ABSTRACT
In the parable of the ropedancer, the tragic myth, which is 'to be understood only as an illustration of Dionysian wisdom through Apollonian artifices', is reborn. The function of the buffoon vis à vis the ropedancer is analogous to that of the fool's mirror in one of Holbein's illustrations to Erasmus' Praise of Folly, which depicts a fool looking searchingly at himself in a mirror (a motif that Holbein borrowed from the illustrations to Brant's Narrenschiff), and the reflection sticking out its tongue at him. The fool's mocking and ambiguous mirroring of the owl (a symbol of wisdom) is analogous, in the private sphere, to the 'refracted light' by which Zarathustra, in a moment of spiritual gloom and weakness, ironically reflects66 upon the foolish wisdom of his inexorable will to truth. The buffoon symbolizes mocking self-reflection: the ropedancer's painful realization that the tight-rope, stretched between beast and Übermensch, is only a metaphorical rope-bridge, a mendacious word-bridge 'signifying nothing'.
