration, which is taken
by those who turn the savage beasts against themselves. They are the
ascetics. But the way of self-laceration is not limited to asceticism. There
is a secular version, Zarathustra says. This is to get lost in furious works
and restless activities, or to seek diversion in what is fast, new, and
strange. These are the clever tricks to wear out the unruly wild dogs.
172 Chapter Five

With "On the Preachers of Death", we are back to the theme of "On
the Teachers of Virtue". The Stoic sage taught that dreamless sleep was
the highest bliss attainable for human beings. The preachers of death are
saying that death is better than life if death is no more than dreamless
sleep. Both of them are seeking their way out of human misery.
Zarathustra has tried to account for human misery on the premise that the
soul is the body that houses a ball of snakes. He has scrutinized many
different ways of coping with this ball of snakes: the way of violence, the
way of fear and anxiety, the way of hedonistic indulgence, the way of
self-laceration, and the way of diversion through work and entertainment.
None of these methods appear to make any better sense than the Stoic
way of sleep without dreams. In the past few sections, Zarathustra has
tried to find a sensible way to fight the war against passions and contin-
ues to do so in "War and Warriors". But he provides no practical meth-
ods for waging this war, although he claims to have won it. He says that
he has mastered the art of dancing and flying like a god. That is perhaps
what it is like to be a superman. His superhuman ideal looks similar to
the Stoic ideal of self-mastery and self-sufficiency. But there is one im-
portant difference between his and the Stoic ideal. For their mastery over
passions, the Stoics resorted to a highly ascetic and repressive discipline.
That is the way of self-laceration. This is not to enjoy the passions, but to
enslave them. To enjoy the passions without repression is Zarathustra's
goal of self-mastery ("On Enjoying and Suffering the Passions"). That
alone is truly to be like the gods.
Zarathustra's war sermon continues in the next section, "On the New
Idol". But his attention shifts from the internal mastery of passions to the
external obstacles. His first target is the state, the new idol for those who
have become weary of their own passions. It is the surrogate for the old
God. It makes the same promise and the same demand that God used to
make. It now provides the same service that used to be provided by the
old God-the refuge for those exhausted in their fight against unruly
passions. But Zarathustra does not recommend revolution to overthrow
the state. His advice is to flee to solitude for the sake of freedom. His
only important cause is freedom. In the previous sections, he talked
about internal freedom, the freedom from passions. In this section, he is
stressing external freedom, the freedom from the state. A truly sovereign
self should be enslaved neither to internal passions nor to external au-
 Nietzsche's Superman 173

thorities. He extends the sermon of solitude from the state to the market-
place in "On the Flies of the Market Place". He says that solitude ceases
where the market place begins. In the market place, you are dazed by the
noise of great men and stung allover by the stings of small men. But
they do not know what greatness means, says Zarathustra. The market-
place recognizes only the showmen. The true greatness lies with the in-
ventors of new values, around whom the world revolves invisibly. Again
he does not issue a call to fight against the marketplace, but only repeats
the same advice: "Flee into your solitude!" At least in this case, he ad-
mits the futility of fighting against the people in the marketplace because
there are too many of them, and warns his audience against the danger of
being crushed under the pressure of the numerous small creatures.
In "On Chastity", Zarathustra takes on the problem of sensuality.
This section is against the city as much as the previous sections were
against the state and the marketplace. The city corrupts our sexual pas-
sions and disrupts our solitude. He recognizes the virtue of chastity as a
way to cope with sensuality. But this virtue is almost a vice in many who
abstain from sex because they are still haunted by the bitch of sensuality.
He counsels not the killing of sensuality, but its innocence. Since it is
god-like to enjoy the innocence of sensuality, it should be regarded as an
essential feature of the superman. Chastity is human, but innocence is
divine. The virtue of chastity involves restraint and repression, but the
state of innocence does not. The latter alone belongs to true freedom. In
this regard, Zarathustra's ideal of freedom and self-mastery is far beyond
the Stoic ideal and truly superhuman. Just as the bond of sexual relations
can endanger solitude, so does the bond of friendship. In "On the Friend",
Zarathustra talks about the danger of friendship for a hermit seeking soli-
tude because it is the pitfall for those who cannot stand on their own.
Therefore, one should never trust or rely on one's friend. The best way to
avoid this pitfall is to be capable of being an enemy to a friend. This is a
strange notion of friendship, which turns upside down our normal con-
ception of friendship. But this strange friendship is unavoidable for
someone seeking the ideal of complete self-sufficiency. This ideal has
two dimensions, internal and external. Internally, it requires the mastery
over one's passions; externally, it requires the independence from others.
Since the ideal of total self-sufficiency is not possible for human beings,
it has long been regarded as a divine attribute. Therefore, Zarathustra's
174 Chapter Five

ideal of a self-sufficient hermit is another indication that the superman is

the humanization of divine perfection.

The Way of Creation (Part 1.15-22)

So far Zarathustra has talked about the internal and external conditions
for autonomy and self-sufficiency. But these conditions are not ends in
themselves. They provide the basis for the creation of new values, which
was mentioned briefly in "On the Flies of the Market Place". He returns
to the creation of values in "On the Thousand and One Goals", and de-
clares that the will to power is the creator of values. Zarathustra has seen
many lands and many peoples, but found no greater powers than good
and evil. No people can live without formulating their own tablets of
good and evil. They are their values that have been established by their
will to overcome the greatest difficulties. Since these difficulties are dif-
ferent for different peoples, each of them has to devise its own unique
system of values. In the ancient world, Zarathustra says, the creators
were the peoples. In the modern age, however, the creators are the indi-
viduals. In fact, the individual is the most recent creation. In "On the
New Idol", he said that every people creates its own values. Now he is
introducing the individual as the creator of values. This is the transforma-
tion of the old communal ethos to the new individual ethos. Whereas the
old communal ethos created one thousand goals for one thousand peoples,
Zarathustra says, the new individual ethos will create one universal goal.
He is now calling for that one goal: "Only the yoke for the thousand
necks is still lacking: the one goal is lacking" (2, 60). What is this one
final yoke? It is the eternal recurrence, the yoke for the superman. This
point will become clearer in Part III.
In "On Love of the Neighbor", Zarathustra again comes back to the
relation of self to others. He says that one's love of a neighbor is often an
escape from oneself. This is a familiar theme from "On the Friend". In
the preceding section, he said that the good conscience is identified with
the herd and the bad conscience with the individual. Since the individual
has to take a big risk in asserting his own self, he is tempted to take ref-
uge in the herd. His neighbors are his nearest herd. Zarathustra says that
the individual not only wants to lose himself in his neighbor, but also
 Nietzsche's Superman 175

would like to make a virtue out of it, namely, the virtue of neighborly
love. But this dubious virtue only indicates that such an individual is suf-
fering from a sickly love of his own self. Without healthy self-love,
Zarathustra says, one can turn his solitude into a prison. Love of the
neighbor can be the escape hatch from this prison. When one cannot en-
dure oneself, he says, one seeks relief in one's neighbor. Instead of the
nearest (the neighbor), he contends, one should love the farthest, that is,
the superman, Since the superman is not here yet, he advises his audience
to love him by creating friends in anticipation of him.
To create friends is a novel proposal. In "On the Friend", he never
talked about creating friends. But how can you create friends? For those
who cannot stand their neighbors, Zarathustra recommends the following
formula of creating friends: "then you would have to create your friend
and his overflowing heart out of yourself' (Z, 61)~ This enigmatic for-
mula is supposed to create a fantastic friend, "in whom the world stands
completed, a bowl of goodness-the creating friend who always has a
completed world to give away" (Z, 62). This friend is so fantastic that
Laurence Lampert identifies him as Zarathustra, that is, he is recom-
mending himself as the creative friend (Nietzsche's Teaching, 65). But
this reading cannot be textually justified. If the fantastic friend is meant
to be Zarathustra, he and his overflowing heart cannot be created "out of
yourself." It may be better to take the enigmatic formula as Zarathustra's
oracular way of saying that you should become a friend to yourself. The
friend you can create out of yourself cannot be anyone but yourself. He is
the only kind of friend you can love and trust without jeopardizing your
sovereignty. With such a friend, you will be spared all the anxiety about
friendship voiced in "On the Friend". But you can be such a perfect
friend to yourself only by becoming a self-sufficient individual who has
his own complete world. Your own world is the only world you can give
away to yourself. Living in your own complete world, you would have
no need to run to your neighbor under any circumstances. This is the ul-
timate outcome of radical individualism: A sovereign individual can find
a true friend only in himselfifhe has his own complete world.
By the end of "On Love of the Neighbor", Zarathustra has almost
perfected the superhuman ideal in the image of a totally self-sufficient
individual, who can give a complete world to himself. This ideal image
sets the stage for his discourse in the next section, "On the Way of the
176 Chapter Five

Creator". He opens the section with two questions: "Is it your wish, my
brother, to go into solitude? Is it your wish to seek the way to yourself?"
(Z, 62). It is easy to lose oneself in the herd, he says, because it is com-
fortable to share a common conscience with the herd. You can recover
your self from the herd only by taking a solitary way to your self. Only
then, Zarathustra says, can you be a first moment and a self-propelled
wheel. These are the metaphors he used to describe the child as the last
stage of the three metamorphoses. .The child is the one who can be the
master of one's own being. Zarathustra says that this truly creative agent
is not one of the lustful and ambitious. He talked about their corruption
in "On Chastity". Now he says that they are only bellows that inflate
with emptiness. He characterizes the creative agent in terms of freedom
and distinguishes two kinds of freedom ("free from what?" and "free for
what?"). This distinction amounts to the difference between the lion's
freedom and the child's freedom. The lion's freedom is the freedom from
servitude, which is not sufficient for the creation of values. Zarathustra
says, "There are some who threw away their last value when they threw
away their servitude" (Z, 63). The child's freedom is the freedom for its
own sovereignty. This is the freedom of a creator, who is not only free
from others, but also free to give himself his own complete world of
good and evil. Just like the old God, he is the sole authority for his law
from its legislation to its execution. This is the lonely self-creator.
Zarathustra compares the lonely creator to "a star thrown out into the
void and into the icy void of solitude" (2, 63). He talks about the spiritual
crisis that will come upon such a solitary existence: You will cry, "I am
alone!" And you will even say, "All is false!" This is the crisis of value,
which will haunt every lonely creator of values. Since the solitary indi-
vidual cannot appeal to any authority in his creation of values other than
his own judgment, he can never find any ground for their justification.
Hence he may well have to admit, "All is false!" But that is not the end
of his difficulties. He will be hated and slandered by the good and the
just for his solitary stand. But they are not the worst enemy for the soli-
tary one. He says, "But the worst enemy you can encounter will always
be you, yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caves and woods" (Z, 64).
This idea clearly sets him apart from Max Stirner, who was chiefly con-
cerned with the danger of having one's sovereignty and creativity abro-
gated by others. For Zarathustra, however, that is not the greatest danger
 Nietzsche's Superman 177

for the lonely individual. The weight of an old self is the greatest obsta-
cle to the creation of a new self. There is no single fixed self for any in-
dividual. Every individual is a Heraclitean flux, which perpetually cre-
ates a new self by destroying an old one. In the domain of self-creation,
the relation of an old self to a new one is more critical than the relation of
oneself to others. The creation of a new self requires the destruction of an
old self. At the end of this section, Zarathustra says, "I love him who
wants to create over and beyond himself and thus perishes" (Z, 65).
Just before this concluding statement, Zarathustra discusses the prob-
lem of self-creation in terms of self-relation in three paragraphs, each of
which begins with "Lonely one". In the first paragraph, he says, "Lonely
one, you are going the way to yourself. And your way leads past yourself
and your seven devils" (Z, 64). Your seven devils are the seven unruly
passions of your old self that have to be conquered by the new self. In
"On Enjoying. and Suffering the Passions", he said that our passions are
called devils when we suffer from them and that they are called angels
when they are turned into virtues. The way to your new self leads past
your old self because the new self has to surpass the old one. To go
against your old self is to be "a heretic to yourself." To destroy an old
self for a new one is "to consume yourself in your own flame." In the
second paragraph, he says, "Lonely one, you are going the way of the
creator: you would create a god for yourself out of your seven devils" (Z,
64t). The seven unruly passions repressed by the old self will be made
into a god when they are sublimated by the new self. The second para-
graph involves a dramatic reversal in the process of self-creation. The
first paragraph simply talks about passing and destroying the old self and
its seven devils, but the second paragraph talks about the creation of a
god out of those seven devils. The devils that make up the old self are not
to be condemned and discarded, but be redeemed and transformed into a
god. By this process, the old self is born as a new child.
In the third paragraph, he highlights self-love as the engine for self-
creation. He concludes his sermon by his final benediction on the lonely
creator. He has outlined his idea of self-creation, which involves two di-
mensions. Externally, you must sever all relations with others, whether
they are the rabble or the state, friends or neighbors. The only friend you
can trust is your own self. One must build a castle of self-isolation and
become a lonely person of solitude. Internally, one must transform the
178 Chapter Five

passions from devils to gods. This is the only way to save the self from
the defilement by others and gain the freedom to create one's own value.
Then one can truly love oneself. Such a self is the superman, who is the
absolute sovereign in his kingdom, like God. But his sovereignty is lim-
ited to his castle of self-isolation or solitude.
Now his sermon on the creative will is almost complete. It is built on
his previous sermons on the mastery of passions and on solitude. The
remaining five sections of Part I are only incidental remarks that follow
his final elaboration on the creative will in "On the Way of the Creator".
They lead up to the farewell in the final section. By the end of "On Free
Death", Zarathustra abruptly brings his preaching to bear upon his own
mission: "Verily, Zarathustra had a goal; he threw his ball: now you, my
friends, are the heirs of my goal; to you I throw my golden ball" (Z, 74).
The time for his exit has finally arrived, and that should be the time for
his free death. The golden ball is no longer in his hand; it has been
passed to his heirs. His disciples give him a farewell present, a staff with
a golden handle, on which a serpent coils around the sun. This gift incites
him to give a speech on the nature of the gift-giving virtue, which he
compares to the sun. With its abundant radiation, the sun has been a ven-
erable symbol of God since Plato's analogy of the Good to the sun in
Book 6 of the Republic. Like the sun, the Good is said to be the source of
all beings. Elaborating on this Platonic metaphor, Plotinus says that the
cosmic Soul gives life to the material world like the sun shining its bril-
liance upon a cloud (Enneads V.1.2). He again uses the same Platonic
metaphor in saying that the emanation of Intelligence from the One may
be compared to the brilliant light encircling the sun and ceaselessly gen-
erated from that unchanging substance (Enneads V.1.6). The Christian
Neoplatonist Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite uses the same metaphor in
comparing God to the sun, whose limitless light renews, nourishes, and
flourishes in all living beings (The Divine Names 4.8). Scotus Erigena
restates Pseudo-Dionysius's teaching by comparing the power of God to
the inexhaustible ray of the sun and to a river that flows from a limitless
source (On the Division ofNature, bk 2, ch 32; bk 3, ch 4). Bonaventure
reaffirms this Christian conception of God by calling Christ's love of the
world the radiant heat of the Eternal Sun (The Tree of Life, Pro!.3). He
also compares Christ's love to the eternal sweet Stream from the Foun-
tain invisible to all mortal eyes (The Tree ofLife III. 47)
 Nietzsche's Superman 179

Zarathustra is now using the metaphor of not only the sun, but also
the stream. But he is using these metaphors to describe the power not of
God, but of man. Any human being who can be so described is like God.
He is the superman, who has transcended the limits of humanity. His
power is limitless, like the radiant sun and the eternal stream. His love of
others is really his love of himself. Hence his gift to others is really a gift
to himself. A strong, healthy self has a much broader boundary of self-
hood than a weak, sickly self. Those who are normally regarded as others
by the weak self are accepted as the extension of oneself by the strong
self. This is clearly a mark of transcending the normal limits of being a
human self. When Zarathustra set out on his journey, he took the sun for
his model. Now we can see that this model expressed his ambition to
elevate man to the position of God. Like God, he is now urging his fol-
lowers, they should be not only independent and self-sufficient, but also
freely giving and caring for others out of abundant self-love. On the
farewell staff, the sun is connected to the serpent. In the Garden of Eden,
the serpent was the malicious creature to lure Adam and Eve, out of envy,
to their perdition. On the farewell staff, however, the serpent stands for
the natural force that generates the sun and its radiance. Thus the sym-
bolism of the farewell staff redeems the natural force from the Christian
condemnation and restores its sanctity and generosity. The union of the
sun and the serpent on the staff represents the unity of God and the earth.
This symbol portrays Spinoza's conception of Mother Nature as the su-
preme deity.
Changing his voice, Zarathustra now urges his disciples to remain
faithful to the earth and continue to be creative fighters. He warns against
the hundred ways the human spirit has been misled to make mistakes.
Human history has been a series of experiments to determine the destiny
of humanity. He then says, "Still we fight step by step with the giant:
accident" (2, 77). This is his first mention of the giant called accident.
His "accident" means not a random event, but any event that does not
belong to the individual will. In that sense, a traffic accident is an acci-
dent. Its happening is under nobody's control. In Zarathustra's world, as
we will see later, accident embodies cosmic necessity that overpowers
the individual will. The giant of accident poses enormous threat against
the castle of self-isolation that Zarathustra has built for the protection of
creative will. Although he mentions it casually, it will haunt him relent-
180 Chapter Five

lessly and mercilessly for the remainder of his career. Changing the tone
of his voice once more, he tells his disciples that they have to walk their
own lonely ways. They should cease to be mere followers and believers.
But he promises to return when they have all denied him. In fact, he
promises two returns. He will make the fITst one to seek his lost disciples
when they have denied him and the second one to celebrate the great
noon when man stands in the middle of his way between beast and su-
perman. On that great occasion, he will get together with his disciples to
celebrate the advent of the superman. With this prophecy for his second
and third coming, he finally leaves his disciples. This is the end of Part I.
His mission appears to be completed. He has rekindled a new fire
from his old ashes and dispensed it as the new meaning of the earth for
humanity. This is his ideal of the superman. But this ideal is a Christian
legacy. It began with the creation of God by the projection of human as-
pirations. But this projection was the alienation of human ideals from
human beings. The re-appropriation of the alienated ideals has taken a
long series of spiritual movements. First, Jesus Christ exhorted his fol-
lowers to seek divine perfection. Second, the medieval Church expressed
this aspiration for divine perfection in the sacrament of transubstantia-
tion: As wine is turned into Christ's blood, humanity will be transformed
into divinity. Third, Luther and his followers brought it closer to the
earth in their doctrine of Incarnation, that is, their God-man ideal. Fourth,
it was secularized and naturalized by Goethe and the Young Hegelians.
This version of the Christian ideal is Zarathustra' s ideal of superman. But
the Stoic legacy is also important for the formation of his ideal. The Stoic
ideal of a self-sufficient sage was in itself an attempt to become like a
god, a totally self-contained being. This Stoic ideal of self-sufficiency
has become Zarathustra's castle of self-isolation for the protection of the
precarious self from the defilement by secular culture. This is his cam-
paign project for the redemption of the secular world by the new spiritual
value of self-creation.
 Chapter Six

The Suffering Soul

(Zarathustra, Part Two)

In the opening section of Part II, Zarathustra is back in the solitude of his
mountain cave, but decides to go on another mission in response to a
dream, in which a child shows him a horrible image of himself in a
mirror: He is wearing a devil's mask with scornful laughter. In his
interpretation of this mirror image, he says that his teaching is now in
danger because it has been distorted by his powerful enemies. The
distortion has made his disciples ashamed of his teaching. So he says, "I
have lost my friends; the hour has come to seek my lost ones" (Z, 83).
The condition of his disciples may appear to fulfill the requirement for
his second coming that he laid out at the end of Part I. He had said that
his disciples would deny him when they grew up and became
independent. But that is not what is happening to them, according to his
interpretation of the mirror image. They are now ashamed of his teaching
because they are deceived by his enemies' distortion of it. Instead of
becoming independent, they have been duped by his enemies. Their
growth has been distorted instead of being healthy and fruitful as' he had
hoped. This unfortunate development may reflect the danger of accidents
that worried him at the end of Part I. So he sets out on his second mission
as a victim of accidents with a voice of suffering. He says, "From silent
mountains and thunderstorms of suffering my soul rushes into the
valleys" (Z, 84). This voice of suffering is coming from his new wisdom.
In Part I, Zarathustra never treated suffering as an important problem.
To be sure, he talked about it in "On Enjoying and Suffering the
Passions". But he taught that passions can be the objects of joy although
they are the source of suffering for weak souls. In "On Reading and
Writing", he boasted of his courage to laugh at all tragedies in real life or
182 Chapter Six

in play. He contemptuously dismissed those who say, "Life is hard to

bear." He called them butterflies and soap bubbles. The problem of
suffering was not worthy of his attention because it was the problem of
weaklings. So he stood disdainfully above the problem of suffering in
Part I. But it is going to engage his primary attention in Part II.

Suffering and Redemption (Part 11.2-8)

In the next section, Zarathustra arrives on the Blessed Isles and begins
his new teaching mission. But his new teaching sounds like his old
teaching. He talks about God and the superman, two familiar topics from
his old teaching. Instead of creating God, he tells his audience, they
should create the superman. He expands the notion of creation by
extending it to the creation of the world. Now he tells his audience to
create their own worlds. Then he says, "Creation-that is the great
redemption from suffering and makes life easy to bear." Again the
theme of creation is old and familiar, but the redemption from suffering
is something new. This new idea naturally follows the theme of suffering
introduced in the opening section of Part II. Zarathustra locates the
problem of suffering in feeling: "All feeling suffers in me and is in
prison." This is the passive dimension of human existence because to
suffer means to be passive. Our feeling is always passive; it indicates
what is done to us. In Part I, Zarathustra was chiefly concerned with the
active dimension of human existence, because he wanted to stress the
creative will. He is now recognizing the passive dimension of human
existence for the first time. But he preaches that the will has the power to
liberate imprisoned feeling. This distinction between active willing and
passive feeling creates an enormously difficult problem. The distinction
presupposes that the will is completely insulated from feelings and
passions. Now suppose that the separation of the will from desires and
passions is a huge metaphysical error as Nietzsche has repeatedly said.
Then the will cannot be the liberator, while feeling is a prisoner. But
Zarathustra cannot easily discard the liberating power of the will because
it has been the most essential feature of his superhuman ideal. What is
the real relation between the liberating will and imprisoned feeling? This
will be the central question for Part II.
 The Suffering Soul 183

After stressing the role of the will as the liberator from suffering,
Zarathustra again talks about its creative function and its joy in begetting
.and becoming. His powerful will is going to be the hammer that will
perfect the image of man buried deep in the ugliest stone. Thus the
conclusion of "Upon the Blessed Isles" seems only to restate and
reaffirm the theme of creation from his earlier teaching. But it will be
overshadowed by the theme of suffering and redemption in the remainder
of Part II. There is a subtle dialectical development in his thought. He
becomes aware of his passivity in his attempt to assert his active will,
because it runs into the obstacles of resistance. These obstacles are what
he meant by "the giant of accident" in the last section of Part I. The more
deeply we get involved in the active dimension of our existence, the
more keenly we feel its passive dimension or our vulnerability to
suffering. Thus, the problem of the creative will inevitably leads to the
problem of suffering. This dialectical development between active will
and passive feeling may have led to the birth of Zarathustra's new
wisdom, which he mentions in the opening section of Part II. In that case,
his new wisdom is an essential complement to his old wisdom. In his old
wisdom, he completely disregarded the passive dimension of human
existence because he was so obsessed with its active and creative
dimension. Hence the resulting superhuman ideal turned out to be too
divine and too unreal. It deals with only one half of human existence.
The function of his new wisdom may well be to recognize and redress
this grave deficiency.
In the next three sections ("On the Pitying", "On Priests", and "On
the Virtuous"), Zarathustra examines some well-established remedies for
suffering: Schopenhauer's teaching on pity (or compassion), the priestly
way with the other world, and the Stoic way of virtue (See my
Nietzsche's Epic of the Soul, 59-64). These three remedies are addressed
to the first dimension of suffering, the internal world of feeling. In the
next few sections, he will consider its second dimension, the external
world of others. In "On the Rabble", he locates the external source of
suffering in the rabble. The rabble is not only poisonous, but also
powerful. They make life far more difficult to bear than even death and
torture. Zarathustra is seized with nausea with the filthy rabble. But he
says that he has redeemed himself from nausea by flying to the highest
spheres beyond the reach of the rabble. This is the way of solitude he
184 Chapter Six

advocated in Part I. This is the method of self-isolation, by which he is

insulated from the rabble. A much worse problem plagues him in the
next section ("On the Tarantulas"). The tarantulas are the egalitarians,
whom he calls the agents of revenge. Their sense of revenge comes from
their repressed envy against the powerful. Their vengeful sense ofjustice
demands equality. But he says that men can never be equal because the
basic principle of life dictates inequality. Life is a perpetual struggle for
power and more power, which leads to greater and greater inequality.
Hence the weak are bound to suffer under the power of the strong. Their
suffering produces the tarantulas, who disguise their envy and revenge as
the demand of justice and equality. In "On the Famous Wise Men", he
extends his attack to those intellectuals who have served as the shameless
servants of the powerful. They have no spirit of their own. Finally he
flaunts his won spirit. But he will be completely shaken by a new sense
of suffering in the next section.

A Dark Night of the Soul (sees. 9-11)

In "The Night Song", Zarathustra is finally alone in the stillness of night.

But he keenly feels something "unstilled" and "unstillable" in himself.
This is his craving for love, which arises from his role as light. He says
that he is light, but wishes that he were night. Since his loneliness stems
from the fact that he is girt with light, he envies the dark night that can
suck at the breast of light. He says, "But I live in my own light; I drink
back into myself the flames that break out of me" (Z, 106). He is so self-
contained in his own light that he can never know the happiness of those
who receive his gifts. Then he talks about the cleft between giving and
receiving. Because he cannot cross this cleft, he feels the malice to hurt
and rob the recipients of his gifts. His malice finally turns into revenge,
which kills his joy of giving. He says, "My happiness in giving died in
giving; my virtue tired of itself in its overflow" (Z, 106). He is getting
killed by his own gift-giving virtue. When he set out on his first teaching
mission, he took the sun for his model. The sun radiates its gift out of its
overflowing abundance to everybody and expects nothing in return. It is
the symbol of self-sufficiency and independence. He has tried to live up
to the ideal of the sun and not to be affected by the responses of his
 The Suffering Soul 185

recipients. Unfortunately, the posture of self-sufficiency suppresses the

most basic need of finite human beings, that is, the need to be connected
with others. The gift-giving virtue of the sun has now turned into the
dreadful despair of loneliness.
He now wishes to be night rather than light, a receiver rather than a
giver, because night can have the experience of sucking at the breasts of
light. In the days of his gift-giving virtue, he had thought that the giver
enjoyed independence and self-sufficiency while the receiver had to
depend on the giver. Now he realizes that the giver is as dependent as the
receiver. Thus he comes to recognize his dependence on others, which
provokes his revenge against his recipients. To avoid the dependence on
others, he had preached building the castle of self-isolation in Part I. But
he is now suffocating in this castle of solitude But he had warned his
disciples about the danger of solitude, "But the time will come when
solitude will make you weary, when your pride will double up, and your
courage gnash its teeth. And you will cry, 'I am alone!'" (Z, 63). That
has become his own cry. He now realizes that solitude brings the despair
of isolation from other human beings and that no one can live in such
isolation without stifling the basic need to be loved by others. He now
recognizes the bitter truth that it is impossible to live up to the ideal of
total self-sufficiency. Every human being has to depend on some other
human beings, and this universal dependence inevitably leads to the
sense of suffering and revenge. He ends "The Night Song" by
recognizing the boundless matrix of his existence: "Night has come; now
all fountains speak more loudly. And my soul too is a fountain" (Z, 107).
Night is the fountain of all fountains, the primal source in Faust's
language. That primal fountain will appear as Life in "The Dancing
Song". As a dependent fountain, Zarathustra can only suffocate himself
by pursuing his ideal of total self-sufficiency and self-isolation. That is
why he now feels an unquenchable craving for love and says, "Night has
come; now all the songs of lovers awaken. And my soul too is the song
of a lover" (Z, 105). He will indeed sing his song of love for the fountain
of all fountains in the next section.
One evening, he runs into a group of girls dancing in a forest. He
does not join the dance, but offers to sing for their dance. In this song, he
recounts his first encounter with his lady of love, Life. He felt that he
was sinking into unfathomable Life, when he recently looked into her
186 Chapter Six

eyes. Why was he sinking? The answer to this question is given in the
prelude to the song, in which he offers to sing a mocking song on the
spirit of gravity, his supreme and most powerful enemy. It was the spirit
of gravity (heaviness) that was weighing him down in the ocean of life.
That was indeed the condition of his life in "The Night Song". In the
darkness of night, he was deeply depressed by existential problems
spawned by the spirit of gravity. That is the sort of feeling one would
experience in getting drowned in a deep ocean, which can be as dark as it
is in the middle of night. But Life saved him by pulling him out with a
golden fishing rod. This pathetic picture of Zarathustra in his helpless
condition makes a dramatic contrast with the mighty picture of his sun-
like radiance in Part I. Instead of flying across the sky, he was sinking
into the unfathomable ocean only to meet the indignity of being saved by
a fishing rod. When she fished him out of deep water, he was not even
asking for help. She came to his aid like the radiant sun. This is a
dramatic role reversal. His role has changed from active to passive, from
giving to receiving, from independence to dependence. This reversal
exposes the passive dimension of his existence.
Zarathustra's heroic posture and his fuss over his predicament are
only big jokes for Life. She even mocks at his description of her as
unfathomable. She says, "Thus runs the speech of all fish; what they do
not fathom is unfathomable" (Z, 108). She understands herself as only
changeable and wild. Perhaps that is why she is unfathomable to men,
because they can deal only with the stable and the tame. She goes on to
say that men try to impose their own virtues on her even when they call
her profound, faithful, eternal, and mysterious. Because they cannot
transcend their narrow perspective and appreciate her in her own right,
she appears to be unfathomable to them. Throughout the conversation,
she treats him like a little child. After all, he is only a small fish saved by
her fishing rod. He now recognizes his own helplessness in
understanding "unfathomable" Life and becomes skeptical about his
vaunted wisdom. Evidently, his relation with Wisdom has been severely
strained by his memorable encounter with Life. When he approaches
Wisdom for a secret talk, she says in anger and jealousy that he wants
and loves Life. Caught in this triangular relation, he admits that he
deeply loves only Life, most of all when he hates her. But he is still well
disposed toward Wisdom because she resembles Life.
 The Suffering Soul 187

This is the gist of his song. At the outset, he offered to sing a dancing
and mocking song on the spirit of gravity. But the tone of his song is far
from mocking. He is overwhelmed by the spirit of gravity not only
during his encounter with Life, but even after his song. When the girls
are gone after their dance, he hears a series of ringing questions, "Why?
What for? By what? Whither? Where? How? Is it not folly still to be
alive?" (Z, 110). These are depressing questions. He says that they are
asked by the evening. Why does the evening ask these questions? What
does the evening stand for? I suppose it stands for Life. While Life is
associated with night and evening, Wisdom has been associated with day
and the sun. Whereas we have known Wisdom from the beginning of his
teaching mission, we meet Life for the first time in "The Dancing Song".
The series of ringing questions are the tough questions about Life, which
have tormented him lately. But the spirit of gravity is the source of these
questions. By spawning these troublesome questions, the spirit of gravity
makes our life unbearable. To indicate the subtle link between the
ringing existential questions and the spirit of gravity, Zarathustra names
the spirit of gravity as his archenemy in the prelude to the song and then
pours out those questions after the song.
In "The Dancing Song", Wisdom gets demoted to second fiddle. Up
to this point, she has been the only fiddle for Zarathustra's performance
in the dispensation of his accumulated wisdom. Life has now become his
prima donna and Wisdom her handmaid. This is perhaps the most
important reversal of roles in his career because the two ladies represent
two modalities of human existence. Wisdom represents the way of
knowledge, the cognitive mode of existence. Life represents the way of
feeling and desire, the affective mode of existence. Life is associated
with night and its darkness; Wisdom is associated with day and its light.
The cognitive mode of existence is cerebral; the affective mode is
visceral. Life has her own wisdom. It is the wisdom of night, whereas
Wisdom is the wisdom of day. The wisdom of day is on the surface of
consciousness; the wisdom of night is submerged under consciousness.
Under the aegis of Wisdom, Zarathustra conducted his mission primarily
as a cognitive task. In the course of this largely cerebral enterprise, he
got entangled with the difficult visceral problems of feeling, such as the
whirling sense of revenge, the ravaging sense of isolation, and the
irrepressible craving for love. The aegis of Wisdom or her cognitive way
188 Chapter Six

was totally helpless against these overwhelming emotions. In this

desperate situation, Life came to his rescue and this was his visceral
experience.
"The Tomb Song" is also a song of suffering, but its tone is different
from that of "The Night Song". Zarathustra now carries an evergreen
wreath of life to the tombs of his youth and tries to redeem the dreams
and ideals of his youth buried in those tombs. When he gets to the tombs,
he pours out his vindictive accusations against his enemies, who killed
the ideals and dreams of his youth. The dearest of these dreams and
ideals was his wish, "All beings shall be divine to me" and "All days
shall be holy to me" (2, 111). Evidently in his youth, he had an ardent
longing to see all things as divine and holy. But the death of God has
extinguished the sense of divinity and sanctity, thereby producing the
secular culture. Revolting against its degrading values, he launched his
ambitious campaign to spiritualize the secular culture in the Prologue.
Now he realizes that the sense of divinity and sanctity has been dissolved
in his own life. But the lost dreams of his youth are still his dearest
possessions. Without their redemption, his life would be as cheap as the
secular culture. When he introduced his notion of redemption in "Upon
the Blessed Isles", he described it as the liberation of feeling from the
prison of its suffering. Since the prison of suffering was situated in the
present, his project of redemption appeared to be focused on the present.
But he now finds that the present suffering contains the despair over the
lost dreams of the past. For the first time in his career, he recognizes the
need to redeem the past rather than the future. But what does it mean to
redeem the past? He will not face this strange question until "On
Redemption". For the moment, his salutation to his will ("Hail to thee,
my will!") at the end of "The Tomb Song" turns into his further
exposition on the will to power in "On Self-Overcoming".

Life and the Will to Power (Part 1.12-17)

The discourse in "On Self-Overcoming" goes through two stages. First,

Zarathustra talks to "the wisest" and then he recounts his lesson from
Life on the will to power. The wisest are supposedly working for the
truth. But he tells them that their will to truth is their will to power in
 The Suffering Soul 189

disguise. This really means that everything we do is the expression of the

will to power. Zarathustra then recounts what he has learned by his own
observation, which boils down to three basic principles of all life. First,
whatever lives, obeys. Second, he who cannot obey himself is
commanded. Third, commanding is harder than obeying because
commanding takes many experiments and hazards. Everyone wants to be
master and commander even at the risk of life. But the weak cannot
overpower the strong. Therefore the weak are persuaded to serve the
strong by their own will to power. But even the weak assert their own
mastery if they meet someone even weaker. No one would renounce the
pleasure of ruling over someone. When the weak cannot openly attain
mastery, they will steal the power from the strong by worming
themselves into their hearts. Whether one conquers the weaker' or
submits to the stronger, one expresses the will to power. Even when
people make sacrifices or cast amorous glances, they are manifesting the
same will to power. The will to life or survival is not the ultimate
principle of existence. Even life is sacrificed by the will to power. But
the will to power involves great hazard because it is the chancy game of
dice to the death even for the strongest.
This is the gist of Zarathustra's talk to the wisest. He tells them that
he has learned this ultimate truth about all living beings by crawling into
the very heart of life. Then he relates his secret talk with Life. Life says
to him in confidence, "I am that which must overcome itself' (2, 115).
The will to power manifests itself as the basic force of Life to overcome
itself perpetually. The will to power for Life is different from the will to
power that Zarathustra attributed to individuals. The former is the cosmic
will to power; the latter is the individual will to power. He has never
talked ,about the cosmic will to power before. Even the will to power he
attributes to ancient peoples in "On the Thousand and One Goals" is not
cosmic but localized in some groups of people. So is the will to power
for the wisest. Life explains the relation of their individual will to power
to hers: "And you too, lover of knowledge, are only a path and footprint
of my will; verily my will to power walks also on the heels of your will
to truth" (2, 115). Individuals and groups of individuals are the agents for
the cosmic will to power. Probably to stress the impersonal character of
the cosmic will to power, Life is referred to as "It" in this discourse,
whereas Life was personified as a woman in "The Dancing Song". The
190 Chapter Six

cosmic will to power cannot operate the same way as the individual will
to power. The perpetual struggle between the contending parties, which
is unavoidable for the individual will to power, is unnecessary for the
cosmic will to power because there is no one to contest it. Therefore,
Life must contest and struggle against itself. Life makes this point:
"Whatever I create and however much I love it-soon I must oppose it
and my love; thus my will wills it" (2, 115).
The game of Life as a perpetual struggle of its will to power to
overcome itself is a poetic image of Spinoza's conception of Nature. We
have seen its poetic representation in Faust, namely, the pervasive power
of the Earth Spirit and the perpetual upheaval of the primal energy. The
game of power is the breeding ground for all the feelings of revenge and
suffering. The ultimate agent for this game is not the contending
individual wills, but Life and her cosmic will to power. Every individual
is only her instrument. In "On the Thousand and One Goals", Zarathustra
attributed the creation of values to the individual will to power. Now he
attributes it to Life and its cosmic will to power. By clarifying this link
between the individual and the cosmic creator of values, he claims to
have solved the riddle in the heart of the wisest. He says that all values
are transitory because they are constantly created and destroyed in the
perpetual process of Life's self-overcoming. He compares the violent act
of creation to the breaking of an eggshell for the creation of a new
chicken. One should never be distressed over the destruction of the past,
but joyfully accept it as the sign of new creation. If this is the truth about
Life, it should provide consolation for Zarathustra's painful mourning
over his broken dreams. He can look upon those dead dreams of his
youth as the broken eggshells for the creation of new values. There is no
point in, pining over the lost dreams of the past, if the creation of new
ideals always requires the destruction of old dreams. His suffering
belongs to the painful process of Life and her perpetual struggle to
overcome herself by destroying old values and creating new ones.
The present section began with the will to truth. The reduction of the
will to truth to the will to power may give the impression that the power
of the will alone counts in the creation of truth. This view will be
critiqued in the next section ("On Those Who Are Sublime"). Zarathustra
ridicules the sportive monsters called the sublime. He describes one of
them as follows. With a swelled chest, the sublime one stands there in
 The Suffering Soul 191

tom garments, decked out with ugly truths, the spoil of his hunting. He
was hunting in the woods of knowledge and came home from a fight
with savage beasts. But he looks terribly repulsive because he is himself
a savage beast. Zarathustra says that he must discard his heroic will and
become the will-less one. Only then can he become beautiful. To be
powerful is not enough. Zarathustra says, "But just for the hero the
beautiful is the most difficult thing" (Z, 118). He adds that no violent will
can attain the beautiful by exertion. These remarks should be taken as his
refinement on his discourse on the will to power, which may have given
the impression that power is everything and that the heroic will is the
best. But power is not everything; it should become beautiful.
Who then is the sublime one? He must be one of the wisest, to whom
Zarathustra addressed his discourse on the will to power in the last
section. The sublime one was hunting in the woods of knowledge. The
wisest are probably the Stoic sages. The sublime one is called "an ascetic
of the spirit." The critique of the sublime one is readily applicable to the
Stoic ideal of self-mastery Zarathustra advocated in the past. His ridicule
of the sublime one is highly self-reflective. He shows it by the opening
sentence of this section: "Still is the bottom of my sea: who would guess
that it harbors sportive monsters?" (Z, 116). The important phrase is "my
sea": the sublime monsters are at "the bottom of my sea." This is to say
that they are his own monsters. The combative posture of the sublime
one is hardly distinguishable from that of the warrior he praised in "On
War and Warriors" of Part I. But he now finds it repulsive as a matter of
taste. The combative posture of a tiger is no longer sufficient for him. In
describing the battle of the sublime one, he says, "He subdued monsters,
solved riddles: but he must still redeem his own monsters and riddles,
changing them into heavenly children" (2, 118). This passage is also
self-reflexive. In the last section, he claimed to have solved the riddle in
the heart of the wisest. But that does not mean that he has redeemed his
own monsters. He is still engaged in a fierce battle with his own
monsters and repressing them with his heroic will. Only by changing
those monsters into heavenly children, can he "stand with relaxed
muscles and unharnessed will." Only then can he become gracious and
beautiful. But this is the most difficult task for the sublime one.
In his critique of the sublime ones, he is reviewing and revising the
Stoic ideal that he had advocated for the mastery of passions. He is now
192 Chapter Six

convinced that power alone is not enough because it is ugly. But he is

still contemptuous of the weaklings and respectful toward the sublime
ones. While the latter have nothing but power, the former have no power
at all. In the next few sections, he will critique the will of the weak lest
their will be mistaken for the will of a child, which he set up as a model
for the sublime to emulate. His first target is the cultured people in "On
the Land of Education." They accumulate many different cultures and
make themselves into a glittering patchwork. This mixture of cultures
makes it impossible to have beliefs, which leads to sterility, the opposite
of creativity. They have no culture of their own; they have only the
"paintings of all that men have ever believed" (Z, 120). The cultured
people are the opposite of the sublime ones. In the previou~ section,
Zarathustra compared the sublime ones with the weaklings. In the
present section, he calls the cultured people the little females. Whereas
the sublime ones are too strong and too stiff, the cultured people are too
weak and too effeminate. Their weakness arises from their lack of faith.
In their land of patchworks of beliefs, Zarathustra feels totally homeless.
In "On Immaculate Perception", he ridicules knowledge divorced from
passion. In "On Scholars", he exposes the pathetic condition of scholars,
who croak like frogs. They keep repeating their tiresome stories and
rehashing the same old ideas.
In "On Poets", Zarathustra finally brings his discourse on knowledge
and belief to bear upon the poets. His charges against the poets are
merciless. They are blatant liars. They pretend to have special secret
access to knowledge and flaunt their sentiments as special inspirations
from nature. They know so little that they are covetous of the old wives'
tales. That is what is called the Eternal Feminine. This is his gibe against
the Eternal Feminine in the conclusion of Faust. The most serious charge
against the poets is their shallowness. Their thoughts never penetrate
deep enough to touch the bottom. For Zarathustra, the deep reality is the
world of bodies, the physical world, while the spiritual world is a poetic
fiction. This point was already asserted in "On the Despisers of the
Body" of Part I. It is reaffirmed in the opening of the present section,
where he starts talking about the relation of the body and the spirit. Since
he has come to know the body better, he says, the spirit appears to be
only a parable. The poets cannot speak the truth, he says, because they
know nothing about physical reality. But they cover up their ignorance
 The Suffering Soul 193

by making up parables about unreality such as gods and supermen. What

is remarkable about these charges against the poets is his refusal to hold
himself above them. Admitting that he is one of the poets, he delivers
these charges in the name of "we the poets." He does not exempt himself
from his own ridicule of dubious poetic fabrications. He admits that the
superman is as fictitious as the old God, but ends his talk by noting that
some poets have become weary and highly critical of themselves. He can
already see the emergence of their penitent spirit.

Descent to the Abyss (Part 11.18-19)

Who are the poets of penitence? Zarathustra is one of them. He is talking

about his own penitence. His own poetry has been as shallow as any
other poetry. His ideal of superman is not deeper than any other poetic
ideals. They do not even scratch the surface of true reality. He is willing
to amend his shallowness and deepen his poetic insight by descending
into the physical world. For all his harsh critique of poets, he repudiates
only shallow poetry. He wants a truly deep poetry, deep enough to plumb
the Abyss of reality. He can have such poetry only by descending to the
Abyss. One day, he indeed makes the descent through the fire-spewing
mountain. But he comes back on the fifth day and describes his
underground discovery as follows. The earth has a skin, which has two
diseases. One of them is man and the other is the fire hound of the fire-
spewing mountain. The fire hound and his devils are social
revolutionaries, whose vociferous speeches are mendacious and
superficial. Nothing really important takes place in their ostensibly big
shows. He finally tells the fire hound about the golden fire hound that
exhales golden rain and golden laughter from the heart of the earth,
which is made of gold. The golden heart of the earth is the Abyss, the
abode of Life. This is indicated by gold and laughter, two special
attributes of Life. In "The Other Dancing Song", Zarathustra will see
gold blinking in the eyes of Life. The laughter that the golden fire hound
takes from the heart of the earth is the same laughter that came from Life
in "The Dancing Song". Gold is the emblem of Life. The golden center
. of earth is the ultimate source of Nature's primal energy, even for the
golden radiation of the sun, just as it is in Faust (Part Two, Act 1).
194 Chapter Six

"The Soothsayer" opens with the Soothsayer's gloomy talk. The

whole earth is cursed. The harvests are poisoned, the wells have dried up,
and the soil cracks. The people have become too weary to die; they are
walking and living in tombs. Moved by this speech, Zarathustra can
neither eat nor drink for three days and then falls into a deep sleep and a
nightmare, in which he turns his back on all life. He becomes a night
watclunan and a guardian of tombs upon the lonely mountain castle of
death, where he sees the triumph of death over life in the musty vaults.
Death permeates everything he sees and smells. When he tries to open
the gate, it does not budge an inch. But a roaring wind tears its wings
apart and casts up a black coffin before him. Then the coffin bursts open
and spews out a thousand peals of laughter, which mocks and throws him
to the ground. This horrible moment wakes him out of his nightmare. But
he does not know how to interpret this dream of Gothic horrors. His most
beloved disciple offers the following interpretation. Zarathustra is the
roaring wind that tears open the gates of the castle of death. He is also
the coffin full of mocking laughter. With the power of his laughter, he
can frighten all the night watclunen and guardians of tombs. He will
frighten and prostrate them with his laughter. This is the sign of his
triumph over death. Understandably, the disciple would like to see his
teacher as the triumphant hero over death. But his interpretation
completely distorts the dream, and Zarathustra takes a long look at him
and shakes his head.
For our understanding of the dream, we should separate it from the
Soothsayer's talk. The Soothsayer is usually taken as a Schopenhauerian
pessimist. This is justified by his gloomy talk. But the nightmare does
not depict a Schopenhauerian world. Death has smothered every spark of
life in the castle of death. This dead world is not a Schopenhauerian
world, a cauldron of living and suffering. The castle of death, I propose,
is the outcome of scientific reduction. By the metaphor of descent, as we
will see in chapter 9, Zarathustra means the scientific reduction of the
physical world. Scientific reduction reduces all living things to dead
matter. Living things are only the surface phenomena of dead matter.
Life is only an illusion and a surface phenomenon. Scientific reduction
kills not only God, but all living things. This dead world is the dungeon
of death, which encounters Zarathustra in his nightmare. His descent to
the dungeon of death resembles Faust's descent to the underworld of the
 The Suffering Soul 195

Mothers, which Mephistopheles describes as the everlasting void

containing only Nothing (Faust 6246-56). When Faust descends there, he
finds it totally devoid of life. Although nothing lives there, the moving
forms of life swarm around in the eternal mode (Faust 6429-32). The
eternal void full of the moving forms of life becomes Zarathustra's
dungeon of death that explodes with force of life. This explosion blows
apart his misconception that the world is made of dead matter and
revives his faith in Life's teaching that she is the eternal fountain of
universal living force. What initially appeared to be the castle of death
turns out to be his momentary pessimistic delusion induced by reductive
materialism. Though the material world appears to be dead, it is charged
with the inexhaustible forces of life. This point has already been made by
Life in her secret instruction to Zarathustra in "On Self-Overcoming".
We noted that Life's description of itself as the perpetual will to
power was a poetic parable of Spinoza's conception of Nature as the
infinite substance. Spinoza's Nature is neither powerless nor lifeless
because power is its essence. The exploding laughter in the castle of
death reaffirms Zarathustra's faith in the will to power as the ultimate
force of Nature. He invites the Soothsayer to a hearty meal as atonement
for his terrible dream. He has repeatedly said that pessimistic feelings are
generated by a weary body. In that case, there can be no quicker remedy
for his and the Soothsayer's weariness than a hearty meal. Now that he
has returned from the dream world, he will visit the real world in "On
Redemption", which opens with his encounter with the cripples and
beggars. They are the real people and the real victims of suffering in the
real world. This transition from the dream world to the real world is
indicated by the great bridge that he crosses before running into the
cripples and beggars in "On Redemption".

The Will and the Past (Part 11.20)

A representative of these victims of misfortune, a hunchback, challenges

Zarathustra to heal the cripples. After declining the request, he turns to
his disciples and begins to talk in profound dismay on the crippled
condition of humanity. All human beings are only fragments and
dreadful accidents, which are scattered like the ruins of a battlefield or
196 Chapter Six

butcher-field. The important word is 'accidents'. The accident is an event

that happens against the will. In the closing section of Part I, Zarathustra
casually referred to the giant of accident and treated it in abstraction.
Now he sees accidents everywhere. They shatter human existence to
fragments. Redemption is to bring the fragments into a meaningful whole.
This is the fIrst formula of redemption, which Zarathustra first assigns to
himself and then to any human being who can be a poet or creator. Then
he gives the second formula of redemption: "To redeem those who lived
in the past and to transform every 'it was' into 'thus I willed it-that
alone should I call redemption" (2, 139). This formula locates the object
of redemption in the past. The first formula does not even mention the
past; it is situated in the present for the future. The fragments to be
redeemed belong to the present for future use, and to redeem them is to
create something by composing them into one. In the second formula,
redemption is the transformation of the past. To redeem the past is to
transform every "it was" into "thus I willed it." "Thus I willed it" also
belongs to the past as much as "it was." But the notion of transforming
the past by the will of the past makes no sense because the will of the
past can no longer be exercised. The very idea of redeeming the past
makes no sense, either, because the past cannot be called back and
reshaped. Although this idea is truly strange, it has been foreshadowed
by "The Tomb Song", in which Zarathustra mournfully talked about
redeeming the dead dreams and ideals of his youth.
How can the will work on the past and redeem it? Zarathustra tells
his disciples that he has already taught them that the will is the liberator
and joy-bringer. Now he tells them that the will is also a prisoner. This is
clearly a new lesson for his disciples. In "On the Blessed Isles", he said
that his will comes to him as his liberator and joy-bringer, although his
feelings are always in prison. We raised the question of how his will can
be a liberator if his feeling is a prisoner. He now admits that the will is
also trapped in the prison of the past. Because the will is totally
powerless against the past, he says, "it was" is called the will's gnashing
of teeth and its loneliest agony. The will becomes angry against the past
because the past is the stone it cannot move. The will cannot will
backward because it has no control over the past. Then, how can the will
cope with the past? He says that it tries to redeem itself in a foolish way
because every prisoner becomes a fool. The liberator becomes a
 The Suffering Soul 197

malefactor, who wreaks revenge on time and the past. This folly acquires
spirit, thereby becoming the spirit of revenge. In "On the Tarantulas", he
talked about the sense of revenge, which cried for redemption. Now he
locates the ultimate source of revenge in the rage against the past and
time. The tarantula's revenge is the repressed envy and anger of the weak
against the strong. But the past is the ultimate cause that has produced
the difference between the weak and the strong. Therefore, the ultimate
object of revenge is the past.
The two formulas of redemption have two different orientations. The
first formula is future-oriented; the second formula is past-oriented.
These two formulas dictate two different forms of the will, the forward-
looking will and the backward-looking will. By its nature, the will is
future-oriented. The will works in the present for the future. In Part I,
Zarathustra advocated the creative will as the preparation for the advent
of the superman. The first formula of redemption comes right out of his
teaching in Part I. But the second formula arises from the theme of
suffering and redemption he has been developing in Part II. With the
novel notion of transforming the past, the will has to be reoriented from
the future to the past. It has to work on the past rather than on the future.
Since to transform the past is an impossible task, it only provokes
revenge against the past that can never be undone. He enumerates some
of the crazy doctrines produced by this revenge against the past, for
example, that suffering is a punishment, or that everything in time passes
away and perishes as a punishment, or that all things are ordered morally
according to justice and punishment. Then he revises the second formula
of redemption by replacing "thus I willed it [the past]" with "thus I will
it." This is the third and final formula. This is to will the past as it was.
But the idea of willing the past is not easy to understand. In our normal
understanding, the will is situated in the present and works for the future.
Because the past is beyond our control, we never think of using our will
to work on the past. But Zarathustra is now recommending the past-
oriented will, the idea of willing backward. This novel recommendation
seems to defy our basic understanding of the will. Fully aware of this
difficulty, he asks, "But has the will yet spoken thus? And when will that
happen?" (2, 141). Evidently, it has not yet happened. Perhaps nobody
knows when and how it can ever happen because nobody has even
thought of it. He suddenly stops talking and looks extremely terrified. He
198 Chapter Six

gazes upon his disciples and tries to pierce their thoughts and the
thoughts behind their thoughts. Thus the talk, which began with profound
dismay, ends with profound terror.
Let us now try to understand the three formulas of redemption. The
first formula is to create something from the fragments by composing
them into a meaningful whole. Let us call it the creation formula, which
has been well elaborated by Alexander Nehamas. He says, "By creating,
on the basis of the past, an acceptable future, we justify and redeem
everything that made this future possible; and that is everything"
(Nietzsche, 160). He assumes that redemption and justification are the
same thing. But they are different. The scheme of justification operates
in the context of means and ends: the ends can justify the means. This is
what Nehamas has in mind, when he says, "In particular, the significance
of the past lies in its relationship to the future. And since the future is yet
to come, neither the significance of the past nor its nature is yet settled"
(Nietzsche, 160-61). To redeem the past is to use it for the future. This is
the instrumental view of the past and its redemption. Let us now compare
it with the non-instrumental view. Suppose that you have done
something terrible in the past, for example, you killed your brother to
monopolize the inheritance from your parents. Now you earnestly wish
to redeem this horrible past and use your terrible experience to reform
yourself and generously help millions of poor people. In that case, are
you redeeming your terrible deed by this new creative act? You may say
that there is no way to redeem your past murderous act by performing
any later creative act, regardless of the magnitude of its beneficence,
because the instrumental use of the past is not its redemption.
The second formula makes no sense, as we noted earlier. The third
formula is to will the past as it was. This is the acceptance formula,
which will be endorsed by Zarathustra in Part III. But there appears to be
nothing creative in accepting the past, although he calls upon the creative
will for this task. You may assume that the will is not a prisoner but a
creative agent at least in the act of willing the past. But the act of willing
the past is also determined by the past. If the will is the prisoner of the
past, it should also be the prisoner of the present because the present is
the product of the past. If it can have no control over the present, it can
have no control over the future, either, because the future is determined
by the present and the past. The will is so tightly imprisoned in the past,
 The Suffering Soul 199

the present, and the future that it can have no freedom and no creative
power under any circumstances. Many commentators have noted that
Zarathustra's teaching on the creative will is destroyed by his doctrine of
eternal recurrence. But the creative will is already eliminated by the
causal power of the past in "On Redemption". This is what terrifies
Zarathustra at the end of his talk.
The creative will is normally understood to have the power and
freedom in the present for the future. In this normal understanding, the
will looks forward. It is future-oriented. This normal understanding is
incompatible with Zarathustra's view. For him, the only way to gain
control over the present and be creative for the future is to establish
control over the past by willing it because the past determines the present
and the future. So he tells his disciples to will the past. The will must
look backward toward the past. The backward willing is so contrary to
our normal understanding of the will that even Zarathustra may not know
how to do it. So he says, "Who could teach the will also to will
backwards?" Thus he has created the collision between two conceptions
of the will, one forward-looking and the other backward-looking. He has
given a long discourse on redemption only to find himself in this terrible
collision. But this collision did not pop up suddenly in the discourse on
redemption. On the contrary, it has been building up over a long period.
In Part I, he had preached on the importance of forward-looking will for
the sake of the superman. Then in Part II, he extensively developed the
notion of backward-willing in connection with the problem of suffering
and redemption. In "On Redemption", he finally brings them to an open
collision, in which the backward-looking will completely overpowers the
forward-looking will.
The two wills are not two separate entities, but two ways of looking
at one and the same will. The will looks forward in contemplating its
future action. The will is the cause of its action. This is the forward-
looking will. It is the will of foresight. But the same will can also be
regarded as an effect of past causes. This is the backward-looking will. It
looks backward to its causes. It is the will of hindsight. The forward-
looking will may feel free, but it may tum out to be determined when its
causal conditions are examined retrospectively. This simple idea of
determinism is the terrifying thought that erupted in his discourse on
redemption. It destroys the foundation for his teaching on the creation of
200 Chapter Six

values and the superman. But he does not want to express his terrifying
thought to the disciples because he has already driven himself into deep
waters by his injudicious babbling. So he keeps it only in his inner
speech with himself. Sensing this inner dialogue of terror, the hunchback
asks, "But why does Zarathustra speak otherwise to his pupils than to
himself?" But he refuses to answer this question.
Zarathustra's terrifying thought cannot be a total surprise to him or
his audience. In "On Self-Overcoming", he was fully instructed by Life
on her will to power as the cosmic principle governing the entire physical
world. She told him that the contending individual wills were not the
ultimate agents for the perpetual game of power and that individual wills
were only the path and footprints of her will to power. In a world that is
governed by her almighty will, individual wills can never have their
autonomy. In that case, the individual will can never have the power of
redemption because it should be treated as just another accident or
fragment. In "On Redemption", Zarathustra is only explicating Life's
bald description of her awesome cosmic power in terms of causal
determination. In "On Self-Overcoming", she told him that she was the
will to power that sustained the whole world. He is now saying that the
whole world is a network of causal determination. From these two
propositions, we can deduce that the universal causal determination is the
manifestation of Life's will to power. Therefore, the individual will is
totally vanquished by Life's overflowing will to power. In Part II, he
functions as the advocate for the teaching of Life, whereas he was the
advocate for his own teaching in Part I. He proclaimed and advocated the
superman on his own authority, that is, without invoking any other
authorities. To put it another way, he was a teacher, pure and simple, in
Part I. But he becomes a learner in Part II. He learns from Life and from
his suffering, which comes from Life. He no longer relies on his own
authority, but appeals to the higher authority of Life and her teaching.

The Collision of Two Wills (sees. 21-22)

Collision of the two wills is the keynote that opens "On Human
Prudence": "Not the height but the precipice is terrible. That precipice
where the glance plunges down and the hand reaches up. There the heart
 The Suffering Soul 201

becomes giddy confronted with its double will. Alas, friends, can you
guess what is my heart's double will?" (Z, 142). Zarathustra now
describes the two wills as upward and downward. The upward-pulling
will is his longing for the superman; the downward-pulling will is his
attachment to humankind. The former draws him up to the height; the
latter pulls him down to the depth. He is still struggling with the conflict
of the twofold will. If human beings are caught in the conflict between
these two wills, one may think, they can resolve the conflict by
relinquishing one of them. But Zarathustra says that it is impossible to
relinquish either. You cannot dismiss the heteronomous will because we
are trapped in it. Nor can you dismiss the autonomous will. Even if you
subscribe to determinism and believe that your will is already determined
by your past, you must still make your decisions as though you had free
will. Although the past has determined your will, it does not tell you
what you should do. Therefore, you cannot avoid the existential problem
of making your decisions and exercising your will. The autonomous will
is as ineliminable as the heteronomous will. Zarathustra prescribes a few
prudential virtues for living with their perpetual conflict.
In "The Stillest Hour", Zarathustra recounts the strange talk he had
with an awesome lady in a dream. Her name is My Stillest Hour and he
had a talk with her. He recounts the talk as follows. Speaking in a
voiceless voice, she chastises him for not saying "it." This whisper
makes him cry out for terror. He defiantly replies, "Yes, I know it, but I
do not want to say it." But it is never explained even to the end of their
talk what it is that he knows and does not want to say. When she tells
him not to hide in his defiance, he begs her to release him from this task
because it is beyond his power. But she tells him to speak his word and
break. He replies, "Alas, is it my word? Who am I? I await the worthier
one; I am not worthy even of being broken by it" (2, 146). Then he
defends himself by saying that he lacks the lion's commanding voice to
say the unspeakable "it." She counters it by saying that he cannot do it
because the pride of youth is still upon him. She counsels him to become
like a child by overcoming his youth. After reflecting on this advice and
trembling for a long time, he says, "I do not want to." Then he is
surrounded by laughter, which tears up his entrails and slits open his
heart. The voiceless voice makes its final statement: "0 Zarathustra, your
fruit is ripe, but you are not ripe for your fruit. Thus you must return to
202 Chapter Six

your solitude again; for you must yet become mellow" (Z, 147). Then it
laughs again and vanishes and everything around him becomes quiet
with a twofold stillness. He lies on the ground and sweat pours from his
limbs. This is a summary of the story Zarathustra tells his disciples to
explain why he has to leave them and return to his solitude.
What is the mysterious "it" that Zarathustra does not want to speak?
Walter Kaufmann identifies it with the doctrine of eternal recurrence (Z,
82). As Kathleen Higgins points out, this is not a convincing account
because it stands on the assumption that the doctrine is already
formulated in Zarathustra's mind (Nietzsche's Zarathustra, 140). But
there is no such indication in the text. The unspeakable "it" is obviously
the one thing that even the talkative Zarathustra could not bring himself
to discuss in "On Redemption", namely, the conflict of the twofold will
and the horror of determinism. It was so terrifying that he had to stop
talking. Even the hunchback suspected that he was holding it back from
his audience. Though he evaded the hunchback's probing questions, he
cannot elude the awesome lady of "The Stillest Hour". Who is this
voiceless lady called The Stillest Hour? She is the lady of night. She is
Life. She had already appeared as the lady who came to his rescue in
"The Dancing Song". This episode explains why she now talks to him in
"The Stillest Hour" not as a stranger, but as someone who has already
secured her lordship over him. There is no other lady who fits this role
except for Life. He became her liege man when she saved him from
drowning by fishing him out of deep waters with her golden fishing rod.
His encounter with Life in "The Stillest Hour" should be understood as a
continuation of his journey down into deep reality, which he began in
"On Great Events". It takes place in a dream of descent to the Abyss. At
the onset of this dream, he feels the ground giving under him and he is
frightened down to his very toes. In this descent, he encounters her as the
queen of the Abyss, the groundless ground of the physical world. When
she vanishes, she leaves behind a twofold stillness. The stillness that
follows is called the twofold stillness because it is the silence over the
terror of the twofold will.
Zarathustra's encounter with the awesome lady resembles Goethe's
encounter with his own nameless lady, which is narrated in his poem
"Dedication". One bright morning, while he is climbing a mountain, a
godlike woman appears out of the mist and floats before him. In a soft
 The Suffering Soul 203

voice of love, she says to him, "Do you not know me? Do you not
recognize the one who often gave you healing balm when you were
wounded sorest?" These are the sort of questions that the voiceless
awesome lady can put to Zarathustra, if she is Life. Although Goethe
refuses to name his lady, he tells her that he knows her by many names.
Zarathustra can say the same thing to Life. In "The Dancing Song", she
told him that men had given her many different names, such as
'profound', 'faithful', 'eternal', 'mysterious', and even 'unfathomable'.
Goethe tells his lady that he has lost many friends in his wandering and
that he now knows only her and no one else. Then she smiles and says,
"Scarcely are you free from the crudest delusion, / Scarcely have you
mastered the most childish will, / Yet you believe you are already good
enough to be superman." Goethe is being chided for taking himself to be
a superman even before mastering the most childish will. On the other
hand, paradoxically, Zarathustra is being urged to become like a child.
Then Goethe's lady tells him: "How much difference is there between
you and others? / Know yourself and live with the world in peace." He is
accused of pretending to be different from others in his superhuman
posture. That is his "crudest delusion." She is urging him to discard this
delusion and pretension and live with the world in peace. Zarathustra has
also been playing his game of delusion and pretension by posing himself
as a superman and a lion. To be free of this game is to become a child.
If the awesome lady is Life, why then does she refuse to reveal her
identity? She is playing a game of concealment in response to the game
of masks Zarathustra has been playing with her. Part II opened with his
mirror image wearing a devil' s mask. He hides himself behind his masks
to protect his self-image. This is obvious in the beloved disciple's
response to his nightmare in "The Soothsayer". He reveres Zarathustra as
the master of life over death by takirig him as the roaring wind that tears
open the gates of the castle of death and as the coffin full of mocking
laughter. This is the disciple's understanding of the master in accordance
with his mask of superhuman mastery. But this mask does not simply
mislead others. It also misleads the master himself. It is this mask of self-
sufficiency and super-mastery that has led to his devastating agony of
isolation and loneliness in "The Night Song". Hence the mask alienates
himself from others and even from himself. This is the most ravaging
effect of masks. When his autonomous will is shattered under the
204 Chapter Six

crushing weight of the past, he cannot reveal his frightening discovery

again because of his mask. An open confession of this discovery would
expose what lies behind his superhuman mask. So he creates a mask of
silence to protect his mask of mastery. As one lie leads to another, one
mask dictates the fabrication of another.
In Part II, Zarathustra is so obsessed with his own mask that he can
see nothing but masks wherever he looks. In "On Priests", he says that
the humility of priests is only a mask for their vengefulness. The so-
called virtue is only a mask of the virtuous for the secrets of their heart,
which are written in the filthy words of the cosmic paymaster. The ideal
of equality is only a mask for the tarantula's envy and revenge. The
famous wise men only wear the mask of wisdom and spirit. The ugly
combative posture of those who are sublime is their mask to hide the
beast and monster still unconquered in their heart. The cultured people
hide themselves behind their mask of patched cultures. The pursuit of
immaculate knowledge is only a mask of purity for the lecherous heart.
The fire hound hides its shallowness behind the mask of big noises. The
poets are the masters of making and wearing masks. They wear the
pompous masks of inspiration and create the masks of gods and the
superman, The castle of death is a mask that hides the exhaustible power
of life. In this case, a mask appears to be generated by illusion and
ignorance. But this is not an exception to the rule. Masks are always
generated from illusion and ignorance and lead to deception and
manipulation. Zarathustra's mask of superman was generated from his
illusion of human capacity and his ignorance of the world that governs
his own will. His game of masks resembles the Masquerade in Act 1,
Part Two of Faust, where masks are used to distort and disguise reality.
But they get burned like the Emperor when reality explodes in fire. By
wearing a mask, the Emperor plays the great Pan in the Masquerade.
Likewise, Zarathustra has been playing the superman by wearing a mask.
By taking off his mask, he will see that he is no different from others.
Goethe's nameless lady said, "How much difference is there between
you and others? / Know yourself and live with the world in peace."
Zarathustra also has yet to accept the fact that he is no different from
other mortals. This is the big problem of self-knowledge that has
tormented him in Part II.
 The Suffering Soul 205

In Part I, Zarathustra came down from his mountain cave to teach

others; in Part II, he began to understand his own existence, especially
the mystery of human will. When he advocated the superman in Part I,
his conception of human existence was one-dimensional. In Part II, he
has learned that it has two dimensions. The two-dimensional view has
led to his game of masks. The one-dimensional person wears no mask.
The will is not only projected to the future, but also determined by the
past. It can look not only forward and upward, but also backward and
downward. The forward-looking will is assumed to be autonomous; the
backward-looking will is known to be heteronomous. The autonomous
will belongs to an individual; the heteronomous will belongs to Life,
Mother Nature. Hence the former is overpowered by the latter. The
autonomous will becomes Faustian when it reaches the superhuman level,
as exemplified by the will of Goethe's Faust. The heteronomous will is
Spinozan. It is based on Spinoza's teaching that our will is determined by
cosmic necessity. In Part I, Zarathustra flaunted his Faustian will for his
campaign of spiritualization, but it is shattered in Part II. His campaign
of spiritualization must shift from the Faustian to the Spinozan mode. He
conducted the Faustian campaign with his own Wisdom, but he has to
rely on Life for the Spinozan campaign. Thus Wisdom is replaced by
Life in Part II. Wisdom vanishes without any formal notice, never to be
seen again to the end of his spiritual campaign. Hence his encounter with
Life turns out to be the most critical event in his epic journey. She has
reoriented his attention from others to himself by starkly posing the
critical problem of his self-knowledge. He will continue to struggle with
this problem in Part III by exploring the mystery of his twofold will and
its relation to Mother Nature.
 Chapter Seven

The Twofold Self

(Zarathustra, Part Three)

The problem of the twofold will, which terrified Zarathustra by the end
of Part II, will be the central theme in Part III. Before investigating the
nature of the will, he will first investigate the nature of the universe. For
this joint investigation, he becomes a wanderer ("The Wanderer") and
the problem of accident becomes his first consideration. This problem
has led to the problem of suffering and redemption, which in tum broke
wide open the problem of the twofold will in Part II. Now he presents a
completely different account of accidents.

The time is gone when mere accidents could still happen to

me; and what could still come to me now that was not mine al-
ready? What returns, what finally comes home to me, is my
own self and what of myself has long been in strange lands
and scattered among all things and accidents. (Z, 152)

The accidents can no longer happen to him because whatever happens

already belongs to him. All events that come upon him are only coming
home after being scattered in strange lands. They are mistaken for acci-
dents because they are assumed to belong to alien forces. But they are of
his own self. This is a fantastic view of the self.
Just imagine that you are hit by a terrorist bomb. If you accept this
fantastic view, you have to say that getting hit by the bomb is not an ac-
cident because it is an essential feature of your self. Since it came from
the terrorists, you have to say that even the terrorists also belong to your
self. Eventually you have to say that everything happening in the whole
world is an essential feature of your self. Your selfhood becomes coex-
 The Twofold Self 207

tensive with the whole universe. This is Zarathustra's notion of his cos-
mic self. To explore the nature of his cosmic self, he has to wander all
over the world. In fact, he already began it in his descent to the Abyss in
Part II. In Part III, he will reverse his course of wandering and begin his
ascent to the highest peak. He says that his descent and his ascent are
inseparable. Just as the highest mountains come out of the sea, he says,
"It is out of the deepest depth that the highest must come to its height" (Z,
154). The union of ascent and descent will be explored along with the
relationship between the individual self and the cosmic self in Part III.

The Eternal Universe (Part 111.2-4)

In "On the Vision and the Riddle", Zarathustra relates his vision of the
eternal recurrence as a riddle to the sailors on a ship. The vision consists
of two scenes: the gateway scene and the shepherd scene. The gateway
scene is given first. In the deadly pallor of dusk, he was climbing a
gloomy mountain with a dwarf, the spirit of gravity, on his shoulder.
When the dwarf jumps off his shoulder and crouches on a stone before
him, there appears the gateway called the Moment with two time lines.
One of them stretches eternally to the future and the other eternally to the
past. He describes the two time lines in a strange language: "They con-
tradict each other; they strike against each other." But it makes no sense
to say that past and future strike against each other, because it goes
against our normal conception of time as a continuous flow through the
present moment. We can make a better sense of the collision of past and
future at the Moment by associating the past and the future with the two
modes of the will. The future-oriented will and the past-oriented will do
collide at the gateway of the Moment. The collision of these two wills
was stressed by the end of Part II. Thus the theme of the twofold will is
sustained in the vision of eternal recurrence.
Zarathustra then asks the dwarf whether the two time lines would
always run in the opposite directions. The dwarf murmurs contemptu-
ously that all that is straight lies, that all truth is crooked, and that time
itself is a circle. This is the circular view of time. It is important to note
that this view of time is first announced not by Zarathustra, but by the
dwarf. Zarathustra rebukes the dwarf for making things too easy for him-
208 Chapter Seven

self. He is clearly annoyed with the dwarfs nonchalance in handling his

difficult question. Then he poses a series of questions that elevate the
dwarfs circular view of time to the doctrine of eternal recurrence. By the
time he says "eternally return," he suddenly becomes afraid of his own
thoughts and the thoughts behind his thoughts. This sudden feeling of
terror clearly echoes back to the terror he had experienced when he was
frightened -by his own thought in "On Redemption" of Part II and tried to
pierce the thoughts of his disciples and the thoughts behind their
thoughts. This was the fear of determinism that paralyzes the autono-
mous will. The vision of eternal recurrence has the same devastating im-
pact on the autonomous will. It is so frightful that he cannot bear it. The
gateway scene is then replaced by the shepherd scene, which is even
more frightful. A young shepherd is being choked by a black snake that
has crawled into his throat. Zarathustra has never seen so much nausea
and dread on one face and screams to the shepherd to bite off its head.
When the shepherd bites it off, he jumps up with a superhuman laughter.
This is his vision of eternal recurrence. In his talk to the sailors,
Zarathustra called it a riddle because it is the riddle of the universe. This
riddle has already been given two expositions. Its first exposition was
given as the secret of Life: The cosmic will to power lies behind the in-
dividual will to power. Zarathustra called it the riddle in the heart of the
wisest in "On Self-Overcoming" of Part II. Its second exposition was
given as the crushing weight of the past on the will in "On Redemption".
The vision of eternal recurrence is the third exposition of the same riddle
on the relation between the individual will and the universe. What makes
the third exposition remarkable is that it is given in Zarathustra's dia-
logue with the dwarf, his sworn enemy. Given his repeated pronounce-
ment of his hostility to the dwarf, it is startling to see him carry the dwarf
on his shoulder on this critical occasion and talk with his mortal enemy
on the riddle of the universe. How can we account for this incredible
partnership? This question does not arise for most commentators because
they believe that the dwarf s account of the eternal ring is too shallow
and is refuted by Zarathustra's elaborate exposition. Carl Jung is the only
exception to this standard trend. In his view, the dwarf makes the original
pronouncement on the eternal recurrence, and Zarathustra only assimi-
lates it in spite of his pretense that the whole doctrine is his own. Regard-
ing the dwarfs pronouncement, Jung says, "This is great language, and
 The Twofold Self 209

Zarathustra assimilates it, but he dilutes it and thinks that they are his
own ideas. But the dwarf has brought up these ideas in Zarathustra.
These monumental short words of wisdom come from the intestines of
the world" (Nietzsche 's Zarathustra, 1272). He says that the short words
of the dwarf are as profound as the words of Lao Tzu, Pythagoras, or
Heraclitus.
In support of lung's unfashionable view, I will point out a few things.
Zarathustra introduces the vision of eternal recurrence as his "abysmal
thought." The dwarf has brought the abysmal thought from the Abyss.
When did the dwarf come up from the Abyss? I propose that Zarathustra
picked up the dwarf when he descended to the Abyss in "On Great
Events" of Part II. He claimed to have met a golden fire hound in the
underworld. The dwarf is that fire hound. It now speaks the words of
golden wisdom about the ultimate mystery of the universe, which has
been hidden in the Abyss. When Zarathustra was ordered to declare "it"
by the voiceless voice in "The Stillest Hour" of Part II, he said, "Alas, is
it my word? Who am I? I await the worthier one; I am not worthy even
of being broken by it" (2, 146). The worthier one has finally appeared in
the dwarf and spoken the unspeakable. The dwarfs function does not
stop there. By the time the gateway scene is replaced by the shepherd
scene, the dwarf disappears. Paul S. Loeb says that the dwarf is trans-
formed into the black snake that crawls into the shepherd's mouth ("The
Dwarf, the Dragon, and the Ring of Eternal Recurrence," 101-2). I have
not seen any more sensible account of the disappearance of the dwarf. In
"On the Pale Criminal" of Part I, Zarathustra described a human being as
a ball of snakes. The snake is the elusive symbol of the pristine natural
force, and the dwarf is its manifestation in a human form. The snake and
the dwarf are the interchangeable agents of Life. These two agents give
Zarathustra the mysterious vision of eternal recurrence. The vision of
eternal recurrence began with terror, but ended with the shepherd's vic-
tory over the snake. This victorious conclusion seems to give Zarathustra
a sense of bliss in "On Involuntary Bliss", and his happiness dramatically
deepens in the following section ("Before Sunrise"), in which he talks to
heaven before sunrise. This is the continuation of his ascent from the
abyss. After climbing the highest peak in the previous section, he is now
trying to reach heaven. He calls heaven the azure bell and then trans-
forms this poetic image into another, the well of eternity. The two images
210 Chapter Seven

have the same shape: one can be obtained by flipping the other. These
two images are further elaborations on the image of eternal recurrence
presented in "On the Vision and the Riddle".
All of them are poetic pictures of the universe. Two of them are tem-
poral images, the gateway and the shepherd. The other two are spatial
images, the azure bell and the well of eternity. The former represents the
temporal perspective on the universe. The latter represents theetemal
perspective, which transcends time. The temporal pictures are heavily
laden with the spirit of gravity because the temporal perspective is the
arena of existential struggle, which can never be freed from the perpetual
burden of misery and worry. But the spirit of gravity does not affect the
eternal pictures because the eternal perspective transcends temporal exis-
tence. In one regard, the azure bell is no different from the ring of eternal
recurrence. Both of them are ruled by the Lord Chance. The universe is
the world of accidents and their necessity. All the cosmic metaphors ex-
press the two essential properties of the universe, its eternity and neces-
sity. Whereas the Christian world has a beginning and an end, the world
of eternal recurrence has no beginning and no end. The conception of the
world as an eternal existence had ruled antiquity before it was replaced
by Christian creationism. The eternity of the world was usually con-
ceived as an endless repetition of the cosmic cycle. The Christians re-
jected the eternal existence of the world because it was incompatible
with their dogma of divine creation. But the eternity of the world came
back with the recovery of classical learning in modem Europe. Their ad-
vocates had to brave brutal persecution by the Christian Church. By the
nineteenth century, some European scientists even revived the cyclic
cosmology (Magnus, Nietzsche's Existential Imperative, 64-65). This
revival provides the background for Zarathustra's vision of eternal recur-
rence. In this vision, he is recovering three features of the universe, its
eternity, necessity, and independence. This is Spinoza's conception of
Nature as the infinite substance or the cause of its own being, causa sui.

Perfection of the Creative Self (Part III. 5-12)

Zarathustra is now going home for his own perfection in compliance

with the command of the awesome lady at the end of Part II. Instead of
 The Twofold Self 211

going straight back to his mountain cave, he wants to find out what has
happened to the people during his absence in "On Virtue that Makes
Small". To his dismay, they have been becoming smaller and smaller. He
attributes this deplorable trend to their pursuit of contentment. All this
echoes back to the wretched contentment of the last men in the Prologue.
What is new is his attempt to restate their situation as the problem of
their will. He says, "Some of them will, but most of them are only
willed." He curses all the cowardly devils and flaunts his lordly will. He
boastfully claims that his lordly will can cook accidents and talk them
into submission. This is a drastic reversal of his position in the last sec-
tion, where repudiated the notion of the autonomous will as an illusion.
As I said in the last chapter, the autonomous will is irrepressible. It
comes back even after it was devastated by the eternal recurrence and the
azure bell. In "Upon the Mount of Olives", he introduces his notion of
the sun-will. The sun has no will in the normal sense. Though the sun
rules over the entire world, its will is one with the will of the Lord
Chance. It is an innocent accident. The accidental will is the will to
power of Life, the cosmic necessity, which rules not only the sun but the
whole world.
In "On Passing By", Zarathustra comes unexpectedly to the gate of a
great city and runs into a foaming fool. He is called Zarathustra's ape
because he gives scathing sermons just like Zarathustra's own. The tar-
gets of his abusive attack are the same as Zarathustra's own targets. His
juicy invective is a flawless imitation of the master's condemnation of
the small people, but he is severely rebuked by the master. Evidently, the
master cannot stand the vengeful tone of the ape's invective although he
did not notice it in his own invective. This shows the efficacy of objecti-
fication. In "On Apostates", he reaches The Motley Cow, where he be-
gan to teach his disciples. But most of them have become apostates. But
his criticism of the apostates is not vengeful. He understands their behav-
ior in terms of their ability: "Were their ability different, their will would
be different, too" (2, 179). Their will is determined by their ability. This
is their heteronomous will, which is determined by accidents beyond
their control. Instead of condemning the apostates, he says, "That leaves
wilt-what is there to wail about?" (2, 179). There is no point in blaming
the apostates any more than in wailing over the leaves for their wilting.
Both events are accidents, the innocent products of natural necessity.
212 Chapter Seven

In "The Return Home", Zarathustra finally returns home and has a

long talk with Solitude. His home is the castle of solitude. He is now re-
turning to its peaceful happiness after having stormed away from it and
weathered the turbulence of the external world. In "On the Three Evils",
he weighs the world on scales and then three supposedly evil things: sen-
suality, the lust to rule, and selfishness. If one can gain a commanding
will over these three, he says, they are like a golden apple. This is the
way to secure happiness in his castle of solitude. But there is still one
menace left standing for this castle, and he tries to conquer it in "The
Spirit of Gravity". But what is the spirit of gravity? This has been a con-
troversial question (See my Nietzsche's Epic of the Soul, 152-54). It is
Dame Care (Frau Sorge), a familiar figure in German folklore. We have
seen her as Care in Faust. She breeds the perpetual worries and anxieties
that we cannot avoid as children of Mother Nature, By the end of this
section, Zarathustra claims to have found his way, presumably the way to
cope with the spirit of gravity. With this, he appears to have completed
the project of his self-perfection and propels himself to his final task of
destroying old values and creating new ones in "On Old and New Tab-
lets". Most of this long section is given to the celebration of his creative
self. But the celebration gives way to his humble petition to his own will
in the last subsection. He prays to his will: "Thou my Will! Thou cessa-
tion of all my need, thou my own necessity! Keep me from all small vic-
tories! Thou destination of my soul, which I call destiny! Thou in-me!
Over-me! Keep me and save me for a great destiny" (2, 214). He is talk-
ing not to his autonomous will, but to his sun-will. The autonomous will
that he celebrated in the previous 29 subsections pales in front of his het-
eronomous will, which he calls "my own necessity". He had treated his
autonomous will as an instrument of creation under his command. But he
feels powerless and helpless before his sun-will because it is the master
of cosmic necessity and Lord Chance of the azure bell.

The Monster from the Abyss (Part 111.13)

In "The Convalescent", Zarathustra finally gains the courage to summon

his abysmal thought. For a long time, he has been waiting for this show-
down. But when the abysmal thought comes up, it clobbers him. He falls
 The Twofold Self 213

down like a dead person. When he regains consciousness, he cannot eat

or drink for seven days, during which he is nursed by his animals. When
he recovers from this devastating event, they sing their lyre song of the
eternal recurrence: The world goes around in an endless dance of return
and renewal. Their understanding of eternal recurrence is the polar oppo-
site to Zarathustra's. He says to them, "But now I lie here, still weary of
this biting and spewing, still sick from my own redemption" (Z, 218). It
is surprising to note that the terrible ordeal has delivered the redemption
he has been seeking so long. But he does not say how he got it. He only
describes the ordeal: "The great disgust with man-this choked me and
had crawled into my throat" (Z, 219). This sentence recalls the shepherd
scene in "On the Vision and the Riddle", which was a pre-vision of what
is happening now. The phrase "the great disgust with man" may sound
like another outburst of his familiar disgust with the rabble and the small
men. But he now feels great disgust not with any particular type of hu-
man beings, but with all human beings. This is the most baffling feature
of his outburst. In order to unravel this mystery, let us take a closer look
at the text:

The great disgust with man-this choked me and had crawled

into my throat; and what the soothsayer said: "All is the same,
nothing is worth while, knowledge chokes." (Z,219)

This statement is an adaptation of the Soothsayer's pronouncement in

"The Soothsayer" of Part II. But the phrase "knowledge chokes" was not
in his pronouncement: "All is empty, all is the same, all has been" (Z,
133). Why does knowledge choke? Zarathustra says that the human earth
has turned into a cave, in which "everything living became human decay
and bones and decaying past to me." This statement highlights the sense
of decay that pervades the entire earth, which has become a cave of "hu-
man decay." The recurrence of the small man is an eternal fixture in this
cave of decadence. He is choked with knowledge of this fact.
The cave of human decay is different from the dungeon of death
Zarathustra saw in his nightmare in "The Soothsayer" of Part II. Whereas
he reached the dungeon of death by his descent to the center of the earth,
he is exposed to the cave of human decay by the ascent of a monster
from the abyss. The descent to the dungeon of death was achieved by
scientific reduction, according to which life was supposed to be only an
214 Chapter Seven

illusion and a surface phenomenon of the earth, because the underlying

ultimate reality was believed to be dead matter. But this scientific version
of pessimism was blown apart by exploding laughter, which displayed
the irrepressible living force of the physical world. What had initially
appeared to be the castle of death was proven to be the castle of living
force. But this castle of living force has now become a massive cave of
human decay. It is important to understand the difference of Zarathus-
tra's seven-day ordeal from what happened to him in "The Soothsayer."
The cave of human decay is real; the dungeon of death was only an illu-
sion. He saw the dungeon of death in the dreamland. But the cave of hu-
man decay is situated in broad daylight. This real cave is none other than
Zarathustra's own cave.
Zarathustra's great disgust with man is his disgust with himself. If all
human beings are small men, he should be one, too. He cannot be any
different. As we noted in the last chapter, a nameless lady asks Goethe,
"How much difference is there between you and others?" Zarathustra is
facing the same question of knowing oneself and others. The Soothsayer
says, "All is the same." This realization is the central crisis of the book.
If the small man is someone else, Zarathustra may have pity or contempt
for him as he has done in the past. There is no reason why he should be
choked at the eternal recurrence of the small man if he can maintain his
separate identity from all the small men. When he turns out to be one of
them, however, he can no longer have the distance and height for pity or
contempt. He is overwhelmed with the revulsion of his own existence.
The monster from the abyss is his animal self as a child of the earth,
however disgusting he may be. This shocking recognition is the knowl-
edge that chokes him. His identity with the dwarf was already implicated
in the opening sentence of his summons to the abysmal thought: "Up,
abysmal thought, out of my depth!" (Z, 215). The monster from the
Abyss is arising out of his own depth. By accepting the dwarf as his ul-
timate self, he has secured his redemption. The dwarf cannot be his arch-
enemy if he is his own ultimate self. Thus the shocking recognition re-
solves the riddle of his own identity.
In "The Vision and the Riddle", he presented his vision of the eternal
recurrence as a riddle. But he never explained why it was a riddle, or
what sort of riddle it was. It now turns out to be the riddle of his own
ultimate nature that is embedded in the eternal recurrence. This riddle
 The Twofold Self 215

unravels itself in two stages, first as a general riddle of the universe in

"On the Vision and the Riddle" and then as the particular riddle of his
own identity in "The Convalescent". These two stages parallel the two
stages, in which the Sphinx's riddle of identity unfolded for Oedipus Rex.
When Oedipus came to Thebes, he found the city plagued because no
one could solve the riddle posed by the Sphinx: "Who goes on four feet
in the morning, on two at noon, and on three in the evening?" He van-
quished the Sphinx by answering, "Man in the three stages of his life."
Although he solved this riddle of general identity for all human beings,
he knew nothing about the riddle of his own identity. He knew what man
was only in the abstract, but not what sort of man he was in the concrete.
Only later, when another plague devastated Thebes, he came to see the
relevance of the Sphinx's riddle for the mystery of his own identity.
What does it mean to bite off the snake's head? This gruesome act is
usually taken as the symbol of acceptance, that is, the courageous act of
accepting one's life. But to bite off the snake's head means to kill the
snake. If the snake stands for one's life, how can you accept it by killing
it? So I propose an alternative reading, The head looks forward, while the
body trails behind. The relation of head and body may represent the rela-
tion between the forward-looking autonomous will and the backward-
looking heteronomous will. Therefore, to bite off the snake's head and to
spit it out is to demolish and discard the illusory idea of the autonomous
will. This illusory idea has been blocking his throat just like the snake's
head in the shepherd's throat. By biting it off, he has achieved his re-
demption from the curse of the dwarf. This curse is none other than the
paralyzing terror that autonomous will is overpowered by the dwarfs
accidental will. He dissolves the curse by two simultaneous strokes. The
first stroke is to recognize the illusory character of the autonomous will.
If the Faustian idea of autonomous will is illusory, it cannot be a disaster
to have this idea quashed under the weight of the accidental will. On the
contrary, it should be a release from the Faustian yoke of an illusion. The
second stroke is his recognition of his identity with the dwarf. This is to
accept the heteronomous Spinozan will as his own, thereby identifying
himself with the dwarf, who embodies the heteronomous will. The ac-
ceptance of the Spinozan will is equivalent to the third formula of re-
demption advocated in "On Redemption" of Part II, that is, the act of
willing the past as it was. He now realizes that he is only one of the
216 Chapter Seven

countless dwarfs forever chained to the iron ring of eternal recurrence.

This is the eternal curse from the Abyss. He secures his redemption from
this curse by identifying himself with the dwarf and by denying the
autonomous will and accepting the heteronomous will as the only real
will. This is Spinoza's simple solution for the problem of suffering. But
it is not easy to accept this simple solution because it is emotionally dev-
astating to concede that the autonomous will is an illusion.
The transition from the autonomous to the heteronomous will is the
transformation of a lion into a child in the scheme of three metamor-
phoses. In "The Stillest Hour" of Part II, Zarathustra was ordered to be-
come a child. In "The Convalescence", the animals conclude their final
song with a reference to this order. They say, "I spoke my word, I break
to pieces (zerbreche) at my word: thus my eternal lot wants it; as a pro-
claimer I perish." This statement is meant to express Zarathustra's own
thought. The awesome lady told him: "Speak thy word and break (zer-
brich) to pieces." The word to be spoken is the unspeakable "it." It is the
collision of two wills, the Faustian and the Spinozan. He has now spoken
it and broken to pieces. As the Faustian superman, he is broken to pieces,
but he is reborn as the Spinozan superman. This is his transformation
from a hero to a superhero. In "On Those Who Are Sublime" of Part II,
he said that the sublime one must redeem his own monsters and solve his
own riddles before he can become a superhero. He has indeed solved his
own riddles and redeemed his own monsters.

The Cosmic Self (Part 111.14 and 15)

In "On the Great Longing", Zarathustra has a strange talk with his soul.
His talk has three parts. He has done many things to make her free, pure
and complete. Having brought his soul into this state of super-perfection,
he has given her new names, "the destiny", "the circumference of cir-
cumferences", "the umbilical cord of time", and "the azure bell". These
names are different labels for the eternal ring or the universe. His soul
has become coextensive with the entire universe. His soul is his cosmic
self. I propose that this cosmic self is none other than the dwarf he ac-
cepted as his animal self in the last section. In "The Convalescent", his
animal self appeared to be an ugly dwarf. It has no power to recognize its
 The Twofold Self 217

own cosmic attributes because it is only a brute. The recognition has

been made by Zarathustra's individual self. That is why he claims to
have endowed his soul with its cosmic perfection by his teaching. Thus
he has gained his cosmic self, which he announced at the beginning of
Part III. When you understand your self as an animal, you can readily see
its connection to the entire physical world because every physical object
is causally connected to every other physical object. This is the con-
sciousness of your cosmic self. On the other hand, when you think of
your self as an autonomous agent acting on the world, you instinctively
feel your independence. This is the consciousness of your individual self.
The individual self is Faustian; the cosmic self is Spinozan. But these
two are not separate entities. One and the same self can be understood
from the individual and the cosmic perspectives. In the past, Zarathustra
tried to build the castle of self-isolation (or solitude) for the protection of
the individual self from others. But that attempt turns out to be futile be-
cause the individual self is integrally connected to the cosmic self.
The two different perspectives are important for understanding the
role of the dwarf. When he is perceived as an individual, he looks like a
helpless dwarf chained to the ring of eternal recurrence. His link to the
iron ring appears to be an accidental misfortune. This perception stands
on the assumption that there is a clear boundary between the dwarf as an
individual and the eternal ring. But that boundary is illusory from the
cosmic perspective. The dwarf is one with the eternal ring. His insepara-
ble connection to the ring is not accidental but essential to his nature.
When this essential connection is understood, he is not an individual
dwarf, but a cosmic giant. He is not a puppet of the iron ring, but the
master of its revolution. That is why Zarathustra called the spirit of grav-
ity "master of the world" in "The Dancing Song" of Part II. There is only
one spirit of gravity reigning over the eternal ring, but there are a count-
less number of dwarfs chained to that ring. But each of those numerous
dwarfs is really a cosmic giant, who function as an agent of the cosmic
will. When Zarathustra takes an individual perspective by asserting his
individual will, all those dwarfs appear to be his enemies, who are buffet-
ing him, individually or collectively. But when he looks upon them from
the cosmic perspective, they are the essential features of his cosmic self.
The recognition of his cosmic self is the final outcome of the self-
perfection he has undertaken under the command of the awesome mis-
218 Chapter Seven

tress in "The Stillest Hour" of Part II. But the perfection of his soul has
led to her strange happiness. He says that her happiness is oppressed by
melancholy. In her sorrow, she is looking out over roaring seas, waiting
for the redeemer in a golden bark. He tells his soul that the master of the
golden bark is the vintager with a diamond knife and that he is the name-
less one, her great redeemer. The master is Dionysus, the god of intoxi-
cation, who will cut the vine with his diamond knife for the ripe grapes.
The redemption by his hand will not be merely redemption from suffer-
ing, but intoxication in the bliss of love. The absence of love must have
been the cause of melancholy for his soul. He says that there was not a
single soul more loving than his soul. The golden bark finally arrives in
"The Other Dancing Song", but the vintager turns out to be a flirtatious
woman, who entices Zarathustra to a dance by casting her melting glance
and by waving her clapper. When he leaps forward in response to her
enticement, however, she flees away from his leap like a snake. Life is a
snake. The dance turns out to be a game of catching the snake. Zarathus-
tra cannot keep up with Life. He suffers and hates her. It is a game of
love and hate. He calls her an untamable prankster and a guileless tempt-
ress. He tries to be the hunter. But he leaps and falls when he tries to run
down the swift and malicious leaping belle. She can never be caught or
tired. The ring of eternal recurrence is the snake biting its own tail, and
the dance of the eternal ring is the cosmic dance of the snake. But he
cannot get into this cosmic dance because he cannot get a grip on the
slippery and slithering Life.
The cosmic self has appeared in three different fonns. First, it ap-
peared as the dwarf in "On the Vision and the Riddle" and "The Conva-
lescent". Second, it appeared as Zarathustra's newborn soul in "On the
Great Longing". In both cases, we encountered only his potential cosmic
self, which had yet to be actualized. The dwarf was still only an animal
that could become his cosmic self only when Zarathustra accepted it as
his own and recognized its cosmic dimension. His soul was again a po-
tential cosmic self in another sense. She was not yet activated. She
showed no sign of power and action. That is why she needed the re-
deemer, who could provide the power for her activation. Life is the cos-
mic force for activation because she is the principle of cosmic life. This
cosmic principle is Dionysus, Mother Nature. Hence Life comes as the
redeemer for Zarathustra's soul. With the infusion of cosmic force, his
 The Twofold Self 219

soul can become one with Life. This is the third form of his cosmic self.
It is Life, the ring of eternal recurrence. Although Zarathustra's animal
self and soul are his potential cosmic self, they will appear to be more or
less as individual entities until their complete union with Life, because
they cannot become fully cosmic without her. Thus there are many stages
for the elevation of the individual self to the cosmic level.
The three forms of the cosmic self mark the different stages of
Zarathustra's redemption. The first stage is his recognition of the dwarf
as his animal self. Although he is crushed by his animal self, he claims to
have achieved redemption because he overcomes his alienation from his
animal self by accepting him as his own self. But his animal self is not
yet fully redeemed. The ugly dwarf still appears to be an individual ani-
mal because its cosmic dimension is still unknown. When its cosmic di-
mension is recognized, his animal self is revealed as his soul with all her
cosmic attributes of perfection. This is the second stage of his redemp-
tion. For all its cosmic attributes, his soul still suffers like an individual
self because it is yet to be activated. Its activation is the third stage of his
redemption, which takes place with the advent of Life. The fully acti-
vated cosmic self would be one with Life. She is the ultimate cosmic
self. But she is too wild and too nimble for Zarathustra. He cannot join
the dance of his cosmic self. The fourth and final stage of redemption
will be their joyful union in the cosmic dance. These four stages consti-
tute Zarathustra's Ladder of Redemption. They are distributed to the last
four sections of Part III. The first stage takes place in "The Convales-
cent", the second stage in "On the Great Longing", and the third stage in
"The Other Dancing Song". The fourth stage does not take place by the
end of Part III. It is projected as Zarathustra's ultimate longing in "The
Seven Seals". Eternity is the object of this ultimate longing.
Let us get back to the game of love between Zarathustra and Life.
Since the game of chasing Life leads nowhere, he decides to change his
game plan and tame Life with a whip. But she admonishes him not to
crack the whip so frightfully because that may kill the tender thoughts
that are just coming to her. Then she shares the tender thoughts with him
as follows. Both of them are good-far-nothings and evil-far-nothings, but
they alone have found their island and green meadow beyond good and
evil. The green meadow beyond good and evil is the natural world. Since
they share this green meadow, she says, they should be friendly with
220 Chapter Seven

each other. Even if they do not love each other from the heart, they
should not bear a grudge against each other. Then, she softly tells him
that he is not faithful enough to her and does not love her as much as he
says. For this reason, he is thinking of leaving her soon. She designates
the exact hour when he wants to leave her, that is, the hour of midnight
when the old bell strikes between one and twelve. Hesitantly affirming
what she has said, he whispers something into her ear, which takes her
by surprise. She replies, "You know that, 0 Zarathustra? Nobody knows
that" (Z, 227). Then they look at each other and weep together and he
feels that Life is dearer to him than all his Wisdom has ever been.
Zarathustra's secret whisper to Life is stated as "Yes, but you also
know ...." What is represented by this blank sign? This question is as
enigmatic as the riddle we encountered in "The Stillest Hour" of Part II:
What is the unspeakable "it"? Just like this enigma, the secret whisper
can be deciphered only contextually because the blank sign carries no
textual meaning. Hence it has generated an endless guessing game (See
my Nietzsche's Epic of the Soul, 209-15). Here is my own guess. Let us
place the secret exchange in the game of love. This is the game of power
between Zarathustra's Faustian individual self and his Spinozan cosmic
self. When he cannot catch Life and join her dance, he gets frustrated and
asserts his Faustian will with a whip. This is a surprising development
because his Faustian individual self was supposedly clobbered in "The
Convalescent". But this is the astonishing feature of the Faustian self. It
may be beaten, but always comes back with fresh force. It is like Hydra's
head. In chapter 6, I talked of how hard it is to discard the autonomous
will. Even if you believe that your will is already determined by your
past, you must still make your decisions and choices. That requires the
assertion of your individual self. There is no way to avoid the assertion
of your individual will in the temporal world. The autonomous will may
be an illusion, but this illusion is the practical necessity for every action.
The individual will is irrepressible in every phase of human existence.
Zarathustra cannot avoid the assertion of his individual will in coping
with the intractable Life. So he tries to impose his Faustian will on Life.
But that is not the way of dance and love. No wonder, he gets only frus-
trated and humiliated in his Faustian approach. What is the moral of this
game of love? It demonstrates the insurmountable difficulty in loving the
cosmic self. To love the cosmic self is to love the whole world because
 The Twofold Self 221

the cosmic self is inextricably interwoven with the world. But the world
is full of accidents that go against the individual will. This is the ground
for the endless collision of the individual self with the cosmic self.
Both the individual and the cosmic selves are ineliminable and irre-
pressible. Hence there is no way to resolve their conflict. Here lies the
heart of Nietzschean existential dialectic. It cannot be resolved by a He-
gelian synthesis because there is no third term for the mediation of two
protagonists. Nor can it be resolved by a Kierkegaardian decision of Ei-
ther/Or, because neither of the protagonists can be eliminated. Thus, their
irreconcilable tension generates an interminable dialectic. There is only
one way to terminate this interminable conflict. It is to terminate life it-
self. For this reason, many believed in the nineteenth century that love
could be fulfilled only in death. The intimate connection of love and
death is dramatized in Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. The two
lovers yearn for their ecstatic union in death because such a union of two
lovers is impossible in life. Their love is perpetually frustrated in this
world, just like Zarathustra's love of Life, because the game of love is
not the simple affair of two individuals, but the complex game of indi-
viduals against the cosmic self. So is the love between Bruennhilde and
Siegfried; it can be fulfilled only in their death. Hence it is plausible to
attribute a death wish to Zarathustra, as Robert Gooding-Williams does
(Zarathustra's Dionysian Modernism, 265). But what kind of death is he
contemplating? As a preliminary to answering this question, let us note
that Zarathustra's love of his cosmic self is equivalent to Spinoza's amor
dei (the love of God), which is the love of the entire natural world. Ac-
cording to Spinoza, the natural world can be viewed from two perspec-
tives, temporal and eternal. The blessed happiness of amor dei is attain-
able not in the temporal perspective, but only in the eternal perspective.
In the temporal domain, it may be perpetually frustrated. Zarathustra may
have come to feel that his love of the cosmic self can be realized only in
the eternal domain.
Like Spinoza's Nature, Zarathustra's cosmic self, Life, can also be
viewed from two perspectives, temporal and eternal. In "The Dancing
Song", Life was described as perpetually changing and untamed on one
hand and eternal and mysterious on the other. These two features are the
two modes of her existence, eternal and temporal. In the eternal mode of
her existence, she is the eternal ring. Although Zarathustra has talked
222 Chapter Seven

about the eternal ring or the well of eternity, he has never lived in it. All
the difficulties he has experienced with his cosmic self have impinged
upon him in the temporal dimension of Life. The game of love is so frus-
trating and exhausting that he is finally convinced of its futility. Out of
this endless series of frustrations, he may have hit upon the idea of leav-
ing her in the temporal mode and trying his luck in the eternal mode. So I
propose that Zarathustra whispers this new plan to Life. In response to
her statement that he wants to leave her soon, he says, "Yes, but you also
know . . . ." This short statement may be read as the contraction of: "Yes,
you are right about my wish to leave you soon, but you also know that I
can rejoin you in the eternal mode." This brilliant idea takes her by sur-
prise, and she says, "Nobody knows that." This plan for the fulfillment
of his love is far better than the yearning of Tristan and Isolde for their
ecstatic union in death and Bruennhilde's self-immolation for her eternal
union with Siegfried on the funeral pyre. His plan can avoid the death of
his body. In Spinoza's and Zarathustra's world, one does not have to die
physically in the temporal world to enter the eternal world. One only has
to ascend from the temporal to the eternal mode within the same natural
world. In his secret whisper, Zarathustra is proposing the reorientation of
his love for Life from the temporal to the eternal mode, and his proposal
is warmly accepted by Life. This secret agreement is reaffmned by Life
in the last subsection of "The Other Dancing Song", which is known as
Zarathustra's Roundelay. It consists of twelve lines distributed to the
twelve strokes of the midnight bell and they are spoken by Midnight, the
voice of Life. It is her emphatic endorsement of their secret agreement.
With this endorsement, he can expect that she will grant his wish and that
his frustrated love will be fulfilled in the eternal domain. The twelfth
stroke is left blank, but it will be filled at their reunion. Until then, he can
only express his passionate longing by repeating the last line of the roun-
delay: "Wants deep, wants deep Eternity." This line will be expanded
and elaborated in the next section, "The Seven Seals".

Longing for Eternity (Part 111.16)

"The Seven Seals" is a song of seven stanzas, in which Zarathustra ex-

presses his passionate longing for Eternity, which is none other than Life.
 The Twofold Self 223

Each stanza is composed of two parts: the main text and the refrain. The
structure of the main text is highly peculiar. It consists of two segments:
(1) the if-segment and (2) the question-segment. In all seven stanzas, the
question-segment repeats the same question: "Oh, how should I not lust
after eternity and after the nuptial ring of rings, the ring of recurrence?"
But the if-segments of the seven stanzas are all different; they recount
Zarathustra's career in seven different roles: (1) a prophet, (2) a destroyer
of the old gods and their churches, (3) a breather of creative spirit, (4) a
universal mixer and reconciler, (5) a boundless seafarer, (6) a dancer of
happiness, and (7) a flier of bird-wisdom. Each of these roles is narrated
in a strange description, which begins with the word 'if. It is not a
straightforward description such as, "I am a soothsayer..." but a condi-
tional one such as, "If I am a soothsayer..." Each of these conditional
descriptions is followed by the same rhetorical question: "Oh, how
should I not lust after eternity and after the nuptial ring of rings, the ring
of recurrence?" Why is an if-clause used to describe Zarathustra's
achievements? There is nothing iffy about his achievements. They are
well-known facts. What is the point of using the conditional form for
describing those well-known facts? This is the first question about the
structure of each stanza.
The next structural question concerns the connection of the if-
segment to the question-segment. How does the if-statement lead up to
the question-segment? It is hard to see the connection between the two.
Let us now consider the question-segment. It contains an emphatic
("Oh") rhetorical question ("how should I not lust after Eternity"?),
which amounts to saying, "I have every reason to lust after Eternity." Let
us again assume that to lust after Eternity is to lust after Life in her eter-
nal mode. "How should I not lust after Eternity?" should be read as
"How should I not lust after Life in the eternal mode?" Thus the rhetori-
cal question expresses his desperate need for the reorientation of his love
of Life from the temporal to the eternal mode. Its meaning can become
even clearer if it is expanded to read: "Oh, how should I not lust after
Eternity, given the condition of my love of Life in her temporal mode?"
What is the condition of his love in temporal mode? It is implied by the
if-segment, the conditional description of his heroic achievement. Thus,
the conditional statement leads to the rhetorical question. The heroic
achievements recounted in the seven if-segments have taken place prior
224 Chapter Seven

to the last four sections of Part III. All of them belong to Zarathustra's
attempt to advocate the creative will as the new way of life in the godless
world, that is, the ideal of instituting the supreme sovereignty of human
will to supplant the traditional divine sovereignty in the universe. In pur-
suit of this epochal ideal, however, he has run into the insurmountable
problems of redeeming the past, releasing the creative will from the
crushing weight of the past, and getting clobbered under the abysmal
thought only to realize that the very idea of the creative will is an illusion.
His creative will culminated in the leonine pronouncements in "On Old
and New Tablets", but that momentary triumph was shattered by a series
of tragic reversals in the next three sections. In desperation, he had to tell
Life his secret wish to leave her in the temporal mode and approach her
in the eternal mode. The if-segments give the reasons for this secret wish
for reorienting his love from the temporal to the eternal mode.
Zarathustra's epic deeds recounted in the seven stanzas are of the
highest heroism, and yet it does not deliver the ultimate bliss. Ifhe can-
not experience the ultimate satisfaction even after reaching the summit of
human achievements in the temporal world, then why should he not feel
the lust for the eternal world as his last resort? The conditional descrip-
tion of his heroic achievement implicitly contains the poignant sense of
his frustration in the temporal world, as described in the three sections
preceding "The Seven Seals". The if-segment of each stanza consists of
two elements: (1) the description of a. heroic achievement and (2) the
unmentioned frustration as its consequence. (2) is left unmentioned be-
cause it was the central point of exposition in the preceding three sec-
tions. To mention it again would be too repetitious and cumbersome. (1)
and (2) jointly lay the ground for posing the rhetorical question for the
reorientation of his love. The force of the if-segment can be given a more
forceful expression by translating the German word wenn not simply into
"if' as usually done, but into "even if' or even better into "even when."
Instead of deflating his heroic achievements, let us take them at face
value as most commentators do. Then Zarathustra would come out as a
pompous braggart. The poignant lament over his perpetual frustration
would sound like a blatant boast over his countless heroic achievements,
by which he tries to present himself as a warrior worthy of the love of
Eternity, presumably a lady even more exalted than Life. It is hard to
accede to this disgraceful picture of our epic hero. This is my main ob-
 The Twofold Self 225

jection to the standard reading of "The Seven Seals". I will now try to
validate my reading by going over each stanza of "The Seven Seals".
The first stanza of "The Seven Seals" describes Zarathustra's auda-
cious activities as a soothsayer. In his prophetic spirit, he wanders on a
high ridge between two seas like a heavy cloud between past and future.
Textually this passage alludes to "The Wanderer" of Part III, where he
appears as a wanderer and a mountain climber about to ascend his ulti-
mate peak, and to "On Redemption" of Part II, where he struggles with
the clash of two wills spanning over past and future. In "The Wanderer"
he ended his talk, laughing at himself in melancholy and bitterness. In
"On Redemption" he became terrified by his own talk and thought. Now
he describes himself as pregnant and compares himself to a heavy cloud
loaded with lightning bolts, which are waiting to explode someday. But
this waiting game is neither easy nor glorious for him because it is the
pathetic game of those who cannot command their destiny. In "On the
Spirit of Gravity" of Part III, he said, "Cursed I call those too who must
always wait; they offend my taste" (Z, 195). He proudly said that he
waited only for himself. But his pregnant self is not waiting for himself.
His boasting game of not waiting did not last long. He opened the
next section by sitting and waiting in the middle of old and new tablets,
and ended it by becoming a humble suppliant to his own sun-will. He
could no longer command his own will. On the contrary, he had to wait
for it to unfold as his fate. This was the final recognition he achieved as a
soothsayer. By the nature of their profession, the soothsayers cannot dic-
tate their will on the fortunes they foretell. Instead they must wait on the
accidental will of those fortunes, their cosmic necessity. One can free
oneself from the ubiquitous accidental will only by moving from the
temporal to the eternal world. The causal necessity obtains only in the
temporal world because causation is a temporal relation. In the eternal
world, there is no need to wait. Tired of the waiting game, Zarathustra
has every reason to reorient his love of Life from the temporal to the
eternal mode. So he says, "Oh, how should I not lust after Eternity and
after the nuptial ring of rings, the ring of recurrence?" Then he expresses
his ultimate hope: "Never yet have I found the woman from whom I
wanted children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love you, 0
eternity! For I love you, 0 Eternity!" He hopes that the children he will
get from Life in the eternal mode will be much more fortunate than the
226 Chapter Seven

ones he has gained from her in the temporal mode. By "children" he may
mean not necessarily carnal offspring, but the fruition of his love in all
forms.
The second stanza describes Zarathustra's activities of breaking
tombs, shattering old law-tables, and rejoicing over the death of gods, but
ends by leaving him to sit, like grass and poppies, on broken churches.
This scene may appear triumphant and exhilarating. But it is a scene of
defeat. Disgusted with the cheap secular culture of The Motley Cow, he
launched his campaign to spiritualize godless humanism in the Prologue.
Then in "The Tomb Song" of Part II, he realized that his own sense of
sanctity had dissolved with the death of God. But he expressed his dear
wish to redeem his old dream of divinity ("All beings shall be divine to
me") and sanctity ("All days shall be holy to me"). In the next section, he
reaffirmed his longing for divinity and sanctity: "You still want to create
the world before which you can kneel: that is your ultimate hope and in-
toxication" (Z, 113). But his ambitious campaign to spiritualize the secu-
lar culture has only shattered churches and shrines, the traditional for-
tress for the sense of divinity and sanctity, and his "ultimate hope and
intoxication" has been buried under their ruins. Mired in the profanity of
the temporal world, he cannot avoid feeling the passionate longing for
the sanctity of the eternal world. This longing justifies the reorientation
of his love from the temporal to the eternal mode because the temporal
world has turned out to be irredeemably profane.
The third stanza praises his creative spirit. But he has faced the stark
truth that the creative spirit is not under the command of his autonomous
will. The creative spirit came to him as a breath of heavenly necessity
that compels even accidents to dance star-dances. In short, it came to him
as a gift of cosmic necessity. Even his laughter of creative lightning was
also the same kind of "accidental" gift. To live with these gifts of cosmic
necessity is to play the game of dice with the gods and use the earth as
the table for this game, as he recognized it in "Before Sunrise" of Part III.
That may look like an exciting scene, but it is described as a game of
horror, which goes on until the earth quakes, bursts, and snorts up floods
of fire. The earthquakes and the floods of fire indeed belong to a game of
horror and chance. The dice game is a game of horror because it is gov-
erned by the Lord Chance. There is no guarantee that the Lord Chance
will send only the gifts of blessing. The earthquakes and any other natu-
 The Twofold Self 227

ral disasters are equally his gifts. There is no way to avoid the sense of
horror in the temporal world, where everything is a matter of chance. But
you can avoid it in the eternal world because it is free of accidents.
The fourth stanza describes Zarathustra's power of blending all
things, the farthest and the nearest, pain and joy, good and evil. These
have been traditionally kept apart from each other as incompatible oppo-
sites, but he is the redeeming salt that can blend them all together. When
he was about to climb the highest peak, he said, "Peak and abyss-they
are now joined together" (Z, 152). This is the synthesis of the highest and
the lowest. In Ecce Homo (Zarathustra 6), Nietzsche singles out the
awesome power of universal synthesis as the salient feature of Zarathus-
tra ("all opposites are in him bound together into a new unity"). In sup-
port of this claim, he then gives an exegesis of Zarathustra's description
of the most comprehensive soul in subsection 19 of "On Old and New
Tablets". In his encounter with the twofold will in "On Redemption" of
Part II, however, Zarathustra found out that the universal synthesis was
an impossible task. There was no way to reconcile the autonomous and
the hetronomous will. In "On Human Prudence" of Part II, he experi-
enced the same difficulty in coping with his twofold will that was pulling
him in opposite directions. The upward will was his longing for the su-
perman; the downward will was his attachment to the vain herd, the good
and the just. It was extremely tortuous and dangerous to hold on to both.
Every synthesis of opposing forces appears to generate a painful conflict
in the Zarathustrian world. Especially his mixing of love and hatred in
his game of love with Life has yielded only frustration and disappoint-
ment. Thus he has severely suffered in the conflict of opposites. Sadly,
their conflict is inevitable and interminable in the temporal world. Hence
it is quite natural for him to tum to the eternal world.
The fifth stanza sings Zarathustra's love of sea and his courage for
exploring the boundless space in search of new shorelines. But the end-
less seafaring guarantees nothing beyond the raging sea and great sea-
sickness, as he said in subsection 28 of "On Old and New Tablets". The
purpose of seafaring was to find the country of man's future, but the
voyage itself produced nothing but great sickness and great nausea. He
recalls a moment of jubilation when he said, "The coast has vanished,
now the last chain has fallen from me; the boundless roars around me, far
out glisten space and time; be of good cheer, old heart!" (Z, 230). This
228 Chapter Seven

word of good cheer is ironic because his leonine will waxes and roars on
the land, but wanes and whines when it goes on the sea and encounters
boundless space and time. The open sea promises the open future and
freedom ("the last chain has fallen from me"), but the open future and
freedom have turned out to be an illusion because the temporal world is
governed by the necessity of Lord Chance. One can be released from the
illusion of freedom and open future in the eternal world, which admits no
distinction between past and future. That gives a strong incentive to re-
orient one's love from the temporal to the eternal world.
The sixth stanza recapitulates Zarathustra's recurrent themes of
dance and laughter, his two favorite devices for overcoming the spirit of
gravity. But he has never succeeded in getting rid of the dwarf. The
dance requires a dancing floor. In subsection 2 of "On Old and New Tab-
lets", he proudly said that moles and heavy dwarfs constitute the floor for
his dance. If his dance depends on the floor of moles and dwarfs, there is
no way to free his dance from the spirit of gravity. In "On the Vision and
the Riddle", the dwarf talked of Zarathustra's inevitable subjection to the
spirit of gravity in his parable of the philosopher's stone. In "On the
Spirit of Gravity", he pitched his final battle against the dwarf, but all in
vain. In "The Convalescent", he was crushed by the monster. Even when
he accepted the dwarf as his ultimate self, he could not fully solve his
problem. His newborn soul was still suffering from melancholy. In "The
Other Dancing Song", he tried to fulfill his dream of dancing with Life.
But his attempted dance turned out to be a perpetual process of humilia-
tion and frustration. He now says, "If my sarcasm is a laughing sar-
casm . . ." Whether laughing or crying, he has every reason to be sarcas-
tic about his vaunted ambition of dancing because it has crumbled. There
appears to be no way to be free from the oppression of the spirit of grav-
ity because he is indeed master of the temporal world. The only way to
be freed from its oppression may be to fly up to the eternal world.
If you cannot fly up to the eternal world, you can try the next best.
This is the attempt to flee from the dwarf by flying up to the sky like a
bird in the temporal world. Zarathustra' s attempt to do so is the theme of
the final stanza. This bird-like flight gave him his bird-wisdom, which
told him two things. First, it said, "Behold, there is no above, no below!
Throw yourself around, out, back, you who are light" (Z, 231). There is
no more distinction between high and low, noble and ignoble, good and
 The Twofold Self 229

bad. It makes no difference which way one flies. The flight becomes
pointless. The freedom of this flight is the freedom of indifference, that is,
the freedom that makes no difference. Zarathustra always wanted to fly,
but fly upward. Levitation is wonderful only when it is counterbalanced
by gravity. Without gravity, levitation becomes a pointless game because
there can be no distinction between high and low. Second, the bird-
wisdom said, "Sing! Speak no more! Are not all words made for grave
and heavy? Are not all words lies to those who are light? Sing! Speak no
more!" (2,231). The elimination of the distinction between high and low,
noble and ignoble, good and bad, also eliminates semantic distinctions,
without which there can be no words. Semantic distinctions also depend
on the spirit of gravity. Words may lie, but to live without words is much
more difficult than to live with them. To sing through life may be won-
derful, but singing without words may be pointless. Just imagine what
Zarathustra's career would have been like, if he had been forced to sing
without words. In the end, the bird-wisdom is not any weightier than the
birdbrain. Since the flight into the sky can get you nowhere, it is high
time to try the flight to the eternal world.
Each of the seven stanzas begins with the description of Zarathus-
tra's heroic deeds. But those deeds belong, one and all, to his Faustian
self, which has given him nothing but endless frustrations in the temporal
world. In that regard, he is truly Faustian. Throughout his life of perpet-
ual striving, as we have seen, Goethe's Faust gains nothing but an end-
less series of dissatisfactions and frustrations. Zarathustra was so frus-
trated with his Faustian self that he finally decided to give it up alto-
gether. So he whispered to Life his secret wish to reorient his love from
the temporal to the eternal mode. The Faustian self belongs to the tempo-
ral world because it is the theater of action. Hence to give up the tempo-
ral world for the sake of the eternal world is to sacrifice the Faustian self.
Let us now consider how this sacrifice is related to the biblical symbol-
ism in "The Seven Seals". As we noted earlier, Lampert locates the es-
chatological significance of Revelation in the marriage of Christ to the
New Jerusalem. But this is an unbalanced reading of Revelation, in
which the Apostle John sees the sealed scroll in the right hand of God.
When the Lamb of God opens it by breaking the seven seals, it reveals
the endless series of disasters in the war between God and Satan. The
seventh seal presents seven angels, who blow seven trumpets, each of
230 Chapter Seven

which announces its own frightening events of the war. After the seven
trumpets, the seven angels pour out seven bowls of horror, each of which
displays its own phase of the holy war. Then, one of the angels an-
nounces the destruction of Babylon and the wedding of the Lamb to the
New Jerusalem. But this prophecy is only the coda of Revelation, not its
body that reveals the continuous horrors of the protracted war between
God and Satan. This protracted war corresponds to the war between
Zarathustra's individual self against his cosmic self. Satan's war against
God is the defiant assertion of his individual will against the Creator. The
same principle governs Zarathustra's war: it is the defiance of the indi-
vidual self against the cosmic self.
The biblical seven seals conceal the divine secret that has to be bro-
ken open. Zarathustra's secret whisper corresponds to this sealed secret.
Only the Lamb of God is worthy to open the sealed document in God's
right hand. Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God, who gives up his own will
and takes on the cross for the will of his Father (Matt. 26:39-45). Like-
wise, only Zarathustra is worthy to reveal the secret of his whisper to
Life because he has become the Lamb of Life by sacrificing his individ-
ual self for the love of his cosmic self. Each of the seven stanzas of "The
Seven Seals" corresponds to the breaking of one of the seven seals by the
Lamb of God in Revelation. Each stanza describes Zarathustra's Faustian
feat in his war against Life, just as the breaking of each seal reveals Sa-
tan's prodigious battle against God. The Faustian self plays the role of
Satan in the war between the individual and the cosmic selves. But the
Faustian feat is perpetually self-defeating, like Satan's defiance against
its Creator, because it is the defiance against the ultimate source of its
own power. So Zarathustra concludes every stanza by declaring his love
of Eternity. This declaration is the reorientation of his love of Life from
the temporal to the eternal mode. As I said before, this is to sacrifice his
Faustian self, that is, its crucifixion, which will lead to its reconciliation
with the cosmic self. This corresponds to the future wedding of the Lamb
to the New Jerusalem. Thus the allegorical parallel between the book of
Revelation and "The Seven Seals" lies in the opening of sealed secrets.
This parallel is not limited to the prophecies of Christ's marriage to the
New Jerusalem and Zarathustra's marriage to Eternity. Most important of
all, the prophecy of a wedding should not be mistaken for its celebration.
 The Twofold Self 231

On this last point, I am going against the standard view that the end-
ing of Part III is the real coda of the entire poem and that Part IV is an
embarrassing addition. Many commentators believe that Zarathustra's
love is finally fulfilled in his marriage to Life in "The Seven Seals". But
his love is far from fulfilled by the end of Part III. "The Seven Seals"
only expresses the passionate longing that erupted in "On the Great
Longing". Hence Heidegger locates the climax of the entire book and its
divine suffering in this section rather than in the last section of Part III
("Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra?", 68). In my view, the last three sec-
tions of Part III present a series of lamentations on this divine suffering
and they culminate in Zarathustra's passionate longing for Eternity in
"The Seven Seals". This painful longing stands like an open wound.
Such an open wound cannot be the conclusion of Nietzsche's poetic
work. There is no way to bind this open wound and stop its bleeding ex-
cept by writing Part IV.
In his letter of February 12, 1885 to Carl von Gersdorff, Nietzsche
refers to Part IV as "a sort of sublime finale." In this finale, we will see,
Zarathustra will be given the mysterious power to ascend from the tem-
poral to the eternal domain and fulfill his frustrated love. This sublime
ending will be the fulfillment of what was prefigured in the flight of the
eagle and the serpent at the end of the Prologue, which we took as the
symbol of his spiritual campaign. The serpent was coiled around the ea-
gle's neck. This is an extraordinary scene. The eagle and the serpent are
naturally hostile to each other; the serpent usually chokes and kills the
eagle by coiling itself around the eagle's neck. But this hostile act is now
converted to an act of erotic embrace. Now we can recognize the eagle as
the symbol of the individual self and the serpent as the symbol of the
cosmic self. Their circular flight is the symbol of their spiritual move-
ment in the cosmic dance of the eternal ring. This is the ultimate end of
the spiritual campaign that Zarathustra launched at the end of the Pro-
logue. When his spiritual campaign was shifted from the Faustian to the
Spinozan mode in Part II, Wisdom was replaced by Life. Now the Spino-
zan campaign is transformed from the temporal to the eternal mode, and
this transformation is marked by the replacement of Life by Eternity.
Life vanishes altogether after "The Other Dancing Song" never to be
seen again, just as Wisdom vanished in Part II. Zarathustra's epic jour-
ney is guided by three ladies, Wisdom, Life, and Eternity, who corre-
232 Chapter Seven

spond in their roles roughly to Dante's three guides for his epic journey,
Virgil, Beatrice, and 81. Bernard of Clairvaux. Just as 81. Bernard guides
Dante to his beatific vision in the Empyrean, so Eternity will give
Zarathustra his mystical vision.
The transformation of Zarathustra's campaign by the replacement of
Wisdom with Life resembles Faust's transition from the small world of
Part One to the great world of Part Two. With Wisdom as his guide in
Part I and II, Zarathustra operated in the small world of his individual
self. This was the Faustian phase of his spiritual campaign. Under the
tutelage of Life, he came to know the great world of his cosmic self,
which is coextensive with the universe. This was the Spinozan phase of
his spiritual campaign, which went to a full swing at the beginning of
Part III, when he announced the cosmic conception of his own self.
Hence Parts I and II of Zarathustra correspond to Part One of Faust, and
Parts III and IV of the former to Part Two of the latter. But the distinc-
tion between the small and the great worlds is marked out differently in
the two epics. In Zarathustra, the distinction is physical and psychologi-
cal. In Faust, it is not only physical and psychological, but also social
and history. The physical dimension of Faust's great world is shown by
his journey of evolution, and its social dimension by his participation in
the politics of the Empire and by his struggle to establish the communal
bonds with other human beings. This social dimension is completely
missing from Zarathustra's great world of his cosmic self.
 Chapter Eight

The Dionysian Redemption

(Zarathustra, Part Four)

By the opening scene of Part IV, Zarathustra is back in his cave. He is

still waiting for the sign that his time has come, sitting on a stone and
looking out on the sea over winding abysses. Those abysses are always
ominous because they are the ground of nausea and despair. So his ani-
mals have every reason to be concerned with his happiness. They ask
him whether he is looking out for his happiness, and he replies that hap-
piness does not matter to him because he is concerned with his work. But
his animals refuse to drop the question of happiness and ask him, "Do
you not lie in a sky-blue lake of happiness?" (Z, 237). He replies that his
happiness is heavy and oppresses him like molten pitch. He is still suffer-
ing from depression, which arises from the abysses. In order to lighten
his mood, his animals encourage him to climb the mountain for better
scenery. Taking up this advice, he proposes to offer a honey sacrifice on
the mountain. When they reach the mountaintop, however, he sends back
the animals and announces his stratagem. He has used the honey sacrifice
as a trick to fool his animals. His real intent is to use the honey as bait for
fishing human beings in the abysmal sea. He says that the most colorful
abysmal groundlings will come up to him in response to his honey bait.
His use of honey for baiting fish and for sacrificial offering reflects his
dual relation to the individual and the cosmic self. The honey sacrifice is
an offering that a humble suppliant makes to a mighty god. On the other
hand, the honey bait is an instrument. These two represent two diametri-
cally opposed positions Zarathustra takes toward the world. With the
honey bait in his hand, he asserts his individual self and his Faustian will
to rule over the sea of abysses. He looks very much like the arrogant
234 Chapter Eight

Faust determined to rule over the raging waves of the sea. With the
honey offering, Zarathustra is reverently bowing before his cosmic self.
The sea of abysses provides the fishing ground for his Faustian self, but
it also shrouds his cosmic monster that can clobber him. He shows his
reverent attitude to his animals by proposing the honey sacrifice. His
animals are closely affiliated with his cosmic self because the cosmic self
is an animal self.
Let us note the tension between the two selves in his soliloquy on the
mountaintop, which is given after the departure of his animals. He
flaunts his Faustian self when he shouts to the sea of abysses: "Open up
and cast up to me your fish and glittering crabs! (Z,239)" But he imme-
diately goes into extolling the magic of relying on his destiny, which he
designated as one of the four attributes of his cosmic self in "On the
Great Longing" of Part III. He calls his destiny "my eternal destiny" be-
cause it is inscribed in the eternal ring of recurrence. For the first time in
his career, he recognizes his destiny in its eternal mode. With this sense
of eternity, he announces his destiny: the great Hazar, his kingdom of a
thousand years. He is now sitting on the highest peak that will be the
center of this kingdom, which will be set up for the redemption of those
foundering in the sea of abysses allover the world. The announcement of
his kingdom comes as a huge surprise. But we may be able to make some
sense of this surprise by connecting it to "The Seven Seals". The seven
seals in the Book of Revelation announce the kingdom that will be estab-
lished by Christ on his second coming. Just as Christ's marriage with the
New Jerusalem will establish his universal kingdom, so Zarathustra's
marriage with Eternity may lead to his universal kingdom. The great
Hazar may be the final form that his cosmic self will take, just as the
New Jerusalem was to be the realization of Christ's cosmic self, the mys-
tical body of Christ. He is following Jesus Christ in laying the foundation
of his kingdom by becoming a fisher of human beings. He casts out his
fishing line from the center of his future kingdom to all the seas, telling
his fishing rod to bite into the belly of all black affliction. He is still suf-
fering from this black melancholy, which has been inflicted on his heart
by the black monster from the Abyss. He wants to call up all those who
have been struggling with the same affliction. They are the higher men
who will be coming up from the abysses. The society of these higher
men will become the foundation of his new kingdom, the great Hazar.
 The Dionysian Redemption 235

The Higher Men (Part IV.2-9)

The Soothsayer is the first of the higher men to show up at Zarathustra's

cave the next day. While the hermit of the cave is tracing his shadow on
the ground, he is startled by another shadow, which turns out to the
Soothsayer. He scoffs at Zarathustra for his pretense to be a cheerful old
man. Happiness is again the center of discussion as it was in the talk be-
tween Zarathustra and his animals. Although Zarathustra pretends to be
happy, the Soothsayer says, one can find only melancholy in the moun-
tain cave. He predicts that his pretense will be swept away by the great
waves of distress that are now rising to his mountain cave. Just then the
cry of distress rises up from the abysses and unsettles Zarathustra. The
Soothsayer tells him that the higher man is crying for him, and he goes
out to look for the higher man in the woods. He says that the higher man
shall not come to grief in his domain. He talks as though he were already
the king of the great Hazar. In "Conversation with the Kings", he runs
into two more higher men, the two kings, who are bringing an ass loaded
.with wine as their tribute to him, whom they call the highest man on
earth. After sending them to his cave, he walks deeper and farther into
the woods and steps on a man, who is lying on the ground and sticking
his bare ann into a swamp to study leeches ("The Leech"). He is the Sci-
entist, another higher man. In "The Magician", Zarathustra runs into an-
other higher man, the Magician or the Poet, who is putting on a show of
convulsions and contortions. He is playing the game of being a great man,
but his game is exposed by Zarathustra. So he terminates his game of
dissemblance and admits his failure to achieve greatness. The burning
desire to achieve greatness is the common bond that ties Zarathustra to
all the higher men. But they are just ugly dwarfs, who gave him the great
disgust in "The Convalescent" of Part III. In "Retired", Zarathustra runs
into a tall man deeply muffled under melancholy. He turns out to be the
last Pope, who served his old God until his last hour, and retired after his
death. But he has neither recovered from his bereavement, nor become
free of his old master. He is still haunted by the sense of piety.
In "The Ugliest Man", Zarathustra runs into a truly miserable crea-
ture in a kingdom of death, which bristles with black and red cliffs.
There is no grass, no tree, and no bird's voice. It is a valley avoided by
all animals, even the beasts of prey. Only a species of ugly fat green
236 Chapter Eight

snakes come there to die when they grow old. Therefore the shepherds
call this dead land the valley of serpent-death. Zarathustra sinks into a
black reminiscence because he feels as though he had stood in this valley
once before. This valley of death looks like the cave of human decay
where Zarathustra felt the great disgust with man. He is now reliving his
ordeal of "The Convalescent" of Part III. When he opens his eyes after
his black reminiscence, he notices something that looks like a human
being. But it is exceedingly horrible. This is the Ugliest Man. He chal-
lenges Zarathustra to solve the riddle: What is the revenge against the
witness? Then he says that this riddle concerns his own identity ("who
am I?"). He is reenacting the riddle of self-identity Zarathustra encoun-
tered for his own identity in "The Convalescent". He immediately solves
the riddle by recognizing the Ugliest Man as the one who murdered God
in his revenge for seeing him through and through for all his ugliness. He
can so easily solve the riddle because he is so much like the Ugliest Man.
He says to Zarathustra, "I have guessed what ax struck you to the
ground: hail to you, a Zarathustra, that you stand again!" (Z, 264). He
knows what has struck down Zarathustra. He knows it because he was
felled by the same ax. But he is now admiring Zarathustra ("hail to you")
for having stood up again. Evidently, the Ugliest Man could not. This is
the common bond and the difference between the two. The image of
Zarathustra standing up again after being felled by an ax recalls the im-
age of the shepherd who rises up triumphantly after biting off the snake's
head. But the Ugliest Man could not bite it off. Consequently, he is still
choking and decaying in the valley of serpent-death. He went through the
same trial and test as Zarathustra's seven-day ordeal with the abysmal
thought. But they have come out with different results. Because of this
common background, Zarathustra feels greater empathy with the Ugliest
Man than with any other higher men. The Ugliest Man is his alter ego or
his counter ego. The other higher men are various versions of this alter
ego, insofar as they resemble the Ugliest Man. They represent the vari-
ous features of Zarathustra's own repulsive self. Hence all of them are
his alter egos with the exception of the two kings, which will be ex-
plained later. It may be more accurate to say that the Ugliest Man is his
primary alter ego.
In "The Voluntary Beggar", Zarathustra finds a preacher talking to a
bunch of cows. This is the Voluntary Beggar. He is trying to find out the
 The Dionysian Redemption 237

secret of happiness from the cows. In the domain of nausea, he can see
no distinction between the rich and the poor. The only cure for this uni-
versal affliction is the art of rumination. He claims to have learned this
from the cows. Greg Whitlock suggests that he is a Buddha-figure (Re-
turning to Sils-Maria, 256). This suggestive idea is in need of substantia-
tion. In The Will to Power 342, Nietzsche says that the Buddhist is the
perfect cow. In Anti-Christ 20, he explains how the Buddhists achieve
their bovine existence. Though Christianity and Buddhism are two great
nihilistic religions, he says, Buddhism is a hundred times more realistic
in coping with human existence than Christianity. The Buddhists treat
suffering, especially depression, as a physiological problem. As a remedy
for this problem, the Buddha devised hygienic measures such as open air,
the wandering life, moderation with food, the avoidance of emotions that
heat the blood, and no anxiety for oneself or others (A 20). These hygi-
enic measures appear to be exemplified by the Voluntary Beggar and his
cows ruminating in the fresh open meadow.
By chewing the cud, the Beggar says, the cows refrain from all
heavy thoughts that inflate the heart. Rumination appears to serve the
same function as Buddhist meditation, probably the most important of all
the hygienic measures devised by the Buddha. Buddhism is the religion
of meditation. The Voluntary Beggar says that the art of rumination is
the cure for nausea. He is the first one to claim that he has found the cure
for the great affliction of nausea. Hence his pronouncement marks a huge
milestone in Zarathustra's search for redemption, because nausea is the
greatest affliction in his world. This milestone is the counterpoint to the
discovery of the Ugliest Man, who has been crushed by the same great
affliction. When the Beggar recognizes Zarathustra, the former calls the
latter the man without nausea, the man who has overcome the great nau-
sea. This is an extraordinary pronouncement. In his long struggle against
nausea, Zarathustra has never shown any sign of having conquered it.
Perhaps, he conquered it in "The Convalescent". That may be what the
Ugliest Man meant by saying that Zarathustra stood up again after the
ax-blow. The talk over nausea establishes an immediate rapport between
Zarathustra and the Beggar. One of them has found the remedy for nau-
sea; the other has overcome it. This common ground clearly sets them
apart from the other higher men. Whereas the latter are still suffering
from nausea, the former have conquered it and become superhuman.
238 Chapter Eight

There is no clearer sign of having become a superman than the conquest

of nausea. Shortly after sending the Beggar to his cave, Zarathustra runs
into the last higher man ("The Shadow"). The Shadow says that he looks
like a ghost because he has spent all his life in following Zarathustra
from one remotest comer of the world to another, overthrowing all
boundary stones, and manipulating the truth at will. The Shadow is not
only the last but also the first higher man to appear on Zarathustra's do-
main. Just before the appearance of the Soothsayer, he was tracing his
shadow on the ground. Thus his shadow marks the beginning and the end
for the presentation of all the higher men. This shows that all the higher
men are his shadows. Although many theories have been proposed on the
nature of the higher men, none is better than the simple view that they
are Zarathustra's shadows from his past. Because the higher men are his
shadows, I will call them his alter egos. His relation to his shadows takes
on different grades of self-identification. The Ugliest Man, the Beggar,
and the Shadow are closest to Zarathustra. Let us compare these three.
The Beggar is the polar opposite to the Ugliest Man. The latter is
victimized by nausea; the former has found the remedy for this affliction.
The Shadow is also the polar opposite to the Voluntary Beggar. The lat-
ter is a peaceful man, but the former is a daredevil. The Shadow is the
Faustian self. By arrogantly flaunting the autonomous will, the Shadow
has overthrown all boundary stones and manipulated the truth at will. But
this willful posture has brought him the disastrous consequence of being
reduced to his shadowy existence. His condition is the same as that of the
Ugliest Man shriveling and decaying in the valley of serpent-death. The
Shadow and the Ugliest Man are dying and shriveling because the asser-
tion of their Faustian will has severed their lifelines to Mother Nature.
On the other hand, Zarathustra and the Beggar are healthy and thriving
because they are securely connected to Mother Nature by the acceptance
of their cosmic self. These two modes of existence are like the two mod-
els of Antaeus and Icarus that we noted in Faust. In Zarathustra, a Faust-
ian is an Icarus and a Spinozan is an Antaeus. The Shadow and the Ugli-
est Man are two shadows of Zarathustra's same past. Whereas both of
them are Faustian figures, the Voluntary Beggar is a Spinozan figure. He
has learned the bovine art of rumination for living with his animal self in
peace and harmony, He is the Buddha-figure, who embraces the karmic
bond. At the beginning of "The Shadow", the Beggar starts running away
 The Dionysian Redemption 239

and Zarathustra runs after him. Then the Shadow appears and starts run-
ning after him. So there are three runners. The Beggar is ahead of
Zarathustra and the Shadow is behind him. This scene of three runners
portrays their relationship. The Shadow is Zarathustra's past self and the
Beggar is his future self. The former is the reminder of his past suffering;
the latter is the promise of his future happiness.
The other higher men are not so closely related to Zarathustra's iden-
tity as the Ugliest Man, the Shadow, and the Beggar are. There are nine
higher men altogether, but only seven of them function as his shadows or
alter egos. The two kings are the exceptions to this stage function. They
bring an ass as a tribute to Zarathustra. A tribute is always given to
someone other than oneself. As the tribute-bearers, the two kings set
themselves apart from Zarathustra's composite self, which is represented
by the other seven higher men. Beyond the two kings and the three
higher men we have talked about, there are four other higher men: the
Soothsayer, the Scientist, the Magician, and the retired Pope. They repre-
sent the social functions, which were already discussed well before the
gathering of the higher men in Zarathustra's cave. The Soothsayer played
his role in "The Soothsayer" of Part II, and the function of the Magician
was scrutinized in "On Poets" of Part II. The Pope was one of the priests
examined in "On Priests" of Part II. The role of the Scientist was essen-
tial for Zarathustra's descent to the Abyss (scientific reduction) in "On
Great Events" of Part II. These four shadows represent Zarathustra's
outer (or social) self, while the other three represent his inner (or existen-
tial) self. With the Voluntary Beggar, we had better broaden our notion
of Zarathustra's shadows. The Beggar represents not only Zarathustra's
past, but also future. He is the only past Zarathustra that is still alive.
Hence he clearly stands out in the company of the higher men.

Prelude (Part IV.IO-16)

Meditative peace is not the ultimate end for Buddhists. It is only their
hygienic means of coping with the turbulent world of samsara. Their
ultimate end is the bliss of nirvana. Likewise, the peace and harmony of
bovine existence cannot be the ultimate end for Zarathustra, whose heart
has been pulsating with the great longing for Eternity ("The Seven
240 Chapter Eight

Seals"). "At Noon" gives a foretaste of his future bliss in the eternal ring.
He lies down under a tree and enjoys a few moments of solitude after
rounding up the company of higher men. He falls into a strange sleep and
sees a god asleep. This god is Pan, who is supposed to sleep at noon. In
Greek mythology, there was a close affinity between Pan and Dionysus.
They were so closely related that they were often believed to be one and
the same. The sleeping Pan can be taken as the sleeping Dionysus.
Zarathustra sees the sleeping Pan under an old tree covered by a lot of
yellow grapes, which are associated with Dionysus. In "The Dancing
Song" of Part II, he mentioned a sleeping god, who had fallen asleep in
bright daylight beside the well probably because he had been tired after
chasing butterflies. This sleeping god, who was then identified as the
spirit of gravity and Life, now turns out to be Pan (or Dionysus). Thus
Zarathustra's brief mysterious sleep under the grapevine is a Dionysian
intoxication, which transports him from the temporal to the eternal realm.
At the onset of his mysterious sleep, he compares his soul to a ship that
has sailed into its stillest cove and leans against the earth, weary of long
voyages and uncertain seas. His soul has not yet fully entered the eternal
realm. She has just sailed into a cove and leans against the land.
In "The Welcome", Zarathustra returns to his cave and faces the as-
sembly of his higher men only to realize that the cry of distress was their
collective voice. In welcoming the higher men, he uses the word "de-
spair" six times and calls them the men of despair. At the end of this
speech, the higher men are treated to a banquet ("The Last Supper"), dur-
ing which he gives a long speech on them ("On the Higher Men"). In its
format, this speech resembles his speech in "On Old and New Tablets",
but it has a completely different orientation. Whereas the previous
speech was concerned with the creation of new values and the destruc-
tion of old ones, the present speech is addressed to the danger of the
abyss and the courage to face it. The former speech was Faustian in its
tone and theme. But the latter speech is Spinozan. He now depicts the
superman as the hero to conquer the abysmal thought, thereby reori-
enting his role from the creation of values to the redemption from the
abysmal thought. After this long speech, he withdraws with his animals
from the higher men and walks out of his cave for fresh air. He wants to
get away from their bad smell. On his departure, the Magician holds the
court in "The Song of Melancholy". He wants to counter Zarathustra's
 The Dionysian Redemption 241

cheerful spirit of laughing and dancing with his heavy spirit of dark mel-
ancholy. This is definitely the spirit of gravity. The Magician recites a
gloomy song and engulfs the higher men with the spirit of melancholy.
In "On Science", the Scientist takes the harp away from the Magician
and tries to ward off the spirit of melancholy. But he gets nowhere. Sci-
ence is no better for coping with the despair of human existence than art
and poetry. But Zarathustra comes back and brightens the atmosphere by
praising the courage that has governed human history. The higher men
cheer up and the Magician concedes his defeat. But the Shadow wants to
offer his own entertainment lest the higher men be seized by another as-
sault of depression after their dinner. He wants to sing an old after-dinner
song he once composed ("Among Daughters of Wilderness").
This song describes a European who agonizes over his shriveled sen-
suality. Trapped in an African oasis, he becomes a helpless captive of
two beautiful girls, who want to play with him for their own sexual
pleasure. But the European is too shriveled to respond to their sensuous
advance, and he tries to hide his embarrassment by posing as a howling
moral monkey. Presumably, the moral roar should scare away those Af-
rican maidens. He concludes his soliloquy by reciting Martin Luther's
words: "And I stand even now/ As a European;/ I cannot do else; God
help me" (Z, 309). He cannot do anything else with the sensuous African
girls because his sensuality is totally withered. The Shadow's song is
self-reflective. It portrays his own shriveled sensuality and his own shat-
tered will before anyone else's. We noted earlier that the Shadow is
Zarathustra's Faustian self, who has been shattered and reduced to a
mere shadow of his previous existence. His Faustian self screamed for
the superman and the creative will, and this was his howling as a moral
lion. Like the pathetic European, he was howling to hide his own exhaus-
tion. All the higher men are like the Shadow. They are trapped in their
own shriveled sensuality, just like the European of the African oasis. No
wonder, Zarathustra cannot stand them. He has to get away from them
frequently for fresh outside air. Their withered sensuality makes them
more disgusting than anything else. Thus the Shadow's song exposes
their pathetic condition and makes them break out in great laughter. They
are laughing over themselves. That is really a victory over the oppressive
spirit of melancholy.
 242 Chapter Eight

The Ass Festival (Part IV.17-18)

In the "The Awakening", the higher men become merry after warding off
the spirit of melancholy. Zarathustra claims it as his triumph over the
spirit of gravity. He is announcing his victory for the frrst time in his
long battle against the spirit of gravity. While he is enjoying his victory,
he is startled to note that the cave has suddenly become deathly still.
.When he goes to the cave to find out what is happening there, he cannot
believe his own eyes. Like little children, the higher men are all kneeling
down to worship an ass as their god. The worship of an ass is a sheer ab-
surdity, if it is taken literally. To avoid such an absurdity, many com-
mentators have tried to take the ass allegorically (See my Nietzsche's
Epic of the Soul, 289-91). But none of them is convincing. So I propose
the hypothesis that the ass is the symbol of Dionysus and that its worship
is the worship of Nature-God. When the ass was presented to Zarathus-
tra, it carried a load of wine, which has been closely associated with Dio-
nysus. In the ancient Greek medallions, Dionysus is often pictured as
riding an ass. His coming was envisaged by Zarathustra right after his
announcement of the triumph over the spirit of gravity in "The Awaken-
ing": "Even now evening is approaching: he is riding over the sea, this
good rider. How the blessed one, returning home, sways in his crimson
saddle!" (2, 310). He is the vintager whose coming was prophesied in
"On the Great Longing".
If the ass stands for Dionysus, the god of fertility, the worship of the
Ass-God is the worship of Mother Nature as God. The Ugliest Man re-
cites a litany that states the theology of the Dionysian Ass-God. No
doubt, it is a parody of the Christian adoration of Jesus Christ as the God
Incarnate. It opens with the familiar expression of "praise and honor and
wisdom and thanks and strength" to God. The second stanza praises his
role as a humble servant: "He carries our burden, he took upon himself
the form of a servant" (Z, 312). Just like Jesus Christ, the Ass-God car-
ries our burden, taking upon himself the fonn of a servant. Nature is the
God that carries the burden of sustaining all life. The third stanza talks
about his speaking ability: "He does not speak, except he always says
Yea to the world he created: thus he praises his world" (2, 312). This
passage is an allusion to the identification of Christ as the Word in the
opening sentence of the Gospel according to John. The Greek word for
 The Dionysian Redemption 243

the Word is logos, which means "speech" and it is associated with wis-
dom. Unlike the supernatural God, the Ass-God does not speak. Al-
though he does not speak, he is not dumb. His is the hidden wisdom of
Nature, the wisdom beyond words, which usually goes unrecognized and
unappreciated by human beings. The fourth stanza praises the plain-
looking appearance of the donkey. Unlike the supernatural deities, Na-
ture is plain looking, but produces all the marvels.
The fifth stanza praises his wisdom of creation: "What hidden wis-
dom it is that he has long ears and only says Yea and never No! Has he
not created the world in his own image, namely, as stupid as possible?"
(2, 313). This line alludes to the Christian dogma that God created the
world in his own image. If the world is created in the image of the om-
nipotent and omniscient God, it should be the most perfect world, as
Leibniz claims. But it is far from perfect. It is riddled with so many de-
fects and disasters that some theologians have regarded it as a work of a
bungling deity. But all those defects can be excused and explained if the
creator is understood to be the Nature-God, who employs natural selec-
tion as the method of creation. Since natural selection is not guided by
any design, it appears to be stupid if it is mistaken as the work of an in-
telligent agent. But this seemingly stupid method hides its own wisdom,
that is, the inventive genius of creating the wonders of life ranging from
the single cells to the complex organs of sensation and reproduction.
Some biologists are so impressed with these wonders of life that they
regard the entire biosphere as a huge inventive brain. The Ass-God has
long ears. His virtue lies not in speaking but in listening. Nature listens to
everything that takes place in her dominion; it has a wonderful feedback
mechanism for whatever happens in the course of natural selection. Fi-
nally, the last stanza celebrates the sensuality of the Ass-God: "You love
she-asses and fresh figs; you do not despise food. A thistle tickles your
heart if you happen to be hungry. In this lies the wisdom of a god" (2,
313). Whereas the previous stanzas play on the subtle mixture of resem-
blance and difference between the Ass-God and the Christian God, this
stanza starkly points out their unbridgeable difference. The Christian
God-man led the life of chastity and celibacy, thereby disowning his re-
productive instinct. His sensuality must have shriveled like that of the
European in the Shadow's song. But the Ass-God loves sex and food.
This shows its exuberant sensuality, which is natural for the Nature-God
244 Chapter Eight

because its method of creation is reproduction. Traditionally, the ass has

been a notorious symbol of inexhaustible sexual energy. No wonder, the
worship of the Ass-God takes place after the Shadow's song revived the
higher men's shriveled sensuality. This festival can be taken as the cele-
bration of their resurgent sensuality.
At the end of every one of these eight stanzas, the ass heartily brays
Yea-Yuh. Without having any chance to appreciate the theological sig-
nificance of the litany, Zarathustra storms into the cave and scolds the
higher men as if they were little children. He demands a number of the
higher men, one by one, to account for their childish and stupid behavior.
But their responses are thoughtful and roguish. Amazed at their re-
sponses, he congratulates them for having become truly joyful again.
This is clearly their triumph over the spirit of melancholy. He exhorts the
higher men not to forget this night and this Ass Festival, and proceeds to
consecrate it: "And when you celebrate it again, this ass festival, do it for
your own sake, and also do it for my sake. And in remembrance of me"
(2, 317). This is a parody of the words that Christ used in consecrating
the Last Supper. By using these words, he is instituting a religion ofNa-
ture-God. This is the new religion of Dionysian pantheism. Because the
Ugliest Man's litany and Zarthustra's words of consecration are parodies,
the Ass Festival is automatically assumed to be a ritual of satire and deri-
sion. But this is a mistake due to our misconception of parody. Nowa-
days, the word 'parody' indeed carries the oyertone of satire and derision.
But the model of parody for the Ass Festival is the parody mass of the
Renaissance, a reverent imitation of the Roman Catholic Mass. The word
'parody' in the parody mass means nothing more than imitation. There is
no sense of satire or derision in the parody mass. On the contrary, it is
solemn and reverent. Likewise, though the Ass Festival is a parody, it is
equally solemn and reverent. Textually, it is impossible to detect any
sense of satire or derision in the whole affair. It can be imputed to the
text only by the reader's ignorance and prejudice.
The Ass Festival of Part IV is usually taken as Nietzsche's poetic in-
vention. But it is his parody of the Christian Ass Festival, which was
popular especially in France from the eleventh to the sixteenth century.
This is not to deny the ingenuity and creativity in Nietsche's parody.
The spirit of this festival was to invert the Christian teaching: instead of
trying to become like God, we should all rejoice in becoming healthy
 The Dionysian Redemption 245

animals. This inverted message was taken to be the message of redemp-

tion delivered by Jesus Christ himself, whose life was closely associated
with the ass. In this inversion of the Christian dogma, God takes on the
humble form of a donkey when he comes down from the supernatural to
the natural world. The same spirit of inversion is taking place in the Ass
Festival of the higher men. Their Ass-God is the God who has come
down from the supernatural to the natural world, that is, their god is be-
ing naturalized. The Ugliest Man, who has killed God as the supernatural
being, is now sanctifying Nature as God. By worshipping this new God,
the higher men are rejoicing over their status as healthy animals just as
the Christians did in the medieval festival. The Ass Festival also restores
their sense of reverence. The higher men have become pious again by
finding something before which they can kneel. Prior to this event, they
were all seeking the sense of reverence because its loss was the chief
cause for their despair in the godless world. This point was well articu-
lated by the retired Pope in his conversation with Zarathustra. The sense
of reverence also haunts Zarathustra throughout his career. In "The
Tomb Song" of Part II, he realized that his own sense of sanctity had dis-
solved with the death of God, and he expressed his dear wish to redeem
his old dream of divinity ("All beings shall be divine to me") and sanc-
tity ("All days shall be holy to me"). If Nature is recognized as the crea-
tor of all things, its awesome power is overwhelming and worthy of rev-
erent worship. To worship Nature as God is to institute a Nature-religion,
and the higher men are instituting one by reviving and parodying the me-
dieval festival.
In the Ass Festival of Part IV, the symbolic significance of the ass is
not exhausted by its identification with Nature-God. The ass is repeat-
edly identified with Zarathustra and his higher men. This identification is
not merely symbolic but behavioral. All of them behave like a bunch of
donkeys, as Higgins says (Nietzsche's Zarathustra, 226-27). By "an ass",
she means a fool and a buffoon. I propose that their asinine behavior in-
dicates their transformation to children. In their worship of the Ass-God,
the higher men are kneeling like children. In this foolish behavior, they
are also likened to the ass. By this casual reference, the ass is identified
with a child. In the litany that follows, the Ugliest Man says to the ass,
"Beyond good and evil is your kingdom. It is your innocence not to
know what innocence is." In response, the ass brays, "Yea-Yuh." Inno-
246 Chapter Eight

cence is a common attribute of the child and the ass. The higher men
have become like children by emulating the innocence of Mother Nature.
This is the secret for the final metamorphosis. Everybody seems to know
what it means to be obedient like a camel or to be fierce like a lion. But
nobody seems to know what it means to become a child. Hence the final
metamorphosis has baffled many commentators. Although Zarathustra
was given the stem command to become like a child in "The Stillest
Hour" of Part II, he has not been able to execute this command because
he has never discovered the secret of becoming a child. But the higher
men have just shown the secret.
To be a child is to have no individual self to assert. On the other
hand, to be a camel or a lion presupposes the separation of the individual
self from the cosmic self. But their separation is overcome by gaining the
innocence of a child. In the last chapter, we noted that the conflict be-
tween the individual self and the cosmic self is interminable and that it
can never be resolved by any human effort because such an effort is al-
ways the self-defeating defiance of an individual self against the cosmic
self. Therefore, their reconciliation can be achieved only by some myste-
rious power beyond the control of an individual self. But such power
cannot come into play until and unless the higher men relinquish their
individual wills and become like children. This point is demonstrated by
the Ass Festival and its strange happening. It was never planned by any-
o~e. It took place spontaneously. It came upon the higher men like "a
roaring that blows your souls bright" as Zarathustra says. They had be-
come receptive for the flow of mysterious force through their innocence.
Even Zarathustra becomes like an innocent child and gracefully em-
braces the child-like behavior of the higher men. Surrendering his stub-
born will to oppose their worship of the ass, he happily blesses their fool-
ish ritual. In their child-like mood, he and his higher men have just seen
the God of Nature in the tangible form of an ass. That is to see the Na-
ture-God in the temporal mode. He is now about to encounter it in its
eternal mode and finally fulfill his passionate longing for Eternity ex-
pressed in "The Seven Seals" of Part III. To see the Nature-God in a tan-
gible fonn is the mythical approach, which is taken in the Ass Festival. A
ritual or a festival is an enactment of a myth. To see the Nature-God in
the eternal mode is a mystical experience, the climatic event in a mystery
 The Dionysian Redemption 247

cult. The celebration of the Ass Festival prepares the spiritual mood for
the mystical communion with the Ass-God in "The Drunken Song".

The Midnight Bell (Part IV.19)

After the Ass Festival, the higher men feel elated and step out into the
open air of the cool night. Zarathustra leads the Ugliest Man by the hand
to show him the beauty of his night-world and the big round moon. The
higher men stand together there in silence, secretly amazed at feeling so
well on this earth. Just at that moment, the most amazing thing of this
amazing day happens. The Ugliest Man, again gurgling and snorting,
says that he is for the first time satisfied for having lived his whole life
on earth. Now he wants to say to death, "Was that life? Well then! Once
more!" (2, 318). This is the statement introduced by Zarathustra as an
expression of courage to face the eternal recurrence in "On the Vision
and the Riddle" of Part III. The Ugliest Man has modified it to make his
personal declaration to death. In the valley of serpent-death, he wanted to
die rather than to live his miserable life of failure. He is now saying that
he would rather live than die, even if he has to repeat the same miserable
life of failure. His declaration of "Once more!" announces his new love
of life over death. This is contagious. When the other higher men hear
his jubilant announcement, they all become conscious of their own trans-
formation and offer thanks and reverence to Zarathustra. The Ugliest
Man says, "Living on earth is worthwhile: one day, one festival with
Zarathustra, taught me to love the earth." This explosive love of life even
overtakes Zarathustra. He stands like a drunkard: his eyes grow dim, his
tongue fails, and his feet stumble. And his spirit flees and flies to remote
places, wandering like a heavy cloud between past and future. These are
the typical symptoms of a mystical flight of the soul from the temporal to
the eternal world. They signal the onset of his mystical experience,
whose development Zarathustra recounts in "The Drunken Song" by us-
ing his Roundelay as his narrative framework. To the best of my knowl-
edge, Joan Stambaugh is the only one who has attempted a mystical
reading of this song (The Other Nietzsche, 146-51). She first points out
that Zarathustra's mystical experience does not conform to the traditional
pattern of mystical vision. This is what makes it hard to recognize the
248 Chapter Eight

mystical dimension of "The Drunken Song". Whereas the sense of vision

is the traditional mode of mystical experience, she says, Zarathustra's
mystical experience is associated not with the sense of vision, but with
the sense of hearing. She believes that the unity of subject and object is
highlighted by detaching Zarathustra' s mystical experience from the
sense of vision and by shrouding it in the senses of smell and hearing.
What is truly strange about Zarathustra's mystical experience is the
full use of natural senses, whether they be the sense of smell, hearing, or
vision. As his mystical experience heightens, his natural senses become
keener and keener. In this regard, his experience also diverges from the
traditional mold of mystical experience. Traditional mysticism is theistic.
It presupposes the separation between the eternal and the temporal, God
and the world, and the mystical vision is the flight from one to the other.
But this cannot happen in Zarathustra's world because it is Spinoza's
Nature. Mother Nature can be approached from two different perspec-
tives. When it is approached from the eternal perspective, it is called God
or the eternal reality. When it is approached from the temporal perspec-
tive, it is called the temporal world or Nature. Therefore, when one takes
the eternal perspective, one experiences the same natural world instead
of abandoning it for another reality. Spinoza's scheme of two perspec-
tives for one reality is also operating in Zarathustra's mystical experi-
ence. It is not a flight from the natural to the supernatural world. When
he regains his senses, he seems to hear something mysterious, which
turns out to be the voice of midnight. Just then the sound of a bell slowly
comes up from the depth of midnight, just as Life had told him in "The
Other Dancing Song" of Part III. Now he wants to whisper to the higher
men what is whispered by the old bell. The midnight bell is the voice of
Life, the cosmic self, who has experienced all the agonies of the universe.
His mystical experience is going to take the form of midnight's secret
speech to him, and he will convey this secret message to the higher men.
This is the format for the composition of "The Drunken Song".
In subsection 4, Zarathustra loses his sense of time ("Where is time
gone?") and feels as though he had fallen into deep wells. There is no
time in the deep well of eternity. The well of eternity does not flow be-
cause it transcends time. He exhorts the higher men to redeem the tombs
and awaken the corpses. Like the Ugliest Man dying in the valley of ser-
pent-death, all the higher men are no more than living corpses and stam-
 The Dionysian Redemption 249

mering tombs. He then connects these living tombs to the burrowing

heart-worm, the dwarf-snake that is decaying and dying in every human
heart. This heart-worm will keep burrowing and pounding as long as
time keeps running and will tum every human being into a living tomb.
This heart-worm is the same as the worm that Faust identifies himself
with, namely, the worm that burrows in the dust (Faust 653). In subsec-
tion 6, Zarathustra's mood changes abruptly. The humming bell becomes
a sweet lyre, whose intoxicated sound delights him. Its sound comes
from all ages and all places. The sweet lyre is the music of midnight, Life,
who has experienced all the joys and woes of the earth. In subsection 7,
he becomes pure and his world becomes perfect. By becoming pure, he
will be fit to be the lord of the earth. He says, "The purest shall be the
lords of the earth-the most unknown, the strongest, the midnight souls
who are brighter and deeper than any day" (2,321). The midnight soul is
the most unknown because it is the dwarf from the abyss, the deepest and
darkest depth of the whole world. But this monster has become the purest
in the eternal ring. This process of purification is different from the one
that purifies Faust's soul after his death, which requires the separation of
impure elements from its immortal part. No such operation is required
from the purification ofZarathustra's midnight soul, which becomes pure
by being placed in the eternal domain. By this process of purification, the
ugly dwarf is being transformed into a heavenly being, as Zarathustra
said in "On Those Who Are Sublime" of Part II.
In subsection 8, he plunges into divine woe. He says, "God's woe is
deeper, you strange world!" (2, 322). In the theistic tradition, the eternal
world of God and angels is supposed to be free of the woe and suffering
that afflict the temporal world. But this cannot be true of Zarathustra's
world because its eternal dimension is inseparable from its temporal di-
mension. Therefore the gods have their own woes, which are even deeper
than ours, because they are greater. In subsection 9, the midnight lyre
talks as the vintager, who cruelly cuts the vine. But blessed be his knife
that cuts the vine. When the vine is cut, the grape is made into wine. This
is the symbol of transforming humanity into divinity. This is the same
symbol as the transubstantiation, in which wine is transformed into the
blood of Christ. In subsection 7, he said that he had not yet become a god
because he had not made god's hell his own. In subsection 8, he took on
divine suffering as his own, thereby becoming ripe for the vintager's
250 Chapter Eight

knife. The coming of this vintager has been predicted many times since
"On the Great Longing" of Part III. He came in "The Other Dancing
Song", but Zarathustra was not ripe yet for the harvest. Now he has come
again and says that what has become perfect and ripe wants to die. But
this is the bliss of dying as a temporal being and becoming a god in the
eternal world. Therefore blessedness belongs to death. On the other hand,
all that is unripe wants to live, and woe belongs to this desire to live. All
that suffers wants to live so that it may become ripe and joyous. It is
lured by the longing for what is farther, higher, and brighter. This is the
perpetual drive for self-overcoming, which generates all sufferings. Even
the desire to have children is the extension of this drive for self-
overcoming: "thus speaks all that suffers; 'I want children, I do not want
myself'" (2, 322). On the other hand, joy does not want to have any chil-
dren because it is already in the perfect world: "joy wants itself, wants
eternity, wants recurrence, wants everything eternally the same" (2, 322).
In "The Seven Seals" of Part III, Zarathustra concluded every stanza by
expressing his desire to have children by Eternity. He can now say that
he was burning with that desire because he was still suffering in the tem-
poral world. But he no longer wants any children or any heirs because he
is now in the eternal world ofjoy.
In subsection 10, Zarathustra says that his world has become perfect
and describes its perfection in a string of paradoxes: "midnight too is
noon; pain too is a joy; curses too are a blessing; night too is a sun-go
away or you will learn: a sage too is a fool" (2, 323). In this mystery of
Eternity, he says, "Have you ever said Yes to a single joy? a my friends,
then you said Yes to all woe." Why should you say Yes to all woe be-
cause of a single joy? The following is his answer,

All things are entangled, ensnared, enamored; if ever you

wanted one thing twice, if ever you said, "You please me,
happiness! Abide, moment!" then you wanted all back. All
anew, all eternally, all entangled, ensnared, enamored-oh,
then you loved the world. Eternal ones, love it eternally and
evermore; to woe too, you say: go, but return! For all joy
wants- eternity. (Z, 323)

This passage is Zarathustra's modification of Faust's famous wager

statement: If he ever says to any single moment, "Stay a while, you are
 The Dionysian Redemption 251

so fair!", then the devil may fasten him in fetters. If you are pleased with
any single moment, Zarathustra says, then you want all other moments
back because they are all tangled in the eternal ring, in which "All things
are entangled, ensnared, enamored." The ring of eternal recurrence is the
ring of love that binds together all things. To become a god in the eternal
world is to be entangled, ensnared, and enamored in this cosmic bond of
love. This cosmic bond establishes Zarathustra's new identity.
The cosmic bond is the union of the individual self with the cosmic
self, because the eternal ring is the cosmic self in its eternal mode. The
Zarathustra who has become perfect is his individual self; the world that
has become perfect is his cosmic self. Their perfection lies in their union.
In the last chapter, we noted the difficulty of resolving the conflict of the
individual self with the cosmic self in the temporal world because the
temporal world is the world of individuals and their conflict. Zarathustra
was so frustrated with the temporal world that he eventually wished to
ascend to the eternal world for fulfilling his love of Life. In the eternal
ring, he has now achieved a mystical union with his cosmic self. In this
mystical union, even the heart of the burrowing worm that breaks and
bleeds in the temporal world, becomes a fountain of joy. Thus Zarathus-
tra's love of the ugly dwarf as his ultimate self becomes complete and
absolute in the eternal ring of love. But there is no need for him to say it
because his love of the whole world is obviously his love of his own self
in the eternal domain. In the early phase of his career, Zarathustra ex-
pressed his hatred of himself as his hatred of others. Only later in his ca-
reer, did he come to realize that his hatred of others only reflected his
hatred of his own being. Just as his hatred of himself involved all others
in the world, so his love of himself now encompasses the whole world.
He comes to love his own being by falling in love with the whole world.
This is the secret of self-love. This expansive notion of love is elaborated
in the opening of subsection 11: "All joy wants the eternity of all things,
wants honey, wants dregs, wants drunken midnight, wants tombs, wants
tomb-tears' comfort, wants gilded evening glow" (Z, 323).
The timeless character of the eternal ring is expressed by the second
phrase ("all eternally"). Because all things are eternally present in the
eternal ring, there can be no repetition. The notion of repetition makes
sense only in the temporal world, where one thing happens after another.
Nothing happens or becomes in eternity. To indicate the timeless modal-
252 Chapter Eight

ity of eternal existence, Zarathustra uses the word "ring" in subsection

11. So there are two metaphors for describing the ultimate reality: the
eternal recurrence and the eternal ring. These two metaphors correspond
to the two modes of reality, temporal and eternal. The third phrase ("all
entangled, ensnared, enamored") describes another feature of eternal re-
ality: all of its elements are tightly entwined with one another in the
cosmic chain of love. This notion of cosmic interconnection can also be
found .in the original description of eternal recurrence in "On the Vision
and the Riddle": "And are not all things knotted together so firmly that
this moment draws after it all that is to come?" (Z, 158). But the two de-
scriptions of the universal connection are different. One is described as
the temporal connection of succession and repetition, and the other as the
timeless connection of eternal presence. The temporal connection pro-
vokes disgust and nausea because its causal power crushes the autono-
mous will. The eternal connection generates love and joy because it as-
sures the harmonious union of the individual with the cosmic self. In the
temporal world, it takes courage and defiance to love one's fate. But
there is no need either for courage or defiance in the eternal world be-
cause there is no nausea and horror of the Abyss. In the well of eternity,
Zarathustra shows no sign of struggle. He only rejoices in it.
The nature of the will changes when it moves from the temporal to
the eternal world. The joy of eternal love belongs to the will of the eter-
nal ring: "it [joy] wants itself, it bites into itself, the will of the ring
strives in it" (subsection 11). In this mystical mode, the will of Zarathus-
tra becomes one with the will of the eternal ring. The fusion of his will
with the eternal ring resolves the problem of redemption propounded in
"On Redemption" of Part II, where Zarathustra says that the spirit of re-
venge arises from the fact that the will has no control over the past. The
will is supposed to be the liberator and bringer of joy for the future, but
unfortunately it is also a prisoner of the past. Everything in our life is
determined by the causal chain from the past, and every life is a series of
sufferings in its technical sense, that is, a series of accidents beyond con-
trol. Since nothing is of our own making and everything is an accident,
our lives are shattered fragments. The redemption from this world of
shattered lives and senseless sufferings can be achieved only by the will
that can overcome the causal chain from the past. The liberation from the
causal chain is fully realized in the world of eternity. There is no causal
 The Dionysian Redemption 253

chain in the realm of eternity because it admits neither the past nor the
future, but only the eternal presence. Hence the revenge against the past
is dissolved by the flight to the eternal world. In the eternal realm,
Zarathustra wills not any single item, but the whole world in its entirety,
"the eternity of all things." By this universal willing, he can bring the
shattered human experiences into a unified whole.
In Ecce Homo (Zarathustra 6), Nietzsche says that Zarathustra binds
together in a new unity all opposites from the highest to the lowest forces
of human nature. By this universal synthesis, he claims, "Here man is
overcome every moment, the concept 'superman' here becomes the
greatest reality." Who is this man that is overcome? He is the dwarf, the
individual self alienated from the cosmic self. By their union, Zarathustra
becomes the superman. In this mystical event, the dwarf flies up like an
eagle to the ring of eternity, thereby fulfilling Zarathustra's original ideal
embodied in the flight of the eagle with the serpent coiled around its
neck at the end of the Prologue. The serpent coiled around the eagle's
neck is a poetic symbol for a sexual union, and Zarathustra was lusting
for such an erotic union in his passionate longing for the nuptial ring in
"The Seven Seals". By this erotic union, his individual becomes one with
the will of the entire universe. This is his sun-will. In chapter 5, we noted
that the sun was Zarathustra's symbol of the superman. For a long time,
he looked upon the superhuman ideal as the hero of autonomous will.
But it has materialized as the superhero of heteronomous will. The sun-
will of the superman is the will of a child. He is a self-propelled wheel
because he is one with the eternal ring, the only self-propelled wheel in
the entire universe. By his mystical union with Life, Zarathustra becomes
a divine child. This completes his final metamorphosis, which was pre-
figured by the childish behavior of the higher men in the Ass Festival.
This is the fourth and final stage in the Ladder of Redemption.

From Darkness into Sunlight (Part IV.20)

The mystical event has finally solved the problem of happiness, the cen-
tral problem for Part IV. There can be no greater bliss than the rapture in
the eternal ring. But no one can live in such rapture for ever. The night
will be succeeded by another day, and Zarathustra and his higher men
254 Chapter Eight

have to come back from the night of intoxication to the sober world of
daylight. What sort of significance can the midnight rapture have for the
long run? The answer is obvious if the mystical experience is taken in
the traditional sense. In On the Genealogy of Morals 111.17, Nietzsche
gives a scathing critique of mysticism. He diagnoses it as an escape
mechanism, which was devised by the ascetic priests to cope with the
problem of suffering. Their common tactic is to numb the nerves and
excite voluptuous ecstasies of sensuality, thereby producing the illusion
of mystical union with God or Brahman. But it can only create the illu-
sion of finding supernatural bliss. This is his critique of traditional mysti-
cism, which presupposes the demarcation between the natural and the
supernatural worlds. But Zarathustra's mystical experience celebrates
natural reality, whereas traditional mysticism repudiates it. Hence it can
have a positive impact on his life in this world. This point is demon-
strated by "The Sign".
Let us first note what happens in this section. Zarathustra emerges
from his cave, glowing and strong like the rising sun, while all the higher
men are still asleep. He wants to go to work. But he is not going to wait
for them because they are not strong enough to be his companions. Then
he suddenly hears the sharp cry of his eagle. Though he is glad to see that
his eagle is already awake, he says, he still does not have the right men.
At that moment, a vast swarm of doves descend and flutter around him,
expressing their love. It is a cloud of love. When he sits down on a big
stone, he encounters something even more startling. He is caressed by a
gentle lion. A world of love is engulfing his existence. The lion and birds
not only show their love to him, but greet one another with love. Tears of
joy well up in his eyes and fallon his hands, and the lion affectionately
licks up those tears and growls bashfully. When he touches the gentle
lion, he says, "The sign is at hand." This is a momentous announcement.
He has been waiting for this sign for a long time. Now it has finally ar-
rived. In "On Old and New Tablets" of Part III, he predicted that his sign
would be "the laughing lion with the flock of doves." He is indeed now
surrounded by the laughing lion and the flock of doves. So he says, "My
children are near, my children." The advent of his children is the central
theme of this section. He states it no fewer than three times. When he
touches the gentle lion, he says, "The sign is at hand." When the lion
laughs with joy over the affectionate birds, he says, "My children are
 The Dionysian Redemption 255

near, my children." At the end of the section, he says, "Well then! The
Lion came, my children are near, Zarathustra has ripened." In this last
announcement, he equates the advent of his children with his own ripen-
ing. In that case, the advent of his children is the advent of his new self
that was born from his mystical union with Life in the eternal domain.
The gentle lion stands for Zarathustra's new self. It is acting like a
dog that has found its old master again. The beast is bashful even when it
roars and growls. It has been transformed from a fierce beast to a gentle
animal. This transformation represents Zarathustra's transformation from
a lion to a child. Prior to the mystical event, he had roared like a fierce
lion throughout his long career except for a few occasions when he was
terrified by his abysmal thought. But he has now become like the gentle
lion. In the Ass Festival, the ass served as the symbol of a child for the
cosmic self and as the model for the higher men to emulate in becoming
children. Now the gentle lion serves as the symbol of a child for the indi-
vidual self, which has become a child of Mother Nature. Thus the two
beasts represent the two different sides of Zarathustra's innocent self,
cosmic and individual. If the new lion stands for the new Zarathustra, the
mystical event produces not only a brief span of intoxication in the well
of eternity, but endows him with new power and energy in the temporal
world. No wonder, he emerges from his cave, glowing and strong like
the fresh morning sun. He is as strong as the roaring lion. This is in vivid
contrast with his condition at the opening scene of Part IV, where his
melancholy made him look more like an old tired lion. But the old mel-
ancholy lion is now reborn as a fresh laughing lion. This completes the
last of the three metamorphoses in his spiritual development. Robert
Gooding-Williams says that the passions of the earth are reborn within
Zarathustra and achieve the third metamorphosis of the spirit in "The
Sign" tZarathustra's Dionysian Modernism, 294). But the third meta-
morphosis does not take place in "The Sign". It only displays and con-
firms the metamorphosis that has taken place in "The Drunken Song".
Why is Zarathustra's new self represented by a group of his chil-
dren? The new self is an individual; a group of his children is a set of
individuals. Why is a single individual represented by a collective entity?
This question concerns the nature of an individual. It is my thesis that he
regards an individual as a composite entity. In "On the Way of the Crea-
tor" of Part I, he said, "Lonely one, you are going the way of the creator:
256 Chapter Eight

you would create a god for yourself out of your seven devils" (Z, 64-65).
The seven devils are the seven passions that are harbored in his earthly
self, the dwarf, whom Zarathustra repeatedly called his devil and archen-
emy. He has created a god out of these seven devils in the eternal ring.
Now I propose that the seven devils are represented by the higher men.
There are nine higher men altogether, but only seven of them function as
his shadows or alter egos. As we noted earlier, the two kings are the ex-
ceptions to this stage function. In "On Those Who Are Sublime" of Part
II, he said that the sublime one "must redeem his own monsters and rid-
dles, changing them into heavenly children" (Z, 118). In that case, the
arrival of his children should be none other than the transformation of his
wild monsters into gentle beasts. The laughing lion and the flock of
doves are gentle creatures full of love. They represent his newborn pas-
sions, his new children. The fierce lion is only one of the many monsters
or wild dogs that can be reborn as lovely heavenly children. The gentle
lion is only a sign. Because one soul harbors many passions and mon-
sters, the rebirth of one soul can be the birth of many heavenly children.
The representation of one soul by many monsters or children reflects
Zarathustra's view that the soul is not a simple, but a complex entity.
Using his favorite metaphor, the soul can be described as a ball of snakes
or a cellar of wild dogs. The idea that the soul is a complex entity is a
Platonic legacy. In the Republic, Plato compares the soul to a state com-
posed of three classes. Zarathustra's great Hazar should be understood as
a kingdom that represents the composite structure of his soul or self. It is
a kingdom within the soul as much as Plato's ideal state can be a state
within the soul. Zarathustra's psychological kingdom begins with the
assembly of his higher men, who represent his old self, and ends with the
birth of his new children, who represent his new self. The two kings'
tribute to Zarathustra represents the transfer of power from the old to the
new dynasty, whose mission is to reign over the tidal waves of despair
rising from the abyss. The entire Part IV is a continuous battle against
those tidal waves, which belong to Zarathustra's psychological landscape.
Part IV opened with him sitting on the highest peak and looking over the
abysses of the sea. This cosmic landscape is psychological, too. He
called those abysses his own abysses, that is, the abysses in his soul. The
center of his future kingdom, from which he cast his fishing rod to all the
 The Dionysian Redemption 257

seas, also belongs to his psychological landscape. So do the higher men

who arise from the abyss to his bait.
Equally psychological is the scenery in "The Sign", in which
Zarathustra is engulfed under the exploding flood of heavenly love. The
laughing lion and the flock of affectionate birds can never be found in
the real world. The scenery in "The Sign" is as natural and as psycho-
logical as it is in "Mountain Gorges" of Faust, where friendly lions are
roaming in the sanctuary of love (Faust 11850-53). Like the ending of
Faust, all of Part IV is a psychological drama. It is my thesis that the
function of this psychodrama is to exhibit the hidden nature of Zarathus-
tra's ordeal with the abysmal thought. There is something truly mysteri-
ous about his recounting of the ordeal to his animals in "The Convales-
cent" of Part III. Although his encounter with the monster is alleged to be
the most shattering experience in his life, he says amazingly little about
what has really expired in that event. When he is clobbered by the mon-
ster, he simply collapses. When he recovers, he screams about the mon-
ster that crawled into his throat, but gives no indication of what sort of
monster it was. Consequently, we cannot even tell with certainty whether
the monster was the dwarf or the snake. He never gives a straightforward
description of his terrible experience, as he did after a similar experience
in "The Soothsayer" of Part II. Hence his cryptic talk is truly tantalizing.
He is again playing his favorite sphinx game and keeping most of his
secret encounter to himself. He justifies this secretive behavior by his
elaborate discourse on the impossibility of real communication.
How should we understand this secretive behavior? In my view,
Zarathustra's difficulty really lies in communicating not only with his
animals, but also with his own deep self. The abysmal thought is the
heart-worm burrowing in his own heart. When this monster wakes up in
response to his summons, he says, "Hail to me! You are coming, I hear
you. My abyss speaks, I have turned my ultimate depth inside out into
the light" (Z, 216). The Abyss is his own ultimate depth that he is trying
to tum inside out. He is trying to expose his innermost self and make it
visible. This is his attempt to understand his deepest self, the dwarf-
snake monster, in a direct encounter. But this confrontational approach
ends only in his getting clobbered by the monster and leaves him with no
clear understanding of his monstrous self in "The Convalescent". In as-
sembling the higher men, he is deploying a drastically different method
258 Chapter Eight

to understand his deepest self. This is to externalize it, personify its vari-
ous features, and project them on the stage for all to see. The baffling
comedy of his higher men reflects the baffling character of his soul. It is
the drama of his soul. We have already noted that the higher men are
Zarathustra's shadows and alter egos. Some of them are more closely
related to his inmost self than others. But all of them have come up from
the Abyss just as his most abysmal thought did in "The Convalescent".
All of them suffer from their shattered ambition to achieve greatness and
feel nothing but nausea at their fate of being decrepit dwarfs for eternity,
as he did in "The Convalescent". All of them are trying to recover from
this mortal sickness of nausea with the aid of his animals, as he did in
"The Convalescent". They are reenacting what he experienced in "The
Convalescent". But the reenactment does not extend to the end of Part IV.
In fact, it is hard to pinpoint its termination. We can only be certain that
"The Awakening" clearly begins a new show. Thus the transition from
the reenactment to the new show is subtle and gradual.
The ultimate end of this reenactment is to exorcise the ghosts of his
old self. When the higher men come out of the cave the next morning to
join Zarathustra, the new lion jumps toward them and roars savagely. At
this scary moment, "they all cried out as with a single mouth, and they
fled back and disappeared in a flash" (Z, 326). They cry out with a single
mouth because they are the shadows of one single soul, just as the cry of
distress was their collective cry. Then they all vanish like ghosts because
they are the ghosts of his past self. This is the exorcism of Zarathustra' s
old ghosts and shadows. It works like psychoanalytic therapy, which
brings out the hidden repressions from the depth of the soul to expose
and understand their haunting presence. This is also the way the psycho-
drama is used as a therapeutic device. The hidden emotions and com-
plexes are staged as concrete persons and agents. The roaring lion shows
the most important feature of Zarathustrian therapy. The exposure and
analysis of those ghost-like shadows are not enough for gaining psycho-
logical health. Those psychological moves can become effective only
when they can generate a new strong self like the roaring lion.
The higher men play two different roles before and after the mystical
event. Before this event, they played the role of his old devils, who were
struggling to recover from their despair and nausea just the way
Zarathustra had done in "The Convalescent". When the Ugliest Man
 The Dionysian Redemption 259

shouted to death, "Was that life? Well then! Once more!", he was feeling
the revitalization of his dying self. His feeling of revitalization was
shared by all other higher men. Thus revitalized, they played the rogues
in concocting the Ass Festival and Zarathustra was amazed by their ro-
guish defense of the festival. In his lexicon, a rogue is a lively devil, a
clear sign of vitality. The higher men were beginning their transforma-
tion from his old shriveled devils to his new vibrant children. After the
mystical event, however, they are no longer roguish devils. They do not
even share his vitality to get up fresh and strong in the morning. They are
reduced to the old husks of his newborn children. These two roles of the
higher men can explain the drastic change in his handling of them. In the
evening before, he was their solicitous host and looked after their safety
and comfort. The next morning, he suddenly becomes callous to their
feeling and shows no concern whatsoever for their well-being, even
when they are frightened by his lion. This abrupt change of his attitude
toward the higher men is inexplicable, if they are assumed to retain the
same identity before and after the mystical event. On the other hand, if
they are no longer his old devils in convalescence, but only the old husks
of his newborn children, there would be no point in Zarathustra's contin-
ued kindness to them. He must make a clean break with them for the in-
tegrity of his new children. So his lion drives them back to the cave to be
buried there. This is his final settlement with his old ghosts.
We have considered the relation of Zarathustra's old and new self in
his psychodrama. But that is only one half of the story because he has a
twofold self. The higher men represent his individual self. In the last
chapter, we noted that the cosmic self is represented by animals. But I
should qualify this description because we have seen that the cosmic self
can exist in two different modes, eternal and temporal. The animals rep-
resent the cosmic self in the temporal mode. This representational func-
tion is important for understanding the role of the cosmic self in the psy-
chodrama of Part IV. Zarathustra's talk with his animals marks the open-
ing of this drama. This is the first sign of communion between his indi-
vidual self and his cosmic self. Thereafter, his animals are entrusted with
the task of receiving and instructing the higher men, representatives of
the individual self. This is the second sign of communion between the
two selves. But his animals are not the only animals to make their pres-
ence felt in the psychodrama. The Voluntary Beggar learns the art of ru-
260 Chapter Eight

mination from the cows. This is the third sign of communion of the indi-
vidual self with the cosmic self. These three communions prepare for the
Ass Festival, in which the higher men as representatives of the individual
self worship the ass as the symbol of the cosmic self. The worship of the
cosmic self leads to Zarathustra's mystical union with the eternal ring,
the cosmic self in its eternal mode. The animals return with greater vital-
ity in the morning after the mystical communion. While the higher men
are still asleep in the cave, Zarathustra comes outside and hears the sharp
cry of his eagle above him. Recognizing that his animals are already
awake, he says to them, "You are the right animals for me; I love you.
But I still lack the right men" (Z, 325). This is an astonishing statement.
For the first time in his long association with his animals, he says that he
loves them. This is the expression of his love for his cosmic self in its
temporal mode. Then suddenly he is submerged under countless swarm-
ing affectionate doves. Their descent is the descent of love from his cos-
mic self to his individual self. In his amazement at this dramatic scene,
he reaches out and touches the gentle lion. This is the birth of his new
individual self from the flock of loving birds. This new self is born with
the love of the cosmic self, just as Christ was born with love of the Holy
Spirit. I have closely associated the cosmic self with animals, but here is
an animal, the lion, that represents his new individual self. This is to
highlight the rebirth of his new individual self as an animal that can have
a complete union with his cosmic self.
The birth of a new self from the old one in this psychodrama is simi-
lar to Faust's rebirth. In his redemption, as we noted in chapter 4, his
despotic individual self is reborn as a new communal self by repenting
his sin of egotism and by being united with the heavenly host, which is
the equivalent of Zarathustra's cosmic self because they represent the
cosmic force of Mother Nature. The function of Zarathustra's psycho-
drama is also similar to the function of purgation in Dante's scheme of
salvation. This is to purge the soul of its sins and make it pure for its
flight to heaven. When Zarathustra flies up to the eternal domain in "The
Drunken Song", he is keenly conscious of his purity. It was achieved by
a long process of purgation. But what is the sin that is purged in this
process? It is the sin of pity. When he started receiving the higher men in
"The Cry of Distress", he called pity his final sin. When he gets rid of all
the higher men in "The Sign", he says that he is finally finished with his
 The Dionysian Redemption 261

pity for the higher men. His pity for them is his pity of his own self be-
cause they are his own shadows.
Now I propose that self-pity is the necessary step in the conversion
of self-hatred to self-love. Self-hatred is converted to self-pity, which is
then converted to self-love. Even in Dante's Purgatory, purgation is a
conversion process: Sinful dispositions are converted to virtues. With
Zarathustra, self-hatred was his first sin because it was the root of all his
sins. His first sin governed the life of his Faustian individual self, who
projected his self-hatred as the hatred of others, especially the spirit of
gravity. His self-hatred was converted to self-pity when he realized that
the dwarf was not really his enemy but his animal self. Instead of hatred,
he felt compassion for the pitiful condition of the dwarf, which was ex-
pressed as his compassion for his soul in "On the Great Longing" of Part
III. In Part IV, he feels the same compassion for the higher men. But his
self-pity is the beginning of self-love because it expresses his concern
with the well-being of his animal self. His self-love is still stunted be-
cause his animal self is too ugly and paltry to be an object of ecstatic
love. Self-pity is this stunted form of self-love. But self-pity is the last
sin because it must be overcome for the perfection of self-love, the first
virtue or the root of all virtues. But the conversion of self-pity to self-
love is not any easier than the conversion of self-hatred to self-pity. The
final conversion is accomplished in "The Drunken Song", where the ugly
dwarf turns into a beautiful cosmic giant and the Faustian self achieves
an ecstatic union with the Spinozan self. By this series of conversions,
Zarathustra becomes free of self-pity. This point is demonstrated when
the lion roars and scares away the higher men. The gentle lion is the
symbol of his new self that shows no pity and no mercy for the ghosts of
his old self.
Let us try to correlate the sequence of self-hatred, self-pity, and self-
love with the sequence of four stages in the Ladder of Redemption that I
presented in the last chapter. The Ladder of Redemption consists of the
following four stages: (1) the recognition of the dwarf as the anima self,
(2) the recognition of its cosmic dimension, (3) the activation of the
cosmic self by cosmic force, and (3) the reconciliation of the individual
self with the cosmic self in their ecstatic union. The first stage, which
begins with Zarathustra's announcement of the superman in the Prologue,
steadily generates self-hatred, which finally explodes in the outburst of
262 Chapter Eight

his great disgust with man in "The Convalescent" of Part III. This was
his self-hatred. The cosmic dimension of the animal self is recognized in
the second stage in "On the Great Longing", and this is Zarathustra's
discovery of his soul as his cosmic self. But Zarathustra feels nothing but
pity for his soul. This is his self-pity, which is dissolved by the activation
of his cosmic self in "The Other Dancing Song". But the activation of the
cosmic self leaves his individual self in a perpetual frustration, which
generates the pity for his individual self in "The Seven Seals". This is the
third stage of his redemption. The self-pity of the individual self is fi-
nally converted to his self-love in "The Drunken Song", and this conver-
sion is fully displayed and announced in "The Sign". This is the fourth
and final stage of his redemption.

The New Dionysian Self

Zarathustra has often associated the advent of the superman with the
great noon. His newborn self is the superman. Robert Pippin observes
that the great noon is the timeless present, which has no shadows stretch-
ing backward or forward ("Irony and Affirmation", 55-56). A human
being can only be an ugly dwarf under the shadows from the past be-
cause they overpower his autonomous will. The superman should be free
from those shadows. To our surprise, however, Zarathustra realized the
superhuman ideal at midnight and emerges to greet the rising sun. But
the great noon can also be marked by the rising sun. Every moment is
high noon from the perspective of the sun. The shadows stretching for-
ward or backward can affect only the worms crawling over the surface of
the earth. Even midnight is high noon from the cosmic perspective of the
superman, who has identified himself with the eternal ring. At the height
of his mystical experience in "The Drunken Song", Zarathustra said,
"Midnight too is noon." Hence the superman of midnight is also the su-
perman of great noon. This is confirmed by the new Zarathustra, who
radiates his overflowing energy like the morning sun. This is the final
confirmation of what was achieved in the mystery of midnight. Since he
emerges as the superman from the Dionysian intoxication, he may be
called a Dionysian hero. In Twilight ofIdols (Expeditions 49), Nietzsche
describes such a Dionysian figure: "A spirit thus emancipated stands in
 The Dionysian Redemption 263

the midst of the universe with a joyful and trusting fatalism, in the faith
that only what is separate and individual may be rejected, that in totality
everything is redeemed and affirmed. . . . But such a faith is the highest
of all possible faiths: I have baptized it with the name Dionysos." He
cites Napoleon as a man of Dionysian faith, who "dares to allow himself
the whole compass and wealth of naturalness, who is strong enough for
this freedom." He says that Goethe "had no greater experience than that
ens realissimum called Napoleon." In his Dionysian faith, Napoleon has
become the most real being because he is one with Mother Nature, the
ultimate reality. For this reason, Nietzsche singles out Napoleon as the
only one to be called the superman without qualification in all his writ-
ings (GMI.16).
When Zarathustra wakes up in the morning after the midnight intoxi-
cation, he also stands on his Dionysian faith. He is no longer "separate
and individual." He has finally fulfilled his destiny in the loving union
with his cosmic self. This cosmic union overcomes the cause of all his
sufferings, namely, the strife between his individual self and his cosmic
self. This union also realizes the great Hazar, in which everything is re-
deemed and affirmed in totality, as indicated by the flock of loving birds.
As we noted earlier, the descent of the loving birds stands for the cascad-
ing love from his cosmic self, which corresponds to the descent of the
heavenly host for Faust from above. Just as this heavenly love from the
Eternal Feminine inspires Faust to form his utopian project, the descent
of cosmic love gives Zarathustra the power to redeem his great Hazar.
He can still truly love his cosmic self even though he is fully awakened
out of mystical intoxication. This is the enduring spill-over effect from
his mystical communion with the eternal ring. It is the ultimate outcome
of his struggle against himself and the whole world. The union of the
individual self with the cosmic self is the hardest task for any human be-
ing. The individual self instinctively feels fear and horror in the face of
the cosmic self because the former cannot avoid the crushing weight of
the latter. It is this instinctive fear and horror that Zarathustra called his
most abysmal thought in "The Convalescent" of Part III. He talked about
the same dreadful horror to the higher men, when he said, "Do your
hearts become giddy? Does the abyss yawn before you? Does the hell-
hound howl at you?" (Z, 286f). The cosmic self looks like a howling
hellhound because it assails the individual self with countless slings and
264 Chapter Eight

arrows. There is no easy way to be in love with such a monstrous entity.

This is the most horrible feature of earthly existence, which Faust and
Zarathustra have tried to overcome by becoming a superman. This is
what is meant by overcoming the limitations of humanity.
The union of the individual self with the cosmic self endows
Zarathustra with superhuman power even in the world of daylight, be-
cause the cosmic self is the fountain of all power. Zarathustra's new in-
dividual self faces the world with Dionysian dynamism and activism.
After announcing the sign for the advent of his children, he says, "Am I
concerned with happiness? I am concerned with work" (2, 327). He is
setting out on a journey of active work. This is the basic difference be-
tween his Dionysian mysticism and traditional mysticism. Rapture is the
ultimate end for traditional mystical vision, but it is not for Zarathustra's.
It gives him the new beginning and new power for active work. In this
regard, he is very much like Shiva, who feels neither pleasure nor pain in
his meditation, but experiences great bliss only when he wakes out of his
meditative mood and moves into his cosmic dance (See my Nietzsche's
Epic of the Soul, 223). This is Shiva's activism and dynamism, which is
diametrically opposed to Buddhist quietism. For the Buddhists, to medi-
tate is to withdraw from the turbulent world of samsara for the peace and
quiet of nirvana. But peace and quiet cannot be the end for Shiva. Like
Shiva, Zarathustra's cosmic self cannot be happy in its inactive state, as
shown in "On the Great Longing" of Part III. It had to become the active
dancer in "The Other Dancing Song" of Part III. His individual self is
now going through the same transformation in the last two sections of
Part IV. He is meditative in "The Drunken Song", but becomes active in
"The Sign".
When the individual self embodies the inexhaustible power of the
cosmic self, it can become an object of reverence because it is no longer
a puny individual. It becomes divine because it is coextensive with
Mother Nature, the Goddess of the whole world. Nietzsche says that the
Dionysian hero Napoleon has reverence for himself (TI, Expeditions 49).
The idea of self-reverence is highly puzzling. This puzzling idea appears
in "On Self-Overcoming" of Part II, where Zarathustra says, "You still
want to create the world before which you can kneel: that is your ulti-
mate hope and intoxication" (2, 113). Why should you feel reverence for
the things you can create? Whatever you can create only manifests your
 The Dionysian Redemption 265

power. Hence there is no reason for you to feel any reverence for it. The
concept of self-reverence is much stronger than the concept of self-
respect. Respect can obtain in the relation of equals, but reverence is lim-
ited to the relation between two entities glaringly unequal. The idea of
self-respect is understandable because one can face oneself as one's
equal. But the idea of self-reverence is incomprehensible because it
makes no sense to face oneself as vastly superior to oneself. Therefore
the ideal of self-reverence makes no sense in the standard conception of
self-relation. It must be understood in the context of two selves. When
the individual self understands its relation to the cosmic self, the former
should feel reverence for the latter because the cosmic self is far greater
than the individual self. This is the Dionysian conception of self-relation.
Probably because Napoleon was conscious of his cosmic self, he not only
had reverence for himself, but also called himself the man of destiny.
The cosmic self is the ground of destiny or fate.
In Zarathustra's world, all existential problems have their roots in the
matrix of self-relation, that is, in the relation of his individual self to his
cosmic self. But he can find his cosmic self only through a long detour of
the whole world, because the cosmic self is coextensive with the world.
This long detour is the epic journey of discovering his ultimate selfhood,
and this journey of self-discovery goes through a series of metamor-
phoses. The stone has become the dwarf. The filthy black snake has be-
come the eternal golden ring. The ugly dwarf has been changed from a
monstrous devil into a tender baby and then into a beautiful god in the
eternal ring. The tidal waves of despair and melancholy that have ema-
nated from the Abyss have been transformed into the whirling flocks of
loving birds. By the power of their love, the ugly dwarf is reborn as the
gentle lion. By this series of miraculous transformations, Zarathustra has
achieved the loving union of his individual self with his cosmic self. This
self-love is his amor fati because it is love of the self determined by
cosmic necessity. His epic career is the story of how easy it is to hate
one's fate and how hard it is to overcome this hatred and tum it into
amor fati. The hatred of fate is the most natural response of the individ-
ual will to the world because it is bound to clash with the unlimited
power of fate. As long as the individual self defiantly asserts its will
against the world, it has no chance of coming to love the cosmic self. The
individual self may even try to love the cosmic self in desperation, but
266 Chapter Eight

such a desperate effort can at most tum self-hatred into self-pity. Al-
though the acceptance of the cosmic self is the first step for the redemp-
tion from self-hatred, it does not automatically lead to love of this cosmic
self. As we noted earlier, love of the cosmic self can never be achieved
by defiant individual effort. It can come only from the power that tran-
scends the individual will. Thus, amor fati is secured not locally in the
relation of an individual self to itself, but is situated globally in the rela-
tion of an individual to his cosmic self. This global self-relation is
equivalent to Faust's relation to the communal self in the Eternal Femi-
nine. Faust cannot secure his redemption with his own power. It can be
secured only by the power of his communal self and the love of the Eter-
nal Feminine.

The Zarathustrian Epic Cycle

Zarathustra ends his epic journey by greeting the sun. He began his jour-
ney by greeting the same sun in the Prologue. He concludes his long
journey by returning to its original point, thereby forming the ring of
Zarathustria's epic journey. This sense of closure would be impossible if
the book were to end with Part III. This again attests to the indispensabil-
ity of Part IV for the integrity of the whole book. But the sun that marks
the end of his journey does not have the same significance that the sun
had at its beginning. In his first greeting to the sun, he treated the great
star as a symbolic projection of his own Wisdom and his Faustian ideal
of superman. When the Faustian ideal was shattered, he recognized the
sun as a symbol of the sun-will, the cosmic necessity of Life. The sym-
bolic transformation of the sun marked the substantive transformation of
his spiritual campaign from the Faustian to the Spinozan mode. In his
last greeting to the sun, he says: "You great star, you deep eye of happi-
ness, what would your happiness be had you not those for whom you
shine?" (Z, 324). This is the same as his first salutation to the sun except
for the phrase, "you deep eye of happiness." The word "eye" has a spe-
cial meaning in this phrase like "the eye of a cyclone." The sun stands
not simply for happiness, but for the ultimate center of exploding happi-
ness. By the end of his epic journey, the great star has been elevated from
the symbol of the Faustian individual self to the symbol of the Spinozan
 The Dionysian Redemption 267

cosmic self, namely Life, and the symbol of her exploding happiness.
This elevation was secured by his flight to Eternity and his mystical vi-
sion of the eternal ring. He can now see the ring of eternal recurrence as
the ring of exploding happiness. It radiates happiness just as the sun radi-
ates its light. The radiant wave of cosmic happiness is now shining upon
his existence. By sharing this wave of happiness with the sun, he partici-
pates in the sun's own happiness. This is the closure for his cosmic part-
nership with the eternal ring.
In Christianity, the sun used to be the symbol of God. But Zarathus-
tra's sun is not a supernatural entity. It is made of the same physical ele-
ments as the earth is. The great star is just a huge stone. In Zarathustra's
world, the stone stands for the ultimate elements for the composition of
all objects. The dwarf came up from the Abyss and became the philoso-
pher's stone in "On the Vision and the Riddle" of Part III. Like a stone,
he was hard and heavy in enunciating the heavy thought of eternal recur-
rence and then in clobbering Zarathustra in "The Convalescent". Now
that the dwarf is reborn as his new Dionysian self, he is not only strong
but glows like the sun. The stone was the point of origination for his
flight to Eternity and the point of his return. It is again at the stone
("Here is the stone") that he recollects his mystical flight in "The Sign".
He is now sitting on a big stone on the ground and looking at a radiant
stone in the sky. His epic cycle is the cycle of stones, which descend to
the Abyss and ascend to the eternal ring. His stones are the stones of love
and hate. The stone of self-hatred is hung around the neck of the Faustian
superman like a millstone. In this regard, Goethe's Faust is no different
from Zarathustra. But when the Faustian superman recognizes this stone
as the fate of his cosmic self, he becomes the Spinozan superman. This
Spinozan enlightenment is the first step for converting the stone of self-
hatred to the eagle of self-love. Then the stone can fly like the sun.
Hence the Zarathustrian epic cycle is the cycle of self-love. It begins and
ends with self-love. The Faustian and the Spinozan supermen are the two
pillars of this epic cycle that display the will to power of the eternal ring.
The ending of Zarathustra's epic cycle has one baffling feature. It
appears to have all the signs of starting a new cycle allover again. In the
morning after the mystical conclusion, he is setting out on another mis-
sion of work. Even his gentle lion is behaving like a ferocious beast
when it chases the higher men back into the cave. It appears to have all
268 Chapter Eight

the potential to tum into a Faustian creature and assert its autonomous
will. I have already stressed the irrepressibility and ineliminability of the
Faustian self. It is like Hydra's head. No sooner is it cut off than it grows
right back. I have also pointed out that the Spinozan self is equally irre-
pressible and ineliminable. The Nietzschean dialectic of these two selves
is an interminable process because it is the process of life. It is as eternal
as the eternal recurrence, which is Life. It can have no beginning and no
ending. This interminable process may tum Zarathustra's epic into an
endless repetition of cycles. Therefore, there may be no final closure for
his epic journey, either. The ending of the present cycle may well be the
beginning of a new cycle. But it cannot be the repetition of the same. At
the end of Part IV, Zarathustra is quite differently situated than he was at
the Prologue. Whereas he was alone in the Prologue, he is now sur-
rounded by the laughing lion and a flock of loving birds. This is the con-
sequence of his mystical union with his cosmic self. In chapter 4, we
noted Goethe's statement, "Faust ends as an old man, in old age we be-
come mystics." Like Faust, Zarathustra has become a mystic in his old
age. Through his mystical experience, he has become much stronger and
happier than before. He has buried all the ghosts of his old self in the
cave. Therefore, if he is destined to go through another cycle, he should
begin _it on a higher level than the previous cycle. The trajectory of his
epic cycle should be a soaring spiral rather than the repetition of the
same cycle.
 Chapter Nine

Mystical Naturalism
(from Goethe to Nietzsche)

In my discussion of Zarathustra, I have occasionally compared it with

Faust. Their resemblance is not accidental because Nietzsche's work is
written as a parody of Goethe's epic. It is about time to take a synoptic
view of the two epics together. Let us first establish their common
ground. Both of them are the epics of superman. Each of them starts out
with a superhuman hero and ends with his redemption in the mystical
realm. As I said in chapter 4, Faust's epic career develops as the inter-
play between two cosmic principles of masculine and feminine. This
thematic framework also operates for the development of Zarathustra' s
epic career. His cosmic self is Life, the counterpart to Faust's Eternal
Feminine. Zarathustra's epic is played out as the interaction between his
Faustian self as the masculine principle and Life as the feminine princi-
ple. The interplay of these two principles forms the common thematic
framework for the two epics. But their heroes face different problems
because they are situated in different historical contexts. Faust is trying
to break out of medieval Christianity at the beginning of modern secular
culture. On the other hand, Zarathustra is a product of that secular culture
and is trying to save it from its degradation.
Faust's problem arises from his alienation from Mother Nature,
which has been induced by the Christian renunciation of this world. But
he bravely decides to become a full-blooded earthling and enlists Mephi-
sto's magic for this endeavor. His ultimate aim is to face the Earth Spirit
as her equal. This is the superhuman project that generates his intractable
and interminable conflict with the mighty Spirit. Throughout his career,
he has to wage the battle of a dusty worm against the mistress of the
270 Chapter Nine

dusty world. Her offspring, Care, never ceases to torment him until his
showdown with her just before his death. Although he dies without being
able to resolve this lifelong conflict, it is resolved by the Eternal Femi-
nine in heaven. Zarathustra's problem arises from his disgust with the
decadence of secular culture, and he feels the desperate need to spiritual-
ize it. To that end, he hoists the ideal of superman, But the assertion of
this ideal is the assertion of his Faustian self that alienates Zarathustra
from Mother Nature. He cannot enlist the devil's magic for solving this
problem because the devils have already departed from his world to-
gether with the gods. His conflict with Mother Nature takes the form of
an interminable battle with the spirit of gravity, his counterpart to Faust's
Care. His lifelong struggle with the spirit of gravity resembles Faust's
lifelong struggle with Care. Just as she is an offspring of the Earth Spirit,
so the spirit of gravity is an offspring of Life, the counterpart to the Earth
Spirit. Care is Faust's mortal foe; the dwarf is Zarathustra's archenemy.
Faust's showdown with Care corresponds to Zarathustra's showdown
with the dwarf in "The Convalescent" of Part III. For both heroes, the
showdown marks the turning point of their career.
At this critical point, under the curse and abuse by Care, Faust wakes
out of the blinding illusion of his power-crazy individual self and recog-
nizes the call of his communal self.. This is the shining moment of his
inner light that brings on his repentance and redemption. A similar rever-
sal takes place in Zarathustra's turning point. When he is clobbered by
the monster from the Abyss, he recognizes and accepts it as his cosmic
self. That is the moment of his awakening and his redemption. But there
are two glaring points of fundamental difference between the two re-
demption schemes. First, Zarathustra's cosmic self is not identical with
'Faust's communal self. The latter is ethical; the former is metaphysical.
Zarathustra's cosmic self comes right out of Spinoza's Ethics. In chapter
4, I said that Spinoza does not even mention ethical precepts and stan-
dards. Nor does he talk about our ethical duties and relation with others.
His Ethics is not an ethical treatise in the standard sense, but a meta-
physical treatise that spins out an iron-tight deterministic universe that
leaves no freedom for ethical choice. Spinoza's world is starkly amoral
and brutally masculine, and Goethe softens it by installing the feminine
principle and creates the ethical space with the concept of the communal
self. This is his moral transformation of Spinoza's totally amoral world.
 Mystical Naturalism 271

But Nietzsche completely dissolves this moral transformation and re-

stores Spinoza's world to its original state. Nietzsche does not allow the
contamination of his naturalism by the imposition of moral precepts on
Mother Nature. Therefore, Zarathustra's redemption does not carry the
ethical significance that is contained in Faust's redemption. Life is his
Eternal Feminine, but she is totally amoral, whereas Faust's Eternal
Feminine provides the moral foundation for his redemption.
The second point of difference concerns Faust's relation with Care.
Unlike Zarathustra, he never recognizes his kinship with Care and his
relation with her remains totally external. She tells him that she builds
her nest in his heart. Therefore, Care is like Zarathustra's heart-worm
that burrows in his heart. But Faust never recognizes Care as a part of his
own self, whereas Zarathustra recognizes and accepts the heart-worm as
his ultimate self. Faust regards Care's nest in his heart only as the painful
intrusion of an external foe. As long as he looks upon Care as an external
foe, he can never secure his reconciliation with the Earth Spirit because
Care is her offspring. Hence his redemption cannot be secured from the
Earth Spirit, but can be given only as a gift from Heaven. But the heav-
enly redemption is the eternal seal for his alienation from Mother Nature,
if it is taken literally, because it requires the separation between the natu-
ral and the supernatural worlds. Thus the ending of Goethe's Faust ap-
pears to betray the spirit of Spinozan naturalism. In chapter 4, I tried to
avoid this appearance by my allegorical reading of Faust's redemption as
a psychodrama that happens before his death. But Nietzsche must have
read it literally and taken it as Goethe's betrayal of Spinoza's naturalism.
He has tried to remedy this betrayal by Zarathustra's acceptance of the
monster from the Abyss as his ultimate self.
As Zarathustra's devil, the dwarf also corresponds to Faust's devil.
Unlike Mephisto, Zarathustra's devil becomes a god in his mystical un-
ion with the eternal ring. To be sure, Goethe indicates the possibility of
the devil's redemption. When boils break out all over his body, Mephisto
says, "Saved are the devil's noble parts" (Faust 11813). Presumably, the
devil has noble parts. But what are they? In Faust's world, I propose, the
distinction between noble and ignoble reflects the distinction between the
individual self and the communal self. In that case, the devil's noble
parts are the elements that can become parts of the communal self. On
that hypothesis, the devil's redemption can be included in my allegorical
272 Chapter Nine

account of Faust's redemption. Though the individual self is the principle

of negation when it smothers the communal self, the former can be re-
deemed as a positive constituent of the latter. But this possibility is never
clearly indicated in the Epilogue of Faust. Therefore, the devil appears to
be forever condemned in spite of his service to the Lord in Heaven, if
Faust's redemption is taken as a supernatural event. Mephisto is a nature
spirit, who stands for the natural impulses displayed in "Walpurgis
Night" and for the primal energy behind natural evolution in the Classi-
cal Walpurgis Night. He declared himself to Faust as a part of the Primal
Darkness. He is the symbol of natural forces. Therefore, his eternal dam-
nation would be the eternal damnation of natural forces, which clearly
goes against the spirit of Spinozan naturalism. Nietzsche apparently re-
gards this as a fatal defect in Faust and tries to remedy it by identifying
the redemption of Zarathustra with that of his devil. His redemption is
equivalent to Faust's redemption together with Mephisto.
In spite of this glaring discrepancy, mystical naturalism provides the
common ground for the two redemption schemes. Both Goethe and
Nietzsche initially based their conception of nature on Greek mythology,
but they traveled to mystical naturalism by different routes. For Goethe,
mythical naturalism was directly translatable to mystical naturalism. But
Nietzsche's navigation from mythical to mystical naturalism was not that
easy. When he was waking out of his mythical romance, he was exposed
to a much harder science than biology. He could not easily assume that
life was an essential feature of the physical world. He had to go through
the scientific reduction of all living things to dead matter, which gave
him scientific nausea and pessimism. But he managed to save himself
from scientific reduction by mystical naturalism. Let us explore his pro-
tracted journey from mythical to mystical naturalism.

Mythical Naturalism

In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche propounded his mythical view of na-

ture. In the experience of Greek tragedy, he says, one is supposed to ex-
perience the indestructible power which lies behind the rise and fall of
mortals. This power belongs to Dionysus. All the worldly phenomena are
Apollonian manifestations of the Dionysian reality. Greek tragedy dem-
 Mystical Naturalism 273

onstrates not merely the fragility of Apollonian phenomena, but really

the indestructibility of Dionysian reality. It is not a lamentation over hu-
man suffering and weakness, but an exultation over the power that tran-
scends all suffering. In the transient world of phenomena, Greek tragedy
gives the secure sense of permanence, Its origin is the Dionysian festival
and its function is to celebrate the perpetual renewal of Dionysus through
its recurrent dismemberment and resurrection. But Greek tragedy did not
last long. It was destroyed by Socratic rationalism, which inspired the
scientific inquiry into nature. Socratic rationalism holds that nature is
ultimately knowable to human intellect and that any presumed mystery
of the natural world is a matter of ignorance. Acting under Socratic in-
fluence, Nietzsche holds, Euripides transformed the tragic drama into a
rational discourse, thereby dissolving the mystery of the Dionysian
world. This dissolution was accomplished by destroying the two basic
elements of Dionysian mystery, myth and music. For Nietzsche, the Dio-
nysian music had the power of expressing the mystery of Dionysus. Be-
yond the destruction of myth and music, Socratic rationalism leads to
scientific optimism. Science can not only understand the world of nature,
but also control and correct it (BT 17). It fosters the prospect of eradicat-
ing all human suffering and achieving happiness for all on the earth. But
Nietzsche believes that this science-based optimism is only an illusion,
which is diametrically opposed to the Dionysian wisdom that the ulti-
mate reality is not only incomprehensible and uncontrollable, but also
irredeemably cruel and horrible. Nietzsche says that the cruel injustice
between the rich and the poor and between masters and slaves is an in-
evitable feature of Dionysian cruelty and monstrosity. But the scientific
optimism for technological progress induces the dream of earthly happi-
ness for all and the hope of eliminating all social injustice (BT 18). This
is the ethos of democratic egalitarianism. Nietzsche says that the rebel-
lious spirit of democracy was incubated in the womb of Socratic culture.
But this egalitarian dream is incompatible with the tragic character of
human existence and the natural cruelty of all things (BT 18).
Nietzsche condemns the ethos of secular culture as a product of sci-
entific rationalism. In the age of Attic tragedy, he says, the Greeks felt
spontaneously compelled to relate all their experiences to the mythical
world. Hence even the most immediate present often had to appear to
them sub specie aeterni and timeless in a certain sense (BT 23). The
274 Chapter Nine

sense of eternity and sanctity governed Greek life not only in the world
of art but also in the state. The Greeks had the ability to impress the
stamp of eternity on their experiences, thereby securing the metaphysical
meaning of life. With the demise of myth, Nietzsche says, everything
becomes secularized. There is nothing mysterious or sacred left in the
entire world, and nature itself is no longer sacred because it is subject to
human control and manipulation. Nietzsche labels this secular ethos as
Alexandrian-Roman because Alexandrian culture was built on Socratic
rationalism and the Roman Empire was an empire of secular culture (BT
21). The Renaissance of the fifteenth century was the re-awakening of
the Alexandrian-Roman ethos after a long interlude. Since then it has
ruled modem Europe and produced the scientific culture of the Enlight-
enment and the secular culture of the bourgeoisie, in which nothing is
sacred (BT 23). Nietzsche's contempt of secular culture is restated by
Zarathustra on his descent from his mountain cave to The Motley Cow.
On the stage of world history, the transition from sacred to secular
culture appears to be the inevitable process that has overtaken all tradi-
tional cultures. As a rule, the traditional cultures were all mythical, but
their mythical foundation was always destroyed by the emergence of
modem scientific culture. But Nietzsche regards this common historical
process as a cultural decline that can be reversed. Without myth, he be-
lieves, all cultures lose their natural health. Modem European culture is
being victimized by the same Socratic rationalism and the same drastic
secularization which destroyed Greek myth and culture (BT 23). This is
his account of the death of not only the Christian God, but also all other
gods. The godless world has emerged not from the death of the Christian
God, but with scientific rationalism, which has destroyed the mythical
world. But Nietzsche believes that the process of secularization is not
irreversible. The Birth of Tragedy is not so much concerned with the
birth of Attic tragedy and its demise under Socratic rationalism as with
the prospect of reversing the process of secularization. This book was
meant to be future-oriented propaganda rather than past-oriented schol-
arly research. In Nietzsche's view, this reversal is already taking place
with the emerging new Dionysian culture in Germany. He is not mourn-
ing over the death of Attic tragedy, but celebrating the birth of German
tragedy, which is supposedly masterminded by the new German trage-
dian Richard Wagner.
 Mystical Naturalism 275

In Nietzsche's view, this event is uniquely German because it has

been empowered by German music and German philosophy. Kant and
Schopenhauer are the two champions of German philosophy who have
demolished Socratic rationalism by demonstrating the limits of scientific
knowledge. They have shown that scientific knowledge is restricted to
the world of appearances and generates antinomies that cannot be re-
solved without reference to the world of noumena (BT 18). By this criti-
cal assault on scientific rationalism, they have cleared the ground for the
resurgence of Dionysian culture. In the meantime, German music has
been nurturing the Dionysian spirit "from Bach to Beethoven, from Bee-
thoven to Wagner" (BT 19). Nietzsche hopes that the German spirit is
strong enough to withstand the evil forces of demythification and main-
tain its own true nature. He further suggests that the battle against scien-
tific rationalism should begin with the eradication of all alien elements
imported from France, the breeding ground of scientific rationalism. Al-
though Germany has been overshadowed by French culture, he says,
German culture in its primitive vitality is far superior to French culture.
Its vitality is usually hidden, but powerfully exerts itself in such critical
moments as the German Reformation. Martin Luther's chorales, which
were so profound, courageous, spiritual, and tender, were the first Diony-
sian cries from the thicket at the approach of spring.
In chapter 5, we noted Zarathustra's condemnation of secular hu-
manism. Whereas secular humanism was largely French, we also noted,
his secular superhumanism was uniquely German and Lutheran. His dis-
taste of the secular culture is basically the same as Nietzsche's in The
Birth of Tragedy. Later Nietzsche will condemn Luther along with the
Reformation for their reaction against the naturalistic movement of the
Renaissance. In The Birth of Tragedy, however, he brands the Renais-
sance as a decadent culture because it embodies the Socratic spirit of sci-
entific naturalism. On the other hand, he regards the German Reforma-
tion as a healthy movement for its valiant attempt to save the mythic cul-
ture against the onslaught of the naturalistic ethos of the Renaissance.
The Birth of Tragedy shows no sign of Nietzsche's later animosity
against Christianity. Although he says nothing specifically about Christi-
anity, he attributes a high sense of nobility to the early Christians. The
superficial cheerfulness of Euripidean culture outraged the profound and
formidable Christian sensibility of the first four centuries after Christ,
276 Chapter Nine

and the early Christians regarded the Euripidean superficiality not only
as contemptible but also as the very opposite of their attitude (BG 11).
Christianity had its own myth and its own sense of nobility, which were
later threatened by the Renaissance, and the Reformation was Martin
Luther's attempt to save the mythical spirit of Christianity. Although the
mythical spirit of the Reformation was overpowered by the naturalistic
spirit of the Enlightenment, it was kept alive by robust German music,
which Nietzsche hopes will eventually lead to the rebirth of German Dio-
nysus. If any German should feel lost in his search for the way back to
his original homeland, he has only to listen to the call of the Dionysian
bird, which hovers over his head and will show him the way (BT 23).
This Dionysian bird is Richard Wagner.
Nietzsche's mythical world is like Goethe's mythical world in the
Classical Walpurgis Night of Faust. But he did not inherit mythical natu-
ralism from Goethe. He was a professor of classics, who was operating in
the heyday of classical revival. But he wanted to take mythical natural-
ism not as a classical fossil, but as a living force, by associating it with
Wagner's attempt to join music and myth to create the new art of Ger-
man Dionysian tragedy and restore the German mythic culture against
the secular ethos. On the surface, The Birth ofTragedy looks like a piece
of classical scholarship, but it is really Nietzsche's "Hail to the Chief'
for Wagner as the new leader for this restoration movement. Let us see
how well Nietzsche understood Wagner's enterprise. His musical career
divides into four phases. The first phase was the period of his apprentice-
ship, in which he wrote his first three operas, Die Feen, Das Liebesver-
bot, and Rienzi. The second phase was his Romantic period, in which he
wrote three Romantic operas, The Flying Dutchman, Tannhiiuser, and
Lohengrin. The third phase is his Feuerbachian period, in which he be-
came a Young Hegelian under Feuerbach's inspiration. The fourth phase
is his Schopenhauerian period, in which he was disillusioned with Feuer-
bachian optimism and became a Schopenhauerian pessimist.
For our discussion, we can ignore the first phase because it did not
produce anything noteworthy. Myth was indeed important for the com-
position of his Romantic operas. Wagner derived their themes from me-
dieval German romances. He was following the German Romantic spirit
of retrieving and reviving German mythology, which produced the
Grimm brothers' collection of fairy tales in German Mythology (1835)
 Mystical Naturalism 277

and Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim's anthology of folk songs
called The Boy's Magic Horn (1805-08). But these Romantic operas
have little relevance to Nietzsche's emphasis on the role of myth in
Greek tragedy, because they are not tragedies but romances. For these
three operas, Wagner cannot be called the German Aeschylus, who is
trying to revive Dionysian tragedy with German mythical backing. In the
third period, Wagner's interest shifted from the world of medieval ro-
mance to his own world of the modem age. He was deeply moved by
Proudon, the 'first man to call himself an anarchist, and then became a
close political friend of another famous anarchist, Bakunin. In the 1849
uprising of Dresden, he became a revolutionary and manned the barri-
cades with Bakunin. But the Dresden uprising failed and Wagner had to
flee to Zurich in Switzerland, thence to Paris, and back to Zurich, where
as a refugee he had plenty of time to immerse himself in the writings of
Ludwig Feuerbach. This is his Feuerbachian period.
During this period, he became a theoretician by imbibing Feuer-
bach's philosophy and formulated his own program of artistic revolution
in three essays, Art and Revolution, The Art-Work ofthe Future, and Op-
era and Drama. These works revolve around Wagner's ideal of Ge-
samtkunstwerk. Although this German word is usually translated as a
total art-work, "a unified art-work" may be a better translation for con-
veying the nature of his ideal. He strives for a threefold unity in his ideal
of a unified music drama. First, all the special arts such as music and po-
etry will cooperate as the constitutive elements of a music drama. Even
the visual arts of painting and architecture will participate in creating an
ideal stage and theater for the dramatic performance, Second, all mem-
bers of the community will come together and participate in the celebra-
tion of the dramatic event. Third, human beings will be united not only
with one another but also with nature in this festive event. Wagner be-
lieves that this threefold unity was experienced in Attic tragedy (Art and
Revolution, 32-35). But the dissolution of the Athenian State brought
about the disintegration of Attic tragedy. The special arts fell out of the
unity of the tragic drama and went their own separate ways. The spirit of
community split itself along a thousand lines of egoistic cleavage. The
Romans transformed the theater into a showcase of gladiators and enter-
tainers, and the Christians alienated all arts from the world of nature. Fi-
nally, the modem bourgeoisie has degraded art by taking it into the mar-
278 Chapter Nine

ket, where it is used for making and spending money. Thus art has be-
come the divisive wall between the rich and the poor and functions as the
ugly instrument of naked egoism, whereas it used to have the magic
power of fostering the communal bond in ancient Greece.
This is roughly Wagner's account of how the noble art of ancient
Greece has been degraded in the modem world. He takes Attic tragedy as
the culmination of Greek communal art, but shows no interest at all in
the spirit of tragedy itself. He indeed recognizes the close connection of
Greek tragedy to Greek myth, and says, "The Tragic-poet merely im-
parted the content and essence of the myth in the most conclusive and
intelligible manner; his Tragedy is nothing other than the artistic comple-
tion of the Myth itself; while the Myth is the poem of a life-view in
common" (Opera and Drama, 156). But his understanding of myth is
unlike Nietzsche's. Whereas Nietzsche takes myth as the revelation of
the mystical universe not available to secular sensibility, Wagner appre-
ciates it in accordance with Feuerbach's naturalistic account. According
to Feuerbach, the gods were created by projecting the human ideals of
perfection. Wagner holds that they were created by human beings to un-
derstand the causal mechanism of the natural world. Surrounded by the
confusing barrage of sensations, primitive human beings tried to con-
dense those sensations to the superstitious poetic images of superhuman
and supernatural beings. For them, these anthropomorphic forms were
the most comprehensible devices for conceiving the natural causes and
their workings (Opera and Drama, 151-54). But this mythological un-
derstanding of nature was the typical error of religious culture that was to
be dissolved by the emergence of science.
Wagner accepts Feuerbach's scientific naturalism and looks upon
mythical naturalism as an outmoded legacy of primitive culture. He lauds
the scientific understanding of nature as the triumph of human intelli-
gence, while Nietzsche condemns it as Socratic rationalism and the de-
stroyer of Greek myth and tragedy. Wagner's idealized picture of Attic
tragedy was never meant to praise the power of myth for disclosing the
mystical dimension of reality. During his Feuerbachian period, he also
conceived The Ring ofNibelung as an epic drama and wrote its libretto.
For its composition, he extensively studied German and Norse mytholo-
gies. But he does not deploy these myths to reveal the mystical nature of
the universe. He uses them to portray the evolution of humanity beyond
 Mystical Naturalism 279

the mythical age: human beings will come of age and shatter the mythi-
cal world of gods and giants. He created his myth to end all myths. This
does not really matter for understanding The Birth ofTragedy, because it
was written before the completion of the Ring cycle. Tristan and Isolde
was the only Schopenhauerian tragedy Wagner wrote before The Birth of
Tragedy. On the basis of this work, Nietzsche has lauded Wagner as the
German tragedian, who is reversing the process of secularization and
rationalization by reviving Dionysian music and myth. Let us now con-
sider the role of myth in this music drama. Although Nietzsche claims
that music generates myth in Attic tragedy, no myth is generated by mu-
sic in Tristan and Isolde because it is not based on any mythology. What
Nietzsche refers to by "the tragic myth" of this opera is a metaphysical
symbolism. Tristan and Isolde is heavily loaded with a series of meta-
physical symbols, for example, day and night as the symbols for the
world of phenomena and the world of noumena. The two lovers detest
daylight because it stands for the world of phenomena that forces upon
them the agony of separation and individuation. They long for the dark-
ness of night because it stands for the world of noumena that gives them
the joy of union. Eventually they achieve their ecstasy in the darkness of
Liebestod (love-death). But this sort of metaphysical symbolism is
clearly different from the myths of Attic tragedy. The world of Tristan
and Isolde is not mythical, but metaphysical. Nietzsche must have recog-
nized this point when he praised Wagner's art as the true metaphysical
activity in the preface to The Birth ofTragedy.
In Wagner's world, the rejection of myth is twofold. In his Feuer-
bachian works, it is debunked. In his Schopenhauerian works, it is re-
placed by metaphysics. This twofold rejection of myth poses an obvious
obstacle to Nietzsche's attempt to paint Wagner as the German Aeschy-
lus, who is trying to revive Dionysian tragedy by the power of German
mythology. But this is his imaginary Wagner, for whose sake he simply
closes his eyes to the real Wagner and the Schopenhauerian metaphysical
world of Tristan and Isolde. Only many years later in the preface to the
second edition of The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner, he
came to label Wagner's works as Romantic and Schopenhauerian and
denounced him as an artist of decadence. It is hard to believe that he did
not notice a Romantic and decadent artist in Richard Wagner when he
was writing The Birth of Tragedy. Hence the book appears to be a piece
280 Chapter Nine

of flattery written in bad faith. A few years after The Birth of Tragedy,
Nietzsche gives a different assessment of Wagner's achievement in
Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, which was written for the celebration of
the first Bayreuth festival in1876.
The startling feature of this essay is how little it talks about tragedy.
When Nietzsche talks about the tragedy of Tristan and Isolde, he calls it
the metaphysical work of all art, in which Wagner tried to philosophize
in sound and fathom the mystery of death in life and of unity in duality.
Nietzsche says not a word about the role of myth in this opera. He fully
recognizes that it is situated in a metaphysical rather than a mythical
framework. Although Nietzsche stresses Wagner's role as a dithyrambic
dramatist, he treats it only as one of the many roles Wagner has played in
his illustrious career (WE 8). Nietzsche's attention shifts from Wagner
the tragedian to Wagner the universal genius and the master of all things,
who wanted to conquer and rule as no artist had ever done before (WE 3
and 8). Nietzsche gives an evolutionary account of this universal genius.
He holds that Wagner's works have evolved to fulfill the ideals he had
set out in The Art- Work of the Future. The first of these ideals is Feuer-
bachian naturalism. In -the past, nature has been distorted and degraded
by religious beliefs, and art has been used as an obedient servant for the
propagation of those erroneous beliefs. In the future, however, nature
will be saved from religion by science, and art will mirror the beauty of
nature thus rediscovered (The Art-Work ofthe Future, 71-73).
Nietzsche says that Wagner's music is a return to nature and its puri-
fication and transformation (WE 5). The purified nature is no longer the
mythical nature because it is nature freed from the illusion of myths by
natural science. This is Wagner's scientific naturalism. Nietzsche's as-
sessment of Wagner's naturalism culminates in his extended discussion
of The Ring of the Nibelung. Its tragic hero is the god who thirsts after
power and loses his freedom. This is a mortal sin against nature because
freedom is the essence of nature. To forestall the demise of all the gods,
Wotan needs a free, fearless human being, and finds such a hero in Sieg-
fried, who slays the dragon, recovers the Ring, and awakens Bruennhilde.
But even this hero cannot be spared from the curse of the Ring. In spite
of his loyalty and purity, he is engulfed by the mists and shadows of guilt.
At last he emerges like the sun and goes under, igniting the whole heav-
ens with his fiery glow and cleansing the world of the curse. This is Sieg-
 Mystical Naturalism 281

fried's purification of nature, which will become the model for the heroic
role of Zarathustra, who rises and goes under like the sun. In Nietzsche's
account, the ultimate end of Wagner's art is to recover the ancient Ger-
man folk in its natural purity. To that end, he has forged the art of pure
naturalism. That is a radically different Wagner from the one Nietzsche
painted as the German Aeschylus in The Birth of Tragedy. The natural-
ism of The Birth is based on myths as Nietzsche says, but myths are only
poetic fables for the scientific naturalism of the Ring. Wagner's tragedy,
Tristan and Isolde, which had been given all the glory of tragic art in The
Birth, fares the worst in the celebration of his scientific naturalism. By
his naturalistic standard, Tristan is an anti-hero, who pines away his life
in his yearning for eternity. His stature shrivels in comparison with Sieg-
fried, who performs his superhuman feats with his natural power.

Scientific Naturalism

Richard Wagner had embraced the mythical tradition only during the
period of his Romantic operas. But he had to abandon it for Feuerbach's
scientific naturalism. Likewise, Nietzsche abandons his mythical natural-
ism of The Birth of Tragedy and advocates scientific naturalism in Hu-
man, All Too Human. Scientific naturalism is the view that the boundary
of nature is defined by natural science and its empirical method. By this
method, all mythological beings are ruled out of nature. In Human, All
Too Human, Nietzsche wakes out of his mythical illusion. He opens the
preface of this book by admitting that he has used art as "a certain
amount of false coinage" for inventing a suitable fiction for his self-
deception. But he defends the art of self-deception for the sake of self-
preservation. In Human, All Too Human, he is determined to free himself
from the fetters of deception. They are not restricted to the outmoded
mythical beliefs, but cover all beliefs that cannot be validated by natural
science. He names metaphysics as the first of those fetters to be shattered
for freedom. The metaphysical claims do not involve rigorous thinking.
They are no more than a tricky manipulation of symbols, allegories, and
parables. Nietzsche consigns all objects of religious, moral, and aesthetic
sensations to the metaphysical domain and points out their similarity to
the objects of astrology (HH 1.4). They are not physically real. Nietzsche
282 Chapter Nine

illustrates this point by the experience of listening to Beethoven's Ninth

Symphony. A passage in this work "will make him feel he is hovering
above the earth in a dome of stars with the dream of immortality in his
heart: all the stars seem to glitter around him and the earth seems to sink
farther and farther away" (HHI.153). It is the function of poets and mu-
sicians to create this sort of fictional world and illusory experience in the
concert halls and religious services. This point is restated by Zarathus-
tra's critique of poets in "On Poets" of Part II: the poetic creations are
fictitious fabrications such as the gods and the superman.
Nietzsche not only praises natural science, but also becomes a cham-
pion of the Enlightenment because he identifies the spirit of the Enlight-
enment with the spirit of natural science. He dedicates Human, All Too
Human to Voltaire, prophet of the Enlightenment, whereas he had dedi-
cated The Birth of Tragedy to Richard Wagner. He also changes his alle-
giance from German to French culture. In The Birth of Tragedy, he had
advocated the liberation of German culture from the corrupting influence
of France, namely, the culture of the French Enlightenment, which had
destroyed the mythical world. Now he condemns the old-fashioned Ger-
man intellectuals for fighting against the spirit of Newton and Voltaire.
This is his condemnation of German Romanticism, in which he singles
out the mistake of Schopenhauer for renouncing the spirit of the Enlight-
enment (HH 1.110). Even Goethe cannot escape his scalpel for his at-
tempt to restore the idea of a divine or diabolical nature suffused with
ethical and symbolic significance (Daybreak 197). In The Birth of Trag-
edy, he had branded the culture of the Renaissance Italian opera as the
modern counterpart of the Socratic culture of ancient Greece and painted
the Reformation as the German battle against this secular Renaissance
culture (BT 19 and 23). In Human, All Too Human, he reverses his earlier
view and praises the Italian Renaissance for the liberation of modern cul-
ture and condemns the Reformation for its attempt to retard the direction
of progress that began with the Renaissance (HH 1.237). In his game of
cultural critique, he has no fixed criteria for the distinction between pro-
gress and regress, health and decadence. He may be playing what Daniel
Conway calls his dangerous game (Nietzsche's Dangerous Game).
Nietzsche's scientific optimism is based on a new picture of the natu-
ral world. In The Birth of Tragedy, the flux of the world is depicted as
highly unpredictable and incalculable because it is governed by the ca-
 Mystical Naturalism 283

pricious Dionysian child-god. For this reason, he believed that the enter-
prise of scientific rationalism was doomed to failure. But this picture of a
capricious nature is now replaced by the Socratic picture of an orderly
nature. Whereas nature is assumed to be arbitrary and irregular in all re-
ligions, he now holds, science advocates the opposite view, the uniform-
ity of nature (HH 1.111). Only such an orderly nature can be mastered
and used for the improvement of the human condition. He is enamored
with scientific progress and praises the scientists for their ability to im-
prove health, education, welfare, and peace (HH 1.23-26). This is a com-
plete reversal of his previous condemnation of Socratic rationalism and
its belief in scientific progress. Now he even dismisses the problem of
suffering and pessimism as an overblown issue (HH 1.28). There are no
evil actions, but only stupid ones. This reflects the Socratic motto that
virtue is knowledge and vice is ignorance. Since most of our sufferings
come from stupidity and ignorance, they will be eventually overcome by
the improvement of human intelligence and knowledge. Here lies the real
possibility for self-enlightenment and self-redemption (HH 1.107). The
promise of modem science is modest, but real. Since the soul is the body,
all our sufferings can be conquered by a change of diet and hard physical
labor (D 269). This is his physiological resolution of human suffering,
which is based on the identity of mind and body. The problem of suffer-
ing, for which religion and metaphysics have offered their pseudo solu-
tions, will finally be resolved by scientific knowledge.
Nietzsche denounces the poets for their illusory method of alleviat-
ing the conditions of human life. He condemns all art and religion as nar-
cotics for human suffering. Only when the domination of religion and all
other narcotic arts decline, can human suffering be really eliminated.
This should be a warning to the writers of tragedies. Art will be replaced
by science. He says, "The scientific man is the further evolution of the
artistic [man]" (HH 1.222). This is a startling statement. He believes that
art does not merely become obsolete, but it evolves into science. He ex-
plains this evolution as follows. When we give up religion, we can still
retain the enhanced feeling we have acquired from it. Likewise, even
when art becomes obsolete, we can retain what art has taught us for thou-
sands of years, that is, to look upon life with interest and pleasure and to
regard human life as a piece of nature and as the object of regular evolu-
tion (HH 1.222). If this is the function of art, surely science can do better.
284 Chapter Nine

When religion declines under the impact of the Enlightenment, Nietzsche

says, art takes over a host of moods and feelings engendered by religion,
becomes more profound and soulful, and acquires the capacity of com-
municating a wealth of religious feelings such as exultation and enthusi-
asm (HH 1.150). Just as art replaced religion, science will replace art and
take over all its functions. He is advancing what Wagner had already ad-
vocated: In science, man comes to understand the necessity of nature
which was misunderstood as caprice in religious illusion, and the func-
tion of art is to express the scientific understanding of life's necessity and
truth (The Art-Work ofthe Future, 71).
In the second volume of Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche further
elaborates on the Wagnerian view of art. A good poet will depict only
reality and completely ignore the fantastic worlds created by the earlier
poets as an escape from reality (HH IIa.114). The poetic power that is
not used up in the depiction of reality ought to be dedicated to signpost-
ing the future by creating a picture of the great and beautiful soul to ex-
cite envy and emulation (HH IIa.99). This ideal model of envy and emu-
lation should paint a soul blessed with strength, goodness, mildness, pu-
rity, and moderation. It should be a picture of balance and proportion. As
Julian Young points out, he is advocating the Platonic ideal of the human
soul and the classical ideal of art (Nietzsche's Philosophy ofArt, 78-79).
Since he has embraced Socratic rationalism, it is natural for him to adopt
the Platonic ideal of art. But what is even closer to his inspiration is The
Art-Work of the Future, in which Wagner spelled out the function of art
for shaping the future under the influence of Feuerbach. Whereas Rich-
ard Wagner had moved from Feuerbach to Schop enhauer, Nietzsche is
now moving from Schopenhauer to Feuerbach. This is Nietzsche's ironi-
cal reversal of the pivotal move Wagner had made in his career.

Reductive Naturalism

Up to this point, Nietzsche's naturalism is the naturalism of Feuerbach

and Wagner, which he celebrates in the name of Socratic rationalism.
This type of naturalism is non-reductive: matter is alive and creative. The
problem with the creative nature is that it creates too many things such as
poetic and moral fictions, which he labeled as unreal and illusory in Hu-
 Mystical Naturalism 285

man, All Too Human. To recognize their unreality is to reduce all natural
phenomena to dead matter. This is known as reductive naturalism or
physicalism. According to this view, the physical world is made of dead
matter. In "The Soothsayer" of Part II, Zarathustra encounters a dead
world in the castle of death. He reaches it by descending to the under-
world, which I interpreted as scientific reduction in chapter 6. According
to reductive naturalism, all living things and mental phenomena are the
epiphenomena or the by-products of dead matter. The father of this view
is Democritus, according to whom the ultimate reality is the atoms in the
void and everything else is only subjective sensation and/or illusion. Re-
ductive naturalism does not accept thoughts and feelings as real entities.
They are treated as the illusory figments of sensation and imagination.
In Daybreak, Nietzsche's naturalism takes the Democritian turn and
becomes reductive. He pitches the camp of realists against the camp of
idealists (D 128). He singles out Thucydides as the leader of the realist
camp and Plato as the leader of the idealist camp. He places Democritus
in the realist camp and takes his atomism as the scientific foundation of
realism. Unlike the realists, he says, Plato fled from reality (D 448) and
his dialectic was the poetic trick of creating non-existent entities (D 474).
In opposition to the Platonic ascent to the world of ideals, Nietzsche ad-
vocates the descent to the bottom of the physical world. The preface to
Daybreak is his invitation for this descent. He opens it by saying, "In this
book you will discover a 'subterranean man' at work, one who tunnels
and mines and undermines." He is supposedly talking to his friends who
are wondering what he has been up to. He says, "At that time I undertook
something not everyone may undertake: I descended into the depths, I
tunnelled into the foundations." He is talking about the foundations of
morality; Daybreak is subtitled as "Thoughts on the Prejudice of Moral-
ity." Because he was bent on seeking the physical foundation of morality,
he had to descend to the depths of the physical world. In the same spirit
of physicalism, Zarathustra descends to the underworld in search of true
knowledge in "On Great Events" of Part II. His descent is a poetic meta-
phor for scientific reduction to reach the ultimate physical basis of all
things. For Nietzsche, the battle between Plato and Democritus was the
most decisive event in the history of Western philosophy. Plato painted
the whole universe in anthropomorphic terms such as purpose and inten-
tion, good and evil. For Democritus, however, the physical reality is ab-
286 Chapter Nine

solutely value-free because the atoms in the void are devoid of needs and
desires, intentions and purposes. All values are no more than the opin-
ions and illusions produced by the intricate motion of atoms in the void.
Hence morality and religion belong to the world of opinions and illusions.
In philosophy, Nietzsche says, morality has been the greatest of all
mistresses of seduction, "the actual Circe ofphilosophers, " who has mis-
led philosophy since Plato (D, pref. 3). He names Rousseau and Kant as
the latest victims of her seduction. To be seduced by this Circe is to ac-
cept the moral world as real, but its existence is continually contradicted
by nature and history. So Kant was obliged to posit "an undemonstrable
world" for morality, that is, the world of noumena or the intelligible
world (D 3). Nietzsche says that Kant's attempt to secure the moral
realm in the face of "the thorough immorality of nature and history" is an
act of absurdity by a pessimist. In this regard, Kant resembles the other
great German pessimist, Luther, who claimed to accept the Christian
faith because of its absurdity. This German spirit of logical absurdity still
thrives in the logic of contradiction, with which Hegel has tried to con-
quer Europe. This leads to Nietzsche's verdict that the Germans are pes-
simists even in the realm of logic. The pessimists invent their absurd
logic because they lack the courage and honesty to face the real world.
The aura of pessimism begins to pervade the preface of Daybreak. He
says that German pessimism still has one last step to take, which will
show up in his denial of morality in this book. Ironically, he notes, the
denial of morality is made out of morality, that is, the moral precept of
honesty. Hence, he admits, his book expresses a pessimistic will and falls
in the German tradition of logical absurdity (D 4). But he claims that this
act of logical absurdity accomplishes the self-sublimation of morality.
But he does not explain this mystery statement. Thus ends the preface to
Daybreak with a heavy note of pessimism, which had never appeared in
his celebration of naturalism in Human, All Too Human.
I suspect that the note of pessimism reflects the impact of scientific
reduction. Let us consider its impact. Its first casualty is consciousness,
"the so-called ego" (D 115). Mental phenomena are the by-products of
physiological processes unknown to us (D 119). Hence it is a delusion to
assume that one can know oneself through one's consciousness alone.
We are ignorant of ourselves if we know nothing about the physiological
base of our consciousness. Consider the knowledge of our actions. We
 Mystical Naturalism 287

may be fully conscious of the desires and beliefs that accompany our
actions, without knowing anything at all about the physiological mecha-
nism that generate those desires and beliefs. Nietzsche says, "The prime-
val delusion still lives on that one knows, and knows quite precisely in
every case, how human action is brought about" (D 116). Although we
think that we know what we are doing, he insists, all our actions are es-
sentially unknown as long as their physiological bases remain unknown
(D 116). Those physiological bases will constitute Zarathustra's animal
self or the cosmic self. Nietzsche says that a human being is a bundle of
drives, and his behavior is determined by the battle among those drives,
which is scarcely known to the conscious ego (D 109). This view is re-
stated in Zarathustra's favorite metaphor of a human being as a ball of
snakes or a bunch of wild dogs, fighting against one another. This is an-
other way of describing the animal self. It is equally our delusion to be-
lieve that we are the masters of our actions, because we have no control
over the physiological mechanism that underlies our consciousness and
action. Contrary to this delusion, we are helpless puppets of the physio-
logical mechanism. Nietzsche says that we usually divide the world into
two domains, the realm of purposes and will and the realm of chance and
accident. He says, "This belief in the two realms is a primeval romance
and fable: we clever dwarfs, with our will and purposes, are oppressed by
those stupid, arch-stupid giants, chance accidents, overwhelmed and of-
ten trampled to death by them" (D 130). The pitiful picture of human
beings as clever dwarfs, who are crushed by these giants and accidents of
physical forces, is surely depressing. It is this pitiful picture of human
beings that will provoke Zarathustra's greatest disgust with the small
man in "The Convalescent" of Part III.
Nietzsche is denying not the existence of purposes simpliciter, but
their independent existence. He regards them as the epiphenomena of
physical reality: "Those iron hands of necessity which shake the dice-box
of chance play their game for an infinite length of time: so that there
have to be throws which exactly resemble purposiveness and rationality
of every degree" (D 130). Zarathustra uses this metaphor of a dice game
to explain the nature of the universe in "Before Sunrise" of Part III. The
operation of the universe as a grand dice game is a Democritean picture.
Each atom can be considered as a die. Any given state of the universe
will be determined by the configuration of atoms, which can be com-
288 Chapter Nine

pared to a throw of dice. If there are only a finite number of atoms, the
number of their configurations will also be finite. In an infinite length of
time, every configuration will be repeated endlessly. Thus the atomic
theory of the universe as a dice game leads to the doctrine of eternal re-
currence. In The Will to Power 1066, Nietzsche explicates this idea: "In
infinite time, every possible combination would at some time or another
be realized; more: it would be realized an infinite number of times." Well
before writing Daybreak, Nietzsche may have rejected Democritean at-
omism and replaced it with Roger Boscovich's theory of matter. Accord-
ing to Boscovich, there are no atoms: the universe consists of force or-
ganized around various points, called puncta (BGE 12). These points are
extensionless, whereas the atoms are extended. But Boscovich's theory
of the physical world does not affect the Democritean picture of the uni-
verse as a grand dice game, because the points of force can still function
as indivisible elements. Such a Democritian picture is the unmentioned
premise when Zarathustra presents the image of eternal recurrence in a
series of probing questions in "On the Vision and the Riddle" of Part III.
I have cited a series of depressing pictures from Daybreak. It is de-
pressing to be told that you are only a puppet, who knows nothing about
the physical mechanism that governs all your actions. It is even more
depressing to be told that the physical mechanism is a blind dice game of
chance and accidents. By "chance" Nietzsche does not mean randomness.
In his conception, chance is none other than blind necessity. In short, all
of us are the helpless puppets in a grand game of blind necessity. And yet
we live under the delusion that we are the master of our actions and our
destiny. This gruesome picture of reductive naturalism is the abysmal
thought that chokes Zarathustra in "The Convalescent" of Part III. It be-
comes even more gruesome when it brutally replaces the Romantic pic-
ture of humanity given by the idealistic naturalists such as Feuerbach and
Wagner. Although Nietzsche celebrated idealistic naturalism in Human,
All Too Human, he repudiates it as a Romantic illusion in Daybreak. In
chapter 1, we noted that the revival of Spinoza's naturalism produced
two versions of naturalism: the idealistic and the realistic views of Na-
ture. We also noted that Goethe dismissed the idealistic view as too un-
real and championed the realistic view and that his frightful Earth Spirit
was designed to dramatize the realistic view. Nietzsche is making the
same choice by rejecting the naturalism of Feuerbach and Wagner and
 Mystical Naturalism 289

advocating his reductive naturalism as the realistic picture of Nature. But

Goethe found the genius of evolution for spinning the beautiful world out
of the beastly world of primal energy. Can Nietzsche find a similar gen-
ius for overcoming the disgusting world of his scientific reduction?

Beyond Scientific Reduction

Nietzsche strives to overcome his scientific pessimism in The Gay Sci-

ence. In the preface to the second edition, he says that this book over-
flows with the gratitude of a convalescent for recovery that was most
unexpected. This statement implies that he had suffered from a terrible
sickness prior to writing this book, that is, while he was writing Day-
break. Let us now consider what he says about the cause of his sickness
and the secret of his recovery in The Gay Science. He begins this book
with a number of nursery rhymes. This appears to be the celebration of
his recovery. It reminds us of Zarathustra's tender care of his soul like a
child in "On the Great Longing" right after recovering from his terrible
nausea in "The Convalescent" of Part III. Nietzsche then opens Book 1
of The Gay Science with his praise of the power of laughter over the pes-
simists and tragedians. The history of humanity has seen a parade of
teachers, who have preached that life is worth living. By their teaching,
human beings have become fantastic animals that must fulfill one more
condition of existence than any other animal, namely, "man must from
time to time believe he knows why he exists" (GS 1). This question
makes sense only by implicitly presupposing the world of providence.
Without such a presupposition, it is a senseless question. Hence the pa-
rade of teachers on the meaning of human existence has turned out to be
the eternal comedy of existence and provoked endless waves of laughter.
To gain the sense of laughter over the ponderous question of human exis-
tence is to capture the gay spirit of medieval troubadours. This is the aim
of The Gay Science.
Nietzsche regards the meaning of existence as the basic cause for the
uniquely human sickness. But he never directly talks about it. He deals
with it indirectly by talking about the nausea of natural science. In the
last section of Book 2, he says that honesty in science would lead to nau-
sea and suicide. It is important to note that he is talking about the nausea
290 Chapter Nine

of not the world, but of science. Now he says that nausea arises from the
insight into the general falsity and mendacity delivered by science. In
Book 3, he begins to explain why he regards the scientific pictures of the
world as false. First of all, science does not explain nature; the so-called
scientific explanations are only descriptions (GS 112). Second, it uses
artificial concepts, which falsify nature. For example, the concept of
cause and effect is artificial because it presupposes the demarcation be-
tween a cause and its effect. But there is no such duality as cause and
effect. The world of nature is a continuum, which we cut up into causes
and effects arbitrarily in accordance with our needs and convenience.
The same is true of all other scientific concepts such as the concepts of
lines, surfaces, bodies, atoms, divisible times, divisible spaces (GS 112).
They do not exist in nature; they are only fictions in our mind. They are
used to deliver the simplified pictures of complex natural phenomena.
Although those simplified pictures are false and fictitious, Nietzsche says,
they are the necessary conditions for our existence because we cannot
live without them.
The problem of falsification becomes even more serious when sci-
ence tries to give an overview of the whole world such as vitalism or
mechanism (GS 109). For example, the view that the world is a living
being is groundless. To be sure, there is life on earth. But Nietzsche re-
gards it as a rare accidental event. The organic view of the world com-
mits the mistake of interpreting the whole universe by taking as the uni-
versal paradigm this rare accidental event on the crust of this small planet.
Nietzsche says that he is nauseated by such a gross misinterpretation. For
him, the mechanistic view of the universe is not any more sensible. The
universe is neither constructed like a machine, nor serves any purpose as
machines are supposed to. Even if the mechanistic view is meant only to
stress the order of the universe, Nietzsche says, it is again mistaken be-
cause the astral order that we observe in our close neighborhood of the
universe is the exception of exceptions. Both vitalism and mechanisms
are only anthropomorphic projections. Finally, he rejects the existence of
enduring matter: "matter is as much of an error as the god of the Eleat-
ics" (GS 109). The concept of imperishable matter is as fictitious as the
concept of an immortal god. The non-scientific concepts do not fare any
better; our ordinary concepts are equally erroneous (GS 110). What is the
nature of reality if it cannot be described by our concepts? Nietzsche says,
 Mystical Naturalism 291

"The total character of the world, by contrast, is for all eternity chaos,"
which is governed by blind necessity and which is totally devoid of "or-
der, organization, form, beauty, wisdom, and whatever else our aesthetic
anthropomorphisms are called" (GS 109).
If chaos is ineffable and indescribable, how does Nietzsche know it?
What is his access to it? Surely, science cannot provide the access, nor
can commonsense knowledge, because its concepts are as faulty as the
scientific concepts. Thus Nietzsche's access to the chaotic universe is a
big mystery. His access may be his nominalistic intuition. Throughout
his life, he never abandoned his nominalistic view of language first an-
nounced in his early essay, "Truth and Lie in the Extra-moral Sense."
This is the view that language is only an army of metaphors. A metaphor
can never correctly describe the nature of reality, because it is based on
the resemblance of one thing to another rather than their identity. Our
language also employs concepts. But their generality cannot capture the
individual essence of each object, which is ineffable and indescribable.
To realize this point is to have the nominalistic intuition of reality. It is a
sort of mystical intuition, if "mystical intuition" means the intuition of
something ineffable and indescribable. By virtue of this mystical intui-
tion, everything is shown to be irreplaceable. This is an essential element
in Zarathustra's conception of redemption, which we examined in chap-
ter 6. He rejects the first formula: To redeem the past by using it crea-
tively for the future, which amounts to substituting the botched past with
a better future. This is similar to God's redemption of Job at the end of
his trial by giving him new children for the lost ones. But the lost chil-
dren cannot be redeemed or replaced by the new ones if they are unique.
The truly chaotic world is called the infinite nothing in section 125
of Gay Science. This infinite nothing sounds like the Nothing, in which
Faust hopes to find "my All" (Faust 6256). Since Nothing or Chaos is
ineffable and indescribable, as we noted in chapter 4, it expresses
Goethe's mystical naturalism. By using the same expression, Nietzsche
is stating his mystical view of Nature. But there is a significant differ-
ence between the two versions of mystical naturalism. Goethe's Chaos
lies at the bottom of Nature, from which the cosmos evolves. On the
other hand, Nietzsche's Chaos lies everywhere in fully developed Nature.
Such a chaotic Nature is the Heraclitean flux, Nietzsche's Abyss. In spite
of this difference, Nietzsche has finally ascended from scientific reduc-
292 Chapter Nine

tion to mystical naturalism. Thus he has moved from the non-reductive

naturalism of Human, All Too Human to the reductive naturalism of Day-
break and then to the mystical naturalism of The Gay Science. These
three views provide the thematic framework for the composition of Thus
Spoke Zarathustra. Part I is written largely in the optimistic framework
of non-reductive naturalism, which is shattered by the pessimistic tone of
reductive naturalism in Part II. But the horror of reductive naturalism is
supplanted by the dread of mystical naturalism that emanates from the
Abyss in Part III. The dread of mystical naturalism is finally overcome in
the mystical union of the individual self with the cosmic self in Part IV.

Two Remedies for Nausea

In Book 4 of The Gay Science, Nietzsche tries to find the beauty of Na-
ture, which has been concealed by the nauseating scientific picture. This
is what he means to recover from the sickness of scientific intelligence.
He explores two ways for finding beauty, which may be called the way
of art and the way of love. The way of art is the way of artists and physi-
cians, who make human existence palatable by decoration and medica-
tion (GS 299). The way of love is not so well known as the way of art,
and Nietzsche does not even give a formal account of it. It appears only
obliquely in his new year's wish "to learn more and more how to see
what is necessary in things as what is beautiful in them-thus I will be
one of those who make things beautiful" (GS 276). But what is the secret
for performing this magic operation? He seems to answer this question,
when he goes on to say, "Amor fati: let that be my love from now on!"
To love my fate is to love what necessarily happens in my life. If I love
my fate, every one of its necessary links should look beautiful. Love can
always make things appear beautiful; every baby is the most beautiful
creature to its mother. If I have amor fati, it can solve my problem of
existence because it can render beautiful everything that happens to me.
Since my fate is none other than everything that happens to me, it can
also be regarded as my personal providence. Nietzsche pursues this line
of thought in the next section (GS 277). He has done away with divine
providence and accepted the world as the infinite domain of Chaos. Even
then, he says, we are confronted with the thought of a personal provi-
 Mystical Naturalism 293

dence backed by the most penetrating force, because we so palpably see

how everything that befalls us continually turns out for the best.
Leibniz says that God makes the best of all possible worlds. This is
his doctrine of divine providence. A personal version of this doctrine is
Nietzsche's thought of personal providence. But he does not explain how
such terrible things as crippling diseases tum out to be the best for us. In
fact, it is impossible to prove that anything has turned out for the best,
because it is always possible to imagine a better outcome. But he says,

Every day and every hour life seems to want nothing else than
to prove this proposition again and again; be it what it may-
bad or good weather, the loss of a friend, a sickness, slander,
the absence of a letter, the spraining of an ankle, a glance into
a shop, a counter-argument, the opening of a book, a dream,
fraud-it shows itself immediately or very soon to be some-
thing that 'was not allowed to be lacking' -it is full of deep
meaning and use precisely for us! (GS 277)

This is the most baffling statement Nietzsche has ever made. He is say-
ing that his thought of personal providence is proven every day and every
hour and that it covers every event in his life whether it is serious or triv-
ial. There is only one way to make some sense of this incredible thought.
This is to take the way of love. If you love something, it is the best for
you whatever it may be because love allows no comparison. The power
of recognizing and appreciating the uniqueness of an object through love
may be called erotic intuition. A while ago, we considered Nietzsche's
notion of nominalistic intuition, which can recognize the ultimate charac-
ter of an object as ineffable and indescribable. We noted that it is ineffa-
ble and indescribable because it is unique and that what is unique cannot
be described by language. In this regard, the erotic intuition functions
like the nominalistic intuition. To put it more accurately, love dictates the
nominalistic intuition by allowing no comparison with others. Whatever
is loved is the best, if it is truly loved. I am not sure that I have given the
right interpretation of Nietzsche's reflection on personal providence. He
does not even mention love. But I assume that he is still talking about
amor fati, which he introduced and discussed in the previous section.
The way of art is in line with Nietzsche's conception of value as a
human creation. Values are not in the factual world; they are created by
294 Chapter Nine

human beings. He has taken this position after his reductionism has
stripped nature of all values in Book 3 of The Gay Science. He has said
that nature is "neither perfect, nor beautiful, nor noble" and that these
concepts of value are anthropomorphic (GS 109). In Book 4, he reaffirms
the same anthropomorphic view of value (GS 301). If value comes into
being by human creation, it constitutes only the surface of reality and can
be made and remade by human beings. This then should be the right
premise for understanding not only the way of art, but also the way of
love. Just like art, love also appears to be a human instrument for project-
ing value on value-free nature. This idea of creating value by love ap-
pears to be contained in his statement, "I want to learn more and more
how to see [out of love] what is necessary in things as what is beautiful
in them-thus I will be one of those who make things beautiful" (GS
276). To make things beautiful is to create their beauty. The two ways of
love and art seem to perform the same function of casting the veil of
beauty over value-free nature.
To our surprise, however, Nietzsche also entertains the opposite view
that beauty is deeply hidden in reality and can be revealed only by cast-
ing off its veil. He expresses this view by taking an example of our com-
ing to appreciate strange new music. Although a piece of new music may
initially sound strange to us, if we make efforts to understand it and have
patience to put up with its oddity, there comes a moment when it will
relentlessly compel and enchant us. It "gradually casts off its veil and
presents itself as a new and indescribable beauty" (GS 334). He says that
this happens not only in music, but also in all other spheres of life. If this
is correct, beauty is not a surface phenomenon, but the deepest secret of
reality. Instead of being a veil over reality, it can be discovered only by
unveiling reality. He says that one must learn to love to unveil the hidden
beauty. In that case, love is the way of not creating, but discovering value
hidden in deep reality. There is a hint of this point in his talk of a per-
sonal providence. He uses the phrase "the beautiful chaos of existence"
(GS 277). Chaos is presumably beautiful. If so, its beauty must lie be-
neath the surface of everyday and scientific phenomena.
So Nietzsche has two theories of beauty, which may be called aes-
thetic surperficialism and aesthetic subterraneanism. "Aesthetic superfi-
cialism" means that beauty lies on the surface of reality and that it is cre-
ated by human beings. "Aesthetic subterraneanism" means that beauty
 Mystical Naturalism 295

lies in deep reality. Aesthetic superficialism belongs to the way of art,

which creates beauty to cover the ugly picture of reality produced by sci-
entific reduction. Aesthetic subterraneanism belongs to the way of love,
which can unveil the hidden beauty by mystical intuition. Nietzsche il-
lustrates aesthetic subterraneanism in GS 339, where life is called a
woman (Vita femina). He says, "Not even all knowledge and all good
will suffice for seeing the ultimate beauties of a work; it requires the rar-
est of lucky accidents for the clouds that veil the peaks to lift for us mo-
mentarily and for the sun to shine on them." For this glorious moment of
revelation, he says, we have to satisfy two conditions: (1) we have to
stand on the right spot and (2) the unveiling must be done by our soul.
Since these two things rarely happen together, he says, "I am inclined to
believe that the highest peaks of everything good, be it work, deed, hu-
manity, or nature, have so far remained hidden and covered from the ma-
jority and even from the best." He goes on to say "that the world is brim-
ming with beautiful things but nevertheless poor, very poor in beautiful
moments and in the unveilings of those things." What are the veils that
hide the beauty of things "from the majority and even from the best"?
His answer to this question should be obvious. They are the veils of our
commonsense consciousness and our natural language that cover the
uniqueness of all things. These veils of habit and custom unconsciously
victimize the majority and even the best and deny them access to the
beauty of the world. They can be saved only by their mystical revelation.
Nietzsche compares life to a woman because "it is covered by a veil
of beautiful possibilities, woven with threads of gold-promising, resist-
ing, bashful, mocking, compassionate, and seductive" (GS 339). Life is
not covered by beauty; it is covered by a veil of beautiful possibilities,
that is, the possibilities of unveiling its hidden beauty. He regards this as
the strongest magic of life. This makes life mocking and seductive. It is
this mocking and seductive life that appears as Life for Zarathustra in
"The Dancing Song" of Part II. She refuses to have the adjectives "pro-
found, faithful, eternal, and mysterious" imposed on her nature by men.
They are the common labels that can never capture her ineffable unique-
ness. She describes herself as "merely changeable and wild." That is her
way of saying that she is unpredictable and indescribable. Right after
praising the hidden beauty as the strongest magic of life, Nietzsche talks
about the dying Socrates, who is equally mocking and seductive (GS
296 Chapter Nine

340). He is the man, "who had lived cheerfully and like a soldier in plain
view of everyone." But his similarity to Life stops on the surface. Socra-
tes's cheerful demeanor is artful and deliberate, whereas that of Life is
natural and spontaneous. Socrates's demeanor turns out to be the surface
and veil hiding his real life of suffering and disease. He is the master of
Greek superficiality, who embodies aesthetic superficialism. Right after
these two stories of life and Socrates, Nietzsche introduces the demon's
story of eternal recurrence and then announces the tragedy of Zarathustra.
The sequence of these last four sections of Book 4 of The Gay Sciences
outlines the thematic ideas for the composition of Thus Spoke Zarathus-
tra. The eternal recurrence generates the problem of existence for the
tragedy of Zarathustra. But there are two ways for resolving it: the way
of art practiced by Socrates and the way of love embodied in Life. The
former is only provisional and superficial, but the latter is real and ulti-
mate. Both of them will be deployed for the resolution of Zarathustra's
existential problem with the eternal recurrence or the abysmal thought.
I have so far talked about the way of love and the way of art as
Nietzsche's proposal for coping with the nausea of science in the first
edition of The Gay Science. In the Preface to its second edition, he again
offers two remedies for nausea. The first one may be called the way of
innocence, which is to become joyful like a child. This will completely
heal the great pain of existence, but it is not available to the convales-
cents because they are not strong and healthy enough to become like
children. For them, he recommends the art of covering the ugly truth
with a veil. It was originally the Greek art of managing the surface, the
Apollonian art of creating a glorious appearance. He says that this Greek
art of superficiality was born out of profundity. The way of art is op-
posed to the way of innocence. The way of art is deliberate and manipu-
lative; the way of innocence is natural and spontaneous. But no one can
go back to the innocence of a child. So Nietzsche calls for a second inno-
cence. The way of art is carried over from the first edition of The Gay
Science. The way of innocence appears to replace the way of love. But
they are inseparably connected with each other. It takes the innocence of
a child to fall in love for two reasons. We have already noted that one
can fall in love only by unveiling the hidden beauty of things, which is
covered by the veils of commonsense ideas and beliefs. To be free of
these veils is to gain the innocence of a child. This is the epistemic di-
 Mystical Naturalism 297

mension of innocence. But there is another dimension of innocence,

which concerns the will. As long as one retains one's own individual will,
one call110t fall in love because love is the perfect union of two individu-
als. But two individual wills always generate an interminable conflict.
This is the problem that Zarathustra encounters in his game of love with
Life in "The Other Dancing Song" of Part III. For the same reason, it is
also impossible for a rational person to fall in love because her will is
protected by her rational control and calculation. Socrates makes this
point in his praise of love in the Phaedrus. Erasmus restates the same
point in his Praise ofFolly, which was written as a parody of Socrates's
praise of love.
Because innocence transcends the normal standard of rational delib-
eration, it is hardly distinguishable from folly. Nietzsche talks about the
fool's cap as an emblem for the art of superficiality (GS 107). But to be a
fool of innocence goes much deeper than merely donning a fool's cap.
The latter covers only the surface; the former reaches the substance. In
medieval Europe, the Feast of Fools was a festival of play-acting for
those who could not be real fools and could not attain real second inno-
cence. Because the higher men of Part IV are still convalescents, they
have to play fools, indulging themselves in a series of pranks and diver-
sions. They are not strong and healthy enough to be real fools of inno-
cence. By their play-acting, they put on a number of entertaining per-
fonnances. But their performance becomes real in the Ass Festival.
Those who fail to recognize this subtle transition take the festival as an
absurd burlesque. But the higher men's worship of the Ass-God is not a
silly prank, but a sincere devotion. Every line of the litany expresses their
profound understanding of and their sincere admiration for the working
of the Ass-God. Their sincerity eventually leads Zarathustra to conse-
crate their festival. They are no longer convalescents. Right after the fes-
tival, when the Ugliest Man leads them to declare their love of life, they
become fully conscious of their dramatic recovery. They have recovered
not only health but also innocence. With their new health and innocence,
they have become children again and gained the power to take the way of
love and participate in the mystical communion with Life. Zarathustra's
mystical union with Life corresponds to Faust's mystical union with the
Eternal Feminine. Thus both works are the epics of mystical naturalism.
 Chapter Ten

Wagner's Superhero
(The Ring ofthe Nibelung)

Spinoza's naturalism was transmitted to Richard Wagner through the

Hegelian channel. Spinoza's infinite substance became Hegel's Absolute
Spirit, which first spins out the logical system of concepts and ideas and
then the world of nature and culture. By this logical transformation,
Hegel denaturalized Spinoza's infinite substance. But the Young Hege-
lian Ludwig Feuerbach re-naturalized it by his materialism, which af-
firmed Nature as the ultimate ground of all reality and replaced Hegel's
pure thought with feelings and desires as the primary force of the world.
Feuerbach became a revolutionary by transforming Hegel's philosophy
of historical process into his philosophy of social revolution. Richard
Wagner imbibed this revolutionary zeal and tried to express it in The
Ring of Nibelung. In his Essence of Christianity, as we have already
noted, Feuerbach advocated that the religious age was only a stage in the
historical development of the human spirit and that the gods were created
by perfecting and projecting human attributes to an external object. He
further believed that human beings would come of age and shatter the
mythical world of gods to create a rational social order on the basis of
scientific naturalism. Wagner constructed his Ring as the music drama
for this historical revolution. Siegfried was meant to be the superhero of
this revolution. In chapter 5, we noted that many Young Hegelians had
entertained their own ideas of superman. The superhero Siegfried was
Wagner's poetic rendition of one of these Young Hegelian ideas.
Although The Ring was originally conceived as an epic drama, it was
later transformed into a tragedy in the course of his musical composition.
This transformation was inspired by his discovery of Schopenhauer. In
1853, Wagner started writing the music for The Ring. In 1854, while he
was writing the music for The Valkyrie, the second part of the Ring cycle,
 Wagner's Superhero 299

he discovered Schopenhauer. He was so mesmerized by The World as

Will and Representation that he read it from cover to cover in spite of his
work on The Valkyrie and then read it three more times within a year.
Schopenhauer's philosophy drastically changed his view of life and mu-
sic by destroying his Feuerbachian optimism and his revolutionary fire.
He came to believe that social injustice and human suffering could never
be eliminated by any political movement. He accepted Schopenhauer's
view that the whole world was a tragic play of the blind Will. The injus-
tice of Wotan's world in The Ring is not an unfortunate mistake to be
rectified, but reveals the inevitable tragic dimension of human existence.
Thus he changed from a Feuerbachian optimist and idealist to a
Schopenhauerian pessimist or realist.
The transformation of The Ring from an epic to a tragedy did not re-
quire any drastic changes in the original plot, because the tragic death of
Siegfried was its original fixed point and terminus. Wagner wrote the
entire libretto starting out from this point and spinning out all the events
that would lead up to Siegfried's tragic death. Therefore, the question of
whether The Ring was to be an epic or tragedy depended on what sort of
interpretation should be given to this ending. In his Feuerbachian period,
Wagner gave it an optimistic coating. After Siegfried's death, Bruenn-
hilde will lead his soul to Valhalla and replace the reign of power with
the reign of love. Siegfried's death will be the great sacrifice for the vic-
tory of love over power. This was the Feuerbachian ending that he tried
out in 1852. Four years later, this optimistic ending was replaced by the
Schopenhauerian ending, in which Bruennhilde renounces this world and
celebrates her release from the endless cycle of reincarnation. But this
ending was not retained for the final version, in which she mounts her
horse and rushes into Siegfried's funeral pyre. The final version is nei-
ther Schopenhauerian nor Feuerbachian, as we will see later. But these
different endings did not affect the nature of Wotan's rule by force and
guile. He always employs the same Machiavellian tactic of a fox and a
lion, regardless the ending of the play. Most people get disgusted with
the gods of The Ring because they are just a bunch of crooks. According
to Bryan Magee, Isaiah Berlin used to exclaim, "But they're just a lot of
gangsters!" If anyone tried to explain to him that they represented a cor-
rupt social order that was about to be swept away, Magee says, he would
look dubious and shake his head (Wagner and Philosophy, 54-55). But it
300 Chapter Ten

is unfair to say that Wotan's world is corrupt because it is meant to be

amoral, if morality is taken to be the morality of our culture. Even the
Rhinemaidens are as amoral as the gods. The world of The Ring is free of
all moral constraints and contamination from Nibelheim to Valhalla. In
that regard, it is like the Hobbesian state of nature. For the same reason,
as we have already noted, Spinoza' s world is also amoral and Goethe
tries to soften it by introducing the elements of Platonic and Christian
ethics. But Wagner accepts none of the Christian and Platonic vestiges
and situates Wotan and other gods in a totally amoral world.
The Christian vestiges in Faust appear to be Goethe's blatant be-
trayal of the idea that he had inherited from Spinoza and cherished all his
life, namely, the idea that Nature is the all-embracing ultimate reality. If
Goethe had been faithful to this idea, he would not have enclosed his
Spinozan hero inside the Judeo-Christian thematic frame of the Prologue
in Heaven and the Epilogue. But these Christian vestiges are only on the
periphery of Faust's world. Its main stream is brimming with ancient
Greek mythological beings. In The Ring of Nibelung, Richard Wagner
replaces Goethe's Greek mythology with his own Nordic mythology. He
replaces the Greek gods and goddesses with the Nordic gods and god-
desses, and the Greek giants and pigmies with the Nordic giants and
dwarfs. But all of them are natural entities. He refines the distinction be-
tween giants and dwarfs. The giants are the primitive creatures without
clever intelligence; they express natural forces in their simplicity. The
dwarfs are clever creatures; they have developed the technique to modify
and control natural resources. The snake is the common symbol for rep-
resenting these children of Nature. In Rheingold, the dwarf Alberich
transforms himself into a monstrous serpent by putting on the magic
helmet, the Tarnhelm. In Siegfried, the giant Fafner transforms himself
into a huge dragon to guard his treasure hoard. The dragon is another
form of the snake, the basic symbol of Mother Nature and her living
force. All of them are children of the earthly goddess Erda, who plays the
roles of both Goethe's Earth Spirit and the Mothers. In Siegfried, Act 3,
Scene 1, Wotan says to her, "Where there is being, your breath blows."
She is the fountainhead of all beings.
The natural world of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is also amoral, but it is
not saddled with the power politics of Wagnerian deities. All of them
have vanished with the death of God except for Erda. She becomes Life,
 Wagner's Superhero 301

the ultimate source of all natural powers. Life and Erda alike represent
Spinoza's conception of Nature, whose essence is power. Nietzsche
transforms the Wagnerian giants into the giants of accident (cosmic ne-
cessity) and installs only one dwarf as the spirit of gravity. He is the
monster. from the Abyss. Zarathustra's dwarf performs a dual function.
When he is perceived as an individual, he looks like a helpless puppet
chained to the iron ring of eternal recurrence, who can appear as a count-
less number of dwarfs allover the world. His connection to the iron ring
may appear to be an accidental misfortune. In this individual perspective,
it is assumed that there is a clear boundary between the dwarf and the
eternal ring. But that boundary is illusory from the cosmic perspective.
His connecton to the eternal ring is not accidental but essential to his na-
ture. But this connection can be recognized only from the cosmic per-
spective, in which the dwarf can be seen as a cosmic giant. He is not a
puppet of the iron ring, but the master of its revolution. That is why
Zarathustra calls him master of the world in "The Dancing Song" of Part
II. This dual function of the dwarf is Nietzsche's ingenious innovation in
his adaptation of the Wagnerian giants and dwarfs.
The relation of Life to the dwarf is much more intimate and mysteri-
ous than the relation of Erda to dwarfs and giants. These earthlings are
supposed to be the children of Erda. But it is hard to tell whether the
dwarf is a child of Life or her own emanation because the dwarf can ap-
pear not only as an individual but also as a cosmic entity. The relation of
the snake to Life is equally baffling. Just like the dwarf, the snake can be
regarded from both the individual and the cosmic perspectives. From the
individual perspective, the snake may represent the life of an individual.
In the cosmic perspective, it can appear as the cosmic snake that repre-
sents Life and her eternal ring of recurrence. As we noted in chapter 7,
the snake and the dwarf are the interchangeable and interconnectable
symbols of Life. Nietzsche elevates Life to the undisputed throne of the
highest authority to reign over the entire universe. There is no Wotan to
meddle with her power and authority. Like Erda, she has her court in the
heart of the earth, but her underground court shines with gold. This un-
derground gold is the ultimate source for the glorious radiance of the sun.
In this regard, Life is different from Erda, who sleeps in her gloomy un-
derground abode. The cosmic power of Life is more like the subterranean
fiery primal energy in Faust.
302 Chapter Ten

The World of Power

The Zarathustrian world in its constitution is an adaptation of the Wag-

nerian world in The Ring. Their common ground is power, the essence of
Nature, according to Spinoza. But Nature manifests her power differently
in the two epics and their different manifestations constitute their plot-
lines. Let us compare them. The Ring cycle is a war epic, the saga ofWo-
tan's war against the dwarf Alberich. Nietzsche's work can also be con-
sidered as a war epic, Zarathustra's relentless war against his dwarf, the
spirit of gravity. Wotan's war is a protracted affair. It is waged not only
by Wotan himself but also his kin and descendents, and his forces are
countered by Alberich and his brother Mime and his son Hagen. Like-
wise, Zarathustra wages his war not only by becoming a warrior himself,
but also by recruiting disciples as his warriors. His war talk in "On War
and Warriors" of Part I is not an incidental or isolated propaganda, but a
permanent fixture of his prolonged war against the dwarf and his count-
less minions, namely, the rabble and the mob, all of whom share the
common fate of dwarfism ("On Virtue That Makes Small" of Part III).
He fights against the curse of the dwarf. So does Wotan. He fights
against Alberich's curse of the Gold Ring. Wotan's war goes through
four stages, which are chronicled in the four parts of The Ring: Rhine-
gold, Valkyrie, Siegfried, and Twilight of the Gods. The first two parts
are the story of Wotan, his rise and fall as a Faustian hero. The last two
parts are the story of Siegfried, his rise and fall as a Spinozan hero.
Likewise, Parts I and II of Zarathustra are the story of a Faustian hero,
and Parts III and IV are the story of a Spinozan hero. Just as the young
Siegfried replaces the old Wotan as the hero of the Wagnerian saga, so
the new Zarathustra supersedes the old Zarathustra when he is trans-
formed from a Faustian hero to a Spinozan hero. With this sketchy out-
line of the two wars, let us examine their development in details.
In Rhinegold, the reigning power belongs to Wotan, the king of im-
mortals, who has wielded his power for a long time with his Spear,
which represents his military force and which is supported by a system of
contracts and treaties. In the opening scene of this opera, a new power
emerges when Alberich makes The Ring from the Rhinegold. This new
power is the industrial power of creating enormous wealth and has the
potential to overthrow and replace Wotan's military empire for the rule
 Wagner's Superhero 303

of the world. But Wotan accomplishes two critical tasks. First, he has
contracted with the giants Fasolt and Fafner to build a mighty imperial
fortress, Valhalla, to consolidate his power against all forces. But he does
not want to pay the giants on their completion of the construction. He
had originally promised to pay for Valhalla with Freia, the goddess of
love and beauty. But he is now scared of losing her. With her departure,
he and other deities will lose youth and beauty. With the advice of Loge,
Wogan finds a substitute payment to the giants. Loge has discovered that
the dwarf Alberich of the underworld has recently stolen the Rhinegold
and made it into a ring that provides enormous power and wealth. This is
the Gold Ring. By using its power, the dwarf has made the magic helmet,
the Tamhelm, and enslaved his fellow Nibelungs to amass a Golden
Hoard. Wotan travels to Nibelheim and captures Alberich by Loge's
clever tricks. Then he brings up his helpless captive to a mountaintop and
forces him to give up the Ring, the Tamhelm, and the Golden Hoard. But
the dwarf puts a curse on the Ring when he is forced to hand over all his
treasures to Wotan under duress.
Wotan offers these treasures to the giants as their wage in place of
Freia, but wants to keep the Gold Ring for himself. It commands such an
enormous power that he cannot feel safe to let it go out of his hand. But
the giants will not take the substitute payment without the Ring. While
they are arguing over the Ring, Erda suddenly appears from the under-
world and warns Wotan to shun the Ring to avoid its curse. Only then
does Wotan reluctantly give up the Ring for the release of Freia, who has
been held hostage by the giants. Thus Wotan wins the first round of the
war against Alberich. He is a Faustian hero par excellence. He has the
power and intelligence to impose his will on the world. So is Alberich,
who is burning with his own ambition to rule the world. But he cannot
match Wotan's power at this stage. The Zarathustra of the Prologue and
Part I does not enjoy such a Faustian stature as Wotan's. But he has the
ambition of reshaping the world with his Faustian ideal of superman. His
descent from the mountain cave is similar to Wotan's descent from Val-
halla. Before the descent, he had enjoyed his solitude for ten years in the
mountain, just as Wotan enjoyed his peace in Valhalla before waking up
to the troubles of the world. Zarathustra's mountain cave is his Valhalla,
his fortress of solitude impregnable to the slings and arrows from the
spirit of gravity. At the opening of the Prologue, Zarathustra greets the
304 Chapter Ten

rising sun, which can be taken as the symbol of kingship. He tries to

transpose his castle of solitude and self-isolation from the mountain to
the marketplace. Paul Heise says that Valhalla is the beautiful world of
illusion that Wotan has built to escape from the misery (Noth) of the real
world ("The 'Ring' as a Whole"). His illusory world is infused with the
perpetual youth and beauty of Goddess Freia. The miserable condition of
the real world is represented by the ugly dwarf Alberich and his Nibe-
lungs. Zarathustra's castle of solitude is his beautiful world of illusion
that he has built to escape from the misery of the real world. His illusory
world is infused with the beauty and power of the superman. The miser-
able condition of his earthy existence is represented by his dwarf, the
spirit of gravity. In "Reading and Writing" of Part I, Zarathustra claims
to have conquered the spirit of gravity. He appears to be stepping allover
the dwarf, just as Wotan manipulates Alberich at will in Rhinegold. Just
as Wotan wins the first round of his fight against the dwarf with Loge's
wit, so does Zarathustra with his Wisdom.
The Gold Ring is the controlling image for Rhinegold. The ring im-
agery is also prominent in the Prologue and Part I of Nietzsche's epic.
Zarathustra closes the Prologue by watching an eagle soaring through the
sky in wide circles with a serpent coiled around its neck. This scene
combines two images of a ring. The first image is the circular paths of
the eagle's flight and the second image is the circle of the serpent coiled
around its neck. The eagle is also the image of a king. Hence its flight
with the serpent coiled around its neck represents Zarathustra's regal
command of the eternal ring. Far from suffering from the curse of the
ring, he is flying on its power, just as Wotan flies up with the Gold Ring
from the underworld to a mountaintop with his regal authority. By the
end of Part I, the solar and the serpentine images of a ring are brought
together on the staff that his disciples give him as their farewell gift. This
staff resembles Wotan's Spear. By the time Zarathustra receives the staff,
he attains Wotan's regal posture of wielding his Spear. The union of the
sun and serpent in the farewell staff radiates the gift-giving virtue, which
stands against the sickly selfishness that grabs everything for the sake of
greed. This is the sort of selfishness that is fostered by the Gold Ring.
Zarathustra calls it the degeneration of natural instincts. His gift-giving
virtue is the healthy form of selfishness, in which he says "your heart
flows broad and full like a river" (2, 76). This river imagery echoes back
 Wagner's Superhero 305

to the Rhine, which freely gives its gold out of its abundance in the open-
ing scene of Rhinegold.
Although both Wotan and Zarathustra appear to have won the first
round of their respective wars, they have not eliminated their mortal foes.
So they are seized by lingering fear and worry. In Rhinegold, Wotan was
eager to retain the Ring in his own possession, but was persuaded to give
it up by Erda's ominous warning. The Ring may not pose any serious
threat to his rule as long as it is in the possession of a giant too dumb to
exploit its power. But the dwarf can recover it and spell the end of Wo-
tan's rule. The fear of this frightful prospect becomes his paranoia. Even
his newly built mighty fortress Valhalla can never be a reliable defense
against the horrendous power of the Ring. To cope with this terrible
anxiety, he comes up with a great idea. This is to find a way to regain the
Ring. But he cannot do it himself because he is bound by his contract
with the giant. He has to create a hero who is free of all legal constraints
to take the Ring away from the giant. This is his idea of a superhuman
hero, who can do what even the god cannot do. By the end of Part I,
Zarathustra's position may not be so rosy and so secure as it is repre-
sented by the image of the eagle and the serpent on his regal staff. He
says to his disciples, "Still we fight step by step with the giant, accident"
(Z, 77). His giant is the giant of accident, cosmic necessity. Although he
has not even officially encountered this giant, he is anticipating a pro-
longed fight. But he has his own great idea of how to wage this war. Like
Wotan, he will rely on the superman, whose will is totally free.
Before the opening of Valkyrie, Wotan has done two things for the
consolidation of his power. He sired Bruennhilde and eight other Val-
kyries from Erda. These war maidens can not only fight for Wotan, but
also bring the heroes slain in battle to Valhalla for its defense. But this
defensive measure is not strong enough to dissolve his paranoia of the
Ring. To cope with this ever present danger, he sires a pair of twins,
Siegmund and Sieglinde, from a mortal woman. By living with the mor-
tals, he trains and grooms Siegmund as the free hero to take the Gold
Ring away from the giant Fafner. He is implementing his "great idea."
But one day a disaster strikes the twins. When Siegmund comes home
with his father from one of their joint adventures, he finds his mother
killed and his sister kidnapped by some local bandits. Then Wotan disap-
pears and Siegmund becomes a loner, who suffers an endless series of
306 Chapter Ten

misfortunes. While running away from his enemies, he takes refuge in

the house of Hunding, chief of the local bandits. In this house, he finds
Sieglinde and discovers that she is his lost twin sister. They fall madly in
love with each other. When Hunding comes home, Siegmund tells his
life story, which reveals that he killed Hunding's men in a previous battle.
So Hunding challenges him to a duel. After Hunding goes to sleep, Sieg-
mund finds the magic sword that Wotan planted in a big tree in the mid-
dle of the house during Sieglinde's forced wedding to Hunding. This
magic sword is Nothung, which nobody has been able to pullout of the
tree trunk. But Siegmund retrieves it and plans to use it in his duel with
Hunding next morning. To assure Siegmund's victory, Wotan gives Bru-
ennhilde his special command to protect him during the impending fight.
Before the duel begins, however, Fricka comes on the scene to tell
Wotan what a terrible thing he is about to do. He is planning to protect
Siegmund, who has violated the marriage vow between Hunding and
Sieglinde by his incestuous adultery with his own sister. The institution
of marriage is one of the laws written on Wotan's Spear. Fricka tells him
that he is undennining his own rule of law by protecting the adulterer in
his fight against the legitimately grieved husband Hunding. In his de-
fense, Wotan tells her that Siegmund can do whatever he wants to be-
cause he is a totally free agent not bound by any legal constraints. But
Fricka points out that he is not a free agent at all, but only an extension
of Wotan himself. He is violating his own laws by employing Siegmund
as his agent. Hence to protect him against Hunding is to dismantle his
own system of power. This is the ironic outcome of his project to create a
free hero for the recovery of the Ring. When he realizes that his "great
idea" was a self-deception, he falls into terrible dejection and only longs
for the End, that is, the end of his reign and the world. This is the end of
his power and Valhalla that was pronounced by Erda in Rh inegold. He
revokes his previous order to Bruennhilde and commands her to do the
opposite, that is, to let Siegmund fall and die in the battle. To secure
Hunding's victory, he withdraws the magic power from Siegmund's
newfound sword Nothung.
Bruennhilde goes to Siegmund and tells him of his impending death.
She tells him that she has come to take him to Valhalla. She tries to con-
sole him with the promise of heavenly bliss in Valhalla. But he refuses
this offer when he is told that he cannot be with Sieglinde there. Moved
 Wagner's Superhero 307

by his love of Sieglinde, Bruennhilde decides to disobey Wotan and pro-

tect Sigmund in his battle against Hunding. But her defiant attempt
comes to naught by Wotan's intervention. When Siegmund is about to
strike Hunding with Nothung, Wotan sticks out his Spear and the sword
shatters on the Spear. Siegmund is killed by Hunding. Then Wotan kills
the killer to take out his frustration. After the battle, Wotan is enraged by
Bruennhilde's defiance and pronounces a severe punishment. She will be
reduced to a mortal and put to sleep on a rocky mountaintop, the Val-
kyrie Rock, until someone comes along and wakes her up for his wife.
She will be easy prey. Horrified at this prospect, she pleas for protection
against cheap molesters during her sleep, and Wotan grants her wish by
surrounding her with a wall of Loge's fire. Only a brave hero who can go
through the ring of fire can claim her hand for marriage. He sings a sad
farewell to his daughter when he puts her into a long sleep.
In chapter 6, we noted that the central theme of Part II of Zarathustra
is suffering and redemption. This is also the central theme of Valkyrie, in
which Siegmund and Sieglinde suffer a series of harsh treatments in the
world. In his lamentation, Siegmund moans over his miserable fate as an
outcast. In its tone, this lamentation sounds like Zarathustra's haunting
description of his loneliness and alienation in "The Night Song" and
"The Tomb Song" of Part II. Wotan also suffers with his children. All
these sufferings arise from his decision to project his "great idea" into the
harsh reality of the world. The projection of such an idea is the assertion
of the will against the world, and this is always the cause of suffering. In
the opening scene of Part II, Zarathustra reads his horrible mirror image
as the distortion of his teaching. This is the portent of his future suffering
for his teaching. In Part I, he had come up with his great idea of super-
man and the creative will, but he will suffer for that idea in Part II when
he subjects it to the mighty accidents of the real world. His suffering ul-
timately comes down to the conflict of the twofold will, namely, the col-
lision between the autonomous will and the accidental will. This is the
common ground of suffering for him and Wotan.
Wotan's notion of autonomous (or creative) will is embodied in
Siegmund and Bruennhilde. He is alleged to be a free hero and she calls
herself Wotan's will. Wotan's heteronomous (or accidental) will is repre-
sented by Fricka, who defends all the contracts he has made in the past.
When she accuses him of having violated the sanctity of marriage in fa-
308 Chapter Ten

thering Siegmund and Sieglinde, he retorts that she can grasp only the
old customs but never his thoughts for the future. One of these thoughts
is to create a new free hero in Siegmund. But Fricka forces him to recog-
nize the contracts and treaties he has made in the past. Fricka always
looks backward like the backward-looking will; Wotan always looks
forward like the forward-looking will. She forces him to recognize that
his idea of creating free human beings has been an illusion and self-
deception and to rescind his order to Bruennhilde to protect Siegmund
during his fight against Hunding. He says to her, "How slyly I sought to
deceive myselfl How easily Fricka uncovered the fraud!" (Valkyrie, Act
2, Scene 1). The "great idea" came to him while he was walking over the
rainbow bridge to Valhalla toward the end of Rhinegold. It has turned out
to be as illusory as the rainbow. He admits that he can never create free
persons but only slaves and that he is trapped in his own fetters. With his
forward-looking autonomous will shattered by his backward-looking ac-
cidental will, he is reduced to total dejection and resignation.
This event corresponds to what happens to Zarathustra's great idea.
Toward the end of the Prologue, he also associated his great idea of the
superman with the rainbow: "I will show them the rainbow and all the
steps to the superman" (2, 24). In "On the New Idol" of Part I, he says
that the rainbow and the bridges of the superman will appear when the
state ends. The superman will be as free of the shackles of the state as
Wotan's new hero is supposed to be free of the laws of contracts and
treaties. Zarathustra had banked all his hope on the autonomous will of
the superman, but realizes in "Upon the Blessed Isles" of Part II that the
will is not the liberator that he had hoped for, but a prisoner of the past.
Thus he is caught in his own fetters just as Wotan. Zarathustra' s great
idea turns out to be as illusory as Wotan's. Both of them are only rain-
bows in the sky. Zarathustra's idea of creative will is shattered under the
crushing weight of the past in "On Redemption" of Part II. His idea of
autonomous will meets the same fate as that of Bruennhilde, a deep sleep.
When his autonomous will crumbles, Wotan blames this disaster on the
curse of the dwarf Alberich's Ring. Likewise, Zarathustra will locate the
source of his disaster in the eternal ring of the dwarf. Wotan abandons
Loge, whose wisdom has sustained his autonomous will in planning and
scheming for the future. In his resignation, he embraces the wisdom of
Erda and her knowledge of fate. The same change takes place in
 Wagner's Superhero 309

Zarathustra. He abandons his Wisdom, which has guided his will in Part
I and which corresponds to Loge's wisdom. In its place, he relies on the
night wisdom of Life in coping with his suffering in Part II. By the end
of the second round of their respective wars, the autonomy of both Wo-
tan and Zarathustra is shattered by the power of accidents.

The Hero of Accidents

After Siegmund's death in the duel with Hunding, Bruennhilde saved

Sieglinde and helped her escape to the East, where she died shortly after
delivering her baby Siegfried. After her death, Siegfried was adopted and
brought up by the dwarf Mime, Alberich's brother. By then, he had
moved out of the underground Nibelheim and opened his smithy near the
cave, in which the giant Fafner has transformed himself into a dragon to
guard the Nibelung hoard. Mime has a secret design on Siegfried. When
Siegfried grows up, he hopes, the youngster will slay the dragon and re-
trieve the Ring, the Tarnhelm, and the Golden Hoard for him. All he has
to do is to forge a great sword for Siegfried. But he cannot do it, although
he is a great smith. Every time he makes a sword, the youngster smashes
it to pieces and berates him for the poor job. But one day Siegfried him-
self forges one from the broken fragments of Nothung, his father's sword,
which was shattered by Wotan's Spear. Bruennhilde had saved the
shards and gave them to Sieglinde when she escaped to the East from
Wotan's wrath. With the reforged Nothung, Siegfried kills the dragon
and takes the Ring and the Tamhelm, but does not even touch the Golden
Hoard. In the meantime, Alberich and Mime have been waiting nearby
and quarreling over how to divide Siegfried's expected spoils. But the
forest bird tells Siegfried that Mime has the evil design to kill him with a
poisonous drink to keep the spoils for himself. When Mime offers him
the drink, Siegfried kills him. Then he sets out to find his bride on the
Valkyrie Rock, again following the forest bird's instruction. When Wo-
tan tries to block his way, he smashes Wotan's Spear with Nothung. Af-
ter going through the wall of fire, he finds and awakens Bruennhilde and
falls in love with her. That is the end of Siegfried.
By the end of Valkyrie, Wotan had resigned himself to his fate and
gave up his scheme of controlling the events of the world. He had sus-
310 Chapter Ten

pended his will by putting Bruennhilde into a deep sleep. In Siegfried, he

becomes the Wanderer only to observe the affairs of the world. When he
accidentally runs into his old foe Alberich, he says that he has come to
watch and not to act and advises Alberich to let things go their appointed
way. His role as the dramatic hero is now taken over by the new hero
Siegfried. Wotan and Siegfried are two different types of hero. Wotan is
a hero of brain; Siegfried is a hero of brawn. They are as different as
Achilles and Odysseus. Siegfried is an impetuous hothead; Wotan is a
cool schemer. The latter acts on his deliberate design and farsighted pro-
ject, which is generated by his autonomous will. He is a Faustian hero
par excellence. But Siegfried acts on his natural instinct and spontaneous
impulses, which come and go like accidents. They belong to his acciden-
tal will. He is a Spinozan hero par excellence. He behaves like the Lord
Chance of the azure bell in "Before Sunrise" of Part III. He is free of
purposes and projects. To kill the dragon for the Ring was not his pur-
pose or project. It was Mime's design. Even when he went to the
dragon's cave, he knew nothing about the Ring. Mime brought him there
to teach him fear to subdue his impudence. When the dragon is mortally
wounded, he says to Siegfried, "Who goaded you to commit this mur-
derous deed? Your brain did not brood on what you have done." Sieg-
fried replies to the dragon, "You goaded me on yourself." He stabbed the
dragon in the heart, when the dragon threatened to devour him. His kill-
ing of the dragon was not a deliberate act of scheming intelligence, but a
spontaneous response of natural instinct.
Siegfried is a hero of accidents. He has never intended to become a
hero, but has become one by the force of accidental circumstances. On
the other hand, Wotan is a hero of his own design. He has become a hero
with his own will and ambition. Whereas Wotan carefully plans every
move, Siegfried instinctively acts on the prompting of circumstances. His
heroic deeds do not come out of training or education, either, because he
has had no teacher or counselor except for the nagging Mime. He is his
own master, in Wotan's words. His deeds instinctively flow out of his
awesome natural endowment, a fortunate gift from natural accidents. So
Wotan says to Erda (Siegfried, Act 3, Scene 1) that the young boy has
won the Ring without his counsel. Even the fact that he is playing the
role of a superhero is an accident. When Wotan originally intended the
role of a free agent for Siegmund, he had never thought of Siegfried. He
 Wagner's Superhero 311

accidentally stumbles into a heroic position and accomplishes a heroic

mission by the power of accidents. He does not really know what he is
doing and has no idea of what it means to have the Ring. When he is irri-
tated by Wotan's attempt to block his way to the Valkyrie Rock, he ridi-
cules Wotan for having only one eye. Wotan says to him that Siegfried is
as blind as his lost eye. He is a hero of no intelligence and all instinct.
Even his bravery or his lack of fear is largely due to his stupid intelli-
gence as much as to his physical endowment.
As a Faustian hero, Wotan is no different from Alberich and his
brother Mime. All of them share the same ambitious scheme of control-
ling the world as the Lord of the Ring. For this reason, Wotan is called
the Light Alberich. Both the Light and the Dark Alberich struggle with
the illusion of autonomous will that spins out the endless stream of an-
guish and fear. Wotan's life is smothered under the perpetual siege of
worry and anxiety, which Zarathustra would attribute to the spirit of
gravity and which can reduce any hero to a mere dwarf. Their spiritual
father is Goethe's Faust. As we have already noted, he had the burning
ambition to gain mastery of the world by employing Mephisto's magic
power. In the end, he came to hate the devil because he could not free
himself from the devil's trap of magic. He could not overcome all the
torments that are bred in his heart by Care, the ultimate source of all wor-
ries and anxieties even for Wotan and Zarathustra. But Siegfried is free
because he is free of the web of projects and purposes that traps the
Faustian hero. This is Spinoza's idea of freedom. Hence he is a Spinozan
hero, who acts by the necessity of accidents. The replacement of the
Faustian hero Wotan by the Spinozan hero Siegfried corresponds to the
transformation of Zarathustra from a Faustian hero to a Spinozan hero in
Part III. By the end of Part II, like Wotan, Zarathustra abandons his cher-
ished notion of autonomous will and resigns himself to the power of ac-
cidents. He opens Part III by becoming a wanderer like Wotan, who be-
comes the Wanderer in Siegfried. As Wotan says, the wanderer only ob-
serves because he recognizes the futility of action.
Zarathustra's transformation from a Faustian to a Spinozan hero
takes place when he summons the monster from the Abyss in "The Con-
valescent" of Part III. Siegfried is the hero who summons the dragon
from the cave. These two events are much similar in their scenarios ex-
cept for one important difference. Whereas Siegfried kills the dragon,
312 Chapter Ten

Zarathustra is clobbered by the monster. In this humiliating event, the

latter comes to recognize the monster as his animal self. Thus he is re-
born as a Spinozan hero of natural force and opens up communion with
his animals. Something like this also happens to Siegfried. The dragon is
the monster that embodies the pristine natural force and emerges from
his cave Rieselheim, which is the Abyss or Chaos. Dieter Borchmeyer
says that the hero must kill the monster to be reborn as a new man
(Drama and the World ofRichard Wagner, 224). By killing the monster,
Siegfried is reborn as the Spinozan hero of natural force. When he licks
the dragon's blood, he suddenly begins to understand the meaning of the
forest bird's song, which tells him about the Gold Ring, the Tarnhelm,
and the treasure hoard in the cave. The dragon's blood secures his com-
munion with the natural world. By following the forest bird's instruction,
the voice of nature, he goes to find Bruennhilde. Their union on the Val-
kyrie Rock corresponds to Zarathustra's union with Life on the green
meadow in "The Other Dancing Song" of Part III. But these two unions
appear to be different. Siegfried and Bruennhilde appear to have
achieved an ecstatic union of love and harmony, unlike the strife-ridden
encounter between Zarathustra and Life. If Siegfried and Bruennhilde
had indeed achieved such a union, Wagner should have ended the Ring
cycle at that point. For this reason, some commentators regard the fourth
part of The Ring as an unwelcome addition that does not go well with the
first three parts, so argues Bernard Shaw (The Perfect Wagnerite, 83-85).
This complaint is similar to the view that Part IV of Zarathustra is a gra-
tuitous addition. This view is based on the supposition that "The Seven
Seals" of Part III is the celebration of marriage between Zarathustra and
Life. This alleged marriage would correspond to the alleged happy union
of Siegfried and Bruennhilde on the Valkyrie Rock.
The union of Siegfried and Bruennhilde is not so harmonious as it
appears on the surface. As we will see later in detail, an overtone of dis-
cord hangs over their union from the beginning to the end. Their so-
called love duet is really a shouting match. That is why Richard Wagner
had to write a sequel and resolve their discord. He had one more reason
to write it. The hero of accidents, Siegfried does not even know the
power of accidents. He is only a beneficiary of favorable accidents.
Therefore he cannot be a truly Spinozan hero, who accepts cosmic neces-
sity as his own will in full awareness. But he cannot accept it without
 Wagner's Superhero 313

knowledge, which he cannot gain without exposing himself to the trag-

edy of unfavorable accidents. The tide of accidents will tum against him
in Twilight of the Gods, thereby testing his true mettle as a hero. He is
free from contractual obligations and other social constraints because he
does not know how to bind himself. He freely rejects Wotan's authority
because he is too ignorant to recognize it. Mime stood as his only author-
ity-figure, playing the role of his father. But Siegfried frees himself from
this paternal authority, when he forces the poor dwarf to confess the chi-
canery of his alleged fatherhood, On this heartening discovery, he says,
"How happy I am to become free. Nothing binds and forces me" (Sieg-
fried, Act 1, Scene 1). He gloats over his freedom of anarchism.
No wonder, Bernard Shaw regards Siegfried as the glorification of
the great anarchist Bakunin (The Perfect Wagnerite, 44). Siegfried's an-
archism comes from his ignorance. Therefore his freedom cannot be the
freedom of a Spinozan hero, which stands on the knowledge of cosmic
necessity. Shortly after killing the dragon, Siegfried identifies himself to
the forest bird as "the foolish boy who knows not fear." Mime tells him
that he must not let him venture into "the cunning world until you have
learned the meaning of fear." But he can learn little about the human
world while he is growing up with Mime as his sole companion. Even by
the time he slays the dragon, he has played only with such wild animals
as bears and wolves. It is about time for him to experience the slings and
arrows of the harsh world. By becoming a victim of accidents, he can
appreciate their power and gain the understanding of cosmic necessity. A
hero of accidents can easily mistake their power as his own.
In Siegfried, the importance of knowledge is highlighted by the use
of riddles, as it is in Part III of Zarathustra. When Wotan appears as the
Wanderer in Mime's cave, the former invites the latter to ask any ques-
tions about what he wants to know most. This invitation turns into a duel
of riddles. Each side will pose three questions and the other side will lose
his head if he cannot answer them. Mime goes first and poses the three
questions of (1) who lives in the depth of the earth, (2) who lives on the
face of the earth, and (3) who lives in the heavens. Wotan says "the Ni-
belungs" for (1), "the giants" for (2), and "the gods" for (3). Now Mime
must stake his head for Wotan's three questions. Mime has no problem
with the first two questions. "The Volsungs" is his answer for the first
question: What is the race whom Wotan oppressed though dearest of all
314 Chapter Ten

to him? "Nothung" is his answer for the second question: What sword
will Siegfried use to slay Fafner? But the third question shakes up Mime:
Who will forge Nothung's splinters into a new sword? That is exactly
what he was trying to do with all his might, but could not get anywhere,
just before the appearance of Wotan. He knows that he is the best smith
in the world. If he cannot do it, Mime replies to Wotan, he has no way of
knowing who can do it. Then Wotan says that Mime has wasted three
valuable questions on remote affairs, but failed to ask about what really
matters for himself. He tells Mime that Nothung can be reforged only by
someone who knows no fear. Although he does not take Mime's head,
Wotan says, he is leaving it forfeit to the hero who does not know fear.
Mime's three questions are the questions of general identity concern-
ing the three races of the dwarfs, the giants, and the gods. On the other
hand, Wotan's questions come down to the specific questions concerning
Mime's project to take the Ring away from the dragon. In chapter 7, we
noted these two levels of riddles for Zarathustra. In "On the Vision and
the Riddle" of Part III, he looks upon the vision of eternal recurrence as a
general riddle of the universe and fails to see its significance for his own
redemption until "The Convalescence", in which he identifies himself as
one of the countless dwarfs chained to the iron ring of eternal recurrence.
Only then does the general riddle turn into the specific riddle of solving
his own problem. In chapter 7, I illustrated the transition from the general
level of understanding a riddle to the specific Ievelby using the Sphinx's
riddle. Oedipus vanquishes the Sphinx by solving her riddle, but does not
see its relevance for the riddle of his own identity until another plague
strikes Thebes. Only then can he identify the culprit and redeem the city
from the plague. Likewise, only when Zarathustra recognizes the rele-
vance of his riddle for his own identity, can he redeem himself from the
curse of the dwarf. For both Zarathustra and Oedipus, the riddles are the
riddles of their existence, and they achieve their redemption by solving
them. In the duel of riddles, Wotan tells Mime that he must "redeem" his
head by solving the riddles because he has staked it. This is his figurative
reference to the redemptive function of riddles. Although Mime's riddles
are only questions of curiosity, Wotan's riddles zero in on the question of
Mime's redemption, which depends on reforging the Nothung and recov-
ering the Ring from the dragon. Because Mime failed to solve the riddle
 Wagner's Superhero 315

of his own redemption, his head will be cut off by Siegfried as Wotan is
predicting now.
Wotan poses his riddles as the Wanderer because they do not con-
cern his own redemption. The Wanderer's function is not to act, but to
observe. Likewise, Zarathustra poses the general riddle of eternal recur-
rence as a wanderer on a ship in "On the Vision and the Riddle"of Part
III. When the riddle comes down to his personal level, he does not face it
as a mere wanderer. This transition from a casual observer to a serious
participant corresponds to the difference between Wotan's and Sieg-
fried's postures on the riddles. Unlike Wotan's playful approach to his
riddles, Siegfried gets obsessed with the riddle of his own identity. Mime
has falsified his identity by posing as his parent. He tells Siegfried that he
is father and mother to the young boy. But Siegfried is painfully aware
that he does not look like the dwarf at all, whereas the children of birds
and animals in the forest resemble their parents. This painful awareness
generates the riddle of his own identity. He finally forces the truth of his
parentage out of Mime. He cannot even stand the idea of being related to
the repulsive dwarf. In this regard, his identity is radically different from
Zarathustra, who identifies himself with the dwarf as his ultimate self.
This is an important divergence of Zarathustra from The Ring, as we will
see later. Even so, the riddle of self-identity is the most important ques-
tion for both Siegfried and Zarathustra.
Siegfried chiefly identifies himself with his parents, especially his
mother. He establishes his identity with others by extending the thought
of his mother. When he finds Bruennhilde on the rocky mountaintop, he
momentarily mistakes her for his mother. Remarkably, Siegfried goes
through the same thought process of feeling identity with the dragon. He
refers to both the dragon and the maiden as his companions. While he
lies alone in the forest just before his battle with the dragon, he thinks of
his father and then his mother. When he accidentally tastes the dragon's
blood after the battle, he can understand the forest bird's song. Thus he
feels a close bond with the giant. When he blows his hom to summon the
monster as his next companion, he behaves just like Zarathustra sum-
moning the abysmal thought in "The Convalescent" of Part III. His en-
counter with the dwarf-snake is a parody of Siegfried's encounter with
the dragon. Just as Siegfried feels his kinship with the dragon, so
Zarathustra feels it with the monster. Just as Siegfried's taste of the
316 Chapter Ten

dragon's blood opens up his communion with the birds, so Zarathustra's

battle with the monster opens up his conversation with his animals. This
is their communion with Mother Nature, by which they are confirmed as
the heroes of cosmic necessity.
In the form of a dragon, the giant embodies the primeval raw power
and the innocent instinct of Mother Nature. By slaying the dragon and
licking its blood, Siegfried has become the hero of the same primeval
raw power and the same natural innocence. He can even understand the
singing of the Forest Bird, the voice of Nature. While he is longing for
his mother in the pristine forest, he hears the murmurs of trees that sound
like the music of water waves at the opening of Rhinegold. He is associ-
ating his own mother with the cosmic mother. Thus he emerges as a hero
from the pristine womb of Mother Nature. That makes him truly a hero
of accidents because they belong to Mother Nature. Bruennhilde is also a
child of Erda, the primeval goddess of Nature, fathered by Wotan. Sieg-
fried has every reason to feel even a closer identity with her than with the
giant because he shares Wotan's blood with her. But the dwarf Mime is
excluded from his instinctive feeling of identity because he is not an
agent of Mother Nature's primeval power and innocence. He is a creature
of clever intellect and evil intent. In that regard, the Nibelungs are cate-
gorically different from the Zarathustrian dwarf, whose primitive instinct
is never corrupted by clever intellect or evil intent. Moreover, as I
pointed out earlier, the Zarathustrian dwarf is a combination of the Wag-
nerian dwarf and giant. He appears to be a dwarf only from the individ-
ual perspective, but is really a giant from the cosmic perspective. Hence
Zarathustra can overcome his revulsion against his dwarf and accept him
as his animal self, whereas Siegfried can never overcome his revulsion
against the dwarfs. The Wagnerian dwarfs will be excluded from re-
demption, but the Zarathustrian dwarf will be included. This will be the
fundamental difference between the two redemption schemes.

The Victims of Accidents

In Twilight of the Gods, Siegfried will run into an adverse tide of acci-
dents when he goes out on adventures to achieve his fame. Before leav-
ing Bruennhilde, he gives her the Gold Ring as a token of his love and
 Wagner's Superhero 317

arrives in the royal court of the Gibichungs, whose king is Gunther. Prior
to Siegfried's arrival, Gunther is holding a conference with his sister
Gutrune and his half brother Hagen. He is the son that Alberich fathered
by Gunther's mother Grimhilde for the purpose of recovering the Ring.
The topic of their conference is how to enhance the lowly reputation of
their clan. Hagen proposes to employ the traditional politics of marriage:
Their reputation can be notably enhanced by marrying Gunther to Bru-
ennhilde and Gutrune to Siegfried. This proposal is too ambitious to be
taken seriously by Gunther and Gethrune, but Hagen persuades them that
it can be executed by using the potion they have in a chest. It will make
Siegfried forget all the women he has ever known and be enamored with
Gutrune alone. When Siegfried comes and drinks the potion, he indeed
forgets all about Bruennhilde and falls madly in love with Gutrune. In
exchange for Gutrune's hand, he volunteers to win Bruennhilde as bride
for Gunther. Hagen's ruthless cunning reduces the innocent superhero to
a helpless puppet. Siegfried and Gunther become blood brothers and go
to the Valkyrie Rock. Siegfried disguises himself as Gunther by using the
Tarnhelm and overpowers Bruennhilde. She tries to protect herself with
the Ring but to no avail. He just takes it away from her. Thus she be-
comes Gunther's bride by capture.
Gunther sails back to his court with Bruennhilde and Siegfried flies
back by using the Tarnhelm. When they are about to conduct two wed-
dings simultaneously, Bruennhilde is startled to see Siegfried as Gut-
rune's groom. When she notices the Ring on Siegfried's hand, she begins
to see the trickery behind her capture and publicly makes the accusation
against him. Denying vehemently the charge of treachery, Siegfried
swears on Hagen's spear that he has never broken faith with Gunther.
But he has no idea of his infidelity to Bruennhilde because the potion has
wiped out his memory of her. She becomes angry with him and conspires
with Hagen for his murder. When he expresses his intent to kill Siegfried,
she laughs at him because she has used her magic to make him invulner-
able to any physical attack. But she reveals a big secret. Although she
has sealed Siegfried's body with her spell, she has left unprotected his
back because she thought he would never show his back to his enemies.
On a hunting trip next day, Hagen stabs Siegfried in the back and kills
him. He justifies the murder on the ground that Siegfried swore falsely
on his spear. When the slain hero is brought back to the Hall of Gi-
318 Chapter Ten

bichungs, Gunther and Hagen fight over the Ring. After killing Gunther,
Hagen reaches for the Ring. But he is scared away when the dead Sieg-
fried raises his threatening arm. Bruennhilde finally reclaims the Ring as
Siegfried's real wife. She orders the vassals to build the funeral pyre for
Siegfried on the banks of the Rhine. After torching the pyre, she mounts
her horse Grane and leaps into it for her union with him in the fire of
love. She tells the Rhinemaidens to take their Ring back after it is puri-
fied by the fire. The fire spreads and engulfs the Hall of the Gibichungs.
The Rhine overflows its banks and floods the fire, and the Rhinemaidens
emerge to recover the Ring. Hagen panics at the prospect of losing the
Ring to the maidens and plunges into the flooding water to claim it for
himself. But the Rhinemaidens entwine their arms around him and drag
him down to his death in the river. Finally, the fire reaches Valhalla and
bums down Wotan's world.
This cataclysmic ending fulfills Wotan's foreboding at the opening
of Twilight of the Gods. In the Prelude, the Noms describe the sense of
doom that hangs over Wotan's Valhalla. After his Spear was shattered by
Siegfried, he returned to Valhalla to await the end of the world. He has
commanded his heroes to hew the dead trunk of the World-Ash Tree, and
they have piled up the logs around the base of Valhalla for its fiery end. I
have already said that Zarathustra' s cave is his Valhalla. In the first sec-
tion of Part IV, he calls the cave the center of his future empire Hazar.
When his autonomous will was shattered, he returned to this cave. Just as
Wotan waits for the fated end of the world in Valhalla, so Zarathustra is
waiting for his destiny to unfold in his cave. The sense of doom and
gloom that hangs over Wotan is similar to Zarathustra' s sense of melan-
choly in the opening scene of Part IV. He tells his animals that his happi-
ness is like sticky molten pitch, a euphemism for his melancholy. From
his cave, he is looking over the sea of human suffering and its winding
abysses. The Soothsayer predicts the tidal wave of despair that will rise
up and engulf Zarathustra's boat sitting on the top of the mountain. The
tidal wave of despair indeed arrives with the cries of distress from the
higher men, who converge on Zarathustra's cave to seek the remedy for
their mortal sickness of nausea. They share one gloomy syndrome with
Gunther and the court of his lowly clan, the Gibichungs. Both the higher
men and the Gibichungs have all miserably failed in their pursuit of
greatness.
 Wagner's Superhero 319

Siegfried becomes the most dismal addition to Gunther's court ofpa-

thetic gang. It degrades his stature for him even to think of seeking new
adventures and fame in such a lowly joint as Gunther's court. He reaches
the height of indignity when he becomes Hagen's pawn and procures his
own wife as bride for Gunther. To be sure, he is induced to do it by the
power of the magic potion. But we should be clear about the role of the
potion. With Siegfried, some commentators think, Wagner is playing the
same magic potion trick that he has played with Tristan and Isolde. In-
stead of inducing love, they say, the love potion incites the love re-
pressed deep in their hearts. Therefore a placebo would have achieved
the same effect for Tristan and Isolde. Philip Kitcher and Richard
Schacht believe that the same thing is happening to Siegfried (Finding an
Ending, 167). When the potion makes him forget Bruennhilde and fall in
love with Gutrune, it is only bringing out what is already in his character.
But the potion does not play exactly the same role in the two cases. In the
case of Tristan and Isolde, the potion ignites their latent love that has
been built up by their mutual attraction. But Siegfried feels no attraction
at all to Gutrune before taking the potion. Unlike the charismatic Isolde,
Gutrune is such a plain woman that her brothers have much trouble in
finding a respectable suitor for her. Probably for this reason, Kitcher and
Schacht attribute Siegfried's sudden infatuation with Gutrune not to his
latent repressed love, but to his character.
What kind of character lies behind Siegfried's new love affair?
Kitcher and Schacht give the following account of his character change.
The raw youth, who has improved his sensitivity under Bruennhilde's
influence, regresses to his old brainless boorish character when he leaves
her for his adventures. When he comes to Gunther, he issues a blatant
challenge ("Now fight me, or be my friend!"), just as he did to Wotan in
Act 3 of Siegfried. This shows his boorishness. Then he makes a number
of disdainful remarks about women. This reveals his crudeness. He just
lacks the character noble enough to sustain his love for and his fidelity to
Bruennhilde when he goes away from her and meets another woman. On
this line of reasoning, Kitcher and Schacht conclude, "The drink, we
suggest, should be understood as a distillation of the debasement to
which desire is susceptible in the absence of true inner strength and qual-
ity. Erotic love is hard to sustain, requiring greater wisdom than Sieg-
fried can muster" (Finding an Ending, 168). In short, Siegfried has be-
320 Chapter Ten

come a philanderer because he lacks the character to sustain the integrity

of his erotic love. Kitcher and Schacht also blame his corrupt world. If he
is exposed to a base and corrupt world, they say, "he would be all too
likely to lapse from his love soon enough of his own accord."
I am not sure that Kitcher and Schacht have passed a fair character
judgment on Siegfried. Although Siegfried's challenge has often been
read as a sign of arrogance, this interpretation is largely due to the igno-
rance of the medieval code of chivalry governing the behavior of one
knight toward another on their first meeting. His challenge ("Now fight
me, or be my friend!") was a common practice in the world of wandering
knights in search of adventures. There is no way to take it as the reflec-
tion of his boorish character, boorish as he may be. He indeed makes a
few disdainful remarks about women, which can paint him as a male
chauvinist by today's standard. But male chauvinism is a common prop-
erty of all males in his world. Siegfried shares it with Wotan and Hund-
ing. Is there any other reason to assume that his boorish attitude toward
women has led to his infidelity with Bruennhilde and his infatuation with
Gutrune? Has he become a philanderer due to his lack of inner strength
and wisdom, as Kitcher and Schacht claim? Let us tackle these questions
by examining his behavior before and after meeting Gutrune.
At the outset, we should remember that Siegfried is not one of the
normal human beings who have to call upon their inner strength and wis-
dom in the time of crisis. His character knows no distinction between
inner and outer strength, and he needs no wisdom to guide his act. He is
a man of natural instinct. His behavior flows out of his spontaneous im-
pulses just like the flow of a river. When he leaves Bruennhilde for his
adventures, he tells her that he cherishes one lesson from her teaching
more than anything else. That is "to be ever mindful of Bruennhilde." He
also tells her that he is going forth only as her arm. When he arrives in
the Hall of the Gibichungs and is questioned by Hagen about the Gold
Ring, he answers, "A glorious woman is keeping it safe." When he takes
the horn of magic potion from Gutrune, he dedicates "this first drink" to
the "true remembrance" of Bruennhilde. This is an extraordinary tribute
to Bruennhilde because he is going against the demand of courtesy that
one should offer the first drink to the hosts, as Dieter Borchmeyer points
out (Drama and the World ofRichard Wagner, 225). Before drinking the
potion, he recalls her most important lesson to be ever mindful of her and
 Wagner's Superhero 321

then says, "Bruennhilde, I drink to you." Up to this point, his fidelity and
devotion to Bruennhilde remain intact, and he shows no sign at all that he
is attracted to Gutrune. But he is suddenly inflamed with Gutrune after
taking the potion. He calls this modest woman the most beautiful one in
the whole world. He says that her eyes bum his heart and kindle his
blood. At the same time, he completely forgets all about Bruennhilde.
Although he is a man of natural instinct, he is not a man of a fickle tem-
perament who can easily forget his old love when he runs into another
attractive woman. Just before he is killed by Hagen, he gets lost in his
hunting trip and unexpectedly runs into the lovely Rhinemaidens. They
try to persuade him to give up the Ring, by flirting with him with flattery
("so strong" and "so handsome") and teasing ("so stingy" and "so hen-
pecked"). Their power of seduction is well attested to by no lesser au-
thority than Fricka, who says that the Rhinemaidens have lewdly lured
away many a man to their watery lair (Rhinegold, Scene 2). Siegfried
himself feels attracted to the maidens. After their departure, he confesses
that he would immediately tame one of these winsome women if he were
not true to Gutrune. They are supposedly far more lovely creatures than
Gutrune, But their beauty cannot sway his fidelity to this plain woman.
The magic potion has nothing to do with his character. On the con-
trary, his character is completely smothered under its overwhelming im-
pact. The potion's dramatic role is to demonstrate the power of accidents.
Siegfried goes through three stages of development in his dealing with
accidents. In the first stage, he is fortunate enough to ride the tide of ac-
cidents. In the second stage, he may be threatened by the tide of acci-
dents that may go against him. In the third stage, he goes under the tide
of accidents. When he slays the dragon and Mime, he is in the first stage.
He is the hero who knows no fear. In the second stage, he learns fear for
the first time in his life. When he cuts away the armor and exposes Bru-
ennhilde's beautiful body, he is suddenly seized by anxious fear. He feels
that his breast is pierced by the flaming fire of love, against which his
armor can give no protection. For the first time in his life, he feels ex-
posed to an awesome power beyond his control. This is the power of ac-
cidents. All the accidents he has faced so far have been physical entities,
which he has subdued with his physical power. But Bruennhilde's heart
cannot be physically conquered. It provokes his fear because it is an ac-
cident beyond his control. This is his second stage of fear. In the third
322 Chapter Ten

stage, he is not only threatened by the power of accidents, but becomes

its helpless victim. Here again he is not victimized by physical force.
Hagen's devilish scheme and his potion cannot be handled physically.
The fear of the second stage is now fully materialized and the former
hero is reduced to Hagen's helpless pawn by the power of accidents.
These three stages may be called the three stages of fear against the
power of accidents.
In his long career, Zarathustra also goes through these three stages of
fear. In the Prologue and Part I, he is a fearless hero. He preaches the
Faustian ideal of superman with confidence and arrogance. This is the
first stage. In Part II, he begins to feel the threat of accidents beyond his
control. In "On Redemption", he is terrified by the swarm of accidents
and fragments strewn all over the world. He finally realizes that every
event is an accident from the past that shatters his autonomous will. He is
so terrified by this thought that he cannot express it even to his disciples.
This is the second stage. In Part III, he enters the third stage when he
recognizes himself as a puppet helplessly enchained to the ring of eternal
recurrence. He feels disgust with his existence smothered under the
weight of accidents. He is clobbered by the dwarf from the abyss, just as
Siegfried is stabbed in the back by the semi-dwarf Hagen. His death does
not even give him the chance to feel disgust with his pathetic fate. But
Bruennhilde calls his pathetic death a gross defilement, which is equiva-
lent to Zarathustra's disgust. In Twilight of the Gods, Hagen traps Sieg-
fried by potion; in Part IV, the Soothsayer traps Zarathustra by the bait of
pity, that is, the pity for the higher men. Just as the potion reduces Sieg-
fried to a pawn in Hagen's power politics, so the bait of pity reduces
Zarathustra to his helpless shadows represented by the higher men.
Hagen embodies the power of accidents that reduces Siegfried from a
hero to a pawn; the Soothsayer represents the power of fate that breaks
down Zarathustra to his shadows.
When I move from Part III to Part IV in my reading of Zarathustra, I
experience almost the same sense of debasement and deflation that I feel
in moving from Siegfried to Twilight of the Gods. In both cases, I move
from a world of heroic exploits to a world of anti-heroic antics. But the
heroes themselves have not changed in their character, but only their for-
tunes. The tide of accidents that has triumphantly carried them is now
brutally crushing them. This is the tragic reversal of fortune. Siegfried's
 Wagner's Superhero 323

tragedy is similar to that of Oedipus. The latter kills his father and mar-
ries his mother; the former procures his wife as bride for his friend Gun-
ther. Both of them are forced to perform the horrible deeds by ignorance.
To be sure, the cause of their ignorance is different, but that does not
make one case any more or less tragic than the other. The only thing that
counts is the fact that both of them are reduced to pathetic figures by the
power of accidents. In that pathetic condition, however, they can come to
know their true naked selves. Under the favorable circumstances, it is
hard to know one's true self because it is deeply hidden beneath the
clothing of power and glamour. King Lear can find his naked self only
when he is stripped of his crown and chased out to the heath. In Part IV,
similarly, Zarathustra and his alter egos come to understand their true
selves by exposing their abysmal existence crushed under the weight of
accidents. So does Siegfried gain the recognition of his true self when he
is crushed by accidents. The painful recognition of the true self as a vic-
tim of fate is an indispensable step for redemption.
The force of accidents is the power of Mother Nature. Our suffering
arises from our contention against her power, which generates our alien-
ation from her. Hence our redemption can be achieved by our return to
Mother Nature and our union with her. Siegfried's death is his return to
Nature, which is completed by Bruennhilde's self-immolation. Under the
Buddhist influence, Robert Donington says, Wagner explained her self-
immolation as her redemption in self-annihilation (Wagner's IRing' and
Its Symbols, 261). John Tietz takes redemption and annihilation as one
(Redemption or Annihilation). But Donington feels that the Buddhist idea
of annihilation is too negative to accommodate the positive tone of the
music that accompanies the self-immolation and points to rebirth and
transformation. But self-annihilation can be the return of the self to
Mother Nature for its rebirth and transformation. Donington may like to
see the rebirth of the self in a new and higher form because he is worried
over its extinction. That is the Christian longing for immortality, which
makes no sense in the Spinozan world. So I propose the theme of return
to nature as the right way to understand the ending of Twilight of the
Gods. Bruennhilde's fiery return to Mother Nature may look like the
Buddhist self-annihilation, but her self-immolation is not for nirvana.
There is no nirvana in Spinoza's natural world.
324 Chapter Ten

The Will to Power

What does the Gold Ring stand for? This is the most baffling question
for understanding the Ring cycle. The standard view is that the Ring
gives its owner the power to rule the world. But this view is discredited
time and again. If the Ring gives the power in the world to its owner, it
can never be taken away by someone else., But Siegfried overpowers
Fafner, while the giant has the Ring in his possession. Likewise, Sieg-
fried is killed by Hagen, while he is in possession of the Ring. There may
be another way of associating power with the Ring. It is not the Ring that
gives power. On the contrary, it is the power that wins the Ring. This
point is demonstrated when Siegfried takes away the Ring from Bruenn-
hilde, while she is holding it out for her protection. So I propose the the-
sis that the Gold Ring embodies the will to power. The first piece of evi-
dence for my thesis is the manufacture of the Ring by Alberich. In the
opening scene of Rhinegold, three lovely Rhinemaidens are at play in the
beautiful water of the Rhine, but their play is interrupted when Alberich
appears on the scene. When he shows his attraction to the maidens, they
flirt with him. He tries to chase them, but they only tease and taunt him.
When he is thus rejected and frustrated in his pursuit of love, a bright
dazzling beam of the sun illuminates the Rhinegold on the top of a rock
under the water. This is the greatest treasure in the world, which is
guarded by the Rhinemaidens. When they sing of its magnificent beauty,
the dwarf disdains it. Then they tell him of its awesome magic power:
Whoever can make a ring out of it will win all the power and wealth in
the world. But one can make the ring only by renouncing love. The
maidens reveal this secret to Alberich, naively assuming that no one
would ever renounce love for anything. To their horror, he does renounce
love and seizes the gold and later turns it into the Ring. He is determined
to use its power to procure the most beautiful women in the world. Later,
in Siegfried, he will threaten to overthrow Wotan's rule and take over all
his females when he regains the Ring.
In his frustrating game of love, Alberich's love of sex is converted to
his love of power. This conversion is natural because the libido is basi-
cally an impulse for power. In that regard, erotic love is different from
benevolent love. The latter seeks the well-being of the beloved; the for-
mer seeks self-fulfillment before anything else. Therefore there is always
 Wagner's Superhero 325

the danger of exploitation in erotic love. The biological function of sex-

ual impulse is to secure the reproduction and transmission of genes in the
arena of perpetual competition. It is an expression of the will to power.
Hence erotic play is essentially a power play. One party tries to exploit
the reproductive resources of the other party by either attraction or coer-
cion. Seduction is the game of attraction; rape is the game of coercion.
Alberich first tries the game of attraction. When it does not work, he tries
to grab one of the maidens by force. But they are too fast for him to catch.
When this game of coercion also fails, he gives up the game of love and
goes for the Rhinegold. He takes it by force. At the end of Rhinegold,
Loge refers to this event as the rape (Raub) of the gold. The German
word Raub means both rape and robbery. The use of this subtle noun
implies that Albrerich's rape of the Rhinegold was his substitute for his
abortive rape of the Rhinemaidens. In the ruthless game of love, they are
not innocent, either. They are heartless and cruel in teasing and mocking
him. They are exercising their power of attraction, their will to power. If
he were handsome, they would go after him with full force and lure him
to their lair. That is their customary way, according to Fricka. When the
love affair develops favorably for both parties, the erotic impulses may
not show the ugly side of their power. But the ugly side will come out in
full force as soon as the affair goes against the will of either party. Thus
the game of love is a terrible game of power, in which either party can
easily be degraded or destroyed.
By the power of the Ring, Alberich enslaves the entire horde of Ni-
belungs to extract a massive amount of gold from the earth. Even his
brother Mime is not immune to his relentless exploitation. He is brutally
beaten to make the Tarnhelm. Alberich gets intoxicated with power. His
heavenly counterpart is Wotan, the Light Alberich. Wotan is the ruler of
the heavenly kingdom; Alberich is the ruler of the underworld. But nei-
ther of them begins as a ruler. Each of them becomes a ruler by gaining
power on his own. Alberich becomes the ruler of Nibelungs by making
the Ring. In Valkyrie, Act 2, Scene 2, Wotan explains how he came into
power. In his youth, he pursued erotic love. But when the pleasure of
love faded, he was seized by the raging ambition for power, which even-
tually led to his rule of the world. Like Faust, he moved from the world
of love to the world of power. Wotan was also like Alberich. Both of
them began their respective careers with erotic impulse. Although Wo-
326 Chapter Ten

tan's erotic impulse was not frustrated, its satisfaction waned. Thus his
erotic impulse turns into the love of power as it does in Alberich. Their
careers become the mirror images of each other. Wotan has his own in-
strument of power, which corresponds to Alberich's Gold Ring. It is his
Spear, which he made by cutting a branch from the World-Ash Tree.
When the Spear is made, the Ash Tree withers and its spring dries up.
The Ash-Tree is the Tree of Life, which represents pristine Mother Na-
ture like the Rhinegold in the depth of the Rhine. The Spear is the prod-
uct of Wotan's rape of Nature, just as the Ring is Alberich's rape. Both
of them have injured Mother Nature with acts of power.
For the sake of his Spear, Wotan had to sacrifice one of his eyes.
Kitcher and Schacht say that to have only one eye means to have tunnel
vision (Finding an Ending, 153). Wotan gets obsessed with power and
can see nothing else. When Wotan gets married to Fricka, he also stakes
one of his eyes. It is often said that love is blind. Butit really means that
love is tunnel-visioned, that is, it cannot see anything else. Wotan is
stricken blind twice by love, once by the love of power and once by the
love of sex. This is not a coincidence. As we have already noted, both the
love of power and the love of sex belong to the basic instinct for power.
But Wotan does not lose one of his eyes for erotic love, although he
stakes it for Fricka. That is, he does not allow erotic love to become a
blinding passion because he is cool enough to control it. But he gives his
love of power absolute reign and wins the rule of the world. He tames
Loge and uses his clever intelligence in building up his political system
of contracts and treaties, which are inscribed on his Spear. Deryck Cooke
says that Wotan exerts his will through the repressive laws engraved on
his Spear (I Saw the World End, 327). The contracts and treaties are the
instruments for sustaining and strengthening the system of power that he
has built up with his military power. He confesses to Bruennhilde that he
has acted fraudulently and unfairly in binding others with mischievous
contracts and treaties (Valkyrie, Act 2, Scene 2). He has played this Ma-
chiavellian game much earlier and on a far bigger scale than Alberich has
done. The Gold Ring is only a late imitation of the Spear. But the former
poses a frightful menace for the latter. With the power of the Ring, Al-
berich can overthrow Wotan's rule.
I have presented an unflattering picture of Wotan, which goes against
a flattering picture that has been built up by some commentators. Bernard
 Wagner's Superhero 327

Shaw was one of the first champions to paint Wotan as an idealistic ruler,
who has established "a reign of noble thought, of righteousness, order,
and justice" in the savage world choking under greedy passions and ap-
petites (The Perfect Wagnerite, 22). But he offers no textual evidence for
this inspiring picture of Wotan. Instead he largely associates it with
Richard Wagner, the revolutionary, who aspired for the improvement of
social order. As we noted at the beginning of this chapter, Wotan's rule
is a system of ruthless power, deceit and trickery, which is offensive to
any sense of decency. Wagner indeed conceived The Ring under Feuer-
bach's revolutionary idealism. But Wotan was not meant to be the revo-
lutionary warrior, but the corrupt guardian for the old order of power to
be overthrown by the new order of love. Lately, Shaw's view of Wotan
has been restated by Philip Kitcher and Richard Schacht. Prior to the ad-
vent of Wotan, according to them, the world is in the Hobbesian state of
savagery, in which life is not worth living because it is too shallow, too
vulgar, and too savage. How can life be made more meaningful? Kitcher
and Schacht call it Wotan's problem, or the problem of order, because
the quality of life is dictated by the nature of social order. To solve this
problem, Wotan installs his rule of law for "the ennobling transformation
of the world." This is what Kitcher and Schacht call Wotan's project.
Valhalla is its capstone: "With the building of Valhalla, he was to have
consolidated and secured his establishment of a new order characterized
by the rule of law and the emergence of richer forms of life" (Finding an
Ending, 75). With the emergence of the Ring, unfortunately, Valhalla is
no longer sufficient to safeguard Wotan's reign. So he is forced to extend
his project. This extension becomes what Kitcher and Schacht call Pro-
ject Siegmund and Project Siegfried.
Kitcher and Schacht do not fare any better than Bernard Shaw in of-
fering textual evidence for their ennobling view of Wotan's rule. In their
extended discussion on Wotan's concern with the meaning of life, they
never cite his own words on this topic (Finding an Ending, 49-76). In-
stead they recount the traditional philosophical and religious attempts to
deal with the question of how to give meaning to human life. They may
presume that Wotan struggles with the same problem. But he says noth-
ing about the meaning of life at any point of his career. Even his epochal
violence to the World-Ash Tree to make his Spear is motivated solely by
his love of power. No doubt, he can make his life meaningful only by
328 Chapter Ten

gaining power because he is power-hungry. But Kitcher and Schacht pay

no attention to his obsession with power. Instead they paint him as a
great hero of benevolent love. They classify love into three types: (1)
erotic, (2) empathic, and (3) benevolent (Finding an Ending, 147-56).
Erotic love is sexual. Empathic love is the love of empathy and compas-
sion. Unlike these two types of love, benevolent love is not directed to
particular persons. It is an impersonal love inspired by such lofty ideals
or principles as the justice of the world and the happiness of humanity. In
his struggle to make the world a more meaningful place for human life,
Kitcher and Schacht hold, Wotan has dedicated himself to benevolent
love throughout his life. In support of this view, they cite only a fragment
of a sentence: "einer Welt zu Liebe / der Liebe Quell/ im gequiilten Her-
zen zu hemmen [out of my love for the world, I was forced to staunch the
well-spring of love in this tormented heart of mine]" (Finding an Ending,
126, 150). This statement is enigmatic because it appears to make a self-
contradictory statement: Wotan was forced to staunch the well-spring of
love for the love of the world. It makes no sense to obstruct the fountain
of love for the sake of love. But this appearance of self-contradiction is
induced by a misleading translation of the German fragment.
The enigmatic fragment appears in Valkyrie, Act 3, Scene 3, where
Wotan chastises Bruennhilde for having disobeyed his command and
tried to protect Siegmund against Hunding. While she was wallowing in
her love of Siegmund, he says to her, he had to curb. the fountain of his
love. According to Kitcher and Schacht, Wotan is struggling with the
conflict of two loves, empathic and benevolent. His love of Siegmund is
empathic; his love of the world is benevolent. He is sacrificing his em-
pathic love for his benevolent love. That should make him a great cham-
pion of benevolent love. But it is hard to believe this story of a heart-
wrenching sacrifice because we have already noted Wotan's motive for
his difficult decision. Although he had originally planned to protect
Siegmund against Hunding, he was forced to change his mind not for his
love of the world, but for his fear of losing power. Fricka made him real-
ize that he would be undermining his own system of power by protecting
Siegmund against Hunding. The phrase "einer Welt zu Liebe" does not
really mean "for the love of the world." It only means "for the sake of a
world", because "zu Liebe" is a colloquial expression for "for the sake
of." The German expression for "for the love of the world" should be
 Wagner's Superhero 329

"urn der Liebe der Welt willen," But "for the sake of a world" conveys a
sense even different from that of "for the sake of the world." The latter
refers to the world, that is, the common world we all share. But the for-
mer refers only to a world, that is, only one of many worlds. This impor-
tant difference is overlooked in every English translation of the libretto I
have checked so far. Wotan is saying that he curbed his love of Sieg-
mund not for the world, but for one world. That one world cannot be
anything other than the world of his own power.
Wotan is called the Light Alberich because he is obsessed with
power like Alberich. The only difference between them is Alberich's
renunciation of love. But that does not make Wotan any better because
erotic love is as self-seeking as the love of power. The retention or re-
nunciation of erotic love makes no difference between the Dark and the
Light Alberich. Both of them are operating in the terrible world of naked
power, the Hobbesian state of nature. Hobbes offers social contract as the
only device to get out of the beastly state of nature. Wotan's social con-
tract consists of the contracts and treaties inscribed on his Spear. He has
imposed it on the world by his Spear not for the sake of justice, but for
the consolidation of his power. His rule of law is not an end itself, but
only a clever means for the expansion and maintenance of his power. We
have already noted his own admission to Bruennhilde that he has acted
fraudulently and unfairly in binding others with mischievous contracts
and treaties. Prior to this admission, Fricka blamed him for having al-
ways played false with his wife and having disdained the sacred institu-
tion of marriage for the indulgence of his wanton desires. This chastise-
ment has special significance for Wotan's rule of law because Fricka
stands for his system of contracts and treaties. Her accusation will be
further amplified by Erda's denunciation, in which she describes Wotan
as the self-proclaimed defender of justice and oaths, who flouts justice
and rules by breaking oaths (Siegfried, Act 3, Scene 1). Although Kitcher
and Schacht cannot show any trace of justice and benevolence in Wo-
tan's present system of laws, they would like to believe that Wotan is
struggling to establish a better social order for the future. Kitcher and
Schacht pin this hope on Wotan's two projects. In Project Siegmund,
they hope, Wotan will use Siegmund for establishing an ideal social or-
der. When this project falls apart, they believe, Wotan comes up with
330 Chapter Ten

Project Siegfried, in which Siegmund will be replaced by Siegfried as

Wotan's agent. Let us now examine these two projects.
Kitcher and Schacht say, "Project Siegmund was ambiguous between
an attempt to establish the rule of law and a venture toward some other
type of order that would also satisfy Wotan's fundamental framing
judgment that life needs to be made meaningful to be worth living"
(Finding an Ending, 112). This is a strange understanding of Wotan's
project. There is no point in talking about "the attempt to establish the
rule of law" because it is already in place. Wotan's only concern is how
to maintain it. His only goal in Project Siegmund is to produce a hero
who is free from all legal constraints to recover the Gold Ring from the
giant before Alberich gets to it. He never mentions the problem of social
order in connection with Project Siegmund. Nor is there any record to
show that he inspired the young Siegmund with his social ideals during
his training as a warrior. The youngster understood his father only as a
scary wolf to the fearful foxes. Nor does Wotan mention the problem of
social order in his defense of Project Siegmund to Fricka. In fact, she
mercilessly trashes it on the ground that it is undermining the reigning
social order. If a lofty social ideal were built into Project Siegmund, it
would be a wonderful defense against Fricka's attack. In Wotan's own
conception, Project Siegmund has nothing to do with social order, but
everything to do with his selfish ambition to protect his power against the
threat of the Ring.
According to Kitcher and Schacht, Wotan's Project Siegmund is
succeeded by his Project Siegfried. This is to build a social order on the
basis of heroic virtue: "Siegfried is to be its avatar and the agent of its
advent" (Finding an Ending, 114). There is no textual evidence for this,
either. Wotan can have no more projects after the demise of Project
Siegmund because he has resigned himself to fate. The birth of Siegfried
was not even on his mind when he conceived Project Siegmund. Nor did
he have any hand in the training of Siegfried for his future role. Sieg-
fried's emergence as a hero is totally beyond Wotan's ken and plan. Be-
cause Siegfried has no connection whatsoever with Wotan, he has the
freedom to kill the dragon and recover the Ring. He is the free hero who
can do what Siegmund could not do because he was only Wotan's pro-
ject and extension. This is the fundamental difference between the two
Volsungs Siegfried and Siegmund. One must overlook this crucial point
 Wagner's Superhero 331

even to think of Project Siegfried on a par with Project Siegmund. This is

to pay no heed to Dieter Borchmeyer's astute insight that Wotan's de-
scendants can become free agents and fulfill his wish only when he cuts
himself from them (Drama and the World ofRichard Wagner, 231).
If there is a project or design on Siegfried, only Mime has one .. He is
bringing up Siegfried for the purpose of taking the Ring away from the
giant. After Siegfried recovers the Ring from the dragon, Wotan says to
Erda that he can now leave his heritage to the young hero although he
had previously conceded the world to Alberich. He says that Alberich's
curse is powerless against the young hero because he is free from greed.
Wotan now feels that Siegfried has not only recovered the Ring but also
can keep it away from Alberich. Thus he feels that his original aim of
Project Siegmund has been accomplished. In describing this feeling of
Wotan, Kitcher and Schacht say that "he can console himself at that
point with the thought that Project Siegfried is well and truly launched,
and that the establishment of a noble human order of heroic dimensions
and lineaments might be realized" (Finding an Ending, 117). But there is
no indication that Wotan expects anything like a noble human order from
Siegfried. Nor does the young hero show any concern with social order
or have any virtue to establish one, because he is a born anarchist, who
stands against all social orders. As we noted earlier, he is regarded as the
glorification of the great anarchist Bakunin by Bernard Shaw. Nietzsche
understands this point even more clearly than Shaw does and says that
Siegfried "merely follows his first impulse, he overthrows everything
traditional, all reverence, all fear. Whatever displeases him he stabs to
death" (CW 4). Probably for this reason, Wotan pins his hope for the fu-
ture not on the young hero, but on his "wise child" Bruennhilde. When
Siegfried awakens her, he says to Erda, she will perform the world-
redeeming deed. As far as he is concerned, Siegfried's mission is limited
to the recovery of the Ring and the awakening of Bruennhilde, and even
that mission was given to Siegfried not by Wotan, but by Mime.
So there is no textual evidence in support of the view that Wotan is
aspiring for an ideal social order. He is too preoccupied with his own
power to worry about such an ideal. Furthermore, he shows neither jus-
tice nor benevolence in the maintenance of his power. This point is dem-
onstrated by his dealings with the giants and the dwarfs. When he made
the contract with the giants for the construction of Valhalla, he promised
332 Chapter Ten

to give Freia, the goddess of love and beauty, as their wage. But he had
never intended to give her up. He had made the contract in bad faith and
used her as bait to induce the dumb giants to take on the back-breaking
work. When the time for payment comes, he enlists Loge's help to wea-
sel himself out of paying the price. He never hesitates in following
through Loge's Machiavellian stratagem of confiscating the Ring from
Alberich. He cannot be a man of benevolence if he shows no guilt or
shame for such a blatant crime. When he meets Alberich again in Sieg-
fried, the dwarf calls him a shameless thief. But he tells Alberich that he
can do to the dwarf whatever he wants to because his power is not con-
strained by any contractual relation. Even when he runs into a contract of
his own making, he feels no qualm in breaking or bending it if it goes
against his power.
When Wotan gets the Ring, Loge counsels him to return it to the
Rhinemaidens for two reasons. First, those maidens are wailing and ask-
ing for the return of the Ring. Second, the return of stolen property to its
original owner is presumably an essential item in the rule of law that
Loge has helped set up for Wotan's power. But he shows no regret in
brushing aside Loge's advice and the Rhinemaidens' wailing, because he
is determined to keep the Ring for the sake of his power. There is no
trace of justice or decency displayed in any of his behavior. Michael
Tanner says that the primal world of the Ring is corrupt from the start
because it is animated only by power and libido (Wagner, 118). As we
noted at the beginning of this chapter, this is a widely shared view. But
we can make this charge of corruption only by imposing our own values
on the primal world of The Ring. The stark truth is that this primal world
is free of our values such as justice and benevolence because it is the
purely natural world of amorality. Tanner is fully aware of this point and
says that the world of Rhinegold is amoral Nature (Wagner, 109).
Kitcher and Schacht compare it to the Hobbesian state of nature, in
which the individual rights and duties can be established only by con-
quest and contract. In this primal world, power and beauty are the two
ultimate values, as exemplified by Valhalla and Freia. Despite his treach-
ery and corruption, Tanner says, there is still genuine nobility in Wotan.
He says that this sense of nobility is often missed by downgrading Wotan
to a politician and Valhalla to Wall Street (Wagner, 115). This is as seri-
ous a mistake as to downgrade the Faust of Act 5 to a mere developer
 Wagner's Superhero 333

and proprietor of coastal land. The heroic play of Wotan and Valhalla
clearly outshines the normal game of making money and seeking happi-
ness for the bourgeoisie. But Tanner stakes his claim of Wotan's nobility
not on Wagner's libretto, but on his music: Wotan is awarded much of
the grandest, noblest music in The Ring (Wagner, 116). This is indeed
true in the flow of Wagnerian music. But the grand music for Wotan is
the same kind of grand music for Valhalla. Their nobility is solely based
on power and beauty, by which the gods want to transcend the misery of
earthly existence, which infects the ugly world of the dwarfs. This is the
essence of their divinity and nobility. It has nothing to do with human
morality. They are as amoral as the Olympians.
Even Kitcher and Schacht admit that there is nothing high-minded or
even right-minded in Wotan's seizure of the Ring and the Golden Hoard
(Finding an Ending, 77). By this shameless act, Dieter Borchmeyer says,
Wotan "forfeits all vestiges of godlike dignity" (Drama and the World of
Richard Wagner, 230). But Kitcher and Schacht excuse it as his "ten-
dency to seize upon a short-term expedient as a means to the attainment
of some larger purpose" (Finding an Ending, 89). This may not be the
right way to exonerate him. He never loses sight of his long-range plans,
although he may make some mistakes in his calculations. He sired and
trained Siegmund on the long-range plan of recovering the Ring. He de-
cided to protect him against Hunding again for the same long-range plan.
He revoked this decision as soon as he realized that he had miscalculated
his long-range plan for the domination of the world. Unlike his sympa-
thetic commentators, Loge is never fooled. At the end of Rhinegold, he
gets deeply ashamed of being a party in Wotan's rotten dealing and
wheeling. He knows it all because he has been Wotan's instrument for
his long-range planning. The Rhinemaidens mournfully endorse, Loge's
view: "Trusty and true / it is only in the deep: false and fated / is that
which rejoices above!" By "above" they are referring to Valhalla. It was
indeed built as a bulwark, but not as a beacon. It was designed as the
mightiest fortress for the protection of Wotan and his cohorts. When the
immortals are marching to Valhalla at the end of Rhinegold, Fricka asks
Wotan about the meaning of the name "Valhalla." He replies that its
meaning will be revealed when he masters fear by his courageous plan.
The construction of Valhalla was motivated by his relentless fear, and his
334 Chapter Ten

fear has been intensified by the emergence of the Gold Ring. It is not a
beacon ofjustice, but a fortress of fear.
Our examination of the protagonists, the Light and the Dark Alberich,
has shown that the Ring cycle is a saga of power, which flows from pris-
tine Mother Nature. The natural world has nothing to do with justice or
benevolence because it is the domain for the will to power. This is the
amoral world of Spinoza's Nature. In his Ethics, as I said in chapter 4,
Spinoza does not even mention ethical precepts and standards. Nor does
he talk about our ethical duties and relation with others. His Ethics is not
an ethical treatise in the standard sense, but a metaphysical treatise that
spins out an iron-tight deterministic universe that leaves no freedom for
ethical choice. Spinoza's world is totally dominated by the masculine
principle, and Goethe has softened it by installing the feminine principle
in Faust and by creating ethical space with the concept of the communal
self. Likewise, Wagner's two male figures Wotan and Alberich are to-
tally amoral, and the ethical sense of decency is retained only in the fe-
male figure of Fricka. But she cannot provide eternal ethical norms be-
cause she is not the Eternal Feminine. Her ethical norms are limited to
the tradition inscribed on Wotan's Spear. The Eternal Feminine of The
Ring is Erda, but she is as amoral as Zarathustra' Life. When Erda warns
Wotan against the curse of the Ring and urges him to yield it in the last
scene of Rhinegold, she is not acting on any ethical principle. She is only
providing her counsel of prudence. The world of The Ring is as amoral as
it is natural because Mother Nature breeds no moral norms. Power is the
only principle of governance for this amoral world, and it is contested by
the Spear and the Ring.
If both the Ring and the Spear are symbols of power, what is their
difference? The Spear is a weapon, but the Ring is not. Nobody can use
the Ring as a weapon, but it has its own power. Paul Heise says that the
Ring represents the power based on Alberich's objective knowledge,
whereas Wotan creates the illusory religious world in reaction to the
harsh and ugly reality that he cannot accept ("The 'Ring' as a Whole").
This seems to explain Wotan's anxious fear of the Ring. If the Ring
represents the power rooted in real nature, it can easily crush Wotan's
Valhalla built on his religious illusion. In that case, the Ring is the Ring
of Nature. But the Ring has been made not by Nature, but by Alberich to
secure his power over the world. He committed the robbery and rape of
 Wagner's Superhero 335

the pure Rhinegold in transforming it into the Ring. Therefore the Ring
represents the power of Nature that has been separated from its original
source by force. This is the classical notion of alienation in political phi-
losophy as it is used for example in Marx's doctrine of the alienation of
labor. In making the Ring, if we follow Heise, Alberich alienates or sepa-
rates the power of Nature and forcibly appropriates it by using his objec-
tive knowledge. In that case, the Ring stands for alienated Nature. But
the Ring is much closer to Mother Nature than Wotan's Valhalla. The
former stands on Alberich's knowledge of Nature, whereas the latter is
the projection of Wotan's illusion. For this reason, the Ring can easily
crush Valhalla as Wotan fears. Valhalla is Wotan's defiance against the
power of Nature, the Ring is Alberich's exploitation of her resources. On
these considerations, I propose that the Ring stands for the alienated
power of Mother Nature.
The history of the Ring is the history of the world, which begins with
the alienation of individuals from Mother Nature. In the Ring cycle, the
world evolves from the primitive state and returns to it at the end. The
cycle of cosmic history begins with the primal nature motif at the open-
ing of Rhinegold. Nature in the depth of the Rhine is beginning her evo-
lution from her undifferentiated condition, which is represented by the
Rhinegold. But the differentiation of the original Nature requires the
separation and alienation of individuals, which is' represented by the
genesis of the Ring and its history. With the return of the Ring to the
Rhine, the Ring cycle returns to E flat of the original motif of undifferen-
tiated Nature. But the Ring does not end there. The tonality of E flat
shifts, in a series of awe-inspiring chord progressions, to a new key, D
flat, which clearly looks forward to a new beginning. It is in this new key
that the redemption motif is repeated for the last time. The redemption is
not only the end of an old cycle, but the beginning of a new one. But
there is no indication that the next cycle will be the replay of the previous
one. This is the heart of Wagnerian redemption. The return to Mother
Nature is to start a new journey of creation and evolution. This process of
perpetual renewal is the only plausible form of redemption in the world
of becoming. It resembles the renewal of Mother Nature's fertility and
the revival of Dionysus from his dismemberment. In Goethe's world,
redemption was to elevate Faust from the realm of perpetual striving to
the realm of eternal rest. But such an elevation is impossible in Wagner's
336 Chapter Ten

purely natural world. The endless repetition and renewal of the Wag-
nerian cycle is restated in Nietzsche's eternal recurrence.
Even Zarathustra's epic career has its own cyclical beginning and
ending. It begins with the rising sun, which corresponds to the opening
scene of Rhinegold, where the golden beauty of the Rhinegold is illumi-
nated by the sunbeam. These two are combined in the golden radiation of
Zarathustra's sun. Hisjoumey follows the trajectory of the sun. It rises to
the zenith in great noon and goes down to the abyss in midnight like the
sun. He concludes his epic journey by returning to the same rising sun
that opened it. The rising sun is his E flat that opens and ends his epic
career. But the end of his epic cycle does not close his career. On the
contrary, he is starting out on a new cycle in "The Sign" of Part IV just
as the end of the Ring cycle is marked by a new key, D flat. His redemp-
tion cannot end with eternal rest in his cave any more than the Wag-
nerian redemption can with eternal rest in the depth of the Rhine. There
is no way to escape from the world of perpetual striving. Therefore,
Zarathustra's epic cycle is bound to be as endless as the Ring cycle. The
eternal repetition of the latter is also the paradigm for Nietzsche's eternal
ring of recurrence.
The Gold Ring is also a symbol of the separation and isolation of in-
dividuals against one another. It encloses one individual against others,
for example, Alberich against his fellow Nibelungs, one giant against the
other giant. When Siegfried gives the Gold Ring to Bruennhilde as a
mark of his love, it alienates him from her. Individuation is the expres-
sion of the power of Mother Nature. Her limitless power is expressed in
the emergence of countless individuals in the world. Hence the world of
individuals is the world of power, and the play of individual powers cre-
ates the history of, Mother Nature. Fate is this history of power play.
Hence the Ring is also a symbol of fate. This is allegorically represented
by the rope of fate. The Noms spin it out of a tangle of threads, which
represent bringing together the lives of many different individuals. When
the third Nom hits the omen for the big disaster from the curse of the
Ring, she sees the web of threads unravel. A fateful event takes place in
the web of accidents, all of which are generated by their respective
threads of causal chain. The web of fate and the play of power are two
ways of looking at the same phenomena in the natural world. But the
play of individual powers inevitably leads to the war of all against all. At
 Wagner's Superhero 337

the end of Rhinegold, the Rhinemaidens refer to the Rhinegold as "pure

gold." But the pure gold becomes full of guilt when it is made into the
Gold Ring. This is the guilt of greed and power that constitutes the ulti-
mate source for the curse of the Ring, that is, the curse of suffering. The
Rhinemaidens were free of suffering because they were living with the
guiltless gold. The curse of the Ring affects not only the Nibelungs, but
also the gods and the goddesses. Their suffering in turn generates the
need for redemption. Here lies the irony of the Ring. Both Alberich and
Wotan looked upon the Ring as the solution of their respective problems,
but it has brought about the most formidable problem for all humanity.
The same paradox obtains for Zarathustra's ring of eternal recurrence. It
is also the ring of power. But its power is its curse.
Thus the Gold Ring simultaneously serves two symbolic functions.
First, it represents Spinoza's conception of Mother Nature as the all-
embracing reality. From time immemorial, the circle has been the symbol
of self-contained reality. Second, the Ring also represents the principle of
individuation for the manifestation of Mother Nature's inexhaustible
power. These two functions correspond to the two dimensions of Mother
Nature: her original unity and her consequent differentiation. In her
original unity, Nature is inclusive of all beings. But her differentiation
leads to their exclusion from her and from one another. Since individua-
tion is the ultimate cause of all sufferings, redemption can be secured
only by overcoming the pain of exclusion and alienation. This is the
mystical union in love that Bruennhilde is seeking with Siegfried by gal-
loping into his funeral pyre. Only in this ecstatic union, can their exis-
tence be freed from the curse and guilt of the Ring. Zarathustra also over-
comes the curse of the eternal ring by his ecstatic union with Life in "The
Drunken Song" of Part IV.
Now I propose that Nietzsche's ring of eternal recurrence is his adap-
tation of Wagner's cosmic symbol. His adaptation removes the big bangs
and the big crunches from Wagner's ring of cosmic cycles. Beyond this
difference, the two Rings are basically alike. Like Wagner's Ring,
Nietzsche's Ring serves as the principle of individuation and alienation
in the temporal domain and as the principle of inclusion and redemption
in the eternal domain. Wagner's Ring was brought up from the depth of
the Rhine by the dwarf Alberich; Nietzsche's Ring emerges with
Zarathustra's dwarf from the depth of the earth. Both Rings embody the
338 Chapter Ten

will to power, which generates the perpetual game of creation and de-
struction. In "On Self-Overcoming" of Part II, Life says, "Whatever I
create and however much I love it-soon I must oppose it and my love;
thus my will wills it" (2, 115). This game of creation and destruction is
played out beyond good and evil. There is no room of justice or benevo-
lence because both Wagner's and Nietzsche's Rings represent a detenni-
nistic universe governed by cosmic necessity. These two worlds are eter-
nal and self-contained. They are radically different from the Christian
world, which is neither eternal nor self-contained. Hence it can be repre-
sented by a straight line because it has a beginning and an end. But the
circle or the ring is the right poetic image for the eternal world because it
has no beginning and no end. This is Spinoza's infinite substance. In my
Nietzsche's Epic of the Soul, I proposed that the eternal recurrence
should be taken as a poetic metaphor for the eternal universe because it
makes little sense to take the doctrine literally. The germ of this meta-
phor was already in Wagner's Gold Ring and Nietzsche has made it into
his metaphor of the eternal ring.

Three Types of Love

I have stressed the affinity between erotic love and the love of power.
The latter may be called kratic love. The Greek word for power is kratos.
I have said that the will to power lies behind these two types of love. But
there is one more type of love that is even more fundamental for the will
to power than these two. It is the love based on blood-ties that ranges
over parental and filial love and the love of siblings and relatives. The
ancient Greeks called it philia chiefly in distinction from eros. Erotic
love is the love of sexual impulses; philia is the love of blood-ties. The
English language does not have a common noun that corresponds to
philia. So I want to translate it as "philotic love." The Greek noun
philotes is a cognate of philia. Before talking about the importance of
eros and philia in the Ring cycle, I want to examine their roles in ancient
societies and evolutionary biology. Biological reproduction can take two
forms: sexual selection and kin selection. In sexual selection, a male and
a female cooperate in passing on their genes to the next generation. The
worker bees cannot reproduce their genes by sexual reproduction be-
 Wagner's Superhero 339

cause they are asexual. But they can help their big sister, the queen bee,
reproduce her genes, by working for her and her brood. The children of
the queen bee share three quarters of their genes with the worker bees.
This way of transmitting the genes to the next generation is called kin
selection. Because of this genetic connection, the worker bees love their
queen bee and her children. This is their philotic love. No doubt, erotic
love is essential for sexual reproduction. Hence eros and philia constitute
the basic instinctual forces that sustain reproduction.
This is not to say that philotic love is restricted to the bees and ants,
whose reproduction depends on kin selection. It is equally important for
those animals whose genes are transmitted by sexual reproduction. The
parents' love of their children is indispensable for their nurture and sur-
vival. Their love is philotic. The love of brothers and sisters, nephews
and nieces, and cousins and other relatives is also important for our kin
selection. Hence philotic love was as important as erotic love in ancient
societies. The distinction between these two forms of love corresponded
to the distinction between two groups of people, the philos (the friends
and relatives) and the zenos (the strangers and foreigners). The philos are
friends not in our modem sense. In the ancient world, friends were the
relatives, who grew up and worked together in the same extended family.
Philia was the love of one's philos, which etymologically mean "one's
own." Because a friend is an extension of oneself, Aristotle says, philia
is the love of oneself (Ethics, bk 9, ch 4). The philos is the domain of
philia; the zenos is the domain of eros. Because philia is the love of
one's own, parents are willing to sacrifice themselves for their children.
On the other hand, eros tends to be exploitive and predatory because it is
directed against the zenos, namely, the strangers and the outsiders. Plato
says that a tyrant is born when erotic love goes mad and gains power
over others (Republic 573c). His erotic love feels no qualm in torturing
and exploiting others. We have already noted the intimate connection
between the love of sex and the love of power.
The difference between erotic and philotic love is fully displayed in
Valkyrie. Hunding and his clan care for one another. That is their philotic
love. But they are total strangers to Sieglinde and their erotic love is ful-
filled by brute force. This is their sexual predation that results in rape and
abduction. Sieglinde feels defiled and disgraced by Hunding's love,
which is no different from Alberich's lust for the Rhinemaidens, which
340 Chapter Ten

eventually leads to the defiling of the Rhinegold. But the love of Sieg-
linde and Siegmund for each other is not merely sexual. During their ini-
tial encounter in Hunding's house, the orchestra introduces the love mo-
tif and immediately switches over to the motif of brother-sister love well
before they recognize each other as brother and sister. While she is talk-
ing about Hunding's clan as strangers, she tells him that she recognized
him as "my own" the moment she saw him. She tells him that she has
encountered a friend for the first time in the frosty foreign land. In his
response, Siegmund says that he has seen her before in a dream of love,
and she replies that she sees in him the image of herself which she had
glimpsed in the brook. Extending the metaphor of likeness, he says to her,
"You are the image that I recover in myself." Then Siegmund recalls his
sister's voice that he once heard as a child. His erotic love of her is com-
pounded by his affection for the long-lost sister. He highlights this point
at the conclusion of Act 1: "Bride and sister / you are to your brother- /
so let the blood of the Volsungs bloom." Their love is rooted in their
blood-tie, which secures their identity with each other.
Right after receiving Wotan's order to let Siegmund be killed in the
battle against Hunding, Bruennhilde tries to console him by offering
Valhalla's everlasting glory and bliss. But he resolutely rejects the offer
when he is told that Sieglinde will not be there with him in Valhalla.
Whether in delight or sorrow, he wants to be only with Sieglinde. Then
he blames Bruennhilde for her cold and hard heart for making such an
egoistic offer. Kitcher and Schacht regard this sort of exclusive attach-
ment and commitment to a single person as the extreme form of erotic
love. This is the "feeling that nobody and (and nothing) really matters
except that other person" (Finding an Ending, 151). But the exclusive-
ness of love is tricky because there are two types of exclusiveness: exclu-
sive possession and exclusive devotion. Erotic love usually demands the
exclusive possession. No male likes to share the love of a female with
another male. Because erotic love is self-seeking, it is highly possessive.
Sexual possessiveness is a biologically dictated instinct, which struggles
to assure the transmission of one's own genes rather than someone else's.
But a man's exclusive devotion to a woman goes against the reproduc-
tive instinct, because he can reproduce more of his genes by expanding
his erotic relation to other women. Hence every male is born with the
natural propensity for philandering, which cannot be curtailed by his
 Wagner's Superhero 341

erotic impulse alone, as demonstrated not only by Hunding but also by

Wotan. The virtue of fidelity and the sanctity of marriage have been used
to control the philandering natural propensity in most societies.
Unlike erotic love, philotic love naturally leads to exclusive devotion
because it is the love of one's own. But philotic love is also self-seeking
in its own way. The scope of self, however, is different for the two loves.
Erotic love is trapped in the constricted individual self, but philotic love
covers the expanded communal self. Siegmund's exclusive attachment to
Sieglinde is not formed by their erotic bond alone. If she had been a total
stranger to him, it would be highly implausible for him to develop such
attachment in the span of one evening. His attachment is so firmly fixed
that it is not even swayed by Bruennhilde's promise that he will be affec-
tionately received by the Wish-Maidens in Valhalla. Since these heav-
enly maidens are supposedly far more beautiful than the mortal Sieglinde,
their attraction should immediately divert his attention from her if his
feeling were only erotic. This is not to deny the possibility of exclusive
devotion in an erotic relation. Over a long period of time, an erotic rela-
tion can develop into friendship. But to be a friend is different from be-
ing a partner in an erotic relationship. When two erotic partners become
friends with each other, they achieve the same philotic bond as the bond
of blood-ties. The philotic bond between Siegmund and Sieglinde ap-
pears to sprout almost instantaneously because they are only recovering
it after its long loss.
Bruennhilde's love of Siegmund and Sieglinde is also philia. She has
a twofold philotic relation with them. First, she shares with them the
same father in Wotan. Second, Wotan's paternal concern for Siegmund
and Sieglinde becomes her own concern because she is his will. She
wants to protect Siegmund in his fight against Hunding as much as Wo-
tan does. When he revokes his original order and commands her to let
Siegmund fall and die, she defies her father at the risk of a dreadful pun-
ishment. Even in her defiance, she tells him that her love of Siegmund is
none other than his paternal love for the son. Her love of Sigmund is ma-
ternal. With the same maternal love, she saves Sieglinde and brings her
to Valhalla. Kitcher and Schacht say that Bruennhilde is motivated by
her empathic love, which she takes to be the highest form of love.
Whereas erotic love is exclusive, they say, empathic love is open-ended
(Finding an Ending, 161). But Bruennhilde's love is not really open-
342 Chapter Ten

ended. In her love, as Kitcher and Schacht parenthetically note, she cares
only for Wotan, Siegmund, Sieglinde, and the unborn Siegfried (Finding
an Ending, 163). This list shows that she loves only her father and his
Volsungs. If her love were empathic, it would have covered many other
people than her kinsfolk. Her love is not open-ended because it is
philotic. Although philotic love is not so exclusive as erotic love, it is
still restricted to the domain of one's blood-ties.
When Bruennhilde encourages Sieglinde to live, she appeals to her
maternal love of the baby in her womb. Responding with the same ma-
ternal love, Sieglinde tells Bruennhilde, "Save me, brave woman! Res-
cue my child." She expresses her maternal anxiety once more: "Save me,
Oh maiden! Rescue a mother." When Bruennhilde sends her away to a
safe place, she tells her that she is harboring the noblest hero of the world
in her womb. Then she gives Sieglinde the shattered Nothung and names
the future hero as Siegfried. This event should be understood together
with Sieglinde's naming her brother as Siegmund. The two women are
exercising the authority of their kinship in naming the two young men.
When Siegfried awakens Bruennhilde from her long sleep, they also feel
philotic love for each other. Before she wakes up, he assumes that he has
found a sleeping man dressed in armor. But when he cuts open the armor,
he is startled to find a beautiful female body dressed in a soft garment.
This is doubling startling to the youngster because he has never seen a
young woman before. His only response is to say, "This is not a man!"
In his consternation, he calls upon his mother for help. Kitcher and
Schacht say that this awkward and ludicrous response is "at odds with
the exceptional tenderness and emotional depth of the orchestration and
would seem to represent a tremendous lapse on Wagner's part at a cru-
cial moment" (Finding an Ending, 159). But I would rather say that the
exceptional tenderness and emotional depth of the orchestration reflects
Siegfried's longing for his mother and her love.
He feels the same tender love for Bruennhilde when she wakes up
from her sleep. He momentarily mistakes her for his mother. His initial
feeling for her is filial; his erotic passion will erupt later. His filial feeling
invites a maternal response from her. She calls him "you sweet child."
Although his mother cannot come back, she tells him, "Your own self am
I." Then she tells him that she has loved him always. Although she could
not help Siegmund, she managed to save Siegfried by rescuing Sieglinde.
 Wagner 's Superhero 343

She looked after Siegfried with her maternal instinct even before his
birth. She is now responding with the same maternal love. Later, both of
them experience the explosion of erotic love. Even then their erotic love
is supported and restrained by their philotic love, as we will see later. But
by the time he comes back from the court of the Gibichungs to take her
as bride for Gunther, he shows no sign of the tenderness and fear he had
for her before. He subdues her with sheer power as though he were rap-
ing her. The potion has altered the nature of his erotic impulse. In the
first meeting, his erotic impulse was contained by the power of his filial
affection. But the potion completely dissolves this filial constraint and
gives his wild erotic impulse complete free play. With his erotic impulse
unconstrained, he becomes hardly distinguishable from Hunding, a ma-
rauding rapist. But this is the normal method of acquiring a female in
Siegfried's world. His favorite expression for getting a woman is to
"tame" her. When he comes to the Valkyrie Rock disguised as Gunther,
he announces himself to Bruennhilde as the hero to tame her. When he
meets the Rhinemaidens, he entertains the idle thought of taming one of
them. This act of taming is denounced as robbery and rape by Bruenn-
hilde. Both of them are using predatory language. This is in line with our
earlier discussion that erotic love is the predatory impulse for abduction
and possession. The ferocious erotic impulse was all along in Siegfried's
heart, but could not break out into the open as long as Bruennhilde was
associated with his mother. One may object to this interpretation on the
ground that his behavior is not really motivated by erotic love. True, he
is only pretending to be a suitor. But that is sufficient because he is try-
ing to behave like someone smitten by erotic love.
Bruennhilde takes his brutal behavior as Wotan's punishment for her.
She thinks that the pitiless god is now pouring scorn and misery on her.
There is a ground for this suspicion. When he punished her by leaving
her on a rocky mountain as open prey for any male, he was openly ex-
posing her to the kind of humiliation she is now receiving from Siegfried.
For her protection, she was granted the wall of fire. Although it can keep
out the cowards, it is no use against brutal assault. Anyone who can get
through the wall of fire can be more brutal than the cowards. Ironically,
her erotic love goes through the same transformation as Siegfried's.
Shortly after his departure for adventures, Waltraute brings to Bruenn-
hilde Wotan's urgent request to return the Ring to the Rhinemaindens for
344 Chapter Ten

the sake of her father and other immortals of Valhalla. But she cannot
even think of relinquishing the Ring because this token of Siegfried's
love gives her a far greater bliss than the bliss of Valhalla. Her erotic
love is overwhelming her filial love for the father and other kin. Right
after sending Waltraute back to Wotan with her chilling refusal, she is
exposed to the brutal assault of Siegfried's erotic impulse. The sequence
of these two events is subtle and critical in determining the audience's
response. For those who can see that she ravages her filial love for the
sake of erotic love, she is setting herself up for Siegfried's erotic assault.
But those who have missed this point can see only gross injustice when
her unwavering love of Siegfried is molested by his brutal assault. These
two responses are quite different for understanding the complexity of the
situation.
When Siegfried gave the Gold Ring to Bruennhilde as the token of
his love before going out for his adventure, it appeared that erotic love
had finally won over the power of the Ring. Now we can see that the
power of the Ring has established the tyranny of erotic love over philotic
love. Bruennhilde's maternal concern for Siegfried totally dissolves after
his degrading assault, and her erotic love turns into the raging impulse
for retaliation and destruction. This erotic rage, which eventually leads
her to playa vital role in the murder of Siegfried, is as frightful as Sieg-
fried's assault. But the conflict between erotic and philotic love is noth-
ing new. It emerged in their first meeting. When Siegfried feels erotic
love in his first meeting with Bruennhilde, he trembles with fear and
feels his own cowardice. Fear is replacing the tender feeling he had for
his mother a moment earlier. When Bruennhilde expresses her maternal
love, she explains to the bewildered youngster that her love is based on
her knowledge that she took care of him along with his parents before his
birth. Thus she lays down her credentials for taking a maternal stance
toward him. At this point, the authority of her maternal love appears to
prevail over the eruption of Siegfried's erotic love and its attendant fear.
But he cannot get over his fear. After confessing that he cannot really
understand all those distant things she has told him, he says to her, "You
bind me in anxious fear; you alone have taught me its anguish." This re-
mark in tum provokes fear in Bruennhilde. Pointing at her shield and her
helmet, she says that they are no longer protecting her body. He replies
 Wagner's Superhero 345

that he has no protection, either, because a blissful maid has pierced his
heart and wounded his head.
The physical protection is useless against the erotic charge. His fear
has nothing to do with the physical assault, which has never bothered
him. He is terrified with the flames burning in his breast. He is experi-
encing the fear of erotic love. So is Bruennhilde. She responds by de-
scribing her own plight. Although she was revered as a virgin maid by
gods and heroes in Valhalla, she now finds herself in a shameful plight
because she feels violated by Siegfried's act of breaking open her armor.
The fear of violation is the natural response to the erotic overture because
the erotic impulse is predatory. When Siegfried urges her to be a woman
for him, her shame turns into despair. Her senses are clouded and her
wisdom vanishes. Mournful darkness descends on her and she is seized
by terror. By removing her hands from her eyes, he encourages her to
overcome the darkness by looking at the bright day. But that does not
help her. She says that the day of her shame shines as bright as the sun.
She tells him to look at her anguish. At this point, she takes her thought
to the care she has always taken for his well-being. By appealing to this
matemallove, she earnestly begs him to leave her alone. She is appealing
to his philotic love as her defense against his erotic passion.
She explains to him that leaving her alone is like leaving a brook un-
disturbed. You can see your face in a clear brook. But you cannot see it
when the brook is disturbed. This is the analogy of a brook that Sieglinde
used in describing her love of her brother. Bruennhilde then tells Sieg-
fried, "Love yourself, and leave me alone: do not destroy your own."
This statement refers to the basic difference between erotic and philotic
love. As we noted earlier, philotic love is the love of oneself, whereas
erotic love is the aggression on another for self-gratification. But her plea
is powerless against his surging erotic passion, which overpowers his
philotic feeling. He says to her, "I no longer have myself." He can only
see the flood-tide surging around him. Though it may shatter his likeness,
he is eager to leap into its stream so that his longing may be stilled in the
flood. He commands Bruennhilde to wake up, and laugh and live. He
concludes this order by repeating "Be mine!" three times. This erotic
command for possession is delivered in an impetuous music, vocally and
orchestrally. Bruennhilde replies, "0 Siegfried! Yours 1 was always!"
This is the expression of her maternal love that she has already voiced,
346 Chapter Ten

and it is delivered in a tender music, vocally and orchestrally. Siegfried

says to her, "If you were mine once, then be mine now." She finally says,
"I will be eternally yours." At this point, her maternal stand caves under
his erotic demand. When he holds her in his anns and feels the beating of
two hearts, he says that he has broken the burning anguish whether Bru-
ennhilde has really become his. In her response, she twice repeats his
question, "Whether I am yours now?" She is telling him that there is no
need to ask her because he can clearly see that she has also been over-
powered by erotic passion. She has lost her godlike composure in the
rage of passions that have driven away her heavenly wisdom. She warns
him against the furious fire of her own erotic passion and concludes her
warning: "Do you fear, Siegfried, / do you not fear / the wildly raging
woman?" But this does not terrify him. Instead he feels the return of his
courage and the disappearance of his previous fear. He says to her, "The
fear you scarcely taught me-I fancy-I have foolishly quite forgotten it
now." He admits the folly of forgetting the fear of erotic love he has
learned from her.
Laughing wildly and joyfully (stage direction) at this childish behav-
ior, Bruennhilde finally accedes to his erotic demand like a mother yield-
ing to the impetuous demand of her child. By addressing him as a child-
ish hero and a glorious boy, she sings the following famous lines:

Laughing must I love you;

laughing must I become blind;
laughing let us decay,
laughing let us perish!
(Siegfried, Act 3, Scene 3)

This passage is often taken to reflect the intensity of Bruennhilde's erotic

love and her readiness to sacrifice everything for its sake. She is seen as
willing to meet even the disasters of her love with laughter. But she is
talking to a child ("0 childish hero / 0 glorious boy") like a mother.
When a mother knowingly gives in to the impetuous demand of her child,
she can laugh over what is going on between her and her child because it
is an amusing game. She has decided to play this amusing game not only
with Siegfried, but also with another child, the blazing erotic love in her
own heart. Although she knows that erotic love will make them blind,
she has decided to let them play with it. She is laughing in joining this
 Wagner's Superhero 347

amusing game. But Siegfried never says that he will be laughing in play-
ing this game. He is too immature to see her amusement. Thus repetition
of the word 'laughing' reflects the maternal response to Siegfried's and
her own childish erotic demand.
Those four "laughing" lines are followed by the love duet. She bids
her farewell to Valhalla and all its glory. It is often said that she is giving
up Valhalla for the sake of her love. That makes no sense. She is in no
position to give up Valhalla. She had already been expelled from Val-
halla when she was punished by Wotan. She is no longer an immortal
because she has been reduced to a mortal. But she can still say that her
present bliss is greater than the bliss of Valhalla. So she joyfully sings of
Siegfried's star, which is shining upon her now. While she is bidding her
farewell to Valhalla and singing its impending doom in the duet, Sieg-
fried sings of her new life, her laughter, and her star that shines upon him.
Then come the last six lines of Siegfried:

Sie is mir ewig,

ist mir immer,
Erb' und Eigen,
ein' und all':
leuchtende Liebe,
lachender Tod!

Bruennhilde sings along the same six lines. But her six lines begin with
the word er (he) instead of sie (she). The quoted passage is usually trans-
lated as "She is mine forever, / is mine always, / my heritage and my
own, / one and all: / shining love, / laughing death!" If this translation is
correct, it should confirm that Siegfried has fully realized his earlier
erotic demand that Bruennhilde become his. In that case, these last six
lines can be taken to celebrate the final victory of erotic love over Bru-
ennhilde's maternal instinct and reservation. But the translation is not
faithful to the text. "Sie ist mir ewig" literally means "She is eternal for
me." Hence its meaning does not even remotely resemble that of "She is
mine forever." The translation of the second line is equally mistaken.
The three words "ist mir immer" does not mean "is mine always." It
means "is always for me." The word mir ("to" or "for me") cannot be
taken as equivalent to mein (my or mine). The first three lines really
mean: "For me, she is eternally and always my heritage and my own."
348 Chapter Ten

The expression "my own (Eigen)" may sound like "mine (mein)."
But they indicate two different modes of possession. The word "my" or
"mine" indicates the standard form of possession: I have appropriated
something other than my self. On the other hand, the word "my own"
indicates my own self, which is not acquired by the appropriation of ex-
ternal objects. My own self comes as my inheritance from my parents
and ancestors. For this reason, the two words "heritage" and "own" are
linked in one phrase "Erb ' und Eigen." The difference between "my pos-
session" and "my own self' is the difference between acquisition and
inheritance. Erotic love cannot avoid the problem of acquisition and its
uncertainty. Siegfried was wracked by the uncertainty over whether Bru-
ennhilde's erotic love could be acquired as his possession. But there can
be no such uncertainty of acquisition for philotic love because its object
is not acquired but inherited. Inheritance is validated by knowledge.
Your inheritance becomes fully yours by your knowledge that it is
handed down to you from your ancestors. When Bruennbhilde told Sieg-
fried that she was his own self, she relied on her knowledge. She said,
"What you do not know, / I know for you: / but I know / only because I
love you!" She is stating the inseparable connection between philotic
love and knowledge. In the six lines we have examined, Siegfried and
Bruennhilde are singing about their philotic love that is rooted in their
enduring Volsung heritage. By this love and heritage, they are tied to-
gether. This union of love is expressed by the fourth line of the quoted
passage, "ein' und all' (one and all)." This union makes her love so shin-
ing (leuchtende Liebe) as a clear brook, whereas her erotic love has been
so murky as a disturbed brook. The line "laughing death" also refers to
Bruennhilde's maternal response to his erotic demand, which we noted
earlier. Thus the last six lines do not celebrate the victory of erotic love,
but attest to the power of philotic love. It is eternally enduring, whereas
erotic love is impetuous and ephemeral.
Now that we have examined the important lines of the duet, let us try
to size up its overall character. It began with Bruennhilde's laughing ac-
ceptance of Siegfried's impetuous erotic demand and ended with their
paean to their philotic heritage. The format of their singing is strangely
disturbing. In a standard duet, two voices sing together, reinforcing each
other in harmony or unison. But Bruennhilde and Siegfried singly shout
against each other. There is no togetherness in their duet. They do not
 Wagner's Superhero 349

even sing to each other. Instead of addressing each other as "you" and
"I," they refer to each other as "he" and "she." For example, he sings,
"She is eternally for me" instead of "You are eternally for me." Like-
wise, she sings, "He is eternally for me" rather than "You are eternally
for me." He sings, "She wakes! She lives!" instead of "You wake! You
live!" He sings, ."Bruennhilde's star shines upon me" instead of "Bru-
ennhilde, your star shines upon me." Likewise, she sings "Siegfried's
star shines upon me" instead of "Siegfried, your star shines upon me."
Instead of talking to each other, they talk about each other as a third per-
son. This mode of singing indicates that they have not really become one,
whereas the standard duet expresses the union of two singers. The con-
flict between the two singers has been building up for a long time ever
since Siegfried's impetuous erotic love provoked Bruennhilde's fear.
There is a twofold erotic conflict. First, there is a conflict between the
two lovers. Then, there is a conflict between the erotic impulse and the
philotic instinct in the heart of each. This twofold tension is sustained
from the beginning to the end of the duet. Only in the last six lines can
they find a common ground in their heritage, which is musically ex-
pressed by the bond of love motif. This bond is not derived from erotic
love. It is the bond of philotic love that holds together the two erotic lov-
ers in war.
The same conflict of erotic demands is played out in the game of
love between Zarathustra and Life in "The Other Dancing Song" of Part
II. When he chases Life for a dance, he is making the same erotic pursuit
as Siegfried's. When he gets frustrated in the game of love and threatens
Life with a whip, he is making an impetuous erotic demand as Siegfried
does when he is wracked with the uncertainty of securing Bruennhilde's
love. When Life makes him sit down with her to share her tender thought
with him, she is making a maternal response as Bruennhilde does in
laughing and giving in to Siegfried's erotic demand. Life and Bruenn-
hilde have similar reasons for taking maternal interest in their respective
charges. Just as Bruennhilde and Siegfried share the same blood-tie, so
do Life and Zarathustra because all living beings are children of Life.
Just as Bruennhilde took care of Siegfried even before his birth by saving
his mother in Valkyrie, so Life saved Zarathustra from drowning in "The
Dancing Song" of Part II. As I already said, the events of Part II corre-
spond to the events of Valkyrie. To be sure, Bruennhilde is not Erda, the
350 Chapter Ten

counterpart to Life. But Bruennhilde is playing Erda's maternal role for

Siegfried as Erda's daughter and extension. By the end of Siegfried, the
love of Siegfried and Bruennhilde is as full of conflict as the love of
Zarathustra and Life by the end of Part III. Wagner could not end The
Ring without resolving this conflict. He had to write its fourth part for the
same reason Nietzsche had to write Part IV of Zarathustra.

The Eternal Feminine

Many commentators have said that the central theme of The Ring is the
war between love and power. But this is an oversimplification. For the
sake of accuracy, we can restate it as the war between erotic love and
kratic love. Nevertheless, it is still an oversimplification. There is more
than one war in the Ring cycle. There are the wars of love against love
and the wars of power against power. When I said that Wagner's work is
a saga of Wotan's war against the dwarf Alberich, I was reducing it to a
war of power against power. The most serious fault of these reductions
and simplifications is to ignore the critical role of philotic love in this
complex saga of wars. Because philotic love is more fundamental for the
will to power than erotic and kratic love, it provides a greater power for
the war than the other two loves. Therefore, Wagner's epic should be
read as a saga of the battle between three types of love. It opens with the
conflict of erotic and kratic love as demonstrated by the careers of Al-
berich and Wotan and ends with the redemption by the power of philotic
love as demonstrated by Bruennhilde and Erda. Let us sketch the outline
of this three-way battle.
Rhinegold records the battle of Wotan's love of power against Al-
berich's. Valkyrie stages the battle of the Volsungs' (Siegmund and Sieg-
linde) philotic love against the erotic love of Hunding and his clan. At
the same time, there is a battle between erotic and kratic love in Wotan
and Alberich. Wotan exploits his erotic power for the maintenance of his
power. He says to Bruennhilde that he overpowered Erda by the magic
spell of love to father the Valkyries, who were to bring the fallen heroes
for the defense of Valhalla (Valkyrie, Act 2, Scene 1). He also says that
Alberich has done the same thing in fathering a son to recover the Ring.
Then there is the battle between philotic and kratic love. Wotan decides
 Wagner's Superhero 351

to sacrifice his love of Siegmund for the sake of his power. When he
learns that Wotan has taken away the magic power from his sword, he
calls Wotan a traitor. This betrayal provokes Bruennhilde to rebel against
her father and defend her philotic love. Wotan subdues this revolt of
philotic love against his kratic love by putting her to sleep. His kratic
love has enslaved and sacrificed both his erotic and philotic love. This is
the tragic end of Wotan's reign by the end of Valkyrie.
When the young Siegfried begins his career, he knows only philotic
love. He is always thinking of his parents, especially his mother. Then he
experiences erotic love for the first time when he meets Bruennhilde.
That brings about the battle between erotic and philotic love. This battle
is not like the battle between friends and enemies such as the Volsungs
and the Hundings. It is a battle of two loves between two friends and
within the heart of each. Before Siegfried can resolve the conflict of
erotic and philotic love, he gets exposed to kratic love in Twilight of the
Gods when he goes on heroic adventures to establish his fame. It takes
power to achieve fame in adventures. When he slew the dragon, he
sought neither an adventure nor fame. He was still innocent of the greed
for power and social standing. But that innocence is gone. He is now
smitten by kratic love. When he reaches the Hall of the Gibichungs, his
kratic love goes against Hagen's. This battle of kratic love between these
two men is the rematch of the battle between their progenitors Wotan and
Alberich in Rhinegold. Concurrently, there is another battle of love going
on in Bruennhilde's heart. By the end of Siegfried, we noted, the conflict
of her erotic and philotic love was left unresolved. When Waltraute
brings to the Valkyrie Rock Wotan's urgent request to return the Ring to
the Rhine, she is appealing to Bruennhilde's philotic love. But it is swept
away by her erotic love, as we noted earlier.
The erotic love that Bruennhilde has kept at the expense of her
philotic love is ravaged when Siegfried forcefully takes her as bride for
Gunther. This event is the victory of kratic love over erotic love not only
because he is overpowering her by brute force, but also because he is
procuring her as an instrument of Hagen's power. This event is also the
victory of kratic love over philotic love because he has betrayed his kin-
ship loyalty to Bruennhilde. When love is violated by power, it is defiled.
Sieglinde felt defiled and disgraced by her forced marriage to Hunding.
In Twilight of the Gods, both erotic and philotic loves are defiled by
352 Chapter Ten

kratic love. In this regard, Twilight of the Gods is different from Rhine-
gold, although both of them result in the victory of kratic love. In Rhine-
gold, its victory does not affect erotic and philotic love because it is the
contest of two kratic lovers, Wotan and Alberich. There is no defilement
in the contest of kratic lovers. Such a contest may result in the injury or
defeat of one party, but the injury or defeat can be sustained without de-
filement. But the violation of erotic and philotic love is their defilement.
Bruennhilde recognizes this defilement as the ultimate curse of the Ring,
the symbol of power, and attempts to redeem Siegfried by restoring his
purity. She secures his purity by recognizing the cosmic necessity behind
his debasing deeds. Her recognition is expressed in the three famous
lines she sings just before jumping onto the funeral pyre: "All things, all
things, / all things I know, / all is clear to me now!"
Just before she sings these three lines of fate, she addresses her la-
ment to the immortals of Valhalla and the orchestra plays the Volsung-
love motif. The orchestra played the same motif while she was sinking
down on Wotan's breast during his aria of sad farewell to her at the end
of Valkyrie. On both occasions, the orchestra is attesting to the strong
philotic love that overflows in her heart for Wotan and Siegfried. By vir-
tue of this love, she can see the cosmic necessity that governs their deeds.
This strong love survived even the onslaught of the raging erotic love in
the final scene of Siegfried, as we noted in our reading of the love duet.
In the final scene of Twilight ofthe Gods, the Volsung-love motif is fol-
lowed by the redemption motif when Bruennhilde jumps into the fire of
purification and redemption. The redemption motif was first introduced
in Valkyrie. After Siegmund's death, Sieglinde only wants to die. But
Bruennhilde tells her that she is pregnant with the noblest hero, and she
bursts out jubilantly: "Sublimest wonder!" This outburst is accompanied
by the redemption motif. This appears to indicate that Siegfried will be
the hero of redemption. But this expectation is shattered when he be-
comes a pathetic victim to Hagen. Hence this event has made it difficult
to understand the role of the redemption motif. This problem can be
solved by noting what Sieglinde says after the jubilant outburst. She
thanks Bruennhilde for the great news and says, "For him, whom we
loved, / I will save what is most dear." Sieglinde is presenting herself as
the agent of redemption, who saves Siegfried with her maternal love. But
she is not the only woman who loves him. She shares her love of him
 Wagner's Superhero 353

with Bruennhilde ("For him, whom we loved"). At the end of Twilight of

the Gods, Bruennhilde is saving Siegfried with the same maternal love
with which Sieglinde saved him at the end of Valkyrie.
Maternal instinct was the saving grace for Wagner even before the
Ring cycle. Senta is empowered by her maternal instinct to redeem the
Dutchman in The Flying Dutchman. The same instinct inspires Elizabeth
to save her knight from the snare of Venus in Tannhauser. Bruennhilde
is playing the same role for the redemption of Siegfried, which has been
known as the Redemption through Love. But it is seldom discussed what
kind of love empowers her act of redemption. Kitcher and Schacht say
that her new love transcends all three types of love (erotic, empathic, and
benevolent) and that the former negates and preserves the latter in a He-
gelian synthesis (Finding an Ending, 180). But they do not explain how
the Hegelian synthesis works its miracle in her new love. In my view,
there is nothing new in Bruennhilde's so-called new love. In fact, it is her
old love, her maternal love, which is even older than Siegfried. It is old
in another sense because maternal love is the oldest love in the world.
Her maternal love reflects the love of Erda, the mother of all living be-
ings. When Wotan started playing the dangerous game with the Ring in
Rhinegold, she came up from the bottom of the earth to express her ma-
ternal concern for him. Bruennhilde is replicating the maternal role of
this cosmic mother in discharging her mission of redemption. Her recog-
nition of fate ("All things, all things, all things I know, all is now re-
vealed to me!") echoes back to Erda's earlier announcement in scene 4 of
Rhinegold: "How all things were-I know; how all things are, how all
things will be, I see as well." As a child of Wotan and Erda, she was
caught in the battle between the love of power and maternal love. By the
end of Valkyrie, she dies as Wotan's will and agent. But she revives as a
replica of Erda when Siegfried wakes her up from her sleep. After his
death, she redeems him with the maternal love that is rooted in Erda, the
cosmic Mother or rather Wagner's Eternal Feminine.
There are three mothers associated with the redemption of Siegfried:
Sieglinde, Bruenhilde, and Erda. That explains why he takes Bruenhilde
for his mother on his first encounter with her. The two ladies are inter-
changeable. When she tells him about his birth and his real mother, her
story is accompanied by the motif of Erda, the primeval mother of all.
Three mothers are linked together by this tender scene. It is about time
354 Chapter Ten

for us to understand what a magnificent role Erda plays in the Ring cycle.
She is the alpha and the omega of the entire cycle. She does not only
provide the ultimate power of redemption. The Erda motif is a variant of
the primal nature motif that opens Rhinegold and ends Twilight of the
Gods. She is the primal nature, whose evolution and redemption make up
the Ring cycle. Due to her sparse appearance on the stage, she is gener-
ally taken as a minor figure, whose significance pales under the glare of
such enormous figures as Wotan and Siegfried. Moreover, her power and
authority are supposed to wane as the drama develops until she falls back
into her deep sleep and loses all her power. The crushing blow against
her waning power and authority is supposed to be delivered by Wotan,
when he summons her with an imperial voice and demands to have her
knowledge at the beginning of Act 3 of Siegfried. But she slinks back to
her sleep without telling him anything. Deryck Cooke says that Erda
cannot tell Wotan anything at this stage because her knowledge cannot
keep up with the fast-changing world. Her knowledge used to be con-
tained in the rope of fate that was spun by her Noms. But the rope of fate
snaps in the Prelude to Twilight ofthe Gods. This means that the world is
proceeding beyond the limits of fate with the creation of free heroes such
as Siegmund and Siegfried. Thus Erda becomes obsolete for the new
world and is superseded by Wotan, whose knowledge is "a great and fi-
nal step forward on Erda's," according to Cooke (1 Saw the World End,
231). Hence she has to vanish into eternal oblivion.
Cooke's view has recently been restated by Kitcher and Schacht. Al-
though Erda was clearly wiser than Wotan in Rhinegold, they hold, she
no longer has the answer for Wotan's problem in Siegfried because her
knowledge has diminished. The world has been changing so fast that she
does not even know what has happened to her daughter Bruennhilde until
Wotan tells her. The new world has no connection with her primordial
world and moves with the rhythms that go beyond hers. Therefore, she is
confused and ignorant. Hence her response to Wotan's request for
knowledge is evasive and submissive, while he takes a commanding po-
sition over her. This is the reversal of their roles (Finding an Ending, 97-
99). But this is not a fair assessment of Erda's response to Wotan in Sieg-
fried. Let us first be clear about what sort of knowledge he is seeking
from her. When he asks for Erda's knowledge, she tells him to check
with her Noms, who spin the rope of fate. But he says that he is seeking
 Wagner's Superhero 355

not that kind of knowledge, but some good advice on how to check a
rolling wheel (wie zu hemmen ein rollendes Rad). This knowledge be-
longs to the forward-looking autonomous will, whereas the knowledge of
fate belongs to the backward-looking heteronomous will. Wotan is now
feeling the revival of his Faustian will. In chapters 7 and 8, we noted the
irrepressibility of the autonomous will. Zarathustra's Faustian will has
kept coming back even after it was shattered by his abysmal thought. The
same thing is happening with Wotan's Faustian will. His resignation
abruptly comes to an end right after Siegfried recovers the Ring from the
dragon. Thus he gains a new hope of controlling the future of the world.
If Wotan wants some counsel on controlling the events of the world,
Erda advises him to consult Bruennhilde. This is the right response' be-
cause Bruennhilde is Wotan's forward-looking will. But he tells her that
he cannot do it because he has sent her into a deep sleep. This provokes
Erda's ire. She severely rebukes him for his duplicity: He became angry
with Bruennhilde for doing what he had urged her to do and he pretended
to defend justice by breaking it. Disgusted with him, she proceeds to de-
scend and return to her sleep. Frightened by this forthright response, he
begs her to stay and changes his tune. He now seeks her wisdom to over-
come the care and dread that she has driven into his heart by her proph-
ecy on the end of the gods. By this request, he is only validating Erda's
earlier charge of his duplicity. If he had learned Erda's earlier lesson and
fully resigned himself to fate as he bragged to Alberich, he should be free
of the fear and dread that were driven into his heart by her prophecy.
Therefore, Erda says to him, "You are not / what you say you are!" En-
raged by this rebuke, Wotan returns the compliment to her: "You are not
/ what you fancy you are!" What does he mean by this? It is explained by
what he goes on to say: "The wisdom of primeval mothers comes to an
end, and your knowledge wanes before my will." He is contending that
Erda still fancies that she has the knowledge of fate. But that knowledge
is coming to an end because the assertion of his will is going to break the
rope of fate. This is exactly what Cooke claims. If so, Wotan is establish-
ing a new authority with his own will that can supplant Erda's authority
as the all-knowing cosmic mother.
Wotan does not stop there. He insults her by calling her the ignorant
one and proceeds to tell her what he wills. He says that he is no longer
consumed by the fear of the end of the gods because he now freely wills
356 Chapter Ten

it. This contradicts what he said a moment before. He was still seeking
Erda's wisdom for coping with his fear. Even if he wills the end of the
gods, he cannot go beyond Erda because he learned it from her. Then he
takes pride in recounting Siegfried's exploit for recovering the Ring. He
can now leave his heritage to Siegfried, whereas he had earlier conceded
it to Alberich. But he does not say that Siegfried will implement his will.
Instead he says that Bruennhilde will perform the world-redeeming deed
when Siegfried awakens her. After this vaunting statement, he lets her
descend to her sleep. In his encounter with her, he is humiliated twice.
First, he sought her advice for controlling future events. By referring this
request to the Noms, she told him that his request was pointless because
future events were determined by fate. After this rebuff, he sought her
advice for coping with his fear of the future. She batted down this request,
too, on the ground that he would not need it if he were truly resigned to
his fate as he had claimed. Only then does he say that he wills the end of
the Gods. That is where he claimed to be prior to summoning her. He is
gone back there not on his own, but because she rudely shoved him back
there. So he goes back to Valhalla and waits for the end of the world by
the beginning of Twilight of the Gods. Erda's humiliating treatment has
flattened his vain hope for the revival of his Faustian will. Even then his
Faustian will does not vanish. He asserts it again by sending Waltraute to
Bruennhilde with his request for the return of the Ring to the Rhine. He
still cannot give up the vain hope of forestalling the end of his reign in
spite of his protestation that he is resigned to fate. As I said earlier, the
autonomous will is irrepressible and ineliminable.
Kitcher and Schacht say that Wotan sends Erda to her eternal sleep
as he put Bruennhilde to sleep at the end of Valkyrie. By this command-
ing performance, he is supposed to demonstrate his complete control
over the two women (Finding an Ending, 98). This commanding per-
fonnance looks like the commanding position that some critics attribute
to Zarathustra as the hunter of his quarry Life in "The Other Dancing
Song" of Part III. But Kitcher and Schacht do not understand that sleep
does not play the same function for these two women. Because Bruenn-
hilde is Wotan's autonomous will, her function depends on her con-
sciousness, which is required for deliberation. Wotan can deactivate Bru-
ennhilde as his will by placing her in a deep sleep. But Erda is the mother
of fate, the heteronomous will, which requires no deliberation. The
 Wagner's Superhero 357

causal chain works itself out without consciousness. Therefore sleep is

her natural state. Wotan is in no position to put her to sleep. Nor can he
deactivate Erda by sending her to sleep because her sleep is not the state
of inactivity. On the contrary, she exercises all her power in her sleep. As
she says, her sleeping produces and nurtures all things in the universe.
Because she is sleeping all the time, she may appear to be doing nothing.
But her sleep is the fountain of all natural forces. It is equivalent to the
Primal Darkness in Faust. Even Wotan fully acknowledges this. When
he summons her, he says that no one is wiser than she and that her breath
blows wherever there is any being.
When Wotan pronounces Bruennhilde's world-redeeming deed, he
may appear to know something that Erda does not. The commentators
often wonder how he has gained this knowledge. It is surely unlikely that
he has developed a new power of clairvoyance on his own. In The Ring,
the foreknowledge of future events is gained only through the Noms,
who can unfold the future in the dreams of mortals and immortals. If
Wotan has learned Bruennhilde's redeeming act from the Noms, he is
only a beneficiary of Erda's sleeping wisdom. Nor has he the right to
take any credit for Siegfried's exploit because he has emerged as the hero
of Erda's primeval power. This point is beautifully conveyed by the for-
est murmurs Siegfried hears just before killing the dragon. While he is
lying alone in the forest and thinking of his mother, the trees murmur just
like the rippling waves in the opening scene of Rhinegold. That is the
wave motif, which is closely associated with the Erda motif. This scene
links Siegfried· to his mother and her to the primeval mother. From this
scene, he emerges as the hero of primeval instinct and power. He is the
wonder of Mother Nature that makes him the hero of accidents. If Wotan
knew this, he would be ashamed of gloating over Siegfried's achieve-
ment. Nor can he rightly take credit for Bruennhilde's future mission. As
we noted earlier, she was caught in the tug of war between Wotan and
Erda because she was their child. But he severed his relation with Bru-
ennhilde by putting her into a deep sleep. After she woke up from her
long sleep, she has whole-heartedly adopted the maternal role of her
mother. She plays the role of Siegfried's redeemer as an extension of
Erda. Thus the Ring cycle begins with the nature motif of Erda and ends
with the redemption motif of her extension.
358 Chapter Ten

Erda is the Eternal Feminine. Valhalla may perish, but she will never
die. Bruennhilde leaps into the funeral pyre not simply as Siegfried's
wife. She also represents Erda's maternal love. Erda and Bruennhilde
work together for the redemption of Siegfried and Wotan just as the Vir-
gin Mary and Gretchen do for the redemption of Faust. The latter is a
parody of Mary's and Beatrice's roles in the redemption of Dante's in his
Commedia. This long tradition of the Eternal Feminine goes back to the
cult of Isis as Mother Nature, who redeems her brother-husband Osiris
from death. This tradition suffered some serious distortion when it was
appropriated into the cult of Virgin Mary by the medieval Christians. The
Eternal Feminine ceased to be eternal when the Virgin was moved from
the earth and placed under the tutelage of the heavenly Father. Goethe
has restored the eternity of the Eternal Feminine, and Wagner retains it in
Erda by placing all the power of creation and redemption in her eternal
sleep. With this majestic stature, she looks like Isis, the eternal sovereign
of the world. She is the mother of all men, who can be redeemed only by
her maternal love. Robert Donington says that Bruennhilde unites the
Eternal Feminine with the Eternal Masculine by her self-immolation
(Wagner's IRing' and Its Symbols, 260). He got only one half of the
story right. There is no Eternal Masculine in The Ring. Like Osiris, W 0-
tan and Siegfried are not immortal. This point is graphically suggested by
the difference between the Spear and the Ring. The Spear is a phallic
symbol. It is a weapon, which represents masculine power. The Ring is a
virginal symbol, which represents the feminine power of Nature. It be-
longs to Erda. Unlike the Spear, the Ring never breaks. The Spear is
shattered, but the Ring remains intact and returns to the Rhine.

The Return to Erda

As we noted earlier, the Ring cycle is the history of the world, which
emerges by the evolution of Mother Nature from her primal state. This
evolutionary history corresponds to Goethe's evolutionary history in
Faust. Unlike the latter, the Wagnerian historical evolution of Mother
Nature returns to her original state. For both Goethe and Wagner, the
evolution of Nature takes place by the principle of individuation, the
painful process of separating individuals from her undifferentiated pri-
 Wagner's Superhero 359

mordial condition. This is the manifestation of her power and the produc-
tion of the individual will. Goethe portrays this phenomenon as the
Faustian striving. In his assertion of the will, Faust aspires to be a super-
man and alienates himself from Mother Nature. When he tries to be a
full-fledged earthling, he has to run over others. The masculine principle
of Faustian striving is too brutal and too cruel to take care of itself. It can
be saved only by the power of the feminine principle, which can provide
the sense of community for Faustian individuals. For the ethical stan-
dards in the natural world, Goethe installs Platonic ethical ideals as the
forms woven by the Mothers in their eternal abode. By virtue of these
eternal ideals, Faust can repent his egotistic outlook and open his eyes
for the utopian community. Thus Goethe retains the Christian legacy of
repentance and regeneration on the ethical level. But Faust dies before
gaining a chance to realize his utopian ideal. Even if he had not died, we
have to wonder whether his ideal community can be realized in the
Faustian world. There is a strong possibility that such an ideal commu-
nity may never pass from the stage of aspiration to the stage of realiza-
tion in the harsh world of Faustian individuals. In that case, the Faustian
world can never be redeemed. The Eternal Feminine may be no more
than the object of eternal aspiration, which is perpetually frustrated in the
real world. This is truly the tragic dimension of Faust, which cannot be
saved by the redemption of Faust's soul.
The world of The Ring is far more brutal than the world of Faust.
Goethe's hero is never forced into any power struggle all his life. But
The Ring is a world of perpetual power struggle. In that regard, the Wag-
nerian world is far more realistic than the Faustian world. In his Feuerba-
chian period, Wagner tried to resolve the problem of perpetual war by
instituting a new order to supplant Wotan's old order. This was the
Feuerbachian ending: As the reign of gods passes away, Bruennhilde
bums herself and Siegfried on the funeral pyre and bequeaths the reign of
love for the world. But this could not be justified because Siegfried had
been destroyed by the violence of her love. As we noted earlier, erotic
love is as self-seeking and as destructive as the love of power. After dis-
carding the naive Feuerbachian optimism, Wagner embraced the harsh
pessimism of Schopenhauer and adopted a Buddhist ending: Bruennhilde
and Siegfried are released from the land of desire and delusion and de-
part for the holiest land free from desire and delusion. But he has not re-
360 Chapter Ten

tained it in the final version because I believe it is incompatible with

naturalism. In the natural world, there is no land free from desire and
delusion. In the final version, Bruennhilde burns herself and Siegfried on
the funeral pyre and returns to Mother Nature to become one with Erda.
This is the only way to overcome the agony of individuation and accept
Erda's cosmic necessity because she is the eternal goddess of all that has
been, that is, and that will be, by necessity. This cosmic union stands be-
yond optimism and pessimism. This is the ultimate test for going beyond
good and evil. For the difference between optimism and pessimism is the
ultimate outcome of the distinction between good and evil. Hence to
stand beyond optimism and pessimism in union with the cosmic mother
is truly a Spinozan ending for the Ring cycle. In joy and love, Bruenn-
hilde rushes into the funeral pyre, where Siegfried's "laughing fire" lures
her and her horse. Her ecstasy in this fire festival is Dionysian and makes
a dramatic contrast with Isolde's ecstasy in the Apollonian illusion.
Whereas Isolde sings in a tone of exhaustion, Bruennhilde shouts in a
tone of exultation. In her Dionysian ecstasy, she is celebrating her reun-
ion with her beloved, thereby completing the return of herself and Sieg-
fried back to Mother Nature.
As the redeeming woman, as we noted earlier, Bruennhilde is like
Senta in The Flying Dutchman and Elizabeth in Tannhiiuser. But her re-
demption is secured in fire. Everything that is burned in fire goes back to
Mother Nature. In that regard, the redemption a~ the end of the Ring cy-
cle is different from the redemption achieved in The Flying Dutchman
and Tannhduser. The men redeemed in these two Romantic operas are
meant to thrive in this world. These two operas were written in the days
of Wagner's youthful hope that redemption was possible in the world of
individuation. But he has realized that his youthful hope was a Romantic
illusion. Nor does he look to the Schopenhauerian noumenal world for
redemption, as he did in Tristan and Isolde. Now he accepts this world of
suffering as the only reality and tries to secure redemption without any
Romantic illusion. 'By burning and joining herself with her beloved in
fire, Bruennhilde overcomes the world of individuation and secures re-
demption in this world. This is the theme of reunion and return, which
sets the tone for the ending of Twilight ofthe Gods. The task of redemp-
tion, which rested on Romantic love in The Flying Dutchman and Tann-
hiiuser, now stands on the knowledge of harsh reality in the Ring cycle.
 Wagner's Superhero 361

Love was enough for those Romantic operas, but it is not for the realistic
drama. It takes knowledge, too. Only the knowledge of reality can dis-
solve the Romantic illusion and overcome the alienation from Mother
Nature. The Romantic illusion is a sentimental salve for the bitter pain of
alienation.
Just before rushing into the funeral pyre, Bruennhilde recognizes her
role in the murder of Siegfried as an inevitable element of cosmic neces-
sity. She also recognizes the same necessity in his infidelity to her. She
says that he was the most faithful man who ever broke faith. But he had
no choice. So she says, "All things, all things, all things I know, all is
now revealed to me!" These words are sung in the fate motif. Her knowl-
edge is the recognition of fate that dictates the life of every creature in
the world. But her recognition of fate really began with Siegfried, when
he told his life story just before his death. In the course of this autobio-
graphical narrative, he breaks through the amnesia induced by Hagen's
magic potion and recovers his old, forgotten self. He also recalls how he
woke Bruennhilde out of her sleep and opened her eyes to light. This was
the moment when he recognized his identity with her, and this recogni-
tion was the end product of his sustained struggle for the discovery of his
identity that had been hidden by Mime's subterfuge. Hagen's potion was
the continuation of Mime's clever trick. Siegfried's recovered knowledge
of his identity will be added to Bruennhilde's knowledge of cosmic ne-
cessity. But the knowledge of cosmic necessity is not enough for re-
demption; it must be linked to the knowledge of self-identity. The union
of these two pieces of knowledge also underlies Zarathustra's redemp-
tion, as it is shown by his riddles of eternal recurrence. His vision of eter-
nal recurrence is his knowledge of cosmic necessity, and his identifica-
tion of himself with the dwarf riveted to the eternal ring is the knowledge
of his own self-identity. By recognizing the power of cosmic necessity,
Bruennhilde places Siegfried beyond good and evil. She was vindictive
of his infidelity because she had assumed that he had done all those terri-
ble things to her with his own free will. By the same power of knowledge,
she also places herself beyond good and evil and regains her innocence.
To regain innocence is to be freed from guilt. Individuals incur their guilt
by asserting themselves against Mother Nature and against one another,
and they are defiled by their guilt. To be purged of this defilement is the
purification of guilty individuals, and this is the ultimate end of recogniz-
362 Chapter Ten

ing cosmic necessity. When Bruennhilde understands the cosmic neces-

sity behind Siegfried's betrayal and recognizes his innocence, she calls
him "the purest." The rite of purification is performed in the fire.
The Gold Ring is also purified on the funeral pyre. Bruennhilde says,
"The fire that bums me will cleanse the curse from the Ring." It was pure
before it was molested by Alberich. To become pure again is the prereq-
uisite for the return to Mother Nature because purity had been lost by
alienation from her. Love, knowledge, and purification are the three ele-
ments of redemption dictated by Spinoza's naturalism. The knowledge of
cosmic necessity leads to the love of Mother Nature, and their combina-
tion reveals the innocence and perfection of all natural beings. For
Mother Nature is beyond good and evil. Love, knowledge, and purifica-
tion also operate in Zarathustra's final redemption. He is redeemed by his
love of Life and his knowledge of eternal recurrence. By throwing him-
self into the deep well of eternity, he achieves the same ecstatic union
with Life as Bruennhilde's union with Siegfried in the flame of his fu-
neral pyre. Both events are the rites of purification. When the sweet lyre
starts singing in "The Drunken Song" of Part IV, Zarathustra announces
that he has become pure. He had been polluted by the assertion of his
Faustian will. But he is purified in the well of eternity just as Bruenn-
hilde and Siegfried are by their knowledge of cosmic necessity on the
funeral pyre. Nietzsche has transposed what takes place on the Wag-
nerian funeral pyre to the well of eternity and replaces the Wagnerian
redemption in death with the Zarathustrian redemption in life. These two
repudiate the Faustian redemption by the heavenly host (taken literally).
Siegfried is destroyed by Bruennhilde's erotic love, but redeemed by
her maternal love. But her redemption scheme is not universal in its
scope. Her philotic love is limited to her kin, the Volsungs and the im-
mortals of Valhalla. The dwarfs are excluded from Bruennhilde's love of
redemption. Hagen is drowned mercilessly by the Rhinemaidens in the
Rhine. Their exclusion resembles the exclusion of Mephisto from the
redemption scheme in spite of his valuable service to the Lord in Heaven.
Their exclusion renders incomplete the reconciliation with Mother Na-
ture. If the dwarfs and the devils are her creatures, their inclusion in the
redemption is required for the full reconciliation with her. In the Ring
cycle, the dwarfs are treated even more harshly than Mephisto and his
cohorts in Faust. By their nature, the dwarfs are repulsive and depraved.
 Wagner's Superhero 363

That is not the case with Mephisto and his cohorts. If the dwarfs are the
children of Mother Nature, they should be as innocent as their mother. It
is understandable that they can become debased by asserting their power
and defiling Mother Nature. But Alberich is repulsive and depraved even
before the assertion of his power and his rape of the Rhinegold. The
dwarfs are too heartless to show any concern even for each other. They
show no philotic love for each other as the Volsungs do. Alberich can
only exploit his brother Mime and other Nibelungs. Neither does he have
any tender feeling even for his own son Hagen, who is raised and sacri-
ficed only as a pawn for the recovery of the Ring. Insofar as philotic love
is the natural impulse in the aid of biological reproduction, its absence in
the Nibelungs indicates that they are a strange race of natural depravity,
which is more horrible than moral depravity. The existence of such an
unnatural race is a disgrace to Spinoza's natural world. All creatures of
Mother Nature should share the same natural feelings of love and hate.
But the Nibelungs can feel no love, but only hate. Nietzsche removes this
anomaly from Spinoza's natural world by making over the dwarf as a
purely natural entity beyond good and evil. This is the most significant
change he makes in taking over Wagner's amoral world.
In Zarathustra's world, the dwarf is not repulsive by his nature. The
dwarf looks terribly ugly only because Zarathustra projects his own self-
hatred onto the dwarf. When he falls in love with the dwarf in the eternal
ring, the dwarf is transformed into a beautiful cosmic giant. Hence the
redemption of the dwarf depends on the conversion of self-hatred to self-
love, and his redemption is Zarathustra's own redemption. Beauty and
ugliness do not belong to different races as they do in The Ring. They
reflect two features of self-relation, the love and hatred of oneself. Here
lies the basic difference between The Ring and Zarathustra. The Ring is
the saga of a war between two races; Zarathustra is a reflection on the
war between two sides of a single self, the individual self and the cosmic
self. It requires a deep reflection to understand the nature of Zarathustra's
war. Though the combatants of The Ring intensely hate their enemies,
they seldom hate themselves. In that regard, their self-relation is not
anywhere as deep as that of Zarathustra. The ultimate end of Wotan's
war is simply the conquest of his enemy for the consolidation of his
power. But the ultimate end of Zarathustra's war is not that simple. He
has to recover his enemy as his own self and convert his self-hatred to
364 Chapter Ten

self-love. This is the war of self against itself. Thus Spoke Zarathustra is
a saga of this unprecedented war. This internal war is mistaken for an
external war by Zarathustra as long as he mistakes the dwarf for an ex-
ternal enemy. Hence his redemption lies in the recognition of this mis-
take and his acceptance of the dwarf as his ultimate self. On the other
hand, the war of The Ring remains an external battle between the mortal
foes Wotan and Alberich, Siegfried and Hagen, to the very end. This
makes impossible the inclusion of the dwarfs in the redemption scheme,
thereby making them the eternal outcasts in The Ring.
To reveal the dwarf as Zarathustra's ultimate self, I read Nietzsche's
epic as a psychodrama. According to Robert Donington, Wagner's work
can also be taken for a psychodrama. In The Ring, all the mythical events
and entities such as the gods and the goddesses, the giants and the
dwarfs, are supposed to represent the events and entities that exist and
operate within the individual psyche. What takes place in the external
world of the music drama is only an allegory of what takes place in the
internal world of the human psyche. In describing the psychological
world, Donington uses the Jungian terms of anima and animus, the self
and its shadow (Wagner's 'Ring' and Its Symbols, 269). Love is the rela-
tion between anima and animus, Bruennhilde and Siegfried. Hate is the
relation between the self and its shadow, Siegfried and Mime. Siegfried
and Bruennhilde are supposedly saved by the power of love, but Mime
and Hagen are damned forever by the power of hate. This psychological
allegory is highly plausible for those who cannot take the mythical
events and entities at face value, especially because Wagner himself
never takes them as real. But it presents one serious problem, namely, the
reduction of The Ring to a solipsistic drama. The love between Bruenn-
hilde and Siegfried is the interaction not between a woman and a man,
but between two components of one individual psyche. So is the war be-
tween Wotan and Alberich. This turns The Ring into a solipsistic trap.
The same consequence may follow from my psychological reading of
Nietzsche's epic. But Zarathustra can weasel himself out of the solipsis-
tic trap by the power of his cosmic self.
Paul Heise avoids the solipsistic consequence by framing his psycho-
logical reading of Wagner's work in terms of Feuerbach's psychology of
historical consciousness. He reads it as an allegorical account of how the
world consciousness has evolved in accordance with Feuerbach's phi-
 Wagner's Superhero 365

losophy ("The 'Ring' as a Whole"). Here is my summary of this histori-

cal allegory. Wotan and his Valhalla stand for the religious conscious-
ness that is built on the desire to escape from the harsh eartWy reality and
on the illusory dream of beauty and immortality. Alberich is the opposite
of Wotan. The dwarf accepts the harsh reality and builds his power on
the basis of his objective knowledge. This is the allegorical meaning of
the Gold Ring; it can be made only by renouncing love. To make this
renunciation is what it means to know and accept the harsh reality. On
the other hand, Wotan believes that he can retain love for eternity be-
cause he lives in illusion. The Ring is a frightful menace to Valhalla be-
cause subjective feelings can be no match to objective knowledge. Wo-
tan's battle against Alberich fizzles out in Valkyrie, but he continues to
sustain the religious consciousness by his reincarnation as Siegfried. Ac-
cording to Feuerbach, Heise says, poetry becomes a new religion when
the old religion dies out. Siegfried stands for this new religion of art and
poetry, which retains only the old religious feelings in poetry without the
old faith in the gods. The old Wotan also uses Bruennhilde, his will, as
the source of poetic inspiration for Siegfried in his struggle to sustain the
religious consciousness. But Siegfried and Bruennhilde are outmaneu-
vered by Alberich's son Hagen. Heise takes Hagen as natural science that
is grown out of Alberich's objective knowledge. Siegfried's murder by
Hagen stands for the dissolution of the new religion of aesthetic feelings
by the power of natural science. Thus Heise maintains that the Ring cycle
allegorically represents the rise and fall of religious consciousness.
This is Heise's Feuerbachian interpretation of Wagner's work. But
its plotline is framed more often by his Feuerbachian speculation than by
his textual analysis. He takes Siegfried for poetry because Feuerbach
says that poetry replaces religion after the religious age. He reads
Hagen's murder of Siegfried as the destruction of poetry by science be-
cause Feuerbach says that poetry is destroyed by science. He imposes
Feuerbach's philosophy of religion on the Ring cycle without providing
solid textual support. On his reading, the Ring cycle ends with the demise
of the religious age. Hence it covers only the first half of Feuerbach's
view of historical evolution without any sense of rebirth or redemption.
But Feuerbach takes the dissolution of religious consciousness not as the
ultimate end of historical evolution, but as the critical stage for the birth
of autonomous human beings to replace the old dying gods. Heise's alle-
366 Chapter Ten

gorical reading gives only a truncated view of the Feuerbachian historical

evolution. But we can amend it so that the Ring cycle can reflect the full
spectrum of Feuerbach's historical outlook. It can be done by refurbish-
ing Bernard Shaw's allegorical account.
In The Perfect Wagnerite, Shaw identifies Alberich and his Nibelung
horde as the allegorical symbol of capitalists exploiting the horde of pro-
letarians. But he provides no social identification of other characters in
the drama. This deficiency can be amended by extending Shaw's alle-
gorical social identification. Wotan and his divine horde can be identified
with the old feudal aristocracy, which belonged to the religious age. In
fact, the deities of this religious epoch were the warrior gods, who were
the idealized images of warriors, for example, Wotan and Donner, Zeus
and Ares. The Giants may stand for the primitive labor of peasants who
slaved to build Valhalla, the feudal castles and palaces. Wotan's fear of
Alberich and his Gold Ring reflects the threat of the bourgeoisie to the
old feudal aristocracy. Siegfried is the new aristocracy that emerges by
the synthesis of these two warring classes. This synthesis is indicated by
his descent from Wotan and his nurture by Mime, whose smithy repre-
sents the industrial technology. On his anvil, Siegfried reforges Nothing,
with which he shatters Wotan's Spear, the old power of feudalism. His
mission is to create a new secular age to replace Wotan's old religious
age. But he is betrayed and destroyed by Hagen, a scheming son (politi-
cian) of the capitalist Alberich. The murder of Siegfried by Hagen stands
for the demise of the new aristocracy on the altar of capitalism. But the
capitalists do not fare any better; their greed drives them to their own
destruction. Hagan drowns in the Rhine in his attempt to retrieve the
Gold Ring. This extension of Shaw's allegorical account roughly coin-
cides with modem German history. Unlike the French aristocracy, the
German aristocracy was never liquidated by the bourgeoisie. On the con-
trary, they rejuvenated their power by appropriating industrial capitalism
only to perish in the wars of capitalistic expansionism.
Siegfried despises the industrial capitalist (Mime) and disdains the
hoard (the capitalist wealth). Though he has overthrown the old aristoc-
racy, he still retains their sense of nobility. But it cannot withstand the
egoistic capitalists' greed for wealth and power. The sense of nobility
was a legacy of the illusion that produced the religious ethos. On the
other hand, the debasing power of greed and ambition was produced by
 Wagner's Superhero 367

Alberich and Hagen's objective knowledge. To accept the harsh earthly

reality without illusion only generates the ugly naked egoism without the
redeeming sense of nobility. No doubt, both the gods and the dwarfs are
the products of individuation. Both of them assert their individual wills.
But there is one fundamental difference between them. The Nibelungs
have no sense of kinship; they exploit one another without mercy and
shame. But the immortals maintain their sense of kinship and community.
In chapter 4, we noted that the Faust's soul had two parts, the noble com-
munal self and the base individual self. The latter is represented by Me-
phisto, who feels no sympathy for others and seeks only his own egoistic
interests. The communal self derives its nobility from its connection to
the community. The redemption of Faust's soul requires the separation of
its immortal element from the mortal one. The communal self is the im-
mortal element because it belongs to the Eternal Feminine, but the indi-
vidual self is mortal because it belongs to the mortal individual. The
communal self is redeemed by its nourishing link to Mother Nature. But
the individual self shrivels to death because it has severed its lifeline to
Mother Nature. This is the reason for the eternal damnation of Mephisto
as Faust's individual self. The same logic may apply to the conclusion of
The Ring. The Volsungs are saved by maternal love that provides their
sense of nobility and community. But the Nibelungs are beyond salvation
because their existence is never graced by maternal love. The power of a
loving mother is not even mentioned in the life of any single Nibelung.
We can make Shaw's reading fully Feuerbachian by expanding it to
the psychological level. Nibelheim depicts not simply the dismal condi-
tion of economic exploitation, but also the brutal psychological condition
of predatory individualism. Likewise, Valhalla represents not only the
social condition of old aristocracy, but also its psychological condition.
In Feuerbach's philosophy, social and psychological conditions are the
two sides of one spiritual phenomenon. The gods and the dwarfs should
be taken not simply as two social classes, but also as two stages of con-
sciousness in the historical development of humankind or rather
Spinoza's infinite substance. The young Siegfried represents the third
stage. This is the sort of historical approach that can carve out a fully
Feuerbachian reading of the Ring cycle.
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 Index
abysmal thought, 209, 213-14, 224,
236,240,255-58,263,288
Abyss, 21, 63, 92,128,130,140,
145-46,149-50,162,193,202,
209,212,214,216,234,252,257,
265,270-71,291-92,301,311-12.
See alos Chaos, Nothingness, and
Primal Darkness
accident, 161, 179, 83, 195-96, 200,
206,210-12,221,226-27,252,
287-88,301,305-7,309-24,336,
357. See also chance
Alberich, 300, 302-4, 308-11, 317,
324-40,350-52, 355-56, 362-65
amor dei, 221, 367
amor fati, 265-66, 292-93
ancient Greece, 13,68,83,278,
282
androgyny, 136, 152
Antaeus, 54, 83,87,93, 104,238
Aristotle, 52, 102, 152, 339
Arndt, Walter, 17
Atkins, Stuart, 33, 50, 51, 53, 55,
59,61,68,73,78,89,97,104,
107, 108, 118, 146
Bauer, Bruno, 163-64·
beauty, 29, 58-81,93,117,144-45,
247-80, 292-96, 303-4, 332-33,
363
Birth ofTragedy, 272-76,279-82
Bonaventure, 178
Borchmeyer, Dieter, 312, 320, 331,
333
BroVVll, Jane, 8,23,38,44,49,105,
127
Buddha and Buddhism, 237-38
Care, 15, 101-15,131,140,144,
212,270-71,311
chance, 210-12, 227-28, 287-88,
310. See also accident
Chaos, 21, 38, 54,63-76, 130, 149-
50, 162,291-94,312. See also
Abyss, Nothingness, and Primal
Darkness
Christ, 6, 16,88, 116, 123, 156,
164,178,180,230-31,234,237,
242,244-45,249,260,275
Christianity, 5-9, 14,88, 150, 154-
55,163-64,237,267,269,276,
298
community, 42-46, 48-54, 61-62,
87,91,106-17,134,137,139-42,
152,155,277,359,366
conscience, 102-3, 137, 140, 174,
176
consciousness, 161-62, 187,217,
286-87,295,356,365
Conway, Daniel, 282
Cooke, Deryck, 326, 354-55
372
cosmic necessity, 179, 205, 211-12,
225-26,265-66,301,305,313,
316, 338, 352, 360-62. See also
determinism
creation and creationism, 1, 4, 13,
19-22,63,72,91-92,131,161-64,
174-183,190,198-99,210-12,
240,243-44,293-94,335,338,
354,358
Dante, 39, 122-24, 142, 147, 155,
158,232,260-61,358
Daur, Albert, 154
l)aybreak, 282, 285-89,292
destiny, 160, 179, 212, 217, 225,
234,263,265,288,318. See also
fate
determinism, 35-36, 199,201-2.
See also cosmic necessity
devil, 1-7, 17-42,51,55,63,81,
88-94, 119-20, 139-40, 157, 169,
177-78,181,256-59,265,270-72,
311, 362, 365. See also Mephisto
Dionysus, 89,219,240,242,272-
73,276,336
Donington, Robert, 323, 358, 364
dwarf, 207-9, 214-19, 228-29, 235,
245-71, 287, 300-16, 322-24,
332-33,338,350, 361-65. See
also the spirit of gravity
Earth Spirit, 7, 10-20, 49-51, 54,
63-66,86,92-100,106-7,113-15,
127-30,153,157,190,269-71,
288,300
Index
earthling, 5-28, 34-36, 83, 87, 91-
93,97,106,131,153,269,301,
359
Emrich, Wilhelm, 108-9, 132
Enlightenment, 152, 164,274-76,
282-84
Erda, 13, 300-10
Eros. See erotic love
Eternal Feminine, 122, 131, 136,
141-47, 151-58, 192,263, 266,
269-71,297,334,350-59,366
eternal recurrence, 174, 199,202,
207-19,247,251-52,267-68,288,
296,301,314-15,322,337-8,
361-62. See also eternal ring
eternal ring, 208, 217-18, 222, 232,
234,240,249,251-53,256,260-
67,271,301,304,309,336-38,
361-63. See also eternal
recurrence
ethics, 9, 108, 125, 138-41, 154-56,
270-71,282,300,334,339,359.
See also morality
Euripides, 273
evolution and evolutionism, 66-80,
91-99,115-16,127-35,144,161-
62,168,272,278,283,289,298,
335-36,339,354,358-59
family, 32, 37,45-47,52-53,82-88,
98,110-17,134-43,339
Fairley, Barker, 125
fate, 35-36, 225, 252, 258, 265-67,
292,302,309-10,322-23,332,
336-37, 352-57, 361. See also
destiny
 Index
feminine principle, 126-36, 146-56,
269-70,334,359. See also
masculine principle
Feuerbach, Ludwig, 163-64, 170,
276-81,284,288,298-99,327,
359-60, 364-67
freedom, 43, 78,86, 105-7, 112-15,
120,168,170-73,176-78,199,
229,263,270,280,311-13,331,
334
friend and friendship, 173-78, 339-
41,351
Gearey, John, 78
giant, 54, 60, 179, 183, 196,217-
18,261,287,300-5,309,314-16,
324,330-32,336,363-66
Gilhus, Ingvild, 244
God, 2-14, 18-21,36,45-47,53,
60,67,84,92,96,123-25,131,
148-53, 161, 164-67, 178-82, 188,
193-94, 226, 230, 235-36, 242-49,
274,293,300,367
Gold Ring, 280, 302-6, 309-18,
321,324-38,344,351-58,362-63
Gretchen, 29-53, 66, 84-87, 90-94,
98, 102, 106, 115-17, 121-28,
132-43,147,153,358
guilt, 40, 45, 90, 101-2, 108, 133,
280,332,337,362
Gundolf, Friedrich, 56, 124-28,
141-42
happiness, 81-82, 108, 165-68, 184,
209,218,221-31,233-39,250,
253,264,266-67,272,318,333
373
Hegel, 13,49,88, 153, 164-65,
286,298,365
Heidegger, Martin, 231
Heise, Paul, 304, 334-35, 364-66
Helen of Troy, 29, 41,62-94, 106,
116,123,126-28,136-40,144
Herder, Johann, 11
Higgins, Kathleen, 202, 245
Hoyle, Fred, 162
Human, All Too Human, 281-88,
292
immortality, 132-33, 140, 143-44,
148,156,324
individualism, 4, 156, 175, 366
innocence, 2, 31-32, 173,245,296-
97,316,351,362
Jantz, Harold, 63-64, 68-69, 122,
134, 149
Jesus Christ. See Christ
Jung, Carl, 167,208-9,365
Kan~3,22,275,286
Kaufmann, Walter, 20, 23, 35, 202
Kitcher, Philip, 319-20, 326-33,
340-42,353-54,356
knowledge, 7-8, 27,48-53,93, 109,
126,157,187,191-92,204-5,
213-14,275,283-87,291,309,
313,335,345,348,354-57,361-
62
Lampert, Laurence, 175
Leibniz, 67, 132, 243, 293
Life, 200-11, 218-32, 240, 248-55,
266-71,295-97,300,309,312,
374
334, 337-38, 349-50, 356, 362,
365
Loeb, Paul S., 209
love, 16, 50, 82, 84, 120-21, 139,
144,156,184-87,242,250-54,
257,292-97,299,303,327-29,
332, 337-50, 353- 362-66; erotic
love, 29-53,65,69,78-79,84-87,
90-91,100,218-32,306-7,312-
13,317-22,324-26,350-52,360-
63; matemallove, 46, 124-38,
146-47, 353-54, 358, 363; self-
love, 175-79,261-67,364
Luke, David, 13, 91, 95
Luther, Martin, 7,165,180,241,
275-76,286
Magee, Bryan, 299
~agnus,Bernd,210
masculine principle, 126-30, 134-
36,137,151-52,155-56,269,
334,359
Mason, Eudo, 3-4, 11-13,25,35,
39,81,98,101-2,105-9,112-14,
122-31,138,141-42,146-48,151,
154-56
materialism, 195, 198. See also
physicalism
matter, 20,64,67,72, 161-62,
194-95,214,284-85,288-90
morality, 2-4, 125-26, 148, 154,
158,270-71,281-86,300,333-34,
363. See also ethics
Mother Nature, 6-13,16,22,24,
30, 34-36, 39, 44, 48-54, 66-67,
73,77-80,93-94,100,110,115-
17,127,133,153,157,179,205,
Index
212,219,238,242,248,255,
260-64,269-71,300,316,323-26,
334-37,357-366
Mothers, 21, 62-71, 76,127-30,
144-45,158,162,195,300,359
mysticism, 9-22, 34, 127, 145-50,
161,232,246-48,251-55,258-64,
267-72,278,291-92,295-97,337
myth, 71, 123,240,246, 272-82,
298, 300, 364-65
Napoleon, 154-57, 263-65
natural science, 148, 160, 164,241.,
273,278,280-84,289-96
naturalism, 11, 14, 92, 133, 143-44,
148-53,161,165,269,271-72,
275-81, 284-92, 297-98,360-62,
367
nature. See Mother Nature
Nehamas, Alexander, 198
Nothingness, 21-22, 63-66, 118-21,
149-50, 195, 291
pantheism, 11-12, 18, 22, 125,
148-50, 153, 244
Passage, Charles, 9-10, 24, 27, 30,
56,65,71-72,82,92,103,105,
146
passion, 27, 29-35, 39-43,46,49-
54,60,65,68-69,74-75,84,93,
103,115-17,127,136-40,168-73,
177-78,181-82,191-92,255-56,
326-28, 343-46
Pelikan,Jaroslav, 148-49
penitence, 121-24, 134, 141-43
pessimism, 214, 283, 286, 289,
359-60
 Index
physicalism, 161, 285. See also
materialism
Pippin, Robert, 262
Plato and Platonism, 3-5, 15-16,
58-60,63-67,71,79,113,131-32,
144-45,156,159,162,178,256,
284-86,300,339,359
pleasure, 23-24, 27, 34-36, 51, 58,
62, 92-93, 103, 115, 156, 189,
241,264,326
Plotinus, 178
power, 8-26, 29-43, 51, 57-58, 64-
68,71,79,84-87,93-96,99-106,
113-115, 122-29, 133-38, 145-46,
156-62,168-70,174,178-84,204,
220,231,246,252,264-66,272-
73,278-81,299-313,316,321-23,
340,343-44, 350-54, 358-66
Primal Darkness, 20-21, 63-66, 70-
71, 74, 77, 106, 128, 130, 145-46,
149-50,162,272,357
primal energy, 5, 14,51-52, 61,
66-68,75-80,117,130,162,190,
193,272,289,301
primal power, 58, 70, 73, 79
primal source, 1,4-5, 10, 17-18,20,
26,63,126,155,185
Pseudo Dionysus Arepagite, 178
purgation, 122, 132-33, 141,260-
61
rationalism, 273-75, 278, 283-84
redemption, 45-47, 108, 118, 121-
34, 138-46, 153-56, 159, 169,
180-83, 188, 195-202, 206-8,
213-19,225-27,233-34,237,240,
252-53,260-62,266,271-72,283,
375
307,314-16,323,336-38,350-54,
358-66
Reformation, 6-7, 275-56, 282
religion, 16,38, 152, 163, 167-69,
237,244-45,280-86
Renaissance, 5, 83, 87-88, 99, 113,
244,274-76,282
Rousseau, 286
Schacht, Richard, 319-20, 326-33,
340-42, 353-54, 356
Schiller, Friedrich, 42-43
Schlaffer, Heinz, 56
Schopenhauer,Arthur, 183, 194,
275-76,279,282-84,298-99,360
secular culture, 5, 163, 166-67, 180,
188,226,269-70,273-75
self, 34, 47,65, 91, 116, 158, 169,
172-79,206,210,214-16,228,
239,255-59,271,287,316,323,
348,364-65;conununalsel~
114-16,136-45,154-56,271-72,
341,366-67; cosmic self, 207,
216-22, 230-34, 238, 246-48,
251-55,259-60,262-69,292,364,
367; individual self, 116, 134-45,
155-56,159,207,210,230-34,
238,241,246-48,251-55,260,
266-72,292,341,364,367
self-overcoming, 188-90, 195,200,
250
sensuality, 27-30, 54, 94, 115, 173,
212,241-44,254
Shakespeare, 41-42, 155, 158
Shaw, Bernard, 312-13, 327-28,
331,366-67
376 Index

Siegfried, 221-22, 280-81, 298-302, 292,299,307-10,341,362;

309-24, 330-32, 336-37, 34-65
solitude, 24,60-65, 71, 79, 111,
145,158,162,172-78,181-85,
201-2,212,217,303-4,366
spirit of gravity, 170-71, 186-87,
207,210,212,217,225,228-29,
240-42,261,270,301-4,311
Staiger, Emil, 101, 111
Stambaugh, Joan, 247
Stimer, Max, 163-65, 176
Stoics and Stoicism, 168, 172-73,
180,183,191
superman, 1,5-16,27,48,83-86,
90,94-95,99,107,118,154-57,
160, 163-80, 182, 193, 197-204,
216, 227,238-41,253, 261-70,
282,298,303-8,322,359
Tanner, Michael, 332-33
Taoism, 21-22,
The Gay Science, 289-96
Tietz, John, 323
tragedy, 272-82, 296-99, 323,366
Tristan and Isolde, 221-22, 279-81,
319,360
autonomous (individual, Faustian
will, 208, 215-30, 233, 238, 252-
53,262,266-68,307-11,318,
355-59, 362; heteronomous
(cosmic, Spinozan), 208, 215-17,
220-21,225-27,253,266,307-11,
318, 322, 355-59
will to power, 19, 99-100, 174,
188-95,208,211,267,324-38
Williams, John, 26, 30, 37,42,44,
48,54,56,67,69,72,81,84,99,
114, 119
Wotan, 199-320, 325-37, 340-44,
347,350-59,364-66
Young, Julian, 284
Young Hegelians, 163-65, 180,
276,298
Zimmer, Heinrich, 167

Virgin Mary, 37,46, 121-24,128,

130,134,142,147-49,151,358

war, 70-80,86-101,115-16,172,
191, 229-30, 302-5, 337, 349-50,
357, 364-66
Whitlock, Greg, 237
will, 19,22,84-85,97,100,168-
69,171,178,182-83,188,195-
207,211-12,227,246,252,282,
 About the Author

T. K. Seung was born in North Korea in 1930. That was long before the
tragic division of Korea at the end of World War II, which led to the
internecine war between two Koreas in 1950. Three years before this war,
the author had escaped to South Korea and studied in Seoul High School
and Yonsei University in Seoul. When the Korean War broke out, he
joined the South Korean Army and served three years in the combat zone.
After the war, he came to Yale University and studied philosophy and
law. He taught at Yale, Fordham University, and Scripps College. He is
currently the Jesse H. Jones Regents Professor in Liberal Arts, Professor
of Philosophy, Professor of East Asian Studies, Professor of Government,
and Professor of Law at the University of Texas at Austin.
The author of this book has taught and written in many different
fields. His writings include The Fragile Leaves of the Sibyl: Dante's
Master Plan (1962), Kant's Transcendental Logic (1969), Cultural
Thematics: The Formation of the Faustian Ethos (1976), Structuralism
and Hermeneutics (1982), Semiotics and Thematics in Hermeneutics
(1982), Intuition and Construction: The Foundation ofNormative Theory
(1993), Kant's Platonic Revolution in Moral and Political Philosophy
(1994), Plato Rediscovered: Human Value and Social Order (1996), and
Nietzsche's Epic ofthe Soul: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (2005).
In his hermeneutic writings, the author has stressed the importance of
grounding the thematic account of a text in the matrix of its cultural
themes, namely, the themes that were operative in its cultural context.
This is his method of cultural thematics, which has been advocated in his
Cultural Thematics and Semiotics and Thematics. This thematic method
is based on the thesis that literary works are rarely self-contained and that
they can become complete only when they are placed in proper thematic
contexts. In this volume, the author has applied his method of cultural
thematics for articulating the genesis and evolution of Spinozan epics.