The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life’s most intense fulfillment. But in the love poetry of every age the woman longs to be weighed down by the man’s body. The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. That is why Nietzsche called the idea of eternal return the heaviest of burdens (“ das grösste Schwergewicht”).Ī life that disappears once and for all, that does not return, is then like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing. In the world of eternal return, the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! It is a terrifying prospect.
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