On Nietzsche's Moustache

Not Vital: Nietzsche's Schnauz (1993)

Aluminium (70 x 140 x 40 cm)

Image via Galerie Nordenhake

 

'Thus the gentlest and most reasonable of men can, if he wears a large moustache, 

sit as it were in its shade and feel safe there ...' [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Understanding as he did the importance of first impressions, Nietzsche highly valued the protective and deceptive nature of his exuberantly styled facial hair. 

 

He even noted in one of his middle period books that a formidable moustache allows a gentle soul to mask their sensitive nature and be perceived as an "easily angered and occasionally violent" [2] military type and thus treated with more respect than is often shown to mild-mannered university professors. 

 

 

II.  

 

The style of 'tache adopted by Nietzsche as soon as hormones allowed, is known as a walrus moustache. It is characterised by thick, bushy whiskers that droop over the mouth and resemble the whiskers of the large marine mammal from which it takes its name. 

 

Nietzsche, of course, was not unusual in choosing to have a Schnurrbart of this type, as they were extremely popular among men in the latter half of the 19th century when he was doing his thing (revaluing values and so on).  

 

Soldiers, scientists, politicians, and poets - not just rogue German philosophers - favoured this rugged style regarded as a symbol of masculinity and, in Poland, a mark of nobility and traditionalism [3].     

 

 

III. 

 

Now, I have to confess, personally, I don't like this moustache - hate it, in fact.  

 

Nevertheless, I do like Nietzsche and I am interested at the moment in the work of the contemporary Swiss artist Not Vital who, in 1993, created a surreal aluminium sculpture titled Nietzsche's Schnauz ... 

 

Retrospectively asked about the piece in a conversation with the curator, critic and art historian Hans Ulrich Obrist - a longtime friend of the artist - Vital recalled:  

 

"When I first went to the Nietzsche-Haus in Sils Maria, what impressed me most about the death mask, drawings and photographs of Nietzsche, was this moustache that grew bigger throughout his life. In the end, you couldn't even see his mouth. That was fascinating: that this moustache would take over his face. So I made a sculpture of his moustache, and placed it in his bed. [4]

 

By isolating the facial hair, Vital's sculpture - part of a wider series exploring memory, identity, and the blurring of human and non-human forms - enables the moustache to assume a kind of object-autonomy. 

 

And, hearing Vital discuss how the 'tache appeared to take over Nietzsche's face, one is put in mind of the parasitoid entity (Manumala noxhydria) that attaches to the face of Kane (played by John Hurt) in Ridley Scott's Alien (1979).

 

Fortunately, the facehugging moustache didn't prove fatal to its host and, according to Nietzsche's own philosophy, whatever didn't kill him made him stronger ... [5] 

      

Notes

 

[1] Nietzsche, Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge University Press, 1997), IV. 381, p. 171. 

 

[2] Ibid.

 

[3] Some readers may recall that Nietzsche often claimed descent from an aristocratic Polish family (although there seems to be no genealogical evidence available to support his claim). 

 

[4] Not Vital, in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist (14 April 2021). The transcript can be read on the Thaddaeus Ropac (London) website: click here. The interview also featured in Wallpaper and can be read on their website by clicking here.  

[5] See Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 'Maxims and Arrows' (8). 

 

 

Readers who enjoyed this short post might like to check out an excellent essay on Nietzsche's moustache available on the website nietzschesbody.com. The site is administered by Robrecht and I'm guessing this is the independent Nietzsche scholar, translator, and cultural critic Robrecht Vandemeulebroecke (apologies to both parties if I'm mistaken). 

      What this essay does well is bring home the fact that Nietzsche knew his moustache was distinctive and would become iconic: "Though not exactly unique, Nietzsche's whiskers were uncommon enough in intellectual circles to become something of a trademark, a fact of which he was not unaware." 

 

Nietzsche and the Question of Race

Unpersuaded by the determining influence of environmental factors, such as sunlight, upon the production of melanin and ignorant of genetics, Nietzsche has a rather outlandish explanation for variations in human skin colour: starting from the assumption that the primal colour of man "would probably have been a brownish-grey", he suggests that blackness is the evolutionary result of anger and whiteness the result of fear.

Nietzsche thus speculates that racial difference is psychological in origin. "Could it perhaps not be", he muses, that blackness is the "ultimate effect of frequent attacks of rage (and undercurrents of blood beneath the skin) accumulated over thousands of years", whilst, on the other hand, "an equally frequent terror and growing pallid has finally resulted in white skin?" 

Section 241 of Daybreak would be embarrassing enough for readers and admirers of Nietzsche if this was all that he said. But, unfortunately, there's more - and idiosyncratic philosophizing on human biodiversity seems to betray (as is so often the case) an inherent racism. For Nietzsche goes on to explicitly link fearful white timidity to intelligence and violent black fury to animality. 

However, before Nietzsche is once more vilified as a fascist and critical opprobrium again directed towards his writing, it should be recalled that, for Nietzsche, cleverness is a trait he often associates with slave morality and men of ressentiment. Nobility, in contrast, is distinctly bestial in character and frenzied fits of passion are to be admired as a sign of underlying health and vitality.  

Thus, if Nietzsche seems to reinforce the classical ideal that equates what is good with fairness of complexion and what is bad with darkness of hair and skin, his notorious concept of the blond beast doesn't merely refer us to blue-eyed Europeans, but equally to those non-white peoples who also "enjoy freedom from every social constraint" and the good conscience of the wild animal.

In sum: when it comes to the question of race (as with the question of woman), Nietzsche is a complex, challenging, and controversial thinker whose work continues to disturb because it so aggressively refuses to conform with the moral and political standards and expectations of liberal humanism. Ultimately, he doesn't seek to enlighten, but to provoke.     

See: Nietzsche, Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), IV. 241 and On the Genealogy of Morality, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson, trans. Carol Diethe, (Cambridge University Press, 1994), I. 11. 

In Praise of Sleep

Man Ray: Sleeping Woman (1929) 

Museum of Modern Art, New York

What can one do, asks Nietzsche, when one succumbs to ennui and feels sick and tired of everything and everyone, including oneself -?

Some recommend drugs; others a stroll in the park. Still others say you should turn to Jesus.

Nietzsche, however, believes the best thing to counteract that awful mixture of boredom, fatigue, and depression is plenty of sleep – both real and metaphorical. Philosophy, a discipline born of idleness, teaches the importance of knowing how to nod off, in either sense, at the right time and in the right way.

Speaking as someone who has regularly compromised their sleep over the years, let me also affirm the vital necessity of a good night’s rest - and, indeed, of daytime naps. Sleep not only sharpens the mind and the senses, as neuroscientists confirm, but it makes happier, healthier, and more creative.

I was once rather disparaging about Tom Hodgkinson (click here), but I agree entirely with him that it’s an absolute certainty that in paradise, everyone naps.

Notes 

Nietzsche, Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Cambridge University Press, 1982), IV. 376.

Tom Hodgkinson, How to be Idle, (Penguin Books, 2005); see in particular the sections on morning lie-ins, afternoon naps, and the joy of finally retiring to bed at the end of each day. 

On Haematolagnia, Feelings and Freethinkers

According to Lawrence, who posits some kind of instinctive and pristine form of blood-knowledge, the intellect is always suspect and we can easily go wrong in our minds. Thus, we should always trust our feelings, rather than our ideas. What the blood tells us, writes Lawrence in a letter to Ernest Collins, is always true. This libidinal irrationalism underlies Lawrence’s hostility towards modern science and forms the basis of his critique of Freudian psychoanalysis.

However, according to Nietzsche - at least during his mid-period, before he too started to develop something of a blood fetish - our feelings are no more original or authentic than our ideas. For behind even our deepest feelings stand inherited values, inclinations, and judgements. Thus to trust one’s feelings - to listen to one’s blood as Lawrence would have it - means no more than paying respectful obedience to our ancestors, rather than to “the gods which are in us: our reason and our experience”.

Ultimately, freethinkers are individuals who break from the morality of custom and traditional ways of behaving, evaluating, and feeling; men and women determined to rely upon their own intellectual resources, rather than sink down into the blood, into the past and into impersonal stupidity.

It’s a sad fact, says Nietzsche, but we must constantly be on guard against the feelings; particularly those higher feelings, “so greatly are they nourished by delusion and nonsense”.


Notes

D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. 1, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1979), Letter number 539, (17 January, 1913).

Nietzsche, Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Cambridge University Press, 1982), Book I, Sections 35 and 33.