306 Nietzsche
here, because for him it was still another expression of our productive
imagination in the face of incomprehensibility. Ultimately, however, the
creative principle saps all resistant reality. The character that Nietzsche
had fashioned out of himself claimed the stage, and everything else
yielded to the sensation of this imaginative self-production.
In the struggle with his "first nature," Nietzsche also invented a past
and a descent of his own choosing. In Ecce Homo, he claimed to be a
"pure-blooded Polish nobleman" (6,268; EH"Why I Am So Wise" § 3).
In December 1888, he added the following remarks, which were sup-
pressed first by his publisher and Peter Gast and later by Nietzsche's sis-
ter: "When I look for the most profound contrast to myself, the
unfathomable vulgarity of instincts, I always find my mother and sister—
the very thought of being related to either scoundrel would be blasphe-
mous to my divine nature" (6,268). The combination of his mother and
sister yielded a "consummate machine of hell" (6,268), and it filled him
with pride to have emerged from this background unscathed. His success
at having done so stemmed from his creative ability to produce his "sec-
ond nature." He could not feel altogether secure, however, because the
"recurrence of the same" could bring back the old unhappy circum-
stances once again. "But I confess that the most profound objection to
'eternal recurrence,' my truly devastating idea, is that of my mother and sis-
ter" (6,268). He would be able to close off the possibility of encountering
them in this frightening context only once his breakdown had enabled
him to escape from himself. As long as he retained his alertness, he had to
escape the machine of hell at home by becoming "dynamite: 1 know my
destiny. Someday my name will be associated with the memory of some-
thing tremendous, a crisis like no other on earth, the profoundest collision
of conscience, a decision conjured up against everything that had been
believed, required, and held sacred up to that time. I am not a man; I am
dynamite" (6,365; £77"Why I Am a Destiny" § 1).
During his final, euphoric autumn in Turin in 1888, he considered it
"tremendous" to have explored every possible repercussion of his dis-
covery that God is dead.