Staring at the Truth
In Irvin Yalom's inventive novel,
When Nietzsche Wept,
the personality of the fictional
Nietzsche is clear in this excerpt from his letter to a friend: "Thank you for
finding me the name of this Dr. Breuer – he is a great curiosity – a thinking,
scientific,
physician. Is that not remarkable? He is willing to tell me what he knows about my illness
and – even more remarkable – what he does
not know! ... The project
intrigues me – a forum for my ideas, a vessel to fill when I am ripe and overflowing, an
opportunity – indeed, a laboratory, to test ideas on an individual specimen before
positing them for the species... "
"Nietzche's
ability to stare unflinchingly at the truth, to break illusion," wrote Yalom, "was remarkable. 'One must pay dearly for
immortality,' he said. 'One has to die several times while still alive.'" In an
imagined conversation between Nietzsche and Dr. Breuer, Yalom brings this quality alive:
Breuer, curious about Nietzsche's message, chose, for once, not
to object to his prophet voice.
"I do not teach, Josef, that one should 'bear' death, or
'come to terms' with it. That ways lies life-betrayal! Here is my lesson to you:
Die
at the right time!"
"Die at the right time!" The phrase jolted Breuer.
The pleasant afternoon stroll had turned deadly serious.
"Die at the right time? What
do you mean? Please, Friedrich, I can't stand it, as I tell you again and again, when you
say something important in such an enigmatic way. Why do you do that?"
"You pose two questions. Which shall I answer?"
"Today, tell me about dying at the right time."
"Live when you live! Death loses its terror if one dies
when one has consummated one's life! If one does not live in the right time, then one can
never die at the right time."
"What does
that mean?" Breuer asked again,
feeling ever more frustrated.
"Ask yourself, Josef:
Have you consummated your life?"
"You answer questions with questions, Friedrich!"
"You ask questions to which you know the answer,"
Nietzsche countered.
"If I knew the answer, why would I ask?"
"To avoid knowing your own answer."
From "The Teaching Novel," Chapter 9 in
The Yalom Reader, by Irvin D. Yalom, M.D., pp. 373-412.
