PART THREE

 

*

 

                                                                                "You look up when you desire to be

                                                                              exalted.  And I look down, because I am

                                                                              exalted.

                                                                                "Who among you can at the same time

                                                                    laugh and be exalted?

                                                                                "He who climbs upon the highest

                                                                               mountains laughs at all tragedies, real

                                                                               or imaginary."

 

                                                                                                        ZARATHUSTRA:

                                                                                                   'Of Reading and Writing'

 

                                      

 

The Wanderer

 

IT was midnight when Zarathustra made his way over the ridge of the island, so that he might arrive at the other shore with the early dawn: for there he meant to board ship.  For there was a good harbour at which foreign ships, too, like to drop anchor: they took on board many who wanted to leave the Blissful Islands and cross the sea.  Now, as Zarathustra was climbing the mountain he recalled as he went the many lonely wanderings he had made from the time of his youth, and how many mountains and ridges and summits he had already climbed.

 

       I am a wanderer and a mountain-climber (he said to his heart), I do not like the plains and it sees I cannot sit still for long.

       And whatever may yet come to me as fate and experience - a wandering and a mountain-climbing will be in it: in the final analysis one experiences only oneself.

       The time has passed when accidents could befall me; and what could still come to me that was not already my own?

       It is returning, at last it is coming home to me - my own Self and those parts of it that have long been abroad and scattered among all things and accidents.

       And I know one thing more: I stand now before my last summit and before the deed that has been deferred the longest.

       Alas, I have to climb my most difficult path!  Alas, I have started upon my loneliest wandering!

       But a man of my sort does not avoid such an hour: the hour that says to him: "Only now do you tread your path of greatness!  Summit and abyss - they are now united in one!

       "You are treading your path of greatness: now what was formerly your ultimate danger has become your ultimate refuge!

       "You are treading your path of greatness: now it must call up all your courage that there is no longer a path behind you!

       "You are treading your path of greatness: no-one shall steal after you here!   Your foot itself has extinguished the path behind you, and above that path stands written: Impossibility.

       "And when all footholds disappear, you must know how to climb upon your own head: how could you climb upward otherwise?

       "Upon your own head and beyond your own heart!  Now the gentlest part of you must become the hardest.

       "He who has always been very indulgent with himself sickens at last through his own indulgence.  All praise to what makes hard!  I do not praise the land where butter and honey - flow!

       "In order to see much one must learn to look away from oneself - every mountain-climber needs this hardness.

       "But he who, seeking enlightenment, is over-eager with his eyes, how could he see more of a thing than its foreground!

       "You, however, O Zarathustra, have wanted to behold the ground of things and their background: so you must climb above yourself - up and beyond, until you have even your stars under you!"

       Yes!  To look down upon myself and even upon my stars: that alone would I call my summit, that has remained for me as my ultimate summit!

      

       Thus spoke Zarathustra to himself as he climbed, consoling his heart with hard sayings: for his heart was wounded as never before.  And when he arrived at the top of the mountain ridge, behold, there lay the other sea spread out before him: and he stood and was long silent.  But the night at this height was cold and clear and bright with stars.

 

       I know my fate (he said at last with sadness.  Well then!  I am ready.  My last solitude has just begun.

       Ah, this sorrowful, black sea beneath me!  Ah, this brooding reluctance!  Ah, destiny and sea!  Now I have to go down to you!

       I stand before my highest mountain and my longest wandering: therefore I must first descend deeper than I have ever descended,

       - deeper into pain than I have ever descended, down to its blackest stream!  So my destiny will have it.  Well then!  I am ready.

       Whence arise the highest mountains? I once asked.  Then I learned that they arise from the sea.

       This testimony is written into their stones and into the sides of their summits.  The highest must arise to its height from the deepest.

 

       Thus spoke Zarathustra on the mountain summit, where it was cold; when he drew near to the sea, however, and at length stood alone beneath the cliffs, he had grown weary on the way and more yearning than he was before.

 

       Everything is still asleep (he said); even the sea is asleep.  Its eye looks at me drowsily and strangely.

       But it breathes warmly; I feel it.  And I feel, too, that it is dreaming.  Dreaming, it writhes upon a hard pillow.

       Listen!  Listen!  How it groans with wicked memories!  Or with wicked expectations?

       Ah, I am sad with you, dark monster, and angry even with myself for your sake.

       Alas, that my hand has insufficient strength!  In truth, I should dearly like to release you from your bad dreams!

 

       And as Zarathustra thus spoke, he laughed at himself with melancholy and bitterness.  What Zarathustra! he said, do you want to sing consolation even to the sea?

       Ah, you fond fool, Zarathustra, too eager to trust!  But that is what you have always been: you have always approached trustfully all that is fearful.

       You have always wanted to caress every monster.  A touch of warm breath, a little soft fur on its paw - and at once you have been ready to love and entice it.

       Love is the danger for the most solitary man, love of any thing if only it is alive!  Indeed, my foolishness and modesty in love is laughable!

      

       Thus spoke Zarathustra and laughed again: but then he thought of the friends he had left, and he was angry with himself because of his thoughts, as if he had injured his friends with them.  And forthwith the laughing man wept - for anger and longing did Zarathustra weep bitterly.

 

 

 

Of the Vision and the Riddle

 

1

 

WHEN it became rumoured among the sailors that Zarathustra was on the ship - for a man from the Blissful Islands had gone on board at the same time as he - a great curiosity and expectancy arose.  But Zarathustra was silent for two days and was cold and deaf for sorrow, so that he responded neither to looks nor to questions.  But on the evening of the second day he opened his ears again, although he still remained silent: for there were many strange and dangerous things to hear on this ship, which had come from afar and had yet further to go.  Zarathustra, however, was a friend to all who take long journeys and do not want to live without danger.  And behold! in listening his tongue was loosened, and the ice of his heart broke: then he started to speak thus:

 

       To you, the bold venturers and adventurers and whoever has embarked with cunning sails upon dreadful seas,

       to you who are intoxicated by riddles, who take pleasure in twilight, whose soul is lured with flutes to every treacherous abyss -

       for you do not desire to feel for a rope with cowardly hand; and where you can guess you hate to calculate -

       to you alone do I tell this riddle that I saw - the vision of the most solitary man.

       Lately I walked gloomily through a deathly-grey twilight, gloomily and sternly with compressed lips.  Not only one sun had gone down for me.

       A path that mounted defiantly through boulders and rubble, a wicked, solitary path that bush or plant no longer cheered: a mountain path crunched under my foot's defiance.

       Striding mute over the mocking clatter of pebbles, trampling the stones that made it slip: thus my foot with effort forced itself upward.

       Upward - despite the spirit that drew it downward, drew it towards the abyss, the Spirit of Gravity, my devil and arch-enemy.

       Upward - although he sat upon me, half dwarf, half mole; crippled, crippling; pouring lead-drops into my ear, leaden thoughts into my brain.

       "O Zarathustra," he said mockingly, syllable by syllable, "you stone of wisdom!  You have thrown yourself high, but every stone that is thrown - must fall!

       "Condemned by yourself and to your own stone-throwing: O Zarathustra, far indeed have you thrown your stone, but it will fall back upon you!"

       Thereupon the dwarf fell silent; and he long continued so.  But his silence oppressed me; and to be thus in company is truly more lonely than to be alone!

       I climbed, I climbed, I dreamed, I thought, but everything oppressed me.  I was like a sick man wearied by his sore torment and reawakened from sleep by a worse dream.

       But there is something in me that I call courage: it has always destroyed every discouragement in me.  This courage at last bade me stop and say: "Dwarf!  You!  Or I!"

       For courage is the best destroyer - courage that attacks: for in every attack there is a triumphant shout.

       Man, however, is the most courageous animal: with his courage he has overcome every animal.  With a triumphant shout he has even overcome every pain; human pain, however, is the deepest pain.

       Courage also destroys giddiness at abysses: and where does man not stand at an abyss?  Is seeing itself not - seeing abysses?

       Courage is the best destroyer: courage also destroys pity.  Pity, however, is the deepest abyss: as deeply as man looks into life, so deeply does he look also into suffering.

       Courage, however, is the best destroyer, courage that attacks: it destroys even death, for it says: "Was that life?  Well then!  Once more!"

       But there is a great triumphant shout in such a saying.  He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

 

 

2

 

"Stop, dwarf!" I said.  "I!  Or you!  But I am the stronger of us two - you do not know my abysmal thought!  That thought - you could not endure!"

       Then something occurred which lightened me: for the dwarf jumped from my shoulder, the inquisitive dwarf!  And he squatted down upon a stone in front of me.  But a gateway stood just where we had halted.

       "Behold this gateway, dwarf!" I went on: "it has two aspects.  Two paths come together here: no-one has ever reached their end.

       "This long lane behind us: it goes on for an eternity.  And that long lane ahead of us - that is another eternity.

       "They are in opposition to one another, these paths; they abut on one another: and it is here at this gateway that they come together.  The name of the gateway is written above it: 'Moment'.

       "But if one were to follow them further and ever further and further: do you think, dwarf, that these paths would be in eternal opposition?"

       "Everything straight lies," murmured the dwarf disdainfully.  "All truth is crooked, time itself is a circle."

       "Spirit of Gravity!" I said angrily, "do not treat this too lightly!  Or I shall leave you squatting where you are, Lamefoot - and I have carried you high!

       "Behold this Moment!" I went on.  "From this gateway Moment a long, eternal lane runs back: an eternity lies behind us.

       "Must not all things that can run have already run along this lane?  Must not all things that can happen have already happened, been done, run past?

       "And if all things have been here before: what do you think of this Moment, dwarf?  Most not this gateway, too, have been here - before?

       "And are not all things bound fast together in such a way that this moment draws after it all future things?  Therefore - draws itself too?

       "For all things that can run must also run once again forward along this long lane.

       "And this slow spider that creeps along in the moonlight, and this moonlight itself, and I and you at this gateway whispering together, whispering of eternal things - must we not all have been here before?

       " - and must we not return and run down that other lane out before us, down that long, terrible lane - must we not return eternally?"

       Thus I spoke, and I spoke more and more softly: for I was afraid of my own thoughts and reservations.  Then, suddenly, I heard a dog howling nearby.

       Had I ever heard a dog howling in that way?  My thoughts ran back.  Yes!  When I was a child, in my most distant childhood:

       - then I heard a dog howling in that way.  And I saw it, too, bristling, its head raised, trembling in the stillest midnight, when even dogs believe in ghosts:

       - so that it moved me to pity.  For the full moon had just gone over the house, silent as death, it had just stopped still, a round glow, still upon the flat roof as if upon a forbidden place:

       that was what had terrified the dog: for dogs believe in thieves and ghosts.  And when I heard such howling again, it moved me to pity again.

       Where had the dwarf now gone?  And the gateway?  And the spider?  And all the whispering?  Had I been dreaming?  Had I awoken?  All at once I was standing between wild cliffs, alone, desolate in the most desolate moonlight.

       But there was a man lying!  And there!  The dog, leaping, bristling, whining; then it saw me coming - than it howled again, then it cried out - had I ever heard a dog cry so for help?

       And truly, I had never seen the like of what I then saw.  I saw a young shepherd writhing, choking, convulsed, his face distorted; and a heavy, black snake was hanging out of his mouth.

       Had I ever seen so much disgust and pallid horror on a face?  Had he, perhaps, been asleep?  Then the snake had crawled into his throat - and there it had bitten itself fast.

       My hands tugged and tugged at the snake - in vain! they could not tug the snake out of the shepherd's throat.  Then a voice cried from me: "Bite!  Bite!

       "Its head off!  Bite!" - thus a voice cried from me, my horror, my hate, my disgust, my pity, all my good and evil cried out of me with a single cry.

       You bold men around me!  You venturers, adventurers, and those of you who have embarked with cunning sails upon undiscovered seas!  You who take pleasure in riddles!

       Solve for me the riddle I saw, interpret to me the vision of the most solitary man!

       For it was a vision and a premonition: what did I see in allegory?  And who is it that must come one day?

       Who is the shepherd in whose mouth the snake thus crawled?  Who is the man into whose throat all that is heaviest, blackest will thus crawl?

       The shepherd, however, bit as my cry had advised him; he bit was a good bite!  He spat far away the snake's head - and sprang up.

       No longer a shepherd, no longer a man - a transformed being, surrounded with light, laughing!  Never yet on earth had any man laughed as he laughed!

       O my brothers, I heard a laughter that was no human laughter - and now a thirst consumes me, a longing that is never stilled.

       My longing for this laughter consumes me: oh, how do I endure still to live!  And how could I endure to die now!

 

       Thus spoke Zarathustra.

 

 

 

Of Involuntary Bliss

 

WITH such riddles and bitterness in his heart did Zarathustra fare across the sea.  When he was four days' journey from the Blissful Islands and from his friends, however, he had overcome all his pain - triumphantly and with firm feet he again accepted his destiny.  And then Zarathustra spoke thus to his rejoicing conscience:

 

       I am again alone and willingly so, alone with the pure sky and the open sea; and again it is afternoon around me.

       It was afternoon when I once found my friends for the first time, it was afternoon, too, when I found them a second time - at the hour when all light grows stiller.

       For whatever happiness that is still travelling between heaven and earth now seeks shelter in a luminous soul: with happiness all light has now grown stiller.

       O afternoon of my life!  Once my happiness, too, climbed down into the valley to seek a shelter: there it found these open, hospitable souls.

       O afternoon of my life!  What have I not given away that I might possess one thing: this living plantation of my thoughts and this dawn of my highest hope!

       Once the creator sought companions and children of his hope: and behold, it turned out that he could not find them, except he first create them himself.

       Thus I am in the midst of my work, going to my children and turning from them: for the sake of his children must Zarathustra perfect himself.

       For one loves from the very heart only one's child and one's work; and where there is great love of oneself, then it is a sign of pregnancy: thus have I found.

       My children are still green in their first spring, standing close together and shaken in common by the winds, the trees of my garden and best soil.

       And truly!  Where such trees stand together, there blissful islands are!

       But one day I will uproot them and set each one up by itself, that it may learn solitude and defiance and foresight.

       Then it shall stand by the sea, gnarled and twisted and with supple hardiness, a living lighthouse of unconquerable life.

       Yonder, where storms plunge down into the sea and the mountain's snout drinks water, there each of them shall one day keep its day and night watch, for its testing and recognition.

       It shall be tested and recognized, to see whether it is of my kind and my race - whether it is master of a protracted will, silent even when it speaks, and giving in such a way that in giving it takes -

       that it may one day be my companion and fellow-creator and fellow-rejoicer of Zarathustra - such a one as inscribes my will upon my tablets: for the greatest perfection of all things.

       And for its sake, and for those like it, must I perfect myself: therefore I now avoid my happiness and offer myself to all unhappiness - for my ultimate testing and recognition.

       And truly, it was time I went; and the wanderer's shadow and the longest sojourn and the stillest hour - all told me: "It is high time!"

       The wind blew to me through the keyhole and said: "Come!"  The door sprang cunningly open and said: "Go!"

       But I lay fettered to love of my children: desire set this snare for me, desire for love, that I might become my children's victim and lose myself through them.

       To desire - that now means to me: to have lost myself.  I possess you, my children!  In this possession all should be certainty and nothing desire.

       But the sun of my love lay brooding upon me, Zarathustra stewed in his own juice - then shadows and doubts flew past me.

       I hankered after frost and winter: "Oh that frost and winter would again make me crackle and crunch!" I sighed: then icy mist arose from me.

       My past broke open its graves, many a pain buried alive awoke: they had only been sleeping, concealed in winding sheets.

       Thus in symbols everything called to me: "It is time!"  But I - did not hear: until at last my abyss stirred and my thought bit me.

       Alas, abysmal thought that is my thought!  When shall I find the strength to hear you boring and no longer tremble?

       My heart rises to my throat when I hear you boring!  Even your silence threatens to choke me, you abysmal, silent thought!

       I have never yet dared to summon you up: it has been enough that I - carried you with me!  I have not yet been strong enough for the ultimate lion's arrogance and lion's wantonness.

       Your heaviness has always been fearful enough for me: but one day I shall find the strength and the lion's voice to summon you up!

       When I have overcome myself in that, I will overcome myself in that which is greater; and a victory shall be the seal of my perfection!

       In the meantime, I travel on uncertain seas; smooth-tongued chance flatters me; I gaze forward and backward, still I see no end.

       The hour of my last struggle has not yet arrived - or has it perhaps just arrived?  Truly, sea and life around me gaze at me with insidious beauty!

       O afternoon of my life!  O happiness before evening!  O harbour in mid-sea!  O peace in uncertainty!  How I mistrust you all!

       Truly, I am mistrustful of your insidious beauty!  I am like the lover who mistrusts all-too-velvety smiles.

       As the jealous man thrusts his best beloved from him, tender even in his hardness - thus do I thrust this blissful hour from me.

       Away with you, blissful hour!  With you there came to me an involuntary bliss!  I stand here ready for my deepest pain - you came out of season!

       Away with you, blissful hour!  Rather take shelter yonder - with my children!  Hurry, and bless them before evening with my happiness!

       There evening already approaches: the sun is sinking.  Away - my happiness!

 

       Thus spoke Zarathustra.  And he waited all night for his unhappiness: but he waited in vain.  The night remained clear and still and happiness itself drew nearer and nearer to him.  Towards morning, however, Zarathustra laughed to his heart and said ironically: "Happiness runs after me.  That is because I do not run after women.  Happiness, however, is a woman."

 

 

 

Before Sunrise

 

O SKY above me!  O pure, deep sky!  You abyss of light!  Gazing into you, I tremble with divine desires!

       To cast myself into your height - that is my depth!  To hide myself in your purity - that is my innocence!

       The god is veiled by his beauty: thus you hide your stars.  You do not speak: thus you proclaim to me your wisdom.

       You have risen for me today, mute over the raging sea; your love and your modesty speak a revelation to my raging soul.

       That you have come to me, beautiful, veiled in your beauty; that you have spoken to me mutely, manifest in your wisdom:

       Oh how should I not divine all that is modest in your soul!  You came to me before the sun, to me the most solitary man.

       We have been friends from the beginning: we have grief and terror and world in common; we have even the sun in common.

       We do not speak to one another, because we know too much: we are silent together, we smile our knowledge to one another.

       Are you not the light of my fire?  Do you not have the sister-soul of my insight?

       Together we learned everything; together we learned to mount above ourselves to ourselves and to smile uncloudedly -

       to smile uncloudedly down from bright eyes and from miles away when under us compulsion and purpose and guilt stream like rain.

       And when I wandered alone, what did my soul hunger after by night and on treacherous paths?  And when I climbed mountains, whom did I always seek, if not you, upon mountains?

       And all my wandering and mountain-climbing: it was merely a necessity and an expedient of clumsiness: my whole will desires only to fly, to fly into you!

       I dislike the passing clouds, these stealthy cats of prey: they take from you and from me what we have in common - the vast and boundless declaration of Yes and Amen.

       We dislike these mediators and mixers, the passing clouds: these half-and-halfers, who have learned neither to bless nor to curse from the heart.

       I would rather sit in a barrel under a closed sky, rather sit in an abyss without a sky, then see you, luminous sky, defiled by passing clouds!

       And often I longed to bind them fast with jagged golden wires of lightning, so that I, like the thunder, might drum upon their hollow bellies -

       an angry drummer, because they rob me of your Yes! and Amen!  O sky above me, you pure sky!  You luminous sky!  You abyss of light! - because they rob me of my Yes! and Amen!

       For I would rather have noise and thunder and storm-curses than this cautious, uncertain feline repose; and among men, too, I hate most all soft-walkers and half-and-halfers and uncertain, hesitating passing clouds.

       And "He who cannot bless shall learn to curse!" - this clear teaching fell to me from the clear sky, this star stands in my sky even on dark nights.

       I, however, am one who blesses and declares Yes, if only you are around me, you pure, luminous sky!  You abyss of light! - then into all abysses do I carry my consecrating declaration Yes.

       I have become one who blesses and one who declares Yes: and for that I wrestled long and was a wrestler, so that I might one day have my hands free for blessing.

       This, however, is my blessing: To stand over everything as its own sky, as its round roof, its azure bell and eternal certainty: and happy is he who thus blesses!

       For all things are baptized at the fount of eternity and beyond good and evil; good and evil themselves, however, are only intervening shadows and damp afflictions and passing clouds.

       Truly, it is a blessing and not a blasphemy when I teach: "Above all things stands the heaven of chance, the heaven of innocence, the heaven of accident, the heaven of wantonness.

       'Lord Chance' - he is the world's oldest nobility, which I have given back to all things; I have released them from servitude under purpose.

       I set this freedom and celestial cheerfulness over all things like an azure bell when I taught that no 'eternal will' acts over them and through them.

       I set this wantonness and this foolishness in place of that will when I taught: "With all things one thing is impossible - rationality!"

       A little reason, to be sure, a seed of wisdom scattered from star to star - this leaven is mingled with all things: for the sake of foolishness is wisdom mingled with all things!

       A little wisdom is no doubt possible; but I have found this happy certainty in all things: that they prefer - to dance on the feet of chance.

       O sky above me, you pure, lofty sky!  This is now your purity to me, that there is no eternal reason-spider and spider's web in you -

       that you are to me a dance floor for divine chances, that you are to me a gods' table for divine dice and dicers!

       But are you blushing?  Did I say something unspeakable?  Did I slander you when I meant to bless you?

       Or is it the shame of our being together which makes you blush?  Are you telling me to go and be silent because now - day is coming?

       The world is deep: and deeper than day has ever comprehended.  Not everything may be spoken in the presence of day.  But day is coming: so let us part!

       O sky above me, you modest, glowing sky!  O you, my happiness before sunrise!  Day is coming: so let us part!

 

       Thus spoke Zarathustra.

 

 

 

Of the Virtue that Makes Small

 

1

 

WHEN Zarathustra was again on firm land he did not go off straightway to his mountains and his cave, but made many journeys and asked many questions and inquired of this and that, so that he said jokingly of himself: "Behold a river that flows back to its source through many meanderings!"  For he wanted to learn what had been happening to men while he had been away: whether they had become bigger or smaller.  And once he saw a row of new houses, and he marvelled and said:

 

       What do these houses mean?  Truly, no great soul put them up as its image!

       Did a silly child perhaps take them out of its toy-box?  If only another child would put them back into its box!

       And these sitting-rooms and bedrooms: are men able to go in and out of them?  They seem to have been made for dolls; or for dainty nibblers who perhaps let others nibble with them.

 

       And Zarathustra stopped and considered.  At length he said sadly: "Everything has become smaller!

       "Everywhere I see lower doors: anyone like me can still pass through them, but - he has to stoop!

       "Oh when shall I return to my home, where I shall no longer have to stoop - shall no longer have to stoop before the small men!"  And Zarathustra sighed and gazed into the distance.

       The same day, however, he spoke his discourse upon the virtue that makes small.

 

 

2

 

I go among this people and keep my eyes open: they do not forgive me that I am not envious of their virtues.

       They peck at me because I tell them: For small people small virtues are necessary - and because it is hard for me to understand that small people are necessary!

       Here I am still like a cockerel in a strange farmyard, who is pecked at even by the hens; but I am not unfriendly to these hens on that account.

       I am polite towards them, as towards every small vexation; to be prickly towards small things seems to me the wisdom of a hedgehog.

       They all talk of me when they sit around the fire at evening - they talk of me, but no-one thinks - of me!

       This is the new silence I have learned: their noise about me spreads a cloak over my thoughts.

       They bluster among themselves: "What does this gloomy cloud want with us?  Let us see that it does not bring us a pestilence!"

       And recently a woman pulled back her child when it was coming towards me: "Take the children away!" she cried; "such eyes scorch children's souls."

       They cough when I speak: they think that coughing is an objection to strong winds - they know nothing of the raging of my happiness!

       "We have no time yet for Zarathustra" - thus they object; but of what consequence is a time that 'has no time' for Zarathustra?

       And should they even praise me: how could I rest on their praise?  Their praise is a barbed girdle to me: it scratches me even when I take it off.

       And I have learned this, too, among them: he who praises appears to be giving back, in truth, however, he wants to be given more!

       Ask my foot if it likes their melodies of praise and enticement!  Truly, to such a measure of tick-tock beat it likes neither to dance nor to stand still.

       They would like to lure and commend me to small virtue; they would like to persuade my foot to the tick-tock measure of a small happiness.

       I go among this people and keep my eyes open: they have become smaller and are becoming even smaller: and their doctrine of happiness and virtue is the cause.

       For they are modest even in virtue - for they want ease.  But only a modest virtue is compatible with ease.

       To be sure, even they learn in their own way how to stride and to stride forward: that is what I call their limping.  Therewith they become a hindrance to anyone who is in a hurry.

       And some of them go forward and at the same time look backward with a stiff neck: I like to run up against them.

       Foot and eye should not lie, nor give one another the lie.  But there is much lying among the small people.

       Some of them will, but most of them are only willed.  Some of them are genuine, but most of them are bad actors.

       There are unconscious actors among them and involuntary actors - the genuine are always rare, especially genuine actors.

       There is little manliness there: therefore their women make themselves manly.  For only he who is sufficiently a man will - redeem the woman in woman.

       And I have found this hypocrisy the worst among them: that even those who command affect the virtues of those who obey.

       "I serve, you serve, we serve" - so here even the hypocrisy of the rulers intones - and alas, if the first ruler is only the first servant!

       Ah, my eyes' curiosity has strayed even into their hypocrisies; and I have divined well all their fly-happiness and their humming around sunny window-panes.

       I see as much weakness as goodness.  As much weakness as justice and pity.

       They are frank, honest, and kind to one another, as grains of sand are frank, honest, and kind to grains of sand.

       To embrace modestly a little happiness - that they call 'submission'!  And at the same time they are looking out for a new little happiness.

       Fundamentally they want one thing most of all: that nobody shall do them harm.  So they steal a march on everyone and do good to everyone.

       This, however, is cowardice: although it be called 'virtue'.

       And when they speak harshly, these little people, I hear in it only their hoarseness - every draught, in fact, makes them hoarse.

       They are clever, their virtues have clever fingers.  But they lack fists, their fingers do no know how to fold into fists.

       To them, virtue is what makes modest and tame: with it they make the wolf into a dog and man himself into man's best domestic animal.

       "We have set our chairs down in the middle" - that is what their smirking tells me - "and as far away from dying warriors as from contended swine."

       This, however, is - mediocrity: although it be called moderation.

 

 

3

 

I go among this people and let fall many a word; but they know neither how to take nor to keep.

       They are surprised that I have not come to rail at their lusts and vices; and truly, I have not come to warn against pick-pockets, either!

       They are surprised that I am not prepared to improve and sharpen their cleverness: as if they had not already sufficient wiseacres, whose voices grate on me like slate-pencils!

       And when I cry: "Curse all the cowardly devils within you who would like to whimper and clasp their hands and worship." then they cry: "Zarathustra is godless."

       And this is especially the cry of their teachers of submission; but it is into precisely their ears that I love to shout: Yes!  I am Zarathustra the Godless!

       These teachers of submission!  Wherever there is anything small and sick and scabby, there they crawl like lice; and only my disgust stops me from cracking them.

       Well then!  This is my sermon for their ears: I am Zarathustra the Godless, who says "Who is more godless than I, that I may rejoice in his teaching?"

       I am Zarathustra the Godless: where shall I find my equal?  All those who give themselves their own will and renounce all submission, they are my equals.

       I am Zarathustra the Godless: I cook every chance in my pot.  And only when it is quite cooked do I welcome it as my food.

       And truly, many a chance came imperiously to me: but my will spoke to it even more imperiously, then it went down imploringly on its knees -

       imploring shelter and love with me, and urging in wheedling tones: "Just see, O Zarathustra, how a friend comes to a friend!"

       But why do I speak where no-one has my kind of ears?  And so I will shout it out to all the winds:

       You will become smaller and smaller, you small people!  You will crumble away, you comfortable people!  You will yet perish -

       through your many small virtues, through your many small omissions, through your many small submissions!

       Too indulgent, too yielding: that is the state of your soil!  But in order to grow big, a tree wants to strike hard roots into hard rocks!

       Even what you omit weaves at the web of mankind's future; even your nothing is a spider's web and a spider that lives on the future's blood.

       And when you take, it is like stealing, you small virtuous people; but even among rogues, honour says: "One should steal only where one cannot plunder."

       "It is given" - that is also a doctrine of submission.  But I tell you, you comfortable people: it is taken, and will be taken more and more from you!

       Oh, that you would put from you all half willing, and decide upon lethargy as you do upon action!

       Oh, that you understand my saying: "Always do what you will - but first be such as can will!"

       "Always love your neighbour as yourselves - but first be such as love themselves -

       "such as love with a great love, such as love with a great contempt!"  Thus speaks Zarathustra the Godless.

       But why do I speak where no-one has my kind of ears?  Here it is yet an hour too early for me.

       Among this people I am my own forerunner, my own cock-crow through dark lanes.

       But their hour is coming!  And mine too is coming!  Hourly will they become smaller, poorer, more barren - poor weeds! poor soil!

       And soon they shall stand before me like arid grass and steppe, and truly! weary of themselves - and longing for fire rather than for water!

       O blessed hour of the lightning!  O mystery before noontide!  One day I shall turn them into running fire and heralds with tongues of flame -

       one day they shall proclaim with tongues of flames: It is coming, it is near, the great noontide!

 

       Thus spoke Zarathustra.

 

 

 

On the Mount of Olives

 

WINTER, an ill guest, sits in my house; my hands are blue from his friendly handshake.

       I honour him, this ill guest, but I am glad to let him sit alone.  I gladly run away from him; and if you run well you can escape him!

       With warm feet and warm thoughts do I run yonder where the wind is still, to the sunny corner of my mount of olives.

       There I laugh at my stern guest and am still fond of him, for he drives the flies away and silences many little noises for me at home.

       For he will not permit even a gnat to buzz about, far less two gnats; and he makes the streets lonely, so that the moonlight is afraid there at night.

       He is a hard guest, but I honour him, and do not pray to a fat-bellied fire-idol, as the weaklings do.

       Rather a little chattering of teeth than idol-worship! - so my nature will have it.  And I especially detest all lustful, steaming, musty fire-idols.

       Whom I love I love better in winter than in summer; I now mock my enemies better and more heartily, since winter sits in my home.

       Heartily, in truth, even when I crawl into bed - even there my hidden happiness laughs and grows wanton; even my deceptive dream laughs.

       I, a - crawler?  Never in my life have I crawled before the powerful; and if I ever lied, I lied from love.  For that reason I am joyful even in my winter bed.

       A meagre bed warms me more than an opulent one, for I am jealous of my poverty.  And it is more faithful to me in the winter.

       I start each day with a wickedness, I mock winter with a cold bath: my stern house-companion grumbles at that.

       I also like to tickle him with a wax candle: so that he may finally let the sky emerge from an ash-grey dawn.

       For I am especially wicked in the morning: at the early hour when the bucket clatters at the well and horses neigh warmly in grey streets.

       Then I wait impatiently, until the luminous sky at last dawns for me, the snowy-bearded winter sky, the white-haired, ancient sky -

       the silent, winter sky, that often conceals even its sun!

       Did I learn long, luminous silence from it?  Or did it learn it from me?  Or did each of us devise it himself?

       The origin of all good things is thousandfold - all good, wanton things spring from joy into existence: how should they do that - once only?

       Long silence is also a good, wanton thing, and to gaze like the winter sky from a luminous, round-eyed countenance -

       like it, to conceal one's sun and one's inflexible sun-will: truly, I have learned well this art and this winter wantonness!

       It is my favourite wickedness and art, that my silence has learned not to betray itself by silence.

       Rattling words and dice have I outwitted the solemn attendants: my will and purpose shall elude all the stern watchers.

       So that no-one might see down into my profundity and ultimate will - that is why I devised my long, luminous silence.

       I have found so many shrewd men who veiled their faces and troubled their waters, so that no-one might see through them and under them.

       But the shrewder distrusters and nut-crackers came straight to them: straightway they fished out their best-hidden fish!

       But the clear, the honest, the transparent - they seem to me the shrewdest silent men: those whose profundity is so deep that even the clearest water does not - betray it.

       You snowy-bearded winter sky, you round-eyed, white-haired sky above me!  O you heavenly image of my soul and its wantonness!

       And do I not have to hide myself, like one who has swallowed gold, so that my soul shall not be slit open?

       Do I not have to wear stilts, so that they may not notice my long legs - all these envious and injurious people around me?

       These reeky, cosy, worn-out, mouldy, woebegone souls - how could their envy endure my happiness?

       So I show them only ice and winter on my peaks - and not that my mountain also winds all the girdles of sunlight around it!

       They hear only the whistling of my winter storms: and not that I also fare over warm seas, like passionate, heavy, hot south winds.

       They even pity my accidents and chances: but my doctrine is: "Let chance come to me: it is ass innocent as a little child!"

       How could they endure my happiness, if I did not put accidents and the miseries of winter and fur-hats and coverings of snow-clouds around my happiness!

       - if I did not myself pity their pity, the pity of these envious and injurious people!

       - if I myself did not sigh and let my teeth chatter in their presence, and patiently let myself be wrapped up in their pity!

       This is the wise wantonness and benevolence of my soul: it does not hide its winter and frosty storms; neither does it hide its chilblains.

       For one person, solitude is the escape of an invalid; for another, solitude is escape from the invalids.

       Let them hear me chattering and sighing with winter cold, all these poor, squint-eyed knaves around me!  With such sighing and chattering have I escaped their heated rooms.

       Let them pity me and sigh with me over my chilblains: "He will yet freeze to death on the ice of knowledge!" - so they wail.

       In the meanwhile, I run with warm feet hither and thither upon my mount of olives: in the sunny corner of my mount of olives do I sing and mock all pity.

 

       Thus sang Zarathustra.

 

 

 

Of Passing By

 

THUS, slowly making his way among many people and through divers towns, did Zarathustra return indirectly to his mountain and his cave.  And behold, on his way he came unawares to the gate of the great city; here, however, a frothing fool with hands outstretched sprang at him and blocked his path.  But this was the fool the people called 'Zarathustra's ape': for he had learned from him something of the composition and syntax of language and perhaps also liked to borrow from his store of wisdom.  The fool, however, spoke thus to Zarathustra:

 

       O Zarathustra, here is the great city: here you have nothing to seek and everything to lose.

       Why do you want to wade through this mud?  Take pity on your feet!  Rather spit upon the gate and - turn back!

       Here is the Hell for hermits' thoughts: here great thoughts are boiled alive and cooked small.

       Here all great emotions decay: here only little, fry emotions may rattle!

       Do you not smell already the slaughter-houses and cook-shops of the spirit?  Does this city not reek of the fumes of slaughtered spirit?

       Do you not see the souls hanging like dirty, limp rags? - And they also make newspapers from these rags!

       Have you not heard how the spirit has here become a play with words?  It vomits out repulsive verbal swill! - And they also make newspapers from this verbal swill.

       They pursue one another and do not know where.  They inflame one another, and do not know why.  They rattle their tins, they jingle their gold.

       They are cold and seek warmth in distilled waters; they are inflamed and seek coolness in frozen spirits; they are all ill and diseased with public opinion.

       All lusts and vices are at home here; but there are virtuous people here, too, there are many adroit, useful virtues:

       Many adroit virtues with scribbling fingers and behinds hardened to sitting and waiting, blessed with little chest decorations and padded, rumpless daughters.

       There is also much piety here and much devout spittle-licking and fawning before the God of Hosts.

       Down 'from on high' drips the star and the gracious spittle; every starless beast longs to go up 'on high'.

       The moon has its court, and the court has its mooncalves: to all that comes from the court, however, do the paupers and all the adroit pauper-virtues pray.

       "I serve, you serve, we serve" - thus does all adroit virtue pray to the prince: so that the merited star may at last be fastened to the narrow breast.

       But the moon still revolves around all that is earthly: so the prince, too, still revolves around what is most earthly of all: that, however, is the shopkeepers' gold.

       The God of Hosts is not the god of the golden ingots; the prince proposes, but the shopkeeper - disposes!

       By all that is luminous and strong and good in you, O Zarathustra! spit upon this city of shopkeepers and turn back!

       Here all blood flows foul and tepid and frothy through all veins: spit upon the great city that is the great rubbish pile where all the scum froths together!

       Spit upon the city of flattened souls and narrow breasts, of slant eyes and sticky fingers -

       upon the city of the importunate, the shameless, the ranters in writing and speech, the overheated ambitious:

       where everything rotten, disreputable, lustful, gloomy, over-ripe, ulcerous, conspiratorial festers together -

       spit upon the great city and turn back!

      

       But here Zarathustra interrupted the frothing fool and stopped his mouth.

 

       Have done! (cried Zarathustra)  Your speech and your kind and long disgusted me!

       Why did you live so long in the swamp that you had to become a frog and toad yourself?

       Does not foul, foaming swamp-blood now flow through your own veins, so that you have learned to quack and rail like this?

       Why did you not go into the forest?  Or plough the earth?  Is the sea not full of green islands?

       I despise your contempt and my bird of warning shall ascend from love alone; not from the swamp!

       They call you my ape, you frothing fool: but I call you my grunting pig - by grunting you are undoing even my praise of folly.

       What, then, was it that started you grunting?  That nobody had flattered you enough: therefore you sat down beside this filth, so that you might have cause for much grunting -

       so that you might have cause for much revenge!  For all your   frothing, you vain fool, is revenge; I have divined you well!

       But your foolish teaching is harmful to me, even when you are right!  And if Zarathustra's teaching were a hundred times justified, you would still - use my teaching falsely!

      

       Thus spoke Zarathustra; and he looked at the great city, sighed and was long silent.  At length he spoke thus:

 

       This great city, and not only this fool, disgusts me.  In both there is nothing to make better, nothing to make worse.

       Woe to this great city!  And I wish I could see already the pillar of fire in which it will be consumed!

       For such pillars of fire must precede the great noontide.  Yet this has its time and its own destiny.

       But I offer you in farewell this precept, you fool:  Where one can no longer love, one should - pass by!

 

       Thus spoke Zarathustra and passed the fool and the great city.

 

 

 

Of the Apostates

 

1

 

ALAS, everything that lately stood green and motley in this meadow already lies faded and grey!  And how much honey of hope have I carried from here into my beehives!

       All these young heart have already grown old - and not even old! only weary, common, comfortable: they describe it: "We have grown pious again."

       But lately I saw them running out in the early morning with bold feet: but the feet of their knowledge grew weary and now they slander even their morning boldness!

       Truly, many of them once lifted their legs like a dancer, the laughter in my wisdom beckoned to them: then they considered.  And now I have seen them bent - to creep to the Cross.

       Once they fluttered around light and freedom like flies and young poets.  A little older, a little colder: and already they are mystifiers and mutterers and stay-at-homes.

       Did their hearts perhaps despair because solitude devoured me like a whale?  Did their ears perhaps listen long and longingly in vain for me and for my trumpet and herald calls?

       Alas!  They are always few whose heart possesses a long-enduring courage and wantonness; and in such, the spirit, too, is patient.  The remained, however, are cowardly.

       He who is of my sort will also encounter experiences of my sort, so that his first companions must be corpses and buffoons.

       His second companions, however, will call themselves his believers: a lively flock, full of love, full of folly, full of adolescent adoration.

       He among men who is of my sort should not grapple his heart to these believers; he who knows fickle-cowardly human nature should not believe in these springs and many-coloured meadows!

       If they could do otherwise, they would choose otherwise.  The half-and-half spoil every whole.  Why complain because leaves wither?

       Let them fall, let them go, O Zarathustra, and do not complain!  Rather, blow among them with rustling winds -

       blow among these leaves, O Zarathustra: so that all that is withered may run from you the faster.

 

 

2

 

"We have grown pious again" - thus these apostates confess; and many of them are still too cowardly to confess it.

       I look into their eyes, then I tell them to their face and to the blushes of their cheeks: You are those who again pray!

       But it is a disgrace to pray!  Not for everyone, but for you and me and for whoever else has his conscience in his head.  For you it is a disgrace to pray!

       You know it well: the cowardly devil in you would like to clasp his hands and to fold his arms and to take it easier: it was this cowardly devil who persuaded you: "There is a God!"

       Through that, however, have you become one of those who dread the light, whom light never lets rest; now you must stick your head deeper every day into night and fog!

       And truly, you have chosen well the hour: for even now the night-birds have again flown out.  The hour has arrived for all people who fear the light, the evening hour of ease when there is no - 'ease' for them.

       I hear and smell it: the hour for their chase and procession has arrived; not indeed for a wild chase, but for a tame, lame, snuffling, soft-walker's and soft-prayer's chase -

       for a chase after soulful hypocrites: all mousetraps of the heart have now again been set!  And wherever I raise a curtain, a little night-moth comes fluttering out.

       Has it perhaps been crouching there with another little night-moth?  For everywhere I smell little hidden communities; and wherever there are closets, there are new devotees in them and the atmosphere of devotees.

       They sit together on long evenings and say: "Let us again become as little children and say Dear God!" - ruined in mouth and stomach by the pious confectioners.

       Or they observe on long evenings a cunning, lurking Cross-spider, which preaches prudence to the spiders themselves and teaches: "There is good spinning under Crosses!"

       Or they sit all day with fishing-rods beside swamps and for that reason think themselves deep; but he who fishes where there are no fish I do not call even superficial!

       Or they learn to play the harp in pious-joyful style with a song-poet who would like to harp his way into the hearts of young women - for he has grown weary of the old women and their praises

       Or they learn to shudder with a learned half-madman who waits in darkened rooms so that the spirits may come to him - and the spirit has quite departed!

       Or they listen to an old, roving, whistling tramp who has learned from the distressful winds the distress of tones; now he whistles like the wind and preaches distress in distressful tones.

       And some of them have even become night-watchmen: now they know how to blow horns and to go around at night and awaken old things that have long been asleep.

       I heard five sayings about old things last night beside the garden wall: they came from such old, distressed, dried-up night-watchmen:

       "For a father he does not look after his children enough: human fathers do it better!"

       "He is too old!  He no longer looks after his children at all" - thus the other night-watchman answered.

       "Has he any children?  No-one can prove it, if he doesn't prove it himself!  I have long wished he would prove it thoroughly for once."

       "Prove it?  As if he has ever proved anything!  He finds it hard to prove things; he thinks it very important that people should believe him."

       "Yes, yes!  Belief makes him happy, belief in him.  Old people are like that!  So shall we be, too!"

       Thus the two old night-watchmen and light-scarecrows spoke together and thereupon blew their horns distressfully: so it happened last night beside the garden wall.

       My heart, however, writhed with laughter and was like to break and knew not where to go and sank into the midriff.

       Truly, it will yet be the death of me, to choke with laughter when I see asses intoxicated and hear night-watchmen thus doubt God.

       For has not the time for all such doubts long since passed?  Who may still awaken such old, sleeping, light-shunning things!

       With the old gods, they have long since met their end - and truly, they had a fine, merry, divine ending!

       They did not 'fade away in twilight' - that is a lie!  On the contrary: they once - laughed themselves to death!

       That happened when the most godless saying proceeded from a god himself, the saying: "There is one God!  You shall have no other gods before me!" -

       an old wrath-beard of a god, a jealous god, thus forgot himself:

       And all the gods laughed then and rocked in their chairs and cried: "Is not precisely this godliness, that there are gods but no God?"

       He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

       Thus spoke Zarathustra in the town which he loved and which is called 'The Pied Cow'.  For from here he had only two days to go before arriving again at his cave and his animals; and his soul rejoiced continually at the nearness of his home-coming.

 

 

 

The Home-Coming

 

O SOLITUDE!  Solitude, my home!  I have lived too long wildly in wild strange lands to come home to you without tears!

       Now shake your finger at me as mothers do, now smile at me as mothers smile, now say merely: "And who was it that once stormed away from me like a storm-wind? -

       "who departing cried: I have sat too long with Solitude, I have unlearned how to be silent!  You have surely learned that - now?

       "O Zarathustra, I know all: and that you were lonelier among the crowd, you solitary, than you ever were with me!

       "Loneliness is one thing, solitude another: you have learned that - now!  And that among men you will always be wild and strange:

       "wild and strange even when they love you: for above all they want to be indulged!

       "But here you are at your own hearth and home; here you can utter everything and pour out every reason, nothing is here ashamed of hidden, hardened feelings.

       "Here all things come caressingly to your discourse and flatter you: for they want to ride upon your back.  Upon every image you here ride to every truth.

       "Here you may speak to all things straight and true: and truly, it sounds as praise to their ears, that someone should speak with all things - honestly!

       "But it is another thing to be lonely.  For, do you remember, O Zarathustra?  When once your bird cried above you as you stood in the forest undecided, ignorant where to go, beside a corpse.

       "When you said: May my animals lead me!  I found it more dangerous among men than among animals.  That was loneliness!

       "And do you remember, O Zarathustra?  When you sat upon your island, a well of wine among empty buckets, giving and distributing, bestowing and out-pouring among the thirsty:

       "until at last you sat alone thirsty among the intoxicated and lamented each night: 'Is it not more blessed to receive than to give?  And more blessed to steal than to receive?' - That was loneliness!

       "And do you remember, O Zarathustra?  When your stillest hour came and tore you forth from yourself, when it said in an evil whisper: 'Speak and break!' -

       "when it made you repent of all your waiting and silence and discouraged your humble courage: That was loneliness!"

       O Solitude!  Solitude, my home!  How blissfully and tenderly does your voice speak to me!

       We do not question one another, we do not complain to one another, we go openly together through open doors.

       For with you all is open and clear; and here even the hours run on lighter feet.  For time weighs down more heavily in the dark than in the light.

       Here, the words and word-chests of all existence spring open to me: all existence here wants to become words, all becoming here wants to learn speech from me.

       Down there, however - all speech is in vain!  There, the best wisdom is to forget and pass by: I have learned that - now!

       He who wants to understand all things among men has to touch all things.  But my hands are too clean for that.

       I even dislike to breathe in their breath; alas, that I lived so long among their noise and bad breath!

       O blissful stillness around me!  O pure odours around me!  Oh, how this stillness draws pure breath from a deep breast!  Oh, how it listens, this blissful stillness!

       But down there - everything speaks, everything is unheard.  One may ring in one's wisdom with bells - the shopkeeper in the market-place will out-ring it with pennies!

       Everything among them speaks, no-one knows any longer how to understand.  Everything falls away into failure, nothing falls any longer into deep wells.

       Everything among them speaks, nothing prospers and comes to an end any longer.  Everything cackles, but who still wants to sit quietly upon the nest and hatch eggs?

       Everything among them speaks, everything is talked down.  And what yesterday was still too hard for time itself and its teeth, today hangs chewed and picked from the mouth of the men of today.

       Everything among them speaks, everything is betrayed.  And what was once called a secret and a secrecy of profound souls, today belongs to the street-trumpeters and other butterflies.

       O humankind, you strange thing!  You noise in dark streets!  Now again you lie behind me - my greatest danger lies behind me!

       My greatest danger always lay in indulgence and sufferance; and all humankind wants to bee indulged and suffered.

       With truths held back, with foolish hand and foolish-fond heart and rich in pity's little lies - that is how I used to live among men.

       I sat among them disguised, ready to misunderstand myself so that I might endure then, and glad to tell myself: "You fool, you do not know men!"

       One forgets what one has learned about men when one lives among men: there is too much foreground in all men - what can far-seeing, far-seeking eyes do there!

       And when they misunderstand me, I, like a fool, indulged them more than I did myself: for I was accustomed to being hard with myself and often even taking revenge on myself for this indulgence.

       Stung by poisonous flies and hollowed out like a stone by many drops of wickedness: that is how I sat among them and still told myself: "Everything small is innocent of its smallness!"

       Especially those who call themselves 'the good' did I discover to be the most poisonous flies: they sting in all innocence; how could they be - just towards me!

       Pity teaches him to lie who lives among the good.  Pity makes the air stifling for all free souls.  For the stupidity of the good is unfathomable.

       To conceal myself and my riches - that did I learn down there: for I found everybody still poor in spirit.  It was my pity's lie that I knew with everybody.

       that I saw and scented in everybody what was sufficient spirit for him and what was too much spirit for him!

       Their pedantic wise men: I called them wise, not pedantic - thus I learned to slur words.  Their gravediggers: I called them investigators and scholars - thus I learned to confound words.

       Gravediggers dig diseases for themselves.  Evil vapours repose beneath old rubble.  One should not stir up the bog.  One should live upon mountains.

       With happy nostrils I breathe again mountain-freedom!  At last my nose is delivered from the odour of all humankind!

       My soul, tickled by sharp breezes as with sparkling wine, sneezes - sneezes and cries to itself: Bless you!

 

       Thus spoke Zarathustra.

 

 

 

Of the Three Evil Things

 

1

 

IN a dream, in my last morning dream, I stood today upon a headland - beyond the world, I held a pair of scales and weighed the world.

       Oh, that the dawn came to me too soon!  It glowed me into wakefulness, the jealous dawn!  It is always jealous of the glow of my morning dreams.

       Measurable to him who has time, weighable to a good weigher, accessible to strong pinions, divinable to divine nutcrackers: thus did my dream find the world.

       My dream, a bold sailor, half ship, half hurricane, silent as a butterfly, impatient as a falcon: how did it have time and patience today for weighing of worlds?

       Did my wisdom perhaps speak secretly to it, my laughing, wakeful day-wisdom that mocks all 'infinite worlds'?  For my wisdom says: "Where power is, there number becomes master: it has more power."

       How confidently did my dream gaze upon this finite world, eager neither for new things nor for old; neither in awe nor in supplication -

       as if a round apple presented itself to my hand, a ripe, golden apple with a soft, cool, velvety skin - thus the world presented itself to me -

       as if a tree nodded to me, a wide-branching, strong-willed tree, bent for reclining and as a footstool for the way-weary: thus the world stood upon my headland -

       as if tender hands brought me a casket - a casket open for the delight of modest, adoring eyes: thus the world presented himself before me today -

       not so enigmatic as to frighten away human love, not so explicit as to put to sleep human wisdom - a good, human thing was the world to me today, this world of which so many evil things are said!

       How grateful I am to my morning dream, that today in the early morning I thus weighed the world!  It came to me as a good, human thing, this dream and comforter of the heart!

       And that I may do the same as it by day and learn and imitate its best aspects, I will now place the three most evils things upon the scales and weigh them well and humanly.

       He who taught how to bless also taught how to curse: which are the three most-cursed things in the world?  I will place these upon the scales.

       Sensual pleasure, lust for power, selfishness: these three have hitherto been cursed the most and held in the worst and most unjust repute - these three will I weigh well and humanly.

       Well then!  Here is my headland and there is the sea: it rolls towards me, shaggy, fawning, the faithful old hundred-headed canine monster that I love.

       Well then!  Here I will hold the scales over the rolling sea: and I choose a witness, too, to look on - you, hermit tree, you heavy-odoured, broad-arched tree that I love!

       Upon what bridge does the present go over to the hereafter?  What compulsion compels the high to bend to the low?  And what bids even the highest - to grow higher still?

       Now the scales stand level and still: I have thrown in three weighty questions, the other scale bears three weighty answers.

 

 

2

 

Sensual pleasure: goad and stake to all hair-shirted despisers of the body and anathematized as 'the world' by all afterworldsmen: for it mocks and makes fool of all teachers of confusion and error.

       Sensual pleasure: to the rabble the slow fire over which they are roasted; to all worm-eaten wood, to all stinking tatters, the ever-ready stewing-oven of lust.

       Sensual pleasure: innocent and free to free hearts, the earth's garden-joy, an overflowing of thanks to the present from all the future.

       Sensual pleasure: a sweet poison only to the withered, but to the lion-willed the great restorative and reverently-preserved wine of wines.

       Sensual pleasure: the great symbolic happiness of a higher happiness and highest hope.  For marriage is promised to many, and more than marriage -

       to many that are stranger to one another than man and woman: and who has fully conceived how strange man and woman are to one another!

       Sensual pleasure - but I will fence my thoughts round, and my words too: so that swine and hot fanatics shall not break into my garden!

       Lust for power: the scourge of fire of the hardest-hearted; the cruel torment reserved by the cruellest for himself; the dark flame of living bonfires.

       Lust for power: the wicked fly seated upon the vainest peoples; the mocker of all uncertain virtue; which rides upon every horse and every pride.

       Lust for power: the earthquake that breaks and bursts open all that is decayed and hollow; the rolling, growling, punitive destroyer of whitewashed sepulchres; the flashing question-mark beside premature answers.

       Lust for power: before its glance man crawls and bends and toils and becomes lower than the swine or the snake - until at last the cry of the great contempt bursts from him -

       Lust for power: the fearsome teacher of the great contempt, who preaches in the face of cities and empires "Away with you!" - until at last they themselves cry out "Away with me!"

       Lust for power: which, however, rises enticingly even to the pure and the solitary and up to self-sufficient heights, glowing like a love that paints purple delights enticingly on earthly heavens.

       Lust for power: but who shall call it lust, when the height longs to stoop down after power!  Truly, there is no sickness and lust in such a longing and descent!

       That the lonely height may not always be solitary and sufficient to itself; that the mountain may descend to the valley and the wind of the heights to the lowlands -

       Oh, who shall find the rightful baptismal and virtuous name for such a longing!  'Bestowing virtue' - that is the name Zarathustra once gave the unnameable.

       And then it also happened - and truly, it happened for the first time! - that his teaching glorified selfishness, the sound, healthy selfishness that issues from a mighty soul -

       from a mighty soul, to which pertains the exalted body, the beautiful, victorious, refreshing body, around which everything becomes a mirror'

       the supple, persuasive body, the dancer whose image and epitome is the self-rejoicing soul.  The self-rejoicing of such bodies and souls calls itself : 'Virtue'.

       Such self-rejoicing protects itself with its doctrines of good and bad as with sacred groves; with the names it gives its happiness it banishes from itself all that is contemptible.

       It banishes from itself all that is cowardly; it says: Bad - that is to say, cowardly!  He who is always worrying, sighing, complaining, and who gleans even the smallest advantage, seems contemptible to it.

       It also despises all woeful wisdom: for truly, there is also a wisdom that blossoms in darkness, a night-shade wisdom, which is always sighing: "All is vain!"

       Timid mistrustfulness seems base to it, as do all who desire oaths instead of looks and hands; and all-too-mistrustful wisdom, for such is the nature of cowardly souls.

       It regards as baser yet him who is quick to please, who, dog-like, lies upon his back, the humble man; and there is also a wisdom that is humble and dog-like and pious and quick to please.

       Entirely hateful and loathsome to it is he who will never defend himself, who  swallows down poisonous spittle and evil looks, the too-patient man who puts up with everything, is content with everything: for that is the nature of slaves.

       Whether one be servile before gods and divine kicks, or before men and the silly opinions of men: it spits at slaves of all kinds, this glorious selfishness!

       Bad: that is what it calls all that is broken-down and niggardly-servile, unclear, blinking eyes, oppressed hearts, and false, yielding type of man who kisses with broad, cowardly lips.

       And sham-wisdom: that is what it calls all wit that slaves and old men and weary men affect; and especially the whole bad, raving, over-clever priest-foolishness!

       And to ill-use selfishness - precisely that has been virtue and called virtue.  And 'Selfless' - that is what, with good reason, all these world-weary cowards and Cross-spiders wished to be!

       But now the day, the transformation, the sword of judgement, the great noontide comes to them all: then many things shall be revealed!

       And he who declares the Ego healthy and holy and selfishness glorious - truly, he, a prophet, declares too what he knows: "Behold, it comes, it is near, the great noontide!"

      

       Thus spoke Zarathustra.

 

 

 

Of the Spirit of Gravity

 

1

 

MY glib tongue - is of the people; I speak too coarsely and warmly for silky rabbits.  And my words sound even stranger to all inky fish and scribbling foxes.

       My hand - is a fool's hand: woe to all tables and walls and whatever has room left for fool's scribbling, fool's doodling!

       My foot - is a horse's foot: with it I trot and trample up hill, down dale, hither and thither over the fields, and am the Devil's own for joy when I am out at a gallop.

       My stomach - is it perhaps an eagle's stomach?  For it likes lamb's flesh best of all.  But it is certainly a bird's stomach.

       Nourished with innocent and few things, ready and impatient to fly, to fly away - that is my nature now: how should there not be something of the bird's nature in it!

       And especially bird-like is that I am an enemy to the Spirit of Gravity: and truly, mortal enemy, arch-enemy, born enemy!  Oh where has my enmity not flown and strayed already!

       I could sing a song about that - and I will sing one, although I am alone in an empty house and have to sing it to my own ears.

       There are other singers, to be sure, whose voices are softened, whose hands are eloquent, whose eyes are expressive, whose hearts are awakened, only when the house is full: I am not one of them.

 

 

2

 

He who will one day teach men to fly will have moved all boundary-stones; all boundary-stones will themselves fly into the air to him, he will baptize the earth anew - as 'the weightless'.

       The ostrich runs faster than any horse, but even he sticks his head heavily into heavy earth: that is what the man who cannot yet fly is like.

       He calls earth and life heavy: and so will the Spirit of Gravity have it!  But he who wants to become light and a bird must love himself - thus do I teach.

       Not with the love of the sick and diseased, to be sure: for with them even self-love stinks!

       One must learn to love oneself with a sound and healthy love, so that one may endure it with oneself and not go roaming about - thus do I teach.

       Such roaming about calls itself 'love of one's neighbour': these words have been up to now the best for lying and dissembling, and especially for those who were oppressive to everybody.

       And truly, to learn to love oneself is no commandment for today or for tomorrow.  Rather is this art the finest, subtlest, ultimate, and most patient of all.

       For all his possessions are well concealed from the possessor; and of all treasure pits, one's own is the last to be dug - the Spirit of Gravity is the cause of that.

       Almost in the cradle are we presented with heavy words and values: this dowry calls itself 'Good' and 'Evil'.  For its sake we are forgiven for being alive.

       And we suffer little children to come to us, to prevent them in good time from loving themselves: the Spirit of Gravity is the cause of that.

       And we - we bear loyally what we have been given upon hard shoulders over rugged mountains!  And when we sweat we are told: "Yes, life is hard to bear!"

       But only man is hard to bear!  That is because he bears too many foreign things upon his shoulders.  Like the camel, he kneels down and lets himself be well laden.

       Especially the strong, weight-bearing man in whom dwell respect and awe: he has laden too many foreign heavy words and values upon himself - now life seems to him a desert!

       And truly!  Many things that are one's own are hard to bear, too!  And much that is intrinsic in man is like the oyster, that is loathsome and slippery and hard to grasp -

       so that a noble shell with noble embellishments must intercede for it.  But one has to learn this art as well: to have a shell and a fair appearance and a prudent blindness!

       Again, it is deceptive about many things in man that many a shell is inferior and wretched and too much of a shell.  Much hidden goodness and power is never guesses at; the most exquisite dainties find no tasters!

       Women, or the most exquisite of them, know this: a little fatter, a little thinner - oh, how much fate lies in so little!

       Man is difficult to discover, most of all to himself; the spirit often tells lies about the soul.  The Spirit of Gravity is the cause of that.

       But he has discovered himself who says: This is my good and evil: he has silenced thereby the mole and dwarf who says: "Good for all, evil for all."

       Truly, I dislike also those who call everything good and this world the best of all.  I call such people the all-contented.

       All-contentedness that knows how to taste everything: that is not the best taste!  I honour the obstinate, fastidious tongues and stomachs that have learned to say "I" and "Yes" and "No".

       But to chew and digest everything - that is to have a really swinish nature!  Always to say Ye-a - only the ass and those like him have learned that.

       Deep yellow and burning red: that is to my taste - it mixes blood with all colours.  But he who whitewashes his house betrays to me a whitewashed soul.

       One loves mummies, the other phantoms; and both alike enemy to all flesh and blood - oh, how both offend my taste!  For I love blood.

       And I do not want to stay and dwell where everyone spews and spits: that is not my taste - I would rather live among thieves and perjurers.  No-one bears gold in his mouth.

       More offensive to me, however, are all lickspittles; and the most offensive beast of a man I ever found I baptized Parasite: it would not love, yet wanted to live by love.

       I call wretched all who have only one choice: to become an evil beast or an evil tamer of beasts: I would build no tabernacles among these men.

       I also call wretched those who always have to wait - they offend my taste: all tax-collectors and shopkeepers and kings and other keepers of lands and shops.

       Truly, I too have learned to wait, I have learned it from the very heart, but only to wait for myself.  And above all I have learned to stand and to walk and to run and to jump and to climb and to dance.

       This, however, is my teaching: He who wants to learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and to walk and to run and to climb and to dance - you cannot learn to fly by flying!

       With rope-ladders I learned to climb to many a window, with agile legs I climbed up high masts: to sit upon high masts of knowledge seemed to me no small happiness -

       to flicker like little flames upon high masts: a little light, to be sure, but yet a great comfort to castaway sailors and the shipwrecked!

       I came to my truth by diverse paths and in diverse ways: it was not upon a single ladder that I climbed to the height where my eyes survey my distances.

       And I have asked the way only unwillingly - that has always offended my taste!  I have rather questioned and attempted the ways themselves.

       All my progress has been an attempting and a questioning - and truly, one has to learn how to answer such questioning!  That however - is to my taste:

       not good taste, not bad taste, but my taste, which I no longer conceal and of which I am no longer ashamed.

       "This - is now my way: where is yours?"  Thus I answered those who asked me 'the way'.  For the way - does not exist!

 

       Thus spoke Zarathustra.

 

 

 

Of Old and New Law-Tables

 

1

 

HERE I sit and wait, old shattered law-tables around me and also new, half-written law-tables.  When will my hour come?

       - the hour of my down-going, my descent: for I want to go to men once more.

       For that I now wait: for first the sing that it is my hour must come to me - namely, the laughing lion with the flock of doves.

       Meanwhile I talk to myself, as one who has plenty of time.  No-one tells me anything new; so I tell myself to myself.

 

      

2

 

When I visited men, I found them sitting upon an old self-conceit.  Each one thought he had long since known what was good and evil for man.

       All talk of virtue seemed to them an ancient wearied affair; and he who wished to sleep well spoke of 'good' and 'evil' before retiring.

       I disturbed this somnolence when I taught that nobody yet knows what is good and evil - unless it be the creator!

       But he it is who creates a goal for mankind and gives the earth its meaning and its future: he it is who creates the quality of good and evil in things.

       And I bade them overturn their old professorial chairs, and wherever that old self-conceit had sat.  I bade them laugh at their great masters of virtue and saints and poets and world-redeemers.

       I bade them laugh at their gloomy sages, and whoever had sat as a black scarecrow, cautioning, on the tree of life.

       I sat myself on their great grave-street, and even beside carrion and vultures - and I laughed over all their 'past' and its decayed expiring glory.

       Truly, like Lenten preachers and fools did I cry anger and shame over all their great and small things - their best is so very small!  Their worst is so very small! - thus I laughed.

       Thus from out of me cried and laughed my wise desire, which was born on the mountains, a wild wisdom, in truth! - my great desire with rushing wings.

       And often it tore me forth and up and away and in the midst of laughter: and then indeed I flew, an arrow, quivering with sun-intoxicated rapture:

       out into the distant future, which no dream has yet seen, into warmer Souths than artists have ever dreamed of, there where gods, dancing, are ashamed of all clothes -

       so that I might speak in parables, and hobble and stutter like poets: and truly, I am ashamed that I still have to be a poet!

       Where all becoming seemed to me the dancing of gods and the wantonness of gods, and the world unrestrained and abandoned and fleeing back to itself -

       as many gods eternally fleeing and re-seeking one another, as many gods blissfully self-contradicting, communing again and belonging again to one another -

       Where all time seemed to me a blissful mockery of moments, where necessity was freedom itself, which blissfully played with the goad of freedom -

       Where I found again my old devil and arch-enemy, the Spirit of Gravity, and all that he created: compulsion, dogma, need and consequence and purpose and will and good and evil:

       For must there not exist that which is danced upon, danced across?  Must there not be moles and heavy drawfs - for the sake of the nimble, the nimblest?

 

 

3

 

There it was too that I picked up the word 'Superman' and that man is something that must be overcome,

       that man is a bridge and not a goal; counting himself happy for his noontides and evenings, as a way to new dawns:

       Zarathustra's saying of the great noontide, and whatever else I have hung up over men, like a purple evening afterglow.

       Truly, I showed them new stars, together with new nights - and over cloud and day and night I spread out laughter like a coloured canopy.

       I taught them all my art and aims: to compose into one and bring together what is fragment and riddle and dreadful chance in man -

       as poet, reader of riddles, and redeemer of chance, I taught them to create the future, and to redeem by creating - all that was past.

       To redeem the past of mankind and to transform every 'It was', until the will says: "But I willed it thus!  So shall I will it -"

       this did I call redemption, this alone did I teach them to call redemption.

       Now I await my redemption - that I may go to them for the last time.

       For I want to go to man once more: I want to go under among them, I want to give them, dying, my richest gift!

       From the sun when it goes down, that superabundant star, I learned this: then, from inexhaustible riches it pours out gold into the sea -

       so that the poorest fisherman rows with golden oars!  For once I saw this, and did not tire of weeping to see it.

       Like the sun, Zarathustra also wants to go down: now he sits here and waits, old shattered law-tables around him and also new law-tables - half-written.

 

 

4

 

Behold, here is a new law-table: but where are my brothers, to hear it with me to the valley and to fleshy hearts?

       Thus commands my great love for the most distant men: Do not spare your neighbour!  Man is something that must be overcome.

       There are diverse paths and ways to overcoming: just look to it!  But only a buffoon thinks: "Man can also be jumped over."

       Overcome yourself even in your neighbour: and a right that you can seize for yourself you should not accept as a gift!

       What you do, no-one can do to you.  Behold, there is no requital.

       He who cannot command himself should obey.  And many a one can command himself but be very remiss in obeying what he commands!

 

 

5

 

This is the will of those of noble soul: they desire nothing gratis, least of all life.

       He who is of the mob wants to live gratis; we others, however, to whom life has given itself - we are always considering what we can best give in return!

       And truly, it is a noble speech that says: "What life has promised us, we shall keep that promise - to life!"

       One should not wish to enjoy where one has not given enjoyment.  And - one should not wish to enjoy!

       For enjoyment and innocence are thus most modest things: neither wants to be looked for.  One should have them - but one should look rather for guilt and pain!

 

 

6

 

O my brothers, he who is a first-born is always sacrificed.  Now we are first-born.

       We all bleed at secret sacrificial tables, we all burn and roast to the honour of ancient idols.

       Our best is still young: this excites old palates.  Our flesh is tender, our skin is only a lamb-skin: - how should we not excite old idol-priests!

       He still lives on in us ourselves, the old idol-priest, who roasts our best for his feast.  Alas, my brothers, how should the first-born not be sacrifices!

       But our kind will have it thus; and I love those who do not wish to preserve themselves.  I love with my whole love those who go down and perish: for they are going beyond.

 

 

7

 

To be truthful - few can do it!  All those who can, will not!  Least of all, however, can the good be truthful.

       Oh these good men!  Good men never tell the truth; to be good in that way is a sickness of the spirit.

       They yield, these good men, they acquiesce, their hearts imitate, they obey from the heart: but he who obeys does not listen to himself!

       All that the good call evil must come together that one truth may be born: O my brothers, are you, too, evil enough for this truth?

       The bold attempt, prolonged mistrust, the cruel No, satiety, the cutting into the living - how seldom do these come together!  But from such seed is - truth raised.

       Hitherto all knowledge has grown up beside the bad conscience!  Shatter, you enlightened men, shatter the old law-tables!

 

 

8

 

When water is planked over so that it can be walked upon, when gangway and railings span the stream: truly, he is not believed who says: "Everything is in flux."

       On the contrary, even simpletons contradict him.  "What?" say the simpletons, "everything in flux?  But there are planks and railings over the stream!

       "Over the stream everything is firmly fixed, all the values of things, the bridges, concepts, all 'Good' and 'Evil': all are firmly fixed!"

       But when hard winter comes, the animal-tamer of streams, then even the cleverest learn mistrusts; and truly, not only the simpletons say then: "Is not everything meant to - stand still?"

       "Fundamentally, everything stands still!" - that is a proper winter doctrine, a fine thing for unfruitful seasons, a  fine consolation for hibernators and stay-at-homes.

       "Fundamentally, everything stands still" - the thawing wind, however, preaches to the contrary!

       The thawing wind, an ox that is no ploughing ox - a raging ox, a destroyer that breaks ice with its angry horns!  Ice, however - breaks gangways!

       O my brothers, is everything not now in flux?  Have not all railings and gangways fallen into the water and come to nothing?  Who can still cling to 'good' and 'evil'?

       "Woe to us!  Hail to us!  The thawing wind is blowing!" - Preach thus, O my brothers, through every street!

 

 

9

 

There is an old delusion that is called good and evil.  Up to now, this delusion has orbited about prophets and astrologers.

       Once people believed in prophets and astrologers: and therefore people believed: "Everything is fate: you shall, for you must!"

       Then again people mistrusted all prophets and astrologers: and therefore people believed: "Everything is freedom: you can, for you will!"

       O my brothers, up to now there has been only supposition, not knowledge, concerning the stars and the future: and therefore there has hitherto been only supposition, not knowledge, concerning good and evil!

 

 

10

 

"You shall not steal!  You shall not kill!" - such words were once called holy; in their presence people bowed their knees and their heads and removed their shoes.

       But I ask you: Where have there ever been better thieves and killers in the world than such holy words have been?

       Is there not in all life itself - stealing and killing?  And when such words were called holy was not truth itself - killed?

       Or was it a sermon of death that called holy that which contradicted and opposed all life? - O my brothers, shatter, shatter the old law-tables!

 

 

11

 

My pity for all that is past is that I see: It has been handed over -

       handed over to the favour, the spirit, the madness of every generation that comes and transforms everything that has been into its own bridge!

       A great despot could come, a shrewd devil, who with his favour and disfavour could compel and constrain all that is past, until it became his bridge and prognostic and herald and cock-crow.

       This, however, is the other danger and my other pity: he who is of the mob remembers back to his grandfather - with his grandfather, however, times stops.

       Thus all that is past is handed over: for the mob could one day become master, and all time be drowned in shallow waters.

       Therefore, O my brothers, is a new nobility needed: to oppose all mob-rule and all despotism and to write anew upon new law-tables the word: 'Noble'.

       For many noblemen are needed, and noblemen of many kinds, for nobility to exist!  Or, as I once said in a parable: "Precisely this is godliness, that there are gods but no God!"

 

 

12

 

O my brothers, I direct and consecrate you to a new nobility: you shall become begetters and cultivators and sowers of the future -

       truly, not to a nobility that you could buy like shopkeepers with shopkeepers' gold: for all that has a price is of little value.

       Let where you are going, not where you come from, henceforth be your honour!  Your will and your foot that desires to step out beyond you - let them be your new honour!

       Truly, not that you have served a prince - of what account are princes now! - or have become a bulwark to that which stands, that is may stand more firmly!

       Not that your family have grown courtly at courts and you have learned to stand for long hours in shallow pools, motley-coloured like a flamingo:

       for being able to stand is a merit with courtiers; and all courtiers believe that part of the bliss after death is - being allowed to sit!

       And not that a ghost, called holy, led your ancestors into promised lands that I do not praise: for in the land where the worst of all trees, the Cross, grew - there is nothing to praise! -

       and truly, wherever this 'Holy Ghost' led its knights, goats and geese and Cross-eyed and wrong-headed fellows always - ran at the head of the procession!

       O my brothers, your nobility shall not gaze backward, but outward!  You shall be fugitives from all fatherlands and forefatherlands!

       You shall love your children's land: let this love be your new nobility - the undiscovered land in the furthest sea!  I bid your sails seek it and seek it!

       You shall make amends to your children for being the children of your fathers: thus you shall redeem all that is past!  This new law-table do I put over you!

 

 

13

 

"Wherefore live?  All is vanity!  To live - that means to thrash straw; to live - that means to burn oneself and yet not become warm."

       Ancient rigmarole like this still counts as 'wisdom'; and it is the more honoured because it is old and smells damp.  Even mould ennobles.

       Children might speak in this way: they shrink from the fire because it has burned them!  There is much childishness in the old books of wisdom.

       And how should he who is always 'thrashing straw' be allowed to slander thrashing!  Such a fool would have to have his mouth stopped!

       Such people sit down to dinner and bring nothing with them, not even a good appetite - and now they say slanderously: "All is vanity!"

       But to eat and drink well, O my brothers, is truly no vain art!  Shatter, shatter the law-tables of the never-joyful!

 

 

14

 

"To the pure all things are pure" - thus speaks the people.  But I say to you: To the swine all things become swinish!

       That is why the fanatics and hypocrites with bowed heads whose hearts are too bowed down preach: "The world itself is a filthy monster."

       For they all have an unclean spirit; but especially those who have no peace or rest except they see the world from behind - these afterworldsmen!

       I tell these to their faces, although it does not sound pleasant: The world resembles man in that is has a behind - so much is true!

       There is much filth in the world: so much is true!  But the world itself is not yet a filthy monster on that account!

       There is wisdom in the fact that much in the world smells ill: disgust itself creates wings and water-divining powers!

       Even in the best there is something to excite disgust; and even the best is something that must be overcome!

       O my brothers, there is much wisdom in the fact that there is much filth in the world!

 

 

15

 

These sayings I heard pious afterworldsmen say to their consciences, and truly without deceit or falsehood, although there is nothing more false or deceitful in the world.

       "Let the world be!  Do not raise even a finger against it!"

       "Let him who wants to slaughter and kill and harass and swindle the people: do not raise even a finger against it!  Thus they will yet learn to renounce the world."

       "And your own reason - you shall yourself choke and throttle; for it is a reason of this world - thus you shall yourself learn to renounce the world."

       Shatter, O my brothers, shatter these ancient law-tables of the pious!  Shatter by your teaching the sayings of the world-calumniators!

 

 

16

 

"He who learns much, unlearns all violent desiring" - people whisper that to one another today in all dark streets.

       "Wisdom makes weary, nothing is worth while; you shall not desire!" - I found this new law-table hanging even in public market-places.

       Shatter, O my brothers, shatter this new law-table too!  The world-weary and the preachers of death hung it up, and so did the jailers: for behold, it is also a sermon urging slavery:

       They have learned badly and the best things not at all, they have learned everything too early and too fast: they have eaten badly - that is how they got that stomach-ache -

       for their spirit is a stomach-ache: it counsels death!  For truly, my brothers, the spirit is a stomach!

       Life is a fountain of delight: but all wells are poisoned for him from whom an aching stomach, the father of affliction, speaks.

       To know: that is delight to the lion-willed!  But he who has grown weary is only 'willed', he is the sport of every wave.

       And that is always the nature of weak men: they lose themselves on their way.  And at last their weariness asks: "Why have we ever taken any way?  It is a matter of indifference!"

       It sounds pleasant to their ears when it is preached: "Nothing is worth while!  You shall not will!"  This, however, is a sermon urging slavery.

       O my brothers, Zarathustra comes as a fresh, blustering wind to all the way-weary; he will yet make many noses sneeze!

       My liberal breath blows even through walls and into prisons and imprisoned spirits!

       Willing liberates: for willing is creating: thus I teach.  And you should learn only for creating!

       And you should first learn from me even how to learn, how to learn well! - He who has ears to hear, let him hear!

 

 

17

 

There stands the boat - over there is perhaps the way to the great Nothingness.  But who wants to step into this 'perhaps'?

       None of you wants to step into the death-boat!  How then could you be world-weary?

       World-weary!  And you have not yet even parted from the earth!  I have always found you still greedy for the earth, still in love with your own weariness of the earth!

       Your lip does not hang down in vain - a little earthly wish still sits upon it!  And in your eye - does not a little cloud of unforgotten earthly joy swim there?

       There are many excellent inventions on earth, some useful, some pleasant: the earth is to be loved for their sake.

       And there are many things so well devised that they are like women's breasts: at the same time useful and pleasant.

       But you world-weary people!  You should be given a stroke of the cane!  Your legs should be made sprightly again with cane-strokes!

       For: if you are not invalids and worn-out wretches of whom the earth is weary, you are sly sluggards or dainty, sneaking lust-cats.  And if you will not again run about merrily, you shall - pass away!

       One should not want to be physician to the incurable: thus Zarathustra teaches: so you shall pass away!

       But to make an end requires more courage than to make a new verse: all physicians and poets know that.

 

 

18

 

O my brothers, there are law-tables framed by weariness and law-tables framed by laziness, indolent laziness: although they speak similarly they want to be heard differently.

       Look here at this languishing man!  He is only an inch from his goal, but from weariness he has laid himself defiantly here in the dust: this valiant man!

       He yawns from weariness at the path and the earth and the goal and at himself: he refuses to take another step - this valiant man!

       Now the sun burns down upon him and the dogs like his sweat: but he lies there in his defiance and prefers to languish -

       to languish an inch from his goal!  Truly, he will have to be pulled into his heaven by the hair - this hero!

       Better to leave him lying where he has laid himself, so that sleep, the comforter, may come to him with cooling, murmuring rain:

       Let him lie until he awakes of his own accord, until of his own accord he disavows all weariness and what weariness has taught through him!

       Only, my brothers, scare away the dogs from him, the indolent skulkers, and all the swarming vermin -

       all the swarming 'cultured' vermin who feast upon the sweat of every hero!

 

 

19

 

I form circles and holy boundaries around myself; fewer and fewer climb with me upon higher and higher mountains: I build a mountain-range out of holier and holier mountains.

       But wherever you would climb with me, O my brothers, see to it that no parasite climbs with you!

       Parasite: that is a worm, a creeping, supple worm, that wants to grow fat on your sick, sore places.

       And it is its art to divine the weary spots in climbing souls: it builds its loathsome nest in your grief and dejection, in your tender modesty.

       Where the strong man is weak, where the noble man is too gentle, there it builds its loathsome nest: the parasite dwells where the great man possesses little sore places.

       Which is the highest type of being and which the lowest?   The parasite is the lowest type; but he who is of the highest type nourishes the most parasites.

       For the soul which possesses the longest ladder and can descend the deepest: how should the most parasites not sit upon it?

       the most spacious soul, which can run and roam the farthest into itself; the most necessary soul, which out of joy hurls itself into chance -

       the existing soul which plunges into becoming; the possessing soul which wants to partake in desire and longing -

       the soul fleeing from itself which retrieves itself in the widest sphere; the wisest soul, to which foolishness speaks sweetest -

       the soul that loves itself the most, in which all things have their current and counter-current and ebb and flow: - oh how should the highest soul not possess the worst parasites?

 

 

20

 

O my brothers, am I then cruel?  But I say: That which is falling should also be pushed!

       Everything of today - it is falling, it is decaying: who would support it?  But I - want to push it too!

       Do you know the delight that rolls stones into precipitous depths? - These men of today: just see how they roll into my depths!

       I am a prologue to better players, O my brothers!  An example!  Follow my example!

       And him you do not teach to fly, teach - to fall faster!

 

 

21

 

I love the brave: but it is not enough to be a swordsman, one must also know against whom to be a swordsman!

       And there is often more bravery in containing oneself and passing by: in order to spare oneself for a worthier enemy!

       You should have enemies whom you hate but not enemies whom you despise: you must be proud of your enemy: thus I taught once before.

       You should spare yourselves, O my friends, for a worthier enemy: therefore you must pass many things by,

       especially must you pass by many of the rabble who din in your ears about people and peoples.

       Keep your eye clear of their For and Against!  There is much right, much wrong in it: whoever looks on grows angry.

       To look in, to weigh in - that comes to the same thing in this case: therefore go off into the forests and lay your sword to sleep!

       Go your ways!  And let people and peoples go theirs! - dark ways, to be sure, on which not one hope lightens any longer!

       Let the shopkeeper rule where everything that still glistens is - shopkeeper's gold!  The age of kings is past: what today call itself the people deserves no king.

       Just see how these people themselves now behave like shopkeepers: they glean the smallest advantage from sweepings of every kind.

       They lie in wait for one another, they wheedle things out of one another - they call that 'good neighbourliness'.  Oh blessed, distant time when a people said to itself: "I want to be - master over peoples!"

       For, my brothers: the best shall rule, the best wants to rule!  And where it is taught differently, there - the best is lacking.

 

 

22

 

If they - had bread for nothing, alas! - what would they cry for!  Their maintenance - that is their proper entertainment; and life shall be hard for them!

       They are beasts of prey: even in their 'working' - there is robbery, even in their 'earning' - there is fraud!  Therefore life shall be hard for them!

       Thus they shall become finer beasts of prey, subtler, cleverer, more man-like beasts of prey: for man is the finest beast of prey.

       Man has already robbed all beasts of their virtues: that is why, of all beasts, life is the hardest for man.

       Only the birds are still beyond him.  And if man should learn to fly, alas! to what height - would his rapaciousness fly!

 

 

23

 

This is how I would have man and woman: the one fit for war, the other fit for bearing children, but both fit for dancing with head and heels.

       And let that day be lost to us on which we did not dance once!  And let that wisdom be false to us that brought no laughter with it!

 

 

24

 

Your marriage-contracting: see it is not a bad contracting!  You have decided too quickly: from that follows - break up of marriage.

       And yet rather break up of marriage than bending of marriage, lying in marriage! - A woman said to me: "True, I broke up my marriage, but first my marriage - broke me up!"

       I have always found the badly-paired to be the most revengeful: they make everybody suffer for the fact that they are no longer single.

       For that reason I want honest people to say to one another: "We love each other: let us see to it that we stay in love!  Or shall our promise be a mistake?

       "Allow us a term and a little marriage, to see if we are fit for the great marriage!  It is a big thing always to be with another!"

       Thus I counsel all honest people; and what would be my love for the Superman and for everything to come if I should counsel and speak otherwise!

       To propagate yourselves not only forward but upward - may the garden of marriage assist you, O my brothers!

 

 

25

 

He who has grown wise concerning old origins, behold, he will at last seek new springs of the future and new origins.

       O my brothers, it will not be long before new peoples shall arise and new springs rush down into new depths.

       For the earthquake - that blocks many wells and causes much thirst - also brings to light inner powers and secret things.

       The earthquake reveals new springs.  In the earthquake of ancient peoples new springs break forth.

       And around him who cries: "Behold here a well for many who are thirsty, one heart for many who long, one will for many instruments" - around him assembles a people, that is to say: many experimenters.

       Who can command, who can obey - that is experimented here!  Alas, with what protracted searching and succeeding, and failing and learning and experimenting anew!

       Human society: that is an experiment, so I teach - a long search: it seeks, however, the commander! -

       an experiment, O my brothers!  and not a 'contract'!  Shatter, shatter that expression of the soft-hearted and half-and-half!

 

 

26

 

O my brothers!  With whom does the greatest danger for the whole human future lie?  Is it not with the good and just? -

       with those who say and feel in their hearts: "We already know what is good and just, we possess it too; woe to those who are still searching for it!"

       And whatever harm the wicked may do, the harm the good do is the most harmful harm!

       And whatever harm the world-calumniators may do, the harm the good do is the most harmful harm.

       O my brothers, someone who once looked into the heart of the good and just said: "They are the Pharisees."  But he was not understood.

       The good and just themselves could not understand him: their spirit is imprisoned in their good conscience.  The stupidity of the good is unfathomably clever.

       But it is the truth: the good have to be Pharisees - they have no choice!

       The good have to crucify him who devises his own virtue!  That is the truth!

       But the second man to discover their country, the country, heart, and soil of the good and just, was he who asked: "Whom do they hate the most?"

       They hate the creator most: him who breaks the law-tables and the old values, the breaker - they call him the law-breaker.

       For the good - cannot create: they are always the beginning of the end: -

       they crucify him who writes new values on new law-tables, they sacrifice the future to themselves - they crucify the whole human future!

       The good - have always been the beginning of the end.

 

 

27

 

O my brothers, have you understood this saying, too?  And what I once said about the 'Ultimate Man'?

       With whom does the greatest danger to the whole human future lie?  Is it not with the good and just?

       Shatter, shatter the good and just! - O my brothers, have you understood this saying, too?

 

 

28

 

Do you flee from me?  Are you frightened?  Do you tremble at this saying?

       O my brothers, when I bade you shatter the good and the law-tables of the good, only then did I embark mankind upon its high seas.

       And only now does the great terror, the great prospect, the great sickness, the great disgust, the great sea-sickness come to it.

       The good taught you false shores and false securities; you were born and kept in the lies of the good.  Everything has been distorted and twisted down to its very bottom through the good.

       But he who discovered the country of 'Man', also discovered the country of 'Human Future'.  Now you shall be seafarers, brave, patient seafarers!

       Stand up straight in good time, O my brothers, learn to stand up straight!  The sea is stormy: many want to straighten themselves again by your aid.

       The sea is stormy: everything is at sea.  Well then!  Come on, you old seaman-hearts!

       What of fatherland!  Our helm wants to fare away, out to where our children's land is!  Out, away, more stormy than the sea, storms our great longing!

 

 

29

 

"Why so hard?" the charcoal once said to the diamond; "for are we not close relations?"

       Why so soft?  O my brothers, thus I ask you: for are you not - my brothers?

       Why so soft, so unresisting and yielding?  Why is there so much denial and abnegation in your hearts?  So little fate in your glances?

       And if you will not be fates, if you will not be inexorable: how can you - conquer with me?

       And if your hardness will not flash and cut and cut to pieces: how can you one day - create with me?

       For creators are hard.  And it must seem bliss to you to press your hand upon millennia as upon wax,

       bliss to write upon the will of millennia as upon metal - harder than metal, nobler than metal.  Only the noblest is perfectly hard.

       This new law-table do I put over you, O my brothers: Become hard!

 

 

30

 

O my Will!  My essential, my necessity, dispeller of need!  Preserve me from all petty victories!

       O my soul's predestination, which I call destiny!  In-me!  Over-me!  Preserve and spare me for a great destiny!

       And your last greatness, my Will, save for your last - that you may be inexorable in your victory!

       Ah, whose eye has not dimmed in this intoxicated twilight!  Ah, whose foot has not stumbled and in victory forgotten - how to stand!

       That I may one day be ready and ripe in the great noontide: ready and ripe like glowing ore, like cloud heavy with lightning and like swelling milk-udder -

       ready for myself and my most secret Will: a bow eager for its arrow, an arrow eager for its star -

       a star, ready and ripe in its noontide, glowing, transpierced, blissful through annihilating sun-arrows -

       a sun itself and an inexorable sun-will, ready for annihilation in victory!

       O Will, my essential, my necessity, dispeller of need!  Spare me for one great victory!

 

       Thus spoke Zarathustra.

 

 

 

The Convalescent

 

1

 

ONE morning, not long after his return to the cave, Zarathustra sprang up from his bed like a madman, cried with a terrible voice, and behaved as if someone else were lying on the bed and would not rise from it; and Zarathustra's voice rang out in such a way that his animals came to him in terror and from all the caves and hiding-places in the neighbourhood of Zarathustra's cave all the creatures slipped away, flying, fluttering, creeping, jumping, according to the kind of foot or wing each had been given.  Zarathustra, however, spoke these words:

 

       Up, abysmal thought, up from my depths!  I am your cockerel and dawn, sleepy worm: up! up!  My voice shall soon crow you awake!

       Loosen the fetters of your ears: listen!  For I want to hear you!  Up!  Up!  Here is thunder enough to make even the graves listen!

       And wipe the sleep and all the dimness and blindness from your eyes!  Hear me with your eyes, too: my voice is a medicine even for those born blind.

       And once you are awake you shall stay awake for ever.  It is not my way to awaken great-grandmothers from sleep in order to bid them - go back to sleep!

       Are you moving, stretching, rattling?  Up!  Up!  You shall not rattle, you shall - speak to me!  Zarathustra the Godless calls you!

       I, Zarathustra, the advocate of life, the advocate of suffering, the advocate of the circle - I call you, my most abysmal thought!

       Ah! you are coming - I hear you!  My abyss speaks, I have turned my ultimate depth into the light!

       Ah!  Come here!  Give me your hand - ha! don't!  Ha, ha! - Disgust, disgust, disgust - woe is me!

 

 

2

 

Hardly had Zarathustra spoken these words, however, when he fell down like a dead man and remained like a dead man for a long time.  But when he again came to himself, he was pale and trembling and remained lying down and for a long time would neither eat nor drink.  This condition lasted seven days; his animals, however, did not leave him by day or night, except that the eagle flew off to fetch food.  And whatever he had collected and fetched he laid upon Zarathustra's bed: so that at last Zarathustra lay among yellow and red berries, grapes, rosy apples, sweet-smelling herbs and pinecones.  At his feet, however, two lambs were spread, which the eagle had, with difficulty, carried off from their shepherd.

       At last, after seven days, Zarathustra raised himself in his bed, took a rosy apple in his hand, smelt it, and found its odour pleasant.  Then his animals thought the time had come to speak with him.

       "O Zarathustra," they said, "now you have lain like that seven days, with heavy eyes: will not now get to your feet again?

       "Step out of your cave: the world awaits you like a garden.  The wind is laden with heavy fragrance that longs for you; and all the brooks would like to run after you.

       "All things long for you, since you have been alone seven days - step out of your cave!  All things want to be your physicians!

       "Has perhaps a new knowledge come to you, a bitter, oppressive knowledge?  You have lain like leavened dough, your soul has risen and overflowed its brim."

       "O my animals," answered Zarathustra, "go on talking and let me listen!  Your talking is such refreshment: where there is talking, the world is like a garden to me.  How sweet it is, that words and sounds of music exist: are words and music not rainbows and seeming bridges between things eternally separated?

       "Every soul is a world of its own; for every soul every other soul is an afterworld.

       "Appearance lies most beautifully among the most alike; for the smallest gap is the most difficult to bridge.

       "For me - how could there be an outside-of-me?  There is no outside!  But we forget that, when we hear music; how sweet it is, that we forget!

       "Are things not given names and musical sounds, so that man may refresh himself with things?  Speech is a beautiful foolery: with it man dances over all things.

       "How sweet is all speech and all the falsehoods of music!  With music does our love dance upon many-coloured rainbows,"

       "O Zarathustra," said the animals then, "all things themselves dance for such as think as we: they come and offer their hand and laugh and flee - and return.

       "Everything goes, everything returns; the wheel of existence rolls for ever.  Everything dies, everything blossoms anew; the year of existence runs on for ever.

       "Everything breaks, everything is joined anew; the same house of existence builds itself for ever.  Everything departs, everything meets again; the ring of existence is true to itself for ever.

       "Existence begins in every instant; the ball There rolls around every Here.  The middle is everywhere.  The path of eternity if crooked."

       "O you buffoons and barrel-organs!" answered Zarathustra and smiled again; "how well you know what had to be fulfilled in seven days:

       "and how that monster crept into my throat and choked me!  But I bit its head off and spat it away.

       "And you - have already made a hurdy-gurdy song of it?  I, however, lie here now, still weary from this biting and spitting away, still sick with my own redemption.

       "And you looked on at it all?  O my animals, are you, too, cruel?  Did you desire to be spectators of my great pain, as men do?  For man is the cruellest animal.

       "More than anything on earth he enjoys tragedies, bullfights, and crucifixions; and when he invented Hell for himself, behold, it was his heaven on earth.

       "When the great man cries out, straightway the little man comes running; his tongue is hanging from his mouth with lasciviousness.  He, however, calls it his 'pity'.

       "The little man, especially the poet - how zealously he accuses life in words!  Listen to it, but do not overlook the delight that is in all accusation!

       "Such accusers of life: life overcomes them with a glance of its eye.  'Do you love me?' it says impudently; 'just wait a little, I have no time for you yet.'

       "Man is the cruellest animal towards himself; and with all who call themselves 'sinners' and 'bearers of the Cross' and 'penitents' do not overlook the sensual pleasure that is in this complaint and accusation!

       "And I myself - do I want to be the accuser of man?  Ah, my animals, this alone have I learned, that the wickedest in man is necessary for the best in him,

       "that all that is most wicked in him is his best strength and the hardest stone for the highest creator; and that man must grow better and wickeder:

       "To know: Man is wicked; that was to be tied to no torture-stake - but I cried as no-one had cried before:

       "'Alas, that his wickedest is so very small!  Alas, that his best is so very small!'

       "The great disgust at man - it choked me and had crept into my throat: and what the prophet prophesied: 'It is all one, nothing is worth while, knowledge chokes.'

       "A long twilight limps in front of me, a mortally-weary, death-intoxicated sadness which speaks with a yawn.

       "'The man of whom you are weary, the little man, recurs eternally' - thus my sadness yawned and dragged its feet and could not fall asleep.

       "The human earth became to me a cave, its chest caved in, everything living became to me human decay and bones and mouldering past.

       "My sighs sat upon all the graves of man and could no longer rise; my sighs and questions croaked and choked and gnawed and wailed by day and night:

       "'Alas, man recurs eternally!  The little man recurs eternally!'

       "I had seen them both naked, the greatest man and the smallest man: all too similar to one another, even the greatest all too human!

       "The greatest all too small! - that was my disgust at man!  And eternal recurrence even for the smallest! that was my disgust at all existence!

       "Ah, disgust!  Disgust!  Disgust!"  Thus spoke Zarathustra and sighed and shuddered; for he remembered his sickness.  But his animals would not let him speak further.

       "Speak no further, convalescent!" - thus his animals answered him, "but go out to where the world awaits you like a garden.

       "Go out to the roses and bees and flocks of doves!  But go out especially to the song-birds, so that you may learn singing from them!

       "For convalescents should sign; let the healthy talk.  And when the healthy man, too, desires song, he desires other songs than the convalescent."

       "O you buffoons and barrel-organs, do be quiet!" answered Zarathustra and smiled at his animals.  "How well you know what comfort I devised for myself in seven days!

       "That I have to sing again - that comfort and this convalescence did I devise for myself: do you want to make another hurdy-gurdy song out of that, too?"

       "Speak no further," his animals answered once more; "rather first prepare yourself a lyre, convalescent, a new lyre!

       "For behold, O Zarathustra!  New lyres are needed for your new songs.

       "Sing and bubble over, O Zarathustra, heal your soul with new songs, so that you may bear your great destiny, that was never yet the destiny of any man!

       "For your animals well know, O Zarathustra, who you are and must become: behold, you are the teacher of the eternal recurrence, that is now your destiny!

       "That you have to be the first to teach this doctrine - how should this great destiny not also be your greatest danger and sickness!

       "Behold, we know what you teach: that all things recur eternally and we ourselves with them, and that we have already existed an infinite number of times before and all things with us.

       "You teach that there is a great year of becoming, a colossus of a year: this year must, like an hour-glass, turn itself over again and again, so that it may run down and run out anew:

       "so that all these years resemble one another, in the greatest things and in the smallest, so that we ourselves resemble ourselves in each great year, in the greatest things and in the smallest.

       "And if you should die now, O Zarathustra: behold, we know too what you would then say to yourself - but your animals ask you not to die yet!

       "You would say - and without trembling, but rather gasping for happiness: for a great weight and oppression would have been lifted from you, most patient of men!

       "'Now I die and decay,' you would say, 'and in an instant I shall be nothingness.  Soul are as mortal as bodies.

       "'But the complex of causes in which I am entangled will recur - it will create me again!  I myself am part of these causes of the eternal recurrence.

       "'I shall return, with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with this serpent - not to a new life or a better life or a similar life:

       "' I shall return eternally to this identical and self-same life, in the greatest things and in the smallest, to teach once more the eternal recurrence of all things,

       "'to speak once more the teaching of the great noontide of earth and man, to tell man of the Superman once more.

       "'I spoke my teaching, I broke upon my teaching: thus my eternal fate will have it - as prophet do I perish!

       "'Now the hour has come when he who is going down shall bless himself.  Thus - ends Zarathustra's down-going.'"

       When the animals had spoken these words they fell silent and expected that Zarathustra would say something to them: but Zarathustra did not hear that they were silent. On the contrary, he lay still with closed eyes like a sleeper, although he was not asleep: for he was conversing with his soul.  The serpent and the eagle, however, when they found him thus silent, respected the great stillness around him and discreetly withdrew.

 

 

 

Of the Great Longing

 

O MY soul, I taught you to say 'today' as well as 'once' and 'formerly' and to dance your dance over every Here and There and Over-there.

       O my soul, I rescued you from all corners, I brushed dust, spiders, and twilight away from you.

       O my soul, I washed the petty shame and corner-virtue away from you and persuaded you to stand naked before the eyes of the sun.

       With the storm which is called 'spirit' I blew across your surging sea; I blew all clouds away, I killed even that killer-bird called 'sin'.

       O my soul, I gave you the right to say No like the storm and to say Yes as the open sky says Yes: now, silent as light you stand, and you pass through denying storms.

       O my soul, I gave you back freedom over created and uncreated things: and who knows as you know the delight of things to come?

       O my soul, I taught you contempt that comes not as the gnawing of a worm, the great, the loving contempt which loves most where it despises most.

       O my soul, I taught you so to persuade that you persuade the elements themselves to come to you: like the sun that persuades the sea to rise even to its height.

       O my soul, I took from you all obeying, knee-bending, and obsequiousness; I myself gave you the names 'Dispeller of Care' and 'Destiny'.

       O my soul, I gave you new names and many-coloured toys, I called you 'destiny' and 'encompassment of encompassments' and 'time's umbilical cord' and 'azure bell'.

       O my soul, I gave your soil all wisdom to drink, all new wines and also all immemorially ancient strong wines of wisdom.

       O my soul, I poured every sun and every night and every silence and every longing upon you: - then you grew up for me like a vine.

       O my soul, now you stand superabundant and heavy, a vine with swelling udders and closed-crowded golden-brown wine-grapes:

       oppressed and weighed down by your happiness, expectant from abundance and yet bashful because of your expectancy.

       O my soul, now there is nowhere a soul more loving and encompassing and spacious!  Where could future and past be closer together than with you?

       O my soul, I have given you everything and my hands have become empty through you: and now! now you ask me smiling and full of melancholy: "Which of us owes thanks?

       "does the giver not owe thanks to the receiver for receiving?  Is giving not a necessity?  Is taking not - compassion?"

       O my soul, I understand the smile of your melancholy: your superabundance itself now stretches out longing hands!

       Your fullness looks out over raging seas and searches and waits; the longing of over-fullness gazes out of the smiling heaven of your eyes!

       And truly, O my soul!  Who could behold your smile and not dissolve into tears?  The angels themselves dissolve into tears through the over-kindness of your smile.

       It is your kindness and over-kindness that wishes not to complain and weep: and yet your smile longs for tears, O my soul, and your trembling mouth for sobs.

       "Is all weeping not a complaining?  And all complaining not an accusing?"  Thus you speak to yourself, and because of that, O my soul, you will rather smile than pour forth your sorrow,

       pour forth in gushing tears all your sorrow at your fullness and at all the desire of the vine for the vintager and the vine-knife!

       But if you will not weep nor alleviate in weeping your purple melancholy, you will have to sing, O my soul!  Behold, I smile myself, who foretold you this:

       to sing with an impetuous song, until all seas grow still to listen to your longing,

       until, over still, longing seas, the boat glides, the golden marvel around whose gold all good, bad, marvellous things leap:

       and many great and small beasts also, and everything that has light, marvellous feet that can run upon violet paths,

       towards the golden marvel, the boat of free will, and to its master: he, however, is the vintager who waits with diamond-studded vine-knife,

       your great redeemer, O my soul, the nameless one for whom only future songs will find a name!  And truly, your breath is already fragrant with future songs,

       already you glow and dream, already you drink thirstily from all deep, resounding wells of comfort, already your melancholy reposes in the bliss of future songs!

       O my soul, now I have given you everything and even the last thing I had to give, and my hands have become empty through you: - that I bade you sing, behold, that was the last thing I had to give!

       That I bade you sing, now say, say: Which of us now - owes thanks?  But better still: sing for me, sing, O my soul!  And let me pay thanks!

 

       Thus spoke Zarathustra.

 

 

 

The Second Dance Song

 

1

 

LATELY I gazed into your eyes, O Life: I saw gold glittering in your eyes of night - my heart stood still with delight:

       I saw a golden bark glittering upon dark waters, a submerging, surging, re-emerging golden tossing bark!

       At my feet, my dancing-mad feet, you threw a glance, a laughing, questioning, melting tossing glance:

       Twice only did you raise your castanets in your little hands - then my feet were already tossing in a mad dance.

       My heels raised themselves, my toes listened for what you should propose: for the dancer wears his ears - in his toes!

       I sprang to your side: then you fled back from my spring; towards me the tongues of your fleeing, flying hard came hissing!

       Away from you and from your serpents did I retire: then at once you stood, half turned, your eyes full of desire.

       With your crooked smile - you teach me crooked ways, upon crooked ways my feet learn - guile!

       I fear you when you are near, I love you when you are far; your fleeing allures me, your seeking secures me: I suffer, but for you what would I not gladly endure!

       For you whose coldness inflames, whose hatred seduces, whose flight constrains, whose mockery - induces:

       who would not hate you, great woman who binds us, enwinds us, seduces us, seeks us, finds us!  Who would not love you, you innocent, impatient, wind-swift, child-eyed sinner!

       Where now do you take me, you unruly paragon?  And again you forsake me, you sweet, ungrateful tomboy!

       I dance after you, I follow you even when only the slightest traces of you linger.  Where are you?  Give me your hand!  Or just a finger!

       Here are caves and thickets: we shall go astray!  Stop!  Stand still!  Do you not see owls and bats flitting away?

       Would you befool me?  You bat!  You owl!  Where are we?  Did you learn from the dogs thus to bark and howl?

       Your little white teeth you sweetly bare at me, from under your curly little mane your wicked eyes stare at me!

       This is a dance over dale and hill: I am the hunter - will you be my hound or will you be my kill?

       Now beside me!  And quickly, you wicked rover!  Now spring up!  And across! - Help!  In springing I myself have gone over!

       Oh, see me lying, you wanton companion, and begging for grace!  I long to follow you in - a sweeter chase! -

       love's chase through flowery bushes, still and dim!  Or there beside the lake, where goldfish dance and swim!

       Are you now weary?  There yonder are sheep and evening: let us end our pursuit: is it not sweet to sleep when the shepherd plays his flute?

       Are you so very weary?  I will carry you there, just let your arms sink!  And if you are thirsty - I should have something, but you would not like it to drink! -

       Oh this accursed, nimble, supple snake and slippery witch!  Where have you gone?  But on my face I feel from your hand two spots and blotches itch!

       I am truly weary of being your shepherd, always sheepish and meek!  You witch, if I have hitherto sung for you, now for me you shall - shriek!

       To the rhythm of my whip you shall shriek and trot!  Did I forget my whip? - I did not!

 

 

2

 

Then Life answered me thus, keeping her gentle ears closed:

       "O Zarathustra!  Do not crack your whip so terribly!  You surely know: noise kills thought - and now such tender thoughts are coming to me.

       "We are both proper ne’er-do-wells and ne'er-do-ills.  Beyond good and evil did we discover our island and our green meadow - we two alone!  Therefore we must love one another!

       "And even if we do not love one another from the very heart, do people have to dislike one another if they do not love one another from the very heart?

       "And that I love you and often love you too well, that I know: and the reason is that I am jealous of your Wisdom.  Ah, this crazy old fool, Wisdom!

       "If your Wisdom should one day desert you, alas! then my love would quickly desert you too."

       Thereupon Life gazed thoughtfully behind her and around her and said gently: "O Zarathustra, you are not faithful enough to me!

       "You do not love me nearly as much as you say; I know you are thinking of leaving me soon.

       "There is an old, heavy, heavy booming bell: it booms out at night up to your cave:

       "when you hear this bell beat the hour at midnight, then you think between one and twelve -

       "you think, O Zarathustra, I know it, you think of leaving me soon!"

       "Yes," I answered hesitatingly, "but you also know...."  And I said something into her ear, in the midst of her tangled, yellow, foolish locks.

       "You know that, O Zarathustra?  No-one knows that."

       And we gazed at one another and looked out at the green meadow, over which the cool evening was spreading, and wept together.  But then Life was dearer to me than all my Wisdom had ever been.

 

       Thus spoke Zarathustra.

 

 

3

 

                                                                            One!

                                                                  O Man!  Attend!

                                                                            Two!

                                                                  What does deep midnight's voice contend?

                                                                            Three!

                                                                  "I slept my sleep,

                                                                            Four!

                                                                  "And now awake at dreaming's end:

                                                                            Five!

                                                                  "The world is deep,

                                                                            Six!

                                                                  "Deeper than day can comprehend.

                                                                            Seven!

                                                                  "Deep is its woe,

                                                                            Eight!

                                                                  "Joy - deeper than heart's agony:

                                                                            Nine!

                                                                  "Woe says: Fade!  Go!

                                                                            Ten!

                                                                  "But all joy wants eternity,

                                                                            Eleven!

                                                                  “- wants deep, deep, deep eternity!"

                                                                            Twelve!

 

 

 

The Seven Seals

(or: the Song of Yes and Amen)

 

1

 

IF I be a prophet and full of that prophetic spirit that wanders on high ridges between two seas,

       wanders between past and future like a heavy cloud, enemy to sultry lowlands and to all that is weary and can neither die nor live:

       ready for lightning in its dark bosom and for redeeming beams of light, pregnant with lightnings which affirm Yes! laugh Yes! ready for prophetic lightning-flashes:

       but blessed is he who is thus pregnant1  And, in truth, he who wants to kindle the light of the future must hang long over the mountains like a heavy storm!

       Oh how should I not lust for eternity and for the wedding ring of rings - the Ring of Recurrence!

       Never yet did I find the woman by whom I wanted children, unless it be this woman, whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!

       For I love you, O Eternity!

 

                           

2

 

If ever my anger broke graves open, moved boundary-stones, and rolled old shattered law-tables into deep chasms:

       if ever my mockery  blew away mouldered words, and if I came like a broom to the Cross-spiders and as a scouring wind to old sepulchres:

       if ever I sat rejoicing where old gods lay buried, world-blessing, world-loving, beside the monuments of old world-slanderers:

       for I love even churches and the graves of gods, if only heaven is looking, pure-eyed, through their shattered roofs; I like to sit like grass and red poppies on shattered churches:

       Oh how should I not lust for eternity and for the wedding ring of rings - the Ring of Recurrence!

       Never yet did I find the woman by whom I wanted children, unless it be this woman, whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!

       For I love you, O Eternity!

 

3

 

If ever a breath of the creative breath has come to me, and a breath of that heavenly necessity that compels even chance to dance in star-rounds:

       if ever I have laughed with the laugh of the creative lightning, which the thunder of the deed, grumbling but obedient, follows:

       if ever I have played dice with the gods at their table, the earth, so that the earth trembled and broke open and streams of fire snorted forth:

       for the earth is a table of the gods, and trembling with creative new words and the dice throws of the gods:

       Oh how should I not lust for eternity and for the wedding ring of rings - the ring of Recurrence!

       Never yet did I find the woman by whom I wanted children, unless it be this woman, whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!

       For I love you, O Eternity!

 

4

 

If ever I have drunk a full draught from that foaming mixing-bowl of spice, in which all things are well compounded:

       if ever my hand has welded the furthest to the nearest, and fire to spirit and joy to sorrow and the wickedest to the kindest:

       if I myself am a grain of that redeeming salt that makes everything mix well together in the bowl:

       for there is a salt that unites good with evil; and even the most evil is worthy to be a spice and a last over-foaming:

       Oh how should I not lust for eternity and the wedding ring of rings - the Ring of Recurrence!

       Never yet did I find the woman by whom I wanted children, unless it be this woman, whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!

       For I love you, O Eternity!

 

5

 

If I love the sea and all that is sealike, and love it most when it angrily contradicts me:

       if that delight in seeking that drives sails towards the undiscovered is in me, if a seafarer's delight is in my delight:

       if ever my rejoicing has cried: "The shore has disappeared - now the last fetter falls from me,

       "the boundless roars around me, far out glitter space and time, well then, come on! old heart!"

       Oh how should I not lust for eternity and for the wedding ring of rings - the Ring of Recurrence!

       Never yet did I find the woman by whom I wanted children, unless it be this woman, whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!

       For I love you, O Eternity!

 

6

 

If my virtue is a dancer's virtue, and if I often leap with both feet in golden-emerald rapture:

       if my wickedness is a laughing wickedness, at home among rose bowers and hedges of lilies:

       for in laughter all evil is present, but sanctified and absolved through its own happiness:

       and if it be my Alpha and Omega that everything heavy shall become light, every body a dancer, all spirit a bird: and, truly, that is my Alpha and Omega!

       Oh how should I not lust for eternity and for the wedding ring of rings - the Ring of Recurrence!

       Never yet did I find the woman by whom I wanted children, unless it be this woman, whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!

       For I love you, O Eternity!

 

7

 

If ever I spread out a still sky above myself and flew with my own wings into my own sky:         

       if, playing, I have swum into deep light-distances and bird-wisdom came to my freedom:

       but thus speaks bird-wisdom: "Behold, there is no above, no below!  Fling yourself about, out, back, weightless bird!  Sing! speak no more!

       "are not all words made for the heavy?  do not all words lie to the light?  Sing! speak no more!"

       Oh how should I not lust for eternity and for the wedding ring of rings - the Ring of Recurrence!

       Never yet did I find the woman by whom I wanted children, unless it be this woman, whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!

       For I love you, O Eternity!