Wandering Through Ice And Mountain Peaks

The Wanderer Above The Sea Of Fog, painting by Kasper David Friedrich

Have just embarked on the epic Nietzsche Podcast on Spotify. It is penned and narrated by Keegan J. L. Kjeldsen.

Episode 2 (of 50 plus to date) bears the title above. 

"In this episode, we discuss the character of The Wanderer. Der Wanderer appeared in multiple Nietzsche works, mainly during the period from Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, through Die fröhliche Wissenschaft. Evidently Nietzsche identified himself with this character. The wandering that Nietzsche did throughout Europe, and while hiking the Alps, paralleled the metaphor of 'philosophical wandering' in Nietzsche's work. We'll also discuss a potential inspiration for Nietzsche, in the motif of "wanderers" in German culture. The significance of philosophical wandering as Nietzsche's approach to philosophy is that Nietzsche's project ends up looking very different from that of most other philosophers. Episode art is Caspar David Friedrich's Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer."

Keegan concludes the episode with a lengthy, powerful quotation from Nietzsche acolyte Stefan Zweig:

"How is it possible to be placed in this amazing uncertainty and multiplicity called ‘existence’ without questioning its meaning, without trembling with curiosity, and without the voluptuous emotion engendered by questioning ?” 

Thus did he rail at our sit-by-the-fires, and make mock of those who are easily satisfied. He, the typical adventurer in the long savannas of thought, was not even inclined to possess his own life; here again he demanded a surplus on the grand scale: 

“What is of genuine importance is eternal vitality, not eternal life.”

For the first time on the ocean of German philosophy the black flag was hoisted upon a pirate ship. Nietzsche was a man of a different species, of another race, of a novel type of heroism; his philosophy was not clad in professorial robes, but was harnessed for the fray like a knight in shining armour. Others before him, hardy navigators of the spiritual world, discovered continents and founded empires; they were animated to a certain degree by a civilising and utilitarian intent, hoping to win those unknown lands to the profit of mankind, to complete the map of the philosophic world by penetrating further and ever further into the terra incognita of thought. They set up the standard of God or of the mind in these new-found lands, they built cities and temples, planned out streets and avenues in the unknown, while governors and administrators followed in their steps in order to reap the harvest of the pioneers’ labours — commentators, dons, men of culture and the like. 

But the aim of these forerunners in the philosophical universe was repose, was peace and security. They desired to increase terrestrial possessions, to promulgate norms and laws, to inaugurate a superior kind of order. Just as the filibusters invaded the Spanish world towards the close of the sixteenth century — a lawless gang of desperadoes, lacking restraint, acknowledging no king, men without a flag and without a home — so Nietzsche made an irruption into the philosophical world, conquering nothing either for himself or for those who should come after; his victories were not achieved for the sake of a monarch or dedicated to the greater glory of God, but purely for the intrinsic joy of conquest, since he did not wish to possess or to acquire or to conquer. He was a disturber of the peace, his one desire being to plunder, to destroy property relationships, to trouble the repose of his fellow mortals. 

With fire and sword he went forth to awaken the minds of men, an awakening as precious to him as is a fusty sleep to the vast majority of mankind. In his wake, as in the wake of the filibusters of old, churches were desecrated, altars were overturned, feelings injured, convictions assassinated, moral sheepfolds sacked; every horizon blazed with incendiary fires, monstrous beacons of daring and violence. Never did he look back to gloat over his acquisitions or to appropriate his conquests. He strove everlastingly towards what had never been explored and conquered; his one and only pleasure was to try out his strength and to rouse up those who slumbered. He was a member of no creed, had never sworn allegiance to any country. With the black flag at his masthead and steering into the unknown, into incertitude which he felt to be the mate of his soul, he sailed forward to ever-renewed and perilous adventures.

Sword in hand and powder barrel at his feet, he left the shores of the known behind him and sang his pirate song as he went :

I know whence I spring.

Insatiable as a flame,

I glow and consume myself.

All I touch flashes into fire,

All I leave is a charred remnant.

Such by nature am I — flame."

The Diddly Squib Pox

A DETAIL OF NANCY EKHOLM BURKERT’S ILLUSTRATION FOR EDWARD LEAR’S “THE SCROOBIOUS PIP.”

Written March, 2021

The Diddly Squib Pox

"The Scroobious Pip went out one day

When the grass was green, and the sky was grey.

Then all the beasts in the world came round

When the Scroobious Pip sat down on the ground.

     The cat and the dog and the kangaroo

     The sheep and the cow and the guineapig too--

     The wolf he howled, the horse he neighed

     The little pig squeaked and the donkey brayed,

     And when the lion began to roar

     There never was heard such a noise before.

     And every beast he stood on the tip

     Of his toes to look a the Scroobious Pip.

At last they said to the Fox - "By far,

You're the wisest beast! You know you are!

Go close to Scroobious Pip and say,

Tell us all about yourself we pray-

For as yet we can't make out in the least

If you're Fish or Insect, or Bird or Beast."

The Scroobious Pip looked vaguelyy round

And sang these words with a rumbling sound-

     Chippetty Flip; Flippetty Chip;-

My only name is the Scroobious Pip...."

(Edward Lear)

There once was an island whose folk were jaded and bored. Their land, though once rich with natural beauty and endless resources, was tired and abused. The people had forgotten how to tease food from the earth or become too lazy to do so. They had plundered the soil, poisoning it and depleting its once-abundant productivity. Rivers ran laden with effluent, the rains unleashed acrid torrents, and the winds whipped up fierce storms of fire and smoke. The seas all around pressed in on the shore with pounding waves and the highest tides in living memory. The air became a cauldron and the forests began to burn out of control. 

When the people became paralysed by a strange inertia that overtook their will to counter these rapid, worrying changes in their lives, they started to believe they were done for. It was then that things took a much bleaker, way scarier turn for the worse. Out of nowhere, or so it seemed, came a pox that leaked a virulent venom and started striking down the vulnerable - the old, the sick, the tormented among them. They say it came from 'nowhere', out of the wild, from the deepest jungle one day, on the breath of a diddly squib (esquibus diddlus silvestris). This semi-mythical creature got loose causing havoc, borne by the wind, spreading fear faster, and pestilence further, than wildfire ever was able, like a dragon of old.

The islanders were so startled, so stricken by fear, they panicked, they did. Their leaders assembled and set down laws to deal with the dubious squib pox, to exterminate the beast, that were so unprecedented, so extreme, so draconian, so disproportionate, so lunatic, so farcical, so barking mad, that the people piped up, almost in unison, OK, enough, we will comply, but just for a while, until we bend back into shape. We will stay home and wait things out, we will cover up and keep away from others and bathe devotedly - as long as you deliver us food and wine and satellite news, oh... and more toilet roll and soap. And please, get rid of that diddly squib and its pestilential pox. It is driving us crazy!

So, the lofty leaders got together, by satellite. They were guided by their geneticist-in-chief, a lauded man beyond reproach, and his trusty epidemiologists in the Fatality Allocation Review Team, the esteemed FART. They sat and conferred with the government and came to a conclusion. They must exercise their power, act, conclusively, exert control, direct the deaths. They must stand up definitively to the diddly squib pox (which, in hindsight, became universally labelled as EDS2020). They would throw the kitchen sink at it, dirty washing and all. In a fierce flash of lightning, a mere instant, they would come up with a magic potion that would melt the pox away, stopping the manic spread of EDS2020 and protecting the whole island. However, there were two catches, the first proviso being that treatment would need to be universal and the second - because eradication was out of the question - it would have to be regularly administered, with updates forever. There was no guarantee that the magic potion would work since this was a novel concoction developed in a laboratory and did not use the tools of Nature. Such a daring sleight of hand, such an act of sorcerous wizardry had never been hysterically undertaken before, but this didn't matter because the people were sore afraid, suffering from panic overload. It was untested over time in real life conditions and nobody could say how safe or efficacious it would prove to be, not even the geneticist-in-chief, lauded though he was. But magical thinking was deemed necessary to defeat this fearsome foe. Time was of the essence. "We are smart, we hearty FART", the leaders chanted in unison.

So it was that the fear-stricken populace lined up in an endless slow-moving procession of possession to receive their dose of potion - a shot in the arm that was to become the first of many aiming to deal the fatal death blow to the devious, evasive pox. But with each dose delivered, the pox became emboldened and invigorated. It mutated and variegated. When and where would it all end? Perhaps - a few among the many mused - it would have been better, wiser to leave the beast well alone, unconfronted, unteased into lashing out.

Revelation

First comes the ploy,

then the narrative spin.

Revelation scatters the pigeons

and revisionism rushes in.