Introduction

1. See, for example, David B. Allison, ed., The New Nietzsche: Contemporary Styles of Interpretation (New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1977); Joseph J. Kockelmans, ed., On Heidegger and Language (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972); and Peter J. McCormick, Heidegger and the Language of the World (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1976).

2. Jacques Derrida, Spurs/Eperons: Nietzsche’s Styles, trans. Barbara Harlow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).

3. Jacques Derrida and Christie V. McDonald, “Choreographies,” Diacritics 12, No. 2 (Summer 1982), p. 74.

I. Kristeva on Language and “the Feminine”

1. A short biography is available in the editor’s introduction to Kristeva, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, ed. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), pp. 1-20.

2. Kristeva’s major publications currently available in English translation are: About Chinese Women (1977); Desire in Language (1980), which is a compilation of eight essays from Polylogue and two from Semeiotikē; Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1982); the first third of La révolution du langage poétique, as Revolution in Poetic Language (1984); The Kristeva Reader (1986); Tales of Love (1987); In the Beginning Was Love: Psychoanalysis and Faith (1988); and Language—the Unknown: An Initiation into Linguistics (1989); and Black Sun (1989).

3. Although not all critics characterize Kristeva as feminist (see Eleanor Kuykendall’s comprehensive discussion and references in “Questions for Julia Kristeva’s Ethics of Linguistics,” in The Thinking Muse: Feminism and Modern French Philosophy, ed. Jeffner Allen and Iris Marion Young [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989]), her basic position on and commitment to women’s full participation and equal rights in society qualify her as feminist, I believe. Her feminism is, to be sure, a complicated version, one that refuses any reification or stabilization of what it means to be a “woman”; but that position is fully consistent with her basic view of the “subject in process/on trial.” (See discussion in text below.)

Toril Moi summarizes Kristeva’s position on feminism well: “Kristeva’s vision is not exclusively or essentially feminist, but it is one in which the hierarchical closure imposed on meaning and language has been opened up to the free play of the signifier. Applied to the field of sexual identity and difference, this becomes a feminist vision of a society in which the sexual signifier would be free to move; where the fact of being born male or female would no longer determine the subject’s position in relation to power, and where, therefore the very nature of power itself would be transformed.” Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (London: Methuen, 1985), p. 172.

4. Kristeva, Powers of Horror (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), p. 48.

5. Powers, p. 113.

6. Kristeva, “Psychoanalysis and the Polis,” Critical Inquiry 9, No. 1 (Sept. 1982), p. 84.

7. Powers of Horror, p. 21. “Sade’s scene integrates: it allows for no other, no unthinkable, nothing heterogeneous. Rational and optimistic, it does not exclude. That means that it does not recognize a sacred, and in that sense it is the anthropological and rhetorical acme of atheism.”

8. Philip Lewis, “Revolutionary Semiotics,” Diacritics (Fall 1974), p.29.

9. “Since it is itself a metalanguage, semiotics can do no more than postulate this heterogeneity: as soon as it speaks about it, it homogenizes the phenomenon, links it with a system, loses hold of it. Its specificity can be preserved only in the signifying practices which set off the heterogeneity at issue. . . . ” “The System and the Speaking Subject,” rpt. in Thomas Sebeok, ed., The Tell-Tale Sign: A Survey of Semiotics (Lisse, Belgium: The Peter de Ridder Press, 1975), p. 8.

10. Kristeva, “From One Identity to an Other,” in Desire in Language, p. 124.

11. Kristeva, “System and the Speaking Subject,” p. 5.

12. “System and the Speaking Subject,” p. 6.

13. Alice Jardine, “Introduction to ‘Women’s Time,’ ” Signs 7, No. 1 (Autumn 1981), p. II, note 15.

14. Jardine, “Theories of the Feminine: Kristeva,” enclitic 4, No. 2 (Autumn 1980), p. 12.

15. Leon Roudiez, Introduction to Kristeva, Desire in Language, p. 17.

16. “System and the Speaking Subject,” pp. 9-11.

17. Kristeva, “From One Identity to an Other,” in Desire in Language, p. 133.

18. Alice Jardine, “Theories of the Feminine,” p. 12.

19. Powers of Horror, p. 72.

20. Jacques Lacan: “To speak of the Name of the Father is by no means the same thing as invoking paternal deficiency (which is often done). We know today that an Oedipus complex can be constituted perfectly well even if the father is not there. . . . So as to make the link between the Name of the Father, in so far as he can at times be missing, and the father whose effective presence is not always necessary for him not to be missing, I will introduce the expression ‘paternal metaphor.’ ” Quoted by Jacqueline Rose, Introduction II to Lacan, Feminine Sexuality (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1982), p. 39. Rose notes further: “The father is a function and refers to a law, the place outside the imaginary dyad and against which it breaks. To make of him a referent is to fall into an ideological trap . . . ” (p. 39).

21. Dorothy Dinnerstein, The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise (New York: Harper and Row, 1976).

22. Kristeva, “From One Identity to an Other,” in Desire in Language, p. 134.

23. La révolution du langage poetique (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1974), p. 40 (my translation).

24. Naomi Schor, “Female Paranoia: The Case for Psychoanalytic Feminist Criticism,” Yale French Studies 62 (1981), p. 211.

25. Kristeva, “II n’y a pas de maitre a langage,” Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse 20 (Autumn 1979), p. 130 (my translation).

26. “Il n’y a pas de maitre a langage,” p. 128 (my translation).

27. “Psychoanalysis and the Polis,” p. 87.

28. “Psychoanalysis and the Polis,” p. 84.

29. “Il n’y a pas de maitre a langage,” p. 37 (my translation).

30. Here the word “style” is used in a general sense, not a technical one. Subsequent chapters will attempt to discern the ways in which the semiotic is integrated into the discourse of the writers under consideration; nearly every observation will relate in some way to their “styles” as writers. Perhaps Nietzsche’s own notion of style is relevant here: “To communicate a state, an inward tension of pathos, by means of signs, including the tempo of these signs—that is the meaning of every style.” Ecce Homo, “Why I Write Such Good Books,” Section 4, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), p. 265.

31. Desire in Language, Preface, p. x.

32. Kristeva, Desire in Language, Preface, p. x.

33. Cassell’s French-English Dictionary (New York: Funk and Wagnalls Co., 1951), p. 428.

34. Albert Dauzat et al., Nouveau dictionnaire étymologique et historique (Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1971), p. 404.

35. “Indo-European Roots,” in The American Heritage Dictionary (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1976), p. 1515.

36. Nouveau dictionnaire étymologique, p. 402.

37. Roudiez, ed., Desire in Language. pp. 15-16.

38. See, for example, the discussion of mysticism in Powers of Horror, p. 127, or the references to Jeanne Guyon’s quietism in “ ‘Ne dis rien’: A propos de ‘l’ interdit de la representation,” Tel quel No. 91 (Spring 1982), p. 43, and numerous examples in Tales of Love.

39. “ . . . en ce que ça dit, où ça souffre et où ça jouit.” “Il n’y a pas de maître à langage,” p. 131.

40. Plato, The Republic, trans. B. Jowett (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1973), Book X.6o7a, p. 301.

41. Lacan’s theory about “desire” has deeply influenced Kristeva. Jacqueline Rose discusses his theory in her introduction to Lacan’s Feminine Sexuality. “Demand always ‘bears on something other than the satisfaction which it calls for’ . . . and each time the demand of the child is answered by the satisfaction of its needs, so this ‘something other’ is relegated to the place of its original impossibility. Lacan terms this ‘desire.’ ” Jacqueline Rose, ed., in Jacques Lacan, Feminine Sexuality (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., Inc., 1982), p. 32.

42. “The Novel as Polylogue,” in Desire in Language, pp. 163-164.

43. Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller (New York:Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1975), p. 14.

44. Trans. Anita Barrows (New York: Urizen Press, 1977).

45. Kristeva, “Il n’y a pas de maître à langage,” p. 134.

46. Jonathan Culler, On De construction (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), p. 173.

47. Kristeva, “The Novel as Polylogue,” in Desire in Language, p. 191.

48. Kristeva, “Psychoanalysis and the Polis,” p. 86.

49. “Sujet dans le langage et pratique politique,” in Psychanalyse et politique ed. Armando Verdiglione (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1974), p. 61.

50. Kristeva, “L’autre du sexe,” Sorcières 10, p. 37. Quoted by Stephen Heath, “Difference,” Screen 19, No. 3 (Autumn 1978), p. 79.

51. “The Novel as Polylogue,” in Desire in Language, p. 165.

52. “Novel as Polylogue,” Desire, p. 165.

53. About Chinese Women, p. 15.

54. About Chinese Women, p. 14.

55. About Chinese Women, p. 16.

56. Powers of Horror, pp. 88-89.

57. “Novel as Polylogue,” Desire, p. 204.

58. “Novel as Polylogue,” Desire, p. 206.

59. “Novel,” Desire, p. 207.

60. Powers of Horror, p. 1.

61. Powers, p. 5.

62. Powers, p. 64.

63. Powers, p. 8.

II. The Gay Science

1. Walter Kaufmann, footnote in Nietzsche, The Gay Science (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), p. 130.

2. Walter Kaufmann, footnote in Nietzsche, The Gay Science, p. 130.

3. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), p. 122.

4. Paragraphs according to Kaufmann’s translation.

5. The Gay Science, p. 123.

6. Friedrich Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, in Vol. V, 2 of Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. G. Colli and M. Montinari (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter and Co., 1973), p. 100. This and all remaining translations in this chapter are mine unless otherwise noted.

7. Nietzsche’s immersion in classical culture often leads him to make such allusions. Der alte Erderschütterer is Poseidon, called Ennosigaios, or earth-shaker. (W. K. C. Guthrie, The Greeks and Their Gods [Boston: Beacon Press, 1950], p. 95.) Guthrie also discusses the origin of the name “Poseidon.” He agrees with the suggestion made by Fisk, supported by Kretschmer and Kern, that “Poseidon” derives from posis Das, or “consort of the earth,” Da being a Doric variant of Gē (p. 95).

Guthrie also supplies other evidence which leads us to identify Nietzsche’s Erderschütterer as Poseidon. He says, “Besides horses, bulls were regularly sacrificed to Poseidon in some places, and we have already noted the connexion of the bull with fertility . . . ” (pp. 97-98). Finally, “as a male spirit of fertility, the original Poseidon is a consort of the Earth, Gē or Da or Demeter. Farnell has noted that Demeter and Poseidon are often associated in cult, so that Plutarch went so far as to call Poseidon the sharer of Demeter’s temple” (p. 99).

Thus, the old earth-shaker singing and stamping like a bull in the depths is himself the consort of Mother Earth, or the male presence within the place of origin. He shares Demeter’s temple, dwelling beneath the earth, consorting with the mother.

8. See “labyrinth,” American Heritage Dictionary, (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1976): “Learned respelling of Middle English laborintus, from Latin labyrinthus, from Greek laburinthos, probably akin to Greek labrus, double ax, perhaps a word borrowed from Caria.”

9. Paragraphs according to Kaufmann’s translation.

10. One is reminded here of the riddle posed at the beginning of Ecce Homo, where Nietzsche says that as his father he is already dead, while as his mother he still lives and grows old. See Chapter IV, below. One may apparently be both dead and alive, as oneself and as others, as happier selves and as parents.

11. Jacques Derrida, Spurs/Eperons, trans. Barbara Harlow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 48. (My translation differs here from Harlow’s.)

III. Thus Spoke Zarathustra

1. Walter Kaufmann reads Zarathustra as the work of a lonely man. See “Editor’s Preface” in The Portable Nietzsche (New York: The Viking Press, 1968), p. 103. As an exposition of Übermensch and eternal recurrence, see many commentators, notable among whom are Nietzsche himself in Ecce Homo, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” Section 1, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), p. 295, and Martin Heidegger in “Who Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?” in The New Nietzsche, ed. David B. Allison (New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1977), pp. 64-79.

As transvaluation of values, see Ofelia Schutte, Beyond Nihilism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). On Zarathustra as a “radical Christian image of Jesus,” see Thomas J. J. Altizer, The Gospel of Christian Atheism (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1966).

2. Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra (Miinchen: Insel Verlag, 1979), Prologue, Section 4, p. 16. Translations throughout this chapter are mine unless otherwise noted.

3. Gary Shapiro, in “The Rhetoric of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra,” Boundary 2 8, No. 2, pp. 165-184, examines Zarathustra as a “self-conscious reconsideration of the struggle” between philosophy and poetry, and as a rhetorical Spiel that “plays with serious affairs of the understanding, but does not aim at persuasion.” His reading is closer to ours than the more conceptually oriented interpretations noted above, but it focuses on the use of four different tropological strategies throughout the four main divisions of the book, rather than on questions of the subject and the feminine in relation to discourse.

Also see Harold Alderman, Nietzsche’s Gift (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1977). “The history of [Zarathustra] interpretation shows . . . that only Zarathustra’s doctrines have interested interpreters. . . . The essence of his stand lies in his language” (p. 37). “Zarathustra is then the teacher . . . who argues that only a voice which learns to express itself in the whole range of possibilities extending from monologic silence, to strident polemics, to theory, to laughter, and to dance and song. . . can be a truly human voice” (p. 173).

The question remains as to the concomitant, coinherent requirement of coming into relation with the feminine, and with the eros of language.

4. Also Sprach Zarathustra, “Vom Lesen und Schreiben,” pp. 43-44.

5. Also Sprach Zarathustra, “Von Alten und Jungen Weiblein,” pp. 67-69.

6. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), p. 125.

7. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1966), p. 162.

8. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Penguin Books, 1969), p. 46.

9. Zarathustra, trans. Hollingdale, p. 111.

10. Zarathustra, trans. Hollingdale, pp. 144-145.

11. Zarathustra, trans. Hollingdale, p. 181.

12. Gay Science, Preface, Section 4, p. 38.

13. Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche: Volume I. The Will to Power as Art, trans. David F. Krell (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), p. 215.

14. Cassell’s German-English Dictionary, p. 593.

15. David F. Krell, footnote in Nietzsche: Volume I, p. 92.

16. Heidegger, Nietzsche: Volume I, p. 119.

17. Matthew 19:24-26, Revised Standard Version.

18. See, for example, The Oxford Companion to German Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 639. “Nietzsche’s attitude to women” and “the fantasies of taking a whip to them” are “attempts to compensate for his own inadequacy in his personal relations.” Cited by R. Hinton Thomas, “Nietzsche, Women, and the Whip,” German Life and Letters 34, No. 1 (Oct. 1980), p. 124. Thomas’s interpretation avoids “obvious” and “literal” conclusions like the one cited, but relates the saying to Goethe’s poem “Selige Sehnsucht,” and otherwise draws on a complex intertextuality in order to understand “the whip.” As will be seen below, my reading remains more imagistic.

19. In Spurs/Eperons, Derrida has dealt at some length with a Nietzschean fragment, “I have forgotten my umbrella.” Cryptic, folded/unfolded (ployé/déployé), the saying and the umbrella itself and its forgottenness become in some way typical of all of Nietzsche’s text. “Folded/unfolded, an umbrella, finally, of which you would not have the use, which you could just as soon forget, as if you had never heard of it, as if it were placed above your head . . . ” (p. 136, my translation). Is the whip, which Zarathustra is counseled not to forget, yet of which he will not have the use, another appearance of this umbrella, phallic yet not deployed, “forgotten” yet not forgotten?

20. Also Sprach Zarathustra, “Das Kind mit dem Spiegel,” pp. 85-87.

21. “Unschuld ist das Kind und Vergessen, ein Neubeginnen, ein Spiel, ein aus sich rollendes Rad, eine erste Bewegung, ein heiliges Jasagen.” Also Sprach Zarathustra, “Von den Drei Verwandlungen,” p. 30.

22. Also Sprach Zarathustra, “Das Nachtlied,” pp. 108-110.

23. Wallace Stevens, “Of Mere Being,” in The Palm at the End of the Mind (New York: Vintage Books, 1971), p. 398. “The palm at the end of the mind, / Beyond the last thought, rises / in the bronze decor . . . ”; Stevens, “Adagia,” in Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), p. 173. (Stevens also writes, “Poetry is the gaiety [joy] of language,” p. 174.)

24. Also Sprach Zarathustra, “Die Stillste Stunde,” pp. 148-150.

25. Also Sprach Zarathustra, “Vom Gesicht und Rätsel,” pp. 156-158.

26. Cassell’s German-English Dictionary, p. 351.

27. C. G. Jung, Symbols of Transformation, Collected Works, Volume 5 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), pp. 379-380.

28. R.J. Hollingdale, trans., Thus Spoke Zarathustra, note 25, p. 341.

29. Hollingdale, Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965), p. 11.

30. Hollingdale, pp. 12-13.

31. “ . . . Worte und Ehren für Leib und Erde.” Also Sprach Zarathustra, “Von den Hinterweltlern,” p. 34.

IV. Ecce Homo

1. Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, in Werke in Drei Bänden, Zweiter Band, ed. Karl Schlechta (München: Carl Hansen Verlag, 1955), p. 1070. Translations from German editions cited in this chapter are mine.

2. Ecce Homo, ed. Schlechta, p. 1073.

3. This later version of the text is included as authoritative in the Colli-Montinari edition of Nietzsche’s works: Friedrich Nietzsche, Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter and Co., 1969), Vol. VI, 3, pp. 265-267.

4. Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1967), p. 222.

5. Ecce Homo, trans. Kaufmann, p. 226.

6. Hollingdale has pointed out that the source of this idea is a “family legend,” and that the Polish connection is unsubstantiated. (R.J. Hollingdale, Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy [Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965], p. 7.) It does figure importantly, however, throughout the book, and becomes one of Nietzsche’s favorite ways of identifying with his father and distancing himself from all that is “German.”

7. Ecce Homo, trans. Kaufmann, p. 228.

8. Ecce Homo, ed. Colli and Montinari, p. 262.

9. Ecce Homo, trans. Kaufmann, p. 238.

10. Ecce Homo, trans. Kaufmann, p. 240.

11. Ecce Homo, trans. Kaufmann, p. 243.

12. Ecce Homo, trans. Kaufmann, p. 244.

13. Ecce Homo, trans. Kaufmann, p. 247.

14. Ecce Homo, trans. Kaufmann, p. 249.

15. Ecce Homo, trans. Kaufmann, p. 251.

16. Ecce Homo, ed. Schlechta, p. 1102.

17. See the subtitle of Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is.

18. Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen (München: Insel Verlag, 1948), p. 86.

19. Ecce Homo, ed. Schlechta, p. 1089.

20. Ecce Homo, “Why I Write Such Good Books,” Section 4, ed. Colli and Montinari, p. 302.

21. Ecce Homo, “Why I Am So Clever,” Section 10, ed. Colli and Montinari, p. 295.

22. Mazzino Montinari, “Ein Neuer Abschnitt in Nietzsches Ecce Homo,” in Nietzsche Studien I (1972), pp. 380-418.

23. “ . . . welche selbst mir den Eindruck zu grosser Selbsterauschung oder gar zu weit gehender Verachtung und Ungerechtigkeit machen . . . ” (Peter Gast’s letter to Franz Overbeck, dated Feb. 27, 1889, quoted by Montinari, p. 401).

24. The relevant passage of Section 3 as it appears in earlier editions is reproduced here:

When I consider how often I am addressed as a Pole when I travel, even by Poles themselves, and how rarely I am taken for a German, it might seem that I have been merely externally sprinkled with what is German. Yet my mother, Franziska Oehler, is at any rate something very German; ditto, my grandmother on my father’s side, Erdmuthe Krause. The latter lived all her youth in the middle of good old Weimar, not without some connection with the circle of Goethe. Her brother, the professor of theology Krause in Konigsberg, was called to Weimar as general superintendent after Herder’s death. It is not impossible that her mother, my great-grandmother, is mentioned in the diary of the young Goethe under the name of “Muthgen.” Her second marriage was with the superintendent Nietzsche in Eilenburg; and in the great war year of 1813, on the day that Napoleon entered Eilenburg with his general staff, on the tenth of October, she gave birth. As a Saxon, she was a great admirer of Napoleon; it could be that I still am, too. My father, born in 1813, died in 1849. Before he accepted the pastor’s position in the parish of Röcken, not far from Lützen, he lived for a few years in the castle of Altenburg and taught the four princesses there. His pupils are now the Queen of Hanover, the Grand Duchess Constantine, the Grand Duchess of Altenburg, and the Princess Therese of Saxe-Altenburg. He was full of deep reverence for the Prussian king Frederick William IV, from whom he had also received his pastoral position; the events of 1848 grieved him beyond all measure. I myself, born on the birthday of the above named king, on the fifteenth of October, received, as fitting, the Hohenzollern name Friedrich Wilhelm. There was at least one advantage to the choice of this day: my birthday was a holiday throughout my childhood. (Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. Kaufmann, pp. 225-226)

25. Ecce Homo, trans. Kaufmann, p. 265.

26. Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, 4th ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), p. 457. Kaufmann devotes three pages to this new Section 3 in the appendix of his book, but does not find it important for understanding Nietzsche’s thought, and has not included it in the “Variant Texts” section of his translation of Ecce Homo.

27. Ecce Homo, ed. Colli and Montinari, p. 266. The German text of these few sentences directly referring to mother and sister is reproduced here:

Wenn ich die tiefste Gegensatz zu mir suche, die unausrechenbare Gemeinheit der Instinkte, so finde ich immer meine Mutter und Schwester,—Mit solcher canaille mich verwandt zu glauben wäre eine Lästerung auf meine Göttlichkeit. Die Behandlung, die ich von Seiten meiner Mutter und Schwester erfahre, bis auf diesen Augenblick, flösst mir ein unsägliches Grauen ein: hier arbeitet eine vollkommene Höllenmaschine, mit unfehlbarer Sicherheit über den Auggenblick, wo man mich blutig verwunden kann—in meinen höchsten Augenblicken,. . . denn da fehlt jede Kraft, sich gegen giftiges Gewürm zu wehren. . . . Die physiologische Contiguität ermöglicht eine solche disharmonia praestabilita. . . . Aber ich bekenne, dass der tiefste Einwand gegen die “ewige Widerkunft,” mein eigentlich abgründlicher Gedanke, immer Mutter und Schwester sind.

28. “Instant” or “moment” may be an inadequate translation in this case. The “Augenblick,” the eye-glance evokes the image of the phallic eye, the God’s eye, the controlling “I,” and the further repetition of the word twice more in this same sentence underlines its significance here.

29. Kaufmann, p. 457. Kaufmann comments on the relative lack of value of the later version of Section 3: “The handwriting was ‘normal’ and showed no signs of insanity. Nevertheless the style strikes me as far less sane that that of any other passage of equal length in Ecce Homo or in any of his other books, and it is arguable how much weight one should give to Nietzsche’s momentary wish to substitute this page for a section that contains some splendid formulations and is clearly, I think, superior in style as well as content” (p. 455). It is to be hoped that future English editions of Ecce Homo will supplement the earlier version of Section 3 with this later variant, without which the “riddle” of Nietzsche’s existence remains opaque.

30. Alexander Nehamas makes this point throughout his book Nietzsche: Life as Literature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985).

31. Ecce Homo, trans. Kaufmann, p. 258.

V. Being and Time I

1. “ . . . das, was als Verborgenes das antiker Philosophieren in die Unruhe trieb und in ihr erhielt.” Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 6th ed. (Tubingen: Neomarius Verlag, 1949), p. 2. (In what follows, references to Sein und Zeit indicate that any translation is my own interpretation, while references to Being and Time follow the Macquarrie and Robinson translation, unless otherwise specified.)

2. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), H4.

3. “ . . . fordert. . . eine eigene Aufweisungsart. . .” Sein und Zeit, p. 6.

4. David F. Krell, Introduction to Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), p. 6.

5. Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. James M. Churchill (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962), p. 207.

6. Being and Time, H7.

7. Being and Time, H39.

8. Being and Time, H130.

9. Being and Time, H12, trans. Joan Stambaugh, in Heidegger, Basic Writings, ed. David F. Krell (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), p. 54.

10. Being and Time, H12 (Stambaugh trans.).

11. Being and Time, Part One, Division One, Sections IV and V, H113-180.

12. Sein and Zeit, p. 113.

13. Cassell’s German-English Dictionary, p. 99.

14. Being and Time, H126.

15. Being and Time, H167.

16. Being and Time, H126-127.

17. Being and Time, H127.

18. Being and Time, H127-128.

19. Being and Time, H128.

20. Being and Time, H129.

21. Being and Time. H127.

22. Desire in Language, Preface, p. x.

23. Desire, Preface, p. x.

24. Being and Time, Sections 35-38, H166-180.

25. Cassell’s German-English Dictionary, p. 257.

26. Being and Time, H167.

27. Being and Time, H167-168.

28. Being and Time, H168-169.

29. Being and Time, H169.

30. Being and Time, H169.

31. Being and Time, H172.

32. American Heritage Dictionary, p. 41.

33. Being and Time, H173.

34. Being and Time, H173.

35. Being and Time, H174.

36. Being and Time, H175.

37. Being and Time, H174.

38. Being and Time, H175.

39. Being and Time, H175.

40. Being and Time, H176.

41. Being and Time, H179.

42. Being and Time, H177.

43. Being and Time, H177.

44. Being and Time, H177.

45. Being and Time, H178.

46. Desire in Language, Preface, p. x.

47. Powers, p. 74.

48. “ Benommen: confused, distraught, dazed, bemused, stupefied.” Cassell’s German-English Dictionary, p. 99.

49. Being and Time, H176.

50. American Heritage Dictionary, p. 477.

51. Cassell’s German-English Dictionary, p. 98.

VI. Being and Time II

1. Being and Time, H191.

2. Being and Time, H181.

3. Being and Time, H193-194.

4. Being and Time, H196.

5. Being and Time, Section 42, H196-200.

6. Being and Time, H197.

7. Being and Time, H197-198.

8. Being and Time, H32-38.

9. Being and Time, H222.

10. Being and Time, H196.

11. See note v. to Being and Time, Division One, Chapter Six, p. 492.

12. Heidegger makes this connection between Saturn and “Time.” He writes: “The decision as to wherein the ‘primordial’ Being of this creature is to be seen, is left to Saturn, ‘Time’ ” (H199). Heidegger’s understanding of Saturn as Time doubtless derives from the equivalence traditionally drawn between the Roman Saturn and the Greek Cronos, identified with “chronos,” time.

13. Kristeva, Desire, Preface, p. x.

14. Kristeva, Powers of Horror, p. 38.

15. Being and Time, H180-230.

16. Being and Time, H182.

17. Being and Time, H186.

18. Being and Time, H186.

19. Being and Time, H186.

20. Being and Time, H187.

21. Being and Time, H191.

22. Kristeva, Desire, Preface, p. x.

23. Being and Time, H188-189.

24. Kristeva, Powers of Horror, p. 7.

25. Being and Time, H253.

26. Being and Time, H254.

27. Being and Time, H254.

28. Kristeva, Desire, Preface, p. x.

29. “Let the term ‘dying’ stand for that of Being in which Dasein is towards its own death,” Being and Time, H247.

30. Being and Time, H263.

31. Being and Time, H240.

32. Being and Time, H262.

33. Being and Time, H254.

34. Being and Time, H264.

35. Sein und Zeit, p. 266.

36. Being and Time, H193.

37. Being and Time, H266-268.

38. Being and Time, H268-301.

39. Being and Time, H271.

40. “In der Erschliessungstendenz des Rufes liegt das Moment des Stosses, des abgesetzten Aufrüttelns. Gerufen wird aus der Ferne in die Ferne.” Being and Time, H271.

41. See “The Gay Science: Women, Art, and Distance,” above.

42. Being and Time, H273.

43. Being and Time, H271.

44. Being and Time, H274.

45. Being and Time, H275.

46. Sein und Zeit, p. 275.

47. Cassell’s German-English Dictionary, p. 358.

48. Being and Time, H277.

49. Being and Time, H276-277.

50. Being and Time, H277-278.

51. Being and Time, H296.

52. Cassell’s German-English Dictionary, p. 678.

53. Being and Time, H284.

54. Being and Time, H285.

55. Being and Time, H286.

56. Being and Time, H296, trans, modified.

57. Being and Time, H277.

58. American Heritage Dictionary.

59. Being and Time, H297.

60. Being and Time, H300.

61. Cassell’s German-English Dictionary, p. 504.

62. Being and Time, H271.

63. Kristeva, “From One Identity to an Other,” in Desire in Language, p. 133.

VII. The Later Heidegger

1. This aspect of Heidegger’s work has stimulated nearly as much commentary as has the existential analytic developed in Being and Time. See, for example, among many other works: Joseph J. Kockelmans, ed., On Heidegger and Language (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972); William V. Spanos, ed., Martin Heidegger and the Question of Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976); Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Heidegger’s Later Philosophy,” in Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. David E. Linge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976); Peter J. McCormick, Heidegger and the Language of the World: An Argumentative Reading of the Late Heidegger’s Meditations on Language (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1976).

2. The eight essays on which this analysis is based come from four of Heidegger’s collections of essays, entitled Holzwege (1950), Vorträge und Aufsätze (1954), Unterwegs zur Sprache (1959), and Gelassenheit (1959). The essays are available in English translation as follows: “The Origin of the Work of Art,” “What Are Poets For?” “Building Dwelling Thinking,” “The Thing,” and “Language,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row, 1971); “A Dialogue on Language” and “The Nature of Language” in On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz (New York: Harper and Row, 1971); and “Conversation on a Country Path about Thinking,” in Discourse on Thinking, trans. John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund (New York: Harper and Row, 1966).

3. “The Nature of Language,” in On the Way to Language, p. 66.

4. Cassell’s German-English Dictionary, p. 126.

5. “The Nature of Language,” p. 88.

6. “The Origin of the Work of Art,” Poetry, Language, Thought (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), p. 73.

7. “The Nature of Language,” p. 81.

8. “Conversation on a Country Path about Thinking,” in Discourse on Thinking, p. 71.

9. “Conversation,” p. 67 (Gelassenheit, p. 41).

10. “Building Dwelling Thinking,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 146 (Vorträge und Aufsätze, p. 20).

11. “Mistress” as translation of die Herrin denotes a relationship of authority, ownership, or control, and not one of extramarital intimacy or financial dependence!

12. “The Nature of Language,” p. 66 (Unterwegs zur Sprache, p. 169).

13. Cassell’s German-English Dictionary, p. 706.

14. “The Nature of Language,” in On the Way to Language, p. 107 (Unterwegs zur Sprache, p. 215).

15. “A Dialogue on Language,” in On the Way to Language, p. 31 (Unterwegs zur Sprache, p. 124).

16. “The Nature of Language,” p. 90.

17. “The Nature of Language,” p. 76.

18. “Building Dwelling Thinking,” p. 146.

19. “Language,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 206.

20. “Language,” p. 198.

21. “Building Dwelling Thinking,” p. 148.

22. “The Nature of Language,” p. 108.

23. “A Dialogue on Language,” p. 37.

24. “A Dialogue on Language,” p. 41.

25. “Conversation on a Country Path about Thinking,” in Discourse on Thinking (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), p. 88.

26. “Conversation on a Country Path about Thinking,” pp. 89-90.

27. My translation.

28. “Conversation on a Country Path,” p. 90.

29. “The Nature of Language,” p. 84.

30. “Memorial Address,” in Discourse on Thinking, p. 47.

31. “Memorial Address,” p. 53.

32. “Conversation on a Country Path,” p. 74.

33. See, for example, Reiner Schiirmann, “Heidegger and Meister Eckhart on Releasement,” Research in Phenomenology 3 (1973), pp. 95-119; John D. Caputo, The Mystical Element in Heidegger’s Thought (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1978); Charles Wei-hsun Fu, “Creative Hermeneutics: Taoist Metaphysics and Heidegger,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 3 (1976), pp. 115-143; Peter Kreeft, “Zen in Heidegger’s Gelassenheit,” International Philosophical Quarterly (December 1971), pp. 521-545.

34. “Memorial Address,” p. 55.

35. “Conversation on a Country Path,” p. 79.

36. “From One Identity to an Other,” Desire in Language, p. 136. Kristeva quotes Sade on this point: “Unless he becomes his mother’s lover, let him not bother to write, for we shall not read him” (Idée sur les romans).

37. “The Origin of the Work of Art,” p. 42.

38. “Origin.” p. 46.

39. “Origin,” pp. 48-49.

40. “Origin,” p. 49.

41. “Origin,” p. 48.

42. David F. Krell, Introduction to “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in Heidegger, Basic Writings, ed. David F. Krell (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), p. 146.

43. The Homeric Hymns, trans. Hugh G. Evelyn-White (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. 456-457.

44. “The Thing,” p. 173.

45. “The Thing,” p. 179.

46. “The Thing,” p. 180.

47. “Language,” p. 202.

48. “A Dialogue on Language,” p. 33.

49. “The Origin of the Work of Art,” p. 66.

50. “Language,” p. 200.

51. “The Thing,” Epilogue, pp. 185-186.

52. “Conversation on a Country Path,” p. 62.

53. “Conversation on a Country Path,” p. 73.

54. “Building Dwelling Thinking,” p. 161.

55. Caputo, The Mystical Element in Heidegger’s Thought, p. 235.

56. Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror, p. 8.

57. “What Are Poets For?” pp. 91-92.

58. “Language,” p. 191. “Die Sprache,” in Unterwegs zur Sprache, p. 13.

59. “Conversation on a Country Path,” p. 75.

60. “A Dialogue on Language,” p. 27.

61. Cassell’s German-English Dictionary, p. 546.

62. “A Dialogue on Language,” p. 26.

63. “The Nature of Language,” p. 64.

64. Jan Aler has also noted Heidegger’s fondness for the oxymoron. He writes, “[Heidegger] handles the most variegated figures of speech with greatest ease. Sometimes one suspects a kind of professional pleasure on his part—for instance, in his preference for the paradoxical connection of opposites in the oxymoron.” “Heidegger’s Conception of Language,” in On Heidegger and Language, ed. Joseph Kockelmans, p. 38. (We argue that here “jouissance” rather than “pleasure” is in effect. See Chapter I above.)

65. “The Nature of Language,” p. 66.

66. Cassell’s German-English Dictionary, p. 189.

67. “The Nature of Language,” p. 66.

68. “The Nature of Language,” p. 66.

69. “The Thing,” p. 179.

70. “Conversation on a Country Path,” p. 79.

71. “Conversation,” p. 82 (Gelassenheit, p. 60).

72. Cassell’s German-English Dictionary, p. 664.

73. Cassell’s, p. 543.

74. “Conversation,” p. 82 (Gelassenheit, p. 61).

75. Cassell’s, p. 446.

76. “Language,” p. 210.

77. “Language,” p. 207.

VIII. Joying in the Truth of Self-Division

1. Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron, eds., New French Feminisms: An Anthology (New York: Schocken Books, 1980).

2. Paul Ricoeur, “The Critique of Religion,” in The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, ed. Charles E. Reagan and David Stewart (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978), p. 214.

3. From “La femme, ce n’est jamais ça” (Woman can never be defined), an interview by “psychoanalysis and politics” in Tel quel, Autumn 1974. Quoted in New French Feminisms, p. 137.

4. Sade, Idée sur les romans. Quoted by Kristeva, “From One Identity to an Other,” in Desire in Language, p. 136.

5. Powers of Horror, pp. 88-89.