Now this is a divine act, and this Pregnancy and birth impart
immortality to a living being who is mortal.

-- Symposium, 206d

N ietzsche was drawn to images of
pregnancy, a rather dubious attraction for a writer so pronounced in
his disgust with women. ¹ The attendant (but not necessarily female)
emblems of procreation -- fecundity, heredity, genealogy, paternity, ma-
ternity, generation -- all assemble to create a heady presence in Nietz-
sche's aphorisms and arguments. It is a curious feature of these remarks
that they often seem 'un-sexed'. Nietzsche's pregnancies and deliveries
are, if anything, 'male' in their aspect. Nietzsche does not seem feminized
by his pregnancies of the spirit, and he is uninterested in gestation of the
usual, female, sort. ² These metaphors are another expression of Nietz-
sche's deep philological commitments. He admires the classical notion
that sexuality and generation are tangible representatives of the entire
human economy of efflorescence and decline.

What did the Hellene guarantee to himself with these mysteries? Eter-
nal life, the eternal recurrence of life; the future promised and conse-
crated in the past; the triumphant Yes to life beyond death and change;
true life as collective continuation of life through procreation, through

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