Rendez-Vous — F. Nietzsche

— Cornelis de Bondt

I was sitting on a bench in a square in Turin; it is the 3rd of January 1889, around eleven in the morning. A man approached, a dark mane of hair, a heavy moustache — I recognised the ‘philosopher with the hammer’. His steps were unsteady; not that he truly staggered, but there was no firmness in his gait. When he reached my bench I addressed him: “Are you quite all right, Mr Nietzsche? Perhaps you would like to sit here beside me for a moment and catch your breath.”

Nietzsche looked at me for some time with a bewildered stare, seemed intent on walking on, but then he stumbled and fell to his knees. I got up, offered him my arm; he looked at me suspiciously, shook his head, but then took my arm after all. I guided him to the bench and helped him sit down.

“Do you recognise me?” I asked. Nietzsche looked at me questioningly. “Sils Maria, last year — we were sitting on a bench there as well.”

A harmless lie; it was of course Athanasius who sat beside him then, but that man deserved to be robbed.

Nietzsche rubbed his knees, but remained silent. “Are you in much pain?” I asked. He only grumbled something and kept rubbing.

“We spoke about a new text you were writing — The Antichrist,” I tried again. “Has it been completed in the meantime?”

Now he looked at me with a faintly curious expression; I thought I detected a hint of interest. He stopped rubbing, muttered something unintelligible, looked at his knees, scratched his hair several times with sudden agitation, and finally turned towards me.

“This book belongs to the very few. Perhaps none of them are alive yet. My time has not yet come,” he said.

“Perhaps I am one of those few…” Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I grinned a little, careful not to let it seem like mockery. I quickly continued, adopting a suitably serious expression: “Time is an interesting matter. I mean the time the Ancient Greeks called kairos.”

A direct hit. “Are you a philosopher?” he asked. “Do you know the classics?”

“I am not academically trained,” I replied.

“Bah!” he sneered. “Do not rely on any of those fools.” He tilted his head, looked at me intently, and continued: “But I do not recognise you. Where did we meet? And what did we speak about? The Antichrist?”

“Yes, indeed — particularly about the role of Paul, who in your view transformed the Church of Christianity into a dogmatic, power-hungry institution. In doing so, he betrayed the teaching of Jesus, and thus the whole of humanity — in the ultimate sense.”

“Thrice bah! Christianity, because of that holy arch-liar, that false heir of Jesus, is a colossal and tragic misunderstanding. Utterly nihilistic!”

His words came out with a spray of spit. I produced my handkerchief, just in case. “So much was clear to me at the time — last year, I mean. But I have wondered whether Paul himself was responsible. Was it not rather the Church that constructed a tradition from his texts without truly understanding them?”

“I do not know on what you base that Quatsch. Paul’s ‘faith’ was a lie. In truth there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross. ‘Faith’ began with Paul, and it was the opposite of what his master intended.”

Now I had to proceed with some tact — not to put him in harness, or rather, to coax him out of it. “I have read a very interesting text by an Italian philosopher, a man of exemplary erudition who has mastered both Ancient Greek and Latin to perfection. It examines several of Paul’s letters — among them the Letter to the Romans and the First Letter to the Corinthians. Through these texts he brings to light the connection with messianism, via the messianic formula of the as_not, the hōs mē. Would you be interested in discussing it?”

“An Italian, you say. That at least is something. I was not the first to remark that where the climate is good, people think more freely, lightly, and joyfully; and that in Italy the sun of reason shines more brightly than elsewhere. In Italy one learns to forget what Germany is. Courage for the surface, the ‘yes’ to appearance — that is the Italian virtue. Italians are ‘light’ because they cannot suffer deeply. But also great, because they do not suffer small.”

He looked at me with a faintly mocking grin, sniffed, and then asked: “What is this man’s name? Do I know him?”

“His name is Giorgio Agamben. I suspect it means nothing to you. He is, first and foremost, a legal philosopher.”

“Hmm…” Nietzsche sniffed again, deeply, and spat a gurgle. “Jurists have turned the morality of customs into a rigid system.” Another gurgle. “Law grows from the struggles over the measure of power.” He burst into a long coughing fit. “All law does not stem from morality, but from custom. It grows from the struggles over the measure of power. So, what has this man to tell us about Paul, that charlatan of morality?”

I had to find a way to appease him; he was in a recalcitrant mood — as if he had not been that way all his life. But he was also clearly ill. I wanted to steer the conversation towards Paul, to compare his views with Agamben’s. I decided to employ his own metaphor; that would flatter his vanity.

“If you are the ‘philosopher with the hammer’, then Agamben is for me the ‘philosopher with the filleting knife’. Let us compare the hammer to the filleting knife — via Paul.”

“Ha! And Kant must be the ‘philosopher with the trowel’!” He grinned mockingly.

“Haha! Spot on!” A feather in his cap could do no harm. “But let us not drag Kant further into this discussion; from our conversation last year…” — a free, all too free interpretation of the facts — “…I already gathered that you regard him as some kind of neo-Christian ‘priest in disguise,’ the builder restoring the temple of that religion with the morality of the ‘categorical imperative,’ a temple you wish to demolish with your sledgehammer.” I smiled.

“Hahaha! That’s also well struck!” He gave me a friendly poke on the shoulder. The ice seemed broken. “Go on!”

“Agamben discusses in his book The Time That Remains the first ten words of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Those ten words are:

paulos doulos christou iesou, kletos apostolos aphorismenos eis euaggelion theou.

Literally: ‘Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated from the gospel of God.’ But I need not explain that to you. The second chapter of the book treats the word klētōs, meaning ‘called.’ The notion of calling is central. He situates this concept in the messianic tradition, which brings him to the concept of ‘time,’ in the sense of kairos. That is the term Paul uses. Particularly in the following passage from the First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 7, verses 29 to 34.” I saw that he was listening attentively, so I pressed on. “I will quote the passage here:”

Brothers, the time is at rest; what remains is that even those who have wives be as not having them, those who weep as not weeping, those who rejoice as not rejoicing, those who buy as not possessing, and those who use the world as not consuming it. For the form of this world passes away. Yet I want you to be without care.

“In the Luther Bible it says, ‘Die Zeit ist kurz.’ But in Greek it says ‘time is contracting itself.’ Time does something; it is not something, it does something. It is therefore a process. Agamben emphasizes this.”

Nietzsche muttered to himself but remained otherwise exemplary. He had something childlike about him; I suddenly thought of Karlheinz Stockhausen.

“Agamben then refers to the phrases in which the messianic formula of the ‘as_not’ appears, in Greek the hōs mē: ‘having wives as_not having,’ ‘weeping as_not weeping,’ ‘rejoicing as_not rejoicing,’ and so on. ‘Weeping as_not weeping’ does not mean ‘weeping as if not weeping’; it is not a comparison between weeping and not weeping. The as_not formula inverts the act of weeping into its opposite, a kind of nullification. Time is thus lifted, aufgehoben, as the Germans so beautifully put it. The end of time is not a matter of morality, as you reproach Paul; it is not a reward in the form of forgiveness of sins — no! — it is the end of time itself. Time gathers together and comes to rest. Agamben demonstrates that Paul belongs to the messianic tradition. The Church has neglected this; the blame is hers!” Nietzsche began to fidget; he clearly had something weighing on him.

“Yes, yes, I understand your point. As I also understand Kant’s point. But it remains six of one, half a dozen of the other. Both starting points are in fact decadent attempts to save Christianity — in a sophisticated way. Philosophical acrobatics to deny the sickness of moral structure. That is a form of nihilism.” He raised his hand to indicate he was not yet done, but then he had another severe coughing fit. After spitting loudly on the street, he resumed.

“It is a form of ‘Theologenluft’, that thin, almost invisible atmosphere of religious thought in which even atheists still breathe. Agamben has understood well that time is not linear — yet he is still afraid to simply say ‘yes’ to life. He must summon a Greek priest for that. A thinker of life would not save Paul, but forget him.”

He paused, rubbed his still painful knees, and I seized the moment. We were having a discussion!

“Agamben is not concerned with a transcendent hereafter; it is not a religious idea. In all his texts he pleads for the profane. That is precisely an affirmation of life, an unambiguous ‘yes’. Messianism as religion is not his topic. The topic is the messianic conception of time. Perhaps in the sense of Zarathustra, who speaks of the ‘moment’ (Augenblick) as the place where eternity and time meet. Agamben’s messianism could well be your Dionysian side.”

Nietzsche looked at me, bewildered, raised both arms in the air, uttered several raw cries, spat a thick gob of saliva at his feet, and tried to rise. At first he failed. He turned towards me and began declaiming:

“Diese lange Gasse hinter uns währt eine Ewigkeit.
Und jene lange Gasse vor uns – das ist eine andere Ewigkeit.
Sie widersprechen einander, diese Wege; sie stoßen einander gerade vor den Kopf –
und hier, an dieser Pforte, wo sie zusammentreffen,
heißt die Pforte ‘Augenblick’.”



Then he made a second attempt, swaying, stood on his legs, hands on my shoulders. Again he declaimed the entire passage:

“This long lane behind us lasts an eternity.

And that long lane ahead of us — that is another eternity.

They contradict each other, these roads; they collide head-on —

and here, at this gate where they meet,

the gate is called ‘Moment.’

Two infinities come together here:

this road stretches endlessly backward,

and the other road — forward — is equally endless.

They face each other like two infinities;

they converge at this one point,

in this moment.

All that can walk must have traversed all these paths once:

this long lane outside and inside —

and all that can happen

must already have happened, been done, gone by.

For time itself turns back like a wheel.”

Suddenly a clattering arose from the other side of the square: a horse-drawn carriage entered, the driver shouting and cursing at the horse, striking the poor animal repeatedly with his whip. The horse neighed, heart-wrenchingly. I saw Nietzsche’s gaze freeze; his face turned pale, tears streamed down his cheeks. He let go of my shoulders and began staggering toward the horse, arms outstretched.

— Bonnemort, November 22, 2025