a journal of the international council of philosophical inquiry with
children
Who
is Happy?
Using
poems of the philosophizing child
Friedrich
Nietzsche to instigate reflection in children and young people today
Eva Marsal
Abstract
In diesem Aufsatz werden die philosophischen Gedanken zum Glück, die der
zwölf - dreizehnjährige Friedrich Nietzsche in Gedichtsform präsentierte, mit
der Glückskonzeption des etwa gleichaltrigen heutigen Werkrealschülers Frederik
verglichen, der drei Gedichte Nietzsches zum Anlass nahm, um über seine eigenen
Vorstellungen zum Glück nachzudenken. Es geht darum zu zeigen, dass die
Gedichte, die das Kind Nietzsche geschrieben hatte, um sich philosophierend mit
seinen Lebensproblemen auseinander zu setzen, auch Kindern des 21. Jahrhunderts
als Impuls dienen können, sich mit problematischen und schwerwiegenden
Grundfragen des Lebens zu beschäftigen. Wie heilsam dieses Nachdenken ist,
konnte nicht nur Daniela Cahmy für den amerikanischen und österreichischen
Sprachraum zeigen, sondern auch Hermann Josef Schmidt in seiner Quadrologie zur
Kindheit und Jugend von Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche.
Keywords
Glückskonzeption des 12 - 13 jährigen Friedrich Nietzsche, Die
Vergänglichkeit des Glücks, Auf der Suche nach dem Glück, Unterschiedliche
Typologien im Umgang mit Glücksmöglichkeiten, Gedichte als Impuls für P4C.
Introduction
What is happiness? How do others see
it, and what does it mean to me? This everyday philosophical question, which
Aristotle treated in the first book of his Nicomachean Ethics, has
always interested all young people. Daniela Cahmy, for one, has shown in the
American and Austrian context just how beneficial reflecting on this
fundamental question can be for finding solutions to difficult problems, as has
also been indicated by Hermann Josef
Schmidt in his four-volume treatise on Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche’s childhood
and youth. In this essay I would like to examine children’s competency in philosophizing
from two directions. First, I will describe the development of a concept of
happiness by the 12-year-old Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900), who dealt
with the problems in his life by philosophizing, and formulated his thoughts as
poems. Second, I will introduce Frederik, a middle school student of about the
same age, who responded to three of Nietzsche’s poems by reflecting on his own
thoughts about happiness.
1. The poems selected
I have chosen just three poems on
the theme of happiness that document an inner conflict and a progressive series
of solutions. In the first poem, “The Transience of Happiness,” the attribution
of happiness is seen as a variable of time enduring beyond the life of a single
individual and revealing itself in the fates of peoples and nations. “Alfonso,”
the second poem, is limited to one individual life and offers many alternative
experiences of happiness. Here the chief question is, “Who can judge whether
someone should be called happy?” After having generally eliminated the
legitimacy of external viewpoints in making such judgments, the poet turns to
the inner perspective. Going one step
further, the third poem, “Two Larks,” uses opposing patterns of behavior to
symbolize the question of intensity’s value in the experience of happiness.
2. The transience of happiness
In 1856 the twelve-year-old Nietzsche considers
the relationship between the duration and the value of happiness in a poem
extending backward into antiquity.
“Transience of Happiness”
(The first
part of the poem is missing.)
(He) flees away to the nearby strand
sees there the
loveliest of shows
For the sun is sending out
The first of its fiery rays
Far across the
See o wanderer on the beach
An abandoned skiff is lying
And the wanderer climbs on in
And the waves of the sea carry him
Him (sic) still far to other lands
Third Canto
On
Amazed the wanderer disembarks
Goes forth, and here, here too he sees
A land that once was so mighty
So many hundred years ago.
For here there lived a race
So splendid in monumental works
that the most recent travelers
gazed astonished on them still
And they are worthy of it.
And the wanderer steps up close
And gazes at the wondrous works
And before his eyes appear
Grand and splendid pyramids
Also built by the people here.
Now he climbs up to their tops.
And gazes from them down below
Sees the land spread out so barren
That was populated long ago
By the great Egyptian nation.
Now he descends inside
Sees the many sarcophagi
Dedicated to the king
Who caused them to be built
By that great great people.
But too long within these walls
The wanderer will not stay
Steps out to gaze at other sights
And sees the lofty obelisks
Raised from a single stone.
Now he stands by the lofty columns
And considers this old old people
That once so truly mighty was
And built these wondrous works.
Observing now he passes further.
Thinks how many peoples
Once gazed upon these structures
Greeks, Romans, and the French
Prussians and also many Turks
All looking on them still.
And in amazement the wanderer sees
The lofty rows of
Sees colossi and he thinks
Could these be the works of man?
And time has taught him that.
Now how will I travel on
he asks: Look here comes an eagle
With his talons lifts him up
And on its feathered wings
He flies over many lands.
IV.
On the breeze the eagle floats
Flies so quickly that the wanderer
Hardly recalls who carried him
How astonished he is as the eagle
Slows down with him and now he sees it
Dizziness strikes him at greatest height
Yet the eagle carries him safely forth
Finally slowly sinking down
And the wanderer climbs to the ground
And beholds a land he has never seen before
Asks at once the first passer-by
What is the ground he is standing on
That one gives him the reply
That this place once
mighty was
In the old old times.
For here once stood a city
Ninive by name.
Her kings were full of pride
For them it had to pay
The city and the entire realm.
Amazed the wanderer passes on
In order to behold it all.
Whatever is memorable to be seen
The columns niches windows
He looks at here within this place.
And notices that this ground too
Was brought to life once by a people
That so loved the ornamentation
That it made them proud
And they were punished by God.
Quickly now he takes a spade
Digs in the ground a gaping hole
And barely a few feet down he finds
The ground is filled with sculptures
And the wanderer delights in them
And settles joyfully down
On a lofty block of marble.
Yet suddenly is overcome by sadness
For he thinks how he has seen already
That happiness passes away.
Just now the sun goes down
Sending the last of its rays
Onto the paleness of the pilgrim’s face
And the wanderer cries, once more,
Rising up from the earth.
How transient happiness is
I have seen now for myself.
Eternal it is found in heaven.
He speaks and lowers in parting his pale head
And fell forthwith into the hole he had dug
there.
BAW I, 347-349
In this poem Friedrich Nietzsche follows the
path of a wanderer who fails to realize his at first implicit, then explicit
demand that happiness should have permanence.The wanderer, carried to Egypt by
a small boat, looks first with astonishment at the monuments bearing witness to
a once great people, the pyramids and obelisks, and he “considers” their
fleeting destiny. And so it is not the lack of happiness that is being lamented
here, but only the lack of its “unlimited duration even beyond the lifetime of
the individual Egyptian” (Schmidt 1991, 219). What causes happiness to end, the
reason why the “once populated land now lies so barren” is not yet specified
here, but only in the second half of the poem, during the contemplation of
Ninive, a place that in the “old old times” was very powerful. The splendidly
ornamented structures are an indication of pridefulness in the kings and
population, for which they had to suffer. God punished them. ‘Happiness’ by
this standard would seem to be a dangerous blessing, capable of bringing
humankind into conflict with the divine powers and calling them into action.
Hermann Josef Schmidt asserts that for the child Nietzsche the themes of
punishment and revenge, as a possible interpretation of the fateful events he
himself had suffered, “are among the unmistakable fundamental problems (and
deeply shattering basic experiences) that the child is trying to process in his
poetry” (Schmidt 1991, 219).
In
the last section the wanderer himself takes up a shovel and begins to act as an
archaeologist. He finds “the ground full of sculptures” and is overjoyed. But
abruptly the mood turns, and suddenly there is nothing but a deep sadness, not
even to be mitigated by the cheering
natural display of the setting sun. The wanderer is caught up in his thoughts
about the transience of happiness. “If good fortune can only truly make us
happy when it is everlasting, then human life, even in times of the greatest
cultural flowering, becomes meaningless (Schmidt 1991,220). But is this really
Nietzsche’s position? Schmidt suggests that Nietzsche, by means of his
parodistic conclusion, introduces a contradictory voice: “after having
exhausted through his rejection of a transient happiness his possibilities of
finding meaning for life on earth, the wanderer fell “into the grave he had dug
himself.’ In his fatal fall, the wanderer pursues his hostile view of life with
such consistency that the borderline separating it from persiflage, parody, or
caricature has become, at the very least, a narrow one” (Schmidt 1991, 221). To
indicate that lasting happiness cannot exist on Earth, the child Nietzsche
formulates it this way in the third line from the end: “Eternal it is found in
heaven.”
3. Alfonso: the search for happiness
Alfonso
1. On
the castle’s lofty tower
Sits
Alfonso sad and pale
Filled
with unspeakable desire
For
what is known as happiness.
2. And
he thinks of ancient heroes
All
enrobed in might and power
To
subdue and rule the nations
That
was surely not real happiness.
3. He
calls to mind the forefathers themselves
Oh
sadly, how often even his father
Named to him with tears
misfortunes,
Humiliations of his paternal
house
4. Oh!
Beauty! What might it be
He
meditates by day and night
And
turning away each plate of food
In
introspection he abides
5. And
there he sits then brooding
Sees
the sun sink down
Breaks
out in tearful words
Cries
out all torn by pain
6. O
sun! You witness to my woe
You
sink again and leave me here
Grieving
and so torn by doubt
If
only I would sink like you into the grave.
7. Yes
it sinks! With stripes of fiery red
The
heaven fills up its gown of blue
A
gloomy fog sinks all around
Darkness
falls; by the Cid as well.
8. Hark!
What is ringing so sweet and refined
It
comes from an ancient cloister, the lovely tone
It
calls the people all to rest and prayer
For
him it brings no peace by day and night.
9. Now
the night has fallen
He
has conceived the plan
Forth
from here he will travel
Until
he has found what he seeks
10. And
in the morrow’s dawn
He
takes his pilgrim’s staff
A
robe of gray goes with him
As
is the pilgrim’s way.
11. Already
he has traveled far
Already
he is tired; then comes
An aged man to meet him
Alfonso where do you intend to
go?
12. It
is the venerable Padre
He’s
recognized his lord
He
takes him into the cottage
And
refreshes him with a drink.
13. The
Padre could imagine
The
old nobleman’s plan
He
had observed him often
Sorrowful
in his castle.
14. In
parting from Alfonso
He
gives him good instruction
Trust
no one who before his death
Has
the semblance of happiness.
15. The
Cid takes it to heart
He
thinks about the words
Happy
only when dead
That
he cannot believe.
16. And
he takes as pilgrims do
With
thanks his walking staff
Departs
from him a teacher
Endowed
indeed with doctrine wise.
17. Wandering
Alfonso goes on his way
And
arrives at the seashore wondering
To
where he should further direct his steps
There
appears in the distance a little ship
And
it draws nearer and he hears
Songs
born from the mouth of the people
In
happiness passes our life til at last
Death
reaches each of us in various forms
Whipped
by violent storms the sea swallows some
Others
find death where the enemy’s bullet bores through him
Yet
but one of all these is hailed as completely happy
The
one who joyously ends a life in loving communion with friends
To
make a pilgrimage forth from the earth
To
join with the Highest and seeing once more the loved ones
By
death torn away with arms of iron on former journeys
In
everlasting joy he spends a time that will never end.
So
sounded the song from the mouths of the rowing boatmen
And
Alfonso hears with a joyful demeanor the words
Again
the darkness the power the words of the Padre
Still
veiled to him were by the words of the rowing boatmen
After
all in small part revealed;
Now
he will try to resemble these people
To be
as happy as they and decides
To
become a boatman himself, always working with oars
To
catch in the widely cast net fish for the daily meal.
18. And
he speaks to the boatmen at anchor busied with washing their nets
With
imploring words: O take me
As
your companion eager to serve you!
The
boat’s leader approaches with friendly words
Asks
for the reason that brought him to this
And
declares at the end: Alfonso
Take
my advice: There lives close by
There
in wild mountains unseen in a gloomy cave
One
who may give you the answer
So
go there in haste! and wishing him luck disappeared.
There
a wild mountainous landscape torn by ravines and valleys
Dark
brush on all sides tall towering trees
And
in the middle well covered with leaves.
A
trap door woven of willow
Surprised
appears at his knocking a graybeard
Who
brings you stranger to me
What
is it that leads your steps this way.
Don
Alfonso replies: I come in friendship.
Just
wishing an answer to following question
Which
one can be called completely happy?
The
old man calls out so come down to me
No
one has yet left my house without a good answer:
I
repeat the words of the wise man of
Call
no one who lives in pleasures and fame
Happy,
for each day misfortune can still overtake him
When
after a praiseworthy life you’ve arrived at your father’s
Then
may the people regard you rightly as happy in life.
You
know it best then yourself.
BAW I, 377-379 (Numbering of the verses has
been added for orientation in the discussion.)
With this poem the child Nietzsche shows that
within the previous year the question of happiness has become still more urgent,
or that he now has the capacity to formulate it more forcefully and with
greater complexity. Alfonso makes contact with various groups of people and
their conceptions of happiness, always in search of an answer that could also
suffice for him. The answers of these others are revealed as false solutions to
his problem; Alfonso must find his own criteria for deciding whether or not
something signifies happiness for him.
This
search for happiness begins with a desperate vehemence standing in absolute contradiction
to the question’s content, and it is also blind to the sources of happiness
that are close at hand.
1) Fame through heroic deeds and the power
of rulers; Nietzsche is familiar with this as the “Greek myth,” long
admired by the young graecophile.
2) Integration into the world and the
tradition of his father; the rejection of this position means breaking with
the idealization and modeling function that Nietzsche’s dead father still long
retained for the child
3) The religious consolations of the Christian
community that heeds the bell’s call; in response to this the child
Friedrich Nietzsche, known since the age of five as “the little Pastor,” has
Alfonso declare that while others might find inner peace in this way, his own
suffering was not touched by it.
“Obviously Alfonso is not looking
for just any solution, but one that is his own” (Schmidt 1991, 243). Even
though he is looking for a personal answer suitable for himself, Alfonso
decides to take an educational journey, so as to first gather all existing
opinions in the best Aristotelian manner before coming to his own conclusion.
“Alfonso begins his search for happiness here with an external orientation: it
all depends on what “people” consider happiness to be. And yet this kind of
orientation, meant to quickly satisfy the questioner with a predetermined
answer, stands in a peculiarly tense relationship to the “unquenchable” longing
so powerful that it evades all designation” (Schmidt 1991, 243).
The first answer-bearer Alfonso
meets is a Padre who proclaims the same thing that Aristotle cited as
bequeathed wisdom in the Nicomachean Ethics: “For many changes occur in life, and all manner of
chances, and the most prosperous may fall into great misfortunes in old age, as
is told of Priam in the Trojan Cycle; and one who has experienced such chances
and has ended wretchedly no one calls happy (I,9)…Must no one at all, then, be
called happy while he lives; must we, as Solon says, see the end? Even if we
are to lay down this doctrine, is it also the case that a man is happy when he
is dead? “ (I, 10) [1]
„Happy only when dead / That he cannot believe.” So Alfonso travels on
and in the third part of the poem encounters a group of fishermen who present
their “theory of happiness in musical form” (Schmidt 1991, 252), and in doing
so reflect on death. Here different
levels of happiness are introduced: normal
happiness in everyday life: “In happiness passes our life til
… death overtakes …us,” and intensified happiness: only that person “is hailed as completely happy” who, like
Socrates or Epicure “joyously ends a
life in loving communion with friends” These
thoughts from the Greek tradition are then amplified in the same section with
Christian notions.
“The
song juxtaposes two concepts of happiness: one purely immanent, deriving from
antiquity and corresponding more or less to the Fragments of Solon, and one
that ‘far surpasses it,’ combining an archaic-pederastic Symposium perspective
(from Alkaios on) with partly Christian notions of an afterlife” (Schmidt 1991,
253). Whereas the Padre still left open the question whether a person could
already be called happy before death, the boatmen are explicit in singing of
themselves as happy, even facing the undeniable possibility of death in the
waves or in war. Thus they represent a heroic and purely immanent conception of
happiness that corresponds to the views of early Greek wise men (such as
Solon).
But the boatmen are not just singing about
themselves. Rather, in the course of their song they change the level and mode
of representation: “They no longer are speaking of themselves, but presenting a
summation. Out of ‘all people’ only that one is ‘hailed as completely happy’
who fulfills a great many very different conditions…(he) …would have to at
least (1) joyously end his life (2) in loving communion (3) with friends, (4)
journey (5) forth from the Earth (6) to the place (7) of union (8) with the Highest, (9)
recognizing again (10) the loved ones that death with iron arms (11) tore away
on a pilgrimage long ago (12) spending time everlasting (13) in eternal joy”
(Schmidt 1991, 252).
Alfonso
finds this complex happiness-conglomerate so appealing that he is infected by
the fishermen’s joyous mood and wants to be taken into their community. In the
enthusiasm of his attraction, however, he neglects to consider differences in
life context and preconditions, for example age, education, answers to
questions about the meaning of life, and so on. His ‘self-surrender’ and
readiness to conform are blocked by the fishermen’s leader, a ‘wise man with
therapeutic gifts,’ who sends him further into the mountains: “His path forward
is as little their own as are his problems.” (Schmidt 1991, 252)
Nonetheless,
Alfonso can take something away from his encounter with the fishermen: the
question concerning intensification of happiness, so that he immediately asks
the old man in the forest about the superlative form of happiness: “Which one
can be called completely happy?” But the
old man deflects both the superlative character of the question and the
fundamental idea that it can be answered by others. In the last line he refers
his interrogator back to himself: “You know it best then yourself.” Alfonso
himself is the only authority on earth that can make judgments about his
happiness.
With
this Nietzsche rejects from a twofold perspective the judgmental authority of
external viewpoints. The criterion for happiness is revealed neither to the
lone thinker through reception of traditional values nor to the active traveler
through life styles he encounters. The finally persuasive answer points to an
inner perspective: each person knows best whether he feels happy and what makes
him happy. And yet the path Nietzsche follows in his poem is by no means
trivial. Results of social-psychological research into the pressures of group
conformity have shown how difficult it is to really adhere to one’s own
feelings and act in accordance with them (Manfred Sader, 1991).
The
abandonment of the external perspective for the judgment of happiness becomes
clear in the poem “Two Larks,” written a short time later. Here the young
Nietzsche consistently follows the inner perspective and “feels through” two
differing possibilities for dealing with experienced happiness.
4. Two
Larks: variant typologies in approaching possibilities of happiness
Two
Larks
I heard as two larks
sang
Their song so bright
and clear
Their flight on joyous
wings
So wondrous against the sky
The one approached the sun
But blinded shrank away
And after often thought with joy
About this happiness now lost.
And yet it does not dare to raise
Its wings up to that ray of light
It fears its striving might at last
Bring it to a painful end
The other urgent and brave
Wings upward toward the sun
Yet closes its eyes so fearfully
On this never taken path.
But then unable to withstand
It feels an irresistible desire
To see the heavenly rays
With hardly a thought left for itself
It looks into the gleaming sun
Gazes without complaint
In heavenly joy and bliss,
Til its eyes at last grew dark. --??
The poem of this precocious child is strikingly
accomplished in its form. The boy is now able to present his years of
reflection, despair and emotional searching in pointed abstract form as the
contrast between two types of behavior. Yet it can’t be assumed that here he
has found a final answer, since neither the uncompromising solution nor the
cautious one, in which life is nourished by memory, offers a realistic perspective
on life.
The
first of the two larks in this poem represents, for one thing, an early form of
the “antiquarian” personality type (second of the Untimely Meditations)
who lives in thoughts and memory, but for the most part sacrifices happiness in
the present. The second lark, on the other hand, “wings upward ‘urgent and
brave,’ – that is, not as a consequence of insight – into the sun, closing its
eyes, thus flying blind, on ‘never taken path.’ It can’t resist, even if it
wanted to; it ‘feels an irresistible desire’ and has ‘hardly a thought left for
itself,’ thus experiencing an ecstatic state. It looks into the sun’s radiance
without complaint, ‘in heavenly joy and bliss, til at last it saw no
more.--??’” (Schmidt 1991, 347f.). In this poem Nietzsche stays purely on the
descriptive plane, yet through positioning, rhythm, and word choice he makes
his preferences clear. He documents positive feelings for both larks, since
both are striving toward the sun, a symbol personally meaningful to him that he
uses in many poems. The sun’s image is always brought to bear by Nietzsche when
the topic is the problematics of happiness, and so it has a presence in all
three poems.
The
larks, on the other hand, as mentioned above, embody distinct typologies in the
way they deal with possibilities of happiness. To underline this, Nietzsche
draws the second lark so that its behavior is opposite in almost every way to
that of the first lark. “There is no doubt that the two larks represent
heterogeneous modes of existence. The one follows its urges and lives them out;
it is in ecstasy and ‘remains therein.’ The other is more likely to rationalize
its existence, does not enter into and remain within the fullness of life, but
goes on living….Thinking helps it – in contrast to its counterpart – to achieve
‘second-hand happiness,’ happiness cautiously dosed, but with less intensity”
(Schmidt 1991, 350).
Like
all works of art, this poem too has many levels and a persuasive power that
aids not only its author in his development and his process of clarification.
Works set free from their contexts possess an independent emanation and enter
into their own quite unique correspondence with the recipient. This is why
today in the areas of literary studies and reader psychology many forward-looking
researchers focus on the effects of reader reception (Norbert Groeben, Peter
Vorderer, 1998). My own special interest has been in how these expressive poems
of the philosophizing child Friedrich Nietzsche would work to inspire
reflection in today’s children.
5. The
poems of the philosophizing child Friedrich Nietzsche as instigation for
Frederik’s reflections on happiness
5.1 The
transience of happiness
Researcher:
What do you think: why is the first poem entitled “Transience of Happiness”?
Frederik: He
was looking at these monuments and then ha saw that the once so powerful kings
had built them and that they now aren’t rulers any more. They had so much good
fortune and now it’s over.
Researcher:
Try to put yourself in the shoes of Friedrich Nietzsche, who was exactly the
same age you are now, as I already told you. What might he have been feeling as
he wrote the poems?
Frederik: He
felt sad because the monuments are nearly destroyed and the people have lost
their culture. Maybe he had read a book back then that talked about the
Egyptians and the people of Ninive.
Researcher:
After the flight with the eagle, when the wanderer asks where he is, he hears
that the city of
Frederik: Very
harsh. I think it’s harsh because the kings were punished just because of their
pride.
Researcher:
Why does Friedrich even mention the fate of Ninive. Wouldn’t his description of
the desolate ruined kingdom of ancient
Frederik: He
wanted to give more examples so that every person would understand it. Some
people think that it serves the Egyptians right, and that’s why he gave other
examples. He thinks that God punished the people of Ninive, but not the
Egyptians. He used Ninive as an example because apparently they were punished
by God, and the Egyptians weren’t.
Researcher:
The poem often mentions that the wanderer “thinks,” “considers,” sits down on a
stone and reflects upon what he has seen. You probably know a lot of boys in
Friedrich’s age group. Have you heard twelve-year-olds talking very often about
someone reflecting on things?
Frederik: No,
never.
Researcher:
Do twelve-year-olds like to reflect on things?
Frederik: I
do. Maybe twelve-year-olds are embarrassed to say so because others might make
fun of them. I like to do it anyway.
Researcher:
Why do you think Friedrich writes so often that the wanderer “thinks,”
“considers,” and so on?
Frederik: Because
Friedrich probably really liked to think about things.
Researcher:
So why does the wanderer think that the people in the ancient kingdoms were happy?
Do you have any ideas about that?
Frederik: He
could only imagine that they were happy because they built such beautiful
structures.
Researcher:
Why does Friedrich have the wanderer fall into his own hole at the end and die?
Frederik: Because
happiness is only in heaven….It’s written right here: “Eternal it is found in
heaven.” He wants to say here that happiness on earth is never eternal.
Researcher:
Imagine that your friend would ask you what type of person this wanderer is.
How would you describe him?
Frederik: Old,
walking stick, green outfit, wise, very wise. I’ve been imagining him that way
the whole time.
Researcher:
Can you understand it that a boy of twelve would write such a poem?
Frederik: No,
I see it as a great accomplishment for him.
5.2
Alfonso
Researcher:
Can you imagine how Alfonso is feeling and describe his problem for me?
Frederik: He
wants to know the meaning of happiness and is unhappy because he doesn’t know
what it is. He wants to fight against his sad state of mind.
Researcher:
Can you understand the problem or does it seem strange to you?
Frederik: I
can’t understand it because he expresses himself so melodramatically.
Researcher:
Now we’ll go through the poem more carefully, and you tell me what each of
these conceptions of happiness means, in your opinion.
Frederik:
- Verse 2: Alfonso
didn’t find domination and ruling happy because it was cruel.
- Verse 3: Even
in his own house there is unhappiness. People think that everything is ok at
home, but unfortunately that isn’t the case.
- Verse 8: For
the others it’s nice to hear the bells, but not for him. For the others the
prayer means peace, but not for him.
- Verses 14
+ 15: The Padre thinks that he shouldn’t call anyone happy before they die,
because something can always happen later. Alfonso thinks that can’t be right,
because when a person is happy, that person stays happy.
- Verse 17:
The fishermen think that everyone dies happy, no matter how, and the person
who has his friends at his bedside dies in the best way. This time Alfonso
agrees.
- Verse 18:
The old man tells Alfonso that you only know at the end whether you had a
happy life.
Researcher:
What do you think of these answers?
Frederik: Some
of them are good, for example I like the old man’s answer, and also the Padre’s.
As to the fishermen, I don’t like their idea that a person is supposed to be
happy even if he dies in battle or drowns in the ocean. I only like their idea
that the happiest death is with friends.
Researcher:
In your opinion, what’s the point of looking for an answer to the question of
who is happy?
Frederik: That
you can be happy yourself if you know who is happy.
Researcher:
What is the old man trying to say with his last sentence: “You know it best
then yourself”?
Frederik: In
the first place, he wants to put Alfonso’s mind at rest because he is always
searching. In the second place, because it’s Alfonso who has lived his life and
people can’t look inside him. That’s why he knows it best.
4.3 Two
Larks
Researcher:
Is Friedrich just trying to say something in this poem about two birds, or do
the larks and the sun stand for something else?
Frederik: They
stand for something else. It’s a parable. The one lark that only took a quick
look stands for a person who only enjoyed happiness for a short time. The other
one stands for a person who enjoyed so much happiness that he burst, you know,
he was so full. The sun stands for radiant happiness.
Researcher:
What’s the difference between the two larks?
Frederik: The
one behaved in the right way who only enjoyed it for a short time and the
other, the one that burst, behaved wrong.
Researcher:
What idea of happiness does the first lark have?
Frederik: To
enjoy it for a short time and remember it for a long time.
Researcher:
What is the second lark’s idea of happiness?
Frederik: To
take in as much as possible.
Researcher:
Which lark do you resemble more?
Frederik: Sometimes
I take in a lot, but sometimes I hold myself back.
5.4
General Questions
Researcher:
Which poem did you like best?
Frederik: The
third one, because you can fit almost any kind of person in there. It’s
expressed well and is a nice parable.
Researcher:
So now you’ve taken a good look at the poems of Friedrich, who is your age, as
you know. What image do you have of him? Use your imagination for a minute.
Frederik: First
from the outside, then the inside: round face, fat, short legs. Now from the
inside: clever, intelligent, friendly. He likes the sunset and sunrise,
friendly people. His hobbies are reading and writing poems.
5.5
Questions about Friedrich’s Conception of Happiness
Researcher:
What do you think most people consider happiness?
Frederik: Happiness
in life, as it’s generally shown in poetry.
Researcher:
Have you yourself ever thought about what happiness is?
Frederik: Yes,
often. I’ve wondered whether everyone can be happy. Whether everyone can have
the same degree of happiness. Can a person lose happiness? Can happiness be
controlled?
Researcher:
Can you name a few situations where you felt happy?
Frederik: For
example when we were on vacation, or when I got a Yahtze while playing the game
Yahtze (Here I mean luck in the roll of the dice.)
Researcher:
What is happiness for you?
Frederik: For
me happiness is when a person has had a happy experience or else when a person
had good luck somewhere, maybe in a game, and when a person gets lucky in an
accident.
6. A
Comparison of the Interpretations
This conversation shows that Frederik, a
student at a vocational school (Hauptschule), has engaged intensively
with the poems. He gives interpretations that can be taken seriously and are
worth comparing to expert interpretations. The expert we have been citing,
professor Hermann Josef Schmidt, begins his interpretations with Nietzsche’s
biography and tries to use the texts to explain the boy’s feelings, states of
mind, thoughts and philosophical points of departure, thus attempting to offer
an original Nietzsche interpretation. Naturally this possibility is not open to
Frederik. In his case the poems must speak for themselves and their effect
arises solely from their artistic expressiveness. Both readers, the professor
and the boy, are noticeably moved by the poems, and not just on the conscious
cognitive level, but also on deeper, unconscious levels touching on personal
questions, needs, and life wounds of each. So both interpreters, with a common
personal response, allowed themselves to be so touched by the poetry of this
young philosopher who lived 140 years ago that they brought the weight of their
own persons into the discussion, making available their personal thoughts, and
thus engaging openly with the texts.
6.1 Transience of happiness: The first important theme developed
by Schmidt on the basis of the tragic childhood experiences is the theme of
punishment and revenge that is able to extinguish an apparently secure
happiness. (Nietzsche’s father died after a painful illness when his son was
four, and shortly thereafter his little brother also died.) Frederik also finds
God’s reaction “very harsh;” just like Nietzsche, he sees no justification for
the divine behavior, but neither does he directly criticize it.
Schmidt
concludes on the basis of the language structure and the parodistic nature of
the poem’s conclusion that Nietzsche rejects the wanderer’s demand for
permanent happiness. Through the line “Eternal it is found in heaven,” Frederik
comes to the same conclusion that happiness on earth can never be eternal, that
is, that someone who makes this demand is not capable of living. It must be
granted, however, that Frederik is not in a position to reflect upon the
possible irony of this sentence.
Both
the vocational student and the professor conclude from various pieces of
evidence that Nietzsche is a child who likes to think. Both are impressed by
him and believe that the poem is a great accomplishment for a twelve-year-old.
6.2 Alfonso: Whereas Frederik was easily
able to identify with the wanderer in the first poem, he found it much harder
in the case of Alfonso. He found him “so melodramatic.” Schmidt characterizes
this attitude as a paradox that “includes the more pathological forms of
‘happiness’.”
Frederik
recognizes correctly that Alfonso does not find the conventional offerings of
happiness appealing. Unlike Alfonso, Frederik finds Solon’s wisdom persuasive,
and he relates it immediately to the answer of the old man, whose position
Frederik likes best. For Frederik – like Schmidt – starts from the premise that
the old man is directing Alfonso toward the inner perspective as the only
possible way to make judgments about happiness. Frederik argues in favor of
this, suggesting that others cannot see into Alfonso’s mind, and so they cannot
know whether or not he has felt happiness in any given situation.
On
the other hand, Frederik is unable to assess the significance of the boatmen’s
song. Here he lacks the life experiences that formed the background for
Nietzsche. Frederik notes the comparative element in assessing the superlative
form of happiness, namely that “the happiest death is (the one) among
friends.” Frederik is able to identify personally with that.
Frederik
does not accept a radical rejection of the external perspective as a source of
knowledge about happiness; he finds it quite useful to consider the conceptions
of happiness held by others. It is his premise “that you can be happy yourself
if you know who is happy.”
6.3 Two Larks: This
poem speaks most strongly to Frederik, both in its content and in its parabolic
form. In contrast to Nietzsche, who makes no direct judgment, the cheerful boy
Frederik judges the larks’ behavior as right or wrong based on the
consequences. In so doing he alters the image: the lark’s eye does not grow
dark, it “bursts” because it is filled to excess with happiness. Frederik does
take into account the lark’s passion, but not the conditions leading up to it,
which Schmidt analyses with subtlety. Whereas Schmidt identifies the young
Nietzsche more closely with the first lark, Frederik identifies himself on the
behavioral level with both larks: “Sometimes I take in a lot, but sometimes I hold myself back.” Since for Frederik the literary
form of the parable is foregrounded, he sees the end of the second lark purely
symbolically, and places a greater emphasis on the quantitative rather than the
radical qualitative difference between the two larks. This is why he has no
problem integrating the second lark into his life perspectives. Such a
flattened interpretation makes it possible for him to place the people around
him on a continuum between the two larks as contrasting end points in the
approach to happiness. In addition to the aesthetic consideration, this
social-psychological aspect is the reason why Frederik likes this poem best, “because
you can fit almost any kind of person in there.”
“The
sun stands for radiant happiness.” Frederik does not need to go into it any
further; with this sentence he has said it all. For him, the poems of the child
Friedrich Nietzsche are already real works of art containing general truths
and, due to their high levels of abstraction, allowing each individual to form
a personal connection from the poem to concrete phenomena.
7. Frederik’s conception of happiness.
The
interview shows that Frederik has also thought about happiness at various
times. Like Nietzsche, he connects the question of happiness with the question
of fate (Fatum, Tyche , and so on). Thus when Frederik is asked, “Have
you yourself ever thought about what happiness is?” he replies, “Yes, often.
I have wondered whether every person can be happy. Whether everyone can have
the same degree of happiness. Can a person lose happiness? Can happiness be
controlled?” Although nowadays we have left behind the Greeks’ mythological
way of thinking, in which humans felt themselves to be the Gods’ “playthings,”
and which was absorbed by the young Nietzsche from many poems and aphorisms,
factors still remain that are beyond our technical reach and thus resistant to
our control. This element of incomplete autonomy in controlling one’s own fate
is a constant in all of Frederik’s answers as he sketches out his own
conception of happiness.
Nevertheless,
the possibility of experiencing happiness can be produced through
favorable circumstances by seeking out situations that promise happiness. Here
Frederik mentions vacations as an example. The other aspect, the lack of
control over happiness, can be seen, according to Frederik, in the example of “the
roll of the dice” or “when someone gets lucky in an accident.”
In order for happiness to be grasped
at all cognitively and emotionally, it needs to be consciously interpreted as
happiness. Frederik hints at this with the sentence, “For me happiness is
when a person has had a happy experience.” In this statement there is a
certain tension between I and a person. On the one hand the
relation to the self is being reflected upon, on the other Frederik is
expanding the question, considering also the other people. Not only is he happy
when he himself “has had a happy experience,” but also when the same
fate befalls others. Frederik does not give specifics about the content. It is
clear to him that differing conceptions of happiness exist. But only the
experience matters.
This
view parallels conclusions of research into depression: as long as an “earthly
good” is not seen as such, and so fails to elicit the corresponding mental,
emotional, and physical reactions, then one cannot speak of “happiness” (Sader,
1991).
Thus
Frederik’s conception of happiness is characterized in its main points by the
following contrasting elements:
-the lack of control over happiness as “fate”
-the conscious experience of the available
happiness
-the seeking out of situations that, according to
one’s self-knowledge, seem to promise the experience of happy feelings.
In
this article I have presented the reactions of a young person to the young
Nietzsche’s poems, and shown that these poems are indeed capable of stimulating
and encouraging children and young people today to philosophize about their own
positions.
Reference
List
Aristoteles: Nikomachische Ethik,
Reclam- Verlag Stuttgart 1969.
Camhy, Daniela [Hg.]:
Children: Thinking and Philosophy - Das philosophische Denken von Kindern,
Kongreßband des 5. Internationalen Kongresses für Kinderphilosophie , Graz
1992, Sankt Augustin1994.
Martens, Ekkehard: Philosophieren mit Kindern. Eine
Einführung in die Philosophie, Stuttgart 22005.
Nietzsche, Friedrich:
Jugendschriften 1854-1861. Herausgegeben von Hans Joachim Mette BAW 1, dtv
München 1994.
Sader, Manfred:
Psychologie der Gruppe. Juventa-Verlag Weinheim / München 1991.
Schmidt, Hermann Josef:
Nietzsche absconditus oder Spurenlesen bei Nietzsche. Kindheit Teil 1/2 Zugänge und Entwicklung, IBDK Verlag
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