Divinity: Transvaluation, Autistic Nihilism, and the Will to Power
An in-depth analysis of the poem "Divinity" through the lens of neurodivergence and Nietzsche's philosophy. Connects autistic burnout to the Active Nihilism of self-creation.
Divinity
I mourn the soul who met a sudden fall,
And mourn yet more those who desire to cease,
To quit their hearts in search of utter peace,
To seek the dark where no one hears their call.
Those who touched heights beyond the world can see,
Then plummeted to earth in mortal strife,
Whose agony became the cry of life,
And cannot bear the weight of destiny
I, from the core of all humanity’s strain,
Proclaim them beings of a sacred type,
Whose eyes are stained and full of endless gripe.
They bear the supreme Divine’s own mark,
Who knew the brightest heavens and the deepest gloom,
Of those who drank the sweet and were dissolved by doom.
“Divinity”: The Sacralization of Existential Exhaustion
The first time I thought about ending my my life I was around 10 years old. I went into the bathroom and tried to cut my wrists with my father’s dull razor blades. This poem was written in the following decade, more specifically between the ages of 14 and 20. And its existence in this second decade of life means that death has always been a very present possibility. I do not feel a strong attachment to life. Today my greatest mundane bond is the responsibility I took on with my gray cat. Other than that, I have my book projects and my studies and research. I do not feel longing. Those who remained behind do not occupy my thoughts with desires of return, only flashes of melancholy in very specific moments. I feel strangely light.
Death is now even more present. Maturity brings with it this certainty of finitude and the uncertainty of a definitive cessation moment . I try to make friends with her. We converse in this language that dispenses with words. I whisper my few hopes of returning home to her. She does not answer, feeding this incisive fear that there is nothing. But it is certain that one day I will stealthily penetrate the cold secret.
Perhaps the poem “Divinity” was born from one of these dialogues, when I was not yet fluent in this language. And that is why the solemn structure of the sonnet (two quatrains and two tercets) and the free meter weave a reflection on suffering pushed to its limit. I remember writing it, but not precisely when, or if it was the fruit of an intense confrontation with suicidal ideation—a statistically painful reality for the Autism Level 1 Support community. I know that the poem, just as Eros and Thanatos would do later, conquers death and transcends individual pain to postulate a new category of dignity for the sufferer. This act of postulating a new dignity is, in Nietzschean terms, a manifestation of Active Nihilism, a refusal to succumb to Passive Nihilism (the resignation in the face of the absence of value).
The Unsustainable Weight of the Spirit (Autistic Exhaustion)
The first two quatrains function as the diagnosis of anguish. The lyrical self laments not only those who die young but rather those who seek death. This desire for absolute silence resonates with the cost of camouflaging (masking) and the sensory and social overload that defines the Autism Level 1 Support experience.
Neuroscience points out that the exhaustive effort to mask autistic traits consumes a disproportionate amount of mental resources, leading to autistic exhaustion (burnout) and depression. What the poem describes as spiritual weight, research (such as Simon Cassidy’s) quantifies as a primary risk factor that places autistics with high cognitive functionality at a disproportionately high risk of suicide. The poem is, therefore, the lyrical voice of the exhaustion that statistics attempt to capture.
The Fall from the Pedestal and the Rebellion
The description of those who “touched heights beyond the world can see / Then plummeted to earth in mortal strife” is the concise report of neurodivergent dysphoria. It reflects the frustration of possessing a high intellectual potential or a profound sensibility, only to be constantly undermined by the social, sensory, and communication barriers of the neurotypical world, leading to a state where the subject “cannot bear the weight of destiny.” The resultant agony is transmuted into a “rebellious cry of life,” an active refusal to accept the injustice of this fateful burden.
The Transvaluation and Divinity in Contrast
The core of the poem lies in the tercets, where the lyrical self assumes the role of grantor, transposing suffering to the realm of the sacred.
The concept of “Divinity” is a profound transvaluation of all values (echoing Nietzschean thought). Divinity is not granted despite the suffering, but because of it. The elevation to “a sacred type” is immediately qualified by imperfection: “though wingless and with stained eyes”.
The supreme divinity is carried “in the flesh,” confirming that sanctity lies in the embodied experience of life’s totality, expressed in the final antitheses: “heaven and the deepest gloom” and the fateful experience of tasting “sweet and being dissolved by doom.”
This extreme duality is the very essence of neurodivergence: the capacity to feel the “heaven” (joy, hyperfocus, profound empathy) and the “doom” (sensory overload, burnout debilitant). The autistic individual who navigates these extremes is not undone; they achieve divinity (in the poem’s definition) by having resisted and embraced the complexity of a high-risk, high-intensity existence. They stand as a being in perpetual self-creation, forging their value by mastering the conflict.
In conclusion, “Divinity” is a hymn to survival and dignity. It transforms the statistical index of suicidal ideation into a poetic meditation on the intrinsic strength of those who, even without attachment to life, continue forward, tied to responsibility or the simple affirmation of experience—even when that experience is a constant battlefield. The poem validates the marginalized experience, granting it a crown of sacredness forged in anguish.
If an blue angel exists, this poem describes it: wingless, with a dirty and tired gaze, contemplating its own certain finitude and seeking meaning in the experience of a fierce existence. And it is not me saying this; it is a very young girl who had not read Nietzsche, but needed to re-signify the values of the world. This intuitive need for re-signification is the very motor of the Will to Power (Wille zur Macht) acting, transforming suffering into a source of creation and value.
CASSIDY, S. [e outros]. Risk markers for suicidality in autistic adults. Molecular Autism, [S. l.], v. 9, n. 1, Artigo 1, 31 jul. 2018. Disponível em: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6069847/. Acesso em: 18 nov. 2025.
NIETZSCHE, Friedrich. A vontade de poder. São Paulo: Cotraponto, 2011.