Living Is Hard
This strange poem resonates with me. Nietzsche was in a class by himself as a professional intellectual. The youngest person to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel at the age of 24, he later turned to philosophy. Nietzsche was an incessant writer. He was plagued with health problems. Also, Nietzsche was “unlucky in love.” The woman he might have married, Lou Salomé was interested in him as a friend. Salomé reports that he asked her to marry him on three separate occasions and that she refused. Do we not underestimate the lasting impact of such disappointments upon the remainder of our lives?
Time is relentless, change is loss. The world is cruel. The world is symbolized by “a glowing bull.” Phalaris, a tyrant of Agrigentum in Sicily, tortured his subjects on the slightest suspicion, by roasting them in a brazen bull. The designer of the bull, Perillus, was the first victim.
The lines about the nameless prostitute, purchased intimacy… Upon reflection he regrets that he offered her only gold, rather than tenderness. She departs in a cold rain.
One plays the hand that one is dealt. It comes down to luck, dumb luck.
How does a poet, or any writer for that matter, console themselves? He/she continues to write.
Rimus remedium
Or: How sick poets console themselves
From your old lips
O Time, you drooling ghoul,
Hour upon hour drips.
My nausea cries to no avail:
“Damn. damn the grip
Of your eternal rule!”
World– hard as stones:
A glowing bull–he hears no crying.
Pain writes with daggers that are flying
Into my bones:
“World has no heart;
The fool bears her a grudge and groans.”
Pour poppies, pour.
O fever! poison in my brain!
You test my brow too long with pain.
Why do you ask. “For what–reward?”
–Hah! Damn the whore
And her disdain!
No! Come back! Hold!
I hear the rain, outside it’s cold–
I should be gentler? You want a caress?
–Take this! It glistens; it is gold.–
You–“happiness”?
You, fever, I should bless?—
A gust–the door
Flies open–rain–my bed gets wet–
The light’s blown out–mishaps galore.
—Without a hundred rhymes, a wight–
I bet, I bet—
Would be done for!
2 thoughts on “Living Is Hard”
I had to look up Brazen Bull. YIKES! What a horrifying way to die. But it got me thinking about cruelty and torture. What drives a person to enjoy the uncompromising pain and suffering of others? Defeating ones enemies is one thing, but subjecting them to unbearable pain prior to death is another. I doubt if this is done as a deterrent to others, but that it is more about power, mental illness, and pleasure.
I suppose I should not admit this in a public forum, but there are times I have fantasized about subjecting people who I deem as evil or corrupt or sadistic to their own world of hurt. Forcing them to physically feel the extremes of depravity as they have done to others, places such as the Brazen Bull for the Josef Mengele’s of the world. I have not been given an opportunity to test myself with regard to torturing another person and I hope that I am never put into that position. I like to believe I would not have the stomach for such behavior, but our minds are strange realms where switches can be activated, potentially turning us into the monsters we despise from afar.
I suspect there are some who might read these words and declare they would never participate in such activities. If I were less honest with myself, I might join that choir of angels who would eschew any such thoughts, but I truly don’t know. If my machinations here make me a monster as well, then so be it. We are not all heroes, the ones who pull babies from burning buildings. We want to believe we would not join mobs screaming in the night or eviscerate an enemy, but are we not all subject to temptation when facing extremes?
There was once a member of the Philo Group who had declared themselves to be an ardent and unwavering pacifist. As an adherent to Judaism they declared all war to be abhorrent. When I pressed this person about the US joining the fight against the Nazi’s and whether this person would have joined that fight, their response was to call me anti-semitic. I had placed them in a box where there was no exit. I suppose this could be construed as a form of torture and yet I see this as a mental prison created by the pacifist. Their only way out was to stop the conversation and scapegoat the person asking the question. It has been at least 5 years and they will still not engage in any conversation with me. But I digress.
Ultimately we are all tested to a degree, even if it is within the arena of a small and perhaps unimportant conversation. A moment may arise where we can choose to pass over a remark that comes to mind out of a deference to the other person’s feelings, or we can put it out there to jab at the other person who might wince. Call it a microscopic Brazen Bull, where the other person squirms and we find justification in our remark. I may be off base, but I believe this is a situation where we have all been, either as the giver or receiver of words that cause pain.
In the end, remaining mindful can keep us in check. Thinking about why we are making a statement before the words land on the ears of others, we can keep ourselves from causing discomfort in others and it just comes down to mindfulness rather than just reacting.
Something to chew on.
Cultivating mindfulness = waking up, it seems to me.
I have heard and read stories of those who were in a situation where inflicting cruelty upon a legitimate enemy could have been “reasonably” justified, and still they stepped away from the edge. I have no doubt that every act has it’s own reciprocal effect upon the one who takes the action.