Some time went by.
- He begins part two with a temporal expression of movement. He does not ascribe to time an absolute objectivity. Some time went by. Not All time went by. Some time went by, expired; bringing his world back to order after his servant rectified the topsy-turvy state of his residence.
A monotonous and unvarying order was established in my whole economy. Everything unable to move stood in its appointed place, and everything that moved went its calculated course: my clock, my servant, and I, myself, who with measured pace walked up and down the floor.
- Note the parallel between his pacing back and forth to the story of Diogenes at the very beginning of part one (p. 131). What is the significance does this hold? Possibly none at all or it is of considerable importance; but nothing in between. The point may be – in reference to his reflections regarding movement later on in the Supplement sections – that movement need not be contrary to the idea of repetition. He walks with measured place; an act that is deliberate on his part, because, as he notes, everything went its calculated course. If such a course is the product of conscious effort, how does he move from repetition as a purely immanent category to a category of the transcendental? Calculated course – each thing has its assigned and proper place. Calculated, but by whom? Hence, who calculates this course? Does he? Does rationality? Is he rational in the pursuing the calculated course? Or is the calculated course rational in allowing him to exist in its invariable stream towards its ordained end? Is his existence dependent upon the calculated course? It is, if he does not believe in repetition as he contends. Or does the calculated course dependent on his decision not to act contrary to it?
Although I had convinced myself that there is no repetition, it nevertheless is always certain and true that by being inflexible and also by dulling one’s powers of observation a person can achieve a sameness that has a far more anesthetic power than the most whimsical amusements and that, like a magical formulary, in the course of time also becomes more and more powerful.
- The key part is dulling one’s powers of observation. He is making fun of his own disbelief of repetition – or at least on the surface, this appears to be the case. A disbelief in repetition, as is broached here, leads to a belief in progress towards sameness – the unified telos – or end of time, perhaps? This promise of eternal sameness and calculated course towards is anesthetic; but in what way is this so? Is it because it is without whimsy, it presents itself as science, a determinism that frees man from his problematic relation to freedom (or free will) – something that ostensibly lead to temptation and angst? Without freedom, man lives without the sibboleth of possible error. Any occurrence of error is impossible, for the process – determined or pre-determined, according to perspective - is assumed to be infallible, parallel to the course of the divine. Hence, Constantius’ preoccupation with established and enduring order illuminates this disjunction between human freedom and eternal order; one must be suppressed for the sake of the other. So, can progress be with repetition, or must progress be without repetition? He paces back and forth, as Diogenes did to refute the Eleatics’ denial of motion. Progress has no back and forth, or so it is assumed. Progress is rarely anything but a linear movement – or at least on the surface movements. But what does the back and forth movement represent? Is it important or merely fulfilling the calculated course of events? Does the content of the movement – back and forth, up and down, left and right – matter if the path itself is drawn before the movement? Is it calculation, as form, that dictates the path of progress? If the calculated course was to spin on one’s head, would that change its own progression towards sameness – reaching the apex of parvenu motion, achieving eternal sameness? Sameness is expressed in form, never in the particular. Form can be uniform. Particular motions are, by definition of its unique individual place, incongruent. Hence, one can spin on his head at a rapid pace, moderate pace, or at a speed that barely completes a single rotation. The sameness is in the form – the act of spinning on one’s head – rather than the particular act itself, where there are invariably differences. But this is rather uninteresting. Let’s move on to Constantius’ revelations.
To maintain this established and enduring order, I made use of every possible expedient. At certain times, like Emperor Domitian, I even walked around the room armed with a flyswatter, pursuing every revolutionary fly. Three flies, however, were perserved to fly buzzing through the room at specified times. Thus, I did live, forgetting the world and, as I thought, forgotten, when one day a letter arrived from my young friend.
- Deformation for order. Let’s really do move on. He swats flies. Time goes by. The world is forgotten, as – at least, he assumes – it has forgotten him. He is sovereign of the room and the flies that occupy it. He swats the revolutionary ones, but allows three to fly around. He is sovereign. He decides on the right to die and sentencing of life. Once again, this is a surface reading, a pedantic one at that. The sovereign individual does not merely swat flies; his game is far more intriguing, the most dangerous of beasts – man. In the universe of the most minute, even the lowliest man can be god. This returns to the young man, slightly ill from his brush with romantic love, helpless in the face of an unpredictable fate.
From his letter, I see what I knew before, that like any melancholiac he is quite irritable and, despite this irritability as well as because of it, is in a state of continual self-contradiction.
- The young man, he concludes, wants to confide in Constantius, but wants only silence from his confidant. The young man secretly believes him to be mad. Once again, what is madness – or to be more precise, what is madness in relation to repetition? Is madness the refutation of repetition? Madness is the refutation of repetition – choosing one linear set of occurrences as the reality of progression, denying the validity of all other possible trajectories. The uniform path has movement, but at the same time it doesn’t. It solidifies into a uniform event – in this case, a man sitting in his home swatting some flies with everything in its right and proper place. So who is truly mad? The self-contradicting young man, conflicted and unsure; or is it the man who swats flies in his kingdom, while forgetting the world…out there?
My position as confidant is even more critical, for he is even more chaste with his mysteries; he becomes ever so angry when I do what he most urgently requests – when I keep silent.
- If nothing else, the young man, Constantius notes, continues along the calculated course of irritability – continual self-contradiction. This course makes his role of confidant more defined early on, eventually sliding into a more indeterminate place? It is the young man’s reflections on Job that motivates him to imply the young man is a poet, in conflict with life. It is in Job that he discovers the double, getting everything doubled. It is the young man who claims to discover repetition, while the first part - as Constantius reveals in his response to Heiberg - is a jest, pure and simple jest, by revealing "his own" futile search for repetition; in his Berlin flat and in theatrical farce.
How comforting, then, that the one from whom one seeks advice and explanation is – mad! Then there is no need to be ashamed. Talking with a person like that, after all, is like talking to a tree, “something one does merely out of curiosity” – if anyone should ask about it. An observer knows how to appear easygoing; otherwise no one opens up. Above all, he guards against being ethically rigorous or portraying himself as the morally upright man. There is a degenerate man, one says, he has taken part, has had some wild experiences, ergo, I can certainly confide in him, I who am far superior to him! Well, so be it. I ask nothing of men but the substance of their consciousness. I scale it, and if it is weighty, no price is too high for me.
- This is all bullshit. He is speaking of the psychological dynamic playing out between him and the young man. The young man sees him as a marginal figure, hence, a figure that cannot judge him, which explains his request for silence. The young man fears judgment most of all. That is what dissuades him in pursuing the romance with the girl. Or is it? Maybe what I am writing is bullshit. No shit.
The issue that brings him to a halt is nothing more not less than repetition. He is right not to seek clarification in philosophy, either Greek or modern, for the Greeks make the opposite movement, and here a Greek would choose to recollect without tormenting his conscience. Modern philosophy makes no movement; as a rule it makes only a commotion, and if it makes any philosophy at all, it is always within immanence, whereas repetition is and remains a transcendence. (186)