Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist (Philosophical Classics Series) Book

The book is one I read - or rather listened to - in a marvellous new translation on LibriVox (a great FREE audiobook app).

It's literally devastating in its effect.

Nietzsche wrote it in the Advent of hiis own irreparable freefall into the Pit of Madness.

It shows.

It is a rape, pillage and plunder of any and all extant Western value. As Sartre would say, it is "de trop" - a climacteric Battle to Death that leaves only "scorched earth" in its wake.

Do we really need this now, at a time when sacred values are crumbling to the ground all around us?

I don't.

For Nietzsche, with his too-solid and thus illusory conception of the Void, proved to us once and for all that the true Vision of the Sinkhole of the Void leads only to Madness.

His anger was simply what had previously hid it from him.

If, like him, we are suspended over the Void of our Fear - and, like him, we fall into it - can this Black Paranoid Hole of Fear ever expel us? I think so, but don't try it yourself.

I think so, because with a modicum of Faith that's what happened to me, fifty years ago.

It expelled me, but for years its magnetic pull brought me back - again and again - to its brink. Evil is that Black Hole, and I wanted to defeat it.

But there was no way I could, as long as its magnetism brought me back for more battle. For a thirst for revenge won't defeat Evil. It's a mere - live - Nothingness.

Only a lifetime of love and humility can defeat that.

You may relish Nietzsche's quicksilver profundity - though that's just a product of a manic imagination - but I, with my history of cauchemars, do not.

His insights remain nevertheless profound in spite of his detractors.

Isn't that part and parcel of GROWING UP, though? For to grow wise we must indeed grow up!

In my own case, I grew up OVERNIGHT, and those memories will always prove enervating to me, for I found my only possible future in the Orthodoxy of normalcy.

And a settled life. That has served me well, I might add...

And find it I did. Whew!

BUT I only have this particular LibriVox item on PAUSE.

I won't delete this, but keep it as a warning of how NOT to write Responsibly - a warning I must continually heed, myself.

For to continue in that doggedly persevering bad faith is just plain bad manners!

And it's a fashion of blogging NO one should attempt -

IF our current Debacle is to leave any survivors.