In Thus Spoke Zarathustra Nietzsche poetically captures the essence and the difficulty of the eternal recurrence, in “On the Vision and the Riddle,” When he describes the following scene as a vision and a riddle to be deciphered: Among the wild cliffs I stood suddenly alone, bleak, in the bleakest moonlight. But there lay a man… a young shepherd I saw, writhing, gagging in spasms, his face distorted and a heavy black snake hung out of his mouth. Had I ever seen so much nausea and pale dread on one face? He seemed to have been asleep when the snake crawled in his throat, and there bit itself fast. My hand tore at the snake and tore in vain; it did not tear the snake out of his throat. Then it cried out of me: “Bite! Bite its head off! Bite!” Thus it cried out of me- my dread, my hatred, my nausea, my pity, all that is good and wicked cried out of me with that single cry… The shepherd, however, bit as my cry counseled him: He bit with a good bit. Far away he spewed the head of the snake and he jumped up. No longer shepherd, no longer human- one changed, radiant, LAUGHING! Never on earth has a human being laughed as he laughed.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 02:12:46 +0000
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