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appears to be self-contradictory. But one does not go especially far off base with a paradoxical concept of immortal mortals and mortal immortals. The gods live the death of mortal humans.
Does that mean that the life of the gods is the slaying of humans? And on the other side, do humans die the life of the gods? Neither could we connect any correct sense with this rendition. I would, therefore, rather believe that the following suggests itself. The gods live in comparing themselves with mortal humans who experience death. They live the death of mortals in that, in their self-understanding and their understanding of being, they hold themselves over against the transience of humans and the all-too-finite manner in which humans understand what is. But it is more difficult if we ask ourselves how we should translate τὸν δὲ ἐκείνων βίον τεθνεῶτες [in that they die the life of those]. Could we set τεθνεῶτες [they, having died] parallel to ζῶντες [those living]? But the question is whether the perfect participle has the meaning of the perfect or whether it is to be translated as in the present participial form like ἀποθνήσκοντες [those who are dying]. This question can only be decided by the philologists. The life of the immortals is the death of mortals. The gods live the death of the mortals, and the mortals die the life of the gods or become atrophied in reference to the life of the gods. We also use the phrase: to die a death, to live a life. In Fr. 62, however, it says: to live the death of the other, to die the life of the other. If we wish to make clear to ourselves what it means that the gods live the death of humans, we could at first reject the radical interpretation according to which the gods would be cannibalistic beings. They do not live the death of humans in the sense that they devour them. For they do not need humans as food nor, in the final analysis, do they need the offerings and prayers of humans. But what then does the formula mean: the gods live the death of humans. I am able to connect only one sense with this sentence. I say that the gods understand themselves in their own everlasting being in express reference to mortal humans. The constant being of the gods signifies a persistence in view of humans' being constantly delivered over to time. In this manner the gods live the death of humans. And in the same way I am able to connect only one sense with the sentence which says that humans die the life of the gods, or that they atrophy in reference to the life of the gods; namely, it is thereby said that humans, by understanding themselves as the ones who most disappear, always comport themselves toward the permanence that the life of the gods appears to us to be.
Humans die as the transient ones not only in so far as they stand in association with transients. They are not only the ones who most disappear in the realm of what disappears, hut rather they are at the same time understandingly open to the permanence of the gods. A fundamental reference to that which never perishes belongs to the relation of