9th Contribution by Bertil Haggman from _Die Schere_

[Bertil Haggman <bertil.haggman@helsingborg.se>]

165 (p. 118)

"Wenn wir der Prognose des Cäsarismus trauen,
stuenden wir im Hinblick auf den Weltstaat
"kurz vor Actium". Die Vergleiche sind ein-
laeuchtend. Zur dreigeteilten Welt fehlt noch ein
Teilhaber. Latifundien, Heere von Fremden in
den Staedten, Entlassung der Kolonien in neue 
Formen der Abhaengigkeit - aehnlich wie aus dem
Sklaven ein Klient, ein Freigelassener wird.

Ein Zyklus ist abgelaufen: ihm folgt eine
geschichtlose Zeit von unbestimmter Dauer,
die angenehm sein kann oder jedenfall untragisch
nach dem Muster des "letzten Menschen", wie
Nietzsche ihn verkuendet und Huxley ihn
beschrieben hat.

Uebrigens koennte es sein - da die Perioden jetzt
sehr schnell und manche nur embryonal verlaufen - 
dass jene des Uebermenschen schon hinter uns liegt.
Ein Salto mortale also - nich des Seiltaenzers, sondern
des Possenreissers, der jenen uebersprang? (Zarathustra I,6)."

Commentary

Actium often appears in EJs texts. The unity
of the Roman empire was achieved after the
naval battle between Anthony/Cleopatra and Octavian
(the future Augustus) at Actium 31 BC. Does 
the former stand for the Soviet Union and the
later for, as it turned out, victorious West ?
Another EJ prognosis turning true ?

And what about the tripartite world ? Wasn't
it bipolar until the collapse of the Soviet
Union in 1991 ? Or is EJ counting Europe as the
third ?

I.6 in Zarathustra is the famous sequence on the
tightrope walker, who walks on the rope over 
a square. It comes to an abrupt end when a jester
causes the walker to fall by jumping over him 
and be crushed against the stones underneath. 
Knowing himself to be dying, the
tightrope walker resigns himself to the fate to which
his life of danger has condemned him. And is
not the life of the tightrope walker, one
of cruel punishments and meagre rewards,
reduced to nothingness if he has nothing more
to fear nor to hope for after this life than
flies and ants ? No, his life is worthy in itself.
By making danger his vocation, he has lifted himself
high above the crowd and made himself the model for
an ideal contrary to the crowd's ideal of risk-free
containment. In living heroically, he has disting-
uished himself and is worthy of Zarathustras
respect.

Greetings

Bertil Haggman