—The Crucified.
In reading the letters of Nietzsche we follow the doomed one with profound pain and awe unto his Golgotha; we witness the dire trials of his spirit and body, we see the last flashes of Zarathustra’s sun, then—darkness. Götter-dämmerung. Self-crucified Dionysus.
Nietzsche was by no means a child of his age. As a prophet, he hurled his seeds far into the future, over the heads of many generations. Mankind is still vegetating on the bottom of the Valley unable to reach the Heights where Zarathustra is alone with himself, bathing in an abyss of light. They who have exchanged the Prophet’s pearls on up-to-date glittering coins, are counterfeiters; they who presumptuously wrap themselves in the crimson mantle of the Crucified Dionysus, as his faithful followers, are impostors: the time for the Superman has not come yet. Let us bear in mind these burning words from the farewell message, Ecce Homo:
Nun heiße ich euch, mich verlieren und euch finden; und erst, wenn ihr mich Alle verleugnet habt, will ich euch wiederkehren.
Soon, I believe, we shall once more receive a lively impression that art cannot rest content with ideas and ideals for the average mediocrity, any more than with remnants of the old catechisms; but that great art demands intellects that stand on a level with the most individual personalities of contemporary thought, in exceptionality, in independence, in defiance, and in artistic self-supremacy.—George Brandes.
Poems
Amy Lowell
Clear, With Light Variable Winds
The fountain bent and straightened itself
In the night wind,