Dionysian Anarchism

As soon as the cooking activity of a Dalitbahujan woman is over, she feeds the children, swallows some food to satisfy the burning hunger in her stomach, packs some food for her husband and leaves for the field. The furrowing of lands, seeding and watering—all these are collective activities of both woman and man. It is not that the patriarchal ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ relations do not operate even in the field in these castes. They do, but they operate at a mundane level. Power relations between men and women are not ‘sacred’ and therefore are less manipulative. The divine stories do not structure them into an ideology that works on the human plane as male control over the female. To that extent this is a less complicated and less oppressive relationship than the relationship between man and woman among the Hindus.

While, to get greater clearness, I am thinking up a comparison, the founding of Christianity comes unexpectedly into my mind. On the liberal side it is noted as a bad point in the first Christians that they preached obedience to the established heathen civil order, enjoined recognition of the heathen authorities, and confidently delivered a command, ‘Give to the emperor that which is the emperor's’.* Yet how much disturbance arose at the same time against the Roman supremacy, how mutinous did the Jews and even the Romans show themselves against their own temporal government! In short, how popular was ‘political discontent’! Those Christians would hear nothing of it; would not side with the ‘liberal tendencies’. The time was politically so agitated that, as is said in the gospels, people thought they could not accuse the founder of Christianity more successfully than if they arraigned him for ‘political intrigue’, and yet the same gospels report that he was precisely the one who took least part in these political doings. But why was he not a revo­lutionary, not a demagogue, as the Jews would gladly have seen him? Why was he not a liberal? Because he expected no salvation from a change of conditions, and this whole business was indifferent to him. He was not a revolutionary, like Caesar, but an insurgent: not a state-overturner, but one who straightened himself up. That was why it was for him only a matter of 'Be ye wise as serpents', which expresses the same sense as, in the special case, that ‘Give to the emperor that which is the emperor's’; for he was not carrying on any liberal or political fight against the established authorities, but wanted to walk his own way, untroubled about, and undisturbed by, these authorities. Not less indifferent to him than the government were its enemies, for neither understood what he wanted, and he had only to keep them off from him with the wisdom of the serpent. But, even though not a ringleader of popular mutiny, not a demagogue or revol­utionary, he (and every one of the ancient Christians) was so much the more an insurgent, who lifted himself above everything that seemed sublime to the government and its opponents, and absolved himself from everything that they remained bound to, and who at the same time cut off the sources of life of the whole heathen world, with which the established state must wither away as a matter of course; precisely because he put from him the upsetting of the estab­lished, he was its deadly enemy and real annihilator; for he walled it in, confidently and recklessly carrying up the building of his temple over it, without heeding the pains of the immured. Now, as it happened to the heathen order of the world, will the Christian order fare likewise? A revolution certainly does not bring on the end if an insurrection is not consummated first!

Revolution and insurrection must not be looked upon as synony­mous. The former consists in an overturning of conditions, of the established condition or status, the state or society, and is accordingly a political or social act; the latter has indeed for its unavoidable conse­quence a transformation of circumstances, yet does not start from it but from men's discontent with themselves, is not an armed rising, but a rising of individuals, a getting up, without regard to the arrangements that spring from it. The revolution aimed at new arrangements; insurrection leads us no longer to let ourselves be arranged, but to arrange ourselves, and sets no glittering hopes on ‘institutions’. It is not a fight against the established, since, if it prospers, the established collapses of itself; it is only a working forth of me out of the estab­lished. If I leave the established, it is dead and passes into decay. Now, as my object is not the overthrow of an established order but my elevation above it, my purpose and deed are not a political or social but (as directed toward myself and my ownness alone) an ego­istic purpose and deed. The revolution commands one to make arrangements, the insurrec­tion [Empörung] demands that he rise or exalt himself [sich auf- oder emporzurichten]. What constitution was to be chosen, this question busied the revolutionary heads, and the whole political period foams with constitutional fights and constitutional questions, as the social talents too were uncommonly inventive in societary arrangements (phalansteries and the like). The insurgent strives to become constitutionless.

The revolution aimed at new arrangements; insurrection leads us no longer to let ourselves be arranged, but to arrange ourselves, and sets no glittering hopes on ‘institutions’. It is not a fight against the established, since, if it prospers, the established collapses of itself; it is only a working forth of me out of the estab­lished. If I leave the established, it is dead and passes into decay. Now, as my object is not the overthrow of an established order but my elevation above it, my purpose and deed are not a political or social but (as directed toward myself and my ownness alone) an ego­istic purpose and deed. The revolution commands one to make arrangements, the insurrec­tion [Empörung] demands that he rise or exalt himself [sich auf- oder emporzurichten]. What constitution was to be chosen, this question busied the revolutionary heads, and the whole political period foams with constitutional fights and constitutional questions, as the social talents too were uncommonly inventive in societary arrangements (phalansteries and the like). The insurgent strives to become constitutionless.

WAR AND WARRIORS. By our best enemies we do not want to be spared, nor by those either whom we love from the very heart. So let me tell you the truth! My brethren in war! I love you from the very heart. I am, and was ever, your counterpart. And I am also your best enemy. So let me tell you the truth! I know the hatred and envy of your hearts. Ye are not great enough not to know of hatred and envy. Then be great enough not to be ashamed of them! And if ye cannot be saints of knowledge, then, I pray you, be at least its warriors. They are the companions and forerunners of such saintship. I see many soldiers; could I but see many warriors! “Uniform” one calleth what they wear; may it not be uniform what they therewith hide! Ye shall be those whose eyes ever seek for an enemy—for your enemy. And with some of you there is hatred at first sight. Your enemy shall ye seek; your war shall ye wage, and for the sake of your thoughts! And if your thoughts succumb, your uprightness shall still shout triumph thereby! Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars—and the short peace more than the long. You I advise not to work, but to fight. You I advise not to peace, but to victory. Let your work be a fight, let your peace be a victory! One can only be silent and sit peacefully when one hath arrow and bow; otherwise one prateth and quarrelleth. Let your peace be a victory! Ye say it is the good cause which halloweth even war? I say unto you: it is the good war which halloweth every cause. War and courage have done more great things than charity. Not your sympathy, but your bravery hath hitherto saved the victims. “What is good?” ye ask. To be brave is good. Let the little girls say: “To be good is what is pretty, and at the same time touching.” They call you heartless: but your heart is true, and I love the bashfulness of your good-will. Ye are ashamed of your flow, and others are ashamed of their ebb. Ye are ugly? Well then, my brethren, take the sublime about you, the mantle of the ugly! And when your soul becometh great, then doth it become haughty, and in your sublimity there is wickedness. I know you. In wickedness the haughty man and the weakling meet. But they misunderstand one another. I know you.

THE PREACHERS OF DEATH. There are preachers of death: and the earth is full of those to whom desistance from life must be preached. Full is the earth of the superfluous; marred is life by the many-too-many. May they be decoyed out of this life by the “life eternal”! “The yellow ones”: so are called the preachers of death, or “the black ones.” But I will show them unto you in other colours besides. There are the terrible ones who carry about in themselves the beast of prey, and have no choice except lusts or self-laceration. And even their lusts are self-laceration. They have not yet become men, those terrible ones: may they preach desistance from life, and pass away themselves! There are the spiritually consumptive ones: hardly are they born when they begin to die, and long for doctrines of lassitude and renunciation. They would fain be dead, and we should approve of their wish! Let us beware of awakening those dead ones, and of damaging those living coffins! They meet an invalid, or an old man, or a corpse—and immediately they say: “Life is refuted!” But they only are refuted, and their eye, which seeth only one aspect of existence. Shrouded in thick melancholy, and eager for the little casualties that bring death: thus do they wait, and clench their teeth. Or else, they grasp at sweetmeats, and mock at their childishness thereby: they cling to their straw of life, and mock at their still clinging to it. Their wisdom speaketh thus: “A fool, he who remaineth alive; but so far are we fools! And that is the foolishest thing in life!” “Life is only suffering”: so say others, and lie not. Then see to it that ye cease! See to it that the life ceaseth which is only suffering! And let this be the teaching of your virtue: “Thou shalt slay thyself! Thou shalt steal away from thyself!”— “Lust is sin,”—so say some who preach death—“let us go apart and beget no children!” “Giving birth is troublesome,”—say others—“why still give birth? One beareth only the unfortunate!” And they also are preachers of death. “Pity is necessary,”—so saith a third party. “Take what I have! Take what I am! So much less doth life bind me!” Were they consistently pitiful, then would they make their neighbours sick of life. To be wicked—that would be their true goodness. But they want to be rid of life; what care they if they bind others still faster with their chains and gifts!— And ye also, to whom life is rough labour and disquiet, are ye not very tired of life? Are ye not very ripe for the sermon of death? All ye to whom rough labour is dear, and the rapid, new, and strange—ye put up with yourselves badly; your diligence is flight, and the will to self-forgetfulness. If ye believed more in life, then would ye devote yourselves less to the momentary. But for waiting, ye have not enough of capacity in you—nor even for idling! Everywhere resoundeth the voices of those who preach death; and the earth is full of those to whom death hath to be preached. Or “life eternal”; it is all the same to me—if only they pass away quickly!— Thus spake Zarathustra.

THE PREACHERS OF DEATH. There are preachers of death: and the earth is full of those to whom desistance from life must be preached. Full is the earth of the superfluous; marred is life by the many-too-many. May they be decoyed out of this life by the “life eternal”! “The yellow ones”: so are called the preachers of death, or “the black ones.” But I will show them unto you in other colours besides. There are the terrible ones who carry about in themselves the beast of prey, and have no choice except lusts or self-laceration. And even their lusts are self-laceration. They have not yet become men, those terrible ones: may they preach desistance from life, and pass away themselves! There are the spiritually consumptive ones: hardly are they born when they begin to die, and long for doctrines of lassitude and renunciation. They would fain be dead, and we should approve of their wish! Let us beware of awakening those dead ones, and of damaging those living coffins! They meet an invalid, or an old man, or a corpse—and immediately they say: “Life is refuted!” But they only are refuted, and their eye, which seeth only one aspect of existence. Shrouded in thick melancholy, and eager for the little casualties that bring death: thus do they wait, and clench their teeth. Or else, they grasp at sweetmeats, and mock at their childishness thereby: they cling to their straw of life, and mock at their still clinging to it. Their wisdom speaketh thus: “A fool, he who remaineth alive; but so far are we fools! And that is the foolishest thing in life!” “Life is only suffering”: so say others, and lie not. Then see to it that YE cease! See to it that the life ceaseth which is only suffering! And let this be the teaching of your virtue: “Thou shalt slay thyself! Thou shalt steal away from thyself!”— “Lust is sin,”—so say some who preach death—“let us go apart and beget no children!” “Giving birth is troublesome,”—say others—“why still give birth? One beareth only the unfortunate!” And they also are preachers of death. “Pity is necessary,”—so saith a third party. “Take what I have! Take what I am! So much less doth life bind me!” Were they consistently pitiful, then would they make their neighbours sick of life. To be wicked—that would be their true goodness. But they want to be rid of life; what care they if they bind others still faster with their chains and gifts!— And ye also, to whom life is rough labour and disquiet, are ye not very tired of life? Are ye not very ripe for the sermon of death? All ye to whom rough labour is dear, and the rapid, new, and strange—ye put up with yourselves badly; your diligence is flight, and the will to self-forgetfulness. If ye believed more in life, then would ye devote yourselves less to the momentary. But for waiting, ye have not enough of capacity in you—nor even for idling! Everywhere resoundeth the voices of those who preach death; and the earth is full of those to whom death hath to be preached. Or “life eternal”; it is all the same to me—if only they pass away quickly!— Thus spake Zarathustra.

And when they had walked a while together, Zarathustra began to speak thus: It rendeth my heart. Better than thy words express it, thine eyes tell me all thy danger. As yet thou art not free; thou still seekest freedom. Too unslept hath thy seeking made thee, and too wakeful. On the open height wouldst thou be; for the stars thirsteth thy soul. But thy bad impulses also thirst for freedom. Thy wild dogs want liberty; they bark for joy in their cellar when thy spirit endeavoureth to open all prison doors. Still art thou a prisoner—it seemeth to me—who deviseth liberty for himself: ah! sharp becometh the soul of such prisoners, but also deceitful and wicked. To purify himself, is still necessary for the freedman of the spirit. Much of the prison and the mould still remaineth in him: pure hath his eye still to become. Yea, I know thy danger. But by my love and hope I conjure thee: cast not thy love and hope away! Noble thou feelest thyself still, and noble others also feel thee still, though they bear thee a grudge and cast evil looks. Know this, that to everybody a noble one standeth in the way. Also to the good, a noble one standeth in the way: and even when they call him a good man, they want thereby to put him aside. The new, would the noble man create, and a new virtue. The old, wanteth the good man, and that the old should be conserved. But it is not the danger of the noble man to turn a good man, but lest he should become a blusterer, a scoffer, or a destroyer. Ah! I have known noble ones who lost their highest hope. And then they disparaged all high hopes. Then lived they shamelessly in temporary pleasures, and beyond the day had hardly an aim. “Spirit is also voluptuousness,”—said they. Then broke the wings of their spirit; and now it creepeth about, and defileth where it gnaweth. Once they thought of becoming heroes; but sensualists are they now. A trouble and a terror is the hero to them. But by my love and hope I conjure thee: cast not away the hero in thy soul! Maintain holy thy highest hope!— Thus spake Zarathustra.

THE TREE ON THE HILL. Zarathustra’s eye had perceived that a certain youth avoided him. And as he walked alone one evening over the hills surrounding the town called “The Pied Cow,” behold, there found he the youth sitting leaning against a tree, and gazing with wearied look into the valley. Zarathustra thereupon laid hold of the tree beside which the youth sat, and spake thus: “If I wished to shake this tree with my hands, I should not be able to do so. But the wind, which we see not, troubleth and bendeth it as it listeth. We are sorest bent and troubled by invisible hands.” Thereupon the youth arose disconcerted, and said: “I hear Zarathustra, and just now was I thinking of him!” Zarathustra answered: “Why art thou frightened on that account?—But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeketh to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthward, downward, into the dark and deep—into the evil.” “Yea, into the evil!” cried the youth. “How is it possible that thou hast discovered my soul?” Zarathustra smiled, and said: “Many a soul one will never discover, unless one first invent it.” “Yea, into the evil!” cried the youth once more. “Thou saidst the truth, Zarathustra. I trust myself no longer since I sought to rise into the height, and nobody trusteth me any longer; how doth that happen? I change too quickly: my to-day refuteth my yesterday. I often overleap the steps when I clamber; for so doing, none of the steps pardons me. When aloft, I find myself always alone. No one speaketh unto me; the frost of solitude maketh me tremble. What do I seek on the height? My contempt and my longing increase together; the higher I clamber, the more do I despise him who clambereth. What doth he seek on the height? How ashamed I am of my clambering and stumbling! How I mock at my violent panting! How I hate him who flieth! How tired I am on the height!” Here the youth was silent. And Zarathustra contemplated the tree beside which they stood, and spake thus: “This tree standeth lonely here on the hills; it hath grown up high above man and beast. And if it wanted to speak, it would have none who could understand it: so high hath it grown. Now it waiteth and waiteth,—for what doth it wait? It dwelleth too close to the seat of the clouds; it waiteth perhaps for the first lightning?” When Zarathustra had said this, the youth called out with violent gestures: “Yea, Zarathustra, thou speakest the truth. My destruction I longed for, when I desired to be on the height, and thou art the lightning for which I waited! Lo! what have I been since thou hast appeared amongst us? It is mine envy of thee that hath destroyed me!”—Thus spake the youth, and wept bitterly. Zarathustra, however, put his arm about him, and led the youth away with him.