When Nietzsche Wept
Page 30
Once Breuer fell behind. Nietzsche, turning to look for him, was surprised to see his companion, hat in hand, standing and bowing before a small plant of ordinary appearance.
“Foxglove,” Breuer explained. “I have at least forty patients with heart failure whose life depends upon the largesse of that plebeian plant.”
For both men, the cemetery visit had opened old childhood wounds; and, as they strolled, they reminisced. Nietzsche recounted a dream he remembered from the age of six, a year after his father had died.
“It’s as vivid today as if I’d dreamed it last night. A grave opens and my father, dressed in a shroud, arises, enters a church, and soon returns carrying a small child in his arms. He climbs back into his grave with the child. The earth closes on top of them, and the gravestone slides over the opening.
“The truly horrible thing was that shortly after I had that dream, my younger brother was taken ill and died of convulsions.”
“How ghastly!” Breuer said. “How eerie to have had such a pre-vision! How do you explain it?”
“I can’t. For a long time, the supernatural terrified me, and I said my prayers with great earnestness. Over the last few years, however, I’ve begun to suspect that the dream was unrelated to my brother, that it was me my father had come for, and that the dream was expressing my fear of death.”
At ease with one another in a way they had not been before, both men continued to reminisce. Breuer recalled a dream of some calamity occurring in his old home: his father standing helplessly, praying and rocking, wrapped in his blue-and-white prayer shawl. And Nietzsche described a nightmare in which, entering his bedroom, he saw, lying in his bed, an old man dying, a death rattle in his throat.
“We both encountered death very early,” said Breuer thoughtfully, “and we both suffered a terrible early loss. I believe, speaking for myself, I’ve never recovered. But you, what about your loss? What about having had no father to protect you?”
“To protect me—or to oppress me? Was it a loss? I’m not so sure. Or it may have been a loss for the child, but not for the man.”
“Meaning?” Breuer asked.
“Meaning that I was never weighed down by carrying my father on my back, never suffocated by the burden of his judgment, never taught that the object of life was to fulfill his thwarted ambitions. His death may well have been a blessing, a liberation. His whims never became my law. I was left alone to discover my own path, one not trodden before. Think about it! Could I, the antichrist, have exorcized false beliefs and sought new truths with a parson-father wincing with pain at my every achievement, a father who would have regarded my campaigns against illusion as a personal attack against him?”
“But,” Breuer rejoined, “if you had had his protection when you needed it, would you have had to be the antichrist?”
Nietzsche did not respond, and Breuer pressed no further. He was learning to accommodate to Nietzsche’s rhythm: any truth-seeking inquiries were permissible, even welcomed; but added force would be resisted. Breuer took out his watch, the one given him by his father. It was time to turn back to the fiacre, where Fischmann awaited. With the wind at their backs, the walking was easier.
“You may be more honest than I,” speculated Breuer. “Perhaps my father’s judgments weighed me down more than I realized. But most of the time I miss him a great deal.”
“What do you miss?”
Breuer thought about his father and sampled the memories passing before his eyes. The old man, yarmulke on head, chanting a blessing before he tasted his supper of boiled potatoes and herring. His smile as he sat in the synagogue and watched his son wrapping his fingers in the tassels of his prayer shawl. His refusal to let his son take back a move in chess: “Josef, I cannot permit myself to teach you bad habits.” His deep baritone voice, which filled the house as he sang passages for the young students he was preparing for their bar mitzvah.
“Most of all, I think I miss his attention. He was always my chief audience, even at the very end of his life, when he suffered considerable confusion and memory loss. I made sure to tell him of my successes, my diagnostic triumphs, my research discoveries, even my charitable donations. And even after he died, he was still my audience. For years I imagined him peering over my shoulder, observing and approving my achievements. The more his image fades, the more I struggle with the feeling that my activities and successes are all evanescent, that they have no real meaning.”
“Are you saying, Josef, that if your successes could be recorded in the ephemeral mind of your father, then they would possess meaning?”
“I know it’s irrational. It’s much like the question of the sound of a tree falling in an empty forest. Does unobserved activity have meaning?”
“The difference is, of course, that the tree has no ears, whereas it is you, yourself, who bestow meaning.”
“Friedrich, you’re more self-sufficient than I—more than any one I’ve known! I remember marveling, in our very first meeting, at your ability to thrive with no recognition whatsoever from your colleagues.”
“Long ago, Josef, I learned that it is easier to cope with a bad reputation than with a bad conscience. Besides, I’m not greedy; I don’t write for the crowd. And I know how to be patient. Perhaps my students are not yet alive. Only the day after tomorrow belongs to me. Some philosophers are born posthumously!”
“But, Friedrich—believing you will be born posthumously—is that so different from my longing for my father’s attention? You can wait, even until the day after tomorrow, but you, too, yearn for an audience.”
A long pause. Nietzsche nodded finally and then said softly, “Perhaps. Perhaps I have within me pockets of vanity yet to be purged.”
Breuer merely nodded. It did not escape his notice that this was the first time one of his observations had been acknowledged by Nietzsche. Was this to be a turning point in their relationship?
No, not yet! After a moment, Nietzsche added, “Still, there is a difference between coveting a parent’s approval and striving to elevate those who will follow in the future.”
Breuer did not respond, though it was obvious to him that Nietzsche’s motives were not purely self-transcendent; he had his own back-alley ways of courting remembrance. Today it seemed to Breuer as if all motives, his and Nietzsche’s, sprang from a single source—the drive to escape death’s oblivion. Was he growing too morbid? Maybe it was the effect of the cemetery. Maybe even one visit a month was too frequent.
But not even morbidity could spoil the mood of this walk. He thought of Nietzsche’s definition of friendship: two who join together in a search for some higher truth. Was that not precisely what he and Nietzsche were doing that day? Yes, they were friends.
That was a consoling thought, even though Breuer knew that their deepening relationship and their engrossing discussion brought him no closer to relief from his pain. For the sake of friendship, he tried to ignore this disturbing idea.
Yet, as a friend, Nietzsche must have read his mind. “I like this walk we take together, Josef, but we must not forget the raison d’être of our meetings—your psychological state.”
Breuer slipped and grabbed a sapling for support as they descended a hill. “Careful, Friedrich, this shale is slick.” Nietzsche gave Breuer his hand, and they continued their descent.
“I’ve been thinking,” Nietzsche continued, “that, though our discussions appear to be diffuse, we, nonetheless, steadily grow closer to a solution. It’s true that our direct attacks on your Bertha obsession have been futile. Yet in the last couple of days we have found out why: because the obsession involves not Bertha, or not only her, but a series of meanings folded into Bertha. We agree on this?”
Breuer nodded, wanting to suggest politely that help was not going to come by way of such intellectual formulations. But Nietzsche hurried on. “It’s clear now that our primary error has been in considering Bertha the target. We have not chosen the right enemy.”
“And that is—?”
“But you, too, Friedrich, must be frightened by death and by godlessness. From the very beginning, I have asked, ‘How do you bear it? How have you come to terms with such horrors?’ ”
“It may be time to tell you,” Nietzsche replied, his manner becoming portentous. “Before, I did not think that you were ready to hear me.”
Breuer, curious about Nietzsche’s message, chose, for once, not to object to his prophet voice.
“I do not teach, Josef, that one should ‘bear’ death, or ‘come to terms’ with it. That way lies life-betrayal! Here is my lesson to you: Die at the right time!”
“Die at the right time!” The phrase jolted Breuer. The pleasant afternoon stroll had turned deadly serious. “Die at the right time? What do you mean? Please, Friedrich, I can’t stand it, as I tell you again and again, when you say something important in such an enigmatic way. Why do you do that?”
“You pose two questions. Which shall I answer?”
“Today, tell me about dying at the right time.”
“Live when you live! Death loses its terror if one dies when one has consummated one’s life! If one does not live in the right time, then one can never die at the right time.”
“What does that mean?” Breuer asked again, feeling ever more frustrated.
“Ask yourself, Josef: Have you consummated your life?”
“You answer questions with questions, Friedrich!”
“You ask questions to which you know the answer,” Nietzsche countered.
“If I knew the answer, why would I ask?”
“To avoid knowing your own answer!”
Breuer paused. He knew Nietzsche was right. He stopped resisting and turned his attention within. “Have I consummated my life? I have achieved a great deal, more than anyone could have expected of me. Material success, scientific achievement, family, children—but we’ve gone over all that before.”
“Still, Josef, you avoid my question. Have you lived your life? Or been lived by it? Chosen it? Or did it choose you? Loved it? Or regretted it? That is what I mean when I ask whether you have consummated your life. Have you used it up? Remember that dream in which your father stood by helplessly praying while something calamitous was happening to his family? Are you not like him? Do you not stand by helplessly, grieving for the life you never lived?”
Breuer felt the pressure mounting. Nietzsche’s questions bore into him; he had no defense against them. He could hardly breathe. His chest seemed about to burst. He stopped walking for a moment and took three deep breaths before answering.
“These questions—you know the answer! No, I’ve not chosen! No, I’ve not lived the life I’ve wanted! I’ve lived the life assigned me. I—the real I—have been encased in my life.”
“And that, Josef is, I am convinced, the primary source of your Angst. That precordial pressure—it’s because your chest is bursting with unlived life. And your heart ticks away the time. And time’s covetousness is forever. Time devours and devours—and gives back nothing. How terrible to hear you say that you lived the life assigned to you! And how terrible to face death without ever having claimed freedom, even in all its danger!”
Nietzsche was firmly in his pulpit, his prophet’s voice ringing. A wave of disappointment swept over Breuer; he knew now that there was no help for him.
“Friedrich,” he said, “these are grand-sounding phrases. I admire them. They stir my soul. But they are far, far away from my life. What does claiming freedom mean to my everyday situation? How can I be free? It’s not the same as you, a young single man giving up a suffocating university career. It’s too late for me! I have a family, employees, patients, students. It’s far too late! We can talk forever, but I cannot change my life—it is woven too tight with the thread of other lives.”
There was a long silence, which Breuer broke, his voice weary. “But I cannot sleep, and now I cannot stand the pain of this pressure in my chest.” The icy wind piercing his greatcoat, he shivered and wrapped his scarf more tightly around his neck.
Nietzsche, in a rare gesture, took his arm. “My friend,” he whispered, “I cannot tell you how to live differently because, if I did, you would still be living another’s design. But, Josef, there is something I can do. I can give you a gift, the gift of my mightiest thought, my thought of thoughts. Perhaps it may already be somewhat familiar to you, since I sketched it briefly in Human, All Too Human. This thought will be the guiding force of my next book, perhaps of all my future books.”
His voice had lowered, assuming a solemn, stately tone, as if to signify the culmination of everything that had gone before. The two men walked arm in arm. Breuer looked straight ahead as he awaited Nietzsche’s words.
“Josef, try to clear your mind. Imagine this thought experiment! What if some demon were to say to you that this life—as you now live it and have lived it in the past—you will have to live once more, and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and everything unutterably small or great in your life will return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this wind and those trees and that slippery shale, even the graveyard and the dread, even this gentle moment and you and I, arm in arm, murmuring these words?”
As Breuer remained silent, Nietzsche continued, “Imagine the eternal hourglass of existence turned upside down again and again and again. And each time, also turned upside down are you and I, mere specks that we are.”
Breuer made an effort to understand him. “How is this—this—this fantasy———”
“It’s more than a fantasy,” Nietzsche insisted, “more really than a thought experiment. Listen only to my words! Block out everything else! Think about infinity. Look behind you—imagine looking infinitely far into the past. Time stretches backward for all eternity. And, if time infinitely stretches backward, must not everything that can happen have already happened? Must not all that passes now have passed this way before? Whatever walks here, mustn’t it have walked this path before? And if everything has passed before in time’s infinity, then what do you think, Josef, of this moment, of our whispering together under this arch of trees? Must not this, too, have come before? And time that stretches back infinitely, must it not also stretch ahead infinitely? Must not we, in this moment, in every moment, recur eternally?”
Nietzsche fell silent, to give Breuer time to absorb his message. It was midday, but the sky had darkened. A light snow began to fall. The fiacre and Fischmann loomed into sight.
On the ride back to the clinic, the two men resumed their discussion. Nietzsche claimed that, though he had termed it a thought experiment, his assumption of eternal recurrence could be scientifically proven. Breuer was skeptical about Nietzsche’s proof, which was based on two metaphysical principles: that time is infinite, and force (the basic stuff of the universe) is finite. Given a finite number of potential states of the world and an infinite amount of time that has passed, it follows, Nietzsche claimed, that all possible states must have already occurred; and that the present state must be a repetition; and, likewise, the one that gave birth to it and the one that arises out of it and so on, backward into the past and forward into the future.
Breuer’s perplexity grew. “You mean that through sheer random occurrences this precise moment would have occurred previously?”
“Think of time that has always been, time stretching back forever. In such infinite time, must not recombinations of all events constituting the world have repea
ted themselves an infinite number of times?”
“Like a great dice game?”
“Precisely! The great dice game of existence!”
Breuer continued to question Nietzsche’s cosmological proof of eternal recurrence. Though Nietzsche responded to each question, he eventually grew impatient and finally threw up his hands.
“Time and time again, Josef, you have asked for concrete help. How many times have you asked me to be relevant, to offer something that can change you? Now I give you what you request, and you ignore it by picking away at details. Listen to me, my friend, listen to my words—this is the most important thing I will ever say to you: let this thought take possession of you, and I promise you it will change you forever!”
Breuer was unmoved. “But how can I believe without proof? I cannot conjure up belief. Have I given up one religion simply to embrace another?”
“The proof is extremely complex. It is still unfinished and will require years of work. And now, as a result of our discussion, I’m not sure I should even bother to devote the time to working out the cosmological proof—perhaps others, too, will use it as a distraction. Perhaps they, like you, will pick away at the intricacies of the proof and ignore the important point—the psychological consequences of eternal recurrence.”
Breuer said nothing. He looked out the window of the fiacre and shook his head slightly.
“Let me put it another way,” Nietzsche continued. “Will you not grant me that eternal recurrence is probable? No, wait, I don’t need even that! Let us say simply that it is possible, or merely possible. That is enough. Certainly it is more possible and more provable than the fairy tale of eternal damnation! What do you have to lose by considering it a possibility? Can you not think of it, then, as ‘Nietzsche’s wager’?”