[Nietzsche Circle][Hyperion]

Abandoned on the Mountains of the Heart

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

Page IV

It is by now clear that Rilke knew how to breathe the air of Nietzsche’s writings; after all, he was, at this point in his life, himself settling in the vicinity of that cold and silent peak of true cognition, or perhaps absolute honesty—albeit, unlike Nietzsche, not of his own accord, “freiwillig,”(27) but rather, exposed or abandoned, “ausgesetzt.” To both, that ice-cold “Unbedingte,” the absolute that is inaccessible to emotion, is equated with the furthest possible reach of the heart, “dem äußersten möglichen Ausschlagswinkel des Herzens,” and thus, confusingly, with emotion itself. This, however, would imply that “Ausgesetzt…” is exclusively a poem representing the inexpressibility of emotional intensity, when in fact it is also its two-fold opposite: a very accomplished expression of sadness and isolation triggered by one’s inability to feel.(28)

Theo Meyer assesses “that speech-scepticism of Rilke’s as part of his Nietzschereception, albeit of a hidden one” (206)—without doubt correctly, particularly given the following passage from Rilke’s essay Der Wert des Monologes (1898):

But one will have to stop overestimating >the word< someday. One will come to realize that it is merely one of many bridges connecting the island of our soul with the great continent that is our shared life, the broadest it may be, but not the finest.

Aber man wird einmal aufhören müssen, >das Wort< zu überschätzen. Man wird einsehen lernen, daß es nur eine von vielen Brücken ist, die das Eiland unserer Seele mit dem großen Kontinent des gemeinsamen Lebens verbinden, die breiteste vielleicht, aber keineswegs die feinste (SW V 435).

However, serving the educational cliché or “Bildungsklischee” of the resistance of certain experiences to the grasp of language (see Lorenz 31) indeed does nothing to dissipate the suggestion that Rilke did not exactly overestimate his own capacity for emotion. Rather, he is abandoned in the vicinity of his last resources of connection to other human beings. Further below—further down the mountains of his heart, down in the valleys that, undoubtedly, represent the less conscious, or even the un-conscious—the speaker must surely assume a wealth of “villages,” maybe even “cities,” of words and feelings. Yet, even if they should exist, he is nowhere near them any longer. He is in the middle of a deep personal crisis which is leaving clear marks (of obscurity, in his case) on his work. Still, he is attempting a contact by asking a “Thou” whether he or she recognizes, knows, or is able to make out his last homestead of feeling: “Erkennst du’s?”, “do you recognize it?”, clearly mirrors Wendung’s “aber nun kennst du sie nicht,” “but you do not know them now.” He doubts whether he will ever be able to know what he sees because he fears that he might not hold the sufficient amount of love needed to achieve this aim. For the moment, he is captured within himself, all alone.

It is vital here to point out that the contact with the reader is not only sought explicitly but also by means of an implicit appeal to our collective unconscious.(29) Rilke uses a language which is fractured and which sometimes chooses to grow silent out of the dark memory of a time in which all words were still available, a time which stood for the experience of totality (see Lorenz 21). Hofmannsthal’s Lord Chandos, too, remembers that time when the entire being seemed to possess great unity and he felt nature in everything, and in all nature he felt himself.(30) To the Rilke of 1914, a sense of a mystical communion between everything and everyone remains elusive. He is not familiar with himself at all, he keeps asking (“Erkennst du’s?”) an apostrophied subject and himself, and thus, also the reader, questions. He uses deictic expressions (“siehe”) to point out the remaining landmarks of his heart; he wants someone to recognize them with him, or even for him.

The next section of the poem emphasises Rilke’s crisis as a poet. While the first section had connected language and emotion with a dialogical structure, there now is a slight thematic shift towards knowledge, or cognition, which has been prepared for by the question “Erkennst du’s?”, which immediately precedes this part:

Exposed on the mountains of the heart. Stoneground
under your hands. Even here, though,
something can bloom; on a silent cliff-edge
an unknowing plant blooms, singing, into the air.
But the one who knows? Ah, he began to know
and is quiet now, exposed on the mountains of the heart.

Ausgesetzt auf den Bergen des Herzens. Steingrund
unter den Händen. Hier blüht wohl
einiges auf; aus stummem Absturz
blüht ein unwissendes Kraut singend hervor.
Aber der Wissende? Ach, der zu wissen begann
und schweigt nun, ausgesetzt auf den Bergen des Herzens.

“Aussetzen” has more meanings than merely “to abandon,” and in the sentence-fragment “ausgesetzt auf den Bergen des Herzens” framing this verse it is precisely the silence, or rather, the absence, of both a syntactical subject and a “non-perfected” verb, which, in a truly dialogical fashion, leaves room for an alternative choice. In this case, the context almost unmistakably suggests that of “to come to a halt.”(31) The now resulting notion of unproductiveness is intensified by the “stony ground” at the end of the same line, which suggests infertility. Like Nietzsche does in “Of the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” here, the poet contrasts dead intellectual knowledge with fertile emotionally integrated knowledge. Furthermore, since the first line of this second section is almost entirely a repetition of the first line of the poem, it is legitimate to draw a comparison between the two words that differ; especially since they are linked by alliteration. We have already seen how Rilke has renounced any attempt to grasp the abstract and the invisible (words and emotion) visibly. The equation of “Siehe” with “Steingrund” now again clearly denies the former’s productivity.

If, indeed, it is not only the lyrical I of this poem (which displays autobiographical features, anyway) who has been abandoned, one wonders who, or what, else has (been) “ausgesetzt.” Firstly, a process of (emotional) cognition, which implies him getting to know his feelings in the case of this poem, has come to a halt: “Ach, der zu wissen begann/und schweigt nun, ausgesetzt [...].” It seems as if that process has not simply come, but ground to a halt on this dead, stony ground. “Hier blüht wohl einiges auf” does not necessarily contradict this deadness, especially if the word “auf” is taken into account sufficiently. The ground itself on the mountains of the heart is, doubtless, infertile. The valley below, however, takes whatever has silently fallen down into its soil, which is so rich that the now singing, blooming herb grows all the way to reach the mountain’s peak.(32)

Like Zarathustra’s “Wanderer,” “Der Wissende” seems like a mountain climber—after all, he has “Steingrund unter den Händen.” And like the “Selbsthenker” “Zwischen Raubvögeln,” a fellow “Wissender” who is “in eignen Stricken gewürgt” (KSA 6, 390), he has been silenced by his very own knowledge in the thin air of increasing mental instability. He is still a stranger up there (“Hier blüht wohl/ einiges auf”; my emphasis) who, unlike “ein unwissendes Kraut,” does not sing anymore. He cannot see things the old way any longer, and this makes one wonder along with Rilke’s Malte whether it is possible “to see everything differently and yet live.” Malte is afraid of change; like the mountain climber in “Ausgesetzt...,” he would gladly prefer the animal’s experience of a “verwandte Welt” to the constant “Verwandlung” of a world without names:

But I am afraid, I am afraid namelessly of this transformation. I had not yet been accustomed to this world which seems good to me. What am I to do in another one? I would so like to remain amongst the meanings which I have become attached to, and if something has to change at all, I would at least like to live amongst the dogs, who have a related world and the same things.

Aber ich fürchte mich, ich fürchte mich namenlos vor dieser Veränderung. Ich bin ja noch gar nicht in dieser Welt eingewöhnt gewesen, die mir gut scheint. Was soll ich in einer anderen? Ich würde so gerne unter den Bedeutungen bleiben, die mir lieb geworden sind, und wenn schon etwas sich verändern muß, so möchte ich doch wenigstens unter den Hunden leben dürfen, die eine verwandte Welt haben und dieselben Dinge (SW VI 755f.).

Possibly both have climbed too high, too far away from that unconscious (“unwissend”), fertile totality of everything down below, there where song is being. The chances of survival are, after all, rather slim for someone who has been abandoned high up on a barren mountain range.

Two contributing factors to the birth of the poem, and indeed of this verse in particular, are by now obvious. First, it is reminiscent of the “self-flagellation” of the intellectual as well as of the disgust with “Bildung,” or institutionalized education, that emanates from much of Nietzsche’s writing. To the philosopher thinking in 1873, the overly proud European of the nineteenth century is mad, for “his way of walking is climbing as a knower.” Having lost touch with both nature and his instincts, he who knows, “der Wissende,” is always in danger of slipping, for his cognizance is not a support, but merely spider’s webs, “nur noch Spinnefäden” (all KSA 1, 313). The biblical loss of innocence (before Nietzsche’s revaluation of cognizance as innocent in Zarathustra) springs to mind here, and indeed, a deep fall seems inevitable in the light of the duality to be felt in Nietzsche’s consideration and, due to a direct influence perhaps, in this poem. This, in turn, mirrors both Nietzsche and Freud’s analogous perception of the unsuitability of the traditional reasoning in binary oppositions.(33)

The fragmented self of the, according to Andreas-Salomé, tendentially schizoid Rilke is another obvious analogy, as is his creative crisis at the time of the birth of this poem. According to Salomé, this probably would have been evidence of a lack of (self-) love to Rilke, without which he could not attain knowledge.(34) And indeed, his “conception of a division in consciousness [between the feeling man and the introspective observer] resembles the psychoanalytic notion of splitting the ego” (Kleinbard 43). The sharp contrast between the state of mind Rilke aspires to and that which he actually inhabits is shown in the last part of the poem, which is also the hardest to grasp:

While, with their full awareness,
many sure-footed mountain animals pass
or linger. And the great sheltered bird flies, slowly
circling, around the peak’s pure denial.—But
without a shelter, here on the mountains of the heart . . . .

Da geht wohl, heilen Bewußtseins,
manches umher, manches gesicherte Bergtier,
wechselt und weilt. Und der große geborgene Vogel
kreist um der Gipfel reine Verweigerung.—Aber
ungeborgen, hier auf den Bergen des Herzens . . . .

The speaker obviously envies the mountain animal for its secure sense of permanence in change, or “Dauer im Wechsel”(35) (“wechselt und weilt”). This corresponds directly to a passage of the eighth, also called the silent,(36) Duineser Elegie, which presents, in the image of the animal, “vivid equivalents of genuinely human possibilities” (Lorenz 152):

If the animal moving toward us so securely
in a different direction had our kind of
consciousness—, it would wrench us around and drag us
along its path. But it feels its life as boundless,
unfathomable, and without regard
to its own condition: pure, like its outward gaze.

And where we see the future, it sees everything
and itself within everything, forever healed.

Wäre Bewußtheit unsrer Art in dem
sicheren Tier, das uns entgegenzieht
in anderer Richtung—, riß es uns herum
mit seinem Wandel. Doch sein Sein ist ihm
unendlich, ungefaßt und ohne Blick
auf seinen Zustand, rein, so wie ein Ausblick.

Und wo wir Zukunft sehn, dort sieht es Alles
und sich in Allem und geheilt für immer (SW I 715).

Especially in the light of this passage, the poem has now moved from an individual’s crisis to a lamenting of the human condition in general. The lines in “Ausgesetzt...” describing the “Bergtier” are separated visually effectively from the final statement of resignation concerning the fate of the human being by a dash. Whereas the animal is “heilen Bewußtseins,” “geheilt für immer,” we have no “Ausblick,” because or view on “Alles,” on the totality produced by the unity of life and death, is blocked by our “Reizschutz Bewußtsein.”(37) The animal, however, cannot turn us around with him towards a healthier, a saner approach to life precisely because it lacks “Bewußtsein unsrer Art.” We can merely try to follow its direction by watching it, and learning from it. Once more, a decidedly Nietzschean presence would seem to be pervading Rilke’s thought here: in “Of the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” the artist-philosopher equates both action and happiness (and, in consequence, silence) with the opposite of knowledge, or consciousness, namely, the (animal’s) ability to forget:

A human being may well ask an animal: why do you not speak to me of your happiness but only stand and gaze at me? The animal would like to answer, and say: The reason is I always forget what I was going to say— but then he forgot this answer too, and stayed silent: so that the human being was left wondering.

Der Mensch fragt wohl einmal das Thier: warum redest du mir nicht von deinem Glücke und siehst mich nur an? Das Thier will auch antworten und sagen, das kommt daher dass ich immer gleich vergesse, was ich sagen wollte—da vergass es aber auch schon diese Antwort und schwieg.(38)

This takes us and Rilke back to the original dilemma. Forced to abandon, to silence our longing for wholeness and unity with nature, we remain outsiders of life, condemned to “look,” to be its spectators: “—But/ without a shelter, here on the mountains of the heart. . . .” The poem runs out into silence. This literally points, once more, to “the unspeakable [...] behind all languages,”(39) but also to Rilke’s resignation concerning the possibility of a true communion with another human being. He is “ungeborgen,” which, unlike the translation “without a shelter,” also implies his not having been found.(40) He realizes that now he has not been recognized by an Other, there is no need for language any longer.

Last, a glance at his biography will serve once more to shed some light on Rilke’s psychological isolation. In a letter to Magda von Hattingberg written in the same year as “Ausgesetzt...,” “he complained that his father’s concern for him had taken the destructive form of “speechless anxiety,” against which Rilke had found it almost impossible to defend himself” (Kleinbard 132). Rilke had already observed in himself his father’s emotional sterility, and now it becomes evident why silence and a lack of love are connected so inextricably in this poem. His father’s death had not relieved the burden, now Rilke’s likeness to him became even more compulsive. “The self, like the poem, is a place of ambivalence where meanings are not given but must be made; the self, like the poem, reflects what is around it and yet must always be fashioned,” Jonathan Hufstader explains his idea of poetry as self-fashioning.(41) The ruptures in this poem reflect all too much what was around the poet by whom, tragically, a truly whole sense of self, as part of a natural totality, was never attained. It was attained only for him; in the unconscious silence of his own death. “Wechsel,” change, corresponds to our earthly life, and—despite the necessity “to find stability within time and determine one’s own identity from within its influence”(42) he felt so urgently—Rilke never experienced any feeling of endurance in it. Thus “Dauer,” permanence, must mean death, as Lou Andreas-Salomé wrote to Sigmund Freud in 1927:

The moment when Rainer was relieved of the flowing change and transformation of his existence, he acquired a solid outline, the most individual totality of his being emerged in the inward engagement with him [...]. No, one does not babble it into clarity for oneself. But there absolutely has been a desire within me, since Rainer’s death, to tell you of that.

Im Moment, wo Rainer dem fließenden Wandel und Wechsel seiner Existenz enthoben war, bekam er eine geschlossene Umrißlinie, seine eigenste Wesenstotalität hob sich, in der innern Beschäftigung mit ihm, heraus [...]. Nein, man schwätzt es sich nicht ins Klare. Aber in mir steckte unbedingt ein Verlangen, seit Rainer’s (sic) Tod, Ihnen davon zu sagen.(43)

(published in Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics, a web publication of The Nietzsche Circle: www.nietzschecircle.com, April 2009)

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