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Posted by Bernard on 3/27/2007, 7:50 am, in reply to "Re: Zarathustra Prologue 8" The buffoon is the first appearance of the spirit of gravity, the dwarf, a great but foolish w e3ight above him (the buffoon is above him in the tower) Even though the buffoon disappears, its only his voice that disappears, reappearing as the dead dog. Its notable in another way that the dead man becomes a dead dog; it is a symbol of the death of companionship. Time and again we see that Zarathustra is most alone, and hungry, when not just good but finally even evil deserts him. This passage is notable bescause we start to get glimpses of Zarathutra that are indistinguishable from N. Its always the lonely passages wherein this effect manifests the most, and also where we get to the bare bones of his thoughts and the processes involved in their formation. His best humour is usually found where N is seeming to feel his person start to emerge in the character of Z. In contemplating the intense and hurried circumstances in which TSZ was written its easy to see how important these little 'self appearances' were to a writer in the the long and rapt hours of creativity as contrapuntals. We can almost hear him laugh with surprise outloud as he discovers himself. It may be that this dead man on Zarathustra's shoulder had, in Nietzsche's mind, Nietzsche's own face. He cares for him as we do our own past selves in order to preserve what is good in them from the constant thought predators, but also becuase others often feel very attached to us according to what we ourselves may be dead to within us; they may be willing to be in our presence only due to that (thus the old man seems to have more time for the corpse than for Zarathustra). The key to Nietzsche's loneliness, and hence his rare creativity, lies right there I think.
123.3.4.X
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