Friedrich Nietzsche

It would be great if I could share some positive news or events that I would like to share. However, we face a sorrowful truth when we open our minds and look at what is happening worldwide. Yesterday, I happened to stumble upon The Truman Show while flipping through channels. It’s an older movie from 1998 (you might have seen it already), but I think it’s still relevant in today’s life and our contemporary “Modern Bourgeoisie” world. I believe it is essential, especially now, to observe our surroundings more closely and be aware of the dark side that casts its wings upon our lives. Anyway, I want to share some bitter yet poetic words from Nietzsche that provoke thought.

While reading Nietzsche’s “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” I came across a section that resonated with the current state of Iran. Zarathustra mourns the loss of youth. It’s no secret that we humans are beings of habit. This fact has been reflected in every major catastrophe in our history. For instance, the war in Ukraine once dominated the headlines, but now another story has taken over as the top news (Israel in the Gaza Strip), pushing the previous one to the sidelines. The Iranian Revolution of #Woman_Life_Freedom was once a hot topic in world news, but it has gradually lost its importance. It’s evident that the interest in any event depends on the observer. As long as people continue to be occupied with their daily lives, their focus can shift, thus preventing the event from becoming monotonous! For me, as a former journalist, every event is significant, and of course, especially those in Iran. In Ukraine, through Russia’s aggression, Ukraine’s folk are suffering, and the Israelites and Palestinians conflict is so old that the judgment thereabout is beyond my ability. What causes me pain is the children suffering in all this turmoil.

I have translated this episode from Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra to depict the scene in his version. In the scene where the youths are dying for their wishes, for the minimum aspiration of human rights, so cries my heart, calls for justice!

The image at the top, Milkrain, Pic Title: Oh! My Pieta! PopArtist Yoon. Deviant Art

The Funeral Song

There is the island of graves, the silent one; The graves of my youth are there too. There, I want to carry an evergreen wreath of life.
So, deciding in my heart, I drove across the sea. – Oh, you, my young visions and appearances! Oh, all your looks of love, all your divine moments! How you died so quickly for me! I remember yours today as my dead.

From you, my dearest dead, comes to me a sweet smell, a heart- and tear-loosing one. Verily, it shakes and loosens the heart of the lonely sailor. I’m still the wealthiest and most enviable – I’m the loneliest! For I had you, and you still have me: tell me, who had such rose apples fall from the tree as I did?

I am still your love’s inheritance and soil, blooming in your memory with colourful, wild-growing virtues, O you most beloved!

Oh, we were made to stay close to one another; you behold strange wonders; you did not come to me and my desire like shy birds – no, as a trusted, to the trusted. Yes, made to be faithful, like me and for tender eternities: I must now call you after your unfaithfulness, you divine looks and moments: I have not yet learned any other name.

Truly, you died too quickly for me, you refugees. But you did not flee from me, nor did I flee from you: we are innocent of our unfaithfulness to one another. To kill me, they strangled you, you songbirds of my hopes! Yes, after you, dear ones, malice always shot arrows – to strike my heart!

And she scored! You were always my dearest, my possession and my obsession; that’s why you had to die young and all too early!

The arrow was shot at the most vulnerable thing in my possession: This is what you are waiting for, whose skin is like fluff and, even more so, like a smile that dies at a glance! But I will speak this word to my enemies: What is all the murder of men compared to what you did to me? You have done more evil to me than all human murder; You have taken something irretrievable from me – so I speak to you, my enemies!

You murdered the visions and dearest miracles of my youth! You took my playmates from me, the blessed spirits! To your memory, I lay this wreath and this curse. This curse against you, my enemies! You would make my eternal short, like a piece of clay shattering in the cold night! Barely as a flash of divine eyes, it came to me as just a moment!

So my purity once spoke at a good hour: ‘All beings shall be divine to me. < Then you attacked me with dirty ghosts; ah, where did that good hour now flee! “All days shall be holy to me” – this is what the wisdom of my youth said: verily, the speech of joyful wisdom! But then you enemies stole my nights from me and sold them to sleepless torment: Ah, where did that joyful wisdom now flee? Once, I longed for lucky bird signs: then you brought an owl monster across my path, an unpleasant one. Ah, where did my tender desire flee?

I once vowed to renounce all disgust, and then you turned my near and dear ones into boils. Ah, where did my noblest vow flee? As a blind man, I once walked blessed paths: then you threw filth on the blind man’s path, and now the old blind man’s footpath disgusts him. And when I did my hardest and celebrated the victory of my overcoming, you made those who loved me cry out that I hurt them the most. Indeed, this has always been your doing: you spoiled my best honey and the hard work of my best bees. You always sent the most impudent beggars to my charity. For my pity, you always urged the incurably shameless. So you wound my virtues in their faith.

And I also laid down my most holy thing as a sacrifice: your “piety” quickly added its fatter offerings so that my most holy thing was suffocated in the steam of your fat. And one thing I wanted to dance like I’ve never danced before. I wanted to dance across the sky. Then you persuaded my favourite singer. And now he intoned an eerie, dull tune; oh, he sounded like a dark horn in my ears! Murderous singer, the instrument of malice, most innocent! I was already prepared for the best dance: then you murdered my ecstasy with your sounds! Only in dance do I know how to speak parables of the highest things – and now my highest legend remained unspoken in my limbs!

My highest hope remained unsaid and unredeemed! And all the visions and consolations of my youth died to me! How do I endure now? How did I cope and overcome such wounds? How did my soul rise again from these graves? Yes, there is something in me that is invulnerable, something that cannot be buried, something that can shatter rocks: that is what is called my will. Walks silently and unchanged through the years.

He will walk his course on my feet, my old will; His mind is heartfelt and invulnerable. I am invulnerable at my heel alone. You still live there and are the same as you. Most patient! You still broke through all the graves! The unredeemed part of my youth still lives in you, and as life and youth, you sit here hoping on yellow grave rubble. Yes, you are still the destroyer of all my graves: Hail, my will! And only where there are graves are there resurrections. –