Art and Atheism: Nietzsche, Zarathustra, and the "Godless" Work

Author(s): Philip Pothen

Source: Journal of Nietzsche Studies , SPRING 2000, No. 19, Special Issue: Nietzsche and
Religion (SPRING 2000), pp. 56-70
Published by: Penn State University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20717736

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 Art and Atheism: Nietzsche,
Zarathustra, and the "Godless" Work
Philip Pothen

itensibly similar to the "free spirits" texts immediately preceding

it?Human, All Too Human and Daybreak?The Gay Science rep
resents, however, something of a new departure for Nietzsche. Along with
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the writing of which is very much intertwined
with that of The Gay Science, Nietzsche now emerges from the so-called
"positivist" phase of his development, to begin to elucidate the values that
are to replace the apparently discredited values associated with the belief in
God, and to begin to understand that because there must be new values, this
project of the founding of them constitutes not only a liberation, but also a
responsibility, perhaps, indeed, the greatest responsibility of all (see GS
125). And so, in these works, Nietzsche puts forward for the first time,
along with the death of God, his doctrines of the eternal return, the will to
power, and amor fati, those doctrines that will supposedly overcome the
nihilism that stands as danger in an age without God. In addition, in the fifth
part of The Gay Science, written after the first three parts of Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, but before its fourth part, Nietzsche puts forward an idea he
echoes at various points throughout his text, one that, I want to argue, is
crucial to an understanding both of Nietzsche's thoughts on art and the artist
and to an understanding of certain central themes of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Here, in a section entitled "The first distinction to be made regarding works
of art," Nietzsche argues that it is the "monological work," the work, that is,
for no one but the artist, that is to be the only work that can be associated
with this age of godlessness:
All thought, poetry, painting, compositions, even buildings and sculpture,
belong either to monological art [monologischen Kunst] or to art before
witnesses [Kunst vor Zeugen], In the second class we must include even
the apparently monological art that involves faith in God, the whole lyri
cism of prayer. For the pious there is as yet no solitude: this invention was
made only by us, the godless [Gottlosen]. I do not know of any more pro
found difference in the whole orientation of an artist than this, whether he

Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Issue 19, 2000.

Copyright ? 2000 The Friedrich Nietzsche Society.

56

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 Art and Atheism 57

looks at his work in progress (at "himself) from the point of view of the
witness, or whether he has "forgotten the world," which is the essential
feature of all monological art; it is based on forgetting, it is the music of
forgetting. (GS 367)

The artist must now, it seems, eschew both the audience and its apprecia
tion, an appreciation that mirrors the consolation, as well as approbation,
which the believer gains from the belief in God, in favour of solitude, for
getting, and inner strength. It is a stark picture, but it is a requirement that
echoes the subtitle of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, namely, "a book for every
one and no one," and represents therefore a distinction that Nietzsche takes
seriously in general and one that must, and does, in his own work, have
practical application. To what extent, then, it must be asked, is Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, a "work for no one," a "godless" work? And is it, as such,
according to Nietzsche's own criterion, also invalidated by its being a work
for "all," for "everyone"? What can this idea put forward in The Gay Sci
ence possibly mean either as a practical criterion for our judgement of the
work of art or as a measure of Nietzsche's apparent rejection of God?
The paradox?the contradiction, perhaps?of all and none runs through
out Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The themes of solitude, discipleship, the few,
the many, the mob reflect Zarathustra's constant struggle to reconcile the
need for an audience to hear what he says with the fact that the audience
cannot and will not hear his words. In the marketplace, Zarathustra discov
ers, as indeed we discover from the crowd's reaction to the madman of The
Gay Science, that the mob, the crowd, herd, or audience is simply not the
entity in which genuine understanding is to take place at all (GS 125). More
over, if man is, as Zarathustra claims, "the as yet undetermined animal"
(BGE 62), and if Zarathustra is the preacher of the ?bermensch, that which
does not yet exist, there can as yet be no one who is worthy to hear
Zarathustra's teaching. "I am the Godless," says Zarathustra, "where shall
I find my equals?" (TSZ 190-91). Zarathustra's godlessness is thus both a
challenge to his audience as well as a question mark against the very possi
bility of such an audience, just as the godless, monological work questions
the need for and value of an audience for works and deeds in general.
But Zarathustra also consistently denies the universalism that would
embrace the herd or the rabble (e.g., TSZ 120), indicating that to a large
extent the whole strategy and structure of the work reflect decidedly eso
teric preoccupations, that the book denies both the "all" and the "none" in
favour of the "few." Lawrence Lampert has written that Thus Spoke
Zarathustra is "a book that enacts its subtitle and gradually shrinks
Zarathustra's audience from 1 to 'None'" (1986,4). While there is cer
tainly something of this particular movement running throughout the text of

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 58 Philip Pothen

Zarathustra, I think it more instructive to see it perhaps as a dialectic that

can never be as determined as Lampert's characterisation, and certainly
nothing like as straightforward, and that finally, as contradiction, it rather
remains defiantly unresolved.
Most commentaries on Thus Spoke Zarathustra see it as moving, to a
greater or lesser extent, within the orbit of precisely those belief systems
that Nietzsche purported to reject for their postulates of universality, abso
lutism, and prescripti veness. For Martin Heidegger, it remains trapped within
metaphysics (e.g., 1968, part 1); for Stanley Rosen, Platonism (e.g., 1995,
x); to an important extent, for Phillipe Lacoue-Labarthe, Romanticism (1993,
35-57); for Carl Jung (1989, 72) and Karl Jaspers, theism (see esp. 1965,
364,430); and for Karl L?with (1997,82,119,120), Christianity. Although
I will argue that Nietzsche's text cannot be reduced purely and simply to
any of these fundamental orientations, nevertheless, it cannot be doubted
that Thus Spoke Zarathustra embraces, in different ways, at different mo
ments, each of these fundamental universalist orientations. For, whatever
kind of work it is, it nevertheless embraces, in any of its guises, precisely
that orientation towards the universal that it exists both to affirm and to
deny. For example, as work of art, Thus Spoke Zarathustra can be seen
both to carry aspirations towards the universal and to provide a thoroughgo
ing critique of that very same universality. Indeed, Nietzsche's critique of
the artist is as virulent in Zarathustra as any he offered in any text: in Of
Poets in part 1, Nietzsche burlesques Goethe's Faust, when Zarathustra
cries out: "Alas, how weary I am of the poets!" (TSZ 150). Later, the poet is
called "the peacock of peacocks" and a "sea of vanity" (151); the poet's
spirit "wants spectators," while "all gods" are nothing but "poets' images,
poets' surreptitiousness!" In part 4, the poet is the Sorcerer who after one of
his poetic offerings is soundly beaten by Zarathustra (268). And, finally,
echoing the subtitle, the poet is called "the enchanter of everyone [der
Bezauberer Aller]" whose only hope is to renounce his art and become a
"penitent of the spirit [B?sser des Geistes]"
And yet, Nietzsche's own language and use of imagery and metaphor
is, especially through the first three parts of the work, inspired to a degree
that brings it perilously close to, if it is not ultimately indistinguishable from,
that which it is intended to parody. Nietzsche himself actively encouraged
the tale that his Zarathustra had been born in a frenzy of inspiration over a
period of six weeks (e.g., EH 11.3). Indeed, there is no question but that
Nietzsche saw his work as one of poetry, not purely and simply, perhaps, but
nevertheless as one whose poetic qualities were to be taken very seriously
indeed and one that deserved to take its place alongside, even surpassing,
the works of Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe (11.6). In fact, as such, as

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 Art and Atheism 59

Rosen argues, it comes close to fulfilling Max Schelling's idealist vision of

the work of art which unifies reason and nature?that is to say, not only is it
presented in the privileged medium of language, and indeed of poetry, guar
anteeing its universality, but as the expression and representation of
Nietzsche's act of writing as well as Zarathustra's act of speech, it accords
with Schelling's idea of reality, of the world, being generated and repre
sented out of the self-activity of the self in the work of art, an activity that
underpins its universality through the very act of expression (1995, 70). As
such, I would contend, it operates within the sphere of the "all" that Nietzsche
wishes at once both to deny and to embrace.
In fact, the whole section entitled Of Poets encapsulates this antago
nism to a quite startling degree. Whether we call this antagonism contradic
tion, indecision, or a deep inner conflict on Nietzsche's part is a moot point,
but it is apparent even as each section appears to contradict the last that the
problematic generated by this section, inscribed within this dialectic of "all"
and "none," comes close to confusion. For in this section Zarathustra claims
that "the poets lie too much" then, "we do lie too much" (149). What is of
particular importance here, I think, is not so much that Zarathustra is unde
cided about whether or not to associate himself with the religious and uni
versalist aspirations of the poet, but that he finally rejects them. For in the
first part of the section Of Poets, Zarathustra refers, alternately, to the poets
first as "they," then as "we," and then once again as "they," "we," and, once
again, "they." But then, halfway through his discourse, Zarathustra pauses;
then
At length he sighed and drew a breath.

I am of today and of the has-been (he said then); but there is something in
me that is of tomorrow and of the day-after-tomorrow and of the shall-be.
(150)
After which Zarathustra never again speaks of the poets as "we." It is, I
think, a telling moment; after remembering the future of his mission and its
revaluative imperative, Zarathustra realises that he must keep the poets at a
distance; he must finally renounce them.
Zarathustra's realisation mirrors, perhaps, Nietzsche's own doubts con
cerning the reception of his work and his conviction, expressed in The Gay
Science, that the poets have always been "the valets of some morality" (GS
1), and the cunning purveyors of accepted religious prejudices. And yet the
difficulty, then, for Nietzsche, is that even his strongest doubts concerning
the future of art without God are here expressed as poetry. In doing penance
for the vanity of the poet, as penitents of the spirit, Nietzsche and Zarathustra
repeat, it seems, the poets' very worst mistakes and leave themselves open

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 60 Philip Pothen

to the charge that, at the very least, even by their own criterion, their god
lessness remains to be proved.

Perhaps the single most important metaphor employed throughout Thus Spoke
Zarathustra to explain Zarathustra's mission and Nietzsche's whole phi
losophy is that of height. Zarathustra's calling is one of ascent, associated
time, and again with the solitude of mountain-tops, with difficult paths, rar
efied air, and with the lordly distance that such serene heights afford.1 This
whole metaphor of height and distance is paralleled by the dynamic of
downgoing?destruction, drowning, perishing?that must be undertaken
before the heights are assumed. Downgoing and his struggles with the spirit
of gravity become the necessary prelude to Zarathustra's overcoming of the
old values, as well as of the acceptance of his own fate, that necessary con
comitant of the eternal return, which, it is said, is the "peak of the medita
tion" (WP 617). From this height, the open skies and open seas become f?r
Nietzsche the symbol of all that has come to be wiped away by the realisation
of the death of God. Nietzsche writes in The Gay Science:

At long last the horizon appears free to us again, even if it should not be
bright; at long last our ships may venture out again, venture out to face any
danger; all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea,
our sea, lies open again; perhaps there has never yet been such an "open
sea." (GS 343)

Earlier Nietzsche had taken the sea as a metaphor for the pretensions of the
poet, posturing before everyone, but now that God no longer supplies a ho
rizon for this world, the seas are open, and their possibilities endless.2 In the
famous section in The Gay Science when the madman runs into the market
place and announces that God is dead, he puts to the crowd a number of
questions:
"Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him [Wir haben
ihn get?dtetj?you and I. AU of us are his murderers [M?rder], But how
did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to
wipe away the whole horizon? What were we doing when we unchained
this earth from its sun?" (GS 125)

And the questions continue until the madman realises he has come too early,
that no one is ready to hear him, that for now their horizons remain fixed. In
"The Word of Nietzsche: 'God is Dead,'" Heidegger remarks that these im
ages of sun, sea and horizon are, as it were symbols of "what is meant by the
event of the killing of God" (1997,107). The horizon, he says, refers to "the
suprasensible world as the world that truly is" while the killing of God means
the getting rid of the suprasensible world. But this does not mean that the

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 Art and Atheism 61

horizon is wiped away, Heidegger says: "It speaks of the event wherein that
which is as such does not simply come to nothing, but does indeed become
different in its Being." And man, too, becomes different such that this kill
ing comes to represent not Nietzsche's liberation and open sea, but the cul
mination of the forgetting of Being in the will to power, as well as the final
destiny of the metaphysics of subjectivity in the ?bermensch, one that there
fore finally and firmly remains bound up with the meta of classical Platonism.
Heidegger here points to one of those rare moments when Nietzsche,
instead of speaking of the death of God, or of the dying of gods in general,
speaks instead of our "killing of God." Heidegger does so largely in order to
emphasise this forceful appropriation of the space which God and the
suprasensible had filled on the horizon of our beliefs and our manipulation
of the "standing reserve" as an object for subjectivity's inexorable self
realisation.3 But Nietzsche himself was always acutely aware that the dan
gers of merely ?nd quite so forcefully replacing God with another set of
beliefs which might constitute another, surrogate "beyond" was almost as
fraught with danger as not replacing God with anything. He is deeply suspi
cious of atheism as a doctrine because it invariably results in, or even en
tails, either nihilism or socialism or some other doctrine that, in his view,
failed to grasp fully the world-historical implications of the death of God
(e.g., WP 18; 77 9.5). But Nietzsche is as well, I want to suggest, not only
the thinker who announces our killing of God, but also the thinker of the
letting-be of God in his slow death. "Let him go," Zarathustra says to the
last pope, "he followed strange paths" (TSZ 293). Later, "one way or the
other, one way and the other?he is gone! He offended the taste of my ears
and eyes, I will say no worse of him." Then "one way or the other, one way
and the other?he is gone! He offended the taste of my ears and eyes, I will
say no worse of him." And yet Heidegger?although I would argue that he
fails to give due weight to the tension that governs Nietzsche's position?is
surely right that Nietzsche's thought contains a fundamental reliance on a
certain theistic?what might be called aspiration?in his rhetoric, his pre
occupations, as well as in the content of certain doctrines themselves which,
although never straightforward, is nevertheless unmistakable. Indeed, we
might say that his idea of the monological work, with its emphasis on a
reward that stems from the silent, solitary, and therefore "higher" act of
devotion owes something, at least, to Protestant theology, and especially,
perhaps, Luther's grace that comes from "good works" inspired by faith
alone.41 would not wish to subscribe to the view that Nietzsche's thought
can so easily be reduced to a precise mirror image of those he actively sought
to oppose, yet it is at the same time important, I think, to emphasise the point
that godlessness and its extraordinary pathos remain, for Nietzsche, many

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 62 Philip Pothen

sided, deeply troubling and impervious either to straightforward reduction

or the quite literal interpretation of godlessness that Nietzsche would some
times have us make.5
Eugen Fink has said that the death of God is the central theme of the
first parts of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1968,70). If this is so, the struggle to
replace God and yet at the same time not simply to replace God is central to
the work, too. Sometimes Zarathustra does envision the ?bermensch as
being the direct replacement of God. In part 4, the suggestion is made that it
is only upon the realisation that God has died that Zarathustra can then
encourage the Higher Men not to think of themselves as "equal before the
mob" (297). Indeed, soon after he says: "God has died: now we desire?
that the ?bermensch shall live." This tendency to think of the ?bermensch
as being the replacement for God, and indeed to think of the proclamation of
the death of God as being in some important sense at the same time an
affirmation, as Heidegger says, of the existence of the classical meta, is
perhaps best expressed in notes for a fifth part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
where Nietzsche writes: "These master of the earth shall now substitute
[ersetzen] for God, and create the deep unconditional trust of the rulers. For
now: their new holiness" (KGW 7.39[3]).
In addition, the notion discussed above, that Nietzsche performs a di
rect inversion of Christian mores whilst at the same time retaining some
thing of their orientation, is given some credence, perhaps, when Zarathustra
says that we are now to love not our neighbours, those who are near, but that
which is "most distant [Fernsten]" (TSZ 87), that which is most removed
from us spatially as well as that furthest removed in time, the ?bermensch.
It may be that this "most distant" arises as the result of the wiping away of
the horizon subsequent to the death of God, but the more this distance be
comes emphasised, of course, the more the "none" of Zarathustra's mission
is recalled as the "none" of human-all-too-human inadequacy, then the more
the "beyond," the meta, comes into view, and the more the promise, proph
ecy, prescriptiveness of the religious brings its "all" to bear on the zeal and
good news of Zarathustra's mission. It is a powerful dynamic, which
Nietzsche, especially, as I hope to show, in part 4 of Zarathustra, struggles
constantly, and not always successfully, to resolve.
In the section immediately preceding the madman passage in The Gay
Science, Nietzsche speaks of the terrible burden of the fact that the seas are
endless, that there is nothing now but sea and infinity:

In the horizon of the infinite.?We have left the land and have embarked.
We have burned our bridges behind us?indeed, we have gone farther and
destroyed the land behind us. Now, little ship, look out! Beside you is the
ocean: to be sure, it does not always roar, and at times it lies spread out like

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 Art and Atheism 63

silk and gold and reveries of graciousness. But hours will come when you
will realise that it is infinite and that there is nothing more awesome than
infinity. Oh, the poor bird that felt free and now strikes the walls of this
cage! Woe, when you feel homesick for the land as if it had offered more
freedom?and there is no longer any "land." (GS 124)

Infinity is now seen to be a cage and complete freedom an illusion; it is a

point that is often ignored, one that Nietzsche's text itself, perhaps, allows
to be ignored, that Nietzsche understands very well that the death of God
does not mean that God is once and for all removed from the horizon. In
section 108 of The Gay Science, he writes: "God is dead: but given the way
of men, there may still be caves for thousand of years in which his shadow
will be shown.?And we?we still have to vanquish his shadow, too." We
will not rid ourselves of God, until we get rid of our belief in grammar, he
says elsewhere (77 4.5), which is to say, perhaps, that God does not exist
except in each of our utterances, an extraordinary reversal of the ancient
belief that he was everywhere but his name ineffable.
Perhaps it is only silence, then, that will suffice in this time without
God, which is where our question began. Or, perhaps, there are different
kinds of silence that will answer the need at least for both communication
and honesty in our age. In On Reading and Writing in part 1 of Zarathustra,
this constellation of difficulties centred on these themes of God and the ab
sence of God, the all and the none, the horizontal and the vertical find, it
might be suggested, a kind of resolution?through, that is, Nietzsche's con
ception of the aphorism. Here Zarathustra proclaims:

In the mountains the shortest route is from peak to peak, but for that you
must have long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks, and those to whom they
are spoken should be big and full of stature.
The air thin and pure, danger near, and the spirit full of a joyful wick
edness: these things suit one another. (67)

The aphorism?meaning "away from" the orismos, the horizon, "away from
that which bounds, defines, delimits," apo horizein?attempts to negate the
"all" of the traditional text. It does so because, Zarathustra implies, although
it can be heard by all, only the few can stand the height that understanding
of it requires. Nietzsche writes that "the esoteric looks down from above"
(BGE 30). It is the silence of aphorisms, the gaps between them, the abysses
between the mountains, perhaps, that prepare those who are equipped to
understand them.6 One sees beyond the or?smos when one is on a mountaintop,
just as what is near disappears entirely. And yet, as we can see from In the
horizon of the infinite from The Gay Science, infinity does not obliterate
the horizon; neither, for that matter, can the horizon be abolished merely by
one's ascending higher: it merely recedes and becomes a different horizon.

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64 Philip Po?hen

Equally, perhaps, it might be said that while an aphorism might address the
few who are equal to its riddle and rarefied conciseness, and might be sur
rounded by silence and reflection, this, it is clear, after all, is not the silence
of the monological work, the silence of utter godlessness. It is still delivered
to the few?those "argonauts of the Ideal," as Nietzsche calls them, the
Higher Men, perhaps, who will one day, it is promised, find land, and be
yond where the eye can see.7 In other words, it is still addressed to "wit
nesses," and still posits a "beyond," albeit one whose great distance is al
ways emphasised (see esp. KGW 7.39[3]). As such, while the aphorism
might be said to represent a point halfway between the various polarities to
be found in this constellation of themes I have been discussing?the near
and the most distant, God and nothing, the work and silence, the mob and
solitude, between the all and the none?once again it resists the claims that
Nietzsche would make for his own work, Zarathustra, and, therefore, per
haps, even for his thought as a whole.

Part 4 of Zarathustra was written while the first three parts were awaiting
publication and after Nietzsche had completed the fifth part of The Gay
Science; it was not finally published as part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
until 1893, by his literary executors, some four years after Nietzsche's final
descent into madness. Most commentators regard the fourth part as some
thing of a mistake; artistically, it is said, there is a falling off in its imagery,
its coherence, its language. R. J. Hollingdale has written that "the glowing
conclusion of the third part is the book's true climax" (1965, 190), while
Fink has said of the fourth part that "it comes to an embarrassing and ter
rible derailment; the entire fourth part is a fall [ein Absturz]* Somehow the
poetic intellectual vision seems exhausted" (1968, 114). Lampert claims
that Nietzsche intended to write still more parts, but, once again, privately,
for his friends, and that the result of the publication of all parts together is a
work that has an ending where one ought not to be and no ending where
there ought to be one, while F. Lea has written that it is a part entirely
lacking in inspiration (1957, 226).
Such views are not universally held, but they are by far, the most com
monly held opinions concerning part 4 of Zarathustra. What I want to sug
gest, however, is that, given the particularly vitriolic nature of Zarathustra's
onslaught on the poet and his pretensions in this section, the preoccupation
with the themes of the death of God, and how we are to act and believe at all
in an age of godlessness, as well as the fact that the fourth part was not
intended for publication, but only for distribution to a few close friends, the
themes I have been discussing up to now?the work for all and none, how
they are to relate to the death of God?are crucially laid bare in this section.

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 Art and Atheism 65

Whatever else the fourth part contains, there can be no doubt that the
overall millennial orientation of the earlier three parts now gives way to an
attempt by Zarathustra to guide the Higher Men in the ways of his teaching
in a much more practical, everyday sense. Some have seen in these Higher
Men aspects of Nietzsche's own persona, others those of his friends to whom
he privately distributed this part. Whatever the case, and possibly both are
correct, the ?bermensch is mentioned just twice: it is now the Higher Men
who are the focus of Zarathustra's teaching. As such, their position is some
what ambiguous, at once the friends and disciples of Zarathustra and, at the
same time, individuals who, for all their absorption of certain tenets of
Zarathustra's teaching, must anger and disappoint him for their ultimate
failures. The Sorcerer?or poet?in particular, disappoints, not once, but
twice. First, after delivering up a poem to God in which he asks God to
rescue him from monologic silence, to "Come back / With all your torments
/ Oh come back / To the last of all solitaries [Einsammen]... Oh come back
/ My unknown God! My pain! My last?happiness!" (267). Here the Sor
cerer asks God to fill the solitude that Nietzsche had said was the invention
of the godless; in renouncing his solitude, he renounces his godlessness too.
Now Zarathustra thrashes him, and when the Sorcerer attempts to convince
Zarathustra that he was pretending to be a poet, and that he had indeed
become a penitent of the spirit, Zarathustra still sees deception in him. Later,
when Zarathustra leaves his cave, the Sorcerer seizes the opportunity to try
again with another poetic effort. This time, the conscientious man of the
spirit rounds on him (311). Finally, Zarathustra reenters the cave and rees
tablishes order. Zarathustra accepts his apology, and all is well again, but
the section ends with Zarathustra longing for "the good air and for his ani
mals" (313).
In other words, there is no longer any ambiguity as far as Zarathustra's
disavowal of the poet-sorcerer is concerned. There is no question here of
any collusion by Zarathustra in the vanity of the poet, nor in the lies that the
latter is charged with peddling; the Sorcerer is accepted as a Higher Man
only insofar as he renounces his arts as well as his God. As far as Nietzsche
is concerned, it would be strange, of course, if he were not also to accept
Zarathustra's unambiguous judgement concerning the poet and himself be
come something of a "penitent of the spirit," both as far as his art is con
cerned and as far as any shadow of God in him or his language are con
cerned. If part 4 is indeed an attempt by Nietzsche to translate the poetic and
apocalyptic vision of the earlier parts of Zarathustra into a more quotidian
practical explication of what Nietzsche-Zarathustra's teaching might mean
to us here and now, it would be surprising if Nietzsche were, like the "evil
old sorcerer" (311) and "enchanter of everyone" (269), to offer up yet an

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 66 Philip Pothen

other poetic vision if it were only to present us with, as Zarathustra says,

"disgust [Ekel]" as its "single truth [Eine Wahrheit]" (269). Hence, it is
surprising that those commentators mentioned above should themselves be
surprised that the language, imagery, vision of the earlier parts should give
way to a more discursive, allegorical, more laboured, perhaps, and certainly
less poetic vision of Zarathustra's teaching. When Nietzsche writes that
"the best images and parables should speak of time and becoming: they
should be a eulogy and a justification of all transitoriness" (111), and charges
the work of art with failing to incorporate any notion of becoming, with
always appearing finished, complete and therefore perfect (see esp. HATH
1.162,164), should we not take seriously, I would suggest, Nietzsche's own
attempts to do so in terms of his own work? Equally, given Nietzsche's deep
ambivalence, mentioned earlier, concerning his and Zarathustra's identifi
cation with the poets, is it any wonder that the fourth part, in which the poet
is beaten twice while lambasted for his pretensions and feebleness, should
be more laboured, less "inspired," more the work of the penitential, godless
philosopher than that of a poet striving to enchant and therefore mislead
everyone?
Given these preoccupations, and given, too, Nietzsche's association of
the work for no one with the godless, it would be surprising if Nietzsche did
not in this part attempt to resolve some of the contradictions we noted ear
lier regarding the absence of God and the need, as it were, to fill God's
place. I have already mentioned how Nietzsche focuses far less in this part
on the ?bermensch, as the "most distant" possibility, a distance I earlier
associated with the beyond, but rather on the Higher Men as examples of
those who represent a "bridge" to still further striving. Some time after
Zarathustra has exhorted them to higher efforts, he returns to his cave to
find that the Higher Men?those who, he had thought, had finally renounced
God?are now worshipping the ass. He chastises them and they attempt to
explain themselves, the last pope saying: "Better to worship God in this
shape than in no shape at all!"; while the wanderer and shadow retorts to
Zarathustra: "[Y]ou are right: but what can I do? The old God lives again,
O Zarathustra, you may say what you will" (323). Zarathustra continues to
upbraid them: "[W]e have become men, so we want the kingdom of earth"
(325). Finally, after a night's sleep, Zarathustra awakes and addresses his
animals: "You are my rightful animals: I love you. But I still lack my right
ful men!" (334). He realises he has been seduced into pity for the Higher
Men. The work ends with Zarathustra in complete solitude, except for his
animals, and this renunciation even of the few who had followed him, be
cause, although they had renounced God, they had not yet released them
selves from the need for a surrogate beyond. Even as a small band, it seems,

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 Art and Atheism 67

they had "hidden mob" in them (293). "It is not for you that I have been
waiting in these mountains," Zarathustra concludes.
And what of Nietzsche's thoughts on the fate of this fourth part, this
part that he did not want published and that ends on this note of solitude and
despair at the apparently ineradicable remnants of God in man? Lampert
claims that Nietzsche insisted on secrecy for the fourth part because the
third part had been intended as the climax to the work. Nietzsche certainly
insisted on secrecy for the fourth part, but this was not for these reasons. In
a letter to von Gersdorff in February of 1885, he writes:

There is a fourth (last) part to Zarathustra, a sort of sublime finale [sublimen

Finale], which is not intended for the public (for me, the word "public" in
connection with my whole Zarathustra, comes to sound rather like "whore
house" and "strumpet"?forgive me!) But this part should and must now
be printed?twenty copies, for me and for distribution among my friends,
and with every discretion. (Middleton 1969, 235)

A month later, he writes to Overbeck: "Perhaps I can still manage to with

draw from him, and thus from the 'public,' the first three parts of my
Zarathustra, which is what I want most of all. Naturally I have not found a
publisher for the 4th Zarathustra" (239). In addition, he writes to his sister
in the following terms: "express requests that not a word be breathed to
anyone about this fourth part and it be kept a secret as if not in existence"
(Leidecker 1959, 114). Finally, some three years later, in December 1888,
he writes to Peter Gast that he wants to recall all copies of part four from
each of his friends who owns a copy: "[I]n order to secure this unpublished
work against all the chances of life and death" (Middleton 1969, 322-23).
Now I would not want to accord too much significance to biographical
details such as these in relation to what is fundamentally a philosophical
question regarding the work for no one and its relation to the consequences
of the death of God, but it seems to me that the connection between
Nietzsche's own attitude towards the fourth and "last" part of Zarathustra,
his secrecy concerning it, his extraordinary attempt to recall it, and his dis
paraging of the idea of the "public" in these letters, require attention insofar
as they can be seen to relate directly to Nietzsche's philosophical preoccu
pations throughout Zarathustra and especially in this final part. If solitude
in relation to the work is indeed the invention of the "godless," as Nietzsche
claims in The Gay Science, what are we to make of these details surround
ing the finale of Nietzsche's "book for all and none"? Is Nietzsche, in short,
consciously and finally putting forward?or, rather, not putting forward:
withdrawing, in fact?in however misguided, bizarre, perhaps even clumsy
a way, a book for no one, and what could this possibly mean beyond the
merely gestural?

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 68 Philip Pothen

Before such a suggestion could be made, certain questions would need

to be answered, such as why Nietzsche suggested in the second of these
letters that he was seeking a publisher for the fourth part, but could not find
one; why he distributed copies in the first place; why he did not, as he sug
gests, withdraw the first three parts from publication,8 and why indeed the
sorcerer's repudiated songs later found their way into print as part of
Nietzsche Dithyrambs of Dionysus of 1887? Equally, given that such ques
tions have, I have argued, been intertwined throughout with this aspiration
to godlessness, does Zarathustra appear to contradict this aspiration when,
after the ass festival, he refers to his teaching as the "new faith" (322) and
the Higher Men as "the worst blasphemers," and indeed to himself as the
"religion founder [der ReligionstifterTl (KGW 7.35[74]). Is it the case,
then, that as the last pope remarks to Zarathustra, we might also say of
Nietzsche himself: "[Y]ou are more pious than you believe, with such an
unbelief!" (274)? Is every utterance of impiety, then, itself an expression of
what it is intended to deny? Is silence, perhaps, once again, the only way,
then, to deny God? Is even silence sufficient finally to lay God to rest? As I
suggested at the outset, the dialectic bound up with these questions in some
way informs the entire work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, always eventually
moving one way, but perhaps never finally resolving itself even to the satis
faction of Nietzsche himself. As such, the work for no one stands as impos
sibility, I would suggest, since the very notion of the work implies an ele
ment, at least, of publicness, as well as, therefore, a fundamental
acknowledgement of otherness, that Nietzsche at his most extreme and his
most anguished appears to want to deny. But it is a denial that nevertheless
requires expression, that requires to be conveyed, and in a work for others,
just as the existence of God might require to be denied but can only be so
denied in a language that is seen to presuppose his very existence. How, in
short, do we forget, when language will not allow us to forget? Hence, per
haps, Nietzsche's extraordinary attempt to recall his work from his friends,
to secure for himself his work for no one, his antiwork, perhaps, that might
represent for him, as with Zarathustra's final disavowal of others, his final
silence, solitude, and even godlessness. That by December 1888, when he
wrote this final letter concerning part 4, his descent into madness should
already have begun is eloquent testament to the impossibility of Nietzsche's
ever fulfilling the requirements he had set himself.

University of Sussex

Notes
1. See EH 1.4, where TSZ is referred to as the "actual book of the air of the heights."

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 Art and Atheism 69

2. It is interesting to note in this connection that one of the most familiar images in
Wagner's writings is the image of the sea in which the Christian artist has floundered for two
millennia, while it is Wagner, an artistic Columbus, who will finally find land, the land of the
Gesamkunstwerk (cf. 1993, esp. pp. 113-15, 118, 123, 125-26).
3. See Heidegger 1977,107-8: "This ultimate blow in the killing of God is perpetrated
by metaphysics, which, as the metaphysics of the will to power, accomplishes thinking in the
sense of value-thinking"; also "The value-thinking of the metaphysics of the will to power is
murderous in a most extreme sense, because it absolutely does not let Being itself take its
rise" (108).
4. See Luther's Preface to the Epistle to the Romans; cited in Cunliffe-Jones 1978,
325-26; see also #GW7.2[321], where Nietzsche himself would appear to make something
similar to this connection.
5. See EH 4.1: "'God', 'immortality of the soul', 'redemption', 'the Beyond', all of
them concepts to which I have given no attention and no time."
6. See EH 1.3: "He who knows how to breathe the air of my writings knows that it is
an air of the heights, a robust air. . . . Philosophy ... is a voluntary living in ice and high
mountains."
7. "[L]et this love be your new nobility?the undiscovered land in the furthest sea"
(221); see also pp. 230-31.
8. See Jung 1989,483: "Zarathustra should not have been published, but should have
been worked over and carefully concealed, perhaps put in a form?in spite of all the beauty
in it?more or less like his aphoristic writings because of the evil or morbid influence such a
book can have."

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