I cannot tear my mind from a single sentence in a wonderful passage from Nietzsche’s Human, All Too Human, which I got pasted on a postcard from Robert Collén: “All mankind is divided, as it was at all times and still is, into slaves and freemen; for whoever has not two-thirds of his day to himself is a slave, be he otherwise whatever he likes—statesman, merchant, official, or scholar.”[1] I keep calculating over and over again whether or not I have two-thirds of my day to myself, and I keep wondering whether or not Nietzsche would accept my calculations as valid. At any rate, more often than not I end up a freeman.

Addendum I (January 31, 2000)

I told Lauren about Nietzsche’s two-thirds-of-the-day rule. “Well,” she said, “that rules out all mothers.” “Probably,” I said, “and correctly so.”

Addendum II (August 14, 2000)

In his response to my survey of the greatest artists of the Twentieth Century, which he copied to all the people on my extensive electronic-mail list plus a few others, Selçuk Avci repeatedly refers to my preoccupation with whether or not I am an artist. He does not attempt to determine who is an artist, but the converse—who is not an artist. In Selçuk’s definition, a slave is not an artist. He concludes: “And, Ranko, my dear friend, you are not a slave.” That settles it.

Footnote

1. Clive, G., ed., The Philosophy of Nietzsche, Vol. I, translated by P.V. Cohn, New York: The New American Library, 1965, p. 371.