The Forty-Nine Steps

151 Pages·2001·15.28 MB·English

by  Roberto Calasso (John Shepley

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@lULICO ORIGINAL
I
THE FORTY-NINE STEPS
R O B E R T O CALASSO
Translated by john SIiepley
PIMLICO
Published by Pinllico 2002
Copyright O 1001 by the Regents of tl~eU niversity of Mi~~~rrst~r.~
Roberto Calasso has asserted h~rs~ ghtu ndrr the Copyr~qht,I )~(I~II>
and Patents Act 1988 to be ~dentlfied.IT the .iilthor of rhlr \;mk
hi^ book is subject to the rondit~oth~;l~t ~t \11,1ll IIO~,
b Y way of trade or othrrwisr, hi. Irl~tr.c ,sold. hil-rd oi~r.
or otherw~sec irculated w~thoutt l~cp ~~bliihcrp'r\i or
consent in any fom~o fb~~idionrs c o;er- othcl- rl1,111
that 111 which it is pi~hl~sl~.IcIdI ~w itlio~.~I t\ ~IIII~;II.
cond~tioni rrclud~~th~~src o~~cl~tbionr ~ ~ ~ g
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Aciclphi Ecllzioni \.I>..\.. M11.111,1 r.1Iy
T11is tr.~n\l~tlofiir~st puhli\l~rd1 11 tlir Unitrd St;rrc\ of Amel-~ca
11y the U~l~vcr\iot)f Mi~~nc.;oIt1.r~r\ s loll1
Firct puhllchrd in Great B~-lt,r~hnv 1'11nlico 2002 To Francesco and Melisenda
Poetry hy I3rrtolt Brrrl~ti\ iron1 '1)itticult Time\', ill Ncrr,111l jrrrlrr POI.IIF1, Y 1.1- lV.iG,
cditrd hy John Willctr .111d I<.~lphM JII~IC.I/INIIc \v YoI.~M. C~~ILI1L9.7I0I.) .
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C O N T E N T S
Acknowledgments xi
-
I. Fatal Monologue - 3
2. The Sleep of the Calligrapher 36
-
3. DPesses entretenues - 52
4. Enamel Scar 78
-
5. On the Fundamentals
of the Coca-Cola Bottle - 86
6. The Perpetual War 91
-
7. The Forty-nine Steps - 111
8. The Superior Man and
the Absolute Cocotte - 114
9. The Ordeal of
Impossible Words 119
-
10. A Report on Readers
of Schreber - t-22
11. Accompaniment to the
Reading of Stirner 144
-
12. Prelude to the Twentieth
Century - 176
13. Hiding Places - 183 Acknowledgments
14. On Public Opinion - 186
15. A Chinese Wall - 200
16. The Practice of Profane
Illurnination - 235
17. Brecht the Censor - 239
18. The Ancient Egyptian
Character of Art - 244
19. The Siren Adorno - 247 I wish to thank Michela Acquati and Ena Marchi for their invaluable help
in preparing this book.
20. An Apocryphal Grave - 251
IV. MYTHOS
21. The Terror of Fables - 259
Notes - 267
Note on Texts - 289

Fatal Monologue
As dream, as illusion, as a ciry of Gandharvns;
so arc arising, abiding, and passing away
expretsed.
-Nzgzrjunn, Miidhyc~rnikai5srraV,Z Z,3 4
Ecce Homo opens with disconcerting words, compared to the beginning
recedes
of On the Genealogy ofMorals, a work that it by only a year. "We
are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledgen--these are the first
' words of the Genealo~a, nd starting there, Nietzsche quickly arrives at the
conclusion that in considering the whole of our lives and being, we "mis-
count"; not only are we "necessarily strangers to ourselves . . . we have to
misunderstand ourselves." The argument then proceeds in the casual con-
versational tone Nietzsche assumed for the prefaces to his books, moves
in other directions, and speaks of other things, never to return to those
first remarks. Actually, these words do not sound odd to a reader of
Nietzsche; rather, they seem like the momentary reemergence of a whole
chain of thoughts already formulated in other writings, with restraint-as
always in Nietzsche when he approaches the essential-and if anything,
with a wish to conceal rather than to insist. It may also be because these
thoughts were very close to confession, as shown by the use of "we": "I say
'we' to be polite," he would once have cautioned.
Now let us turn to the opening of Ecce Homo. Nietzsche starts by
telling us that his writing will declare what he is and that this explanation
seems indispensable to hirn. In other words, he will provide an answer to Of force, to remove its last rest~aintsa nd defenses against the pressul-e of
that very question that the man of knowledge cannot put to llin~selfwith- the world, which were characteristic of philosophy before being pounded
out going wrong: "Who crre we really?"' This is truly unheard-of, and we by Zarathusrra's hammer-seem to beconle more visiblc after a certain
are all the more swayed by the italicized words with which the paragraph point. An irreversible transition is foreshadowed at every turn, as though
ends: "Hear me! For Z am sucl~n nd such n person. Aboz~cd. l, do not mistake everything Nietzsche had been so Llr was preparing to manifest itself in a
mefor someone else."? It is not the imperative tone thac colnes as a surprise new form. The first symptoms of rhis process can be seen in some letters
but the clairn to be able to present himself ~~neqi~ivocalalsy w, ell as the written in December 1887. We see the same expression repeated to three
brusque manner, as though these words were uttered in the grip of neces- different correspondents within the space of a week, thereby introducing
sity, with sort~erhingi mmense looming and darkly suggesting "the most the final phase: to close out his past by drawing a line under it.
serious need" humanity has known. In rhis new act of presentink himself,
For I am. almost un\villingly but in obedience to an implacable need, in
one feels an approaching change, a change that turns above all against
the process of scttling my accounts as far as people and things :Ire con-
Nietzsche himself and threatens his most private self-image. He recog-
cerned and of p~~ttinmgy whole "till now" nd czctcz. Alrnost all I'm doing
nizes it at once: "a duty against which my habits, even more the pride of
now is drawing a line underneath. The violence of inner fluctuations has
my instincts, revolt.""
been terrifying all these last years; horn now on, since I must reach a new
and higher form, I need in the first place a ne\v separation, an even greater
So one wonders: What was it that in the space of little more than a year-
depersor~alkxtion.
the preface to On the Genealogy ofMomls dates from July 1887, Ecce Homo
from October 1888-drove Nietzsche to set himself a task thac he consid- What I've done in the last years has been to settle accounts, to sum up the
ered doomed to failure and that wounded his instincts? Had not he him- past, and in the end I've freed myself from people and things and drawn a
self shown how suspect and degenerative such a wound could be? Was the line under it all. Who and wh/it 1'11 have left, now that I must pass on to
great tree of thought, which never knows what it will bring forth, perhaps the real main point of my existence (1i.n doornc,d to pass on to it . . .), this is
preparing a monstrous fruit, a fruit representing in miniature the tree it- now an important que~tion.~
self?*E cce Homo has always aroused the most serious perplexities, though
I feel like working but am in a n~elancholym ood and have by no means
certainly not for these reasons. Since the book was published, people have
emerged from the violent shocks of these last years. Not yet "depcrsonal-
never stopped wondering what to call it. A cosmic proclamation? A psycl~o-
ized" enough. Still. J know what is over and don? iuith: I've drawn a line
pathological document? A self-portrait? The loudest sort of anti-Ger~nan
underneath my past existence.'
invective? Or none of the above? But before asking these questions, which
rnay all turn out to be beside the point, one ought to take a step back and Nietzsche, having come to the end of his work and despite his "uncon-
pick up once more the ominous remains of the first questions Nietzsche querable mistrust of the possibility of self-k~~owledge""~rhaps the sole
himself asked when faced with any piece of writing: Who is spaking in critical point he shares with Goethe, the only other German he recognizes
these words? What necessity is speaking in these words? as his peer-then proceeds, by recognizing himself as object, to clash not
only with his psychological acumen but with the harshest results of his
Nietzsche's whole life has its unfathomable aspects. but this holds supreme- thinking. Indeed, the condemnation of self-knowledge is only a corollary
ly true for the last year of his career as a writer. The constant fluctuation of of the condemnation of any meraknowledge, which Nietzsche's criticism
force, the cyclical mockery and exaltation, recurrent and reverberating has by now established in a theorem that is likewise a death sentence: In
from things close at hand, so elocl~ientlyr einstated by Nietzsche himself, the effort to know its own instruments, thought necessarily destroys itsclf.
to those things that lie beyond any conl~nunicableli fe, the very element of and in particular, Western thought, the only kind that has calmly ven-
his thought, his grand wager-to intl.oduce thought into the actual How tured on this path. Turning then to personal experience, we scc that
6 . Fatal Monologue Fatal Morrologlrr . 7
whereas Goethe, at least in his maturity, had perhaps based his wisdom
our innermost needs. I am often surprised to see how little the extreme
(the "perhaps" is essential) on the willed preservation of the ego in its most
disfavor of destiny can do against our will. C>r rathcr, I tell myself that the
ordinary sense (a case of sublime hypocrisy) Nietzsche, in his most pro-
will must acrually bc destiny for always being right once nlore even ;pinst
ductive years, had instead pursued the active destruction of the subjecr,
ir. hyp2'r. indvon-.I'
following the rule of a warrior monk by his sysreniatic undermining of
every reference point and by practicing the "magic of thc extreme." So in
considering this attempt at self-explanation, one would have more than
ever to ask oneself, "Who says '1' here?" And the answer, like the attempt
If genius includes the capacity to take oneself literally, [hen Nietzsche,
itself, can only be paradoxical.
from the moment he sertles in Turin (5 April), ingeniously applies the
terms of his letter to Deussen ahouc chance and destiny. If these phrases
Throughout 1888, a year marked by harsh and hasty writings, [he wish to
are accurate, then they must be fulfilled in every detail, first of all in the
establish an image of his own past will come increasingly to [he fore, no
"closest things." From his first days in 1Urin we feel that Nietzsche is in]-
longer in solitude in the darkness of the cave but now ~lbrupclytr ansport-
printing a positive sign, of ascendant life, on every aspect of the world
ed onto a stage as broad as the world, where Nietzsche himself will have
surrounding him. "This is truly the city I need now!"'^-so begins the
the scandalous courage to display himself and say, "Ecce homo." During
transformation ofTurin into the city of destiny. First to be transformed
the winter in Nice, at a low point in the usual continual fluctuations in
will be the city's general character and its aristocratic architecture; then all
the state of Nietzsche's health, a secret transformation occurs, and like a
the circumstances of life, the prices, the food, the climate, the theater,
negative film image what will be revealed a year later seems to become
manifest themselves as favorable signs. But by the last letters in autumn,
fixed in the silence. But tbr the moment Nietzsche is still in the cave, the
in particular the Iasr one to Jakob Burckhardr, evervthing is transfigured.
site opposite to the stage. In the first monrhs of 1888, he often, in speaking
By now the will has devoured the external world, devouritlg itself as well,
of himself, rerurns to the image of the Wdde (den, hollow, cave). This is
and ecstatically watches the spectacle it has set in motion. During his first
for him a central and recurrent figure, and we will see it reappear amid the
days in Turin, the "hulnan cave" crosses an already prepared threshold,
final signs of his life. "An animal, when it is sick, hides in its den; and so
which his will, in the thrm of chance, now reveals to him. Early in April
does the bPtephilosophe. . . inadvertently I have become a kind of cave-
Nietzsche receives a letter from Brandes in which the Danish philosopher
something hidden, which you would no longer be able to find, even if
informs him that he will give a course at the University of Copenhagen
you went looking for it."" And earlier he had invited Georg Rrandes to
"on the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche."
approach his "cave-i.e., philosophy."'" From now on it is clear that in
Today it is difficult to assess the enormous extenr 01' Nietzsche's soli-
his underground work Nietzsche aims above all at separating himself from
tude at the time. Having beco~nea shadow for most of his old friends, a
his past, certainly not at possessing it: "Basically everything in me now
difficult and invisible man. by now accustomed to p~~blishinhgis books at
marks an epoch; everything mine till now crumbles away from me, and
his own expense, accustomed too to counting his loyal readers on his fin-
if I reckon what I have done in the past two years. it looks to me as
gers and having to reduce their number as each new book comes out,
though it has always bee11 the same task: to isolate lnyself from my past
Nietzsche seems to have circled as far from the world as to a
and cut the unlbilical cord that tied me to it."" 'This, from a letter to I'aul
point of insurmountable alienation, which his old friend Erwin Rohde
Ileussen, is Nietzsche's most explicit statement of his incetitions; in the
had Felt at their last meeting, in thc spring oF 1886: "as though he came
same letter the sound of rhr last phase could already be heard, a few words
from a region inhabited by no one else." Brandes's letter arcivcs at this
that rnight stand as an epigraph for the whole year 1888:
point as the first outside approval, produced by chancc thnt has become
'Things do not prevail over thc man who is able to put 3 will into thenl; destiny, the prelude to a stage, an action addressed to the world. Then, for
even cllancc occasions cntl by nrranging thelnsclves in accordancc with the whole winter, rapid signs of an approaching upheaval kept flickering
Fatilf Monof ogur . 9
in Nietzsche, to erupt in the middle of his labors. August Strindberg's first
savage attack on him. Here too the answer involves the whole process of
letters in autumn represent ;I second threshold, where Nietzsche hcars the Nietzsche's laar Indeed, as we will srr, only thr pscexisring, albeit
"tone of universal history" resound and recognizes for the firsr time an thought of Ecce Homo call account for his need to write
interlocutor of his stature, and this at the beginning of his vcry last days Thr Case of Khgncr.
in Turin, followi~~thge drafting of Ecre Hnntn. Betwccrl these two thrcsh-
The first big problem that looms for Nierzsche at the beginning of his
olds, spring and autumn, we have an entire cycle, a lightning advance on Turin spring is the acceptallce ofthe theater, ofthe stage. Having thought
a single ftont, in quickjtep, while his euphoria spirals upward. The first all his life nboztt the theater, he now finds himself faced with the i~npera-
traces of this activity directed to thc outside, tl~efi rst sreps ofthe l~urnnn tive to prartic.~it . And for Nierzsche, theater has always been synonymous
cave on the stage of the world, are already in Nietzsche's letter responding with Wagner. The stage ir Wagner, and to mount the stage himself Nietz-
to Rrandes's announcement. With this letter he enclosed a lxief curricu- sche must rid it of Wagner, must set down and etch the differences like
lum: thrcc vcry simple pages seeking only to specifjl a few facts, but in scars. The tenor of the text is derisive; the action has an unseemly mobility;
them it is easy to recognize various observations that will reappear, sorne- here for the first time Nietzsche tries out the I'Y~L/sus tyle,Ii the mask of
times almost word for word, in Ecce Homo, the writing of which had the "decent ~riminal."~~)NTiheetz sche who is quick to assume the role of
begun. histrio [actor] raises the histrio Wagner to rhtt sinister archetype of the simu-
There is no reason to doubt Nietzsche's statement chat Ecce Homo was lator, that deadly category that had been on his mind ever since The Birth
written with the greatest speed and assurance between 15 October and 4 of'wedy Here, for the last time, Nietzsche stares at the features of the
November 1888. This is not to deny the results of Mazzino Montinari's ex- being who is his exact opposite, before meeting hirn on the same stage,
amination of the letters and manuscripts showing Ecce Homo ro be a work his own features set firmly for the last time irz n role, in the last pages of
in progress: Some fragments already appear off and on betwee11 April and Erce Horno. This dual movernent already recalls the gesture of the tragic
October, and it is also obvious that after returning the proofs to his pub- hero who wills "the utter collapse into his oppositen;'- otherwise, why
lisher, C. G. Naumann, on 6 December, Nietzsche went on correcting the should Nietzsche choose to present himself with the greatest theatricality,
text and writing variations on it during his very last days in Turin. So even rhe very weapon of his antipode? Attacking, in the name of music, the
if the outline of the work was established in a few days, one can say that perversion of the actor who make5 use of music, and thereby breaking the
many of its sentences and paragraphs had been on Nietzsche's mind for suprerne spell of decadence-this is 7be <,me of lVhg?lel:U sing the weap-
months, up to the rnoment of his breakdown. Besides, there is a close ons, gestures, masks, and indiscretion ofthe dctor to make m~rsico fone-
connection among all of Nietzsche's writings between April 2nd October self, a monologue that forgets itsrlJ'and is "the music offorgetting" IH-this
1888. Each of these works is governed by the same gesture, the bursting will be Ecre Homo.
forth ofa wild theatricality, his self-presentation on the stagc by concen-
trating his whole being in its most intense form. With Ecre Homo this im- The real response to 7Re (;axe ofWdgner was to come more than seventy
pulse is fully displayed, but the style, tempo, and manner are similar in years later. Just as Nierzsche recognized in Wagner his ordy existing an-
rt!~
c ~ soef' Wdgn~?,T, he Twilight of tl~e?d o/s, and T/JA~nt ichl-;st-a1 1 of tagonist, thereby rendering him the highest tribute, so it was to Nietzsche
them composed between April and September 1888. First among then1 is that Martin Heidegger devoted his most articulate piece of writing on the
7 % ~ of'Wzsner, which Nietzsche already mentions incidentally to subject of a modern, though still untimely, thinker, paying him the su-
Peter Gasr in April: "My fingel-s at the moment are busy with a littleprzm- preme compliment of calling Iiirn "the last Western ~~~etapI~ysici";'i r~."
phlet on mi~sic.""B~y May the little book is finished, perhaps the most as- And jusr as Nietzsche distanced himself in everything from Wagner's op-
rorlishing example in Nietzsche of the pure nrt ofgestu~eO. ne might won- ponents, so Heidegger had little to do with all the of critics
der why just now, ten years after his break with Richard Wagner 2nd five and impugners of Nictzsche; much more imporrant, he was rlic only one
years after the composer's death, Nietzsche should feel the need to write a to respond to Nietzsche. .lb be surc, the style and tone are diffcrcnr, not to