Veiled truth

Schiller tells us about the young man, greedy for truth, who visited the temple of Isis in Sais.  

Scarce could the Hierophant impose a rein
Upon his headlong efforts. “What avails
A part without the whole?” the youth exclaimed;
“Can there be here a lesser or a greater?
The truth thou speak’st of, like mere earthly dross,
Is’t but a sum that can be held by man
In larger or in smaller quantity?
Surely ’tis changeless, indivisible;
Deprive a harmony of but one note,
Deprive the rainbow of one single color,
And all that will remain is naught, so long
As that one color, that one note, is wanting.”

The Veiled Statue at Sais, Friedrich Schiller

Isis, painted ca. 1360 BCE

The hierophant warns the man: if he takes the veil, he will see the truth. At night, he goes back to the temple and has a look. In the morning, he is found dead at the feet of the statue.

The poem reminded me of the statue of Aphrodite by Praxiteles. The Greeks used to make statues of men in the nude and women draped. This image of Aphrodite, unveiled, placed in a temple where it could be seen from all sides, was a novelty. Here, too, a young men visited the temple at night and tried to get — in a way — nearer the truth: he was laughed at.

An earlier version of Aphrodite

Nietzsche refers to Schiller’s poem in “The Gay Science” and he compares the eager young man with the rationalists of his day:

“As if reality stood unveiled before you only, and you yourselves were perhaps the best part of it — o you beloved images of Sais!”
The Gay Science, §57 Translation Walter Kaufmann

It’s not the truth that is veiled here: it’s the young man looking at it. Who would you identify with: the young man thirsting for the whole truth? The pragmatic admirer of Aphrodite or the realist, perhaps busily trying to unveil only himself? Comments are moderated, but very welcome!

Dreaming reality

“I have suddenly awoke in the midst of this dream, but merely to the consciousness that I just dream, and that I must dream on in order not to perish; just as the sleep-walker must dream on in order not to tumble down.”

Nietzsche, The Gay Science, book I aphorism 54

Gai saber, an expression from the Provence, translated as ‘gay science’. Surely you could have guessed that it refers to the art of poetry. Walter Kaufmann mentions this in his foreword to The Gay Science. It’s a concept from the middle ages, when the barriers between poetry and science were still quite low. To Nietzsche it conveyed the image of “that unity of singer, knight and free spirit” that he associated with the Provence, with Zarathustra and, ultimately, with himself.

Is this the dark image of Dürer’s engraving “Knight, Death and Devil” that Nietzsche once gave to Richard Wagner? Or should we think more of Don Quixote: we know that Nietzsche appreciated him.

It might also be the Provencal troubadour and knight Bertran de Born. Heinrich Heine wrote a poem about him and Dante sent him to the eighth circle of hell, where he walked around holding his head out in front of him like a lantern. He was literally split in two, for causing a rift in his own family. Apparently, the songs of this knight were more powerful than his deeds. According to Heine:

“Er sang sie alle in sein Netz.”

“He sang them all into his net.”

Exactly like Nietzsche, I would say. You can read some of his aphorisms again and again, trying to unravel them, but still those dreamlike images have an effect on older parts of the brain. “It’s not real,” we could tell ourselves, waking up suddenly in the middle of the night. But, says Nietzsche, it’s all a dream.

Infinity

Giacomo Leopardi wrote his poem “L’infinito” in 1819.

This lonely hill was always dear to me,
and this hedgerow, which cuts off the view
of so much of the last horizon.
But sitting here and gazing, I can see
beyond, in my mind’s eye, unending spaces,
and superhuman silences, and depthless calm,
till what I feel
is almost fear. And when I hear
the wind stir in these branches, I begin
comparing that endless stillness with this noise:
and the eternal comes to mind,
and the dead seasons, and the present
living one, and how it sounds.
So my mind sinks in this immensity:
and foundering is sweet in such a sea.

(translated by Jonathan Galassi)

Nietzsche alludes this poem in the final aphorism of “Dawn”, according to Brittain Smith, who translated the book in the SUP “Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche”.

Carl Frederic Aagaard [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Leopardi wrote about infinity in the garden of his own home. Nietzsche imagines birds flying overseas, guided by an inner drive. And humans, going west, sailing towards the setting sun. We shouldn’t worry if it turns out we’re aiming for India but going in the wrong direction, or if we don’t make it at all.

“Foundering is sweet in such a sea,” says Leopardi, who was a favourite poet of Nietzsche. The aphorism seems to point towards Odysseus: rudderless, perhaps, but with eyes wide open.