Thus Spoke Severian? (Nietzsche links)

Jon Camfield · 03 Dec 1998, 09:35 · from urth-v0022.mbox · original

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From: Jon Camfield <GriffJon at Mail.UTexas.edu>
Subject: (urth) Thus Spoke Severian? (Nietzsche links)
Date: Thu, 03 Dec 1998 09:35:35
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(Yah, I's been quiet.  I's been busy.  OTOH, I did have a chance to read
lots of Nietzsche, and find a few parallels, only one striking one)

In _On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Live (1874), Nietzsche
argued that man must live as a balance between remembering and forgetting,
and one passage in particular struck me:

"Cheerfulness, the good conscience, the joyful deed, confidence in the
future -- all of them depend, in the case of the individual as of a nation,
on the existence of a line dividing the bright and discernable from the
unilluminable and dark; on one's being just as able to forget at the right
time as to remember at the right time; on the possession of a powerful
instinct for sensing when it is necessary to feel historically and when
unhistorically.  This, precisely, is the proposition the reader is invited
to meditate upon: /the unhistorical and the historical are necessary in
equal measure for the health of an individual, of a people and of a
culture/."  (/../ specify italics, Nietzsche's.)

Now, not to overanalyze, (but I wish I knew if Wolfe had read Nietzsche!),
but "line dividing the bright ... and dark"? Terminus Est, you mean?  Or
what about Severian being the 'memory' for a culture living in the present
moment (living unhistorically) while immersed in it?  And in being the
opposite extreme, gives a healthy balance?

Also, in _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_, Zara announces the future of humanity as
having two possible courses, one towards the Last Man (no lie!), of a
future bright in technology and comfort, but immersed in decadence and
eventual death, and that of the Superhuman/Overman, who is a dramatic
change from current man, an evolution from him, but more a revolution in
(moral) thought-- Ash, master of the Last House vs. the Green Man?

...nahhhh. ;)

Has anyone else read these connections into Nietzsche, or (as is likely)
seen ones I missed?

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"Behold the good and the just!  Whom do they hate the most?
The man who breaks their tables of values, the breaker, the
lawbreaker; yes he is the creator"
--Nietzsche, _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

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