Interlude XVI. Nietzsche - part 5

Prometheus + Indian Summer

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Interlude XV. Nietzsche - part 4

From The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche...

Sec 9 - The Aryan myth of Prometheus vs the Semitic myth of the fall

The presupposition of the Prometheus myth is to be found in the extravagant value which a naive humanity attached to fire as the true palladium of every ascending culture. But that man should freely dispose of fire without receiving it as a present from heaven... struck those reflective primitive men as sacrilege, as a robbery of divine nature... The best and highest possession mankind can acquire is obtained by sacrilege and must be paid for with consequences that involve the whole flood of sufferings and sorrows with which the offended divinities have to afflict the nobly aspiring race of men... What distinguishes the Aryan notion is the sublime view of active sin as the characteristically Promethean virtue. With that, the ethical basis for pessimistic tragedy has been found; the justification of human evil, meaning both human guilt and the human suffering it entails.

In the heroic effort of the individual to attain universality, in the attempt to transcend the curse of individuation and to become the one world-being, he suffers in his own person the primordial contradiction that is concealed in things, which means that he commits sacrilege and suffers.

So in the middle of this ongoing discussion of the Apollinian and Dionysian, Nietzsche suddenly goes off on the Promethean. This starts with Aeschylus’s Prometheus but quickly turns to Goethe’s Prometheus with a quote from the lovely ending of that poem where Prometheus refers to Zeus or the Olympian gods in general:

Here I sit, forming men

in my own image,

a race to be like me,

to suffer, to weep,

to delight and to rejoice,

and to defy you,

as I do.

This got me questioning my knowledge of the Prometheus myth, so I did a little research and no wonder I was confused. And it gets even more complicated when those damn Romantics get involved. Prometheus is either a Titan or, for people who want to emphasize his similarity with Christ, a son of Zeus. He either creates man out of clay or men are created by the Olympian gods and he only breathes life into them. Or he merely gives them fire, though what exactly is meant by “fire” is also open to interpretation.

Aside from the people who wish to see in his perpetual suffering a Christlike figure -- bound to the rock with the eagle (or Byron would make it a vulture) eating his liver every day in punishment for his giving fire to man, for most he is an equivalent of Lucifer giving men precisely what the gods don’t want them to have. (It is also worth noting that "Lucifer" supposedly means "light bearer" or, as an adjective, "light-bringing" in Hebrew.)

I can’t help wondering how Goethe compared Prometheus with Lucifer or his own Mephistopheles. Giving man either fire or the "divine spark" is interesting for a number of reasons. Either can be viewed as what separate man from nature. Fire, what the Greeks understood by the term, but also the highly problematic industrial and modern fires of coal (which Goethe viewed with alarm), oil, and fission, are what give us the ability to desecrate our world. Goethe was critical of the un-natural power over the earth that Mephisto gave to Faust and also of the Faustian desire to change or improve nature. So does he view Prometheus with the same jaundiced eye?

And then there’s the other thing, the divine spark. That which makes us conscious of ourselves and of our separation from nature. For the Greeks this quality was laid at Prometheus’s door. Milton, and Christianity, would give the credit or blame to Lucifer, for what is the knowledge of good and evil that got Adam and Eve kicked out of Eden but the consciousness or belief that acts have a moral value -- something that doesn’t exist in nature. (To realize just how amoral nature is you can read Sallie Tisdale’s “The Sutra of Maggots and Blowflies,” included in the book The Inevitable by David Shields, or Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim At Tinker Creek.)

Is Prometheus really the Friend of Man he has been made out to be? Or, like Lucifer, can he also be seen as man’s greatest enemy? Prometheus and Lucifer are the ones who cut us off from the oneness -- or at least the unself- consciousness -- of creation. Nietzsche claims that the Greeks invented the Olympian gods and placed them (more or less) in the world so that we would not be overwhelmed by despair. If the gods love and fight and procreate then life must be good enough for us, too. But couldn’t you then also see Zeus as punishing Prometheus in man’s behalf for the questionable gifts he inflicted on us? Do the Olympian gods exist for us to get our revenge?

Prometheus from Wiki:

In his book written in 1476-77 titled Quaestiones Quinque de Mente, Ficino indicates his preference for reading the Prometheus myth as an image of the human soul seeking to obtain supreme truth. As Olga Raggio summarizes Ficino's text, "The torture of Prometheus is the torment brought by reason itself to man, who is made by it many times more unhappy than the brutes. It is after having stolen one beam of the celestial light [...] that the soul feels as if fastened by chains and [...] only death can release her bonds and carry her to the source of all knowledge."[64] This somberness of attitude in Ficino's text would be further developed later by Charles de Bouelles' Liber de Sapiente of 1509 which presented a mix of both scholastic and Neoplatonic ideas.

For the Romantic era, Prometheus was the rebel who resisted all forms of institutional tyranny epitomized by Zeus — church, monarch, and patriarch. The Romantics drew comparisons between Prometheus and the spirit of the French Revolution, Christ, the Satan of John Milton's Paradise Lost, and the divinely inspired poet or artist. Prometheus is the lyrical "I" who speaks in Goethe's Sturm und Drang poem "Prometheus" (written c. 1772–74, published 1789), addressing God (as Zeus) in misotheist accusation and defiance.

Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein is subtitled "The Modern Prometheus", in reference to the novel's themes of the over-reaching of modern humanity into dangerous areas of knowledge.

Prometheus is the creative and rebellious spirit rejected by God, and who angrily defies him and asserts himself; Ganymede, by direct contrast, is the boyish self who is both adored and seduced by God. As a high Romantic poet and a humanist poet, Goethe presents both identities as contrasting aspects of the Romantic human condition.

"Goethe's Prometheus had Zeus for father and a goddess for mother. With this change from the traditional lineage the poet distinguished his hero from the race of the Titans." For Goethe, the metaphorical comparison of Prometheus to the image of the Son from the New Testament narratives was of central importance, with the figure of Zeus in Goethe's reading being metaphorically matched directly to the image of the Father from the New Testament narratives.

In his 1952 book, Lucifer and Prometheus, Zvi Werblowsky presented the speculatively derived Jungian construction of the character of Satan in Milton's celebrated poem Paradise Lost. Werblowsky applied his own Jungian style of interpretation to appropriate parts of the Prometheus myth for the purpose of interpreting Milton. A reprint of his book in the 1990s by Routledge Press included an introduction to the book by Carl Jung. Some Gnostics have been associated with identifying the theft of fire from heaven as embodied by the fall of Lucifer "the Light Bearer".

Indian Summer.

Our Indian Summer continues. The weather is perfect and I’ve been sitting often at my table overlooking the garden with the doors thrown open. Every day there seems to be a little more red at the top of the Japanese maple tree, and just this week I’ve noticed a bare branch or two up there as well. But what really catches the eye are the hummingbirds. I don’t associate them with this season, but they’ve been zooming all over the place, harvesting the last of this year’s nectar I suppose.

I said before that swallows are the bird I most like to watch in flight, and I am sticking to that, while giving an honorable mention to hawks hovering nearly motionless above a ridge or tall building. Hummingbirds seem to violate all the rules of flight. They are more like bumblebees than other birds. And while bumblebees are my favorite bees (or insects, for that matter) hummingbirds, for all their virtuosity and outrageousness, are not as graceful as the swooping sparrow. But they are exciting to watch.

A new restaurant has opened up near me called “Game.” As a vegetarian, I haven’t even bothered to study their menu, but I imagine (my head cannon) it consists, in best locavore tradition, of squab, rat-on-a-stick, and roast raccoon. Perhaps sea-lion steaks in season. While concocting this menu I found myself wondering if I would make an exception for locally caught pigeons -- do I hate them enough to violate my moral standards to support the thinning of their numbers? I’m not sure, to be frank.

Even pigeons are amazing fliers. Next time you are watching some nasty pigeons in flight, contrast their antics with the best of human heavier-than-air technology. They leave the most nimble helicopter or drone in the dust when they land on window ledges or weave between branches or wires. If I were an aeronautical engineer I think I would probably hate them... more than I already do, I mean.


Next: Interlude XVII. Nietzsche - part 6.

Autumn XIII. Stoics - part 2

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Autumn XIII. Stoics - part 1

But we are fronted by that persistent questioner who will accept no a priori assumption, however noble in its character and beneficent in its tendency. How do we know that the reason of the Stoic is at harmony with the world’s law? I, perhaps, may see life from a very different point of view; to me reason may dictate, not self-subdual, but self-indulgence; I may find in free exercise of all my passions an existence far more consonant with what seems to me the dictate of nature. I am proud; nature has made me so; let my pride assert itself to justification. I am strong; let me put forth my strength, it is the destiny of the feeble to fall before me. On the other hand, I am weak and I suffer; what avails a mere assertion that fate is just, to bring about my calm and glad acceptance of this down-trodden doom? Nay, for there is that within my soul which bids me revolt, and cry against the iniquity of some power I know not. Granting that I am compelled to acknowledge a scheme of things which constrains me to this or that, whether I will or no, how can I be sure that wisdom or moral duty lies in acquiescence? Thus the unceasing questioner; to whom, indeed, there is no reply. For our philosophy sees no longer a supreme sanction, and no longer hears a harmony of the universe.

“He that is unjust is also impious. For the Nature of the Universe, having made all reasonable creatures one for another, to the end that they should do one another good; more or less, according to the several persons and occasions; but in no wise hurt one another; it is manifest that he that doth transgress against this her will, be guilty of impiety towards the most ancient and venerable of all the Deities.” How gladly would I believe this! That injustice is impiety, and indeed the supreme impiety, I will hold with my last breath; but it were the merest affectation of a noble sentiment if I supported my faith by such a reasoning. I see no single piece of strong testimony that justice is the law of the universe; I see suggestions incalculable tending to prove that it is not. Rather must I apprehend that man, in some inconceivable way, may at his best moments represent a Principle darkly at strife with that which prevails throughout the world as known to us. If the just man be in truth a worshipper of the most ancient of Deities, he must needs suppose, either that the object of his worship belongs to a fallen dynasty, or -- what from of old has been his refuge -- that the sacred fire which burns within him is an “evidence of things not seen.” What if I am incapable of either supposition? There remains the dignity of a hopeless cause -- “sed victa Catoni.” [from the Pharsalia by Lucan, “victrix causa diis placuit, sed victa Catoni” = The victorious cause [at the Battle of Pharsalus] pleased the gods, but the defeated cause pleased Cato] But how can there sound the hymn of praise?

“That is best for everyone, which the common Nature of all doth send unto everyone, and then is it best, when she doth send it.” The optimism of Necessity, and perhaps, the highest wisdom man can attain unto. “Remember that unto reasonable creatures only is it granted that they may willingly and freely submit.” No one could be more sensible than I of the persuasiveness of this high theme. The words sing to me, and life is illumined with soft glory, like that of the autumn sunset yonder. “Consider how man’s life is but for a very moment of time, and so depart meek and contented: even as if a ripe olive falling should praise the ground that bare her, and give thanks to the tree that begat her.” So would I fain think, when the moment comes. It is the mood of strenuous endeavour, but also the mood of rest. Better than the calm of achieved indifference (if that, indeed, is possible to man); better than the ecstasy which contemns the travail of earth in contemplation of bliss to come. But, by no effort attainable. An influence of the unknown powers; a peace that falleth upon the soul like dew at evening.  

Alpha.

It has always seemed to me that philosophers had a rather naive understanding of human nature when they said things like,

The happy life is a life that is in harmony with its own nature.

-Seneca

And, to refer once again to Sallie Tisdale's The Sutra of Maggots and Blowflies (in The Inevitable: Contemporary Writers Confront Death), the notion that,

He that is unjust is also impious. For the Nature of the Universe, having made all reasonable creatures one for another, to the end that they should do one another good...

demonstrates a remarkably poor understand of Nature, and Ryecroft admits as much. Annie Dillard may have put it best in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,

Either this world, my mother, is a monster, or I myself am a freak... We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet... We are moral creatures, then, in an amoral world. The universe that suckled us is a monster that does not care if we live or die -- does not care if it grinds itself to a halt.

To borrow a phrase (and book title) from Nietzsche, Nature exists Beyond Good and Evil. And to repeat something I’m pretty sure I said before in reference to Prometheus and The Serpent (Spring XXV. The end of spring + Prometheus), our perception of Good and Evil is a symptom of our individuation... our isolation from nature (and arguably from God.) This is why I would say that the true Problem of Evil is our thinking there is a problem. But this isn’t something you would want an absolute ruler -- or half the population -- to believe.

And yet I don’t think this existential twist completely undermines the final bit of Stoic wisdom quoted above,

Consider how man’s life is but for a very moment of time, and so depart meek and contented: even as if a ripe olive falling should praise the ground that bare her, and give thanks to the tree that begat her.

This holds true even in a world Beyond Good and Evil. Actually, I think Epictitus said it best,

To trouble ones mind about the nature of the Universe is to play the fool. One sect has discovered that Being is one and indivisible. Another that it is infinite in number. If one proclaims that all things are in a continual flux, another replies that nothing can possibly be moved at any time. The theory of the universe as a process of birth and death is met by the counter theory that nothing ever could be born or ever will die. Socrates was interested in human topics.

But what does it all mean? I don’t know, of course, but I choose to see in Nature/the Universe/Devi, the Great Novelist. What does any compelling, page-turning, novel mean? Do we really care? At the end of Vikram Seth’s monumental A Suitable Boy I experienced a level of grief that was new to me from reading -- I couldn’t read fiction for months -- not because the ending was sad (it isn’t) but because the story, this entire universe of literary creation, was over... and the author made it clear on the final page that there would be no sequel. I didn’t crave meaning then, I wanted more story.

Next: Autumn XIV. Suffering + Acorns, trees, and Feng Shui.

Spring XXV. The end of spring + Prometheus

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: XXIV. Walking in the country

Walking in a favourite lane to-day, I found it covered with shed blossoms of the hawthorn. Creamy white, fragrant even in ruin, lay scattered the glory of May. It told me that spring is over.

Have I enjoyed it as I should? Since the day that brought me freedom, four times have I seen the year’s new birth, and always, as the violet yielded to the rose, I have known a fear that I had not sufficiently prized this boon of heaven whilst it was with me. Many hours I have spend shut up among my books, when I might have been in the meadows. Was the gain equivalent? Doubtfully, diffidently, I hearken what the mind can plead.

... As I turn to summer, a misgiving mingles with my joy.

Alpha.

This description of nature in the spring, reminds me of similar passages in -- wait for it -- The Magic Mountain. They serve to mark the seasons and the passage of time but also to celebrate nature in an almost Romantic manner. Both Mann and Gissing differ from Annie Dillard, in Pilgrim At Tinker Creek, in that they only gloss the beauties of nature (I will have to confirm this as I read) and not the darker side. Dillard (and Sallie Tisdale, I’m thinking of her The Sutra of Maggots and Blowflies in the book The Inevitable: Contemporary Writers Confront Death) uses insects to show the immorality of nature and our distance, as humans, from that state of nature that we can only see as darkness.  

Beta.

The divide between the humane and the natural is, I think, related to the crisis of individuation -- that we are conscious of ourselves as existing outside nature. Nietzsche is focused on this problem throughout The Birth of Tragedy, it is the reason we humans are tragic and why we are in need of tragedy and Dionysian healing. This can be viewed either in Classical (Promethean) terms -- Prometheus either created us as demi-gods to thwart the gods of Olympus or (myths always have multiple versions) he stole and gave us a Divine Spark that achieves the same thing. It was for this crime that his liver was perpetually on the menu, though it is unclear to me if Zeus or mankind was more injured by this “gift”  --  or you can view it in Christian terms:

How men torment themselves is all I see.                                  280

The little god of Earth sticks to the same old way,

And is as strange as on that very first day.

He might appreciate life a little more: he might,

If you [God] hadn’t lent him a gleam of Heavenly light:

He calls it Reason, but only uses it                                             285

To be more a beast than any beast as yet.

-Mephistopheles - Goethe’s Faust

Again, I’m confused by this quote as Goethe seems to steal from Satan the credit for giving man this doubtful gift, for what else is the “knowledge of good and evil?” Of course he does put this in Mephisto’s mouth, and you really can’t trust that guy. But the rule with myths and poetry seems to be that you can just make anything up as you go along.

Next: Summer I. Time regained.