From: CathB2-AT-aol.com
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1998 23:56:31 EDT
Subject: Re: Zarathustra's Lucid Dream at Noontide


>Then he starts yelling at himself to get up!  No more stillest hour,
>get up and follow your destiny.  Stop sleeping, stop dreaming, stop
>idealizing, stop falling into Plato's trap. 

Lucid dreaming is not Plato's trap.  The injunction that Z addresses to
his old heart or body to stop sleeping is an injunction not to be
satisfied with the notion that his soul can overcome death by lucid
dreaming and convince his body to give in to the sun's embrace, ie to
have the well of eternity drink his double into itself, the golden drop
of dew that is at once that little that makes for the best happiness and
the source of a golden nostalgia.  At noonday, Z wants to stand upright
and have his body carry the energy from the sun ("(...) for a ray of
sunlight had glanced down from the sky on to his face") rather than
succumb to it on the shade of an old tree.  But Z is not sure whether
the golden ring of joy is ripe only for the soul - he only knows he must
rise so as not to fall into deep wells and give in to the soft song of
his soul, to its power to suffuse awareness by dreaming; he must rise
because there is "still a good way to go".  In all this, Z had dreamed
the moment: "the sun was still standing straight above his head".

Lambda C


All this sun stuff does remind me of the trip outside the cave for Plato's
philosopher kings.  You don't think the Plato's Source of life and truth--sort
of ETS in the sky-- which we get to by figuring out exactly which word is
really the logical  name of the item--that Platonic magic word nominalism--is
implied in this image?  But I believe you are saying, Lambda C, that it is an
overall theme in this book--sort of, let's get over the Republic and get on
with our lives--is that it, but just not relevant here?  


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