Nietzsche's Labyrinth - Prologue

“Ariadne I am your labyrinth “

Everything that I write, explore and travel, everything that generates me, everything that devours me, everything that breaks and makes me, everything is a dance of inventing, creating from the raw materials of chaos, is translated from “myth, fact and nonsense” Plato

Zenovia

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Prologue 

Nietzsche prepares for his descent into his Labyrinth, in the past, he had dipped his toes in it while he lived in his solitude, for the past eleven years he had lived deeply silently in it, and now he desires to submerge himself in it and become part and whole in it.

To face one more time, his fearless pursuit of truth that lives deeply and inwardly, one more breath, one more dive into the tunnels, one more battle with the minotaur, which has face, one more destination of living his “eternal recurrence” now that he is on his death bed, one more time

“I will take with me what if of me and from me”

Nietzsche accepts the quest and challenge that his Ariadne offers him “take the orange ball of wool and descent into your labyrinth, one last time, before your transfiguration,  tie it at every dark tunnel that you travel through and in, so that you may return to the upward world  and live your life backwards into where you came from, what you have become and where you are going” 

His small ears hear her melodic voice, deep inside of him, as a silent tear escapes his half-closed distant eyes, the tones of her voice are like a swallow that seeks to return home, guiding him on the dangerous and freeing arrival and his final departure, from the finite into the infinite

Like a Knight on his honourable quest,   seeking the Holy Grail, knowing he will not return to the upward world, he has lived far too long in the upward world, it was never his home, and does not desire to return; he bows his head, removes his glasses, for he knows he will not need them anymore, in his labyrinth, he will not be short-sighed, he will see with perfect vison,  all his upward and downward life, all his backward and forward life. Nietzsche follows the voice of his Ariadne into his descent with her, he is ready to become the dance of Dionysios, he has been preparing all his adult life for this dance.

“Ariadne I am your labyrinth”

“My wife Ariadne has brought me here”

“I love you Ariadne”

Love notes that Nietzsche wrote to Ariadne, eons ago, and sent to her, she did not receive them, she lived beyond the deep dark sea on the island of Samos in Greece.  He still wrote love letters to her, after his descent, when the world had declared him mad. When he had decided to live out the rest of his life through his spiritual mask of the madman and Dionysios   It was for the first time, that he could see, with perfect vision, the hunger and madness of the world. The insanity of the world, by his blood he knew he was sane and vanished from them all, no one could follow him into his inward labyrinth, no one knew, no one could follow, no one knew of his secret, no one knew the man, very few understood the philosopher.

“Did I speak of love?”

Nietzsche’s way of travelling his inner labyrinth in a fearless pursuit for the truth

The outward world, the insane world that drove him into his internal sanity had him under house arrest for the past eleven years.

“Do not speak to me of love, it does not exist among the “insane” among the “same” among the “last man” in a world that has either gone mad through pain or cold indifference.

“ I have transfigured into Dionysios the creator of  inward vision, divine inspiration”

“Dare you descent into your labyrinth, for your last battle with the demons and angels that you bred with, to relive every detail, every second, every minute, every month, every year, with no shame, regret or guilt for your life, to relive over again backwards and forwards,  the Eternal Recurrence of your life, so that you can ascent into the “divine instinct” of loving the unknown ?

 The great Nietzsche is preparing for such a battle, he has arrived at his destination, the destination that all his life prepared him for, for he is on his death bed, and he is in-love, he is burning in the flame of love.  The Sirens song has pierced his heart, and now, it has begun, the finding of all his upspoken secrets from his heart, all his longing and seeking for Ariadne.

Before Nietzsche was a philosopher, he was a man, and when his wisdom left him, he was still a man, and his “soul was the song of lover”

Nietzsche and love?

Background maps into the life of his labyrinth, that generated his electrical passion, his electric memory

“Nothing else matters but love”

“Everything that moves and breathes in the world is created from love” Plato 

Everything that is created either from body or soul is the mother and father of loving profoundly, burning for your creation, this loving consists of an unquenchable deep desire to create a new life, a new world from a dying world.  

The deepest desire to engage and hook into and on to the infinite, “immortality” either through a physical creation or a soul creation, “artistic soul vison” the deepest longing and desire to continue beyond death, to continue. It is this dialectical tension between the finite and infinite, the tension between the body and the soul, that causes all life forms to create the impossible into possible, it is through this loving, that Nietzsche created  his world, his philosophy, his life, out of nothingness , out of the  terror that is hidden within the cell structure of life and living Nietzsche fell in love with life, and decided to have children with “eternity”.  He transformed and wove both the finite and the infinite into a limitlessness search and seeking for his kindred and home.   Nietzsche was in   love with creating below and above the limitations of his life, while being bound within the limitations in his life.

He was the bound man that used his limitations and the destruction and deprivation within them, that he experienced in life, to weave and spin the fibre of his rebellion and defiance into above and below all his life. 

He would not surrender!

He possessed a fearless pursuit for the truth and truth is active, it is not passive, and it consumes the seeker of truth, nothing remains bloodless, nothing is the same, nothing is common.  

Nietzsche knew by heart, by body, by soul, that his limitations, his bindings, his battle and struggle with defeat, loss and death, awakened  in him the mightiest courage and defiance to create within the restrictions, the bindings, the terror, the fear, the deep anxiety and aloneness,  he desire with all his life to create a defiance against the storms of life. To dig deeper within his labyrinth to discover the gold that was hidden in the layers of mud, to create from life’s suffering a life of truth and beauty

He ate it layer by layer, to dig to the next layer, and with each layer, he would hear voices, he would see phantoms and shadows moving towards him and through him, until he reached the layer where there was a silence that he could hear his own breathing.

“Why does it take so many years, so much digging, so much of one’s life to discover the gold of truth?  Why is one seeking this at the end of their life, to relive their life backwards, downwards and upwards, to descent, to swirl like a star in circles, and why does not the human voice offer any map or comfort.   Why does one need to travel through an apocalypse to obtain a revelation?”

“Have I reached the last layer in my labyrinth?  No, I am covered by the dust from the circling dying star.  Is that the truth, is that the light from the outward world, the world of the insane?”

  “Why does it take years of digging, sleepless night, and solitude?”

Could it be that Nietzsche discovered that truth has been for eons buried under the rabble of being forgotten, hidden or distorted?  And dare one disrupt the sleeping nightmare within the gluttonous dragon that has fed on the flesh and souls of the above and below sleepwalkers’"

“And how much truth can you bear?

He used the limitations that life imposed on him, he used the net that life has snared   him in, bound him in, to create a world that belonged to him by his values, to weave and spin his essence, his creativity, his philosophy and his chosen life which became his chosen fate. He travelled inro the limitlessness that is discovered in loving to create, loving life, to battle and win one’s self-mastery and ones “amor fati”

There only exists within the walls and tunnels of his inner labyrinth and his outward life is  “loving” to love without expecting to be loved, there only exists the war within to keep digging deeper and further to find more that has been hidden and buried, to eat the chaos that is part of and in life, to face the storms of life, and to keep something alive “to keep love alive”

To never surrender to safety, comfort, sameness, sedated happiness, a half-life, a no life.    To never surrender to nihilism.   That demanded everything from Nietzsche, such loving, such a life that becomes a work of art, a philosophy that is carnivorous, and it is most carnivorous when it smiles

This is a fearless unquenching unfathomable creative loving for ones life, that does not allow sedation through the lies of delusions, the destruction through the delusion of happiness, the dying of all that consists of and breaths of life through the delusion that life will not touch one, and that storms will not come.

How does one do that?   How did Nietzsche do that?  Only through the fire of creating, only through loving all aspects, all heights and depths of life in all “her” tragedy and beauty.  

In the depth and solitude of his internal labyrinth, in his  internal exploration of “loving” and  “living” not seeking to be loved, Nietzsche needed to accept the orange woven thread that his Ariadne offered to him, to have the faith of a child and  to enter his labyrinth, to be able to descent into the unmeasurable hidden secrets of his psyche, his unwritten soul,  the unspoken secrets of his heart.  That our civilization and our culture have no language for, it cannot follow, only those that have the courage of and for many fallen battles that are the outcome of being in love with life.  This dark inward journey, a journey that all must take willingly or screaming at the end of their life, and still retain the faith of a child, while having the scars all over his body of his many world experiences, the many battles in betrayal and in treachery, his losses and defeats,  the agendas, plans and delusions of the insane that exist in the upperworld. 

Even Nietzsche’s writing, his soul and body creations, are no longer important in his new sight, his now perfect vision that he is experiencing in the tunnels and darkness of his labyrinth

He sees clearly without language, without his glasses, he is merging time within the limitlessness of the finite into the infinite, and has transcended his life, writing, his philosophy.

“I once wrote great books”

“Stories I told myself, so that I was not be so alone in the upward world, when I lived with the insane “

He knows by his blood that he desires to weave from the Unknown, he is from the Unknown.  As the unknown seeks to be known in the darkness of Nietzsche labyrinth.

It is a dangerous inward journey, consisting of a depth and weight of darkness that does not resemble night, for all creation stems from the secrets of our darkness, as he descents holding onto the orange thread, he will discover echoes of past conversations, and phantoms, that he once weaved and lived in and with.  He will discover his essence, that cannot be grasped or defined by the outward world of moving and changing seasons of changing shapes and forms. The labyrinth has no beginning or ending, no voice, no shape, no destination, or arrival. 

It has existed in Nietzsche from the beginning.

Nietzsche’s deeply inward labyrinth exists forever dividing, multiplying and adding, forming and shaping a life of its own from the skin of a philosopher, even years before his death, it was breathing and living deep within him, Nietzsche desired this, he kept it alive, he kept Ariadne alive in it. Nietzsche at some timeless space, in some tunnel or cave of his inward labyrinth, decided to cut the orange thread that his beloved Ariadne gave to him, he cut the orange thread and decided not to return to the outward upward world, decided not to return to the surface of the world, he decided not to return to the world of the insane. In that world he was held captive, and under house arrest by others for eleven years, and tonight, he is spinning and weaving his sanity and freedom, and no one can see or hear this final loving of his Eternal Recurrence.

He decided eleven years ago to become the beloved husband of Ariadne, he decided to become Dionysios

“I am Dionysos!”

He cut the orange thread as he stepped more deeply inward into himself deeper than before, to meet and be totally consumed by his ” Eternal Recurrence,” to relive his life backwards for all eternity, so that no one could follow, not that anyone had the courage to follow or seek, so that no one would ever find him again, touch him, or repulse him. What was he protecting deeply inward in his labyrinth?  Who was he protecting?

Nietzsche decided to become the “loving” one and not seek love from anyone in the last eleven years, actually all of his life, he had decided to live his life in exile from all, and now he continued with what defined him, when he lived in the upper- world, where he could he found ,the world proclaimed him “insane”. In the upper world that arrivals and destinations and maps and compasses existed, one did not get lost, one travelled in the path of the knowledge of others, he needed his glasses to see into the distance, to see in front of him, in this world these things do not exist.  This exile and chosen descent into the underworld were not the same as his chosen solitude, this inward descent when he got beyond Ariadne’s orange thread, he could not return, he did not desire to return.

He could hear everything, and he could see without his glasses perfectly, without his physical eyesight, he could see all his life clearly,  he knew without speaking the why in his tormented life , he knew without having been here before without Ariadnes orange wool to return, he had gone further and deeper and there was so much more to travel  in  and he did not , nor want to have known  a road, a map, or the safety of a compass.

Was this labyrinth born with him, lived in him from birth and it grew in the depth and height as he saw in its darkness, clearly all the turns and twist of his life?  The passages deep within him, resembled the depth of the sky, did it grow with every passing moment, with every decision that he made?   He knew it was part of him, it longed for him, with his desire to continue to seek and find, it was in front of him, it was behind him, it was in him, it was all around him, as he continued into the Unknown.

“Is the void outside of us, or inside of us, or all around us?“

“Do we contain and carry deep inside of us the sky, the sea and all the void of these vast untravelled worlds within us?”  

“I thought it was outside of me at one time, when they thought me sane”

The only thing that he took with him in his internal descent was the broken and cut orange wool that his Ariadne had given to him to, so that he would not lose his way in this depth and darkness and return.  Nietzsche desired to lose his way into the unknown to discover all of him, to live all his life again, to live it backwards, that is all that mattered to him.  He decided to stay in the underworld, within his internal labyrinth.  He carried the seed of Ariadne within him, in his electric memory, for memory is alive and it hurts everywhere you touch it, he was pregnant with her, he contained the seed of her, the essence of her deeply inward in his labyrinth ,  and he knew, this was the transfiguration of the alchemist and that he could bring her to life as he travelled into his eternal recurrence to fuse his electric memory into the undying of what has been done, cannot be undone.

“I loved her, she lives within the layers of my skin, and that cannot ever be undone.  My moments with her are wedded into the eternity”

The upward world in all its brutality, pain and indifference had removed her from him, so he carried the seed of her in him,, so that he could give birth to her within the vastness and untamed wilderness of his internal labyrinth.  He had kept her deep within him, so that he would not be separated from her again, he shared his electric memory of her with no one in the upperworld, he had kept her in incubation within him, and now he could feel her presence with him.  With his perfect eyesight, he did not need to look in the distance, she stood in front of him.   He held the orange broken wool gently and tightly in his hand, he held it to his heart for this was the only sacred thing he had of her and from her, he had her presence within him, he had her with him. In her absence she was deeply inward in the underworld with him, deeply so alive and present in him, like no insane or living person had been.

He decided in a second, or was it an eternity, that he would not return, he decided to become Dionysios, eleven years ago,  the husband of Ariadne; told no one of his secret, how could they understand the working of his heart and soul, when they could hardly understand his writing,  how could they understand that the heart will have what it desires, hunts and consumes.

“I hope you do not understand what I mean”

The heart the centre of all life, that is both like a captive bird that seeks to fly out of the rib cage, with every heartbeat, while the finite and infinite suspended tension, destroys and creates a carnivorous sea , consuming all with it, within the sacred liquid of life giving blood, as it stirs the blood, emotions, desires, that burns mortality into immortality, the impossible into the possible,  the absent into a deep felt  presence, the finite into the infinite , that gives birth to the alchemist final transfiguration to breathe life into the unknown 

The human heart resembles the sea, “and there is the sea and who can drink it dry?”

“A mans dream resembles the vastness of the eternal sky, and a man without a dream is a neither alive nor dead”

“The upward and the downward worlds have a similar design, pattern, coiling and consuming and transfiguration of all” 

The labyrinth consists of all the secrets of the human heart

The labyrinth exists in all of us, even if we do not decide to take the orange wool to descent and travel inward to find all our wounds, our ghosts and our monsters, the silent labyrinth that is with us since our birth still breathes and multiplies and lives silently within us.  Nietzsche took this descent, this journey without a map, with a gravity that no compass could follow or direct to an absolute destination such as the North or South, with no beginning or ending, he only held in his hands the orange woven ball of wool  that his beloved Ariadne had offered to him, to keep him safe, but no one is safe, he knew this, he wanted this,  in his descent into the unknown that was of him and from him.

Loving had everything to do with Nietzsche as man and a philosopher, for before he wrote philosophy, he was a man, and after philosophy and his wisdom left him, he was still a man.

Our internal labyrinth is woven from the solitude of our seeking and searching psyche, our soul.   It has walls and floors, chambers and tunnels that have been build over all our life, from our unspoken longing, our unfertilized dream, our wounds, our hidden secrets, that we do not share with the world of acceptance or appearance, or any bed-companions, our labyrinth is the anguish and despair of our psyche our soul, it is the untravelled path  to finding us, and finding our home.

We build this internal labyrinth inch by inch, hour by hour, day by day, month by month, year by year, it is in all  of us, it is alive, it waits for us, it had waited for Nietzsche, and Nietzsche willingly travelled in it to find Ariadne, for he had  out of “duty” abandoned her eleven years ago, it felt like an eternity to him, the minute the ship sailed away from the island.  He knew he was travelling without his heart, he knew when had returned to his mother and sister, to his wandering, to the safe destination of Turin that he would not be returning to her, and when he saw the horse  at Turin being beaten, he knew he that he needed to stop the beating of his innocent and beautiful horse, for his Ariadne also had rescued and healed a wounded horse.   Instead, he wept, yelled for the beating of the horse to stop, fell to the ground, and chose not to return to the world of the upperworld, he was already living with Ariadne in his labyrinth. 

The Turin horse was the catalyst for all the storm within his life to consume him. 

 He learned to live from his electric memory of her for the past eleven years in his inward and chosen sanity, he would not leave without her, the darkness of his labyrinth would surrender to him all that was of him and all that belonged to him, even if it was for one minute, one second.   “How does one count eternity, is not eternity the foundation of one second, or is eternity born and contained within a living breathing second?”

“Do not some butterfly’s live for one day, and yet, I remember their beauty all my life, do I not take this beauty into eternity, is this not eternal beauty?

“What I have seen cannot be unseen”

What I have loved and held cannot be removed from my electric memory, it has happened, it is hooked into the vastness of eternity

I have seen her, heard her, dialogued with her, loved her, no one can remove this from me, not even death, for I will take the moment and eternity that is woven in me, deep within me, I will take it all with me”

Am I awake, or am I dreaming I have been alive, and yet, I am here at this destination, I have consumed all of me for this moment, for this destination.  I cannot tell, I am upside down, outside in, I have learned to walk on my hands, as Plato said, I still remember Plato in my labyrinth, “one needs to walk on their hands to see reality”

Nietzsche knew at this point of descent, at this point of seeing clearly, that the confinement of his written word cannot capture or define, this descent into keeping love alive, into his labyrinth, he could only sense and continue to journey further inward with the faith of a child.    His bad eyesight was luminous in this darkness, he could see clearer then when he lived among others, and in daylight, he could see.

It is all about love, it is all about loving, for nothing else matters, and nothing ever gets created without loving

It is not a romantic love, one with agendas, comfort, and safety,  it is not about wanting to be loved, it is about an all-consuming devoted love to living fully and integrating and unifying with the cycles of past, present, eternity,   within  the process of creating, destroying, creating and transfiguring into a realm and world that is not taught, The creator invents this world ,his world,  through struggle, turmoil, seeking ,destroying and inventing, creating his character, which becomes his fate, such a lover owns himself, it requires all of him to achieve, what we have come to know as the  “dancing philosopher”

All that was taught is lost in the labyrinth, and all that was impossible is  within the labyrinth  and all that was impossible is made possible, this journey cannot be taken unless one is fearless to find a way through and under, to discover at any cost, at any self-sacrifice,  what is real and what is not, and to face themselves without any hidden secrets 

“Ecce Homo, behold the naked Nietzsche”

“Where have all my constructed values gone, the ones that kept me awake at night, where are they now?”

“I am naked here, I can use nothing that I have learned, the only spark, fire that I have, is the torn safety net  of the orange wool thread, of my loving, and the cut orange woollen thread that my Ariadne offered to me, so that I would not lose beauty and truth, my desire to continue to creating from the darkness, for this deep solitude, my defiance to love”

He will not turn around, even his name is unrecognizable to him, names are not important or vital in his labyrinth.

This is the journey that Nietzsche had taken long before he declared himself mad, before he announced to the outward, the upperworld world that he was Dionysios

“I am Dionysios and my wife Ariadne, has brought me here”

Of course , there is a price to this type of quest and journey, as there is a price to being born, the price is that you will be found,  this debt did not prevent Nietzsche from totally and fully loving life in all “her” tensions and turns, like the turbulent sea, like the turbulent heart. 

The new book by Zenovia - Nietzsche's Labyrinth, is coming soon. You can view her existing works here