One extremely strong similar underlying theme between “The Tropic of Cancer” and Nietzsche’s philosophy is the concept of Nihilism. Miller opens up this chapter of his novel by saying “We are all alone here and we are dead.” A straightforward, negative, and surely discouraging view on our role and existence here in the world. He includes his readers in this generalization; we are all alone. There is nothing we can do to escape this reality that encompasses us. He also states, with a metaphor of the general concept of weather, “The weather will continue bad, he says. There will be more calamities, more death, more despair. Not the slightest indication of change anywhere. The cancer of time is eating us away,”. There is condolence in the certainty and reliance of chaos, and suffering. The only thing we can be certain of is this suffering, and in this way we can expect it, and prepare. From some angles, that can be beautiful. Tragedy is everywhere.
Acknowledging Nihilism, Nietzsche encourages us to love life even though suffering is inevitable. In “The Birth of Tragedy”, Nietzsche states “we are most alive when we suffer, because that is when we feel most intensely,” (Nietzsche, 739). There is nothing to numb us or allow us to escape from our humanity at this point, when we are feeling most deeply, and most rooted to ourselves and the source of our pain. Henry Miller shows he understands this deeply in this chapter when he says. “I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.” Everything is falling apart, everything is chaos, and he is grateful.
Throughout these misadventures, Miller makes it clear that while he used to think he was an artist, now he no longer thinks about it, he just is. Disregarding the type of art he might possibly be making, we can relate this ideal to Nietzsche’s views from “The Birth of Tragedy” where he states “ man is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art,” (Nietzsche, 744) from expressing himself and his sense of belonging to a higher community, man feels himself to be a god.
Miller also plays with the concept in this chapter of extracting from life ‘some satisfactory measure of what [they] are putting into it’. He suggests the idea that only killers are utilizing and expressing this ideal. In some ways he is playing on how destruction is a form of creation, and sometimes in society it is necessary. His opening sentence in this reading is “there is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead.” There is no mess, no chaos, no passion, only order. What good can come of this? Destruction is the only thing that can change order.
One thing I also notice in this text is the parallels between the main character (the narrator; Henry Miller) and the Greek character that Nietzsche discusses, Oedipus. Nietzsche declares Oedipus to a noble human being who is ‘destined for error and misery despite his wisdom’. This does seem to be the case for most of humanity, according to the theme of nihilism. Nietzsche says, “the old man, stricken with an excess of suffering, and exposed, purely as a suffering being, to all that affects him, is contrasted with the unearthly serenity,”. This sounds strangely familiar to the character Henry Miller is portraying; to him, everything is first and foremost suffering, and to be expected, and he still finds himself in a state of peace with it and knowing what to do. For him, this doing that he feels the need for, a type of expression, is singing. “It is to you Tania,” he says, “that I am singing… I am thinking that when the great silence descends upon all and everywhere music will at last triumph… You Tania, are my chaos.” He acknowledges that the only constant and certainty is the chaos, and he can contribute to it in whatever self-expressive way he can. He has a muse, Tania, and she is his chaos.
Things are always happening, and falling apart, everything is chaos and nothing is permanent and that is why he should passionately and unapologetically contribute to the chaos and create art. “Things will happen elsewhere. Things are always happening… everywhere I go people are making a mess of their lives. Everyone has his private tragedy.” He travels to all these different places and just sees patterns and repetitions of the different types of people living out their own forms of chaos and destruction. Things may change around him, but he won’t. The only thing he has is what he is becoming and creating, and that is all he can take with him.
This goes back to another ideal that Nietzsche refers to, in accordance with the artist. He says, “the artist’s delight in Becoming, the serenity of artistic creation in defiance of all catastrophes, is merely a bright image of clouds and sky reflected in a dark sea of sadness,”. Creation is the only thing we can bring about from the result of destruction and chaos. As artists, we can form in and digest it into something more beautiful and in this find serenity within the chaos. Perhaps this is why our character in “Tropic of Cancer” is so at peace with himself within all this constant change and chaos. He is an artist, he is in a constant state of creation and becoming, he has a personal chaos, Tania, that comes with him and aids him in this. He is the nihilistic artist’s dream.
“We are living a million lives in the space of a generation,” Henry Miller states. To have a seemingly grand and important life reduced to something compared to a cell or deep-sea life, is an ultimately nihilistic perspective. It is what we make of it that brings us out of the chaos. Miller states that he thrives on the chaos, that it is the “score that reality is written upon,”. “I am crying for more and more disasters,” he states. This theme goes back to the idea of destruction as a form of creation and killers only reaping from the world what they are owed. If everything is descending into chaos, the world is out of whack, everyone would be Becoming, everyone could be an artist. Passion would last and the acceptance of this fate would allow us to make a mess of our lives, do what we want, create what we want, as we are just microscopic beings in the grand scheme of things, and to dance with chaos is only to scratch upon the surface of Becoming.
Resources
Leitch, Vincent B., et al. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. W.W. Norton & Company, 2018.
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