Introduction: Invisible Kingdoms
“Out of life’s school of war—what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.”
I’ve known about Friedrich Nietzsche’s lean, bracing maxim since high school, perhaps even earlier. At once a dream of invincibility and a promise to avenge oneself against misfortune, the aphorism was stitched into the cultural fabric all around me; commemorated in songs, slogans, tattoos, and social media posts; exchanged in television dialogue; and growled by our school’s sports coaches. I heard it from my father, too, who recited with his soft, measured voice and knowing glance to rouse me when my childhood discouragement pantomimed adult despair. It was the rare adage that seemed transcendent of time, culture, or ideology, gracefully leaping from one generation to the next with a cogency and force of impact that was never antiquated or diminished. Few other scrimshaws of wisdom—the Delphic adage “Know thyself”, Protagoras’s “Man is the measure of all things,” Margaret Hungerford’s “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”—felt as immutable and immemorial. That it was true felt obvious; it was both entrenched in the annals of human wisdom and forever close at hand.
In 1888, Nietzsche set out to compose a brief primer on his iconoclastic views of subjects like ancient philosophy, morality, and free will. With his popularity growing in Germany and throughout Europe, he wanted to give his expanding readership a more accessible entry point into his oeuvre. That work, Twilight of the Idols, dashed off in a single week and published the following year, included the brief aphorism that would catapult far beyond the purview of nineteenth-century European thought. Though Twilight of the Idols turns its gimlet eye on a sprawling range of subjects, renouncing the decadence of contemporary Germany culture and lambasting religious moralizing, no other aspect of the book would have nearly the same boundless legacy.
When I was a teenager, Nietzsche’s aphorism was grafted onto my sense of self. The philosopher’s words were being poured into the bedrock of who I understood myself to be even before I could glean them with any level of care. Like an irrepressible pop song, the maxim soared over logical reasoning, thriving instead off the surge of triumph and defiance it made people feel. It allowed me to transform my family tragedies into both foundation for and evidence of the fiercer, more resilient person I believed I was. Without even fully understanding Nietzsche’s words or the philosophical context out of which they arose, I had begun to construct my story around them.
Then I was blindsided by a life-altering illness, and the aphorism snapped into an even more person place for me. I used Nietzsche’s line like a shield, sometimes, a weapon. Yes, my pain would make me stronger—not weaker, sadder, distressed, or vulnerable—and I would move through the world a more dogged, battle-hardened person. For years I even wrote his words in the right-hand corner of nearly every page of my work notebook, so I might glance over to them at any moment as a reminder of my intensifying strength.
The promise of Nietzsche’s maxim is the idea that out of their most harrowing crucibles, human beings emerge harder and flintier, with greater reserves to draw on and a character hammered and chiseled by the trials it has endured. For 130 years his line has evoked the idea that we could become more powerful – physically, emotionally, spiritually—as long as we were able to survive whatever injury, illness, accident, or smarting twist of fate had torn our lives asunder. In Nietzsche’s telling, endurance becomes synonymous with accretion. We subsume what we withstand, and our character expands in stride with the geography of our suffering. If we were up for the challenge, Nietzsche seemed to promise, adversity could transform us into superior versions of our younger, more callow and less tested selves.
It was a challenge I’d co-opted to inform and animate my personal ethos. For a very long time, his words were the through line for the story I told myself to explain the biographical facts of my life.
词汇：
Aphorism: a pithy observation that contains a general truth, such as, “if it ain't broke, don't fix it.”
Pantomime: a dramatic entertainment, originating in Roman mime, in which performers express meaning through gestures accompanied by music.
Cogency: the quality of being clear, logical, and convincing; lucidity
antiquated: outdated, outmoded, old-fashioned
scrimshaws: 刻在骨头，贝壳，象牙上的雕刻，这里是指精雕细琢的东西
iconoclastic: characterized by attack on cherished beliefs or institutions; skeptical or irreverent
oeuvre: the works of a painter, composer or author regarded collectively; a work of art, music or literature
Subsume: include or absorb (something) in something else; include, encompass, embrace
Callow: (of a young person) inexperienced and immature:
gimlet eye：
If you say that someone has gimlet eyes, you mean that they look at people or things very carefully, and seem to notice every detail.
smarting: adj. felling a sharp stinging pain
tear/torn asunder: tear/torn into parts
Through line: a common or consistent element or theme shared by items in a series or by parts of a whole 贯穿上下的一条线
近日开始读What doesn‘t Kill Us Makes Us. 这文字太棒了（但是好像不能多读，多读也会疲倦：））一字一句敲下来，分享于此，也便于自己再读。
From book cover: Delving into lives we rarely see in such meticulous detail—lives filled with struggle, loss, perseverance, transformation, and triumph – Mike Mariani leads us into some of the darkest corners of human existence, only to reveal our endless capacity for kindling new light.
What makes Heroic? To face simultaneously one’s greatest suffering and one’s highest hope. --- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gray Science
