suffering from the "it was," as the suffering from the bygone, the past. But what is past stems from the passing. The will—in suffering from this passing, yet being what it is precisely by virtue of this suffering—remains in its willing captive to the passing. Thus will itself wills passing. It wills the passing of its suffering, and thus wills its own passing. The will's revulsion against every "it was" appears as the will to pass away, which wills that everything be worthy of passing away. The revulsion arising in the will is then the will against everything that passes—everything, that is, which comes to be out of a coming-to-be, and endures. Hence the will is the sphere of representational ideas which basically pursue and set upon everything that comes and goes and exists, in order to depose, reduce it in its stature and ultimately decompose it. This revulsion within the will itself, according to Nietzsche, is the essential nature of revenge.
"This, yes, this alone is revenge itself: the will's revulsion against time and its 'It was'." (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part II, "On Deliverance.")
Revenge, however, never calls itself by its own name, least of all when it is in the act of taking revenge. Revenge calls itself "punishment." By this name it endows its hostile nature with the semblance of right and justice. It covers its revolting nature with the semblance that it is meting out well-deserved punishment.
"'Punishment'—that is what revenge calls itself: with a lying word it counterfeits a good conscience" (ibid.).
This is not the place to discuss whether these words of Nietzsche, on revenge and punishment, revenge and suffering, revenge and deliverance from revenge, represent a direct confrontation with Schopenhauer, and indirectly one