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On the 125th Anniversary of Nietzsche’s Death
Mr. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
wrote books that were dense and preachy,
as he soared above life’s trenches,
with his fellow Übermensches.
Supermen like him had vaulted
far above and were exalted
by their scholarly devotees,
who wore tweed and sported goatees.
Always ready with a wry word
that he’d drop as he flew skyward,
aimed at feeble-minded peasants,
deemed unworthy of his presence.
He helped send the world careening
by declaring that life’s meaning
is based on each one’s perspective,
and that morals were subjective.
He belittled true believers
who, to him, were self-deceivers
foolishly in search of pleasure
from fictitious holy treasure.
Awed by all he’d promulgated,
he quite often celebrated
God’s death with utmost affection,
but ignored His resurrection.
He could not have been much wronger
when he wrote what made him stronger
was whatever hadn’t killed him.
Soon thereafter, madness filled him.
He died young, and quite demented,
but with his beliefs cemented
in the minds of agitators,
and pedantic contemplators.
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Poet’s Note: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche died of a stroke at the age of 55 on August 25, 1900, following a decade-long battle with debilitating mental health issues. He is best known for developing the philosophy of the Übermensch (translated into English as Overman or Superman). Such a person, he holds, rises above herd mentality and creates their own set of values, freed from the constraints of traditional morality.
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Warren Bonham is a private equity investor who lives in Southlake, Texas.
Waren, what an apt rendering and searing critique of one who adversely affected generations of Europeans and must have been an inspiration for Hitler and the Nazis in their quest to manufacture the super race. I read Nietzche in my university studies and was impressed with how succinct and well-formulated your poetic offering was.
So many people whom I admired in my university days looked upon Nietzsche favorably. It never occurred to me that he might be a nutjob (or worse) until much later in life. I’m glad you enjoyed it!
What a wonderful summary of a perverse life. I love your many hilarious rhymes!
I’m glad you enjoyed the rhymes. Coming up with one for Ubermensches was a challenge. His life had a big, but as you say, perverse impact.
Very well done, Warren! The marchlike meter appropriately echoes the rhythm of a Nazi goosestep! Your careful and frequently funny word choices contribute to the wry humor and bitingly satirical tone of the entire poem. As Cynthia says, you really summarize quite well the essence of Nietzche’s thought and the “perverse” life behind it. I have often thought that his nihilistic philosophy drove him mad, but most scholars think his madness was more likely due to an organic cause like a brain tumor, a neurological disease, or even syphillis than to his philosophy. You can see a brief video clip of Nietzche on You Tube that was filmed at the asylum where he was taken. You can see the look of derangement in his eyes.
I just watched that video clip. There was no spark of humanity left in him when he died, but I’m not sure there was much of a spark in him when he was younger and in his so-called intellectual prime.
This is a really fun read, much better than trying to read Nietzsche’s stuff. He doesn’t read well in German or English, but he does make for good entertainment posthumously.
I have no idea how his ideas took off. They are completely inaccessible to everyone except tweed-wearing academics. I also find him to be very unreadable.
After one night at the priory,
We both knew this to be true,
When you look into the Abbess
The Abbess looks back into you.
Fantastic pun! Nietzsche would have been better off contemplating Abbesses rather than abysses.
Just when I was reading the explorer Freya Stark’s opinions about Nietzsche, this interesting poem came into view….his philosophy dominated all cultures for decades, I just wonder what his father Carl Ludwig, a German Lutheran pastor, would have made of his son’s preposterous ideas ( he died when Nietzsche was 5 years old) I saw his later madness as karma, hauntingly, after his “god is dead” statement….
I know little of Freya Stark but just saw that she recommended Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I found a quote from Nietzsche in which he described that book as being “the greatest gift ever made to mankind”. They must both be much smarter than me. I always found that book to be impenetrable. I’d like to think that if Nietzche’s father hadn’t died so young that he would have turned out differently (better?), but we’ll never know.
Love this one, Warren. It reminds me of a bumper sticker from the turbulent sixties… “Nietzsche is Peachy.”
I’m glad you came through the sixties unscathed by such catchy, but harmful influences.
Say what you like to condemn Nietzsche, but he recognized a crucial fact about human life and interactions, namely, the sundering difference between “Herrenmoral” and “Sklavenmoral,” and how the latter has been poisoning the West.
You are a font of encyclopedic knowledge. I’m ashamed that I needed to look up those concepts and still have more digging to do after a cursory examination. I am convinced that Nietzsche got some things right.
You outdo the satirists, Warren, identifying targets too problematic to take on. You not only meet the challenge of speaking the satire with amusing scorn, but manage to explain issues briefly. In Nietzsche’s case, admiring intellectuals crave superman-hood capable of dictating to others while they do as they like. His beliefs are indeed “cemented in the minds of agitators.” Notice “minds” with an impoverished understanding of humanity (unaware of soul or spirit, however “preachy” they may be). “Pedantic contemplators” would be similar, though maybe less activist.
And you may well be right that Nietzschean morality or lack thereof is linked to ineffective fatherhood. Heard the slogan, “Bring back the fathers and the killings will stop”?
Thank you for the supportive comments and thorough analysis! Nietzsche left behind a lot of catchy quotes and phrases that seem to stir up agitators very effectively, but they always lead to chaos and never to solutions to any significant problems (the fatherhood problem being a great example).
Warren, I love the way your poem romps along with poetic aplomb to paint a picture of a philosopher I find fascinating. I particularly like your end rhymes in the opening stanza – if anyone has trouble pronouncing the philosopher in question or his big idea, “preachy” and “trenches” will set them straight.
The one thing that strikes me in Nietzsche’s works is how his “God is dead” observation is nearly always quoted with the second half of his idea missing. The full quote is “God is dead. And we have killed him.” Nietzche lived at the time of a moral culture collapse, much the same as we’re going through now. When egoism is thought to be the noblest result of this situation, I believe it’s a pathway to disaster for humankind… which is why this philosopher is well worth a read. I’m reading about Dostoevsky at the moment. He had similar concerns to Nietzsche but his faith in God separated their conclusions – which is why (in my opinion) we should never kill God in a society on its way to moral bankruptcy.
Warren, thank you for a poem that has made me think… deeply.
Susan, you are quite correct — when a society attempts to kill or suppress God, it signs its own death warrant. In any case the attempt is futile, since God cannot be killed or suppressed. He will always be present.
The problem is not God. The problem is ideology-ridden cultists (and some religionists) who go around trying to tell us what God wants, and how we have to act to satisfy those wants.
The problem today (which Nietzsche foresaw) is the metastasizing growth of Sklavenmoral, with its victim-worship, toxic empathy, self-abasement before “The Other,” and suicidal sentimentalism. Left-liberalism, a new religion that bows down to this array of bizarre “woke” obsessions, is precisely the Sklavenmoral that Nietzsche described.
SJB pointing out the missing half of the quote is a great insight. A true God cannot be killed but any man-made one can be. We need someone or something to kill the Sklavenmoral god we seem to be worshipping now.
Thank you for this poem, Warren, honouring one of humankind’s greatest geniuses. Reading Nietzsche’s works, especially “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, was revelatory for me. I was a hedonist before reading his works, and he made me see the error of my ways. I wouldn’t have started writing, either, if not for Nietzsche. I’m now a published formal poet with a novel manuscript that will hopefully soon become a published novel, by abnegating pleasure for purpose. Where before I seeked pleasure, now I seek the bridges to the Overman! Though, one must never forget to enjoy the pleasures of life, regardless, but to not be ruled by them.
Bravo, Warren! It’s a really great poem that I will read many times!
I’m glad that some people recognize Nietzsche’s greatness as a philosopher-prophet, despite his unfortunate lapse into madness at the end of his life. The persons who are most fanatically antagonistic to him seem always to be leftists or sentimental religionists, whom he recognized as “birds of a feather.”
Nietzsche is very often misunderstood and even labelled a Nazi (though how one can be a Nazi decades before the founding of the Nazi party, they never explain) by those with agendas or, being brutally honest, idiots. A couplet from a poem I’m currently editing goes:
“The Will to Power drives those greats we laud,
Mere fools think Nietzsche was a Nazi fraud!”
The left are often his biggest critics, you’re correct there, Joe, and it’s a shame because Nietzsche was apolitical, he only cared about human beings reaching their maximum potential, how could one not embrace and support that? I often think what else he could have written, if not for his madness, but the line between genius and madness, can be very fine, as with Nikola Tesla and his eventual lapse into madness.
Drilon, I would add something else: Nietzsche disliked the Germans as a nation, and he thought that anti-semitism was stupid.