THEGAYSCIENCE 1043
to die at all. Such laments as arise now arise over short-lived Achilles, over the generations
ephemeral as leaves, the decline of the heroic age. It is not unbecoming to even the great-
est hero to yearn for an afterlife, though it be as a day laborer. So impetuously, during the
Apollonian phase, does man’s will desire to remain on earth, so identified does he become
with existence, that even his lament turns to a song of praise.
It should have become apparent by now that the harmony with nature which we
late-comers regard with such nostalgia, and for which Schiller has coined the cant term
naive, is by no means a simple and inevitable condition to be found at the gateway to
every culture, a kind of paradise. Such a belief could have been endorsed only by a
period for which Rousseau’s Emile was an artist and Homer just such an artist nurtured
in the bosom of nature. Whenever we encounter “naïveté” in art, we are face to face with
the ripest fruit of Apollonian culture—which must always triumph first over titans, kill
monsters, and overcome the somber contemplation of actuality, the intense susceptibility
to suffering, by means of illusions strenuously and zestfully entertained. But how rare
are the instances of true naïveté, of that complete identification with the beauty of
appearance! It is this achievement which makes Homer so magnificent—Homer, who, as
a single individual, stood to Apollonian popular culture in the same relation as the indi-
vidual dream artist to the oneiric capacity of a race and of nature generally. The naïveté
of Homer must be viewed as a complete victory of Apollonian illusion. Nature often uses
illusions of this sort in order to accomplish its secret purposes. The true goal is covered
over by a phantasm. We stretch out our hands to the latter, while nature, aided by our
deception, attains the former. In the case of the Greeks it was the will wishing to behold
itself in the work of art, in the transcendence of genius; but in order so to behold itself its
creatures had first to view themselves as glorious, to transpose themselves to a higher
sphere, without having that sphere of pure contemplation either challenge them or
upbraid them with insufficiency. It was in that sphere of beauty that the Greeks saw the
Olympians as their mirror images; it was by means of that aesthetic mirror that the Greek
will opposed suffering and the somber wisdom of suffering which always accompanies
artisic talent. As a monument to its victory stands Homer, the naive artist.
THE GAY SCIENCE (selections)
- New struggles.—After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still shown for centuries
in a cave—a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead; but given the way of men,
there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown.—
And we—we still have to vanquish his shadow, too. - In the horizon of the infinite.—We have left the land and have embarked. We
have burned our bridges behind us—indeed, we have gone farther and destroyed the land
behind us. Now, little ship, look out! Beside you is the ocean: to be sure, it does not
always roar, and at times it lies spread out like silk and gold and reveries of graciousness.
The Gay Science, from The Portable Nietzsche, translated and edited by Walter Kaufmann. Copyright 1954 by
the Viking Press, renewed © 1982 by Viking Penguin Inc. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of
Penguin Books USA Inc.