The image asleep in the stone

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a German philosopher born in Röcken. In the second part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he puts a tool into the hands of someone who longs to create. Zarathustra speaks on the blessed islands to people who can imagine a different human future. By the end of the speech one can almost hear a sculptor’s blows.^[1]

What the sculptor already sees

To anyone else the block may look merely hard and ugly. To Zarathustra it already has a shape. The small phrase “for me” matters. The speaker sees an image because a particular human possibility occupies his imagination. It is this image that makes the stone a material in which his vision must prove itself.^[1]

Ah, you human beings, an image lies asleep for me in the stone, the image of my images! Ah, that it must sleep in the hardest, ugliest stone!^[1]

Why the fragments fall

In the next paragraph chips fly. Bringing the image into being requires a real intervention in the stone. Yet Zarathustra describes the impulse behind it with surprising delicacy. A shadow came to him, a passing intimation of the beauty of the Overman. The heavy hammer answers that fleeting impression. The speech ends with someone who knows what he wants to work towards, while the figure itself has yet to emerge.^[1]