Issue #46

Abstract: If we talk about Nietzschean “metaphysics of landscape”, it is impossible to understate the importance of the theme of the South in his late work. The South is not just a geography, a region, a direction; it is a way of thinking and a state of mind close to the noblest elements — fire, light, air, sky. It is a symbol of everything healthy, clear and vital in contrast to the cold, cloudy North: the homeland and personification of abstractions, vagueness and disease. All his life Nietzsche has been running from North to South, and increasingly to an imaginary South. But the South, like the movement towards it, turns out to be endless and infinitely receding into the distance, like the horizon or Achilles’ tortoise. “The most sultry South has not yet been discovered,” he exclaims with the mouth of Zarathustra. Behind one South opens another, even harsher and hotter, just as in Tsvetaeva, behind one God there is another, behind some heavens there are others. Something similar is experienced in life and work of the Russian admirer of Nietzsche, the poet Nikolai Gumilev. The similarities and dissimilarities of their “geography of the spirit” are discussed in this article.