Volume XI, Issue II, Spring 2018

THE AGONIST
and deception, in that they tell of “gods and Übermenschen.” Zarathustra declares
that he is weary of all this; in Part III he will even say he is ashamed of being a
poet (Z III: “Tablets” 2). The section “On the Poets” is striking because poetic
language in Zarathustra and other texts is often praised as an alternative to
traditional knowledge claims, and Gleichnis is frequently deployed in a positive
manner in Zarathustra. 2 But here knowledge seems to be a corrective for poetry
and parables (even of Übermenschen!)—more precisely for too much deception,
which is not a rejection of poetry outright. Zarathustra goes on to say that poets
old and new are superficial and shallow, that “they have not taken their thought
deep enough” (Sie dachten nicht genug in die Tiefe). Their beautiful creations must
pale before something ugly, which is spelled out in the next two sections of the
text.
In “On Great Events,” something momentous looms ahead. The next
section, “The Soothsayer,” foretells the nihilistic effects of eternal recurrence:
that everything is in vain because of endless repetition. Zarathustra is stricken by
this and has a terrible dream where he sinks into life-denial. But images of
children and laughter presage the next section, “On Redemption,” where the
eternal recurrence of life is affirmed, which redeems what has been by willing its
return—a “vision” that composes (dichten) the past, present, and future into a
unified necessity. This composition is contrasted with life-denying, vengeful
“fable-songs (Fabelliedern) of madness.” The vision will become a direct
experience of eternal recurrence in Part III (“On the Vision and the Riddle”);
and the thought of eternal recurrence will be counter-posed to Zarathustra’s
admission of shame at being a poet (Z III: “Tablets” 2).
What is evident in the span of texts I have sketched is an ambiguous set of
juxtapositions—poetry, knowledge, experience, a confrontation with nihilism,
and composition of the life-affirming thought of eternal recurrence—the upshot
of which is not easy to fathom. In addition, the seeming critique of poetic
deception does not sit well with an important moment in a later text, GM III:
25, where Nietzsche declares that the life-denying ascetic ideal is not countered
by science (because of its belief in truth) but by art, because in art “lying
sanctifies itself and the will to deception has good conscience on its side.” What are
we to make of all this? We seem to face a tangled intersection of truth, lying,
thought, and poetry, which I will attempt to sort out in what follows.
Portable Nietzsche (New York: Viking Press, 1954). Z is by Graham Parkes in Thus Spoke
Zarathustra (Oxford University Press, 2005). I have occasionally altered the translations.
2 Some examples: Z I: “Gift-giving Virtue,” Z II: “Isles of the Blest,” Z II: “Grave
Song,” and Z III: “Homecoming.”
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