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."
