Of the Tarantulas

Guilherme Pontes: Von den Tarantein, 

Also sprach Zarathustra (2024)

Woodcut and silkscreen on paper (45 x 32 cm) [1]

 

 

I. 

 

There are, apparently, over a thousand species of tarantula, including some spiders that are merely pretending to be tarantulas or are commonly mistaken as such. And they live in various types of natural habitat in warm regions all over the world.

 

Some people keep them as pets. But most people want to keep them as far away as possible and regard these large, hairy, eight-legged creatures as the stuff of nightmares. They even have downward-facing fangs that can inflict painful puncture wounds - like vampires! 

 

And of course, all tarantulas are venomous.  

 

I don't know if Nietzsche was an arachnophobe, but Zarathustra certainly had issues with tarantulas ... 

 

II.  

 

Zarathustra is acutely aware of the dangers when dealing with poisonous spiders. He knows they have venom glands within their jaws and he knows also what is hidden within their souls: the desire for revenge.

 

But even Zarathustra, for all his caution, is eventually bitten on the finger by a tarantula and has the black scab to show for it, illustrating how hard it is not to fall victim to those full of poison and ressentiment when one spends time in their company. 

    

 

III. 

 

Of course, Zarathustra is not speaking about actual spiders, that live underground in deep burrows. 

 

The tarantulas to whom he refers live in caves and castles and walk on two legs. They spin lies rather than webs. And they delight in trolling those who gaily teach a philosophy of innocence and forgetfulness: soured self-conceit and repressed envy bursts forth from their words like a type of madness. 

 

They may resemble inspired men and creative artists, but it is not courage that fills their hearts, but malice: "'Revenge rings in all their complaints, a malevolence is in all their praise; and to pass judgement seems blissful to them.'" [2] 

 

Ultimately, says Zarathustra, these spider-people are "'of a bad breed and a bad descent'" [3] and it's best to avoid their company - and certainly never trust them; for they will always bite you in the end and make you just another manic participant in their crazy dance [4].     

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] This mixed-media artwork by Guilherme Pontes forms part of a larger visual series inspired by Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It is available on select fine art print platforms and curated gallery sites, including meisterdrucke.com 

 

[2] Nietzsche, 'Of the Tarantulas', Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1969), p. 124. I have slightly modified the translation.  

 

[3] Ibid.

 

[4] I'm referring here to the southern Italian folk dance, la tarantella, characterized by a fast upbeat tempo and accompanied by tambourines. The dance was originally symptomatic of a peculiar medical condition known as tarantism, which baffled doctors but was believed to result from the venomous bite of a wolf spider (Lycosa tarantula). 

      Zarathustra declares at the end of his discourse on tarantulas: "'Truly, Zarathustra is no veering wind nor whirlwind; and although he is a dancer, he is by no means a tarantella dancer!'" See Zarathustra, as cited above, p. 126. 

  

No More Heroes 2: Friedrich Nietzsche - The Man Who Failed to Die at the Right Time

No More Heroes (Friedrich Nietzsche)

(SA/2026)

 

 

I. 

 

Having in the previous post examined the source of my disappointment with my punk mentor Malcolm McLaren [1], I'd like now to turn to my philosophical hero - and I use that word with reservations [2] - the untimely thinker Friedrich Nietzsche ... 

 

What is it about him that ultimately leaves me feeling a little let down? 

 

Actually, the answer to this question is pretty straightforward: Nietzsche didn't die at the right time ...

 

 

II.  

 

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-85), Nietzsche famously preaches the gospel of voluntary death and praises the difficult art of dying at the right time: "Many die too late and some die too early. Still the doctrine sounds strange: 'Die at the right time.'" [3] 

 

Do this, and death becomes a festival and a triumph; a perfect death which serves as "a spur and a promise to the living". 

 

To die in battle and thus to squander a brave soul is good, says Zarathustra. But to die freely at a time of one's own choosing and most advantageous to one's goal, surrounded by friends "filled with hope and making solemn vows", that is the best death of all.

 

Anyone who wants glory and to be remembered with fondness long after their death must take their leave in good time and not hang "withered wreathes in the sanctuary of life", or lie around just waiting for death to creep up on them.      

 

Perhaps this is doubly true for those fuck-ups who have made a failure of their life; they more than others need to see to it that their death is a great success. 

 

But again, timing is the crucial thing here; for whilst, as we have said, many die too late, there are those who die too soon. Zarathustra names Jesus at this point: "and that he died too early has since been a fatality for many" - something that D. H. Lawrence absolutely agrees with, thus his insistence on mortal resurrection as being far more important than the crucifixion or any ascension unto heaven [4].      

 

But, mostly, the problem is one of people dying too late, not prematurely; of hanging on like apples on a tree even when full of worms and overripe to the point of rottenness. Zarathustra - and let's concede that he's pretty much Nietzsche's philosophical mouthpiece and alter ego - says he would hate to be one of these individuals.

 

He wants to die when at the height of his physical and intellectual powers, so that, in death, his spirit "should still glow like a sunset around the earth" with which he joyfully reunites, so that he may know peace in the material world that bore him.       

 

 

III.  

 

Unfortunately, Nietzsche doesn't die at the right time. After collapsing in Turin, aged 44 [5], Nietzsche lived on for eleven more agonising years in a state of severe physical and mental decline. Thus, in a disappointing twist of cosmic irony, Nietzsche utterly failed Zarathustra's ultimate test.

 

Never in the best of health in bourgeois terms, Nietzsche had nevertheless possessed an extraordinary vitality (what he termed die große Gesundheit). So, it's regrettable that he didn't die defiantly with his arms around the neck of a horse in 1889, but became this vegetable, cared for by his elderly mother and anti-Semitic sister who put him on display for visitors like a living museum exhibit. 

 

Worse still, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche took control of his archives, systematically falsifying his letters and editing his Nachlaß in order to present his philosophy as a form of proto-fascism [6]. Thus, not dying at the right time was not only a personal catastrophe, but by failing to leave his affairs in order Nietzsche enabled his philosophical legacy to be hijacked, distorted, and weaponised by the reactive forces of ethno-nationalism he spent his life combatting. 

 

If only Nietzsche had learnt from Socrates or Seneca before being overtaken by biological fate! They provided masterclasses in how to die and shape their own narratives. As it is, however, his end contrasts as the tragic antithesis to these highly controlled, theatrical exits [7]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] 'No More Heroes 1: Malcolm McLaren - Stuckism and the Quest for Authenticity' (14 July 2026): click here. 

 

[2] The word hero derives from the Ancient Greek term ἥρως which referred to one such as Heracles born of divine ancestry, or to one who was awarded divine honours for their deeds. Whilst Nietzsche retained the concept in his work, he was unhappy with the way it is used in the modern world, often taking on a moral aspect and tied to notions of self-sacrifice, for example. Others may disagree, but, for me, to call Nietzsche a hero would betray a fundamental misunderstanding of his philosophical project.    

 

[3] See Nietzsche, 'Of Voluntary Death', Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1969), pp. 97-99. All lines quoted in section II of this post are taken from this edition of Nietzsche's text.  

 

[4] See Lawrence's vitally important short novel The Escaped Cock (1929), which can be found in The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories, ed. Michael Herbert, Bethan Jones and Lindeth Vasey (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 123-163. 

      One of the earliest posts on Torpedo the Ark was written on this work by Lawrence (29 March 2013): click here. 

 

[5] On 3 January 1889, Nietzsche suffered a mental breakdown and was briefly detained by two policemen for causing a public disturbance in the streets of Turin. What happened exactly remains unknown, but an often-repeated tale from shortly after his death states that Nietzsche witnessed the flogging of a horse in the Piazza Carlo Alberto, threw his arms around its neck in order to protect the animal and then collapsed to the ground. 

      In the following few days Nietzsche sent several letters - known as the Wahnbriefe - to a number of friends including Cosima Wagner and Jacob Burckhardt. Most were signed Dionysus, though some were also signed der Gekreuzigte (the Crucified). He ended his days physically and mentally paralysed and in the care of his sister (i.e., a fate worse than death; see note 6 below).  

 

[6] Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche physically curated her brother's final public image by transforming his living death into a highly orchestrated spectacle. Rather than hiding his vegetative state, she paraded it, meticulously staging his environment, dress, and physical presentation before a carefully selected audience. 

      Thus, for example, she would routinely wheel a silent, uncomprehending Nietzsche dressed in a flowing, heavily pleated white robe that closely resembled a classical philosopher's toga out onto a prominent first-floor balcony, allowing visiting disciples and curious tourists to look up and venerate him from the garden below like a tragic prophet. She also meticulously groomed his famous, oversized moustache in an attempt to maintain the fierce, recognisable profile of his lucid years and disguise his frailness. 

      At the same time, Elisabeth established the Nietzsche-Archiv and - in collaboration with Peter Gast - forged and spliced together entries from his notebooks to create what was intended to be his magnum opus - Der Wille zur Macht. The first German edition of this spurious text, containing 483 sections, was published a year after Nietzsche's death in 1901. This version was superseded in 1906 by an expanded second edition containing 1067 sections and it was this edition that was translated into English as The Will to Power, by Anthony M. Ludovici, in 1910.  

 

[7] Condemned to death by the Athenian court, Socrates refused flight or compromise, choosing instead to drink hemlock as a final, supreme act of obedience to the laws of the state that shaped him. He spent his final hours calmly debating the immortality of the soul with his grieving disciples. 

      Similarly, Seneca - ordered to commit suicide by Emperor Nero - embraced his fate with Stoic equanimity, using his final moments to dictate philosophy and comfort his family while bleeding to death in a bath. Both men transformed state-mandated executions into ultimate proofs of concept, ensuring their deaths perfectly authenticated their life's work.

 

 

The next post in this series - on D. H. Lawrence as inveterate priest of love - can be read by clicking here.  

 

 

Once Upon a Time ... There Was a Philosopher Named Friedrich Nietzsche and He Privileged a Pissing Giant Over Clever Dwarves

Nietzsche with Snow White, dwarves, and other fairy tale characters 

in a whimsical, enchanted forest with a gingerbread house

craiyon.com 

  

We think that play and fairy tales belong to childhood: how shortsighted that is! 

As though we would want at any time of life to live without play and fairy tales! [1]

 

 

I.  

 

As the above quotation demonstrates, Nietzsche always loved fairy tales - or Märchen, as the Germans call them - a genre of short story characterised by magical or supernatural elements, archetypal characters, a fantastical setting, and (all too often) a conventional moral lesson in which good triumphs over evil and order is restored to a chaotic world. 

 

So, no surprise then that he should write one of his own ...

 

 

II. 

 

Whilst in Turin, in April 1888 - only nine months before his collapse - Nietzsche scribbled an untitled short text about a giant and some dwarves into a notebook where it remained unpublished for many years [2]. 

 

Less than 150 words in the original German, it's a queer story about the mortal danger of being urinated upon when you are of restricted stature, by someone monstrously bigger in size. For it's not only unpleasant, when you're a dwarf, if a giant pisses on you, but there's the very real risk of drowning (a prospect that even the most ardent urophile might blanch at) [3].

 

Thus, the dwarves recognise that they have to find a way to prevent the giant from relieving his bladder - and, indeed, stop him from shitting on them as well.     

 

(Somehow, I don't think Disney are going to be bidding for the rights to make this into a film anytime soon.)  

 

For the oldest and wisest dwarf, this double danger presented something of a philosophical problem; clearly action needed to be taken in the face of an existential threat. But the situation necessitated not only trying to scare the giant away by tickling him and biting his toes - "customary means to encouraging and enforcing bowel and bladder control" [4] - but morally measuring up and rising to the challenge as a people.   

  

 

III. 

 

What are we to make of this ...?

 

The story seems to suggest that powerful individuals - in this case one who is great in size and strength - can become threatening to the well-being of others smaller in size and weaker in strength and therefore need to be restrained and, if possible, persuaded to curtail their natural instincts.         

 

But that would be a rather surprising lesson coming from Nietzsche who not only refuses to posit a doer separate from their deeds [5], but usually writes in praise of greatness and dislikes the little people who, in the name of morality and civilisation, wish to cut others down to their own size, à la David, slayer of Goliath (1 Samuel 17) [6]. 

 

Zarathustra, for example, is forever bemoaning the fact that everywhere he looks, everything has become smaller; houses, men, virtue and even happiness [7]. Small people, he says, mistake mediocrity for moderation and fundamentally only want one thing: that nobody shall do them any harm - and that includes not pissing on them.  

 

So, despite initial impressions, Nietzsche's tale is probably a satirical (uro-scatological) attempt to reverse values and "twist the standard Märchen perspective that establishes cultural relationships between giants and little people" [8].    

 

Ultimately, argues Richard Perkins: 

 

"The giant expresses a natural and cultural superfluity that squanders its great capacities. He represents 'overflowing' as such, and, in an important sense, his crude bodily eliminations illustrate the supreme value that Zarathustra designates as the 'gift-giving virtue' [...] The giant pisses away his virtue as gold glistens and as the sun radiates its creative brilliance." [9]   

 

And on that watersporty note ... 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (II. 1. 270), trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 277. 

 

[2] For those who can read German, the tale can be found in the Critical Student Edition of Nietzsche's Complete Works: KSA 13: 483: 16. 

      For those who can't, an English translation by Richard Perkins is available in his essay 'A Giant and Some Dwarves: Nietzsche's Unpublished Märchen on the Exception and the Rule', in Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy Tale Studies, Vol. 11, Nos. 1-2 (Wayne State University Press, 1997), pp. 61-73. 

      This essay, which I shall quote from later in the post, is available to read or download on JSTOR: click here. 

 

[3] One wonders if Nietzsche ever read Rabelais's The Inestimable Life of the Great Gargantua (1535), in which the famous giant urinates on the city of Paris from the heights of Notre Dame, causing the people to flee, fearful that they'll be washed away in a torrent of piss (and, indeed, over 250,000 Parisians - not even counting the women and children - do drown in the resulting flood, according to Rabelais).     

 

[4] Richard Perkins, op. cit., p. 71. 

 

[5] Refuses, that is to say, to fall into the metaphysical and grammatical trap of thinking that there's a free-willing subject who can - and in certain circumstances ought - to change their behaviour. This clever moral move allows notions of blame, guilt, and sin (i.e., bad conscience) to enter into the world; see the Genealogy where all this is examined by Nietzsche in depth. 

      The key point is this: to ask a giant not to express his strength and not to piss when his bladder's full, is like asking an eagle not to prey upon a lamb. 

       

[6] One thinks also of how the good people of Lilliput are initially fearful and mistrustful of Gulliver and how, even after he has saved their land from invasion and extinguished a fire at the royal palace by, funnily enough, pissing on it, they turn on him and decide to blind him and starve him to death. 

      See Jonathan Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels (1726).   

 

[7] See 'Of the Virtue that Makes Small', in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. 

      See also 'On the Vision and the Riddle' in the same text, where Zarathustra (assuming the role of a giant) carries a dwarf on his shoulders in order to give the latter a glimpse of greatness. Unfortunately, however, the dwarf fails to understand the profundity of what he sees and Nietzsche is able to show why the metaphor about 'standing on the shoulders of giants' (i.e. accepting intellectual dependency on past figures) is something that needs to be critically re-examined. 

 

[8] Richard Perkins, op. cit., p. 66.  

 

[9] Ibid., p. 70. 

      Perkins also directs us towards another unpublished piece in which Nietzsche gives his philosophical project a scatological twist: a fragment dating to late 1883 (see KSA 10: 635-37), which concludes with the startling injunction to shit and become as gods! For a discussion of the theoscatological in Nietzsche (and Lawrence) please click here. 

 

There is a Spider Crawling ...

 

'Without spiders, flies would have no wings ...'

 

 

Hazlitt's essay opens with a lovely passage about a spider crawling along the floor towards him. Rather than crush the unwelcome intruder, he allows the creature to pass by in peace and, in fact, aids his escape into a darkened space. 

 

This is the mark of a man whose philosophy has taught him how to behave with restraint even when confronted by a creepy-crawly whom he instinctively hates the sight of. In other words, although the spirit of malevolence has been curbed to the extent that he doesn't commit a needlessly cruel act, he still feels negatively towards the eight-legged other:    

 

"We give up the external demonstration, the brute violence, but cannot part with the essence or principle of hostility. We do not tread upon the poor little animal in question (that seems barbarous and pitiful!) but we regard it with a sort of mystic horror and superstitious loathing." [127-28] [a]

 

Hazlitt suspects it will take "another hundred years of fine writing and hard thinking" [128] before he gets over his arachnophobia and learn how to regard spiders with something approaching love and kindness. 

 

However, he doesn't wish to be cured entirely of his ability to hate. For without having something to hate - if not spiders, then snakes; if not snakes, then other people - man's ability to act or even to think is seriously compromised and rather than resembling a fast-moving and sparkling stream, life becomes a stagnant pool. 

 

Moralists may not like the fact, but pure goodness soon grows insipid and man finds delight in his unruly passions. Indeed, it may even be the case, as Zarathustra says, that man needs 'what is most evil in him for what is best in him.' [b] 

 

So it is that there's a seceret affinity between love and hate and the human heart desires the latter as much as the former. And since love soon turns to indifference or disgust, says Hazlitt, perhaps "hatred alone is immortal" [128] amongst the passions; not only the longest lasting, but primary, due to the simple fact that there is always a "quantity of superfluous bile" [128]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] William Hazlitt, 'On the Pleasure of Hating', essay in The Plain Speaker: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things, originally published anonymously in two volumes, in 1826. 

      I am using the text as it appears in volume 7 of The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, ed. A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover (J. M. Dent and Co., 1903), published as an eBook by Project Gutenberg in 2018: click here. All page numbers refer to this edition. 

 

[b] See Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra,  'The Convalescent' (2). 

      Of course, before either Nietzsche or Hazlitt were writing, Blake had already recognised that evil was only another term for the active expenditure of energy and that the feeling that results from this is a form of eternal delight. See 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell' (1790).  

 

 

Readers may be interested in two sister posts inspired by Hazlitt's essay 'On the Pleasure of Hating':

 

'On the Need to Fear Ghosts and Hate Witches' (14 August 2025): click here.  

'And Hate Shall Set You Free' (15 August 2025): click here. 

 

 

I Stood Watching the Shadowy Fish ... Notes on the First Line of D. H. Lawrence's 'The White Peacock'

  

I. 

 

The opening line from Lawrence's debut novel, The White Peacock (1911), reads: 

 

"I stood watching the shadowy fish slide through the gloom of the mill-pond." [1]  

 

It is spoken by Cyril Beardsall; a fairly obvious self-characterisation, even if Lawrence cannot be completely identified with the (artistically inclined but somewhat priggish) narrator of his novel. 

 

Cyril is as enchanted by the intense stillness of the water as he is by the grey-silvery fish and the manner in which the entire scene was "gathered in the musing of old age" [2]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Now, a Heideggerian critic might be tempted to suggest that Cyril knows what it is to not merely inhabit a space and reflect upon it like one of those moon-like philosophers whom Zarathustra condemns [3]. 

 

That he knows how to dwell in the world; i.e., to form a deep and meaningful relationship with all the various elements of his environment, in this case, fish, gloom, water, stillness, and temporality.     

 

For Heidegger, dwelling is a fundamental aspect of Dasein that allows men and women to exist as mortals beneath the sky, upon the earth, and in the presence of gods.  

 

But whilst it allows connection and interrelationship, dwelling is not a way for us to project ourselves into all things; i.e., it's not a form of existential narcissism and Cyril is not merely admiring his own reflection in the mill-pond and desiring to become one with it.   

 

 

III. 

 

Finally, it's interesting to compare the opening of Lawrence's first novel with one of his early poems, 'The Wild Common', whose setting and situation are somewhat similar.

 

In this poem, the young male narrator observes his own reflection on the surface of a pond: "Naked on the steep, soft lip / Of the bank I stand watching my own white shadow quivering to and fro" [4]. 

 

It is only after he plunges naked into the water that he fully appreciates how the natural world has physical reality that is not dependent upon his perception and understanding of it: "Oh but the water loves me and folds me / Plays with me, sways me, lifts me and sinks me ..." [5] 

 

And that it is his self, in fact, which has no substantial reality apart from the world of flowers, sunlight, and pulsing waters.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, The White Peacock, ed. Andrew Robertson (Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 1. 

 

[2] Ibid. 

 

[3] In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche critiques the concept of immaculate perception (i.e., the mistaken idea that we are capable of pure knowledge and a detached, moon-like contemplation of the world free of all desire; emasculated leering, as he calls it). See the section entitled 'Of Immaculate Perception' in part two of Zarathustra.    

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Wild Common' - click here to read online. 

      Note that this is the original version of the verse, written c. 1905-06 and published in Amores (1916). Lawrence later revised it for his Collected Poems (1928), adding new material and finally saying what it was he had started to say (incoherently in his view) when he first wrote it as a young man. This final version can be found in The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 5-6.

      For a critical reading of 'The Wild Common', see the first chapter of M. J. Lockwood's, A Study of the Poems of D. H. Lawrence: Thinking in Poetry, (Palgrave Macmillan, 1987). 

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Wild Common'. 

 

 

Heaven and How to Get There

Revival Movement Association

revivalmovement.org 

 

 

I. 

 

One of the ironic consequences of mass migration from sub-Saharan Africa is that there are suddenly lots of evangelical Christians on the street corners, preaching the gospel and reaching out as missionaries. 

 

In other words, having been colonised and converted by bible-bashing Europeans in the nineteenth-century, they are now attempting to undo secular modernity and effectively plunge us back into a world of religious mania.   

 

Thus it was I was given a little leaflet this morning, encouraging me to turn away from sin and put my faith and trust in Lord Jesus Christ, Saviour, as well as promising to reveal not only what Heaven is like, but, more importantly, how to get there.  

 

 

II. 

 

According to the leaflet, Heaven is a wonderful place whose beauty is incomparable:

 

The God of the Bible is a God of beauty, and this is why Heaven will be perfectly beautiful. It will be so beautiful that it cannot be compared to anywhere here on earth.   

 

Note how Heaven is capitalised, but earth is not: Nietzsche would argue that this provides a crucial insight into the Christian mindset; to the fact that Christianity prioritises that which comes after life whilst, at the same time, devaluing material (mortal) existence and is therefore profoundly nihilistic [1]. 

 

But let's leave aside the anti-Christian case against Heaven until later and continue with our reading of the leaflet ... 

 

Interestingly, no sooner are we told about the beauty of Heaven than we are informed that this is its least important aspect. What matters far more is the fact that Heaven is the place where all the purest, humblest, most unselfish people the world has ever known finally come together as one flock. 

 

And, to top it off, Jesus Christ Himself is there - as well as God in all His glory! Thus, in Heaven, we will finally have the opportunity to see God with our own eyes! 

 

I find the emphasis on this selling point a little perplexing; I'm no bible scholar, but didn't Jesus say somewhere or other that blessed are those who who have not looked upon the face of God and yet still believe in his majesty? Are we not encouraged to doubt our own eyes on the grounds that the senses can deceive us? [2]  

 

 

III. 

Moving on ... The little leaflet also tells us that Heaven is a place of happy reunions - i.e., a place where the dead and the living can catch up and renew relations, reminisce about old times, etc. 

 

There's no consideration of the fact that not everyone wants to meet with their former friends, partners, and family members - and certainly not if we are then never more to part. For as Larry David (mistakenly) reveals to his wife Cheryl in an episode of Curb, the great attraction of an afterlife is the thought of being free and single once more and able to make a fresh start: click here [3].  

 

 

IV. 

    

Clearly, as much as those who long for Heaven hate earthly life, the thing that really motivates their faith is fear of death, as this (inadvertently hilarious) passage makes abundantly clear:

 

Another great truth about Heaven is that there will be no death there. We will never have to endure the heartbreak of watching a loved one passing away. We will never again have to watch the undertaker as he screws down the coffin lid on the one we loved, there will be no black ties, no funerals passing through the streets, no standing by an open grave and watching a coffin lowered into it, no listening to the clods of earth as they fall remorselessly on the box that contains the remains of the one we love so much and whose death has left us so sad and broken. Thank God there is no death in Heaven!

 

Now, experiencing Angst - as Heidegger was at pains to explain - is a fundamental aspect of being human. Angst isn't merely a form of anxiety born of thanatophobia; rather, it is how Dasein grasps the idea of finitude and confronts the void at the core of existence [4].

 

In other words, angst allows us to understand that being-in-the-world rests upon non-being. An unsettling thought, perhaps, but ultimately a liberating one that dares us to live and become who we are (or find authenticity and accept responsibility for our own choices, as Heidegger would say).    

 

And those who would deny us this - and who would, in effect, rob us even of our own deaths - deserve our contempt.  

 

V. 

 

Finally, as to how to get to Heaven ... 

 

There is, apparently, only ONE way: and that is by accepting Jesus as your Lord and Saviour:  

 

Jesus is the only way, and no man can come to the Father except through HIM. If you reject Him you shut the door to heaven on yourself. 

 

Well, that's unfortunate, perhaps, because I do reject Jesus - and I don't even think, like Lawrence, that there are many saviours and that man can secure himself a spot in paradise via a number of paths leading to God [5]. 

 

And - just to be clear - I wouldn't want to go to a Heaven in which the purest, humblest, most unselfish people are all gathered; because these people are very often nothing of the kind and they seem to spend a good deal of their time revelling in the misfortune and torment of those burning in that other place, which, let us remind ourselves, has a sign above its gates declaring: Built in the name of eternal Love [6].  

 

Ultimately, I stand with the naked and damned and not the smug and saved in their new white garments; and I choose to be amongst the scarlet poppies of Hell rather than in a Heaven "where the flowers never fade, but stand in everlasting sameness" [7].   

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Nietzsche speaks of afterworldsmen who create a vision of paradise born of suffering, impotence, and an impoversished form of weariness: "It was the sick and dying who despised the body and the earth and invented the things of heaven [...] They wanted to escape from their misery and the stars were too far for them." See Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1969), p. 60. 

 

[2] See John 20:29. The KJV reads: "Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." 

 

[3] Curb Your Enthusiasm season 4, episode 9: 'The Survivor' (2004), dir. Larry Charles, written by Larry David, starring Larry David and Cheryl Hines.    

 

[4] See Heidegger, Being and Time, Division I, Chapter 6, where Heidegger not only discusses Angst as a fundamental mood, but relates it to his important notion of Sorge (usually translated into English as care and which provides the basis for Heideggerian ethics).   

 

[5] See the fragment of text written by Lawrence given the title 'There is no real battle ...' in Appendix I of Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 385. 

      In this piece, Lawrence argues that "the great Church of the future will know other saviours" and that the reason he hates Christianity is because it declares there is only one way to God: "'I am the way' - Not even Jesus can declare this to all men. To very many men, Jesus is no longer the way. He is no longer the way for me." 

 

[6] This idea of the sign is found in Dante's Inferno Canto III. Lines 5 and 6 of which read: Fecemi la divina podestate / somma sapïenza e ’l primo amore (My maker was divine authority / the highest wisdom and the primal love). But note that Nietzsche says it displays a certain philosophical naivety on the part of the Italian poet and that if there is a sign it is placed rather above the entrance to Heaven, with an inscription reading: Built in the name of everlasting Hate. See my post - 'A Brief Note on Heaven and Hell' (18 October 2014): click here. 

 

[7] D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 144.   

 

Joy is Deeper Than the Heart's Agony: On Nietzsche and the Concept of Confelicity

A young Nietzsche looking joyful in 1869

Image via The Mindless Philosopher 

 

"The lowest animal can imagine the pain of others.

 But to imagine the joy of others and to rejoice at it is the greatest privilege of the highest animals ..." [1]

 

 

Many English-speakers know the meaning of the German term Schadenfreude. 

 

But very few know the antonymic term Mitfreude, coined by Nietzsche in 1878, and referring to the feeling of joy felt when learning of the happiness or good fortune of others [2].

 

Interestingly, Nietzsche also contrasts Mitfreude with Mitleid (pity) - and even Mitgefühl (compassion) - viewing an ethic of shared joy rather than shared suffering as more noble (and less Christian).    

 

It is shared happiness, not shared pain, he argues, from which bonds of friendship best develop [3] and allow for a future democracy of joyful exuberance to develop [4].  

 

 

Notes

 

The phrase used in the title of this post - 'Joy is deeper than the heart's agony' - is from section 8 of 'The Intoxicated Song', found in part 4 of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  

 

[1] Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, volume 2, part 1, section 62. 

      I am consulting R. J. Hollingdale's translation from the 1986 Cambridge University Press edition of this work, p. 228, but I have slightly modified it. 

 

[2] Usually, in English, we use the term confelicity to describe this feeling, although this is not a word one hears very often.

[3] Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, I. 9. 499.

 

[4] It might surprise some readers to discover that Nietzsche writes of such a future democracy; one that will create and guarantee as much independence as possible and which is in stark contrast to the model of liberal democracy founded upon a mixture of fear and herd morality (i.e., modern humanism). See Human, All Too Human, II. 2. 293. 

 

 

Musical bonus: Killing Joke, 'We Have Joy', from the album Revelations (E.G. Records, 1982): click here for the 2005 digitally remastered version. 

 

This post is for my frenemy Síomón Solomon. 

On the Loving of Enemies

Liebe deine Feinde, 

denn sie bringen das Beste in dir zum Vorschein ...

 

 

I. 

 

As we all know, Jesus famously taught we should love our enemies (and not only our neighbours):

 

"Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." 

- Matthew 5:43-44 (KJV)

 

Many Christians like to believe that this, one of the most widely quoted sections of the Sermon on the Mount, is what separates their faith from all earlier religious doctrines; i.e., that it's a distinctive moral innovation. 

 

But that's not quite true and there are, in fact, a number of ethical precedents, as scholars familiar with the writings of the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians have pointed out. Indeed, similar teachings can also be found in the works of Jewish, Greek, and Roman authors [1].   

 

Still, it remains an interesting and important idea; albeit one that requires careful consideration of its terms; the word love, for example - ἀγαπάω (agapan) in the original Greek - refers to a kind of universal affection that is spiritual rather than sexual in origin. We are encouraged to be charitable and forgive those who trespass against us, not sleep with the enemy or become erotically fixated on them. 

 

And yet, arguably, there is something a bit perverse (and paradoxical) about developing positive feelings towards those who curse, hate, and persecute you; is loving one's enemy not simply a passive-aggressive attempt by the despised and victimised to bond with those who are in a superior and more powerful position? 

In other words, is it not a type of coping mechanism disguised as morality? Nietzsche certainly seemed to think so ...

 

 

II. 

 

Writing in the first essay of the Genealogy, Nietzsche argues that love of enemies is a possibility only for the truly strong and noble individual, who can view his enemy with a high degree of respect (and even admiration); essentially seeing them as worthy opponents that elevate his own status. 

 

This is in stark contrast to the resentment-driven love of enemies preached by slave moralists who often use this concept to mask underlying hostility and their desire for the downfall of those whom they regard as the evil ones (even whilst secretly envying them).  

It takes something special to truly love one's enemies (and not merely forgive, but forget their misdeeds); it requires a generosity of spirit to not be consumed by hatred for those whom we blame for our suffering and misfortune [2].    

But the philosopher must go even further says Zarathustra and be able not only to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends ... [3] 

Notes

 

[1] I refer readers to John Nolland's The Gospel of Matthew (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005), which provides an extensive commentary on the Greek text of this work.

        

[2] See Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, I. 10.  

[3] Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 'Of the Bestowing Virtue' (3). 

In Praise of Skipping

Vivienne Westood photographed by Michael Roberts 

for Vogue (August 1987) [1]

 

 

The other day, walking in a westerly direction along Piccadilly, accompanied by one of the country's leading figures in the field of developmental genetics, an attractive and stylish young woman with blonde hair suddenly came skipping past, to the amusement (and bemusement) of onlookers.

 

And when I say skipped, I mean skipped; she wasn't jogging or power walking past us, but literally skipping, like a child, with joy, in a bilateral manner (i.e., with an alternating lead foot). 

 

It's a vision that powerfully affected me - much as Zarathustra was once seduced by the sight of young girls dancing in the woods by moonlight [2]. 

 

My heart stood still with delight to see someone exorcising the spirit of gravity on the streets of London as Big Ben struck noon; someone who instinctively understood the importance of movement and the crucial role that the body plays in what D. H. Lawrence terms the sane revolution:

 

If you make a revolution, make it for fun, 

don't make it in ghastly seriousness, 

don't do it in deadly earnest, 

do it for fun. [3]

 

I may have certain issues with Vivienne Westwood, but I think she would - in her more lighthearted moments at least, when not banging on about climate change or human rights - share this sentiment and actively encourage those wearing her clothes to hop, skip, and jump their way into the future (as she seems to be doing in the above photo by Michael Roberts).  

 

Notes

 

[1] This charming photo of Westwood by Michael Roberts, along with 54 others, can be found in the Vivienne Westwood Style File on the British Vogue website: click here.

 

[2] See Nietzsche, 'The Dance Song', in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'A Sane Revolution', Pansies (Martin Secker, 1929), p. 108. 

 

 

This post is in memory of my mother, who enjoyed nothing more than skipping along the seafront at Whitley Bay as a child in the 1930s.

 

Meine Rosen

Meine Rosen (SA / 2024)

 

 

I. 

 

As is well known, Zarathustra often speaks cryptically.

 

Take the following sentence, for example, spoken when, walking through the forest with his disciples one evening, he came to a clearing where lovely maidens were dancing. Attempting to reassure the young women that he meant them no harm, he first praises their light-footedness before adding: 

 

'I am a forest and a night of dark trees: but she who is not afraid of my darkness will discover a bed of roses ...' [1]

What does that mean? 

 

It sounds like a rather elaborate chat-up line to me; i.e., a remark made both to initiate conversation and signal sexual interest. Of course, Zarathustra being Zarathustra, he can't help also displaying his intelligence and poetic sensibility (even as he openly admires the bare feet and fine ankles of the girls to whom he speaks).

 

 

II.

As Zarathustra is essentially Nietzsche's fictional mouthpiece, it's not surprising that the latter also liked to speak with pride about his roses ... 

 

Thus, in the poetic prelude to The Gay Science entitled 'Joke, Cunning, and Revenge' [2], Nietzsche includes a verse entitled Meine Rosen, which also combines the idea of rosy happiness or the promise of joy, with something a bit darker, a bit pervier, a bit more "malice-laden" as one translator has it [3].   

 

Below is my version of the poem; not exactly a translation, more a (somewhat prosified) reimagining, which, nevertheless, I think manages to make Nietzsche's point that those who want to find love and happiness - particularly as he understands these things - have to struggle and be prepared to take risks (i.e., engage in something that some might think of as edge play).

My Roses

 

Of course my happiness wishes to infect you - 

All joy is contagious! 

But if you'd like to smell my roses

 

You'll have to scramble first over rocky ledges

and cut through tangled thorny hedges,

pricking your tiny finger tips!

For my joy - it loves cruel teasing!

For my joy - it loves displeasing!    

Do you still want to pick my roses?

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, II. 32.

[2] Nietzsche borrows this title from a libretto by Goethe: 'Scherz, List, und Rache'. Although the work was written in the 1780s (and published by the author in 1790), it was not set to music until 1881, when Nietzsche's young friend Peter Gast (Heinrich Köselitz) decided to undertake the task.

 

[3] I'm referring to Adrian Del Caro, whose translation of Nietzsche's poems in 'Joke, Cunning, and Revenge' can be found in the 2001 Cambridge edition of The Gay Science, ed. Bernard Williams, trans. Josefine Nauckhoff. 

      Del Caro attempts to stay as closely as he can to the rhyme scheme (and rhythm) of the German; readers can decide if succeeds (or not) in the case of Meine Rosen by turning to p. 13 of the above text. For an alternative translation, see Kaufmann's effort - conveniently placed alongside the German original - in The Gay Science (Vintage books, 1974), pp. 44-45. 

 

Is it True That When You Leave the Haunted Forest You Discover the Blue of the Greater Day?

 Intoxication (SA/2023)

 

Is it true that when you leave the haunted forest you discover the blue of the greater day?

Not quite. 

 

What you discover, in fact, is that the haunted forest in all its grey stillness, and the greater day in all its vivid blueness, coexist and that the only piece of fakery in the above image is the thick black line of division which creates the illusion these are separate worlds.   

 

As Nietzsche's Zarathustra reminds us, all things are entwined, including joy and sorrow; in affirming one thing, we therefore say yes to everything. 

 

Thoughts Inspired by Ben Woodard's 'On an Ungrounded Earth' (2013)

Punctum Books (2013)

 

 

I.

 

When I hear the term geophilosophy my first thought is not to Deleuze and Guattari's work, but, rather, back to Zarathustra's injunction that above all things his followers should remain true to the earth and not listen to those who speak of superterrestrial hopes [a].

 

So a study such as Woodard's - author also of the darkly vital text Slime Dynamics (2012) [b] - was always one I'd feel obliged to get around to reading sooner or later. 

 

That said, I'm not sure his attempt to unground the earth will be something I'll be entirely comfortable with, although maybe that's the point and I'm certainly not adverse to the idea that we might denaturalise, destabilise, and deterritorialise the earth if that's what it takes to challenge certain models of thought that justify themselves by showing how they are grounded (and anchored) in the security of terra firma.

 

For I know what Nick Land means when he writes of a dark fluidity that rebels against such philosophies [c] - one wouldn't be able to continue with a blog called torpedo the ark if that wasn't the case. But, it's important not to be too swept up and carred away by talk of dark fluidity and solar waves etc.

 

For ultimately, I agree with Negarestani writing in his Cyclonopedia (2008) - and quoted here by Woodard - that whilst the earth with its solidity, gravity, and wholeness can be restrictive, the destruction of all ground to stand on only results in another hegemonic regime. 

 

Ungrounding, therefore, has to be about something more than mere destruction; has to involve the discovery or unearthing of an underside to the ground, or what I suppose those excited by the demonology of a new earth might call an underworld - although it's more the realm of worms [d] rather than horned devils; a place of decay and decomposition rather than evil.  

 

Does Woodard wish for man to inhabit such a world? I'm not sure - although he does point out that humans have, at times, lived beneath the surface of the earth and does insist that we "must burrow deeper into the earth, into the strange potentiality of infernal geologies" [70].  

 

Personally, I wouldn't fancy such an existence; living in a network of tunnels and underground bunkers, like a smuggler or terrorist. I don't even like riding the Tube. 

 

 

II. 

         

To be honest, Woodard's book only really came alive for me when, in chapter 4, he took us on a tour of that chthonic underworld that is commonly referred to as Hell, explaining along the way how the latter "in its chthonic configuration, suggests an odd short circuit between the earth as a shallow phenomenological playground and a deeper understanding of the earth as a complex geological system" [72]. 

For Woodard, Hell is best thought of as a volcanic inferno, rather than the dwelling place of demons; it is unfortunate, he says, when infernology is overridden by demonology (something that Deleuze is often guilty of).

III.

 

I also enjoyed the concluding fifth chapter on a monstrous dark earth that generates life which eventually rots back into compost and chaos, and a malevolent black sun, about which I have myself have written on numerous occasions: click here for example. 

 

Of the dark earth, Woodard writes:

"The earth [...] does not require much labor to become a monster. The earth is a stratified globule, a festering confusion of internalities powered by a molten core and bombarded by an indifferent star. This productive rottenness breeds the possibility of escaping the solar economy through the odd chemistry of ontology." [83-84] 

 

I'm not sure I entirely understand what he means at the end there, but I do like the thought of this earth as a storm of forces and a darkly productive monster - one that is "far removed from the Earth discussed in ecology studies and in popular culture, where it is caught between a thing to be worshiped and a thing to be exploited" [86].

 

I do not like the sons of Prometheus. But nor do I care for those sons of Orpheus who subscribe to a naive neo-pagan fantasy set in some post-industrial eco-utopia in which man is supposed to live once more in perfect harmony with nature.    

 

As for the sun, Woodard reminds us it's not simply the life-giving yellow star that so many philosopher's worship, but also a darkly malevolent monster that burns your skin and causes cancers and madness [e]: 

 

"Again it is tempting to return to Land and his pseudo-Bataillean nature philosophy. The sun must be the illuminator for Plato and Socrates. But there is, for Bataille, a second sun, a dark sun, a black sun: 'The sensations we drink from the black sun afflict us as ruinous passion, skewering our senses upon the drive to waste ourselves.'" [90] [f]

Woodard rightly notes how certain thinkers have strange dreams "about surviving this aspect of the sun, which culminates in the cataclysm of its destruction preceded by its darkening, its blackening, and its degradation towards meltdown" [90], but the fact is we're not going to outlive solar cataclysm. 

 

As Ray Brassier writes: "Solar death is catastrophic because it vitiates ontological temporality as configured in terms of philosophical questioning's constitutive horizonal relationship to the future." [g] 

 

That's a pretty nihilistic note on which to end - but there's really not much that can be done about it. For whether we like it or not, it's all going to end and not merely in the elimination of all terrestrial life, but, ultimately, in the annihilation of all matter. 

 

Woodard is by no means the greatest thinker or writer in the world, but he's to be congratulated for reminding us that oblivion is the name of the game and any humanistic optimism on this point - whether secular-scientific or mytho-religious in character - is simply pitiful [h].  

 

 

Notes

 

[a] See Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathusra, Prologue 3. The original German reads: "bleibt der Erde treu und glaubt Denen nicht, welche euch von überirdischen Hoffnungen reden!" 

 

[b] Woodard's Slime Dynamics: Generation, Mutation,and the Creep of Life, (Zero Books, 2012) is another text I've not got round to fully reading, although I have previously mentioned it on Torpedo the Ark: click here.  

[c] Woodard quotes the line from Land that I refer to on p. 6 of Ungrounded Earth. It reads: "A dark fluidity at the roots of our nature rebels against the security of terra firma." See The Thirst for Annihilation (Routledge, 1992), p. 106. Note that all future page references to Woodard's book will be given directly in the post.  

 

[d] Woodward has a fascination with worms of all kinds (real and fictional); he calls them "engines of a terrestrial weirdness". See On an Ungrounded Earth, p. 21. 

[e] I have written elsewhere and at length on this; see the essay 'Sun-Struck: On the Question of Solar Sexuality and Speculative Realism', published on James Walker's Digitial Pigrimage (14 Jan 2019): click here. 

 

[f] Woodard is quoting Land writing in The Thirst for annihilation, p. 29.   

[g] Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 223. Woodard also quotes this line in his text, see. pp. 90-91. 

[h] See the recent post published on oblivion (22 Nov 2023): click here.