Lou Salomé and I he Quest for Intimacy 273of critical importance to Nietzsche. We approach it by recalling that it
was actually the doctrine of the eternal recurrence of the same that
Nietzsche wanted to have his Zarathustra preach. Not until the third
book of Zarathustra does he almost hesitandy broach this theme, in the
section called "On the Vision and the Riddle." The actual significance of
the Ubermensch becomes clear at this point: the Übermensch is the person
who is capable of comprehending and enduring the vastness of this
doctrine. He is not undone by the doctrine of eternal recurrence and
can, to use Nietzsche's term, "incorporate" it This is shown to grue-
some effect in the scene in which a black serpent is hanging out of the
mouth of a young shepherd who is writhing in agony, his face horribly
contorted. Zarathustra commands him to transcend his fear and
loathing and to bite off the head of the serpent that has crept into his
mouth. The shepherd does so, and thus commences his development
into an Übermensch: "No longer shepherd, no longer man—he was trans-
formed and radiant, and he was laughing" (4,202; ZThird Part, "On the
Vision and the Riddle" § 2).
The serpent is the symbol of revolving time. Biting off its head sig-
nifies the conquest of fear. The Übermensch is strong enough to recog-
nize that there is no flight from time and no beyond. We do not escape
from the sphere of being, and there will be no liberation by nonbeing,
because we will, according to the doctrine of recurrence, awaken to a
new consciousness. The period of time that has elapsed "between" our
absences is nonexistent, since this time exists only for consciousness.
But even in Zarathustra Nietzsche was dogged by the problem that
the doctrine of recurrence comes across as peculiarly banal and trivial
if it is expressed direcdy as an idea. During the summer of 1882, with
Salomé in Tautenburg, he noted down: 'The more abstract the truth
that one wishes to teach, the more one must seduce the senses into it"
(10,23). With the gothic setting of the scene at the gateway, the dwar£
the shepherd, and the serpent, Nietzsche offered rich illustrations for his
doctrine. He also demonstrated what would happen if the doctrine were
to be trivialized and misperceived. The dwarf heaps "scornful" com-