Foreword
To stay cheerful when involved
in a gloomy and exceedingly responsible business is no inconsiderable art: yet
what could be more necessary than cheerfulness?
Nothing succeeds in which high spirits play no part. Only excess of strength is proof of strength.
- A revaluation of all values, this question-mark so black, so huge it
casts a shadow over him who sets it up - such a destiny of a task compels one
every instant to run out into the sunshine so as to shake off a seriousness
grown all too oppressive. Every
expedient for doing so is justified, every 'occasion' a joyful occasion. ['jeder "Fall" ein
Glucksfall'. 'Fall' means case, 'Glucksfall' a
piece of good luck. As well as being a
play on words there seems to be a reference intended to 'Der
Fall Wagner' (The Wagner Case), Nietzsche's witty attack on Wagner completed
immediately before 'Twilight' was begun and which was also announced,
ironically of course, as a 'relief' from a sterner task.] Above all, war.
War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown
too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one
receives. A maxim whose origin I
withhold from learned curiosity has long been my motto:
increscunt
animi, virescit volnere virtus. [The spirit grows, strength is restored by
wounding.]
Another form of recovery, in certain cases even more suited to
me, is to sound out idols.... There are more idols in the world than
there are realities: that is my 'evil eye' for the world,
that is also my 'evil ear'.... For once to pose questions here with a hammer
and perhaps to receive for answer that famous hollow sound which speaks of
inflated bowels - what a delight for one who has ears behind his ears - for an
old psychologist and pied piper like me, in presence of whom precisely that
which would like to stay silent has to become audible ...
This book too [Like
'The Wagner Case', presumably.] - the
title betrays it - is above all a relaxation, a sunspot, an escapade into the
idle hours of a psychologist. Perhaps also a new war?
And are new idols sounded out? ... this little
book is a grand declaration of war; and as regards the sounding-out of
idols, this time they are not idols of the age but eternal idols which
are here touched with the hammer as with a tuning fork - there are no more
ancient idols in existence.... Also none more hollow....
That does not prevent their being the most believed in; and they are
not, especially in the most eminent case, called idols ...
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
on the day the first book of the
Revaluation of all Values was completed.