‘Nothing is true, all is permitted’: so said I to myself. Into the coldest water did I plunge with head and heart. Ah, how oft did I stand there naked on that account, like a red crab!
The shadow quotes the maxim by which he lived.
- Nihilism (all is empty)The formula of the unmoored free spirit, who plunges into freedom without a goal.
What the critics said
Ludovici reads the shadow as the bold, wayward free spirit who follows every daring movement of his age until he loses all goal and home, cries 'Nothing is true; all is permitted', and becomes wreckage, prone to being captured by a narrow faith.
Ludovici reads the shadow as the bold, wayward free spirit who follows every daring movement of his age until he loses all goal and home, cries 'Nothing is true; all is permitted', and becomes wreckage, prone to being captured by a narrow faith.