Stages on Life’s Way
Page 62
From sketch; see 56:6-60:3:
Plato, as we know, thanks the gods for four things—an [V B 178.8 307] older philosopher had already thanked them for three; it increases. I go back further and thank them for one, but all the more fervently, that I became man and not woman. Woman is basically made a fool of in life; she is never allowed to mean anything on her own but only through her relationship. As a child the girl is esteemed less than the boy; future care of the girl occupies the parents very early and worries them. She grows up, and, see, now a rich suitor casts his eyes on her. Presto—the sweet Camilla becomes in the parents’ eyes a [V B 178 8 308] most precious child (a blatant lie; it is a matter of the son-inlaw and his money). He wooes her and for fourteen days of billing and cooing he buys a lifetime of slavery. This whole wooing business in particular is an unparalleled joke on her. Even the crudest male, even the public executioner, when he lays down his fasces in order to go a-wooing, even he makes his approach with a certain ingratiation and obsequiousness—and even the most cultured man is absolutely changed as soon as he becomes a married man.77 If I were a woman I would first and foremost petition that all wooing be abolished. I would say to the man: If you want me, then take me. I will bear your children. I will manage your house. I know that I am the weaker sex, but you have not made me that; I take that humbly from God’s hand. But all wooing disgusts me; it is a lie—you may rather hit me. —Eventually she dies and now the husband becomes sentimental and consoles himself with the reunion. But I hope that by that time she will have perceived herself differently and will receive him most kindly in a better world. For this blessed reunion the man prepares himself by taking a new wife, even if he still believes that a second marriage cannot be as beautiful as the first, but only a reprint. In olden days, one believed that immortality was proved by erotic love, somewhat like this: these two love each other for all eternity, ergo, there ought to be an eternity; nowadays one proves it by having loved very frequently, for is not a perfectibility such as this proof of an immortal spirit!
If we leave this bourgeois world in order to enter the world of poetry and fiction, then a fool is once again made of woman. She is supposed to be, so it is claimed, the one who inspires. How many amorous flutists have played this theme, and how many shepherdesses have listened to it. She inspires the warrior; she rewards him with her love. But if one thinks about that more carefully, one perceives that unhappy love in particular makes the bravest warrior, and if she does it once, then possession is the knight’s very downfall, for now he acquires something else entirely to think about—ergo, it is in a very figurative sense that she does it. —She inspires the poet. [V B 178.8 309] She? Which she? The beloved, quite right, but not the beloved he won as his wife, by no means. Is there one single example of a happy love that has made a man a poet? So it is a lie and falsehood, and it is only the man’s ideality that is aroused by the lies. If he had won the beloved, then good night, good peaceful night, Mr. Married Peter.78 Thus everywhere she is the object of ridicule. No man has ever become a poet because of a woman. It happens in two ways, either by loving only one, whom he does not win, or by loving many, but summa summarum [sum of sums, in the long run] loving many is indeed also an unhappy love, for the point in all happy love is that there is only one.—Pap V B 178:8 n.d., 1844
From sketch; see 56:26-30:
Women and slaves were always placed in [the same] category by the Greeks.—Pap. V B 178:4 n.d., 1844
Deleted from final copy; see 57:18:
Richard III was, as he himself says, en[t]stellt, verwahrlost von der tückischen Natur [deformed, unfinished by dissembling nature].79—Pap. VI B 8:5 n.d., 1844
Deleted from final copy; see 57:26:
Richard’s fury over being a love-smitten specimen of a human being would probably have been even more terrible if it were conceivable that with a higher reflection he could catch himself having to be helped from the frying pan into the fire. —*In the sense of Richard III
In margin: *In the sense of a deformed person
—Pap. VI B 8:6 n.d., 1844
From sketch; see 59:6-7:
[V B 179 3 309] It is also my opinion that ideality enters into life by way of women, and to that extent I am far from agreeing with Constantin [V B 179.3 310] that she is a joke. What is man without woman? It is altogether correct; but as soon as this high-sounding talk is understood more closely, then it goes just like the transition from Juliane to Mrs. Petersen.—Pap. V B 179:3 n.d., 1844
From sketch; see 59:19-22:
. . . It is very wisely arranged by life that a man shall not owe one person everything.—Pap. V B 178:7 n.d., 1844
From sketch; see 60:34-61:21:
The true ideality and true verification in the proof again rest first in unhappy love.—Pap. V B 179:4 n.d., 1844
From draft; see 61:32-62:2:
The view once again begins to be so grandiloquent, as if she were even capable of becoming more guilty than the man, and in the next moment ends with one’s saying to her or to oneself about her: Don’t trouble yourself about it, dear child; you certainly have been forgiven for it long ago.—Pap. V B 179:5 n.d., 1844
From draft; see 62:15-64:26:
[V B 179 6 310] Now if this is the way it is with woman, what position to her is the man to take? In my opinion, he is to stay on the outside completely and attend to saving his soul from such meaninglessness, which ultimately enervates his strength. A man who has much to do with women eventually, just like her, in an imaginary moment becomes something extraordinary and in actuality nothing. Wherever woman is involved, there is this unavoidable hiatus, a hiatus that begins with opening the mouth so wide that it is impossible to speak because of sheer overexcitement and when one finally shuts one’s mouth ends in finding that basically it is not worth talking about. So it is with marriage—which especially in our day begins with a hodgepodge[*] of sacred and secular, of pagan and Christian, bourgeois grandiloquence, so one can make neither head nor tail of whether it is that inexplicable eroticism, that Wahlverwandtschaft [elective affinity] between like-minded souls, or it is duty or it is a partnership or an expediency in life or the custom in certain countries, whether one is to listen to the tunes of the cither in the evening or to organ [V B 179 6 311] music or to the admonishing words, the edifying discourse, of the clergyman or of the police inspector.
[*]In margin: just as the turtle has a taste of everything possible
—Pap. V B 179:6 n.d., 1844
From draft; see 63:10-14:
If, however, she remains faithful, then good night, Ole and Ideality.—Pap. V B 180:1 n.d., 1844
From draft; see 63:18:
. . . . . only death is more decisive.—Pap. V B 181:2 n.d., 1844
From draft; see 64:1-3:
. . . . . passage that is unlike anything else, for not even death can be compared, since as simple it no doubt is terrible but is not complex. Consequently such a composite passage—Pap. V B 181:3 n.d., 1844
From draft; see 64:21-26:
As he sees it afterwards, he gradually sees exactly the opposite, and in the course of two weeks one can, by observing him and his speech, receive the opposite explanations, for his life lacks unity.
Just as I have thanked the gods that I became man and not woman, so let us also thank the gods that none of us has been so infatuated with any woman that he has received employment for life, a lifetime employment of continually having to think afterwards.—Pap. V B 181:4 n.d., 1844
From sketch; see 64:27-65:14:
Victor Eremita’s Speech
Lines. After all, a seducer has always been a difficult subject for me. Certainly no one has ever begun with wanting to be a seducer,* but it is a man who has been unable to decide to belong to one girl for his whole life. He has had sufficient ideality to grasp this thought but not to go through with it. Thus a seducer is also an unhappy lover, and the first love’s yield is what he plows under, and this plowing under nourishes his autumn affair. But in this way a seducer is
the most dependent.—Pap. V B 178:1 n.d., 1844
In margin of Pap. V B 178:1:
. . . . . *no more than a girl at first wants to let herself be seduced. Yet we have an example (police inspector Götsche,80 a “freeborn,” who as a maiden became a public prostitute, robbed the man, and he reported the theft but also believed that she could not be a public prostitute since she was a maiden).—Pap. V B 178:3 n.d, 1844
From sketch; see 64:27-65:14:
To be a benedict—is rubbish; to be a seducer is also rubbish; but to be an exceptional husband and on the quiet seduce every girl—seemingly to be a seducer and yet hide all the ardor of romance in his soul—this is the task. To me this reduplication is necessary. I have difficulty articulating myself. This reduplication is like the embellishment in the Slavic languages. For this reason no immediate subjectivity can understand me or articulate me. For this reason I cannot marry, for my wife cannot articulate me. (After all, every man in his youth has felt this urge for reduplication, but then they become cowardly.)—Pap. V B 178:5 n.d., 1844
From sketch; see 65:5-27:
But this reduplication shows that his relationship to woman is not something essential but that through her he merely relates to himself. A reduplication such as that is like the embellishment in the words of several languages, it makes it impossible for woman to articulate him. An immediate subjectivity cannot understand or articulate this reflectiveness in which man’s ideality is actually first posited.
But even conceived in this way, the relationship to woman in one way or another still remains a concession, for even if a concession is revoked by being drawn up into a second power it is nevertheless a concession in the first power. Therefore, what was my first word is my final word, that I thank the gods I became a man and not a woman.
If a woman can do the same as the man, then there can still be no relationship between them, no more than an erotic relationship between man and man, and for her to be regarded as man would of course be unbeautiful.
—Pap. V B 179:7 n.d., 1844
From sketch; see 65:25-67:9:
The Fashion Designer
If anyone knows woman, then it is I; I know her from her advantageous side: adornment, and what else is she able to do or for what else does she have any sense than for adorning herself. see journal, p. 71 [Pap. IV A 135-139].81
—Pap. V B 182:1 n.d., 1844
From sketch; see 66: 10-15:
Indeed, if fashion meant nothing more than that a woman in the concupiscence of lust throws off everything, that would still be something. But that is not the way it is. Fashion is not open sensuality; it is not tolerated dissipation; it is authorized propriety. This, its pettiness, is what is really so loathsome about it. In a country where Jews are not tolerated, one at times sees a Jew roaming around and hawking; in the same way fashion’s sneaking sensuality fears morality’s commandment and therefore makes no big business deals, nothing that could intimidate, but in very small, almost microscopic parts (for the feminine reflection is infinite) one hawks the forbidden but in such a retail way that no devil can check on it. . . . —Pap. V B 182:5 n.d., 1844
From sketch; see 68:13-70:12:
[V B 182 7 314] . . . See, there she stands; now she pushes her lips apriorally, then gesticulates aposteriorally; now she wriggles her hips, then she lisps with her tongue and then with her feet; now she sinks casually into an upholstered armchair while I obsequiously hand her a flacon, recommend a new kind of perfume to her, and say to her that she is in fashion. In everything, everything, every minute she wants to be in fashion. Fashion, pro dii immortales [ye immortal gods], what is woman when she is not in fashion, and what is woman when she is in fashion! Say to her when she blissfully sinks to your breast and lisps incomprehensibly, “Yours forever,” and hides her face in your bosom, say, “Sweet Katy, your hairdo is in style”—and everything is forgotten.[*] From my boutique the glad gospel [essentially the same as 69:26-35] I put everything in order,** and when she looks crazier than someone who has escaped from the loony bin, indeed, as crazy as someone who [V B 182 7 315] could not even be admitted there, then I escort her out, hurry past her, open the door of my boutique, bow adoringly before her, cross my arms, allow myself to throw her an admiring kiss.
[*]I am the most dangerous man in the kingdom.
**[See last line of Pap. V B 182:8]
—Pap. V B 182:7 n.d., 1844
From sketch; see 68:24-37:
Say to her as she adoringly falls on your breast, “Dear Catherine, one of your curls is falling down”—and then she has forgotten everything over that. Say to her when she kneels before God that her shawl has fallen down too far (the woman Diogenes saw, who lay worshiping in a somewhat immodest position and he asked her whether she did not believe that the gods could see her from behind).—Pap. V B 182:3 n.d., 1844
From sketch; see 70:8-71:12:
All girls, not merely the exclusive ones, pay homage to fashion. This I can see in my young girls who sew for me and on whom I lavish a little. They look half lunatic, and I the high priest look utterly disconsolate. Whether I am serving the devil or the god I do not know, but I am right. And I press my right. I see a little bourgeois girl who, ordinary and nice, pays no attention to fashion and corsets. Soon she is mine. I measure her first with a contemptuous look; she perishes from fright, alas, for I am the Fashion Designer ϰατ’ ἐξοχήν [par excellence]. Thereupon I deck her out, and blissful she leaves me.—Pap. V B 182:8 n.d., 1844
From sketch; see 70:15-20:
When a seducer says that every woman’s virtue is for sale, I do not believe him. But she lets herself be brought into the realm of fashion; she cannot resist the temptation. And yet she is more incurably corrupted by this than by being seduced, for this self-reflection lets her perish as one σϰωληϰόβϱωτος [eaten by worms],82 and it can be stopped at a hundred places, but it breaks out once again.—Pap. V B 182:4 n.d., 1844
From final copy; see 70:20:
. . . . . for this sickness cannot be stopped, and fashion’s prey always ends up as one σϰωληϰο´βϱωτος [eaten by worms].83—Pap. VI B 8:7 n.d., 1844
From sketch; see 70:20:
The most wretched of all must still be to have been a woman who went about with padded hips in order to please men and to have fuller hips than her friends.
—Pap. VB 182:2 n.d., 1844
From sketch; see 70:21-24:
I always use women as spies and to incite.—Pap. V B 182:9 n.d., 1844
From sketch; see 71:27-72:2:
[V B 183 1 315] Johannes the Seducer’s Speech
When Johannes was about to speak and consequently first declare that he was intoxicated or in the condition in which the power of the wine and the power of consciousness are wrestling, objections were raised. Constantin insisted that he was not in the condition.* During the meal it had struck me that although Johannes drank much more than all the others he was so far removed from becoming drunk that he became more and more sober-minded; just a certain coolness spread over his whole being, and he spoke more slowly and in very short sentences. It seemed as if his reflection made it impossible for him to become drunk. He retained all his dignity, and when it appeared to him that a waiter did not understand how [V B 183.1 316] to serve champagne, he took the bottle from him and did it himself, but with a marvelous graciousness. Now he stood up, his napkin in hand, and declared that if he was not intoxicated now he never would be.** So he received permission to speak.
In margin: *At this point the uniform succession of the speeches was interrupted by a deliberation over whether or to what extent experimenting reflection—to drink in order to see if one can become drunk—does not make it impossible to become so.
In margin: **but if it could set their minds at rest, he would have a huge bottle of champagne brought;† he drank it.
†so that my eyes may be red with tears, as Falstaff says.84
—Pap. V B 183:1 n.d., 1844
From sketch; see 72:21-
26:
One should not demand of woman an ideality she does not have, that she be faithful or make something of the man, but one should take her as she is and have one’s joy of her.—Pap. V B 183:3 n.d., 1844
From sketch; see 72:21-26:
I am not surprised that in this company such strange conclusions are arrived at with respect to woman, for all the other speakers seem to me to be unhappy lovers, since he, too, is an unhappy lover who has conjured up a notion of womanly ideality that cannot be found. Such a thing has never occurred to me.—Pap. V B 183:4 n.d., 1844
From sketch; see 73:24-28:
It seems almost like a conspiracy against the opposite sex; if no one will speak to its honor, then I surely will.
Eulogy on Woman
For this he uses an essay by Hen. Corn. Agrippa,85 which I own. Because of its naïveté the comic and humorous effect is assured.—Pap. V B 183:2 n.d., 1844
From sketch; see 76:14-21:
The god [Guden] formed her out of man; as this derivative she promptly manifests herself as being collective.—Pap. V B 183:15 n.d., 1844
From sketch; see 77:3-26:
[V B 183:13 318] . . . . . light as the bird, although she bears a world of bliss within her
elegant of gait
[V B 183: 12 319] light and ethereal as if formed of the mists of the summer night, swift, vanishing like a wren until once again she betrays her hiding place, mischievous as a child at play who peeks out of his hiding place, and in the same way she peeks out of her hiding place. Calm as the stillness of evening when not a leaf stirs, calm as the thought that has nothing to think about, calm as the consciousness that is aware of nothing, for she knows nothing, and yet the devotee of erotic love who listens with stethoscopic probity discovers all the craving of desire therein. Silent as the solitude of the forest, talkative as twittering birds.
carefree
—Pap. V B 183:12 n.d., 1844
From sketch; see 77:16-21:
confidential as if it were oneself; surprising as the sight of a revelation, necessary in life, and yet like the riddle of life—strange, as if one were looking at oneself outside oneself, inexplicable as that which did not arise in one’s heart.—Pap. V B 183:13 n.d., 1844