Blogging Nietzsche—Nietzsche's Poetry: "Upward"

In this installment of my philosophical analysis of Nietzsche’s poetry, I look at Nietzsche’s poem “Upward” (Nietzsche, The Gay Science, ‘Joke, Cunning, and Revenge’: Prelude in German Rhymes, No. 16).

“Upward” is unusual insofar as it takes the form of a two-line question-and-answer conversation:

16. Upward

‘How do I best get to the top of this hill?’
‘Climb it, don’t think it, and maybe you will.’

Hills and mountains feature prominently in Nietzsche’s imagery. For Nietzsche, mountains are an expression of his humanism. While religious believers tend to look to the sky or to the heavens as some form of escapism, mountains for Nietzsche represent both the challenges of this earthly life and its possible achievements. Nietzsche views religion as a form of weakness, whereas it’s a sign of strength to set your sights on a challenge that is authentic for you as an individual and to begin your climb up that metaphorical mountain with your own two feet and your own inner strength.

While unquestionably achieving many types of goals takes planning, itself a type of intellectual activity, too often the act of planning is stultifying, preventing you from actually getting started and from taking those initial steps that will allow you to actually achieve your goals and dreams someday. Seen in this light, planning should never prevent you from actually doing.

Doing, however, means being willing to take the risks involved, even the risks of failing or of tumbling back down the mountain, perhaps only to pick oneself back up and begin the climb all over again—as anyone who’s experienced failure knows all too well! Fear of failure is arguably an even greater risk to actually getting started on the metaphorical journey up the mountain than planning is.

Nietzsche is constantly reminding us that we are embodied beings, not disembodied Cartesian egos or immaterial souls, hence the presence of so much physical, biological, and naturalistic imagery in Nietzsche’s poetry, and in his philosophical writings in general. Elsewhere in his essay “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” (Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the Early 1870’s), Nietzsche refers to humans as “clever beasts who invented knowing.” And while this newfound and late-in-coming rational ability arguably gave humans an evolutionary advantage, it can also hold us back as a species and as individuals if it prevents us from doing the things that are authentic to us as individuals or as a society.

The vast majority of people remain in the lowlands, either dreaming of some heavenly afterlife or yearning in awe of the mountains they’ve seen in dreams, of those hills they’ve imagined themselves climbing. But there the journey ends for most people who never even take the first steps to achieve the things they long inside to achieve, or to have the things they yearn for and burn for most inside. Rare is the person who looks upward to the summit from the base of the mountain and fearlessly begins the journey, come whatever unknown peril, hardship, or obstacles he or she may face along the way.

Nietzsche’s poem “Upward” is meant to be inspiring, as much of Nietzsche’s writing is intended to be, even when Nietzsche is at his most critical or seemingly nihilistic. If you yourself have a dream, a goal, or an accomplishment that you yearn to bring to fruition, take Nietzsche’s (and my) advice and simply get started. Don’t think. Don’t plan. Don’t keep merely daydreaming. Get started and make it happen, trusting in your own rationality to figure out how to overcome each obstacle you encounter along the way. If you fail or tumble or slide backward along the way, don’t think twice about it. Pick yourself back up and begin the climb all over again, even if you have to set your sights on a different mountain than the one you originally envisioned yourself climbing. After all, climbing some mountains in life, even the unexpected ones, is better than climbing none at all by contenting to play it safe in the lowlands, valleys, and shelters of life.

For Further Reading:

• The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche