Abandoned on the Mountains of the Heart

Silence and the Cognitive Value of Art and Emotion in Nietzsche and Rilke

by Katja Brunkhorst

Page II

This essay is concerned with two philosophizing poets in crisis; namely, with Rilke during his phase of artistic silence, or “Verstummen,” in 1914 as mainly represented by “Ausgesetzt auf den Bergen des Herzens” (“Exposed on the Mountains of the Heart”), and with Nietzsche’s cries for help, which curiously always seemed to take the form of poetry, in “Einsiedlers Sehnsucht” (“Hermit’s Longing”), and the Dionysos-Dithyramben. Whereas Giorgio Colli, writing about the latter, maintains “Nietzsche the poet is none other than Nietzsche the philosopher” (KSA 6, 454) (1), the editor of the KSA however simultaneously advises interpreters in spe to maintain a respectful distance from the philosopher’s lyrical output. According to Colli, Nietzsche’s poetry contains “impressive material,” but lacks authentic expression due to its inextricable interconnectedness with the prose work, “and many other elements behind it.” Employing the same adjective Heidegger used regarding the interpretation of Rilke’s “valid poem,”(2) Colli’s verdict is that any kind of judgement, particularly on the aesthetic level, of Nietzsche’s poetry would be “conceited” as that poetry represents the philosopher-poet’s inner experiences, which cannot be verified nor repeated (455).

Colli’s observations may help to provide a context for the only statement concerning Nietzsche’s poetry we have by Rilke, which, taken by itself, seems rather obscure:

The beautiful almanac, however, has arrived, which I am interacting with a lot these days,—the Nietzsche poem is possible, after all, in turns becoming clear and refusing to be found in the contexts it is found in, corresponding to its existence and non-existence. . .

Dafür kam der sehr schöne Almanach, mit dem ich nun viel verkehre,—das Nietzsche-Gedicht ist doch möglich und wird in den Zusammenhängen, in denen es sich findet, abwechselnd deutlich und unauffindbar, wie es seinem Dasein und Nichtdasein entspricht. . . (Briefwechsel, 33).

Rilke wrote this to Katharina Kippenberg on 31 October 1911 with regard to the Insel-Almanach auf das Jahr 1912, wherein “the Nietzsche poem,” “Hermit’s Longing,” is reproduced as follows (83-86):

O noon of life! O time to celebrate!
O summer garden!
Relentlessly happy and expectant, standing: —
Watching all day and night, for friends I wait:
Where are you, friends? Come! It is time! It’s late! [1]

Higher than mine no table has been set: —
Who lives so near
The stars or dread abysses half as sheer?
My realm, like none, is almost infinite,
And my sweet honey—who has tasted it? .... [2]

The glacier’s gray adorned itself for you
Today with roses;
The brook seeks you, and full of longing rises
The wind, the cloud, into the vaulting blue
To look for you from dizzy bird’s-eye view — — — [3]
>
—There you are, friends!—Alas, the man you sought
You do not find here?
You hesitate, amazed? Anger were kinder!
I—changed so much? A different face and gait?
And what I am—for you, friends I am not? [4]

Am I another? Self-estranged? From me?
Did I elude?
A wrestler who too oft himself subdued?
Straining against his strength too frequently,
Wounded and stopped by his own victory?— [5]

I sought where cutting winds are at their worst?
I learned to dwell
Where no one lives, in bleakest polar hell,
Unlearned mankind and god, prayer and curse?
Become a ghost who wanders over glaciers? [6]

A wicked archer I’ve become!—The ends
Of my bow kiss;
Only the strongest bends his bow like this.
No arrow strikes like that which my bow sends:
Away from here—for your own good, my friends!— [7]

—My ancient friends! Alas! You show the shock
Of love and fear!
No, leave! Do not be wrath! You—can’t live here:
Here, among distant fields of ice and rock—
Here one must be a hunter, chamois-like. [8]

You leave?—My heart: no heart has borne worse hunger;
Your hope stayed strong:
Don’t shut your gates; new friends may come along!
Let old ones go! Don’t be a memory-monger!
Once you were young—now you are even younger! [9]

No longer friends—there is no word for those—
It is a wraith
That knocks at night and tries to rouse my faith,
And looks at me and says: “Once friendship was—”
—O wilted word, once fragrant as the rose! [10]

What once tied us together, one hope’s bond—
Who reads the signs
Love once inscribed on it, the pallid lines?
To parchment I compare it that the hand
Is loath to touch—discolored, dark, and burnt.— [11]

Youth’s longing misconceived inconstancy!
Those whom I deemed
Changed to my kin, the friends of whom I dreamed,
Have aged and lost our old affinity:
One has to change to stay akin to me. [12]

O noon of life! Our second youthful state!
O summer garden!
Restlessly happy and expectant, standing!
Looking all day and night, for friends I wait:
For new friends! Come! It’s time! It’s late! [13]


O Lebens Mittag! Feierliche Zeit!
O Sommergarten!
Unruhig Glück im Stehn und Spähn und Warten!
Der Freunde harr ich, Tag und Nacht bereit:
Wo bleibt ihr Freunde? Kommt! 's ist Zeit! 's ist Zeit! [1]

Wer wohnt den Sternen
So nahe, wer des Lichtes Abgrundsfernen?
Mein Reich—hier oben hab ichs mir entdeckt—
Und all dies mein—wards nicht für euch entdeckt? [2]

Nun liebt und lockt euch selbst des Gletschers Grau
Mit jungen Rosen,
Euch sucht der Bach, sehnsüchtig drängen, stoßen
Sich Wind und Wolke höher heut ins Blau,
Nach euch zu spähn aus fernster Vogelschau— — — [3]

Da seid ihr, Freunde!—Weh, doch ich bins nicht,
Zu dem ihr wolltet?
Ihr zögert, staunt—ach, daß ihr lieber grolltet!
Ich bins nicht mehr? Vertauscht Hand, Schritt, Gesicht?
Und was ich bin, euch Freunden bin ichs—nicht? [4]

Ein andrer ward ich und mir selber fremd?
Mir selbst entsprungen?
Ein Ringer, der zu oft sich selbst bezwungen,
Zu oft sich gegen eigne Kraft gestemmt,
Durch eignen Sieg verwundet und gehemmt?— [5]

Ich suchte, wo der Wind am schärfsten weht,
Ich lernte wohnen,
Wo Niemand wohnt, in öden Eisbärzonen,
Verlernte Mensch und Gott, Fluch und Gebet,
Ward zum Gespenst, das über Gletscher geht. [6]

Ein schlimmer Jäger ward ich: seht, wie steil
Gespannt mein Bogen!
Der Stärkste wars, der solchen Zug gezogen—
Doch wehe nun! Ein Kind kann jetzt den Pfeil
Drauf legen: fort von hier! Zu eurem Heil!— [7]

—Ihr alten Freunde! Seht! Nun blickt ihr bleich,
Voll Lieb und Grausen!
Nein, geht! Zürnt nicht! Hier—könntet ihr nicht hausen!
Hier zwischen fernstem Eis- und Felsenreich—
Da muß man Jäger sein und gemsengleich. [8]

Ihr wendet euch?— —O Herz, du trugst genug!
Stark blieb dein Hoffen!
Halt neuen Freunden deine Türe offen,
Die alten laß! Laß die Erinnerung!
Warst einst du jung, jetzt—bist du besser jung! [9]

Nicht Freunde mehr,—das sind, wie nenn ichs doch?
Nur Freund-Gespenster!
Das klopft mir wohl noch nachts an Herz und Fenster,
Das sieht mich an und spricht ‘wir warens doch?’
—O welkes Wort, das einst wie Rosen roch! [10]

Und was uns knüpfte, junger Wünsche Band,—
Wer liest die Zeichen,
Die Liebe einst hineinschrieb, noch, die bleichen?
Dem Pergament vergleich ichs, das die Hand
zu fassen scheut - ihm gleich verbräunt, verbrannt!— [11]

O Jugendsehnen, das sich mißverstand!
Die ich ersehnte,
Die ich mir selbst verwandt-verwandelt wähnte—
Daß alt sie wurden, hat sie weggebannt:
Nur wer sich wandelt, bleibt mit mir verwandt! [12]

O Lebens Mittag! Zweite Jugendzeit!
O Sommergarten!
Unruhig Glück im Stehn und Spähn und Warten!
Der Freunde harr' ich, Tag und Nacht bereit: —
Der neuen Freunde! Kommt! 's ist Zeit! 's ist Zeit! [13]

This is a slightly altered version of the original poem, written approximately at the same time as most of the Dithyrambs (most of which, after all, were taken from Book IV of Zarathustra) and sent to Heinrich von Stein in late November 1884.(3) Another variant, inclusive of two additional final verses written in spring 1886,(4) features in Beyond Good and Evil as “From High Mountains. Aftersong” (KSA 5, 241-243). As such, the poem had a major impact on the generation after Nietzsche, one example being Schnitzler,(5) who was “touched and taken” by it, further lauding it rapturously as “Nietzschean sentimentality!—Weeping marble! Passages which even have an effect on the ladies, without one having to take offence at the passages, or the ladies.“(6) In contrast—also, particularly, with Gundolf’s enthusiastic judgement (“it is one of the greatest poems ever created”)(7)—Rilke’s assessment, uttered the same year as Gundolf’s, seems strangely restrained. Two potentially subtly negative remarks regarding Nietzsche as poet are immediately striking: provided the term “Nietzsche-poem” is taken as reference to Nietzsche’s poetry per se, the word “doch” (“after all”) suggests that, so far, it had been assumed (by whom is unclear—maybe, by Rilke as opposed to the Nietzsche-enthusiast Kippenberg) impossible, and hence, that Nietzsche was no poet. Moreover, in claiming that it cannot be found at times, according to its “non-existence,” Rilke in fact declares “the Nietzsche-poem” non-existent, at least temporarily.

It is possible that in those problematic categorizations the poet implied the “lack of authentic expression” as diagnosed by Colli, and therein, the aesthetic limitations of the philosopher’s “poem.” Alternatively, he may simply have found himself unable to creatively repeat the inner experiences mediated in the poem at that point in his life, and hence failed to “understand” it—it is quite impossible to know for certain. What remains even more open to further interpretation is the precise meaning of “the contexts it is found in.” Whilst it would seem too simplistic, and therefore highly unlikely, for that phrase to merely refer to the context of the Almanach, it would amount to pure conjecture to suggest an alternative here. Suffice it to add, for the sake of a more balanced view, that the mature poet, at the very least, obviously enjoyed and valued Nietzsche’s verse: Marga Wertheimer, briefly Rilke’s secretary in the autumn of 1924, reports that her employer sometimes recited “poems [...] by Nietzsche” to her at Muzot, “before we started to work in the morning or in the afternoon” (13f.). Sadly, Wertheimer does not specify any further which Nietzsche poems exactly Rilke read to her. Therefore, “Hermit’s Longing,” “very close to his ‘Zarathustra’” (Pestalozzi 220) and demonstrably known to Rilke, will be examined more closely now, as shall selected Dithyrambs—which, although the last of his works the author prepared for publication himself, actually largely stem from the same period as the tale of the Persian prophet’s wanderings.(8) As “a series of immediate records of states of the soul” rather than philosophical abstractions (KSA 6, 458), those works shed a highly focused, “verdichtetes” (“densified”) light, as only “Dichtung,” poetry, can, on the artist-philosopher’s state of mind while composing his Zarathustra.

In case one wishes to argue that loneliness was the Leitmotiv of much of Nietzsche’s life, and, as a consequence, pervades much of his writing, it would be worth one’s while to examine the events of 1884. In the autumn of that year, Nietzsche was to write his best-known poem, “The Free Spirit. Goodbye,” better known as “Grown Lonely,” whose mood of autumnal gloom anticipating the loneliness represented by winter (particularly in the line “How lucky is he, who still has a—home!”; KSA 11, 329) is echoed in Rilke’s “Autumn Day”: “He who has no house now, will no longer build“ (SW I, 398). Already on 22 February however, after having completed Book III of Zarathustra, the philosopher wrote to Rohde:

And this, friend, is how it is with everyone who is dear to me: everything is over, past, protection; one still sees one another, one talks so as not to be silent—, one still writes letters to one another so as not to be silent. The truth, however, is told by the eyes: and they tell me (I hear it well enough!) “Friend Nietzsche, you are now entirely alone!”

Und so, Freund, geht es mir mit allen Menschen, die mir lieb sind: alles ist vorbei, Vergangenheit, Schonung; man sieht sich noch, man redet, um nicht zu schweigen—, man schreibt sich Briefe noch, um nicht zu schweigen. Die Wahrheit aber spricht der Blick aus: und der sagt mir (ich höre es gut genug!) “Freund Nietzsche, du bist nun ganz allein!” (KGB III.1, 478f.)

Here, a typically Nietzschean revaluation takes place: the spoken and written word has lost its meaning; it has become silent, whilst the normally silent glance speaks the truth—as far as the embittered philosopher’s subjective perception is concerned, at least (“der Blick […] sagt mir”; my emphasis). The wistful nostalgia of these lines mourning the breakdown of communication with those dearest to him finds such numerous echoes in “Einsiedlers Sehnsucht” that that poem must be seen as distinctly autobiographical.

The middle part of its three-part structure in particular is clearly anticipated in the complaint to Rohde. According to Pestalozzi’s apt interpretation,(9) verses one to three of “Einsiedlers Sehnsucht” constitute the exposition, setting the scene for the eagerly anticipated arrival of the friends. Alluding, once more, to the Bible (“für euch mein Tisch gedeckt”; “Mein Reich”), Nietzsche positions his lyrical I high up on a glacier: traditionally, the top of a mountain has always been the locus for divine revelation, and solitude its necessary precondition. The Nietzschean hermit, however, is not merely passively waiting, he is also an active explorer (“entdeckt” is repeated twice) proudly displaying his new-found empire and longingly wooing his old friends to appreciate its beauty. Still, his particular discovery is not the replacement of the Christian God by himself (as the rather grandiose biblical vocabulary might suggest), but by the community of friends as a part of which, in turn, the “Einsiedler” defines himself, thereby justifying his hermit status.(10)

However, in the middle part in verses four to nine—pre-emptively summarized, it would seem, by the lines to Rohde—the scenery changes dramatically: the young roses disappear, and the glacier once more becomes what it actually is: deadly and threatening. This is symbolic of the hermit’s disillusionment, whose friends have arrived but fail to recognize him as part of their group. At first, this makes him realize that he is by himself in his inhospitable surroundings, a “ghost who wanders over glaciers” in icy winds, for no reason. However, the six questions the “Einsiedler” then asks himself in verses four to six also indicate the chance for a re-positioning of the self as independent and self-reliant (“Mir selbst entsprungen?”, unlike the English translation, “From me? Did I elude?”, clearly bears the connotation of “sprung from myself”), much as that situation is initially scary and loathsome to him. In the seventh verse, Philoktet, hero of antiquity, is alluded to,(11) who united within himself the divine strength of the Heraclitean bow that he guarded and the weakness of the sick and abandoned hermit that he was. This implies that the Nietzschean hermit’s strength transcends himself; it is now beyond his control. As a consequence, he now even urges his friends to leave, almost threatening them. In the ninth verse, he addresses his own heart instead, and asks it to let go of old memories, to fully let itself in for the painful process of disillusionment, and to look to the future.(12)

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