Abandoned on the Mountains of the Heart

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

Page III

In consequence, in the last four verses, the hermit fights his self-pity: although he admits to being plagued by melancholic memories at night, he is no longer willing to regard himself as a spectre. Instead, he now sees his old friends as mere wraiths, ghosts of friends. The hermit’s realization of their stagnation symbolized by old age, as opposed to his renewed youth achieved by constant self-transformation, has exorcized them (or so the hermit would want to believe), and he maintains “one has to change to stay akin to me,” anticipating, it would seem, Rilke’s famous Orpheus-Sonett II/12.(13) However, in the last verse, a utopia of new friends has replaced the memory of the old ones. According to Pestalozzi, this results in the “appearance of the poem having ended up flatter than it had originally been conceived” (206), because the self is still not defined self-sufficiently, after all. The “message“ of this Nietzsche poem thus remains: “Whoever wants friends must not climb high mountains. He ought to remain in the lowlands, where people live” (219). This is also expressed in the remorse felt by the wanderer in Zarathustra, “his heart raw as never before” (KSA 4, 195), who cries bitterly when thinking of the friends he actively left behind in order to find his self in his lone ascent to his highest mountain top. “Loneliness is a dangerous thing, the longer it lasts, the more dangerous it becomes,” the private person Nietzsche admits, while the philosopher’s “mask of holy loneliness” becomes less and less able to hide this danger, the more often he employs it.(14)

In consequence, Zarathustra finally finds himself no longer amongst humans, let alone friends, but birds of prey, “Zwischen Raubvögeln.” Following Colli’s advice, aesthetic judgement ought to be left aside when considering this Dithyrambus. Instead, it is best read as a prominent example of Nietzsche-Zarathustra stripped bare in his own poetry:

Whoever wants to venture down here,
how quickly the depths will devour him!
—But you, Zarathustra,
love the abyss still,
doing as the fir tree does?


Wer hier hinabwill,
wie schnell schluckt den die Tiefe!
—Aber du, Zarathustra,
liebst den Abgrund noch,
thust es der Tanne gleich? (KSA 6, 389)

That fir-tree, whom Zarathustra is literally equated with (“der Tanne gleich,” my emphasis), is further described as taking root at the edge of the abyss, “patiently conniving, tough, silent, lonely.” The only guest who would dare to visit is the bird of prey, who cruelly taunts Zarathustra: “one has to have wings if one loves the abyss,” unlike him, the “Self-knower!/ Self-executioner” (390) who clings to the edge, having bound and strangled himself with the rope of his wisdom. Once, the bird continues to sneer, Zarathustra was proud, “the hermit without God,/ cohabitating with no-one but the devil” (392). Now, however, he is nothing but a tired riddle, a question mark bent in between two nothings—by no one’s fault but his own: in “Der Wanderer,” Zarathustra had willed the identity of the summit with the abyss (“Summit and abyss—have now been resolved to be one!”; KSA 4, 194). This implies that that identity is not a natural one; and his statement “From the lowest, the highest must come to its height” already sounds rather forced than convinced. By the time of his arrival amongst birds of prey, “Zwischen Raubvögeln,” the merciless emptying of both heaven above him and the abyss of his self below him—“the heaviest burden” (KSA 6, 391)—have finally resulted in a total void in meaning bending the philosopher, once “the scarlet prince of every mischief,” double with self-hatred and fatigue. Sick with the snake’s venom of knowledge, he is someone who knows, “ein Wissender,” high up on a mountain and simultaneously buried deep within himself, digging away at his very substance, hollowing himself. Indeed, as Peter Sprengel has observed, “Tanne” is an anagram of “néant,” French for “nothing.”

The bird at home in surroundings hostile to humans, the silent isolation associated with cognition, the mountain climber facing the abyss—these, and many more, elements from the Nietzsche works discussed so far feature in a well-known Rilke poem. “Exposed in the Mountains of the Heart” (“Ausgesetzt auf den Bergen des Herzens”), separated from “Einsiedlers Sehnsucht” by three decades—or by a generation—exactly, was written in September 1914. That year saw another turning point in Rilke’s development, both personal and poetic. Seven years before, he had been enjoying the beginning of his longest period of sustained creativity. Seven years later he was to be about to enter into the famous, feverish phase of the completion of the Duino Elegies and the outpouring of the Sonnets to Orpheus in only one month.(15) At this point, which, seen symmetrically and metaphorically, constructs his “midst of infertility,” “Ausgesetzt...” came into being; three months after “a strange poem I could not help but call “Turning” as it represents the turning point which has to come to pass if I am to live.”(16) With a nod to his friend Kassner,(17) to whom he was to dedicate his eighth Elegie in 1922, the poem which most clearly “reflect[s] Rilke’s grievous confrontation with his inability to love” (Kleinbard 215) bears the decidedly Nietzschean motto “the path from inwardness to greatness leads through sacrifice”:

TURNING
[...]
For there is, you see, a limit to looking.
And the more-seen world
wants to flourish in love.

The work of vision is done,
now go and do work of the heart
on the pictures within you, those captured ones; for you
have overpowered them: but you do not know them now. […]


WENDUNG
[...]
Denn des Anschauens, siehe, ist eine Grenze.
Und die geschautere Welt
will in der Liebe gedeihn.

Werk des Gesichts ist getan,
tue nun Herz-Werk
an den Bildern in dir, jenen gefangenen; denn du
überwältigtest sie: aber nun kennst du sie nicht. […] (SW II, 83)

“Ausgesetzt...” represents an answer to “Wendung”’s appeal to drop the cold and technical approach of “Anschauen” as practiced, under Rodin’s influence, mainly in the Neue Gedichte, in favour of a loving reflection on the “geschautere Welt.” Yet, Rilke had already anticipated the crisis which was to befall him in 1914 in a famous poem from that very collection, namely, in the last verse of “Der Panther” from 1902:

Only sometimes the curtain of the pupils
soundlessly slides up—. Then an image enters,
goes through the limbs’ taut stillness—
and in the heart ceases to exist.

Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille
sich lautlos auf—. Dann geht ein Bild hinein,
geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille—
und hört im Herzen auf zu sein (SW I 505).

Indeed, in the notion of a picture silently entering the caged animal’s pupil and progressing through its tense yet immobile limbs, only to cease to be upon its arrival in the panther’s heart, “Wendung”’s themes are all assembled: looking in relation, or even direct opposition, to the heart, as well as the interrelated topics of stagnation and imprisonment. Referring to Nietzsche’s Dithyrambus “Nur Narr! Nur Dichter!” (nearly identical with Zarathustra’s “Lied der Schwermuth 3”; KSA 4, 371), which states that “eagle-like, panther-like/ are the poet’s desires” (KSA 6, 379), Gunnar Decker sees the panther, always by Dionysos’ side in Greek mythology, as an analogy to the poet caught in a “Zwischenreich” or “anti-world which the bourgeois wants to see locked away” in the Rilke poem.(18) Similarly, Phelan suggests that “we may indeed wish to understand the panther of the poem as an analogy for its author,” remarking on the self-referentiality of much of Rilke’s writing as represented by that particular poem (1992, 45). Such observations would seem to be supported by the poet himself: in a letter to Salomé dating from the same year as many of the Neue Gedichte, Rilke “realizes that an intellectual or spiritual appropriation of the world relying entirely on vision, as was the case with me, proves less dangerous to the sculpting artist as it is calmed more tangibly by physical results.”(19) He had failed to differentiate sufficiently between the two art forms, poetry and sculpture; and he had failed to realize that unlike the sculptor’s ever present physical raw material, he had to create material to work with from the abstract, slippery things that are words. It was not only vital “to find the tool for my art, the hammer, my hammer,” (BW LAS 105), but also that which that hammer could work on.

Thus, Rodin’s motto that Rilke admired so that it cannot be repeated too often—“qu’il faut travailler, travailler toujours”(20)—could not be applied to his own art, which had to be more than the disciplined daily application of the self to becoming an objective recording instrument, a human camera, as it were. His poetry, formerly inspired by pure looking, “Anschauen,” now needed “love” to thrive: “And the more-seen world/ wants to flourish in love.” This reminiscent of Nietzsche’s dictum in the Gay Science that “all great problems demand great love” (KSA 3, 577); also, tellingly, when Rilke himself wrote about other artists, he required of himself not objectivity, but love. The motto of his Worpswede book was, “in Jacobsen’s words: “thou shalt not treat him justly; for where would justice take the best among us; no; but think of him in the hour during which you loved him most deeply...’”(21)

Some years on—in a passage of a letter to Stefan Zweig from 11 August 1907, which was to become his Cézanne-year, about Emile Verhaeren, the imaginary recipient of his Letter of the Young Worker (Brief des jungen Arbeiters)—the poet no longer separates justice from love, but, rather, sees love and admiration as a condition of justice. Criticizing his contemporaries’ inclination toward criticism rather than admiration, he writes, already foreshadowing the line from his Orpheus-Sonett II/23, “We, only just where we still praise” (“Wir, gerecht nur, wo wir dennoch preisen”, SW I 767):

One does not exaggerate if, speaking of Verhaeren, one addresses all the love one has for his existence also at his work, as it is, the greater, the better. I also believe that one is never more righteous than in the moment of devoted admiration.

Man übertreibt nicht, wenn man, von Verhaeren redend, alle Liebe, die man für sein Dasein hat, auch an sein Werk wendet, so wie sie ist. Je größer je besser. Ich glaube auch, daß man nie gerechter ist, als wenn man mit aller Hingabe bewundert (B I 263).

This development in Rilke points yet again to Nietzsche, who argues in love’s favour in the Zweite Unzeitgemäse Betrachtung, a work read by the poet that also advises against false objectivity. In the philosopher’s view “the eternalizing power of art” (which in real life he ironically gave up in favour of theory) joins forces with love (which he, ironically, never enjoyed in its guise as adult relationship). Together, both are believed to engender the “Self-forgetting” (KSA 1, 323) that makes room for honesty and, thus, true cognition.(22) One is reminded once more of Zarathustra’s aversion, expressed in the chapter “On the Immaculate Perception,” to any pretension to objectivity. Nietzsche connects “On the Isles of Bliss” to “On the Pitiful” here by thematizing the problem of cognizance jointly with that of shame:

This parable speak I unto you sentimental dissemblers, unto you, the “pure discerners!” You do I call—covetous ones!
Also ye love the earth, and the earthly: I have divined you well!—but shame is in your love, and a bad conscience—ye are like the moon!
To despise the earthly hath your spirit been persuaded, but not your bowels: these, however, are the strongest in you!
And now is your spirit ashamed to be at the service of your bowels, and goeth in by-ways and lying ways to escape its own shame.

Dieses Gleichniss gebe ich euch empfindsamen Heuchlern, euch, den “Rein-Erkennenden!” Euch heisse ich —Lüsterne!
Auch ihr liebt die Erde und das Irdische: ich errieth euch wohl!—aber Scham ist in eurer Liebe und schlechtes Gewissen,—dem Monde gleicht ihr!
Zur Verachtung des Irdischen hat man euren Geist überredet, aber nicht eure Eingeweide: die aber sind das Stärkste an euch!
Und nun schämt sich euer Geist, dass er euren Eingeweiden zu Willen ist und geht vor seiner Scham Schleich- und Lügenwege. (KSA 4, 156).

As before in the Historie-essay, and as Rilke was to do later in poems such as “Wendung,” Nietzsche here states his belief in the superiority of an emotional cognizance over that achieved by cold, disinterested looking, expressing his violent distaste in highly creative and amusing terms such as “emasculated squinting” or “fumbling with cowardly eyes,” transporting obvious sexual connotations. In brief, anyone claiming an objective will to knowledge because of a fear of being associated with desire will only achieve less knowledge, along with the stain of dishonesty and shame. In “On Chastity,” the philosopher’s alter ego asks: “Has not merely your lust dressed up, calling itself pity?” (KSA 4, 70). The lesson to be learned here is obvious: sublimated drives can suffocate, as pity managed to kill even God. At the very least, they are hostile to creative processes.

Now, Rilke’s response to his new, unfamiliar surroundings, the “learning ground” of his heart where he has abandoned himself, ought to be examined:

EXPOSED on the mountains of the heart. See, how
small there,
see: the last hamlet of words, and higher,
and yet so small, a last
homestead of feeling. Do you recognize it? [...]

AUSGESETZT auf den Bergen des Herzens. Siehe, wie
klein dort,
siehe: die letzte Ortschaft der Worte, und höher,
aber wie klein auch, noch ein letztes
Gehöft von Gefühl. Erkennst du’s? [...] (SW II 94)

At first, the poet attempts to apply his old technique to his new-found inner landscape: looking (“siehe”). Despite the reminder given to himself in “Wendung” that the work of looking has been done, “Werk des Gesichts ist getan,” he is seemingly still trying to grasp such abstract things as language and emotion visually. However, the poem now exactly takes as its theme how that method cannot work any more since all the experiences he has gathered, all the pictures he has stored away within him have not fermented and developed into imagination yet. They remain foreign to him. Freud might have taken this as evidence for his theory of the resistance of pure “remembering” to consciousness.(23)

Alternatively, apart from meaning “face,” “Gesicht” can imply something altogether different from mere “looking.” Especially in the sense of “das zweite Gesicht,” it also stands for the intuition of the visionary or prophet that is not rational, but emotional. However, this approach does not lend itself to the poem in question as Rilke quite clearly differentiates “Werk des Gesichts” from “Herz-Werk,” work of the heart; regarding the latter as secondary in chronological order, but primary in importance. Its “content lies in the transformation of suffering” (Görner 2004, 175); Rilke asking elsewhere: “Does being-heart not mean coping?” (KA 2, 128). Indeed, as a consequence of the isolation resulting from Rilke’s flight into an emotional, inward world—which was to come to fruition in the Elegien in the perfection of lines such as “Nowhere, beloved, will the world be but inside. Our/ life goes by in change” (SW I 711)—there is now the entire notion of communication to be rethought. On the mountains of the heart, only very few words can exist, and they are only barely visible. This, at last, implies Rilke”s rejection of his cold, impersonal “looking,”(24) much like Nietzsche had done in Zarathustra, remarking in the guise of the “Wanderer”: “He, however, who is obtrusive with his eyes as a discerner, how can he ever see more of anything than its foreground!” (KSA 4, 194). The few words the voice of “Ausgesetzt…” can still make out are of a disappearing smallness—such as that of a couple of houses lost in the vastness of a mountain-range. “Emotion” is now equated with “words,” it is small yet, “[auch] klein.” This levelling out of the two should strike one as very unusual, especially with regard to the commonplace of the heart being the exclusive domain of emotion. Admittedly, Rilke does make a quite literally small concession to this cliché by setting “emotion” higher on the mountain, closer to the moral, true and silent peak. He thus expresses the belief that (silent) emotion lies deeper within the heart than (loud) speech, but it is also harder to recognise and potentially impossible to communicate.(25) Emotion is primary to thought. It outlasts the latter, reaching further than language, as Nietzsche writes in The Gay Science (KSA 3, 502), once again preempting Rilke: “Thoughts are the shadows of our emotions,—always darker, emptier, simpler than the latter.” Accordingly, Storck remarks on the “discrepancy between expression and emotion” which is thematized in this Rilke poem.(26) The critic even maintains that emotion itself “remains behind faced with the height and ice-coldness of the absolute.” This, in turn, is rather reminiscent of Nietzsche’s self-appraisal in Ecce Homo:

Those who can breathe the air of my writings know that it is an air of the heights, a strong air. One must be made for it. Otherwise there is no small danger that one may catch cold in it. The ice is near, the solitude tremendous—but how calmly all things lie in the light! How freely one breathes! How much one feels beneath oneself! Philosophy, as I have so far understood and lived it, means living voluntarily among ice and high mountains—seeking out everything strange and questionable in existence […] Every attainment, every step forward in knowledge, follows from courage, from hardness against oneself.

Wer die Luft meiner Schriften zu athmen weiss, weiss, dass es eine Luft der Höhe ist, eine starke Luft. […] Das Eis ist nahe, die Einsamkeit ist ungeheuer—aber wie ruhig alle Dinge im Lichte liegen! wie frei man athmet! wie Viel man unter sich fühlt!—Philosophie, wie ich sie bisher verstanden und gelebt habe, ist das freiwillige Leben in Eis und Hochgebirge—das Aufsuchen alles Fremden und Fragwürdigen im Dasein […] jeder Schritt vorwärts in der Erkenntniss folgt aus dem Muth, aus der Härte gegen sich (KSA 6, 258f.).

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