Carlyle through Nietzsche: Reading "Sartor Resartus" Author(s): Jeremy Tambling Reviewed work(s): Source: The Modern Language

Review, Vol. 102, No. 2 (Apr., 2007), pp. 326-340 Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20467281 . Accessed: 21/11/2011 04:52
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CARLYLE READING

THROUGH

NIETZSCHE:

SARTOR RESARTUS

I was reading the lifeof Thomas Carlyle, thatunwitting, involuntary farce, thatheroic moral interpretation of dyspeptic conditions.-Carlyle, a man of strong words and attitudes, a rhetor out of need, constantly provoked by the longing for a strong faith and the feeling of being incapable of it (-in which he is a typical Romantic!) The longing for a strong faith is no proof of a strong faith, rather the opposite. If you have faith, then you can allow yourself the fine luxury of scepticism: you are secure enough, firmenough, fetteredenough for it.Carlyle anaesthetizes something in himself by the fortissimo of his admiration forpeople with a strong faith,and by his rage against those with himself who are less naive: he needs noise. A constant and passionate dishonesty that is his proprium, it iswhat makes and keeps him interesting.Of course in England he is admired precisely for his honesty [. . .]Now that is English-and considering that the English are the nation of complete cant-even fair enough, and not merely understandable. Basically Carlyle is an English atheist seeking to be honoured for not being so.' It is fascinating to see Carlyle, author of the six volumes of the History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great (I 858-65), being commented name since he was born on his on by Nietzsche, who was given Friedrich's calls it in Ecce Homo).2 For the name-day ('this perfect day', as Nietzsche

definedas 'theessence of innumerable first writer,history, biographies', is the definitive subject, since 'whatis allKnowledge [. . .]but recorded Experience,
and a product of History?'3 He is confronted by the philosophy which discusses the uses, but also stresses the disadvantages, of history for life, and which, for the present, writes: 'I rejecting the idea of past knowledge as commanding teach to you theOverhuman. The human is something that shall be overcome

[.. .]All thingsso far have createdsomething beyond themselves.'4 Nietzsche's

paraphraseofNietzsche, Carlyle's proprium, or his propriety, what was proper self' (p. 7), an unconscious self-deception. While Nietzsche talks ofEngland and
1 Nietzsche, Press, Twilight of the Idols, trans, by Duncan ' Large (Oxford: Oxford University is quoted by J. Hillis Miller, inSartor Resartus', Truth" 1998), p. 49. The passage "Hieroglyphical in Victorian Perspectives, ed. by John Clubbe and Jerome Meckier (London: Macmillan, 1989), assumes Nietzsche was reading a German translation of James Hurrell pp. 1-20 (p. 7); Miller one Froude's two-volume Life of Carlyle and in German in year (1882 1884), published 1887, before Twilight of the Idols. His essay draws out Nietzsche's debt to Emerson, much influenced, of the deconstructive of language made it inevitable course, by Carlyle. For Hillis Miller, properties that Carlyle's writing should be unable to express a fundamental honesty: the point is interesting, but not the argument adopted here. 2 trans, by R. J.Hollingdale Ecce Homo, Nietzsche, 1992), p. 7. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 3 in A Carlyle Reader: 'On History' Selections from theWritings Carlyle, (1830), of Thomas ed. by G. B. Tennyson Press, 1984), pp. 57, 56. Carlyle, (Cambridge: Cambridge University 4 trans, by Graham Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Parkes Nietzsche, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 11. Modern Language Review, I02 (2007), 326-40 ? Modern Humanities Research Association 2007

'overhuman' breaks the confines of what has been defined as human thus far, including what has been defined as worthy of hero-worship, and in that sense it is the antithesis of any of the right-wing appropriations that have been made of him: as are his comments on Carlyle. toHillis Miller's We should look at the detail of these comments. According to him, was 'the impropriety of a constant passionate dishonesty against him

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'cant',Froude,Carlyle's biographer, commentson Carlyle's hatredof 'cant' own illusions, and reducingthemto the wretchedestofpossible conditions,that of being insincerely sincere'.'Yet the impossibility of gettingout of 'illusions'
is at the heart of what makes Carlyle 'interesting', as Nietzsche finds him to be. Later in Twilight of the Idols (Ix. 44), he calls him a 'great man'; while in Ecce Homo he distinguishes the idea of the Ubermensch from 'the "hero cult" of that again self-deception at work, even if unconscious, but the word also implies that not only Carlyle's choice of great men or heroes, but the idea of heroes is a 'organised hypocrisy, the art ofmaking things seem what they were not; and art [. . .] carrying them beyond the stage of conscious falsehood into a belief in their

great and involuntary Carlyle' (p. 41).6 'Counterfeiter' suggests counterfeiter

form of counterfeiting, heroes producing a dud readingof history, comprising who are counterfeits. Nietzsche's commenton Carlyle pathologizeshim, in seeinghim as living in 'dyspepticconditions'which are associatedwith his repressionand self division.7 Historically, thedyspepsia inCarlyle seems to have settled in from I8I8 onwards.Nietzsche says nothingabout the relationbetween such self division and thequestion of Carlyle and his relationshipto sexuality, which, however speculative the com material, can hardlybe ignoredby a latter-day mentator,butwhich would certainly not have lessenedCarlyle's self-divided For Nietzsche, dyspepsia relates to the impossibility state.8 of forgetting the
past, being held by its past constructions,

Nietzsche isnot something aboutwithin that modernity. Forgettingin happens, it is something we activelydo, and thefunction of 'activeforgetfulness'

a condition

that he sees as brought

resembles thatof a concierge preserving mental order, calm, and decorum. On thisbasis, what extent there could be no happiness, no serenity, one may appreciate immediately to no hope, no pride, no presentwithout forgetfulness.The man inwhom this inhibiting apparatus is damaged and out of order may be compared to a dyspectic (and not only is never 'through'with anything.9 compared)-he On

the insouciance(theserenity, thehope, thepride) to livein thepresent.Twilight

that his rhetoric exhibits a desire for a great man, and for
5

this reading, Carlyle

ismarked

by obsession

about the past, and cannot find

of the Idols argues

2 vols (London: Thomas Carlyle: A History J. A. Froude, of his Life in London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1891), 11, 18. 6 G. B. Tennyson, The Genesis, Structure and Style of Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Called Resartus: First Major Work (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), p. 317, simplifies when he says that 'Nietzsche himself felt only contempt for Carlyle's search for faith, and dispensed with him as an "atheist who makes it a point of honor not to be so".' 7 see Simon Heffer, Moral On Carlyle's continual dyspepsia, and his hypochondria, Desperado: A Life of Thomas Carlyle and Nicolson, 54-55. For a (London: Weidenfeld 1995), pp. 46-47, review of Heffer and a comparison with Fred Kaplan, Thomas Carlyle: A Biography (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University review in Victorian Studies, 40 (1997), Press, 1983), see Mark Cumming's 661-63. 8 The absence of the sexual in Carlyle's marriage (see Heffer, pp. 88-90) was discussed by J.A. for Libraries with Carlyle Froude, My Relations Press, (1903; repr. Freeport, NY: Books 1971): he said 'that their marriage was not a real marriage, and was only companionship' (p. 4); and the to on book discusses Geraldine her relations with JaneWelsh Froude, based Jewsbury's comments Carlyle (pp. 20-23). 9 On the Genealogy Second Nietzsche, ofMorals, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 39. Essay, Section 1, trans, by Douglas Smith

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Nietzsche through

faith, both things of the past, and acts as a drug to keep him from the awareness that such a thing cannot exist in the present, that it can only be constitutive in of the counterfeit; that it is nihilistic to demand it. Further, the knowledge Carlyle at some level of the futility of what he writes and of the counterfeiting power of his rhetoric causes him to be in a state of anger against others, those less 'naive' who do not require the illusions that he creates through his writing; in such a text this would account, partially, for the resentment of democracy as 'Shooting Niagara: And After?' (I867). The greatness that Carlyle values

becomes inseparablefromsimple-mindedness;it is a desire forsomething un

as when, in the essay 'Characteristics' questioned and unquestioning, (I83 I), he says that 'the healthy Understanding is not the Logical, argumentative, but is not to prove and find reasons, the Intuitive; for the end of Understanding but to know and believe'.'0 The language implies, in its resistance to doubt,

but in Nietzsche's argumenttrue 'greatness', submissionand simplecertainty;

inseparable from an accompanying scepticism, is not at all simple. Carlyle, de siring greatness, is a split subject, and that shows in his anger. He admires the single-minded, but he cannot grapple with greatness, because greatness is not

single-minded.

While this paper will explore the implications of Carlyle's dyspepsia through on a reading of Sartor Resartus, his most interesting work, to read Nietzsche Carlyle will also have to note that what he writes is symptomatic in that itwas produced by the nineteenth-century discourse he did somuch to create, as with Dickens, who met him in i840, wanted him present in I844 when he read The dedicated Hard Times Revolution (1837), in also to read Dickens." to be in a pathological to him, and spoke of the Preface to A Tale must be noted And it state, as the following

used part ofLatter-Day Pamphletsin David Copperfield, Chimes tohis friends,

his 'wonderful book', The French of Two Cities. To read Carlyle is that Carlyle considered his society passage suggests:

thewhole Life of Society must now be carried on by drugs: doctor after doctor appears with his nostrum, of Cooperative Societies, Universal Suffrage, Cottage-and-Cow sys tems,Repression of Population, Vote by Ballot. To such height has the dyspepsia of Society reached; as indeed the constant grinding internal pain, or from time to time the mad spasmodic throes, of all Society do otherwise toomournfully indicate. ('Charac teristics', p. 83) Carlyle's persistent dyspepsia must be read as being not a singular or personal the condition of moder state, but general, as part of the condition of England: nity, to follow Nietzsche. This would modify the view of Rosemary Ashton,
10 inA Carlyle Reader, ed. by Tennyson, p. 71. Further references in 'Characteristics', Carlyle, the text. 11 in my Dickens, Violence I discuss The French Revolution in relation to A Tale of Two Cities State: Dreams and the Modern of the Scaffold (London: Macmillan, 1995), pp. 129-54, ana< Car in 'Carlyle in Prison: Reading in relation to Latter-Day Pamphlets Latter-Day lyle and Dickens on Chapter see also my comments 26 (1998), 311?34; Dickens Studies Annual, 58 of Pamphlets', inmy edition for Penguin David (Harmondsworth: 2004). See also William Penguin, Copperfield The Question of Influence (London: Centenary Press, 1972), pp. 41?60; Oddie, Dickens and Carlyle: of Georgia and Dickens Michael Press, (Athens: University 1972), pp. 78-99; Goldberg, Carlyle on and Dickens', Further Thoughts 'Stern Hebrews Who and George H. Ford, Carlyle Laugh: New Essays, ed. by K. J. Fielding and Rodger L. Tarr in Carlyle Past and Present: A Collection of (London: Vision, 1976), pp. 112-26.

JEREMY when she says that Carlyle's

TAMBLING smells as metaphors

329 or

names-Teufelsdrockhmeans "devil's dung", thepopularname forasafoetida,

'frequent use of unpleasant

his striking way of giving a strong-smelling herb used as an emetic-represents vent in his social and political criticism to a disgust which, as he well knew, had its roots in his unfortunate physical condition'.12 It is perhaps not possible to say whether Carlyle's dyspepsia was rooted in social causes, a dyspepsia at work there, or whether its physical presence caused a dyspeptic reading of so ciety, or whether the distinction between the two forms of dyspepsia cannot be is true, how Carlyle pathologizes maintained. Whatever society turns out to be notes a similar problem: that 'Signs of the true of himself. Raymond Williams Times' comments on 'veneration for the physically strongest' and on how 'we worship and follow after power', yet that this becomes true of Carlyle, who has is only following Nietzsche in finding in noted it in others, so thatWilliams

as power'.'3 Carlyle 'impotence projecting itself

from Sartor Resartus ['The Tailor Patched'] appeared in Fraser's Magazine, in I836 and in Britain November I833 toAugust I834, as a book inAmerica in I838. It gives, in fragmented form, the opinions on clothes of the ima of thought put together and commented on by the editor. Teufelsdrockh's

Weissnichtwo [Know-not-where], ginedProfessor Teufelsdrockhof fragments

work on clothes concludes that 'whatever sensiblyexists, whatever represents

Spirit to Spirit, is properly a Clothing, a suit of Raiment, put on for a season, in this one pregnant subject of CLOTHES, and to be laid off. Thus rightly understood, is included all that men have thought, dreamed, done, and been: the whole external Universe and what it holds is but Clothing, and the essence

of all Science lies in thePHILOSOPHY

OF CLOTHES'.'4

The argument

has reached this conclusion by saying that 'all visible things are emblems' while all language is the 'Flesh-Garment, the Body, of thought' (pp. 56-57), so that to follow Carlyle's thought would be to find that there was nothing character to it, nothing that was not existing that had not a supplementary the expression of something that also existed in supplementary form. This argument is accompanied by the editor's excerpts from the autobiography of Teufelsdr6ckh, who 'belongs to thatmystery, aMan' (p. 92). As G. B. Tennyson writes, thework 'is studded with Carlyle's attempts at a definition ofman'.'5 In this,Carlyle is not different from theUtilitarians whom he most attacks through Sartor Resartus, even if theUtilitarian attempt to form a science ofman he finds
12 (London: Pimlico, 2003), Rosemary Ashton, Thomas and Jane Carlyle: Portrait of aMarriage p. 36. 13 Culture and Society 1780-1850 Raymond Williams, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963), p. 90, ed. by Tennyson, p. 50. (1829) from A Carlyle Reader, quoting 'Signs of the Times' 14 and Peter Sabor (Oxford: Oxford University Sartor Resartus, ed. by Kerry McSweeney Press, are given in the text. See also this edition for bibliography iCCC)* PP- 57-58; further page-references of writings on Sartor Resartus. Use has also been made of the edition by Mark Engel and Rodger L. Tarr of California Press, 2000), given as 'Tarr' plus page reference. In (Berkeley: University see Gerry H. Brookes, The Rhetorical Work of Carlyle's addition to Tennyson, 'Sartor Resartus' of California Press, 1972). (Berkeley: University 15 on pp. 320-22. This Sartor Called Resartus, fits with the p. 320; see examples Tennyson, on Bentham a means work of Foucault inDiscipline and Punish, finding the Panopticon by which a science of man is developed: I refer tomy Dickens, Violence and the Modern 1, for State, Chapter as complicit with this is to see the power of a discourse which this. To read Carlyle's Romanticism is intent on defining 'man'.

330

Carlyle through Nietzsche

to mechanical, reductive. The third Book returns Teufelsdrockh'sopinions,and

it is the section where it is easiest to find Carlyle looking for a 'strong faith' and a great man. There is discussion of those who are exceptional: George Fox, who 'stands on the adamantine basis of his Manhood, casting aside all props and shoars' (p. i6o); and of the symbol as another name for clothes: 'the Universe is but one vast Symbol of God; nay, if thou wilt have it,what isman himself but a Symbol of God?' (p. i66). The editor concludes with Teufelsdrockh as 'one of those who consider Society [. . .] to be as good as extinct' (p. 176), needing a

new birth, likea Phoenix. Chapter 7, 'Organic Filaments', discusses 'Mankind'

as in 'living movement' and finding 'Hero-Worship' obligatory: 'So cunningly hath Nature ordered it, thatwhatsoever man ought to obey, he cannot but obey'

(p. I90). The following chapter, on 'NaturalSupernaturalism', indicates what

daughter, 'Louisa, neverwonder!'"6 der,adds:

'Natural Supernaturalism',

it must affirm, chief among these being the power of 'wonder', which is dimmed inHard Times telling his by Custom: the emphasis leads intoMr Gradgrind thinking of the power of 'custom' to blunt won

still the new question comes upon us: What isMadness, what are Nerves? Ever, as remain a mysterious-terrific, altogether infernal boiling up of before, does Madness theNether Chaotic Deep, through this fair-painted Vision of Creation, which swims thereon, which we name the Real. Was Luther's Picture of the Devil less a Reality, whether itwere formedwithin the bodily eye, or without it? In every thewisest Soul, lies a whole world of internalMadness, an authentic Demon-Empire, out of which, indeed, his world ofwisdom has been creatively put together,and now rests there, as on its dark foundations does a habitable floweryEarth-rind. (pp. I96-97) in The French Revolution, where The passage reappears as an autocitation includes clothes-a Carlyle calls 'Habit'-which protection, not a prevention, against wonder. There is a complete reversal of the direction of the argument, as if Carlyle was on both sides at once, willing change and yet resisting it, anaesthetizing himself against it, as Nietzsche would say: Rash enthusiast ofChange, beware! Hast thouwell considered all that Habit does in this lifeof ours; how all Knowledge and all Practice hang wondrous over infiniteabysses of theUnknown, Impracticable; and our whole being is an infiniteabyss, overarched by Habit, as by a thin earth-rind, laboriously built together? But if 'everyman', as it has been written, 'holds confined within him a mad-man', what must every Society do? [... .] 'Without such Earth-rind of habit', continues our Author, 'call it system of Habits, in a word, fixed ways of acting and of believing, Society would not exist at all. [. . .] [L]et but, by ill chance, in such ever-enduring struggle,-your 'thinEarth-rind' be once broken!The fountains of the great deep boil forth; fire fountains, enveloping, engulfing. Your 'Earth-rind' is shattered, swallowed world there is a waste wild-weltering chaos;-which has up; instead of a green flowery begun, with tumult and struggle, tomake itself into a world.'7 There is nothing to the human; only an abyss. Or, better, there is nothing but the power of madness, which has the capacity to blast what seems 'Real'
16 Charles Dickens, Hard Times, ed. by Paul Schlicke P- 64. 17 ed. by K. J.Fielding Carlyle, The French Revolution, Oxford University Press, 1989), 1,40. (Oxford: Oxford and David University 2 vols Press, 1989),

Sorensen,

in 1 (Oxford:

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out of existence, and that is the motor-force within history.'8 Such a power is of Conscious outside the control of the human: 'such a singular Somnambulism, and Unconscious, of Voluntary and Involuntary, is this life of man' (I, 4I0). Both passages which have been quoted from The French Revolution are behind 'There seems to be nothing there but languid and monotonous smoke. Yet when the night comes, Fire bursts out, father."9 Carlyle's 'custom' or 'habit'

Louisa Gradgrind's senseof the when she tells Coketown chimneys, her father: more specific:the has become inDickens something monotony ofCoketown.

Louisa's awareness of energies beneath the surface ready to burst out aligns her with what the editor calls Teufelsdr6ckh's 'deep Sansculottism' (p. i6o; see also pp. 13, 46, 49, 5 i,i8i), a rebelliousness which Carlyle's text simultaneously admires and dreads. inside but which Carlyle's image of energies which cannot be contained explode outwards contrasts with his other sense of a society clogged by dyspep sia, but the phrase 'swallowed up' in the quotation from The French Revolution shows an alternative fear,which is expanded in the statement 'the lowest, least blessed fact one knows of, on which necessitous mortals have ever based them That I can devour Thee' selves, seems to be the primitive one of Cannibalism: (French Revolution, I, 57). There is nothing there except the abyss, and yet, in contradiction, there is a fear of being devoured, which can be traced throughout Sartor Resartus.20' Man' is inherently nothing, but at the same time he is in dan In the chapter 'Getting under Way' ger of being consumed. the editor thinks that Teufelsdrockh suffers from an 'afflictive derangement of head', since he

reflects that:

Saturn, or Chronos, orwhat we call TIME, devours all his Children: only by incessant Working, may you (for some threescore and ten years) escape him; and you too, he devours at last. (p. 99) Yet this pessimism is confronted by another attitude that discovers from the philosophy of clothes: 'Thus is the Law of Progress secured, and in Clothes, as in all other external things whatsoever, no fashion will continue' (p. 37). The 'Progress' that means that time's improvements can never be negated is also destruction, Time as Saturn; again the text seems to put Carlyle on both sides of the argument at once. And that latter image is not isolated: it returns at the in The French Revolution, commenting end of the chapter 'The Twenty-Two' on the end of the Girondins. Carlyle concludes with a quotation from their executed leader, P. V. Vergniaud: 'The Revolution, like Saturn, is devouring its own children' (II, 329). Yet here there is something strange, which inclines to identify the Revolution not with the children, which would be expected (in relation to the ancien regime), but with the oppressive patriarchal force, as though the revolutionary children were also the force of Saturn, the old, melancholic god. To read the image in a way that gave it sense would mean that the Revolution must be understood, not as brought into existence in amoment
18 See on these passages John D. Rosenberg, Carlyle and theBurden of (Oxford: Oxford History Press, 1985), pp. 13-14. University 19 Hard Times, ed. by Schlicke, p. 132. 20 Dickens, On this see Lee Sterrenberg, of Revolution', and the Iconography Victorian 'Psychoanalysis 19 (1975), 241-64. Studies,

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Nietzsche Carlyle through

of time, but as always there, as identifiable with the forces of oppression that are normally thought to bring it on. Revolution and its opposite are to be identified, is seen as a climax in Carlyle, like devouring and progression. The Revolution of cannibalism, no sort so 'detestable' (II, 376), and the fear is that it is not that comes from yet over, and that it appears as the triumph of the madness 'O mad Sansculottism, hast thou risen, in thymad darkness, in thy soot and

below, as in the following passage, which objectifiesthe revolutionary force: rags, unexpectedly,likean Enceladus, living-buried, from underhis Trinacria?

of living:Teufelsdrockh blames theTime-Spirit which has imprisonedhim within the 'Time-Element', so that:
Me, however, as a Son of Time, unhappier than some others, was Time threatening to eat quite prematurely; for strive as Imight, therewas no good Running, so obstructed was the path, so gyved were the feet. (pp. 99-IOO) If Life is a continual process of devouring, the text identifies itwith both time and death.2I And everything else takes on that character: even reading partakes of themodel of devouring, when in 'Characteristics' Carlyle finds that 'Litera

They thatwould make grass be eaten, do now eat grass, in this manner?' (I, 2 I 6). Yet, as said before, in Sartor Resartus such eating is not part of revolution, but

Review' ('Characteristics', ture' is becoming 'one boundless, self-devouring

with Stomach', Profit-and-loss Philosophy [. . .] thatSoul is not synonymous

p. 87). To write is to be consumed; while even friends in 'The Everlasting No' section of Sartor Resartus are said to have 'too-hungry souls' (p. I27). Images of devouring run through 'The Everlasting No', the part of Teufels dr6ckh's autobiography where he undergoes a crisis. The editor comments in whose life has a partly sympathetic, partly ironic mode upon Teufelsdr6ckh, 'hot fever of anarchy and misery raging within', while he is at the same time defining himself as 'Man', and speaking of himself as 'wholly unreligious'. The to much editor reflects that such readers who have found, 'in contradiction

in Teufelsdrockh's 'that for man's well-being, and who understand, words, Faith is properly the one thing needful; how, with it, Martyrs, otherwise weak, can cheerfully endure the shame and the cross, and without it, worldlings puke up their sick existence, by suicide, in the midst of luxury', will know that this 'one thing needful' quotes from loss means 'loss of everything' (p. 124). The Luke I0. 42, and is quoted in turn in the opening chapter-title ofHard Times. The dyspepsia implicit within the word 'puking' will be noted, as well as its extremism; it seems that martyrdom or suicide and weakness or strength are the only choices, and because suicide is seen as a form of vomiting up life, and is posited as the likely result of lack of faith, and as happening in conditions of luxury, which are, by this image, rendered conditions of decadence, there is also the sense that life can only be vomited up; that the sick are not the seem to have the power to be sick, and to vomit up their 'worldlings'-who lives-but 'existence' itself. The possible choices are, to be devoured or to vomit un- or to he vomited un
Activism The Seventh Hero: Thomas Carlyle and the Theory of Radical Philip Rosenberg, from Carlyle: Press, 1974), relates this to what he quotes University (Cambridge, MA: Harvard in us', the 'diseased mixture and conflict of life and 'the perpetual Contradiction [that] dwells death' (pp. 26, 43). 21

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the 'foolish A speech from on, attacking Teufelsdrockhfollows Word-monger mechanism forthe andMotive-grinder, who in [his]Logic-mill hast an earthly
Godlike itself, and wouldst fain grind me out Virtue from the husks of pleasure' (p. I24). The passage may be compared with two others: That process of Science, which is to destroyWonder, and in its stead substituteMensu ration and Numeration, finds small favourwith Teufelsdrockh. . . 'Shall your Science', says he, 'proceed in the small chink-lighted, or even oil-lighted, underground workshop of Logic alone, and man's mind become an Arithmetical Mill, whereof Memory is the Hopper, and mere Tables of Sines and Tangents, Codification, and Treatises ofwhat Meal? (p. 53) you call Political Economy, are the and professed Enemies to The section refers also to 'Logic-choppers, Wonder, about the Me who, in these days, so numerously patrol as night-constables chanics' Institute of Science' (p. 53): it is suggestive for the classroom scenes in Hard Times, which are also based on theMechanics' Institutes of the i820S.22 Starr's annotations to Sartor Resartus (pp. 293, 349) find inCarlyle's rhetorical 'Logic-mill' and 'Arithmetical Mill' a pun on James Mill. In keeping with Car

lyle's anti-Utilitarianism, thesepassages,which include an almost hysterical

sense of the deliberate abolition of wonder, seem to have provided the name is Gradgrind. But not just him. In Dombey and Son the son of Polly Toodle patronized by Mr Dombey, who sends him off to the 'Charitable Grinders' school, where the number of the son is 'one hundred and forty-seven'.23 This charitable school grinds out charity, making its pupil 'Rob the Grinder'. Related images and puns on Mill appear in 'Symbols' in Book Third, where,

in thepresent, which is runby 'Motive-Millwrights',

Mechanism smothers [Man] worse than anyNightmare did; till the Soul isnigh choked out of him, and only a kind of Digestive, Mechanic life remains [. . .] theworld would indeed grind him to pieces. (p. I67) 'mill' here is one in which the soul-as The to facts-is processed, opposed chewed over, and produced as fragmentary, ground to pieces. In 'The Everlast 'our ingNo' the context is that of those who would make the idea of Happiness In the earlier essay 'Signs of the Times' true aim': it critiques Bentham. (I829) the Utilitarian philosopher was seen as 'not creat[ing] anything, but [. . .] [is] a sort of logic-mills, to grind out the true causes and effects of all that is done and created'.24 The absence of creation, and the sense of Utilitarianism crushing what has been created, seems basic. This part of Sartor Resartus makes two further accusations against theUtili tarian: one, that he attempts to substitute for the absent 'Godlike', his 'earthly mechanism' being a desire to produce absolute reality, denying the temporary nature of all forms of reality (their nature as mere 'clothes'). The second is that Benthamism argues that virtue, or duty, can emerge out of pleasure, that pleasure comes first, and that when that is consumed (leaving husks: as in
School: Political Economy in the Classroom', See on these Robin Gilmour, 'The Gradgrind Victorian Studies, n (1967), 207-24. 23 and Dennis W?lder Dickens, (Oxford: Oxford Uni Dombey and Son, ed. by Alan Horsman versity Press, 2001), p. 65. 24 inA Carlyle Reader, ed. by Tennyson, p. 47. Carlyle, 'Signs of the Times', 22

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the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke I5)), there is the possibility of Virtue, but the image makes pleasure never more than empty husks. Yet besides this, there seems the unstated fear that the Utilitarian may be right, thatVirtue has (whose liver was consumed by eagles) no reality; that the heroic Prometheus but was wasting his time, that the only diseases are not those of 'Conscience' of dyspepsia, which the passage wills to be 'the diseases of the Liver'-signs a spiritual condition, the dread being that it could be cured. And the idea of say pleasure has been deliberately reduced to the most material: Utilitarians (p. 9I). The stomach, that 'man's Soul is indeed [. . .] a kind of Stomach' which recalls the parable of the belly in Coriolanus, has become, by association, 'chop[ping]' everything that it receives since itmust be satisfied. In this mill motives are fragmented, made into things conducive to pleasure by a machine which imposes a constant demand, and is satisfied only in the dissection of feels he is being devoured, while meditating motives. Hence Teufelsdrockh on the 'Infinite nature of Duty' which was 'still present tome: living without in the world, of God's God light I was not utterly bereft [. . .] in spite of all

like a mill, 'digestive, mechanic', undiscriminating but still 'grind[ing]'and

Motive-grinders,andMechanical Profit-and-LossPhilosophies' (p. I26). and devours life; but also inducesdyspep The Utilitarianmill grinds things,

what 'Characteristics' sia in Carlyle and in Teufelsdrockh: called 'a constant grinding pain'. The opposition of Carlyle to the Utilitarian can be read as that of the dyspeptic (who can neither digest nor devour) against the person who can do both. But, in another reading, the quotation from 'Characteristics' implies

a dyspeptic which becomes, therefore, thatdyspepsiaproducesUtilitarianism,

state. In which case the stomach, the devourer, themill, a Utilitarian object in itself, ismarked out by 'constant grinding pain'. Carlyle (like Teufelsdrockh) suffers from grinding taking place both within (in his own stomach) and with out (from the mechanical that age). His stomach, turned into the mechanism the image of life itself, whether as in the mechanical he so resists, becomes or in revolution. Further, the passage in 'Charac philosophy of Utilitarianism, teristics', since it continues with the 'mad spasmodic throes of all Society', adds the implication that society as a stomach suffers the spasms that are associated with vomiting. So society either devours or vomits, produces dung or vomit, the name and its herbal association. two possibilities inherent in Teufelsdr6ckh's and vomiting are equivalent forms bringing about destruction. Devouring Yet that devouring image must be placed alongside the weak, or nostalgic, sense that Teufelsdr6ckh gives of having the sense of God ('in my heart He was terms, present' (p. I26)) even while going through the crisis. In Nietzsche's he cannot admit his 'atheism'; he remains on the side of right, being non transgressive, passive, in the midst of fears of the devouring power of the mechanical age. Since he assumes the rightness of his theism without question, he never fully confronts the challenge of themechanical age, which means that he simplifies both his own position and that of Benthamism. Perception of being devoured returns in a longer passage which begins by that 'to be weak is the true quoting Satan, from Paradise Lost (i. 157-58), lacks the heroism of the rebel, and the argument misery'; yet Teufelsdrockh turns into another argument: about weakness

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yet of your Strength there is and can be no clear feeling, save bywhat you have prospered in,by what you have done. [. . .]A certain inarticulate Self-consciousness dwells dimly inus; which only ourWorks can render articulate and decisively discernible. Our Works are themirror wherein the spirit firstsees its natural lineaments. Hence, too, the folly of that impossible Precept, Know thyself;till itbe translated into this partially possible one, Know what thoucanstwork-at. (p. I26)

As life is sickness, inducing suicide, so it is attended by self-consciousness,

which

works,which act as its mirror.The note that suggests thatself-knowledge isapparent; hence equatedwith self-consciousness-wouldproduce self-hatred the inadmissibility of theSocratic teaching'Know thyself'. Instead, there must
be an objectification of the self through itsworks; the self is not known, save through action, which, by the conclusion of 'The Everlasting Yea' has be

is also summarily

rejected;

the self cannot be looked at except through

come production ('Produce! Produce!' (p. 149)).And thatindicates howmuch

is part of the belief in progress, with the implications of en Teufelsdrockh forcing demands on labour; making himself part of the Utilitarian philosophy he so forcefully rejects. The passage defines 'man' through the ethos of pro ductivity; its denial of the privilege of introspection, which is blocked off as a possibility, allows the dishonesty towards the self that Nietzsche comments the sense of on. But Teufelsdrockh feels he has produced 'Nothing'. Hence I walked solitary; guilt: 'In midst of their crowded streets, and assemblages, and (excepting as itwas my own heart, not another's, that I kept devouring) savage also, as the tiger in his jungle' (p. 127). In this period of unbelief, it is not the absentee God that he fears, but the

absenteeDevil:

you cannot so much as believe in a Devil. To me theUniverse was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility: itwas one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb. 0, the vast, gloomy, solitary Golgotha, andMill ofDeath! (p. 127) How potent this image is, of a mill which 'grinds' and consumes, whose wheels roll on in an indifference which is said to be 'dead', appears when it is taken over by Dickens inDombey and Son, in a different context, when Carker, on the run from Dombey, not consumed-by the train: is killed-if a [He] felt the earth tremble-knew in a moment that the rush was come-uttered shriek-looked round-saw the red eyes, bleared and dim, in the daylight, close upon him-was beaten down, caught up, and whirled away upon a jagged mill, that spun him round and round, and struck him limb from limb, and licked his lifeup with its fiery heat, and cast his mutilated fragments in the air. When the traveler [Dombey], who had been recognized, recovered from a swoon, he saw them bringing from a distance something covered, that lay heavy and still, upon a board, between four men, and saw that others drove some dogs away that sniffedupon the road, and soaked his blood up, with a trainof ashes.25 The chapter is significantly called 'Rob the Grinder Loses his Place'. The boy, produced by the 'Charitable Grinders', has gone into work for the equally
25 Dickens, and Carlyle, Dombey and Son, p. 823. For pp. 117-18. the connection between the passages, see Oddie, Dickens

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Nietzsche through

mechanical Carker, themodern manager; and here the employer of the Grinder is ground down. The train is animate, alive, with red-as ifbloodshot-eyes that hunt down their object, but it is also themechanistic mill, and this contradictory quality in it that gives it the character of the nineteenth-century fetish will need to be discussed further, at the end. It is the 'jagged' mill, that which cuts its own script on the body, as it cuts a jagged line through towns and country, both breaking it and imprinting the body with the signs of its own automatic

writing-processes. Dickens has identified Carlyle's 'steam-engine', patentedby

James Watts in I769, with the locomotive engine (first called a 'steam-engine' in I825), and he has identified both with the mill: the train as the mill, and as symbol of the Benthamite machine age, and more intense in form than the machine-like Carker, consuming his life-blood in a way that the dogs would like to do. The dual image of licking up the blood (devouring) and casting the fragments into the air (vomiting up the body) follows Carlyle. The last image, the 'train of ashes', puns on the train as an industrial mill, a factory-productive of ashes-and as delivering death, and requiring ashes to be laid in its 'train'; its trace, its track, being ashes, like husks, markers of death, like Carlyle's reference

to 'Golgotha'.

'dead indifference' passage has as sequel the editor referring to Carlyle's 'sickness of the chronic sort' and quoting from his autobio Teufelsdrockh's graphy about the temptation to suicide: How beautiful to die of broken heart, on Paper! Quite another thing in Practice; every window of your Feeling, even of your Intellect, as itwere, begrimed and mud bespattered, so that no pure ray can enter; a whole Drugshop in your inwards; the foredone soul drowning slowly in quagmires ofDisgust! (p. I27) The passage concludes with the fear of being consumed (of drowning) and with disgust at the body (which, via the French degout, would include dyspepsia). But the body has been identified with 'disgust' itself; as though itmakes filthy is a shift of intensity the intellect; suicide bringing that out further. There from 'mud' to 'quagmire', which increases the sense of abjection. The state of 'smouldering in sulphurous, slow-consuming fire' persists into this sense of the self about to disappear: I lived in a continual, indefinite,pining Fear, tremulous, pusillanimous, apprehensive of I knew not what: it seemed as ifall things in theHeavens above and theEarth beneath would hurtme; as if the heavens and theEarth were but boundless Jaws of a devouring Monster, wherein I, palpitating, waited to be devoured. (p. I28) The crisis climaxes in the dog-days (the time of madness) in an episode in the Rue Saint Thomas de l'Enfer, when a 'Thought' suddenly rises in him, making him ask himself what he is afraid of, and whether he cannot "'trample Tophet itself [. . .]while it consumes thee?" [. . .]And as I so thought, there rushed like a stream of fire over my whole soul' (p. I 29). The passage seems integral to that quoted from Dombey and Son; it is as if the stream of fire is both that of Tophet, the burning power of hell, and the energy of the selfwhich responds. It enables a reading of the street-name, which is both the place of hell, where the subject must walk, the urban landscape of Paris, or Edinburgh, and also, because it is the place of Thomas Carlyle, it gives the sense that Carlyle must himself be of

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of Hell. hell: that he can take no other position, that he wants to be Thomas the Sansculottes-in Suddenly losing fear, his 'whole Me' has 'stood up'-like reply to the 'Everlasting No' which had said: mine (theDevil's), towhich my Behold, thou art fatherless,outcast, and theUniverse is whole Me now made answer, 'I am not thine,but Free, and foreverhate thee!' It is from this hour that I incline to date my Spiritual New-birth, or Baphometic Fire-baptism; perhaps I directly thereupon began to be aMan. (p. I29) to be diabolical, transgressive, as the image of the The response wishes Baphomet implies. The language of hatred is loaded, yet themove is not towards

to thecentre,standingup or otherness, but towardsconformity heterogeneity,

as a 'Man'. The repeated phrase the 'whole Me' shows a will towards being

Man' allows neither self-doubt nor self-consciousness.26 Yet the passage being 'a simplifies and objectifies the cannot allow such simplicity, for the 'whole Me' self, since there remains, outside it, the 'I' who uses that term. Becoming a 'Man' cannot be a single state; there is something supplementary, outside can can define Man that state and naming it; no more than the Utilitarian Carlyle do that. At the cost of such self-simplification he ceases to 'eat his own heart' (p. I30), which recalls how he declared he was devouring himself when he was like a tiger in the jungle (p. I27). He has not been separate that have from the forces of life, and time, and revolution, and mechanism, eaten him; he has been sadistic towards himself. Now he has ceased to be of the 'inward Satanic school' (p. 130) but only through 'Annihilation of Self' is a language of hatred when the self is self-accusingly called (p. I42). There seeking [. . .] that fliest through the Universe 'nothing other than a Vulture after somewhat to eat; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not given thee' (p. I46). This image of a dead world precedes words intended to behind, opening up the way to purposive action and put self-consciousness work: 'Close thyByron; open thy Goethe'.27 So: 'the self in thee needed to be annihilated. By benignant fever-paroxysms is Life rooting out the deep-seated and triumphs over Death.' That annihilation of self, through chronic Disease, in 'The disease' implies the enduring, ongoing sickness or fever described Everlasting No', but it also implies sickness caused by time, or by modern the self and themodern age seems to be the same thing, part times. Annihilating (p. I48). Annihilation of the soul's 'internecine warfare with the Time-spirit' of self seems to relate to its unfulfillable desire for happiness. Two ideas come as the principle behind the modern age together: a critique of Utilitarianism, which endorses the idea of pleasure, and rejection of the idea that the soul can ever think of itself in terms of happiness. The appropriate response must
26 than I might make much of the bold-faced writes: 'more ardent Freudians "my Rosenberg whole ME stood up [. . .] I directly thereupon began to be a Man"' (p. 12). 27The 'had not Mill's Autobiography is referred to in passage (1873) as relating to 1826-27: Mill heard of the anti-self-consciousness [...] But I now thought that [happiness] was theory of Carlyle it the direct end. [. . .]Ask yourself whether you are happy, and only to be obtained by not making but some end external to it, as the you cease to be so. The only chance is, to treat, not happiness, purpose of life' (J. S. Mill, Autobiography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), pp. 120-21).

while with no Nietzschean scepticism, of as a single,unifiedsubject, thought

sickness destroyingsickness, is 'theEVERLASTING

YEA'. The

'chronic

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Nietzsche Carlyle through

everything illustrating 'indomitable

be 'renunciation' (p. 145).The secondBook endswith Teufelsdrockhgaining Defiance' and 'boundless Reverence' (p. I55). solution, inwhat can be Nietzsche sees Carlyle as producing a 'counterfeit'
Nietzsche's terms, no 'proprium'. Carlyle uses the word 'fetish' in the satire on dandies, the aristocracy, and the 'silver fork' novel, in 'The Dandiacal Body', toCloth' which makes fun of those who live by clothes, whose 'Life-devotedness shows a 'willing sacrifice of the Immortal to the Perishable' (p. 207): 'the spirit and the clear aims of a man',

would be 'fetish':that which has, in devoured.Anotherword for 'counterfeit'

seen as this pumped-up

self, described

as a 'Man'

in reaction to fear of being

To the psychologic eye [dandyism's] devotional and even sacrificial character plainly enough reveals itself. Whether it belongs to the class of Fetish-worships, or of Hero worships or Polytheisms, may [... .] remain undecided. A certain touch ofManicheism [.. .] is discernible enough [... .]To my own surmise, itappears as if thisDandaical Sect were but a new modification, adapted to the new time, of that primeval Superstition, and others strove rather Self-Worship, which Zerdusht, Quangfoutchee, Mohamed, to subordinate and restrain than to eradicate; and which only in the purer forms of Religion has been altogether rejected.Wherefore, ifany one chooses to name it revived I have, so far as is yet visible, no Ahrimanism, or a new figure of Demon-Worship, objection. (p. 209)28

The passagemakes an implicit alliance of 'fetish-worship'-worship of clothes

as having magic, animistic powers-to of clothes is hero-worship. Worship does worship of symbols, and 'Man' is no more than a symbol of God-but that Nietzsche answers in the negative, Carlyle believe in God? A question saying that he is an 'English atheist seeking to be honoured for not being so'; but it may be said that the language of fetishism is precisely thatwhich allows for the question to be avoided, not to be answered finally, and for the text to be on both sides of the argument, to be for illusion or the counterfeit, and against it.29 'constant and passionate dishonesty with This, inNietzsche's terms, isCarlyle's himself', and is an instance of what Freud's essay on fetishism calls 'disavowal' (Verleugnung): where something is both known and yet the knowledge denied at the same time.30 The passage conjoins fetish-worship and hero-worship, and, surprisingly, since it associates the first of these with polytheism, puts them The latter term both together with 'self-worship', the ultimate monotheism. associates with Utilitarian and mechanical selfishness, and appears in the phrase 'self-love' in a context also to do with fetishes. The chapter 'Symbols', which discusses their temporality, says that 'a day comes when the Runic Thor, with into dimness [as an immediate, powerful symbol]; his Eddas, must withdraw
28 is Zoroaster, the Greek name for Zarathustra, is Confucius; Here, Zerdusht Quangfoutchee 'Fetishism' and Ahriman is a demonic earlier in Sartor figure from Zoroastrianism. appeared comes out with the where in the 'Sorrows of Teufelsdr?ckh' Resartus, chapter Teufelsdr?ckh to seek saved me from Dying?by 'that I had my Living suicide' and adds that 'in our aphorism is there not an everlasting demand for Intellect, in the chemical, mechanical, busy Europe, political, In Pagan countries cannot one write Fetishes?' departments? (p. 121). religious, commercial 29 In cf. Teufelsdr?ckh's the word associated with fetishism is the 'phantasmagoria'; Marxism, sense of living in illusion: 'we sit as in a boundless and Dream Grotto' Phantasmagoria (p. 42). 30 and Other Works, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality inOn Sexuality: 'Fetishism', Freud, Freud Library, The ed. by Angela 7 (London: Richards, 1977), pp. 351-57 Penguin Penguin, (P- 353)

JEREMY and many an African Mumbo-Jumbo, lished'. Similarly, the Royal Sceptre

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wood. Hence:

and Indian Wau-Wau be utterly abo and the Pyx have become no more than

wouldst thou plant forEternity, then plant into the deep infinitefaculties ofman ... plant into his shallow, superficial faculties, his Self-love and Arithmetical Understand ing,what will grow there.A Hierarch [. . .] and Pontiff of the World will we call him, thePoet and inspiredMaker, who, Prometheus-like, can shape new Symbols, and bring new Fire fromHeaven to fix it there. (p. I70)

In this familiarargument, where several thingshave been unexpectedly must be a Prometheus, transgressive, of the future rebellious,revolutionary.
Dickens's perception of the train in Dombey and Son does not separate these things: the train, a revolutionary force in the novel, is themechanical mill, yet its red eyes mean that it is seen as animistic, with a fetish-like reality. Car lyle's sense of the fetish belongs with theMumbo-Jumbo and theWau-Wau as instances of the primitive symbol, destined to be seen as no more than 'gilt wood', 'foolish boxes', 'wooden tools'. Yet worshipping the hero may also be a Carlyle's proposition that everything partakes in symbolism, even the category of 'Man' as that which, as animated, 'stands up' to the dead universe. To 'the psychologic eye' such a fetish seems specifically masculine, and, as in Freud, who theorizes the fetish as that which disavows the male fear of castration, its sexual reference is that it defends 'throne and altar'-masculine fetishistic the feminine ('Fetishism', p. 352). Here, apart from images of security-against as thatwhich Freud, the authority isDickens, who annotates 'Mumbo-Jumbo' keeps the woman in awe, and protects male illusions: I observe, reading that wonderful book The French Revolution again, for the 5ooth time, that Carlyle, who knows everything, don't know what Mumbo Jumbo is. It is not an idol. It is a secret preserved among the men of certainAfrican tribes, and never revealed by any of them, for the punishment of theirwomen. Mumbo Jumbo comes in hideous formout of the forest,or themud, or the river,or where not, and flogs thewoman who had been backbiting, or scolding [... .]Carlyle seems to confound him with the common Fetish, but he is quite another thing.He is a disguised man, and all about him is a me fetish and the symbol, hero-worship and self-worship-the aligned-the chanical principle prevents anything else from having an effect, and the hero

even self-worship. If so,what emergeshas significance form of fetishizing, for

freemasons' secret the among men.3'

It seems that a 'disguised man'-this invokes, again, the power of clothes supplements the visible power of masculinity by something else, and the need for that declares the inadequacy of that visible power without it. Carlyle's and Dickens's interest in fetishism associates with Carlyle's fear, in Latter Day Pambhlets. of 'Dhallus-worshin'.32 This associates with fetish-worship
31 To Forster, summer ed. by 1851, in The Pilgrim Edition of the Letters of Charles Dickens, vi: 1850-1852, Madeline House and others, 12 vols (Oxford: Clarendon ed. Press, 1965-2002), and Nina Burgis Tillotson, by Graham (1988), pp. 452-53. The editors refer to Storey, Kathleen 1. 1. 1 and in. 6. 4. OED to the Inland Parts of French Revolution, cites Francis Moore, Travels to keep women in awe, and Jumbo as idol, as bugbear Africa [i.e.West Africa] (1738), forMumbo as language. 32 See my 'Carlyle in Prison', credits Carlyle with the first use of 'phallus pp. 321?24. OED worship'.

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Carlyle through Nietzsche

and with what should be its notional opposite, 'hero-worship', but perhaps the willingness to define 'Man' in terms of greatness and heroism contains as much in it as Carlyle attacks in those others whom he perceives as phallus-worship

living by thepower of fetishism. Carlyle claims Zarathustra as a figure who tried to eradicate self-worship,

which is now 'revived Ahrimanism, or a new figure of Demon-Worship'. But this attempt tomake Zarathustra a figurewho makes a sharp separation between self-worship (yet this is but fetish-worship) and the self that stands up in its manhood as independent of that does not relate to Nietzsche's Zarathustra, to undo precisely what revived in Thus Spoke Zarathustra whom Nietzsche saw 'in the struggle According toNietzsche, the Zarathustra of Zoroastrianism between good and evil the actual wheel in theworking of things: the translation as force, cause, end-in-itself, is his of morality into the realm of metaphysics, work. [. . .] Zarathustra created this most fateful of errors, morality.'33 Hence the reification in Zarathustra of the demonic figure of Ahrimanes. Nietzsche's Zarathustra must be brought back to undo his error of seeing good and evil as objective, inherent in the world-order. The argument by which he does so

which Nietzsche considersZarathustra'sprimaryerror. Carlyle endorses, that

moves very complexly towardsundoing the very concept of stable identity.

That associates with the point that Nietzsche finds the idea of a substantial and enduring 'doer' behind any deed an instance of fetishism at work.34 It is a product of the dyspeptic thinking that holds on to valuations established in the past as though they could define and control the present moment. 'interest' shows, then, in the way he can see and not see these Carlyle's contradictions, and is caught within the illusionism that fetishism implies. His rhetoric makes 'fetish-worship' illusory, counterfeit, just asmuch as theworship of other symbols. Yet, as ifhe is held by the rhetoric which says, in the teeth of the evidence, that the fetish has magic powers, it remains not quite illusory for him; something else within him and within the discourse around him, which calls 'dyspeptic conditions', continues to believe in its power. The Nietzsche result is that, 'passionately dishonest' to himself, he must define 'Man' in single and simplifying terms of masculinity, and heroism, and power, and make an absolute of all those things whose value he also knows is only as the fetish. UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER JEREMY TAMBLING

33 see also Parkes's to inEcce Homo, introduction pp. 97-98; Nietzsche, 'Why I am A Destiny', Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pp. xi-xii. 34 conscious of the basic 'We become involved in a crude fetishism when we make ourselves . .] this is what sees doer and deed of the metaphysics of language it [. everywhere; premises in the "I"' believes in the will as cause in general, it believes (Twilight of the Idols, p. 18). For the central idea in Thus Spoke Zarathustra?as the undoing of a reading of eternal recurrence?the :Life and Death in Literary and concept of the 'same' and of identity, see my Becoming Posthumous Cultural Studies Press, 2001). (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University