nietzsche as masked romantic

7/28/2019 Nietzsche as Masked Romantic

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Nietzsche as Masked Romantic

Author(s): Caroline Joan ("Kay") S. PicartReviewed work(s):Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 55, No. 3 (Summer, 1997), pp. 273-291Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The American Society for AestheticsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/431798 .

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CAROLINE JOAN ("KAY") S. PICART

Nietzsche as Masked Romantic

At this stage of Nietzsche scholarship,it mayseemstrange o returno the linkbetween Nietz-sche and romanticism.' Yet, as Ernst Behlerpoints out, the spirit of literary modernismsprang romthe womb of romanticism.2Hence,any attempt to harness Nietzsche within thecontemporary arena of postmodernism mustfirst wrestle with Nietzsche's debts to romanti-cism and the extent to which a residualroman-ticism contoured the development of Nietz-sche's thought-that is, the extent to whichNietzsche remaineda maskedromantic.It is undeniable hat Nietzsche himself, in hislater pieces, sought to distance himself fromwhathe viewed as thebefogginginfluence of ro-manticism. For the later Nietzsche, Germanmusic,particularlyWagner'smusic, wasroman-tic "through and through ... a first-rate nerve-destroyer,doubly dangerousfor a people givento drinkingandrevering he unclearas a virtue,namely, in its two-fold capacity of an intoxicat-ing and stupefyingnarcotic."3Walter Kaufmann, a leading authority onNietzsche, clearly sets himself against any ro-mantic interpretationof Nietzsche. For Kauf-mann, "self-overcoming"is the only viablemethod of finding one's way out of the Nietz-schean labyrinth.Thus, he strategically con-flates anydifferencebetweenNietzsche's inten-tions andhis mannerof execution. Forexample,Kaufmannemploys a decidedly Apollonianap-proach in interpreting a title Nietzsche used,"EcceHomo."For Kaufmann, he use of "EcceHomo" should be interpreted as Nietzsche'snakedstatementof self-identification:"Here s aman!Here is a new, a different mage of human-ity: not a saintor holy manany morethan a tra-ditional sage, but a modernversion."4In addi-tion, he interprets"Ich bin der und der"5as "I

am suchand sucha person,"an apparentprepa-rationfor a unidimensionalway of reading thelastline of thefirstsection of thepreface: Aboveall, do not mistakeme for someoneelse."6Yet, "Ich bin der und der" may be interpretedcontrapositivelyas "I am he and he," implyingeither a fragmentation r adissimulationorbothin the speaker-a methodof writing thatechoesthe satyr-ic author who has made the mask hissignature.Similarly,"Ecce Homo" s utteredbyPilate: the same man, who, in Nietzsche'seyes,is the only hero of the New Testamentbecauseof his having asked "Whatis truth?"Further-more,Nietzsche's first use of the phrase,"EcceHomo,"occursin his savagecharacterization fthe moralistbigot and prig who paints his por-traitupon the wall and utters the all-too-(in)fa-mous phrase.This seems yet anotherclue thatsomething seems to be amiss with a linearwayof interpretingNietzsche, especially when heclaims to have takenoff his masks.Nevertheless, in accordancewith his Apol-lonian method of interpretingNietzsche, Kauf-mannwrites:Nietzsche definedhis position in termsof his crucialbreakwith Wagner;and in NietzscheContraWagnerhe says expresslythat it was in partWagner's"ambi-guity"thathe couldnot"bear."... And the ambiguityof the romantics-their protest"againstreason,en-lightenment, taste, and the eighteenthcentury"7-isjust whatNietzsche denounced.8Similarly, Adrian del Caro, in his book Di-onysian Aesthetics; The Role of Destruction inCreation as Reflected in the Life and Works ofNietzsche (1981), cautiously describeswhat heviews as the three stages in the maturationofNietzsche's thought: (1) Nietzsche in his lateThe Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism55:3 Summer1997


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274 The Journalof Aesthetics and ArtCriticismtwenties,a close personalfriend of Wagnerandthe spiritual disciple of Schopenhauer;9 (2)Nietzsche in his convalescence from romanti-cism andhis conversion o aprimarilypositivis-tic attitude, in the Enlightenmentsense, withhis newly found heroworshipof Voltaire;'0and(3) the soberand satiricalNietzsche, morecon-cerned with the problemsof nihilismand Chris-tianity than with Greekcultureandtragedy,andthe project of the transvaluationof all valuesrather han a nostalgic longing for the rebirthofclassical tragicculture."IFordel Caro,as for Kaufmann, t appears hatit is only within the first phase, a period thatNietzsche eventually dismissed emphatically,thatNietzsche could be definitively describedasbeing under he influence of romanticism. How-ever, in his laterbook, Nietzsche Contra Nietz-sche (1989), del Caro ties the development ofNietzsche's thoughtmuchmore closely with hisromanticheritage:in the spirit of early romanticism as defined by thebasic issues of finding a ground for being and usingcreativity, as opposed to the cognitive or systemati-cally philosophicalroute, t is Nietzsche whodeservestheepitaph"lastromanticist."This is not intendedtomarkhim as a latecomeror to detract romthe lucid-ity of his thought. .. In Nietzsche we havethe culmi-natorandsurpasser f a longand venerableradition.2

In line with del Caro's view of Nietzsche asthe "lastromanticist," wish to show thatthereis good sense in drawingout the romantic nflu-ences that Nietzsche undoubtedlyattempted opurge himself of, but failed. The romanticspecter unceasinglyhauntedNietzsche even ashe struggled to exorcise himself of its ghostlyinfluence, and shapedhis genderedandmytho-logical politicsandaesthetics.To illustrateNietz-sche's persistentromanticism,I build upon delCaro'sthesis concerningthe possibility of dif-ferentiatingtwo types of romanticism,particu-larly in relationto Nietzsche:Just as Nietzsche envisagedtwokindsof nihilism andtwo kinds of skepticism, depending on whetherstrengthor weakness is the motivating factor,so tooare thetwokinds of romanticism,a facthe frequentlyoverlooked: the romanticism that he usually de-scribed as weak, passive and pathological;and theimage of romanticismthat representsthe transition

frompassive oactive,namely, cheerful, trong, e-structive,reative omanticism.13In this article, I attempt to excavate Niet-

zsche's persistent yet hidden romanticism bydrawing forth a striking correspondence be-tween the progressionof Nietzsche's initiallyoptimistic politics to his later, increasinglymisogynistic and pessimistic politics, and ageneral sketch of how romanticism follows asimilartrendof deepeningmisogynyandpoliti-cal pessimism, despite an initial optimism. Iconstruct this sketch thataims to capturesomeof the mainoutlines of the developmentof (Ger-man and French) romanticismvia an examina-tion of severalkey paintings by CasparDavidFriedrich one of the earliest andforemost Ger-man romantic painters)and Eugene Delacroix(one of the most renowned ater French roman-tic dandies, whom Nietzsche associates withWagner).What I hope to show is that this largerpicture, rooted in the history of an aesthetico-political movementembodiedin representativepaintings,revealsa similargravitation owardadarkerpessimism, as evidenced in its treatmentof "woman"/the"feminine,"and its increasingfascinationwith violence and sickness.The choice of not only painting, but also ofthese two specific painters,Friedrichand Dela-croix, as the basis for forming the macroscopicview against which the microscopic view ofNietzsche's politics and aestheticsmay be plot-ted needs some justification. It is true thatwitha few exceptions, such as Raphael'sTransfigu-ration in The Birth of Tragedy,Nietzsche oftenequated "romanticism"purely with Wagner'soperas, and as such, even attempting a generalcomparison across Nietzsche's texts and paint-ings seems awkward. Yet, as an historicallyrooted phenomenon,romanticism,understoodas a Europeanphenomenon,was certainlymorediverse than Wagner'soperas, as illustrated nthepanoplyof paintingsandliterarypieces thatwereinspiredby it. Nietzsche, who aspired o bea "good European," ertainly was a product ofmorethanmerely parochialGerman nfluences,and spoke affirmatively of particularly theFrench n his laterwritings.I takethese images,no less evocative than their musical counter-parts, to be the invisible terrainagainst whichNietzsche waged his battle with Wagnerian o-manticism.In addition,I have chosen Friedrich


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Picart Nietzsche as MaskedRomantic 275and Delacroixas theparticular epresentativesfwhat I perceiveto be two poles/types of romanti-cism as they,like Nietzsche,were consumedbythe question of how a genius may sculpt apolitico-aestheticmythologyforthe future.WhatI wish to put forthis an accountof howNietzsche, especially in his early post-Zarathus-tranphase, fluctuates nbetweenthese twotypesof romanticism:the optimistic/healthy (exem-plified by Friedrich) and the pessimistic/pathological exemplified by Delacroix).14Bothof these strains of romanticismmay be seen inBeyond Good and Evil, an early post-Zarathus-tran text, createdby Nietzsche to be a simpli-fied/exotericized version of Thus Spoke Zara-thustra.15 This fluctuation between the twopoles in Nietzscheeventuallyresults, n thefinalparts of his post-Zarathustran hase, in choiceof the darker,fatalistic type (characteristicofDelacroix) over the lighter, optimistic type(characteristicof Friedrich).My position differs from Adriandel Caro's nhis Nietzsche Contra Nietzsche in two areas.First, del Caroconceives of Nietzsche's strugglewith romanticismin linear or temporal terms(as he has outlined in his 1981 book). Conse-quently,he generatesan accountthat documentsthe struggle of the earlier Nietzsche contra thelater Nietzsche. While I draw from del Caro'stemporal schemaof Nietzsche's developmentasa thinker,I view Nietzsche's sustained strugglewith romanticismas itself constitutiveof Nietz-sche'slater dentity.That is, I do notview Nietz-sche's conversion of Dionysus into a philoso-pher-godas a radical break from his romanticpast, but as its naturalconclusion. Nietzsche'smatureconcept of the will to power resonatestoa high degree with the romanticmoralaestheticof qualitativepotentializing (and by this I mean,drawingfrom Novalis at a preliminary level, away of simultaneouslyreadingthe world as if itwere a novel, and imagining or writinga bookthat could be consubstantialwith the world),and yet deviates from it to some degree. Second,del Caroemploys a method thatattemptsan ex-haustive analysisof the statementsexpressedbyvariousromantic hinkers such as the Schlegels,Novalis, Tieck, Kleist, Wackenroder, nd Hl-derlin in orderto characterizewhat he refers toas "romanticism."My goals aremore modest. I aim to illustratesome essentialromanticprinciplesandideals,at

an introductory evel, through my examinationof two famous paintings by Caspar DavidFriedrich, and another two by Eugene Dela-croix. The first two paintings,The Cross in theMountains and Monk by the Sea, and the laterpair, The Massacre at Chios and Death of Sar-danapalus, serve as embodimentsof less tangi-ble and more diffused romantic ideals, as ex-pressed by the chief proponentsof the romanticmovement, and later intertwined with thepolitico-aesthetic vision of the dandy, as weshall see in Delacroix'scase.The significance of my turningto Friedrichand Delacroixlies in my attempt o arriveat anaccountthatdescribeshowNietzsche, Friedrich,and Delacroix converged strikingly in areaswhich may be called "romantic." n taking thisapproach, do not pretend o cover all aspectsofEuropean romanticism, but instead, strive togive a thumbnail sketch of its diversityand in-ternal tensions-a dynamic that is reflected inNietzsche's own reluctantand maskedromanti-cism(s). In view of the numerousunsuccessfulattemptsat defining romanticismmade in thetwentiethcentury, offerno startlinglynew andexhaustive characterizationof it here, becausethehistoryof romanticism tself is a storyof be-coming, of revolutionandevolution.A common quandarywith definitions of ro-manticism is that they either tend to be so gen-eral as to include a bewildering number ofnonexclusive characteristicsalso found in otherperiods,16or so specific'7 thatthey exclude themajorityof those commonly ascribedto the ro-mantics. For example, in a celebrated essay,A. 0. Lovejoy proposed that the word "roman-tic" shouldbe usedonly in the senseof FriedrichSchlegel's definition of "romantischePoesie,"publishedin 1798, and that all other "romanti-cisms" shouldbe distinguished romit andfromone another.'8As FriedrichSchlegel's own useof the term was far from consistent,this causedhis loosely connected ideas to explode into analmost infinite numberof interpretationsmadeby individuals at differentpointsin time.'9In contrast, whatI intend to do is to paint, inbroad strokes, certain general (but not overlydiffuse) characteristics that are recognized as"romantic" y a majorityof scholars,and whichare significantin assessingthe natureof the ro-manticismsthat plaguedandinspiredNietzscheas a philosopher. Among these kernels of ro-


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276 The Journalof Aesthetics andArt Criticismmantic temperament,ratherthan thought, thatpersist in Nietzsche's masked romanticism are:(1) a passion for the theme of transformation;(2) an antirationalism hatdoes not, despite im-mediate appearances, inkinto an indulgenceinthe equivocaland indeterminate; 3) a total em-brace of the romantic ideal of untimeliness ornoncontemporaneity; and (4) an increasingpessimism concerning modern society and"woman"/the"feminine."The first three char-acteristicsare sharedby whatI call the "lighter"and"darker" isages of romanticism; he fourthcharacteristicmarks the characteristicsplit ofthe "darker" romanticism (characteristic ofDelacroix) from the "lighter" omanticism seenin Friedrich).The tensions and confluences be-tween "light" and "dark"romanticisms, as Ishall show, are visible even in Nietzsche'savowedly "postromantic"work.

I. THE NATURE OF THE ROMANTIC

Prior to tracing how the romantic concept ofirony contours the later Nietzsche's thought,particularly n Beyond Good and Evil,I wish torendervivid some essential characteristics f ro-manticism, and from there, llustrate ts twovis-ages-visages I label the "optimistic"and the"pessimistic."In taking this approach, wish todraw from and to reinforce the active formula-tion of romanticismas a process or questratherthan a fixed and totalizing definition. I do thisin keeping with a fragment of a letter thatFriedrichSchlegel, the most outspoken polemi-cist among the early romantics, wrote to hisbrother, August Wilhelm: "I can hardly sendyou my explanationof the word romantic, be-cause it would take- 125 pages."20 FriedrichSchlegel's intent is clear: the mock precisionwith which he estimates the length of his defin-ition of the term underlines and ironizes hisnondefinition of it. In his most famous text,Fragment116 from the first issue in 1798 of theAthenaeum,the founding journal of early ro-manticism, Schlegel attemptsapositive descrip-tion of romantic poetry which emerges as noless unfixed than his earlier satiric one:Theromantic indof poetry s still in a stateof be-coming;n factthat s its realessence: hat t shouldeternally ebecoming ndnever ompleted.21

In ordernot to do violence to this characteri-zation of romanticism as perpetual processrather han accomplishedproject, I shall resortto a brief examinationof some of the character-istic featuresand the generaloutlinesof the his-toricalcontextthatunderlay he genesis of someof CasparDavid Friedrich'spaintings to illus-trate the "lighter" face of romanticism. Thelogic of my choice of Friedrichlies in thatFriedrich'sworks, in his day, were regardedasthe very epitome of romanticism.Hence, theyconstitute,in some senses, a distillation of ro-manticideals. Both Friedrichand Nietzsche ad-hered to crucial aspects of the romanticmoralaesthetic, which, for both of them, constitutedthe supremeartistic moral.This moral aestheticdemanded the complete interpenetration f theartisticand the moral. Such an interpenetrationwas essentiallydynamic, completely devotedtothe theme of metamorphosis,resistingthe hard-ening into divisions characteristicof the En-lightenment,yet avoidingthe descent into a de-bauchedrevelry n the utterly mystical. Such aninterpenetrationof the moral and the aestheticrenderedthe moral aesthetic and the aestheticmoral. Hence, the optimistic romantic moralaestheticdecreed that no sacrificewas too highfor the genuine artist in his or her quest for thegenuinely "beautiful" r "healthy."In order to understandthis romantic moralaesthetic moreconcretely, et us turn o some re-marks by Heinrich von Kleist, the brilliantyoung writerof some of the most remarkableplays in German iterature, uchas Amphitryon,Penthesilea,and Prinz Friedrich von Homburg.After Kleistgazedupon Friedrich'sMonkBy theSea (fig. 1),the young writerrhapsodized:Nothing ouldbe moresad andeerie han hisposi-tionin theworld, heonly sparkof life in the widerealm f death,a lonelycentrena lonelycircle.Thepicturewith its twoor threemysteriousbjectsap-pears as the apocalypse,as if it were dreamingYoung's NightThoughts"ndbecause f its monot-onyandboundlessnessliterally:horelessness], ithnothingbut heframe sa foreground,nefeels as ifone'seyelidshadbeencutoff.22

Monkby theSea was one of two picturesCas-parDavidFriedrichxhibitedwith greatnotorietyatBerlinin 1810.This painting, n keeping withan earlier, equally controversialaltarpieceenti-


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Picart Nietzsche as MaskedRomantic 277

FIGURE 1. CasparDavidFriedrich,Monkby theSea. StaatlicheMuseen zu Berlin Preulischer KulturbesitzNationalgalerie.tied Cross in the Mountains(fig. 2), employedthe technique of silhouetting a foregroundimage against an intangible background-athencontroversial ct against the canonsof aca-demic classicism in art. The context withinwhich Friedrich's aintingsarousedso much at-tention, and gained the description"romantic,"serves as a relief against which the revolution-ary character of Friedrich's works may beviewed. Friedrich's chief antagonist, Freiherrvon Ramdohr, advocated not only that order,balance, and clarityof compositionbe upheldasprimary aesthetic principles, and that artistsshould do no more than copy and imitate thestyle andsubjectsof antiqueart,but also that artcouldbe reduced o a set of rationaland restric-tive rules, and that these rules, once codified,couldbe learnt.23Incontrast,at a preliminary evel, Friedrich'spaintings seemed to embody a passion for theequivocal, the indeterminate,the obscure andfaraway(objectsshrouded n a fog, adistant ire

in darkness,mountainsmergingwith clouds); acelebration of subjectivity borderingon solip-sism, often coupledwith a morbiddesire that heself be lost in nature'svarious infinities; and avalorizationof night over day, signifying a reac-tion against Enlightenment and rationalism.Hence, in Monk by the Sea, Friedrichcarriedeven further the radical compression and sim-plification of forms in Cross in the Mountains ocreate a landscape of startling bareness, inwhich a solitary monk holds his head in hishands. As before, the different areas of thepainting are decisively separated from eachother,so thatthe monk appears o be surroundedby the uncompromising lementsof earth, sea,and sky. Kleist wrote of the Anspruch, he de-mand, and the Abbruch, the loss, that gazinguponthatpaintinginflicteduponhim:thatonehaswanderedut here, hatonemust eturn,thatonewants o crossover, hatonecannot, hatonelackshereall life andyet perceives hevoicesof life


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278 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

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FIGURE 2. CasparDavidFriedrich,Cross in the Mountains.SachsischeLandesbibliothek.AbteilungDeutscheFotothek.A. Rous, 1995.in the rushing tide, in the blowing wind, in the pas-sage of clouds, in the solitary birds.24

Nevertheless, as one enters into a deeper re-flection upon and interactionwith Friedrich'spaintings, one cannot help but notice that theheavy emotive impact of Friedrich's andscapes

does not impair his expressive directness. Hiseliminationof introductoryforegroundmotifscreates a visual vortex that sweeps the onlook-ers' eyes onto his central imagery,which arerendered even more compelling by the perva-siveness of the atmosphere he created. Mostof Friedrich's subjects are not mystifications


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Picart Nietzsche as MaskedRomantic 279wroughtby a mind obsessedby the obscure,butnaturalobjects undergoing a form of transfor-mation-against the haze of sunriseor the deeppurpleandorange glow of twilight,in the swirl-ing, diaphanousrobes of mist, or underthe cry-stalline blanket of fallen snow. This form ofcommunication,althoughcertainly not in keep-ing with the intellectual temperament of theEnlightenment,resists the categorizationof thepurely abstruse and incomprehensible. AsVaughanpoints out, "justas Friedrich'spicturescombine ambiguous spatial constructions andlight effects with direct imagery,so their inten-tions, while expressed evocatively, are by nomeans inexplicit."25A sensitive reading of Nietzsche reveals thathe is similarly concerned with the themes oftransformationand a form of communicatingthat is other than totally lucid, though it is notcompletely indecipherable. t is a form of com-munication that attempts to be sensitive to thereverberations, he resonances of an aestheticand moral form of self-becoming.This processof self-becoming resists cognitive fixation in anabsolute sense and yet is not utterly elusive.Crucial to this is Nietzsche's fascination withthe metamorphosisof decadence into the com-ing of the Ubermensch-a moral-political-aes-thetic vision whose outlines are never clearlydefined, but are certainly discernible in somesense. Similarly,Nietzsche'scharacterization fa "good" writing style is one which simultane-ously communicates an "inward tension ofpathos"using an art of gesturesthat "makes nomistake about the signs, the tempo of thesigns."26 t is a distinctivemasteryof the multi-fariousness of signs and of the innerstates theypoint to that does not negatetheir multifarious-ness as signs and inner states.27

However, his romanticemphasison the mul-tifariousnessof signs could also be interpretedin amorepessimistic/"darker"way.A primeex-ample of this darkerinterpretationof the ro-mantic quest may be seen in EugeneDelacroix.For Delacroix,the romanticdandy, the purposeof painting lay neither n themimetic attempt oreproducenature lavishly northe attempt o ad-here to the prescriptions of the traditionalcanons of ideal beauty. Insofar as he perceivedthe missionof thepainter o lie in the expressionof the "soul,"he advocated its "vagueness"astheverymechanismthroughwhichpaintingbe-

comes powerful-piercing beyond clear-cutand distinct thought, into the zone of the sub-conscious.28For Delacroix, as for Nietzsche, the powerofthe "sketch" ies in its ambiguityandmultifari-ousness.Precisely by being able to evokeratherthan represent,the sketch, in Delacroix'scase,or the aphorism, n Nietzsche's case, is a con-centrated or distilled form, ratherthan a care-lessly executedand effete creation."With great artists," Delacroix wrote, "thesketch is not a dream,a vague cloud;it is some-thing other than a coming togetherof barelygraspable features. The great artists alone setout from a fixed point, and it is this pure ex-pression to which it is so difficult for them tocome back to during the execution of theirworks, be it lengthyor rapid."29Employing heaphoristicorm Nietzschehim-self aspired o in his lateryears,Delacroixwrote:"Success n the arts is not a matterof abridging,but of amplifying,and,if possible,of prolongingthe sensationby all availablemeans."30Among the formal techniques Delacroix isnotedfor is his distinctuse of color as meshingwith, dissolving into,and evenexpandingspace.By intensifying the illusion of light, and intro-ducingrich andunusualhalf-tones,andmakinguse of a technique called "scumbling,"Dela-croix assaultedthe classical focus on form, out-line, andmodeling. Scumbles producepassagesthat enable the tones to melt together; the sub-stitutionof varnishfor oil enables burstsor scin-tillationsof light. Local tone, decisive to estab-lishing the autonomy/distinctiveness f a figureor object, is brokenup,either through he use ofstripes,or by decomposing both the color andtexture.Huyghe quotesVillot on Delacroix:Instead f layingon thecolor,brilliant nd pure, noneprecise lace,heinterlaceshe ones,breaks hemup and,makinghebrush ehaveikeashuttle, eeksto producea tissue whosemany-colouredhreadsconstantlyrossand nterruptneanother.31

Delacroix's rebellion against the classicalaestheticprinciplesof formandpure color, andhis elevation of movement, hybridization ofcolor, and tone, seem, in some ways, the visualcorrelate of Nietzsche's own experimentationwith writing styles. Similar to Delacroix's pref-erence for hybridizedcolor and texture, Nietz-


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FIGUR 3. ugeneDelaroix The assare a Chio. ThLoure..?Phot.RMN

sche preferreda multivocalwriting style-onethat could speak differentlyto different audi-ences, resistingthe linear "moralistic" oice heattributedo Platonismand its moderndescen-dant,Christianity.Condensation,ntensification,

breakage,refraction-these aestheticprinciplesmay be seen at workin both the post-Zarathus-tranNietzscheandDelacroix.More importantly,however,both Delacroix'sand Nietzsche's arts possess a destructive di-


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Picart Nietzsche as Masked Romantic 281mension-a voluptuousembraceof the sensual-ity of the apocalypticvision. In certain senses,both men searched for deliberately refractorymechanisms simultaneouslyto hide and com-municate a dark message: the eternalprepara-tion for the inevitable encounterwith death.Butthis type of death was not a quietslipping awayfrom life; it was a glorious and sensualdarken-joyment-the savoring of the horror of pro-longed torment, disease, and carnage. Twopaintings of Delacroix strikinglydepict this es-otericmessage commonto both artists.The Massacre at Chios (fig. 3), which wasdisplayedat the Paris Salon of 1824, causedanuproar.An immense, still, open space consti-tutes its background,dressed in copper hues,smearedwithsoot, bile, andblood, undera mur-derous and nightmarishsky. With its dramaticdepiction of the dark eroticism of suffering,itconveys no clear moral message, but revels inthe ambiguityof theunremitting ea of dismem-bered and bloody bodies, and faces devoid ofhope, impassively awaiting the inevitable.Delacroix'sentries n his diariesrevealhis ownawarenessof his foray into this darkeroticism:Mypicturesacquiring torsion, movementnden-ergywhichI mustbring o completion.tneeds hedarkness,hedesirable irtiness,hespecial imbs ..The smile on the dying face! ... The final embracesofdespairingeings!Thisis thetruedomainof paint-ing! ... If I am not writhing like a snakein the handsof apythoness, amcold.(Friday, May1824)32

Delacroix called The Death of Sardanapalus(fig. 4) his "massacrenumbertwo." His criticsdenounced t as a scandalousmassacreof paint-ing itself. The historicalcontext/pretext or thescene is derived rom thevainglorioussuicide ofShamash-shum-ukin,he crownprinceof Baby-lon. Defeated in battle by his brother,Assur-bani-pal,the princeorderedhis officers and eu-nuchs to slaughter all that had given himpleasure during his lifetime-his harem, ser-vants, horses, and favoritedogs-so that noneof these wouldsurvivehim. The resultantpaint-ing is a festival of color hyperbolized into afeveredpitch. One can almost smell the headyscent of perfumemingledwithblood as Aischehthe Bactrian hangs herself, Baleah, the cup-bearer, ights the pyre upon which he will seekhis own death, and Myrrhaembraces her death

with her arms, hair,and body submissivelyof-feredto imminentannihilation.Huyghe capturesthe extravaganceand sen-sualexpenditureof the painting:Neverhavenecklacesfprecious tones, arved asesandglittering oldsmiths'workhavebeenpiled upwithsuchwealthand suchgreedyrelish;neverhascolour een oresplendent,nitingnone loral heafluminouswhites, parkling olds,pinksandredsandsplashes forangehatquiverwith ilvery leams ndreverberategainst atches f green.33Yet the cornucopiaof jewels and humanfigurescrests and dies beneath heimpassive gazeof theking, himself an embodiment of the death thatawaits him. Sardanapalusbecomes the mask ofDelacroix as the world-wearyaesthete orches-tratinghis own death as his ultimate work ofart.34Similarly,the post-Zarathustran ietzsche inparticularrevels in themes of disease, death,and destruction. It is true thatin generalNietz-sche seems to fluctuate between the rhetoricalregistersof optimism and pessimism. Yet oneof the most distinctive features of his post-Zarathustranwritings is its unremitting sav-agery-its thorough-going propagationof thetotal destruction of modernity. The post-ZarathustranNietzsche seems to sharein Dela-croix's darkjoy in his exultation over this nec-essary "damming up" of modernity-thisruthless slaughter of the "descending lines oflife."35This Nietzsche advocates the use of po-litical power to exterminate all the weakness,poison, and decadence thatmodernity,with itssoft and "womanly" deals have preserved. Yetunderneathhis exoteric message of "overcom-ing" and the futurecoming of the Ubermenschlies his esotericmessage of the possible nonres-urrection of the firebird from the ashes ofmodernity, as the fourth book of Thus SpokeZarathustra eems to show.There is one final striking similaritybindingNietzsche's masked romanticism with Dela-croix's own: their attitudes toward the "femi-nine"/"woman."Both Nietzsche and Delacroixset themselves against "W/woman," progress,and democracy;36both had "the dandy's [am-bivalent]taste for womenof easy virtue,for theintoxicating sensuality and the bitterness withwhichprostitutesreducehumanrelationships o


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FIGURE 4.ug1ne Delacroix, The Deat of SardanapalusThe Louvre. Photo*I

FIGURE 4. Eugene Delacroix,TheDeathof Sardanapalus.he Louvre.? PhotoRMN.

nothing, with their trashy ornamentsand fren-zied spasms."37Both advocated an Orientaliz-ing vision of "woman"as most beautiful andmysteriouswhen she is not out in the world, in-terferingwith the affairs of men, butfloweringwithin the realms of "feminine" devotion andmaternity.Delacroix, during his trip to Mo-rocco, managed to obtain permission to slipinto a genuine Turkishharem in order to do afew sketches. Delacroix was apparentlyso in-toxicated by the experience that he had to becalmed down with difficulty with sorbets andfruits. Huyghe frames and records Delacroix'sthoughtson this occasion.Here Delacroix found the secret dream a reality: thewoman withdrawnto devote herself to her originalmission-the work of herhouse,the love of herman,the educationof her child: "This,"[Delacroix]said,

"is woman as I understandher, not thrown into thelife of the world, but withdrawnat its heart, as itsmost secret, delicious and movingfulfillment."38Howvery like Nietzsche's pronouncementshat"natural aw" requires that "man wills" and"woman s willing";39 hat "feminism shuts thedoor on all audacious nsights";40 hatthe onlyway to "cure"a woman of herresentment s to"give her a child."'41Finally, here s yet another ense in which theromantic moralaesthetic resonateswith Nietz-sche's philosophy in a strikingly biographicalsense. Friedrich,Delacroix, and Nietzsche will-fully embraced he burdenof noncontemporane-ity or untimeliness characteristicof the trulyrevolutionaryromantic. In brief, this ideal up-held that the genius be wholly unique and indi-vidual, capable of producing works autono-


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Picart Nietzsche as MaskedRomantic 283mously, transcending the forces of patronageandpolitics, alwaysshattering xisting interpre-tative and evaluative paradigms.The demandthat this ideal exerted upon the romantic artistwas total-even till the point of the sacrifice ofthe artist. The romantic notion of verschwen-dung,total squandering,surfaces at this point.However,this ideal possessed a second dimen-sion: that of attemptingto transcend this indi-viduality,which ranthe risk of becominga mor-bid self-absorption,and establishing, throughthe genius's art, a new mythology,a mythologyrelevant and binding for the generations tocome. For Friedrich and Nietzsche, the frus-trated ongingfordisciplesandthenonvisibilityof apublic reinforcementof theirprivateaspira-tions turned them radically inward. Throughtheirlives and works, the myth of the romanticaesthete as a lonely, solitary wanderer,essen-tially always within a cave or upon a mountain-top, farremoved romthemadding herd, gainedfurtherconcretenessandcredibility.42Delacroix's case would be slightlymorecom-plicated. As a man who meticulously dressed,every day, for his own death,the search for dis-ciples or acommunitywouldhaveseemedmoot.Yet there are flashes of this same fascinationwith deathand destruction n Nietzsche, along-side his gravitationtoward a more optimisticand creative politic. In effect, what I find inNietzsche is a fluctuating alignment with boththese types of romanticism,which, until the lastphases of his post-Zarathustraneriod, hang ina tightbalance.These polarities,of radical ndi-vidualism and the desire to construct a polis be-yond theChristian oundationsof good andevil;of creationanddestruction;of transformingandpreserving,arecharacteristicof thenew pitchtowhich Nietzsche brings the romantictraditionof irony,as we will see in the next section.II. GLIMPSES OF THE ROMANTIC CONCEPTOF IRONY IN NIETZSCHE'S BEYOND GOODAND EVIL

Del Caro sets the margin for the hardening ofNietzsche's matureand most productive phaseat the creation of Beyond Good and Evil.43 Inthis section, I shall draw out the persistence ofromantic irony (a characteristic of both the"lighter"and"darker" aces of romanticism) nsome sections of the said book, which are re-

flective of the manner of philosophizingof theolder (and supposedlynonromantic)Nietzsche.As Behler points out, Nietzsche takes up andbrings to a radical culmination a tradition ofironytraceable romSocrates,Aristotle, Cicero,Quintilian,Boccacio,Cervantes,Sterne,Goethe,and ultimately, FriedrichSchlegel.44 Irony, inthis tradition, is more than a figure of speechindicating a discrepancy between what thespeakersays and whathe or she intends to com-municate. Moreimportantly, t is a means of at-tack; an "involuntaryand yet completely delib-eratedissimulation."45For Schlegel, one of the key philosophicalproponentsof romanticism, his method of con-ducting warfare against the "idol of the highlypraisedomniscience"(Kritische,vol. 13,p. 208)is necessarilyself-reflectiveand self-consciouspoetry. This, in Schlegel's eyes, was accom-plished by Goethe in his novel, WilhelmMeister.In fact, Schlegel was so struck by the "ironyhovering above ... [this] .. entire work" (Kri-tische, vol. 2, p. 137) thathe rhapsodized n oneof his notebooks: "Meister= ironic poetry asSocrates = ironic philosophy because it is thepoetry of poetry" (Kritische,vol. 18, p. 24). ForSchlegel, suchpoetrybreaksfree fromthe rule-based form of rhetoricalronythatgrounds tselfupon a complete agreement between speakerand listener and an absolute notion of Truth.Schlegel strovecontinually to capturethe Soc-ratic-Platonicsense of irony as configurative,indeterminable, and self-transcending in vari-ous formulations.Hence, in Schlegel's late lec-tures about Philosophy of Language and Word(1829), he described rony as the "astonishmentof the thinking mind about itself which oftendissolves into a gentle smile" and "beneatha cheerful surface"encompasses "adeeply hid-den sense, anotherhigher meaning, and oftenthe most sublime seriousness"(Kritische, vol.10, p. 353).Thereis yet anotherway in which Schlegel'sthoughton irony is significant with respect todredging out any traces of romanticism in thematureNietzsche. Inhis earlywritingson Greekpoetry, Schlegel described the countermove-ments of self-creation and self-destruction as amanifestationof a self-inflicting momentcapa-ble of disruptingthe primordialDionysian ec-stasy. It is a manifestationof "the most intensepassion [that s] ... eagerto wounditself, if only


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284 The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticismto act and to discharge its excessive power"(Kritische,vol. 1, p. 403). One of Schlegel's fa-vorite examples was the parabasis of Greekcomedy,which may be characterizedas the oc-casionally capricious or frivolous addressesofthe poet through the chorus to the audience,which serve to slice intothe flow of theplay.ForSchlegel, such a capacityto disruptor injureisthe natural esult of overflowing vitality or "themost intense agility of life," and results in a"stimulation f theeffect, sinceitcannotdestroythe illusion (of Aristophanes' comedies)"(Kri-tische, vol. 1, p. 30, emphasis added). Ulti-mately, for Schlegel, "irony is a permanentparabasis" Kritische,vol. 18, p. 85).It is with respect to these three centralnotionsof romantic rony (i.e., irony as satirical,humor-ous, and strategic dissimulation; irony as self-conscious and self-reflective poetry defiant ofabsolute formulation; irony as a permanentparabasis) hat Nietzsche struggleswith and re-defines his congealing framework in BeyondGood and Evil.In the prefaceof this book, Nietzsche beginswith his formulationof what he perceives to bethe central problem of philosophy: that it re-mains as aloof as a womanunwon; thatits edi-fices are unwieldy, built upon "any old popularsuperstition from time immemorial ...; someplay on wordsperhaps,a seductionby grammar,or an audaciousgeneralizationof very narrow,very personal, very human, all too humanfacts."46From the beginning,it is easy to locateNietzsche as an heir to the romantic raditionofirony. His tone is adversarial;his smiling orplayful countenance does little to hide the in-herent seriousness of the task he takes uponhimself-the unmasking of the "good" as"evil,"and the re-creation of a sense of virtuebeyond "good" and "evil." This smiling sav-agery is something that persists in Nietzsche'sattackuponall the traditional dols of morality.Nietzsche identifies several of these tradi-tional idols or dogmatists who have cunninglyconstructed these pitifully and laughablytenu-ous facades upon which the grandioseedificesof philosophy rest: Plato, Christianity,Jesuit-ism, and liberaldemocracy BGE, pp. 2-3; JGB,p. 5). Of these, the most beautiful and danger-ous, themostcompellingandcancerousgrowth,is Plato. For Nietzsche, Plato's fundamentalerrorlay in his invention of the pure mind and

the "good" n itself. Proceedinghence fromthispremise, as Leo Strauss points out, "one caneasily be led to Diotima's conclusion that nohumanbeing is wise butonly thegod is; humanbeings can only strive for wisdom of philoso-phizing; gods do not philosophize."47In thewordsof Nietzsche, "itmeantstandingtruthonherhead anddenyingperspective, he basic con-dition of all life, when one spoke of spiritandthe good as Plato did" (BGE, p. 2; JGB, p. 4).The convictions that necessitated battles be-tween Schlegel and Hegel resonatequite wellwith the grounds for the uncompromisingcon-oclasm Nietzsche sets out to perform.For bothNietzsche and Schlegel, the "inexhaustibleplenitudeand manifoldness of the highest sub-jects of humanknowledge"(Kritische,vol. 13,p. 207) renders a tyrannical ormulationof thecontent of these subjects impossible, absurd,andmorallyobjectionable.Such a stance neces-sarily transforms hem into allies in their siegeagainst what they viewed as the overweeningpride of a rationalism hat had become elevatedto the statusof divinity.As a further illustration of this, in the firstchapterof Beyond Good andEvil,Nietzsche, inconfronting what he considers the ultimatephilosophicalquestions,bringsus face-to-facewith the Sphinx-siren, he deity who inspiresusto dash ourselvesagainst the rocks in the maddesire to ascend the shores of truthbathed inApollo's light. Nietzsche presents us with a rid-dle: "whynot ratheruntruth?and uncertainty?even ignorance? ... Who of us is Oedipus here?Who the Sphinx? It is a rendezvous, t seems,ofquestionsandquestion marks" BGE, p. 9;JGB,P. 9).The very posing of the riddle s itself the pre-lude of the battle Nietzsche wages againstvar-ious "frog perspectives" (BGE, p. 10; JGB,p. 10)-perspectives from below, perspectivesthat lie in the cold, amphibiousregion that suf-focateslife, perspectivestrappedby theputrefy-ing scaffold of the mistakenwill to truth.Oneexampleof such a "frogperspective" s the tra-ditionalmetaphysicalnegation of the origin ofopposites (i.e., that it is impossible for truth toemerge from error, or that the will to truthbegenerated by the will to deception, or the self-less deed arise from the selfish deed) coupledwith its "faith in oppositevalues." (BGE, p. 10;JGB,p. 10). This leads to the ironic nonfulfill-


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Picart Nietzsche as MaskedRomantic 285ment of one of philosophy's majorprecepts:deomnibus dubitandum Descartes's "all is to bedoubted").Again, one can alreadydetect glim-mers of the romantic nausea with fixity, and itsfascination with the fearfully unfixed. Nietz-sche, like the romantics, s interested n an aes-thetic moral and a moral aesthetic beyond theconvictionin a metaphysicsof stasis. Nietzschethenposits his own counterhypothesis:Forall thevalue hat he rue, he ruthful,heselflessmay deserve, t wouldstill be possible hata higherandmore undamentalalue or ifemighthavebeenascribedo deception, elfishness nd lust. Itmighteven be possible hat whatconstitutes he value ofthese goodandreveredhings s precisely hat heyare insidiously elated, ied to, and involvedwiththese wicked, seeminglyopposite things-maybeevenone withthem nessence.Maybe! BGE,p. 10;JGB,p. 10)

To enflesh his primary hesis, he employstwostrategies.In the first, he characterizes nstinctas the unseen, primalforce that forces reasoninto certain channelsof thought(section3), andhe displacesthe questionof the legitimacyof a"false" judgment with the question of whetherthis judgment is "life-promoting,life-preserv-ing, species-preserving,perhaps even species-cultivating" BGE, p. 11;JGB, p. 11).For Nietz-sche then, truth may be glimpsed only in itsvolatility; its promotionof life; its free expendi-ture of vital forces. This is clearlyan injunctionthat resonatesvery well with the romantic tem-perament hat resists the stricturesof classicismand valorizestheexplorationof theexpulsionofvitality. It is also important o observethe strat-egy, characteristicof romanticism,of replacinga model of truthbased on objective validity toone based on subjectivevalidity. Truth s not tobe found in the distant and externalether, butthrobbing within the noble heart. (Goethe'syoung Werther readily would have acknowl-edged this Nietzschean insight as his own.)Nietzsche draws his argument o its conclusion:we are fundamentallynclined to claim that thefalsestudgements..are hemost ndispensableous... thatrenouncingalsejudgements ouldmeanre-nouncingife and a denialof life.To recognizeun-truth s a condition f life-that certainlymeans e-sistingaccustomed alue feelings in a dangerous

way;and a philosophyhatrisks his wouldby thattokenaloneplace tselfbeyond oodandevil.(BGE,p. 12;JGB,p. 12)The second strategyhe employs is that of de-bunking-of shattering he idols of traditionalphilosophy, some with savage humor, otherswith earnest edged with mockery. For Nietz-sche, every "great"philosophy so far has beennothing more than a conscious or unconsciousmoral (or immoral) striptease "the personalconfession of its author and a kind of involun-tary and unconscious memoir" (BGE, p. 13;JGB, pp. 13-14). The restof this chaptersimplydeals with an examinationof the unconsciousmotives that move the Dionysiokolakes, thebuffoonish truth-adorers,and the various illu-sions theyallowto entrap hem.Again, theherowhose shadowyoutlines are definedagainstthefragmentedremains of these shattered dols iscertainly romantic.It is again thatmythologicalartist-moralist-warrior,who heroically and ir-reverently ays bare the idolatry and hypocrisyof conventionalsociety,who rears his head.48Ishall discuss, in some detail, simply the exam-ples of Stoicism and Kant.In his critique of the Stoic ethic (section 9),

"to live according to nature,"Nietzsche levelstwo counterarguments:1) How could a humanbeing, vulnerableandproneto passion, live ac-cording to nature's ndifference? (2) If "livingaccording to nature"was simply a disguise for"living according to life," how was it possiblefor one to transgressthis maxim? Ultimately,for Nietzsche, Stoicism is nothing but maskedself-tyrannyand self-aggrandizement;a meansthroughwhichnatureallowsherself to be tyran-nized in the figure of the Stoic; a necrophiliousformof the "most spiritualwill to power, to the'creation of the world,' to the causa prima (Un-causedFirstCause)" BGE, p. 16; JGB, p. 16).Again, hintsof the romantic raditionof ironyreadily emerge at this point. Nietzsche seems tofind particularly objectionable the absence ofself-reflectiveness or self-consciousnessin Sto-icism. It is this lack of self-reflectivenessthatcauses Stoicism to be a mere illusion. Stoicismis but afixed formulawhich falls shortof its am-bition-that of becoming a poetry of poetrythat roots itself in the reality of the world asformedby the self-conscious,aesthetico-moral-izing humanmind.


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286 The Journalof AestheticsandArt CriticismPerhapsthis is one of the points in whichNietzsche's attraction o theoptimisticromanticideal is as strong as his aversionto it. For thelighter visage of theromantic,reverence oward

nature s of supremeimportance.For example,Friedrich, the quintessentially romantic land-scape painter, espoused one of the chief tenetsof Schelling's Nature-philosophy: that "theartist mustfollow the spiritof Natureworkingatthe core of things."49Nietzsche, in his polemicagainst this, raises a two-fold objection: it isboth too difficultandtoo facile as a way of liv-ing. Nietzsche's mainobjectionsto Stoicism arethat it is illusory and directed destructivelyin-ward. But thereis a sense in which he fostersanostalgiafor this "most spiritualwill to power"-this will to the recreationof the world, thepossibility of which may be seen in the Stoicperversionof it. It is possible,of course,to spec-ulateupon a way in which the Stoic temptationmay be redeemed, within Nietzsche's frame-work. Such a move would requirenot the schiz-ophrenic attemptto "live accordingto nature"andyet to deny that one is part of nature as theStoics do),but to draw from the model of natureandto locate itself in its grand political schemeof the agonisticsquandering f vital forces.Certainly, Nietzsche's will to power, with itsfoundationsof vitalism, pantheism,and hylozo-ism, or rootednessin nature,has strong roman-tic undercurrents. he "will to power"serves asNietzsche's synonymfor Life, the transindivid-ual agencythat enervates ndividual agentswithforce andvitality.Will to poweris the enigmaticunitary life force from which everything ani-mateandinanimatedraws. Moreover,Nietzschecustomarilyportraysthe human ink to this pri-mordial life force as different from the strictlycognitive. Nietzsche's will to power then ap-pears to correspond with what the romanticsrefer to as "Nature."In his post-Zarathustranworks, Nietzsche seemsto characterizeLife andNatureas two forms of the will to power. Life iswill to power expressed in terms of anthro-pocentric incarnation;Natureis will to powermanifested in its amoral, indifferent incarna-tion. The human soul lies at the intersection ofLife and Nature, the two faces of the will topower.In addition,there is a sense in which Nietz-sche'swill topower coincides with Novalis's ac-tive formulationof romanticism as "qualitative

potentializing."By "qualitativepotentializing,"Novalis meant to characterize the romanticquest as a readingof the world as if it were abook, and imagining, or writing, a book thatcouldbe consubstantialwith the world.Such animperative would entail a reworking of thestructureof the world, such that the common-place is conferreda "highermeaning"whereas"the operation is reversedfor the higher, un-known, mystical, infinite."50Nevertheless,an undeniablepoint of rupturebetweenNietzsche andromanticismmaybe laidout at this juncture.For Novalis, the romanticvalorizationwas aimed at a rediscoveryof theworld'soriginalmeaning (whichwas a continu-ing task rather han an accomplishedhistoricalachievement).While Nietzsche would be sym-patheticto the dynamicnatureof a valorizationor transvaluation, e woulddismiss as mistakenany attempt o discovera pre-existingor "origi-nal" meaning.Yeteven the apparentlyundivided natureofNietzsche's antipathy owardmetaphysicalreal-ism is not so simple.For instance, in the booksof 1888, Nietzsche champions a position thathe alternatelycalls "realism"and "naturalism,"which he characterizesn contrapositiono "ide-alism." Nietzsche claimsthat a "realist" r "nat-uralist,"as opposedto the "idealist," s capableof viewing the world as it is, unrefractedby thelenses of metaphysics.It is also clear thatin hismaturephase, especially in Twilightof theIdols,The Anti-Christ,and Ecce Homo, that Dionysusis a figure who is a philosopher-godwho is in-dispensableto Nietzsche's projectof the trans-valuationof valuesbecause he has come to rep-resent,in Nietzsche's eyes, the one, true reality.What seems to become apparents the extenttowhich Nietzsche struggleswith and is attractedto the ideals of the two types of Germanroman-ticism, and how he seeks to define his positionin terms of a hybrid of scientific "realism"or"naturalism" nd subjectivevalorization.I leave my analysisof Nietzsche's confronta-tion with Stoicism for his battlewith Kantto il-lustrate further Nietzsche's persistent rooted-ness in the romantic fascination with irony.Nietzsche'scritiqueof Kant (section 17) beginswith his recalling Kant'sreplyto the question ofhow one acquires access to synthetic a priorijudgments.For Nietzsche, "by virtue of a fac-ulty"is Kant'sanswer,purifiedof its display of


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Picart Nietzsche as Masked Romantic 287German profundityand curlicues. He then hu-morouslydraws a devastating parallelbetweenKant's reply to a line from the doctorin one ofMoliere's plays: "How does opium inducesleep? By virtueof a faculty, namely the virtusdormitiva."Argumentum d ignorantiam,roarsNietzsche the faun, the man-goat-god, rollingwith laughter.Kant's"faculty"has laid philoso-phy'ssenses to sleep for too long.Nietzsche levels his attackon Kant based onwhat he views as the loss of an objective groundby which a synthetic a priori udgmentlatchesonto the "natural" r "real"world. In fact, forNietzsche, physics (section 14), physiology(section 15), Darwinism (section 14), and logic(section 17)-actually all supposedly egitimateworld-explanations-are but interpretationsorexegeses of theworld. He reiterates his pointinthe secondchapter,where he states that "itis nomore thana moralprejudicethat truthis worthmore than appearance" (section 34). Nietz-sche's homage to perspectivism,though, is notwithout appeal to some sort of objectivity.Unsurprisinglyperhaps,Nietzscheeventuallyarrives at a method and a vision which referback to his romanticroots, despite his incorpo-ration of novel elements.For Nietzsche, all pastphilosophizing,oreventhevery processof think-ing itself, is but a relationof drivesto each other.These drives,in theiragonisticdesire to squan-der themselves, are powered by the desire tomastereachother,and thusrecreate he worldintheir own images.Hence, psychology,forNietz-sche, must be understood as the "morphologyand the doctrine of the will to power" andmustbe reinstatedas the queen of all sciences (sec-tion 23). Nietzsche's passion for psychology isbred from an aversion to the absolute luciditythatthe Enlightenmentboasts to have access to,as well as a revulsion with the dreamyenslave-mentto obscurityhe attributes o what del Carowouldtermthe"weaker"brandof romanticism.WhatNietzsche seems to be aiming at is a "self-overcoming"of the various philosophical andscientific doctrines. Yet Nietzsche's goals andmethodsat achieving this self-overcomingulti-mately resonate, o a remarkable xtent,with hisheritageof romanticism(s).The persistence of the romantic heritage inNietzsche's writingsis also glimpsed in his en-comium to the "free spirits"-the "heraldsandprecursorsof the philosophy of the future."'5'

Briefly, there are two general categories intowhich Nietzsche's remarkson these "free spir-its" may be classified: (1) a descriptionby nega-tion of the principalqualitiesof the free spirits,and (2) a positivedescriptionof their distinctivefeatures. For Nietzsche, a free spirit may beglimpsed only in sharprelief against the DonQuixote-esquefigureswho sufferfor the sakeof"truth"-these sophisticatedvengeanceseekersand poison brewers,loafers and cobweb-spin-nersof the spirit.The penultimate igureof dec-adence,forNietzsche,is thephilosopher-martyrwho is a stage- and platform-bawlern a "satyrplay, merely an epilogue farce, merely the con-tinued proof that the long, real tragedyis at anend, assuming that everyrealphilosophywas inits genesis a long tragedy" (BGE, p. 37; JGB,p. 39). A free spiritis neither a dogmatistnor ablind advocateof the "CommonGood" (which,Nietzsche writes, is a contradictionin terms)(BGEand JGB,section43).Incontrast,a free spiritsings the ironichymnof the sancta simplicitas that venerates the willto ignorance (or the will to the uncertainor theuntrue)as a refinementrather han anegationofthe will to knowledge (BGE and JGB, section24). He52strives nstinctively for a citadel and asecrecywherehe is saved fromthe crowd (BGEand JGB, section 26). He can listen to everycoarse and subtlecynicism (as cynicism, Nietz-sche posits, is theonly formin which base soulsapproachhonesty) (BGEandJGB,section 26).He can dance to variant,unfamiliar empos (i.e.,be capable of "the most delightful, daring nu-ances of free, free-spirited thought" [BGE,p. 40; JGB, p. 42]). He claims the "right o a badcharacter"(BGE, p. 46; JGB, p. 49), i.e., onewho accepts the responsibilityof being impu-dent and the dutyto "squintmaliciously out ofevery abyss of suspicion" (BGE, p. 46; JGBp. 49). A profoundspiritneeds anddelightsin amask (BGEandJGB,section40) and conserveshimself from any inordinate attachment; heo-retically, he conserves himself even from hisown detachment(BGE and JGB, section 41).Such a spiritis an attempter,a tempter,and anexperimenter BGEand JGB, section 42). Ulti-mately, a "free, very free spirit" s the mortalenemy of the "leveler" the one who "strives ..for the green-pasturehappiness of the herd"[BGE, p. 54; JGB, p. 57]).

It seems then that, using the language of


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288 The Journalof Aesthetics and Art CriticismSchlegel, Nietzsche's free spiritsare mastersofironicparabasis.They possess, harnessedwithinthemselves, the vitality to suspendthe farcicaltheater of the conventional.Theirs is a vitalitythat resists the subtlety and coarseness of thesiren song of the herd. Theirs is a vitality thatsquints,with malicioushumor,and dances witha freedomunknown o the victims of the leveler,across the stage upon which platformbawlersperform.Theirs is a vitalitythatsimultaneouslystalls andaccelerates he slide into a decadent l-lusion till it reaches the point of its disruptionand its recreation. Theirs is a vitality that, inits sardonically serene self-creation and self-destruction, catalyses the self-overcoming ofmodernity.Unlike crabs,the free spiritscannotmove backwards.Theirs is a destiny meant forthe accelerationinto decay of the present ageandthe rebirthof a new age.Of further interest to tracing the extent towhich Nietzsche remains linked with romanti-cism is thechapter n Beyond Good and Evilen-titled"Epigramsand Interludes."Strauss statesthat it is possible that this chapter is nothingmore thana mosaic of snippetsrandomlystrungtogether.While it is true thatthere seems to beno specific topical ordering, it appears to methatmanyof these aphorismsare as the incendi-ary points upon which Nietzsche concentratesthe raysof his earlierinsights, using the form ofthe aphorismas a lens. Hence, with the excep-tion of his aphorismson "women" which seemto resonatewith Delacroix'sdandyism, as Ihaveshown earlier), many of his earlier themessuchas therelativityof knowledge, honesty,andvirtue; the linkage of supposedly moral oppo-sites;53 he attributesof the free spirit;54knowl-edge as a mask for instincts, emotions, and thewill;55 he primacyandinevitabilityof interpre-tations;56 he contempt for the herdand the de-sire for secrecy andsolitude;57 he loathsomeil-lusions of Christianity and martyrdom;58 ndthe mask and the art of concealment59-re-emerge in more opaque, purer forms. Thesethemes, as we have seen, vibratewith romanticunderpinningsnsofar as they implicitly elevatethe values and projects of freedom, dynamism,spontaneity, and the veiled (or at least thatwhich resists full exposure) as morally superiorto those of fixity, stability,rule-governance,andthe fully knowable. Hence, Nietzsche himself,thoughhe hyperbolically stressed the arbitrari-

ness of traditional moral ideals, implicitly up-held a notionof a stricthierarchyof values.As Ihave attempted o illustrate,these ultimate val-ues were morecompatible with, rather hanan-tithetical to, the romantic dealshe undoubtedlystruggledmightily against,but returned o, as ameans of ambivalentlyattempting o purgevar-ious philosophicaland scientific vantage pointsof whatconstituted, n his view,theirinadequa-cies. Thathe neverovercameeitherhis romanti-cism(s) or their faults has been a crucialpartofthis preliminaryattempt o unmask Nietzsche'spersistentand masked romanticism.III. CLOSING REMARKS

The purposeof this article has not been to showthat Nietzsche remained a romantic in everysense imaginable. Rather,I have aimed at anexcavation of the various romantic ideals thatsilently shape Nietzsche's laterphilosophy,de-spitehis explicit andbitterdenunciationsof ro-manticism atthis stage.Inbrief,thesepersistentromantic nfluences include:(1) anattraction o the themesof transformationand a form of insight and communication

thatsimultaneouslyresists utter ucidityandtotaldarkness;(2) an intereston exploringthe linkage betweenthe sublime and the fearful as seen in hislaterDionysianaestheticof creationand de-struction;(3) an aesthetico-moralvision of life as the freeexpenditureof vital forces;(4) a form of heroism that demands both dis-tance fromthe commonrabbleand the abil-ity to craft a mythology that can inspire andshape the public imagination;(5) anambitionaimedat the totaltransvaluationor reworlding of the world through thebirthing of a new "(anti-)religious"orderthat would vindicate the secular "divinity"of the world;(6) a consuming aspirationto be able to com-mand both nature and especially the self,evento thepointof the sacrificeof one's lifefor the sake of ideals;(7) a fluctuating ambivalence owardthe "fem-inine"/"woman," ranging from an adora-tion of her as an Orientalizedvisage; a mix-

tureof approvaland disgustin the figure of


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Picart Nietzsche as Mash ed Romantic 289the prostitute; and tite total rejection of"woman" out in the world-the "abortedfeminists."

In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche's linkwith romanticism becomcs even more evidentin termsof his taking upthe romantic raditionsof eironeia and dissimulatio.By this, I mean:(1) the use of the mask and the smile as methodsof attack; (2) the attemptto create a literaryform whichmaybe describedas atypeof poetrywhich is self-aware and resists the hardeninginto formulae; and (3) parabasis, or the sus-pension and hastened descent into an implod-ing lie, which, in Nietzsche'scase, meant beliefin the various idols of the age of modernity.In taking this approach,I have tried to conveya certain amount of the extent to which Nietz-sche did struggle againsthis romanticheritage,and attemptedto rescue, in veiled form, theromantic deals thatexertedapowerful nfluenceuponhim undera banner hathe labeled"antiro-mantic."Ultimately,Nietzsche'sostensiblyantiroman-tic homage to and alliance with Dionysus ne-cessitated that Nietzsche himself wear theDionysian mask. It requiredthat the all-too-human spiritual disciple attempt to bear theweight of the secretof the vine and the deepestmysteries of life-a weight fitting for a tragicgod, or amaskedromantic.As Taraba oints out,the danger nherent n such a degreeof identifi-cationwith Dionysus"is that the maskbecomesthe man."60The maskof the laterDionysus,thegod of the transvaluation f values and the re-worlding of the world, is the civilized mask ofthe romantic dandy. The mask of the laterDionysus is essentially the mask of qualitativepotentializing as it is the mask of the will topower.It is as essentiallythe mask wornby theromanticadorerof night-timevisions of sublimehorrorthatslip free of enlightened rationalism,as it is themaskwornbythe intoxicated ollowerof Dionysus, the god of blissful and horrifyingecstasies, the god shornaway fromhis Apollo-nian counterpart.It is this mask Nietzsche re-turnsto, after he has tried on the various ill-fit-ting masks of traditional philosophers andscientists. It is thismask Nietzschecould not tearaway fromhis face for it had "wriggled nto hiseyes and mouth"as it "weptandtriedto be lyri-cal."61 This was the mask thatclung lovingly to

him, creating the compellingand fearful visagethat had become Nietzsche'sown face.CAROLINE JOAN ("KAY") S. PICARTDepartmentof Philosophyand Religious StudiesUniversityof Wisconsin-Eau ClaireEauClaire, Wisconsin54702

1.I wish to thank he refereesof TheJournalofAestheticsand Art Criticism or their insightfuland constructivecom-ments and suggestions. I wouldalso like to thank Ernst-JanWitt, Professor JosephKockelmans, oana Gogeanu,Mon-ika Giacoppe, Carol Gould, and Alan Leidner or theirhelpin obtaining copyrightpermissions.2. Ernst Behler, Irony and the Discourse of Modernity(Universityof WashingtonPress, 1990), p. 50.3. FriedrichNietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy r Hellenismand Pessimism, trans. W. M. A. Haussmann (New York:GordonPress, 1974),p. 12.4. WalterKaufmann,"Editor's ntroduction,"n FriedrichNietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. and ed. Walter Kaufmann(New York:Vintage Books, 1989), p. 204.5. FriedrichNietzsche, Ecce Homo in Nietzsche Werke;Kritische Gesamtausgabe,eds. Giorgio Colli and MazzinoMontinari Berlin: de Gruyter,1969), p. 55.6. Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. and ed. Kaufmann,pp. 217, 204.7. FriedrichNietzsche, Der Willezur Macht(The Will toPower),p. 8, cited by WalterKaufmann,Nietzsche;Philoso-pher, Psychologist, Antichrist (New York:Vintage Books,

1968), p. 15.8. Kaufmann,Philosopher,Psychologist,Antichrist,p. 15.9. Adriandel Caro, TheRole of Destruction nCreationasReflected n theLifeand Works f FriedrichNietzsche,Euro-pean UniversityStudies (Frankfurt:Peter D. Lang, 1981),p. 11.10. Ibid., p. 12.11. Ibid.,pp. 12-13.12. Adrian del Caro, Nietzsche Contra Nietzsche; Cre-ativity and the Anti-Romantic Louisiana State UniversityPress, 1989), p. 5.13.Ibid., p. 24.

14. Del Caro sets up a different opposition: for him, the"weaker type" of romanticismwould be analogous to thetype of romanticism associate with Friedrich,and to whichNietzsche, even in his post-Zarathustran hase, sought tocreate a healthieralternative. nmy view, Nietzsche, despitehis attemptsand pronouncements,sinks into a more pes-simistic/unhealthy ype of romanticism,similar o thatprac-ticed by Delacroix, in the final phases of his post-Zarathus-tran works.15. Such an accountconvergeswith Behler's position onNietzsche's persistentromanticism-a position I build fromin section II of this article-yet whereas Behler places hisstress upon the parallelismsbindingthe Schlegel/Nietzschepositions, as fundamentallyrooted in Nietzsche's Birth ofTragedyperiod, I ground he comparisons make in both vi-sual and literary terms, showing how the microscopic pic-ture of Nietzsche's romanticisms reflect the larger,macro-scopic backdrop against which these two general types of


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290 The Journalof Aestheticsand ArtCriticismromanticisms may be seen. Although Behler does devoteone chapterto romantic visual art andmusic, the visual ar-tists he discusses, RaphaelandDiirer,arenotgenerallyrec-ognized as quintessentially romantic painters the wayFriedrichand Delacroixwere andare;neither areRaphael'sandDurer'spaintingsthemselvesthe directobjectsof inves-tigation in Behler's study. Instead, Behler relies heavilyupon the theories that Wackenroderand Tieck impose asromantic frameworks in interpreting/rewriting/rereadingthese paintings.Incontrast,the approach take begins withthe paintings as direct and vivid illustrationsof the roman-ticisms that sculpted Nietzsche's own thought,even in hisso-called postromanticphase.Cf. ErnstBehler,GermanRo-manticLiteraryTheory (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1993), pp. 111-130, 222-259.16.See, forinstance,Hoffmeister's"workingdefinitionofRomanticism"n the prefaceto EuropeanRomanticism;Lit-erary Cross-Currents,Modes and Models, ed. GerhardHoffmeister WayneStateUniversityPress, 1990),pp.14-15.

17. For Honour, ndividual sensibilityalone, the sole aes-thetic faculty for the romantics,seems to be the only defin-ing featureof romanticism.Cf.: Hugh Honour,Romanticism(New York:Harperand Row, 1979),p. 20.18. Arthur0. Lovejoy, "On the Discriminationsof Ro-manticisms" (1923) in Essays in the History of Ideas, ed.Arthur0. Lovejoy (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1948),pp. 228-253. Lovejoy lateradopteda less restrictiveattitudeto romanticism; cf. his The Great Chain of Being (1936;New York:Harperand Row, 1960),pp. 288-314.19. For a concise and articulateexposition on the diffi-culties a historianundergoes tryingto plot when and whereromanticism began, and more importantly,what romanti-cism is, refer to Morse Peckham,Romanticismand Behav-iour, Collected Essays II (University of South CarolinaPress, 1976), pp. 3-5.20. Joseph Leo Koerner,CasparDavid Friedrichand theSubjectof Landscape London:ReaktionBooks Ltd., 1990),p. 24.21. Ibid.22. Heinrich von Kleist, Berliner Abendbldtter, 2 Blatt,13 October 1810, pp. 47-48, quoted in William Vaughan,HelmutBorsch-Supan,and Hans JoachimNeidhart,CasparDavid Friedrich London: The Tate Gallery, 1972), p. 107.23. Koerner,pp. 54-57.24. Kleist,BerlinerAbendbldtter, rom Koerner,p. 212.25. Vaughan, Borsch-Supan, and Neidhardt, CasparDavid Friedrich,p. 16.26.Nietzsche,Ecce Homo, rans.and ed. Kaufmann, . 265.27. Nehamasmakes a similarobservation:"style,which iswhat Nietzsche requires and admires, involves controlledmultiplicity and resolved conflict." See Alexander Ne-hamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature (Harvard UniversityPress, 1985), p. 7.28. ReneHuyghe,Delacroix (London: HarryN. Abrams,Inc., 1963), p. 78.29. Quoted in Claude Roger-Marx and Sabine Cott6,Delacroix, trans. Lynn Michelman (New York: GeorgeBraziller, 1971), p. 28.30. Ibid., p. 98.31. Huyghe, p. 129.32. Michel Le Bris, Romanticsand Romanticism (NewYork:Rizzoli InternationalPublications, 1981), p. 144.33. Huyghe, p. 175.

34. Le Bris, p. 146.35. FriedrichNietzsche, Twilightof the Idols, trans.An-thony Ludovici (New York: Gordon Press, 1974), p. 88;Nietzsche, G6tzen Dammerung in Nietzsche Werke,Kri-tische Gesamtausgabe, ds.GiorgioColliand MazzinoMon-tinari (Berlin: de Gruyter,1969), p. 128.36. Le Bris, p. 134.37.Ibid., p. 133.38. Huyghe, p. 280.39. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom, trans.Thomas Common (New York:GordonPress, 1974),p. 102;Nietzsche, Frohliche Wissenschaft,n SamtlicheWerke;Kri-tische Studienausgabe, eds. Giorgio Colli and MazzinoMontinari Berlin and New York:de Gruyter,1988), p. 427.40. FriedrichNietzsche, Ecce Homo,trans. anded. Kauf-mann, p. 264; Nietzsche, Ecce Homo,in Nietzsche Werke;KritischeGesamtausgabe,eds. Colli andMontinari,p. 301.41. Ibid., p. 267; Ibid.,p. 304.42. Forquotationsattesting o the positive value Friedrichplaced upon his hermeticism, which was often misinter-preted as misanthropy,refer to Koerner, Caspar DavidFriedrich,p. 66. For Lou Salome's impressionson the over-whelming sense of reclusiveness that Nietzsche uncon-sciously exuded, refer to Hugh Adam Reyburn,Nietzsche;The Story of a Human Philosopher (Westport, CT: Green-wood Press, 1973), pp. 286-287.43. Adriandel Caro,Dionysian Aesthetics,p. 12.44. Behler, Irony and the Discourse of Modernity,pp. 73-92.45. FriedrichSchlegel, Kritische Ausgabe seiner Werke,ed. ErnstBehler (Paderborn-Munchen: choningh, 1958-),vol. 2, p. 160. References o KritischeAusgabe seiner Werkewill be indicated parenthetically n the text with the abbre-viation Kritische.FriedrichSchlegel, Lucindeand the Frag-ments, trans. Peter Firchow (Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1971), p. 155.46. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans.WalterKaufmann New York:Vintage Books, 1989), p. 1;FriedrichNietzsche, Jenseits vonGutundBose in NietzscheWerke;Kritische Gesamtausgabe, eds. Giorgio Colli andMazzino Montinari (Berlin, Germany:de Gruyter, 1968),p. 3. References o these workswill be given parentheticallyin the text with the following abbreviations: he Kaufmanntranslation,BGE; Jenseitsvon Gut und Bose, eds. Colli andMontinari,JGB.47. Banquet, 203e-204a, from Leo Strauss, Studies inPlatonic Political Philosophy(University of Chicago Press,1983), p. 175.

48. For an excellent discussion of dissimulatio andeironeia in aphorism40 of BeyondGood and Evil, refer toBehler, Ironyand the Discourse of Modernity, p. 96-97.49. F W J. Schelling, Uber das Verhaltnisder bildendenKunste zu der Natur; SammtlicheWerke Stuttgart: 1860),vol. 7, p. 292, as cited by Vaughan et al., Caspar DavidFriedrich,p. 14.50. Novalis,Novalis:Schriften, ol.2, eds. Paul Kluckhornand Richard Samuel (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer,1960),p. 545, as cited by Koerner,CasparDavidFriedrich,p. 24.51. Strauss,p. 175.52. Nietzsche genders his "free spirit"as masculine.53. For example, see Beyond Good and Evil, aphorisms63-68, 73, 73a, 79, 80-82, 93, 95, 96, 101, 107, 116, 128,132, 135, 149, 152, 154, 162, 175-177, 180, 184.


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54. Ibid., aphorisms69, 70, 87, 94, 96, 105.55. Ibid., aphorisms70-71, 83, 106, 128, 137, 158.56. Ibid., aphorisms89, 91, 108, 121, 138.57.Ibid., aphorisms77,99, 100, 112, 156, 160-161.58. Ibid., aphorisms104, 124, 168, 181.59. Ibid., aphorisms65a, 130, 169.60. WolfgangF. Taraba,"FriedrichNietzsche's Dionysus

Dithyrambs" Speech Delivered at the University of Min-nesota on February17, 1977), cited by del Caro,DionysianAesthetics,p. 141.61. Froma transcript f thepoem as readonBritishPoetsof our Time:RogerMcGoughandBrian Patten,ed. PeterOrr(London: Decca Records,1974/1975).

nietzsche as masked romantic

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