Cap. ii.
[HI 5] [20] In the second night thereafter, I am walking alone in a dark forest and I notice that I have lost my way. [21] I am on a dark cart track and stumble through the darkness. I finally come to quiet, dark swamp water, and a small old castle stands at its center. I think it would be good to ask here for the night's lodgings. I knock on the door, I wait a long time, it begins to rain. I have to knock again. Now I hear someone coming: the door opens. A man in an old fashioned garment, a servant, asks what I want. I ask about lodgings for the night, and he lets me enter a dark vestibule. Then he leads me up an old, worn-out stairway. At the top I come to a wider and higher hall-like space with white walls, lined with black chests and wardrobes.
I am led into a kind of reception room. It is a simple space with old upholstered furniture. The dim light of an antiquated lamp lights the room only very meagerly. The servant knocks on a side door and then quietly opens it. I scan it swiftly: it's a scholar's study, with bookshelves on all four walls and a large writing desk, at which an old man sits wearing a long black robe. He beckons me to draw closer. The air in the room is heavy and the old man seems careworn. He is not without dignity -- he seems to be one of those who have as much dignity as one can be granted. He has that modest-fearful look of scholarly men who have long since been squashed to nothing by the abundance of knowledge. I think that he is a real / [5/6] scholar who has learned great modesty before the immensity of knowledge and has given himself tirelessly to the material of science and research, anxiously and equably appraising, as if he personally had to represent the working out of scientific truth.
He greets me embarrassed, as if absent and defensive. I do not wonder about this since I look like an ordinary person. Only with difficulty can he turn his gaze away from his work. I repeat my request for lodgings for the night. After a longer pause the old man remarks, "So, you want to sleep, then please yourself." I notice that he is absentminded, and therefore ask him to instruct the servant to show me a chamber. To this he says, "You are demanding, wait, I cannot just drop everything!" He sinks again into his book. I wait patiently. After a while he looks up astonished: "What do you want here? Oh -- forgive me -- I totally forgot that you are waiting here. I'll call the servant straightaway." The servant comes and leads me to a small chamber on the same floor with bare white walls and a large bed. He wishes me good night and withdraws.
As I am tired, I undress immediately and go to bed, after I have snuffed out the candle. The sheet is uncommonly rough and the pillow hard. My errant way has led me to a strange place: a small old castle whose scholarly owner is apparently spending the evening of his life alone with his books. No one else seems to be living in the house apart from the servant who lives over there in the tower. An ideal though solitary existence, I think, this life of the old man with his books. And here my thoughts linger for a long time, until I finally notice that another thought doesn't let go of me, namely that the old man has hidden his beautiful daughter here -- a vulgar idea for a novel -- an insipid, worn-out theme -- but the romantic can be felt in every limb -- a real novelistic idea -- a castle in a forest -- solitary night -- an old man petrified in his books, protecting a costly treasure and enviously hiding it from all the world -- what ridiculous thoughts come to me! Is it Hell or purgatory that I must also contrive such childish dreams on my wanderings? But I feel impotent to elevate my thoughts to something a bit stronger or more beautiful. I suppose I must allow these thoughts to come. What good would it do to push them away -- they will come again -- better to swallow this stale drink than keep it in the mouth. So what does this boring heroine look like? Surely blonde, pale -- blue eyes -- hoping longingly that every lost wanderer is her savior from the paternal prison -- Oh, I know this hackneyed nonsense -- I'd rather sleep -- why the devil must I plague myself with such empty fantasies?
Sleep does not come. I toss and turn -- sleep still does not come -- must I finally harbor this unsaved soul in myself? And is it this that will not let me sleep? Have I such a novelistic soul? That's all I needed -- this would be agonizingly ridiculous. Does this bitterest of all drinks never end? It must already be midnight -- and still sleep does not come. What in the wide world, then, won't let me sleep? Is it something to do with this chamber? Is the bed bewitched? It's terrible, what sleeplessness can drive a man to -- even the most absurd and superstitious theories. It seems to be cool, I'm freezing -- perhaps that's what keeps me from sleeping -- it's really uncanny here -- Heaven knows what goes on here -- weren't those steps just now? No, that must have been outside -- I roll over, firmly closing my eyes, I simply must sleep. Wasn't that the door just now? My God, someone is standing there! Am I seeing straight? -- a slim girl, pale as death, standing at the door? For Heaven's sake, what is this? She's coming nearer!
"Have you come at last?" she asks quietly. Impossible -- this is a cruel mistake -- the novel wants to become real -- does it want to grow into some silly ghost story? To what nonsense am I damned? Is it my soul that harbors such novelistic brilliance? Must this, too, happen to me? I am truly in Hell -- the worst awakening after death, to be resurrected in a lending library! Have I held the men of my time and their taste in such contempt that I must live in Hell and write out the novels that I have already spat on long ago? Does the lower half of average human taste also claim holiness and invulnerability, so that we might not say any bad word / [6/7] about it without having to atone for the sin in Hell?
She says, "Oh, so you too think me common? Do you too let yourself be deluded by the wretched delusion that I belong in a novel? You as well, whom I hoped had thrown off appearances and striven after the essence of things?"
I: "Forgive me, but are you real? It's the sorriest likeness to those foolishly threadbare scenes in novels for me to assume that you are not simply some unfortunate product of my sleepless brain. Is my doubt then truly confirmed by a situation that conforms so thoroughly with a sentimental romance?"
She: "You wretch, how can you doubt that I am real?"
She falls to her knees at the foot of my bed, sobbing and holding her face in her hands. My God, in the end is she really real, and do I do her an injustice? My pity awakens.
I: "But for Heaven's sake, tell me one thing: in all earnestness must I assume that you are real?"
She weeps and does not answer.
I: "Who are you, then?"
She: "I am the old man's daughter. He holds me here in unbearable captivity, not out of envy or hate, but out of love, since I am his only child and the image of my mother, who died young."
I scratch my head: is this not some hellish banality? Word for word, pulp fiction from the lending library! Oh you Gods, where have you led me? It's enough to make one laugh, it's enough to make one weep -- to be a beautiful sufferer, a tragic shattered person is difficult, but to become an ape, you beautiful and great ones? To you the banal and eternally ridiculous, the unutterably hackneyed and emptied out, is never set like a gift of Heaven in uplifted praying hands.
But still she lies there, crying -- yet what if she were real? Then she would be worth feeling sorry for, every man would have compassion for her. If she is a decent girl, what must it have cost her to enter into the room of a strange man! And to overcome her shame in this way?
I: "My dear child, I believe you, despite everything, that you are real. What can I do for you?"
She: "Finally, finally a word from a human mouth!"
***
She gets up, her face beaming. She is beautiful. A deep purity rests in her look. She has a beautiful and unworldly soul, one that wants to come into the life of reality, to all reality worthy of pity, to the bath of filth and the well of health. Oh this beauty of the soul! To see it climb down into the underworld of reality -- what a spectacle!
She: "What can you do for me? You have already done much for me. You spoke the redeeming word when you no longer placed the banal between you and me. Know then: I was bewitched by the banal."
I: "Woe is me, you now become very fairy-tale-like."
She: "Be reasonable, dear friend, and do not stumble now over the fabulous, since the fairy tale is the great mother of the novel, and has even more universal validity than the most-avidly read novel of your time. And you know that what has been on everyone's lips for millennia, though repeated endlessly, still comes nearest the ultimate human truth. So do not let the fabulous come between us." [22]
I: "You are clever and do not seem to have inherited the wisdom of your father. But tell me, what do you think of the divinity, of the so-called ultimate truths? I found it very strange to seek them in banality. According to their nature, they must be quite uncommon. Think only of our great philosophers."
She: "The more uncommon these highest truths are, the more inhuman must they be and the less they speak to you as something valuable or meaningful concerning human essence and being. Only what is human and what you call banal and hackneyed / [7/8] contains the wisdom that you seek. The fabulous does not speak against me but for me, and proves how universally human I am and how much I too not only need redemption but also deserve it. For I can live in the world of reality as well or better than many others of my sex."
I: "Strange maiden, you are bewildering -- when I saw your father, I hoped he would invite me to a scholarly conversation. He did not, and I was aggrieved at him because of this, since his distracted slackness hurt my dignity. But with you I find it much better. You give me matters to ponder. You are uncommon."
She: "You are mistaken, I am very common."
I: "I can't believe that. How beautiful and worthy of adoration is the expression of your soul in your eyes. Happy and enviable is the man who will free you."
She: "Do you love me?"
I: "By God, I love you -- but -- unfortunately I am already married."
She: "So -- you see: even banal reality is a redeemer. I thank you, dear friend, and I bring you greetings from Salome."
With these words her shape dissolves into darkness. Dim moonlight penetrates the room. Where she stood something shadowy lies -- it is a profusion of red roses. [23]
***
[2] [24] If no outer adventure happens to you, then no inner adventure happens to you either. The part that you take over from the devil -- joy, that is -- leads you into adventure. In this way you will find your lower as well as your upper limits. It is necessary for you to know your limits. If you do not know them, you run into the artificial barriers of your imagination and the expectations of your fellow men. But your life will not take kindly to being hemmed in by artificial barriers. life wants to jump over such barriers and you will fall out with yourself. These barriers are not your real limits, but arbitrary limitations that do unnecessary violence to you. Therefore try to find your real limits. One never knows them in advance, but one sees and understands them only when one reaches them. And this happens to you only if you have balance. Without balance you transgress your limits without noticing what has happened to you. You achieve balance, however, only if you nurture your opposite. But that is hateful to you in your innermost core, because it is not heroic.
My spirit reflected on everything rare and uncommon, it pried its way into unfound possibilities, toward paths that lead into the hidden, toward lights that shine in the night. And as my spirit did this, everything ordinary in me suffered harm without my noticing it, and it began to hanker after life, since I did not live it. Hence this adventure. I was smitten by the romantic. The romantic is a step backward. To reach the way, one must sometimes also take a few steps backward. [25]
In the adventure I experienced what I had witnessed in the Mysterium. What I saw there as Salome and Elijah became in life the old scholar and his pale, locked-up daughter. What I live is a distorted likeness of the Mysterium. Following the romantic way I reached the awkwardness and ordinariness of life, where I run out of thoughts and almost forget myself. What I formerly loved I must now experience as feeble and wasted, and what I formerly derided I had to envy as towering and helplessly crave. I accepted the absurdity of this adventure. No sooner had this happened than I also saw how the maiden transformed herself and signified an autonomous meaning. One inquires into the desire of the ridiculous, and that is enough for it to change.
What about masculinity? Do you know how much femininity man lacks for completeness? Do you know how much masculinity woman lacks for completeness? You seek the feminine in women and the masculine in men. And thus there are always only men and women. But where are people? You, man, should not seek the feminine in women, but seek and recognize it in yourself, as you / [8/9] possess it from the beginning. It pleases you, however, to play at manliness, because it travels on a well-worn track. You, woman, should not seek the masculine in men, but assume the masculine in yourself, since you possess it from the beginning. But it amuses you and is easy to play at femininity, consequently man despises you because he despises his femininity. But humankind is masculine and feminine, not just man or woman. You can hardly say of your soul what sex it is. But if you pay close attention, you will see that the most masculine man has a feminine soul, and the most feminine woman has a masculine soul. The more manly you are, the more remote from you is what woman really is, since the feminine in yourself is alien and contemptuous. [26]
If you take a piece of joy from the devil and set off on adventures with it, you accept your pleasure. But pleasure immediately attracts everything you desire, and then you must decide whether your pleasure spoils or enhances you. If you are of the devil, you will grope in blind desire after the manifold, and it will lead you astray. But if you remain with yourself, as a man who is himself and not of the devil, then you will remember your humanity, women per se as a man, but as a human being, that is to say, as if you were of the same sex as her. You will recall your femininity. It may seem to you then as if you were unmanly, stupid, and feminine so to speak. But you must accept the ridiculous, otherwise you will suffer distress, and there will come a time, when you are least observant, when it will suddenly round on you and make you ridiculous. It is bitter for the most masculine man to accept his femininity, since it appears ridiculous to him, powerless and tawdry.
Yes, it seems as if you have lost all virtue, as if you have fallen into debasement. It seems the same way to the woman who accepts her masculinity. [27] Yes, it seems to you like enslavement. You are a slave of what you need in your soul. The most masculine man needs women, and he is consequently their slave. Become a woman yourself, [28] and you will be saved from slavery to woman. You are abandoned without mercy to woman so long as you cannot fend off mockery with all your masculinity. It is good for you once to put on women's clothes: people will laugh at you, but through becoming a woman you attain freedom from women and their tyranny. The acceptance of femininity leads to completion. The same is valid for the woman who accepts her masculinity.
The exclusive Ak-Sar-Ben club, comprised of the leading figures in the Omaha business community, flaunts its bizarre rituals in its own publicity material. A 1967 book on Ak-Sar-Ben by Arvid E. Nelson, Jr., commissioned by the Ak-Sar-Ben Board of Governors, displayed this picture of a 1923 Ak-Sar-Ben festivity, showing male Ak-Sar-Ben members dressed as Egyptian dancing girls.
Two years after the raid on King's credit union, as the legislative Franklin committee's original term drew to a close, an old hand in Nebraska politics reflected on the events of the past 24 months. "The Omaha business community," he said, "the Ak- Sar-Ben crowd, has really closed ranks behind Alan Baer, Andersen and the rest of them. The word has gone out: layoff the Franklin investigation. Most of the Senators are terrified. These guys make and break political careers. They give a lot of campaign money, and many of the Senators get what are generously called 'consulting fees,' or sometimes positions -- no-show jobs, really -- with the big firms up there. That's the way it's done. It's not uncommon for a big company to have more than one Senator on a $50,000 retainer."
Who were "these guys," the Ak-Sar-Ben crowd?
Visit the Omaha Public Library to look up the boards of directors of big Omaha companies, and you will find names that are listed on board after board. Take a few of those -- say, Walter Scott, Jr., chairman and CEO of the construction giant, Peter Kiewit and Sons Corporation; Charles "Mike" Harper, chairman and CEO of the $20 billion per year food conglomerate ConAgra; Michael H. Walsh, CEO of Union Pacific Railroad, a major force in Nebraska for over a hundred years -- and ask the librarian to help find information on these men. The reply will likely be something like what one library staffer told a friend of mine in 1991: "These are businessmen all right, but they are intensely secretive. We have very little on them."
For over a century, the Omaha business community has been organized around the Knights of Ak-Sar-Ben, a quasi-freemasonic social organization, centered on a racetrack and fairgrounds in Omaha. Spell "Nebraska" backwards and you get its name. Founded in 1895, Ak-Sar-Ben functions as a sort of central committee of the corporate elite, and a self-perceived oligarchy for the city.
Every year Ak-Sar-Ben celebrates a ritual coronation of the "King of Ak-Sar-Ben," generally an older corporate executive, and his Queen, generally the younger wife or daughter of another man in the club. The king for 1990 was Mike Harper of ConAgra. Here, and at debutante balls and other affairs organized for the younger generation, the lords and ladies of Ak-Sar-Ben establish their social pecking order. The rituals and "den shows" mimic ceremonies from different lands, real and invented, and always pagan. Past Ak-Sar-Ben festivity themes included: "The Roman Hippodrome," "King Arthur's Wild Goats," "Trouble in the Tropics," and "Hi-Jinx in Hades." Sometimes the men and boys of Ak-Sar-Ben paraded in women's clothing, or dressed as Egyptian goddesses.
Ak-Sar-Ben's clout is so legendary, that Omaha Mayor P.J. Morgan, himself a member of the Ak-Sar-Ben social set, could make political hay by a demagogic attack on it. In 1990, during a squabble with Ak-Sar-Ben over where a new stadium would be constructed, Morgan blustered, "Frankly, I'm just sick and tired of a small handful of people who think that they can control this city and county without regard to feelings, sentiments and desires of the honest, hard-working people who are the real foundation of this city."
Sensitive to this widespread perception, ConAgra's Harper, speaking as chairman of Ak-Sar-Ben's Board of Governors, replied in a special World-Herald column on December 9, 1990, "Ak Knights Don't Control City." Just because the individuals and corporations on Ak-Sar-Ben's board had given over $50 million to various causes over the past 20 years, wrote Harper, ticking off a list of most of the public facilities in Omaha, that did not mean they had clout. I am at a loss to see how contributions to reputable charities can be associated with political power."
Harper's own company flaunted its political power over the city and the state, just a few years ago. According to "Omaha Held Hostage," a May 1989 article in Progressive magazine, ConAgra threatened in 1987, to pull out of Omaha, unless the city granted it a choice piece of free land, sewage, paving and a host of other benefits, which will ultimately total as much as $60 million, for a new corporate headquarters. The city acquiesced. Later the same year, when the Nebraska Legislature was on the verge of removing personal property tax exemptions on purchases of jet airplanes and mainframe computers, Harper put out the word to the legislature: Change the tax bill, or ConAgra leaves Nebraska. The bill was changed.
***
Ak-Sar-Ben has been ruled for decades by its Board of Governors, a roster of sixteen influentials (increased to twenty, in 1990, "to better represent the entire community," according to Mike Harper), most of whom are chief executives of major corporations. In the late 1980s, the board included:
Charles "Mike" Harper, President and CEO, ConAgra
William A. Fitzgerald, President and CEO, Commercial Federal Savings and Loan
Bruce Lauritzen, President, First National Bank of Omaha
David A. Rismiller, Chairman and CEO, FirsTier Financial, Inc.
Walter Scott, Jr., President and CEO, Peter Kiewit &Sons, Inc.
Thomas J. Skutt, Chairman and CEO, Mutual of Omaha
Michael H. Walsh, Chairman, Union Pacific Railroad
Michael Yanney, Chairman and CEO, America First Cos.
These corporations poured millions into the Franklin Credit Union, in the form of deposits and outright contributions. Their executives supported King, in arrangements both informal and formal.
Bill Fitzgerald, Knight of Ak-Sar-Ben and president of Commercial Federal Savings and Loan, helped his friend Larry King with advice. When the jig was up for Franklin and the Consumer Services Organization, King's close associate CSO director Barbara Moore could find employment with Walter Scott's wife, Sue.
Mutual of Omaha placed funds in the credit union, while Thomas Skutt, chief executive of this insurance giant, co-chaired a $1.3 million fundraising drive for Franklin, with Harold Andersen.
The Franklin Credit Union had two boards. The small, governing board included Larry King, Jarrett Webb and James C. Hart, Jr., the secretary, who were named as child abusers by victim-witnesses before the Legislature's Franklin committee. The firms run by the Knights of Ak-Sar-Ben, along with other prestigious Omaha corporations and law firms, showed up on the larger, "Advisory Board."
On the Franklin Community Federal Credit Union Advisory Board were:
Chairman Harold Andersen, publisher, World-Herald
Rep. Hal Daub (R-2nd Congressional District)
N.P. Dodge II, President, N.P. Dodge Real Estate
Lamont Wallin, Kutak, Rock, & Huie law firm
L.B. Thomas, Vice President, ConAgra
Jerome Jamrog, Senior Vice President, Commercial Federal Savings and Loan
Arnold Nesbitt, Senior Assistant Manager, Union Pacific Railroad
David Hinton, Assistant Dean, College of Public Affairs, University of Nebraska, Omaha
Louis Lamberty, County Surveyor
Samuel Marvin, President, R-Lynn, Inc., Council Bluffs, Iowa
Leslie McAuley, Supervisor, Director of Quality Control, Northwest Bell
Donald Miller, Vice President, Omaha National Bank
Carolyn Rothery, Byrne & Randall, P.C., Omaha
Dale Wolforth, Vice President (ret.), Murray State Bank
John S. Zeilinger, attorney, Baird-Holz, Omaha
Michael Albert, President, Albert Food Brokerage
Angelo Amato, General Superintendent Customer Records Department, M.U.D.
David Ambrose, Professor, Department of Marketing, University of Nebraska, Omaha
Joseph Barker III, Massachusetts Mutual Insurance Company
Dana "Woody" Bradford, Bradford, Coenen, & Ashford
Leo Eisenstatt, Erickson, Sederstrom, Leigh, Eisenstatt, Johnson, Kinnamon
James Healy, Administrator of Urban Affairs, Northern Natural Gas
L.B. "Red" Thomas headed up finances for ConAgra, which put funds into Franklin certificates of deposit. Union Pacific, and its executives acting as individuals, poured in money, while Union Pacific officer Arnold Nesbitt sat on the board.
Ak-Sar-Ben interfaced with the Franklin credit union proper, but also with individuals in the orbit of Larry King. One of its biggest financial contributors in recent years was the department store heir and child abuser, Alan Baer. Catering for Ak-Sar-Ben was Gary West, bartender from the Max gay bar.
-- The Franklin Cover-Up -- Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in Nebraska, by John W. DeCamp
The feminine in men is bound up with evil. I find it on the way of desire. The masculine in the woman is bound up with evil. Therefore people hate to accept their own other. But if you accept it, that which is connected with the perfection of men comes to pass: namely, that when you become the one who is mocked, the white bird of the soul comes flying. It was far away, but your humiliation attracted it. [29] The mystery draws near to you, and things happen around you like miracles. A gold luster shines, since the sun has risen from its grave. As a man you have no soul, since it is in the woman; as a woman you have no soul, since it is in the man. But if you become a human being, then your soul comes to you.
If you remain within arbitrary and artificially created boundaries, you will walk as between two high walls: you do not see the immensity of the world. But if you break down the walls that confine your view, and if the immensity and its endless uncertainty inspire you with fear, then the ancient sleeper awakens in you, whose messenger is the white bird. Then you need the message of the old tamer of chaos. There in the whirl of chaos dwells eternal wonder. Your world begins to become wonderful. Man belongs not only to an ordered world, he also belongs in the wonder-world of his soul. Consequently you must make your ordered world horrible, so that you are put off by being too much outside yourself.
Your soul is in great need, because drought weighs on its world. If you look outside yourselves, you see the far-off forest and mountains, and above them your vision climbs to the realms of the stars. And if you look into yourselves, you will see on the other hand the nearby as far-off and infinite, since the world of the inner is as infinite as the world of the outer. Just as you become a part of the manifold essence of the world through your bodies, so you become a part of the manifold essence of the inner world through your soul. This inner world is truly infinite, in no way poorer than the outer one. Man lives in two worlds. A fool lives here or there, but never here and there.
[30] Perhaps you think that a man who consecrates his life to research leads a spiritual life and that his soul lives in / [9/10] larger measure than anyone else's. But such a life is also external, just as external as the life of a man who lives for outer things. To be sure, such a scholar does not live for outer things but for outer thoughts -- not for himself, but for his object. If you say of a man that he has totally lost himself to the outer and wasted his years in excess, you must also say the same of this old man. He has thrown himself away in all the books and thoughts of others. Consequently his soul is in great need, it must humiliate itself and run into every stranger's room to beg for the recognition that he fails to give her.
Therefore you see those old scholars running after recognition in a ridiculous and undignified manner. They are offended if their name is not mentioned, cast down if another one says the same thing in a better way, irreconcilable if someone alters theirs views in the least. Go to the meetings of scholars and you will see them, these lamentable old men with their great merits and their starved souls famished for recognition and their thirst which can never be slaked. The soul demands your folly, not your wisdom.
Therefore, because I rise above gendered masculinity and yet do not exceed the human, the feminine that is contemptible to me transforms itself into a meaningful being. This is the most difficult thing -- to be beyond the gendered and yet remain within the human. If you rise above the gendered with the help of a general rule, you become the same as that rule and overreach the human. Therefore you become dry, hard, and inhuman.
You may go past the gendered for human reasons, and never for the sake of a general rule that remains the same in the most diverse situations, and therefore never has a perfect validity for each single situation. If you act from your humanity, you act from that particular situation without general principle, with only what corresponds to the situation. Thus you do justice to the situation, perhaps at the expense of a general rule. That should not be too painful for you, because you are not the rule. There is something else that is human, something all too human, and whoever has ended up there will do well to remember the blessing of the general rule. [31] For the general rule also has meaning and has not been set up for fun. It comprises much venerable work of the human spirit. Such persons are not capable of a general principle above the gendered, but only their imagination is capable of what they have lost. They have become their own imagination and arbitrariness, to their own detriment. They need to remember the gendered, so that they wake from their dreams to reality.
It is as agonizing as a sleepless night to fulfill the beyond from the here and now, namely the other and the opposing in myself. It sneaks up like a fever, like a poisonous fog. And when your senses are excited and stretched to the utmost, the daimonic comes as something so insipid and worn out, so mild and stale, that it makes you sick. Here you would gladly stop feeling across to your beyond. Startled and disgusted, you long for the return of the supernal beauties of your visible world. You spit out and curse everything that lies beyond your lovely world, since you know that it is the disgust, scum, refuse of the human animal who stuffs himself in dark places, creeps along sidewalks, sniffs out every blessed angle, and from the cradle to the grave enjoys only what has already been on everyone's lips.
But here you may not stop -- do not place your disgust between your here-and-now and your beyond. The way to your beyond leads through Hell and in fact through your own wholly particular Hell, whose bottom consists of knee-deep rubble, whose air is the spent breath of millions, whose fires are dwarflike passions, and whose devils are chimerical sign-boards.
Everything odious and disgusting is your own particular Hell. How can it be otherwise? Every other Hell was at least worth seeing or full of fun. But that is never Hell. Your Hell is made up of all the things that you always ejected from your sanctuary with a curse and a kick of the foot. When you step into your own Hell, never think that you come like one suffering in beauty, or as a proud pariah, but you come like a stupid and curious fool and gaze in wonder at the scraps that have fallen from your table. [32] / [10/11]
You really want to rage, but you see at the same time how well rage suits you. Your hellish absurdity stretches for miles. Good for you if you can swear! You will find that profanity is lifesaving. Thus if you go through Hell, you should not forget to give due attention to whatever crosses your path. Quietly look into everything that excites your contempt or rage; thereby you accomplish the miracle that I experienced with the pale maiden. You give soul to the soulless, and thereby it can come to something out of horrible nothingness. Thus you will redeem your other into life. Your values want to draw you away from what you presently are, to get you ahead of and beyond yourself. Your being, however, pulls you to the bottom like lead. You cannot at the same time live both, since both exclude each other. But on the way you can live both. Therefore the way redeems you. You cannot at the same time be on the mountain and in the valley, but your way leads you from mountain to valley and from valley to mountain. Much begins amusingly and leads into the dark. Hell has levels. [33]
: [Logos] a concept, a word? It was a light, indeed a man, and lived among men. You see, Philo only lent John the word so that John would have at his disposal the word '
[Chameleon], a caricature, one prone to changing colors, a crawling shimmering lizard, but precisely not a lion, whose nature is related to the sun, who draws his power from within himself, who does not crawl around in the protective colors of the environment, and who does not defend himself by going into hiding. I recognized the chameleon and no longer want to crawl on the earth and change colors and be reborn; instead I want to exist from my own force, like the sun which gives light and does not suck light. That belongs to the earth. I recall my solar nature and would like to rush to my rising. But ruins [95] stand in my way. They say: "With regard to men you should be this or that." My chameleonesque skin shudders. They obtrude upon me and want to color me. But that should no longer be. Neither good nor evil shall be my masters. I push them aside, the laughable survivors, and go on my way again, which leads me to the East. The quarreling powers that for so long stood between me and myself lie behind me.