[I]t is true that the movement toward
wholeness begins as madness. I cast off good, I cast off reason (sense), I open
beneath my feet the abyss from which action and its consequent judgments have
separated me. At the very least the consciousness of totality begins in despair
and inner crisis. When I abandon the framework of action, my perfect nakedness
is revealed to me. I am without recourse in the world, without support, I
collapse. There is no possible outcome other than an endless incoherence in
which chance is my only guide.
An experience so disarming is obviously to be made only when all others
have been tried and completed, when all possibilities have been exhausted. It is,
consequently, only in extremis that it can become the action of humanity as a
whole. It is, in our time, accessible to only a very isolated individual, through
mental disorder conjoined with unquestionable vigor. He can, if chance is with
him, discern in incoherence an unforeseen balance. Since this divine state of
balance expresses in the bold simplicity of its ceaseless play the discordance, the
imbalance of the dancing equilibrist, I take it to be inaccessible to the "will to
power." In my understanding, the "will to power," considered as a goal, means
a return to the past. In following it, I should be returning to the bondage of
fragmentation, accepting once again duty and the good, be dominated by
power. Divine exuberance, the lightness expressed in Zarathustra's laughter
and his dance, would be lost; in place of the joy in suspension over the abyss, I
should be inseparably bound by gravity, by the servility of strength through joy.
If we set aside the "will to power," the destiny conferred by Nietzsche upon
man places him beyond anguish; no return to the past is possible, and that is
the source of the doctrine's deep inviability. In the notes to The Will to Power,
projected action, the temptation of formulation of goals and politics merely end
in a labyrinth. The last completed text, Ecce Homo, declares the absence of goal,
the author's insubordination to plan of any kind. Nietzsche's work, seen from
the perspective of action, is an abortion- a strongly defensible one; his life is a
failed life, like that which attempts to put his writing into action. [My note:
Marechera's life can be seen similarly as a "failed life", from this perspective.]
Let no one doubt for an instant! One has truly not heard a single word of
Nietzsche's unless one has lived this signal dissolution in totality
[my note: this dissolution is the collapse of will to power upon reaching the limits] ; without it,
this philosophy is a mere labyrinth of contradictions, and worse; the pretext for
lying by omission (if, like the fascists, one isolates passages for purposes which
negate the rest of the work). I wish at this point to be particularly attended to.
The foregoing criticism is the masked form of approval. It is a justification of
that definition of the whole man: "the man whose life is an unmotivated feast";
it celebrates, in every sense of the word, a laughter, a dance, an orgy which
knows no subordination, a sacrifice heedless of purpose, material or moral.
The foregoing introduces the necessity of dissociation. Extreme states of
being, whether individual or collective, were once purposefully motivated.
Some of those purposes no longer have meaning (expiation, salvation). The
well-being of communities is no longer sought through means of doubtful effectiveness,
but directly, through action. Under these conditions, extreme states
of being fell into the domain of the arts, and not without a certain disadvantage.
Literature (fiction) took the place of what had formerly been the spiritual life;
poetry (the disorder of words) that of real states of trance. Art constituted a
small free domain, outside action: to gain freedom it had to renounce the real
world. This is a heavy price to pay, and most writers dream of recovering that
lost reality. They must then pay in another sense, by renouncing freedom in the
service of propaganda. The artist who restricts himself to fiction knows that he
is not a whole man, but the same is true of the writer ofpropaganda.
[my bolds]
wholeness begins as madness. I cast off good, I cast off reason (sense), I open
beneath my feet the abyss from which action and its consequent judgments have
separated me. At the very least the consciousness of totality begins in despair
and inner crisis. When I abandon the framework of action, my perfect nakedness
is revealed to me. I am without recourse in the world, without support, I
collapse. There is no possible outcome other than an endless incoherence in
which chance is my only guide.
An experience so disarming is obviously to be made only when all others
have been tried and completed, when all possibilities have been exhausted. It is,
consequently, only in extremis that it can become the action of humanity as a
whole. It is, in our time, accessible to only a very isolated individual, through
mental disorder conjoined with unquestionable vigor. He can, if chance is with
him, discern in incoherence an unforeseen balance. Since this divine state of
balance expresses in the bold simplicity of its ceaseless play the discordance, the
imbalance of the dancing equilibrist, I take it to be inaccessible to the "will to
power." In my understanding, the "will to power," considered as a goal, means
a return to the past. In following it, I should be returning to the bondage of
fragmentation, accepting once again duty and the good, be dominated by
power. Divine exuberance, the lightness expressed in Zarathustra's laughter
and his dance, would be lost; in place of the joy in suspension over the abyss, I
should be inseparably bound by gravity, by the servility of strength through joy.
If we set aside the "will to power," the destiny conferred by Nietzsche upon
man places him beyond anguish; no return to the past is possible, and that is
the source of the doctrine's deep inviability. In the notes to The Will to Power,
projected action, the temptation of formulation of goals and politics merely end
in a labyrinth. The last completed text, Ecce Homo, declares the absence of goal,
the author's insubordination to plan of any kind. Nietzsche's work, seen from
the perspective of action, is an abortion- a strongly defensible one; his life is a
failed life, like that which attempts to put his writing into action. [My note:
Marechera's life can be seen similarly as a "failed life", from this perspective.]
Let no one doubt for an instant! One has truly not heard a single word of
Nietzsche's unless one has lived this signal dissolution in totality
[my note: this dissolution is the collapse of will to power upon reaching the limits] ; without it,
this philosophy is a mere labyrinth of contradictions, and worse; the pretext for
lying by omission (if, like the fascists, one isolates passages for purposes which
negate the rest of the work). I wish at this point to be particularly attended to.
The foregoing criticism is the masked form of approval. It is a justification of
that definition of the whole man: "the man whose life is an unmotivated feast";
it celebrates, in every sense of the word, a laughter, a dance, an orgy which
knows no subordination, a sacrifice heedless of purpose, material or moral.
The foregoing introduces the necessity of dissociation. Extreme states of
being, whether individual or collective, were once purposefully motivated.
Some of those purposes no longer have meaning (expiation, salvation). The
well-being of communities is no longer sought through means of doubtful effectiveness,
but directly, through action. Under these conditions, extreme states
of being fell into the domain of the arts, and not without a certain disadvantage.
Literature (fiction) took the place of what had formerly been the spiritual life;
poetry (the disorder of words) that of real states of trance. Art constituted a
small free domain, outside action: to gain freedom it had to renounce the real
world. This is a heavy price to pay, and most writers dream of recovering that
lost reality. They must then pay in another sense, by renouncing freedom in the
service of propaganda. The artist who restricts himself to fiction knows that he
is not a whole man, but the same is true of the writer ofpropaganda.
[my bolds]
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