The Poets Lie Too Much
God is a thought
—a thought that makes all that is straight crooked,
and all that is standing reel.
What !? Time negated,
and all time bound beings,
dying, would be but a lie?
To think such is giddiness
and vertigo to human limbs,
and even vomiting to the stomach;
truly a reeling sickness I’d call it,
to conjecture such a thing.Evil! is what I call it
and misanthropic,
all that teaching about the one,
and the everywhere present,
and the unmoved,
and the sufficient,
and the eternally living….All the imperishable—
that’s but a simile,
and the poets lie too much.But of time and of becoming,
shall the best similes speak;
to praise and to justify
all perishableness!Creating—-
that is the great salvation from suffering,
and life’s alleviation.
But for the creator to appear,
suffering itself is needed,
and much transformation.
—excerpt, Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
In The Happy Isles p 83 by Friedrich Nietzsche
2 thoughts on “The Poets Lie Too Much”
Certainly an interesting conjecture on Nietzsche’s part through his Zarathustra character. Perhaps I am missing the overall point, but my sense is that some poets do attempt to praise (or at least delve into) the ephemeral, the transient nature of nature. Not all poets buy into the eternal pretense of an omniscient presence, in fact my feeling is that (at least in today’s world of poetry) it is just the opposite and this is why much of poetry is questioning and skeptical of the status quo. Maybe in Nietzsche’s day the poets were like many of the painters who did little but depict the religious tenets of our worldly time. Yet on second thought, Shakespeare rarely mentions any deity and wrote mostly of love. So I don’t have really have a good response nor do I have any idea what I’m really trying to say. Another day of personal confusion. Oh well.
I take Nietzsche’s words as a commentary on the role of metaphor, especially that of poets. Nietzsche himself was a master of metaphor, writing prose that sparkled with images. Unlike academics of our own day, Nietzsche does not waste words, going on and on with surplus blather. Like a poet his words persuade, and seduce.