The desire for suffering. – When I think of the desire to do something, how it continually tickles and goads the millions of young Europeans who cannot endure boredom and themselves, I realize that they must have a yearning to suffer something in order to make their suffering a likely reason for action, for deeds. Neediness is needed! Hence the clamour of the politicians; hence the many false, fictitious, exaggerated ‘emergencies’ of all kinds and the blind readiness to believe in them. This young world demands that not happiness, but unhappiness should approach or become visible from outside; and its imagination is already busy turning this unhappiness into a monster ahead of time so that afterwards it can fight a monster. Were these distress-addicts to feel within themselves the power to do themselves good from within, to do something for themselves, they would know how to create their very own distress. Their inventions could then become more refined and their satisfactions sound like good music, while they now fill the world with their clamour about distress, and consequently, all too often with the feeling of distress! They do not know what to do with themselves – and so they paint the unhappiness of others on the wall; they always need others! And continually other others! – Pardon me, my friends, I have ventured to paint my happiness on the wall.35
1 A mistranslation of lines 89–90 of Prometheus Bound formerly ascribed to the fifth-century (BC) Athenian dramatist Aeschylus. The lines actually read: ‘countless laughter of the sea waves’.
2 ‘the discordant harmony of things’; from Horace, Epistles 1.12.19
3 French writer of fables (1657–1757); his most important work is the Dialogues of the Dead (1683) to which Nietzsche refers in § 94.
4 Italian liberal (1805–72).
5 The Cyclopes, in ancient mythology, were one-eyed giants. Though represented in Homer as wild creatures, they elsewhere appear as workmen of superhuman power, and were credited with building massive ancient fortifications such as those of Tiryns.
6 The usual German word for ‘consciousness’ is Bewutheit (literally ‘being-in-a-state-of-aware-ness-of’) and this is the term Nietzsche uses in the title of this paragraph. He then however shifts to the much more unusual word Bewufitheit, which has an ending (heit) that usually signifies an abstract property, and argues against the view that having such a property is something fundamental or especially important to humans.
7 See Iliad II.155and xx.30,336.
8 Quotation from Act III, Scene 2 of Goethe’s Egmont, frequently cited in Germany as an archetypal description of the Romantic personality.
9 This doctrine, originally defended by Socrates (see Xenophon, Memorabilia III. 5), was a central part of Stoic ethics (see A. A. Long and D. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers [Cambridge University Press, 1987], esp. vol. I, pp. 344–436, and esp. pp. 357–9).
10 See Plato, Republic 329c.
11 Stoic doctrine; see e.g. Diogenes Laertius 7.121–2 (in Long and Sedley, Philosophers, vol. I p. 431) and Cicero, De stoicorum paradoxiis, Paradoxon V.
12 ‘The king’s schedule for the day’
13 French moralist (1533–92) who discusses the pains (and pleasures) of his affliction in his essay ‘Of Experience’
14 Perhaps a reference to Montaigne’s letter ‘To the Reader’, printed as introduction to his Essays
15 In his notebook Nietzsche writes that this refers to ‘Augier’; probably Emile Augier (1820–89), minor French dramatist who wrote on classical topics.
16 Reported in Mémoires de Madame de Rémusat (3 vols., Paris, 1879–80), vol. I, pp. i14f., a copy of which Nietzsche had in his library
17 Moses was the supposed author of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible which include, in Exodus, 20, the Ten Commandments.
18 In seventeenth-century France aestheticians (mis)read Aristotle (see his Poetics, esp. chapter 8 [1451a. 16–35]) as requiring that a tragedy exhibit unity of time, place, and plot.
19 One of the charges on which Socrates was condemned to death was that of ‘corrupting the youth’; see Plato, Apology 24 BC.
20 ‘hidden history’
21 ‘Father of the Fatherland’ was an honorary title bestowed by the Roman Senate on the emperor Augustus. In his biography (chapter 99) Suetonius reports that these Latin words (= ‘Applaud, my friends, the comedy is over!’) were among the last Augustus spoke on his deathbed.
22 ‘I die, what a loss to art!’ (as reported by Suetonius, Life of Nero, chapter 49)
23 Socrates insisted that a decorous silence be preserved while he was being executed; see Plato, Phaedo 117c–e, but see below, § 340, p. 193.
24 ‘I die, but what a good observer I was!’
25 Tiberius’ end is described in Suetonius, Life of Tiberius (chapter 73) and in Tacitus, Annals VI.50.
26 English physicist and mathematician (1643–1727)
27 Paradigmatic French rationalist of the Enlightenment (1694–1778)
28 Jewish philosopher who lived most of his life in Amsterdam (1632–77)
29 ‘This is ridiculous, this is absurd.’
30 Greek for ‘nature’
31 Nietzsche here uses the expression Sittlichkeit der Sitte, and similar phrases occur elsewhere (e.g. in § 46, die Sitte der Sittlichkeit). Hegel had distinguished between Sittlichkeit, the ethical outlook embodied in a society’s customary practice, and Moralitdt, an abstract, reflective, code such as that insisted upon in Kant’s philosophy. It is unclear, but unlikely, that Nietzsche was aware of Hegel’s own particular version of this distinction, but Nietzsche’s formulations emphasize strongly the customary aspect of traditional ethical life.
32 Islamic sect in central Arabia. The anecdote which follows is taken from William Gifford Palgrave’s A Narrative of a Year’s Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia 1862–1863 (translated into German in 1867–8).
33 Reported in Plutarch’s Quaestiones romanae, 6.
34 Late fourth-century BC Athenian philosopher who held that pleasure (correctly understood) was the goal of human life. This paragraph is probably influenced by Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, Bk. 11, i-61, which describes the effects to be expected from following the Epicurean doctrine.
35 A reversal of the German expression ‘Don’t paint the devil on the wall’ (because by doing so you will cause him to appear).