Reprinted from the novel "The Unbearable Lightness of Being."
www.jimwcoleman.com adopts the principles as part of a personal
biography, but certainly does not embrace the missives of Hitler,
or other historical figures, quoted herein:
The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often
perplexed other philosphers with it: to think that everything recurs as we
once experience it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinimum! What
does this mad myth signify?
Putting it negatively, the myth of eternal return states that
a life which disappears once and for all, which does not return,
is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it
was horrible, beautiful or sublime, its horror, subliminality,
and beauty mean nothing. We need take no more note of it than of
a war between two African kingdoms in the fourteenth century, a
war that altered nothing in the destiny of the world, even if a
hundred thousand blacks perished in excruciating torment.
Will the war between two African kingdoms in the fourteenth century
itself be altered if it recurs again and again, in eternal return?
It will: it will become a solid mass, permanently protuberant, its
insanity irreparable.
If the French Revolution were to recur eternally, French historians
would be less proud of Robespierre. But because they deal with something that
will not return, the bloody years of the Revolution have turned into mere
words, theories, and discussions, have become lighter than feathers, frightening
no one. There is an infinite difference between a Robespierre who occurs
only once in history and a Robespierre who eternally returns, chopping
off French heads.
Let us therefore agree that the idea of eternal return implies a perspective
from which things appear other than as we know them; they appear without the mitigating
circumstance of their migratory nature. This mitigating circumstance prevents
us from coming to a verdict. For how can we condemn something that is ephemeral, in transit?
In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia,
even the guillotine.
Not long ago, I caught myself experiencing a most incredible sensation. Leafing through a booklet on Hitler, I was touched by some of his portraits: they reminded me of my childhood. I grew up during the war; several members of my family perished in Hitler's concentration camps; but what were their deaths compared with a lost period in my life, a period that would never return?
This reconciliation with Hitler reveals the profound moral perversity of a world that rest essentially on the nonexistence of return, for in this world everything is pardoned in advance and therefore everything is cynically permitted.
If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity
as Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross. It is a terrifying prospect. In the world of eternal return
the weight of unbearable responsiblity lies heavy on every move we make. That is why Nietzsche called the idea of
eternal return the heaviest of burdens (das schwerste Gewicht.)
If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand
out against it in all their splendid lightness.
But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?
The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground.
But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighted down by the man's
body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most
intense fulfillment.
The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.
