1
This work--which covers scarcely one hundred and fifty pages, with its
cheerful and fateful tone, like a laughing demon, and the production
of which occupied so few days that I hesitate to give their number--is
altogether an exception among books: there is no work more rich in
substance, more independent, more upsetting--more wicked. If any one
should desire to obtain a rapid sketch of how everything, before my
time, was standing on its head, he should begin reading me in this
book. That which is called "Idols" on the title page is simply the
old truth that has been believed in hitherto. In plain English, _The
Twilight of the Idols_ means that the old truth is on its last legs.
2
There is no reality, no "ideality," which has not been touched in
this book (touched! what a cautious euphemism!). Not only the eternal
idols, but also the youngest--that is to say, the most senile: modern
ideas, for instance. A strong wind blows between the trees and in
all directions fall the fruit--the truths. There is the waste of an
all-too-rich autumn in this book: you trip over truths. You even crush
some to death, there are too many of them. Those things that you can
grasp, however, are quite unquestionable; they are irrevocable decrees.
I alone have the criterion of "truths" in my possession. I alone _can_
decide. It would seem as if a second consciousness had grown up in me,
as if the "life-will" in me had thrown a light upon the downward path
along which it has been running throughout the ages. The _downward
path_--hitherto this had been called the road to "Truth." All obscure
impulse--"darkness and dismay"--is at an end, the "_good man_" was
precisely he who was least aware of the proper way.[1] And, speaking
in all earnestness, no one before me knew the proper way, the way
upwards: only after my time could men once more find hope, life-tasks,
and roads mapped out that lead to culture--_I am the joyful harbinger
of this culture._ ... On this account alone I am also a fatality.
3
Immediately after the completion of the above-named work, and without
letting even one day go by, I tackled the formidable task of the
_Transvaluation_ with a supreme feeling of pride which nothing could
equal; and, certain at each moment of my immortality, I cut sign after
sign upon tablets of brass with the sureness of Fate. The Preface
came into being on 3rd September 1888. When, after having written it
down, I went out into the open that morning, I was greeted by the most
beautiful day I had ever seen in the Upper Engadine--clear, glowing
with colour, and presenting all the contrasts and all the intermediary
gradations between ice and the south. I left Sils-Maria only on the
20th of September. I had been forced to delay my departure owing to
floods, and I was very soon, and for some days, the only visitor in
this wonderful spot, on which my gratitude bestows the gift of an
immortal name. After a journey that was full of incidents, and not
without danger to life,--as for instance at Como, which was flooded
when I reached it in the dead of night,--I got to Turin on the
afternoon of the 21 st. Turin is the only suitable place for me, and
it shall be my home henceforward. I took the same lodgings as I had
occupied in the spring, 6111 Via Carlo Alberto, opposite the mighty
Palazzo Carignano, in which Vittorio Emanuele was born; and I had a
view of the Piazza Carlo Alberto and above it across to the hills.
Without hesitating, or allowing myself to be disturbed for a single
moment, I returned to my work, only the last quarter of which had still
to be written. On the 30th September, tremendous triumph; the seventh
day; the leisure of a god on the banks of the Po.[2] On the same day,
I wrote the Preface to _The Twilight of the Idols,_ the correction of
the proofs of which provided me with recreation during the month of
September. Never in my life have I experienced such an autumn; nor
had I ever imagined that such things were possible on earth--a Claude
Lorrain extended to infinity, each day equal to the last in its wild
perfection.
[Footnote 1: A witty reference to Goethe's well-known passage in the
Prologue to _Faust_:--
"A good man, though in darkness and dismay,
May still be conscious of the proper way."