Nietzsche and Hemingway

“Such mighty music from a single soul!
Ah, Wagner! You were superman until
Religion made your song effeminate.
Who can forgive your cowering ‘Parsifal’.”

The old man’s hands fell on piano keys,
But not into a chord. He saw the book
And touched it gently as he would touch a child
And said, “I, too, wrote good books once.”

A worm of youth was gnawing in his brain,
Was eating up his passion’s time and form,
Was spreading through his vision’s final space
Its poisonous rest, its waste–oblivion.

"Your pretty thought does not describe hard life.
It tells a wish. You have to save yourself.
Redemption is the honesty of courage,
The guts to bet yourself against all odds.

The old man grieved because his net of words
Fell on a page, no longer catching him;
And, knowing only what a man should do,
With wounded beasts he kissed the phallic gun.

The connection here is that Nietzsche imagined a superman, not a superwoman. He saved “effeminate” for his critique on Christianity. Likewise, Hemingway espoused the alpha male POV. The question is–did their philosophies of life contribute to madness on one hand and suicide on the other?

if someone imagines about superman everyday, and not superwoman, that means they are probably gay or effiminate in some way. Gayness was frowned upon in those days, so it might have had something to do with their madness and/or suicide.

Back when i used to watch porn, i preferred lesbian POV porn honestly.

Because one sees himself as the alpha male and philosophizes accordingly does not prove he is gay. Disproportionate, maybe.

Nietzche’s Gay Science IS a testament of some sort into the evolution of prophetic condemning words.
In fact ‘gayness’is a spectacular shift in perception. The trigger is phenomenological, it is a phenomenal shift, due to various pressures, influences, revelations, misconceptions, nuances, frames of reference, frames of mind, attributions, strengths by chance occurances, revolutions, reversion so of underlying motives, effects of appropriate play acting, with proper care to infuse with subliminal affect. Changes of deliberate invocation of a hierarchy of underlying postulates’ reset withe coordination of mythological artifacts. When the young can no longer dream, the old will love them for their abandonment. Finally the aesthetic dispersion of
ideal elements within a pre-existing unity, foe ever re-ignited, and taken ‘as-is’, formless sly re-constituted in a relative field of accaliration.

The above implied connection is as tenuous as it is facetitious. However, any two different meanings can be contrasted, as contrast is, the key element of artistic expression. Can a poem be contrasted with an aphorism? Of course, any thing can be related.

The derivation of ‘gay’ goes back to the sixteenth 1600 hundreds with Chaucer saying, ’ in our bed he was so…and gay. This derivation was sustained in the late 1800’s, where Nietzche was well aware of this usage, as something showy, promiscuous, (referring to brothels and baths). gay science was published around the 1890’s.

Kissing a phallic gun does, though, however.

Not necessarily. It may just be an idealizing of manhood.

Not necessarily. It may just be an idealizing of manhood. The worm of youth could be seen as effects of syphilis or as a product of the deification of manhood. Neither Nietzsche nor Hemingway was gay in our modern sense of the word. Guns are phallic symbols. To kiss one may be merely to embrace its power. Rockets are also phallic symbols.

Irr, both Nietzche and Hemmingway have been studied post humeously ex post facto. The consensus is that they were latent homosexuals.
Which was a pretty bad thing back then. The guy who broke the Nazi code back in WW2, was gay, and committed suicide on account. Back then, it was a matter of life and death, if such things were revealed.
Even today, post 'don’t ask don’t tell, there are reservations. Of course, it is a mistake to read into poetry to ascertain meaning, such attempt would defeat the figurative intent of that genre. It would seem to defeat it’s purpose.

Jesus, can someone seriously take N to be gay? That is really silly.

Overt masculinity does not mean gay ness. In these times it may seem to you like that because you are being told.

But try to talk to real gays. Try to have experience and thoughts.

not a bad poem by the way.

Gays do not typically love violence. They do not typically get crazy when a woman rejects them. They never SOUND masculine. They do not understand the masculine heart well enough to seduce man to his true love; war. Women do understand in their way. Hetero Man - Hetero Woman - Gay Man - Lesbian. That is how identification powers seem to be separated.

(Yes , this is based on social experience with each group. And yes it is profiling and pointless. It is just that to think N was gay one must have either not read N or never talked to a gay person. Hemingway gay??? That sounds absurd but Ill have to look into it.)

Jakob,
Thanks for your insights into this poem. I’ve read much N. & H. The poem was not intended to show that either was gay. But I can see how it was interpreted in that way from my using “worm of youth” and “phallic gun” to symbolize a certain type of masculinity. Unfortunately for us poets who read their ideas into things, Freud once said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” That N and H were “latent homosexuals” is a Freudian interpretation of the poem.
N.'s worm of youth was penis thinking. He attended a brothel. He caught syphilis (SIC). H’s phallic gun was his final surrender to the violence of his masculinity. Only a cursory reading of the poem and of writings of N. and H. would suggest that they were latent homosexuals.

See Will Durant’s “The Story of Philosophy” for a good view of Nietzsche’s last days.

duplicate

the aversion to violence is directly related to how sensitive one is. it has not much to do with ones sexual orientation, for example, you could be some effiminate peace love hippie who is sexually attracted to women because of how fairy-like they are.

He did once say something along the lines of reabsorbtion of semen into the blood was the best form of nourishment. Do you think he meant we should go easy on the whackin’ or…or, oh god it’s to horrible to think about.