Page 15 - GALIET CRUX, NUX OR LUX: Nietzsche IV

chords that he lasted the 40 days ... not seeking food but rather by zeal and divine grace. Night and day, he is standing ... in view of all and now bending down repeatedly offering worship to God. Many bystanders count ... one counts 1244 [prayers] before slackening and giving up account... and bending down he [Simeon] makes his forehead touch his toes ... as a result of standing, it is said a malignant ulcer has developed...nevertheless none of these afflictions have overcome his philosophy... he bares all nobly, all voluntary and involuntary actions, overcoming both the former and the latter by zeal...”13
Zeal. This literature of extremes was widely known and read by Nietzsche and his contemporaries. For Nietzsche, an ascetic life is self-contradiction: Life against Life. For him, it symbolizes
“a ressentiment without equal rules...an unsatiated instinct and power-will that would like to become lord not over something...but rather over life itself...pleasure is felt and sought in deformation, atrophy...self-flagellation...self-sacrifice.”14
(O Nietzsche, you also deformed, self-flagellated and sacrificed!)
Furthermore, the ascetic priest attempts to dull the senses and to distract one’s mind by hard work. Like Saint Simeon, the
13 Stouck, Mary-Ann. Medieval Saints - A Reader (Readings in Medieval Civilizations and Cultures, 4) N.Y.: Broadview Press, 1999.
14 Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morality. Trans. Maudemarie Clark and Alan J. Swensen. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1998. iii, 11, 10-15
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