SOURCE: "Time and Distance," in Hudson Review, Vol. XLVI, No. 1, Spring, 1993, pp. 247-55.

In the following excerpt, Wilhelmus evaluates "the new 'definitive' version" of The Joke in relation to contemporary history.

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the animals say to Nietzsche's philosopher-mystic:

"Look, we know what you teach: that all things return forever, and we along with them, and that we have already been here an infinite number of times, and all things along with us."

According to Milan Kundera, this "mad myth" is Nietzsche's means of forcing us to contemplate the horror as well as the beauty and sublimity of life's events in a way which prevents our overlooking them because they are so fleeting. Without some such concept—that an event may return again and again to haunt us—"We would need take no more note of it than of a war between two African kingdoms in...