My Nietzsche

for Rs

Just the other day I was looking at Kaufmann’s introduction to Thus Spoke Zarathustra when I came across this fact: Nietzsche and I are the same height. In that instant I grasped it all: I am a giant.

I have a different perspective on human life because I gaze down upon it like an eagle from the towers of five foot eight. Does the thunder frighten you? It is merely our laughter, the laughter of we titans, we five foot eight Hyperboreans.

In all probability, I could walk in Nietzsche’s shoes; I weigh 66 kilos; I could wear his overcoat -the overcoat of the Father of the Overman. I could fit into his suits. I would wear them with no underwear in a Revaluation of All Values! Naked like a child!

Listen as I mock this Wagner CD! And kiss this horse!

Nietzsche was a lonely man; if you doubt this, read Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Zarathustra has disciples; he leaves them; he comes back; he leaves them; in the end he spends time in bed talking to his animals. I, too, spend time in bed talking to my stuffed animals.

We are lonely: because we stand at the five foot eight peaks of wisdom, a horizon from which we can see the coming of that which justifies Man, the Overman. We carried our ashes to the mountains. We return bringing our fire to the valley. This has met with mixed results.

In all of Zarathustra’s wanderings, in his questings, -no where does he find any hint of a girlfriend, unless that girlfriend be eternity herself, wedded with that nuptial ring of rings, the eternal return, which is really more of a personification and so there is really no hint of a girlfriend and everything will repeat itself exactly as it has happened, with fire-dogs, dwarves, hunchbacks, tarantulas but no girlfriend.

I, too, go everywhere in my student’s coat, and here and there slap somebody on the shoulder and say, Siamo contenti? Son dio ho fatto questa caricatura.

I, too, have had Caiphas put in fetters, Wilhelm, Bismarck, and all Anti-Semites abolished.

For in the end, I would much rather have been a Basel professor than God; but I have not dared push my private egoism so far as to desist for its sake from the creation of the world, You see, one must make sacrifices however and wherever one lives.

Tomorrow my son Umberto will come with the lovely Margharita, whom, however, I shall also receive here only in shirtsleeves. The rest is for Frau Cosima -Ariadne -from time to time there is magic.



You may make any use of this letter which will not degrade me in the eyes of those at Basel.



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