The Last Antichrist
Son of the Morning. By E. J. O'Brien. (Cape. 10s. 6d.) As the genius of Nietzsche developed more and more along its wild elliptical course towards the light that finally blinded him, he made emphatic claims to be regarded as the satanic parallel of Christ. In his final letters he signed himself " The Crucified" and "The Antichrist." This delusion of megalo- mania is frequent amongst the insane. But in the case of Nietzsche it cannot be written off as merely a symptom of psychosis. It was that, but it was something more. What that something more amounts to is the whole psychological life story, so superbly, heroically and poetically built up, with infinite agony of patience, by the man whose final failure, through self-annihilation, was the desired achieve- ment of his philosophy. It may be argued that Christ, when refusing to answer His judges, made the same gesture of signing His lifework.
Whatever may be the utility and attraction of Nietz-sche's work, that enigmatic ending forces both critics and wor- shippers to approach the problem of interpretation in the same way, even though in a different degree, as they approach the Mystery of Christ. Nietzsche has, therefore, forced the world to meet him on his terms. His colossal egotism, repulsive and even ludicrous in his mundane life, justifies its pre- liminary .assumptions. The fulfilment of his claim is still a matter that has not yet been finally judged, in spite of the latter-day theologians, the psycho-analysts : ," I know my fate" (he said), "r am not a man. Now man may .begin to hope once more since I have lived. The strongest kingdoms of the old order are blown to atoms, for they were founded on a lie. There will be such wars as this earth has never seen. From now on, only after me will there be politics on the grand scale."
Mankind is hoping once more, but with a hope that does not , articulate perfectly into this man-god, egotist system) Nietzsche went on to say :
"I am the most terrible man who has ever lived ; but this nil not hinder me from being the most beneficent. I know the delight of annihilation corresponding to my power of annihilation. The Arniutsking of Christian morality is the greatest event in history. He who has achieved it is a fatality, cutting in two the history of the world."
These words appear to have a sinister significance to-day. We see in actual process the annihilation of individualism, with all that it carries in morality, politics, art and philo- sophy. At the same time, these events, foreseen byNietz.sche, are throwing aside all forms of dogma—including that of Marx--and so dwarfing all philosophies built on the hero- myth, that the great beings whose genius has hitherto led the world now have an air of pathetic ineffectualness. A terrifying and lightning-like pragmatism is the only philo- sophy that the rush of events—political, moral, scientific, economic—will allow us as an instrument to try and preserve our racial sanity. For our individual sanity we have only the broken shreds of "our little systems" which have had their day. , If, again, any kind of static philosophy emerges—which I doubt—where then will stand Nietzsche, with his scholastic reconstruction of the Delphic mysteries, and his aggrandise.: ment of himself as Apollo's opponent Dionysus, "the most terrible man who has ever lived," the apostle of spontaneity ? If, as appears likely, the world shakes down to a non-classical culture, contemptuous of philology and all god-man myths, then Nietzsche's claims, along with those of giants greater than he, will be meaningless.
Whatever the future may bring forth, we are still interested in Nietzsche's divine (or demoniac) ascent to the realm of insanity. Mr. O'Brien's book is successful in showing that tragic journey, stage by stage, from the poet's birth, through the significant events whose association in the steely logic of Nietzsche's brain gradually fettered him. We see—for Mr. O'Brien has worked well with his ample biographical material—how the process worked. We realize that if a man wishes to become a god, he needs an infinite memory ; and that if he would be Satan, he needs to destroy the frag- mentary memory which even the worst of mortals possesses. Mr. O'Brien indulges occasionally in those little " recon. struction scenes' which have become a bad habit in modern biography, and he adds to the consequent confusion by
certain eccentricities of style. He uses the word " climate " where he means " weather " ; repeats the fantastic word " euphoria " ad nauseam, and speaks of Nietzsche "exploring pain to the cream of the bone." But the accumulative effect of Mr. O'Brien's five-year study is impressive, and the reader closes the 1.o dc with a more physical sense of Nietzsche's life, and with a meaningful apprehension of the relation of its events to the startling adventures of his mind, an engine that was one of the most intricate and subtle ever evolved
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