|
Amor Fati
It was Meta’s last day in Sils Maria, Switzerland, and she planned to spend as
much of it as she could outdoors.
Friedrich’s favorite walk was around the east bank of Lake Silvaplana,
half a kilometer from town. The lake was a shimmering, crystalline thing this
time of year, wreathed by the mountains on a horizon pulverized by white
peaks. It was on walks around this lake that he and Meta had first bonded four
summers ago. This was how she wanted to spend her last day with him. This
was how she wanted to remember him.
They left shortly after breakfast. The sun was perfect, and the air was
silky. She led, and he hobbled along behind her with his walking stick. They
passed barns and fields of cattle and a small sugar beet farm. Friedrich joked
that the cows would be his most intellectual companions once Meta left. The
two laughed and sang and picked walnuts as they went.
They stopped and ate around noon, beneath a larch tree. It was then that
Meta began to worry. They had come far in their excitement. Much farther
than she had anticipated. And now she could see that Friedrich was
struggling, both physically and mentally, to keep it together.
The walk back was arduous for him. He dragged noticeably now. And the
reality of her leaving the next morning fell over them like an ominous moon,
a pall upon their words.
He had grown grumpy, and achy. The stops were frequent. And he began
muttering to himself.
Not like this, Meta thought. She didn’t want to leave him like this, but she
must.
It was late afternoon by the time they approached the village. The sun was
waning, and the air was now a burden. Friedrich lagged by a good twenty
meters, yet Meta knew the only way to get him all the way home was by not
stopping for him.
They passed the same sugar beet farm, the same barn and the same cattle,
his new companions.
“What was that?” Friedrich shouted. “Where has God gone, you say?”
Meta turned around and knew what she would find before she even saw it:
Friedrich, walking stick waving in the air, shouting maniacally at a small
group of cows chewing in front of him.
“I shall tell you,” he said, breathing heavily. He raised his stick and
gestured to the mountains around. “We have killed him—you and I! We are
his murderers. But how have we done this?”
The cows chewed placidly. One swatted a fly with its tail.
“How were we able to drink up the seas? Who gave us the sponge to wipe
away the horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun?
Are we not perpetually falling in all directions? Are we not straying as though
through some Infinite nothing?”
22
“Friedrich, this is silly,” Meta said, trying to grab his sleeve and pull him
along. But he yanked his arm away; there was madness in his eyes.
23
“Where is God? God is Dead. God remains dead. And we have killed
him,” he declared.
“Please, stop this nonsense, Friedrich. Come on, let’s go to the house.”
“How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What
was holiest and mightiest of all has bled to death under our knives: who will
wipe this blood off us?”
Meta shook her head. It was no use. This was it. This was how it would
end. She began to walk away.
“What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of
atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of
this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to
appear worthy of it?”
Silence. A moo rang out in the distance.
“Man is a rope, tied between beast and Superman—a rope over an abyss.
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what can be loved in
man is that he is an overture [to something greater.]”
24
The words struck her. She turned and locked her gaze on his. It was this
idea of man being an overture to something greater that had drawn her to
Nietzsche so many years ago. It was this thought that had intellectually
seduced her, because, for her, feminism and women’s liberation (her
ideological religion) were that “something greater.” But, she realized, to
Nietzsche, it was simply another construct, another conceit, another human
failure, another dead god.
Meta would go on and do great things. In Germany and Austria, she
would organize marches for women’s suffrage—and achieve it. She would
inspire thousands of women worldwide to stand up for their own god projects,
for their own redemption, their own liberation. She would quietly,
anonymously, change the world. She would liberate and free more human
beings than Nietzsche and most other “great” men, yet she would do this from
the shadows, from the backstage of history. Indeed, today, she is known
mostly for being the friend of Friedrich Nietzsche—not as a star of women’s
liberation, but as a supporting character in a play about a man who correctly
prophesized a hundred years of ideological destruction. Like a hidden thread,
she would hold the world together, despite being barely seen and quickly
forgotten.
She would go on, though. She knew she would. She must go on and
attempt to cross the abyss, as we all must do; to live for others despite still not
knowing how to live for herself.
“Meta,” Nietzsche said.
“Yes?”
“I love those who do not know how to live,” he said. “For they are the
ones who cross over.”
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
