FRAGMENTS (6): VIII - It's My Own Invention

“The tune's my own invention,” claims the White Knight. Alice, however, recognizes the tune: “But the tune isn't his own invention.” I Give Thee All, I Can No More.

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass.

Takuji Mamiya, too, has his own invention. But how much of it is truly his own?

FRAGMENTOS (6): VIII - It's My Own Invention

«La melodía es invención mía», afirma el Caballero Blanco. Alicia, sin embargo, reconoce la melodía: «Pero la melodía no es invención suya». I Give Thee All, I Can No More.

Lewis Carroll, A través del espejo.

Takuji Mamiya también tiene, presuntamente, su propia invención. Pero ¿hasta qué punto es propia?

FRAGMENTS (5): ARYAN CHRIST

“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

 
“This is a technique that was frequently used by my old friend, Adolf Hitler.”
Takuji Mamiya, Subahibi; It's my Own Invention

FRAGMENTOS (5): CRISTO ARIO

«La historia se repite dos veces, primero como tragedia y después como farsa.»
Karl Marx, El 18 de brumario de Luis Bonaparte

«Esta es una técnica que usaba a menudo mi viejo amigo, Adolf Hitler.»
Takuji Mamiya, Subahibi; It's my Own Invention

FRAGMENTS (4): PHYSIS UNVERBORGENHEIT

Ἡ φύσις ἤδη καθ’ αὑτὴν ἐστὶν ἀλήθεια· κρύπτεσθαι γὰρ φιλεῖ.

“The physis is already aletheia in itself, because it loves to conceal itself.”

Cf. Heraclitus, fr. B123: φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ.

ἀ-λήθεια: privative a- + λήθη, “forgetfulness,” “concealment”: non-concealment / unconcealment.

φύσις is related to φύειν (phýein), “to grow,” “to spring forth,” “to emerge,” “to come into presence”: the unfolding of that which arises and appears of itself.

Translation mine.

FRAGMENTOS (4): PHYSIS UNVERBORGENHEIT

Ἡ φύσις ἤδη καθ’ αὑτὴν ἐστὶν ἀλήθεια· κρύπτεσθαι γὰρ φιλεῖ.

«La physis es ya en sí misma aletheia, porque gusta de ocultarse.»

Cf. Heraclitus, fr. B123: φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ.

ἀ-λήθεια: a- privativa + λήθη, «olvido», «ocultamiento»: no-ocultamiento / des-ocultamiento.

φύσις está relacionada con φύειν (phýein), «brotar», «surgir», «emerger», «venir a presencia»: el desplegarse de aquello que surge y aparece por sí mismo.

FRAGMENTS (3): BROKEN MIRROR

 

“The subject does not belong to the world, but is a limit of the world.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 5.632

FRAGMENTS (2): DIONYSIAN ECSTASY

“Now, in the gospel of universal harmony, each person feels not only united, reconciled, fused with his neighbor, but one with him, as though the veil of Maya had been torn apart and now merely fluttered, in tatters, before the mysterious Primordial One. Singing and dancing, the human being manifests himself as a member of a higher community: he has unlearned how to walk and speak and is on the way to taking flight through the air as he dances. Through his gestures speaks the magical transformation. Just as now the animals speak and the earth yields milk and honey, something supernatural resounds within him as well: he feels himself to be a god, he himself now walks as ecstatically and uprightly as, in dreams, he saw the gods walk. The human being is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art: to the supreme, blissful delight of the Primordial One, the artistic power of all of nature reveals itself here amid the tremors of intoxication.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music

Translation mine.

FRAGMENTS (1): ARTIST-GOD/STRONG GOD/WEAK GOD

 

“Only as an aesthetic phenomenon is the existence of the world justified. Indeed, behind all becoming one recognizes nothing but an artistic sense and an artistic over-sense, a ‘god,’ if one wishes, but certainly only an entirely amoral and unscrupulous artist-god, who, in building as in destroying, in good as in evil, desires only to become conscious of his pleasure and sovereignty, identical in both; an artist-god who, creating worlds, frees himself from the necessity implied in fullness and over-fullness, from the suffering of the antitheses accumulated within him. The world, in each instant, the attained redemption of god, as the eternally changing, eternally new vision of the most suffering, most antithetical, most contradictory being, which knows how to redeem itself only in appearance: this entire artist-metaphysics may be called arbitrary, idle, phantasmagorical; what is essential in it is that it already betrays a spirit that will one day, despite all dangers, defend itself against the moral interpretation and significance of existence.”

“Let these serious men learn from this that I am convinced that art is the supreme task and the properly metaphysical activity of this life [...]”

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music

Translation mine.

FRAGMENTOS (3): ESPEJO ROTO

«El sujeto no pertenece al mundo, sino que es un límite del mundo.»

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus, 5.632

FRAGMENTOS (2): EXTÁSIS DIONISÍACO

«Ahora, en el evangelio de la armonía universal, cada uno se siente no sólo reunido, reconciliado, fundido con su prójimo, sino uno con él, cual si el velo de Maya estuviese desgarrado y ahora sólo ondease de un lado para otro, en jirones, ante lo misterioso Uno primordial. Cantando y bailando manifiéstase el ser humano como miembro de una comunidad superior: ha desaprendido a andar y a hablar y está en camino de echar a volar por los aires bailando. Por sus gestos habla la transformación mágica. Al igual que ahora los animales hablan y la tierra da leche y miel, también en él resuena algo sobrenatural: se siente dios, él mismo camina ahora tan estático y erguido como en sueños veía caminar a los dioses. El ser humano no es ya un artista, se ha convertido en una obra de arte: para suprema satisfacción deleitable de lo Uno primordial, la potencia artística de la naturaleza entera se revela aquí bajo los estremecimientos de la embriaguez.»

Friedrich Nietzsche, El nacimiento de la tragedia en el espíritu de la música

FRAGMENTOS (1): DIOS ARTISTA/DIOS FUERTE/DIOS DÉBIL

«Sólo como fenómeno estético está justificada la existencia del mundo. De hecho, no se reconoce, detrás de todo acontecer, más que un sentido y un ultra-sentido de artista, un «dios», si se quiere, pero, desde luego, tan sólo un dios-artista completamente amoral y desprovisto de escrúpulos, que tanto en el construir como en el destruir, en el bien como en el mal, lo que quiere es darse cuenta de su placer y su soberanía idénticos, un dios-artista que, creando mundos, se desembaraza de la necesidad implicada en la plenitud y la sobreplenitud, del sufrimiento de las antítesis en él acumuladas. El mundo, en cada instante la alcanzada redención de dios, en cuanto es la visión eternamente cambiante, eternamente nueva del ser más sufriente, más antitético, más contradictorio, que únicamente en la apariencia sabe redimirse: a toda esta metafísica de artista se la puede denominar arbitraria, ociosa, fantasmagórica, lo esencial en esto está en que ella delata ya un espíritu que alguna vez, pese a todos los peligros, se defenderá contra la interpretación y el significado morales de la existencia.»

«A estos hombres serios sírvales para enseñarles que yo estoy convencido de que el arte es la tarea suprema y la actividad propiamente metafísica de esta vida [...]»

Friedrich Nietzsche, El nacimiento de la tragedia en el espíritu de la música

ABOUT MY SUBAHIBI ARTICLES: PRESENTATION

 

With this text, I would like to introduce my project of interpretive criticism devoted to Subahibi, explaining its focus and purpose, conceived as a series of philosophical, essayistic, and not strictly hermeneutical articles. Its starting point can be found in The Aesthetic Justification of the World: Nietzsche and Subahibi, a text which, although it originally arose as a relatively delimited reflection on Nietzsche, ultimately encouraged me to continue writing and publishing my perspective.

The series does not aspire so much to offer a definitive interpretation of Subahibi as to specialize in what I consider distinctive about the work in contrast to the readings that have most frequently been established around it.

This also entails a certain desire for exhaustiveness. Not in the sense of systematically commenting on every scene or exhausting the work through a meticulous exegesis, but rather in attempting, throughout the series, to accommodate as many elements as possible that prove necessary for understanding my overall perspective on Subahibi. Some articles may begin from a specific philosophical problem; others, from a particular aesthetic structure, a figure, a recurring motif, or a relationship with another tradition. Their unity will therefore not depend on a single method or on a strictly thematic progression, but on their belonging to the same attempt at understanding. In this sense, the project will be deliberately non-hermeneutical in a precise sense.

It is important to point out from the outset a matter concerning Sakurano. Subahibi and Sakurano constitute, for me, a totality whose ultimate understanding cannot be established while ignoring the relationship between the two works. It would therefore be artificial to pretend that such a relationship does not exist. Even so, this project does not intend to address Sakurano. Whenever it proves necessary to draw upon it, this will be solely in order to illuminate some aspect of Subahibi, and such references may inevitably reveal certain elements of the second work. Its proper study is reserved for a later project, on a considerably larger scale, which will require the time and dedication that I cannot currently devote to it.

For this reason, what is presented here should be understood as an exploration of the first piece of that totality: an attempt to remain within Subahibi, to traverse it from different angles, and to make explicit a reading that could hardly be contained within a single essay. The first text in this series, The Aesthetic Justification of the World: Nietzsche and Subahibi, thus constitutes its starting point, but not its conclusion.