Friedrich Nietzsche on Women:

“Translated into reality: the danger for artists, for geniuses…is woman: adoring women confront them with corruption. Hardly any of them have character enough not to be corrupted-or “redeemed”-when they find themselves treated like gods: soon they condescend to the level of the women.-Man is a coward, confronted with the Eternal-Feminine-and the females know it.-In many cases of feminine love, perhaps including the most famous ones above all, love is merely a more refined form of parasitism, a form of nestling down in another soul, sometimes even in the flesh of another-alas, always decidedly at the expense of “the host”!”

Amusing sexism aside, how do the characters in “One Flea Spare” corrupt each other through love? What do these characters lose when they nestle down in another soul? When another soul nestles down within them? ESPECIALLY with the context of the John Donne poem, how is love parasitic in this show? What kinds of love are parasitic?

Nietzche, Friedrich. “The Case of Wagner.” Turinese letter of May 1888. (sorry, read it as a doc for a class, and that prof didn’t give us the full citation)

-Christine