The sea storms: everything is at sea. Well then! Come on! You old seaman-hearts!
What of fatherland! Our helm wants to fare away, out where our children’s land is! Out that way, stormier than the sea, storms our great longing!—
29
“Why so hard!”—said the kitchen coal one day to the diamond; “are we not then close kin?”—
Why so soft? O my brothers thus I ask you: are you not then—my brothers?
Why so soft, so submissive and yielding? Why is there so much negation and abnegation in your hearts? So little fate in your glances?
And if you will not be fates and the 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 brass,-harder than brass, nobler than brass. Only the noblest is entirely hard.
This new tablet, O my brothers, I put over you: become hard!—
30
O you my will! You end of all need, my own necessity! Keep me from all small victories!
You predestination of my soul, which I call destiny! You in-me! Over-me! Keep and save me for one great destiny!
And your last greatness, my will, save for your last—that you may be inexorable in your victory! Ah, who has not succumbed to his own victory!
Ah, whose eye has not dimmed in this drunken twilight! Ah, whose foot has not faltered and in victory forgotten-how to stand!—
—That I may one day be ready and ripe in the great noon: ready and ripe like glowing ore, like a cloud heavy with lightning and swollen milk-udders:—
—ready for myself and my most hidden will: a bow eager for its arrow, an arrow eager for its star:—
—a star, ready and ripe in its noon, glowing, pierced, blissful through by annihilating sun-arrows:—
—a sun itself and an inexorable sun-will, ready for annihilation in victory!
O will, you end of every need, my necessity! Save me for one great victory!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
THE CONVALESCENT
1
One morning, not long after his return to his cave, Zarathustra sprang up from his bed like a madman, cried with a frightful voice, and acted as if some one still lay on the bed who did not wish to rise; and Zarathustra’s voice resounded in such a way that his animals came to him in fright, and out of all the neighboring caves and hiding places all the creatures slipped away—flying, fluttering, creeping, jumping, according to the kind of foot or wing each had been given. But Zarathustra spoke these words:
Up, abysmal thought, out of my depths! I am your cock 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 balm even for those born blind.
And once you are awake you will always stay awake. It is not my way to awaken great-grandmothers out of their sleep in order to I bid them-sleep on!
You stir, stretch yourself, wheeze? Up! Up! Do not wheeze—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!
Hail to me! You are coming—I hear you! My abyss speaks, I have turned my lowest depths into the light!
Hail to me! Come here! Give me your hand—ha! let go! Ha ha!—Disgust, disgust, disgust—woe is me!
2
No sooner had Zarathustra spoken these words than he fell down like a dead man, and long remained as one dead. But when however he came to himself again, then he was pale and trembling and remained lying down and for a long time would neither eat nor drink. This condition continued for seven days; his animals, however, did not leave him day or night, except that the eagle flew off to fetch food. And whatever he fetched and collected he laid on 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 stretched, which the eagle had with difficulty robbed from their shepherds.
At last, after seven days, Zarathustra raised himself in his bed, took a rosy apple in his hand, smelt it and found its aroma pleasant. Then his animals thought the time had come to speak to him.
“O Zarathustra,” they said, “now you have lain like that for seven days with heavy eyes: will you not now get on your feet again?
“Step out of your cave: the world waits for you as a garden. The wind plays with heavy fragrance which seeks for you; and all the brooks would like to run after you.
“All things long for you, since you have been alone for seven days-step forth out of your cave! All things want to be your physicians!
“Has a new knowledge perhaps come to you, a bitter, grievous knowledge? You have lain like leavened dough, your soul has risen and swelled over all its rims.—”
—O my animals, replied Zarathustra, chatter on like this and let me listen! It refreshes me to hear your talk: where there is talk, the world is like a garden to me.
How charming it is that there are words and sounds: are not words and sounds rainbows and illusive bridges between things eternally separated?
Every soul is a world of its own; to each soul every other soul is an afterworld.
Illusion deceives most beautifully precisely between what is 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 sounds; how delightful, that we forget!
Have not names and sounds been given to things that man may refresh himself with them? Speech is a beautiful folly: with it man dances over everything.
How lovely is all speech and all the lies of sounds! With sounds our love dances on many-colored rainbows.—
—“O Zarathustra,” his animals said, “all things themselves dance for those who think as we do: they come and offer their hand and laugh and nee—and return.
“Everything goes, everything returns; the wheel of being rolls eternally. Everything dies, everything blossoms forth again; the year of being runs eternally.
“Everything breaks, everything is joined again; the house of being builds itself the same eternally. Everything parts, everything greets every other thing again; the ring of being is eternally true to itself.
“In every Now being begins; the ball There rolls around every Here. The center is everywhere. The path of eternity is crooked.”—
—O you jokers 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 off its head and spat it away from me.
And you—have you already made a hurdy-gurdy song out of it? But now I lie here, still exhausted with that biting and spitting-away, still sick with my own redemption.
And you watched all this? O my animals, are you also cruel? Did you like to look at my great pain as men do? For man is the cruelest animal.
At tragedies, bullfights, and crucifixions he has so far felt best on earth; and when he invented hell for himself, behold, that was his heaven on earth.
When the great man cries-: immediately the little man comes running; his tongue hangs out of his mouth with lasciviousness. But he calls it his “pity.”
The little man, especially the poet—how zealously he accuses life in words! Listen to it, but do not fail to hear the delight that is in all accusation!
Such accusers of life: life overcomes with a wink. “You love me?” she says impudently; “wait a little, as yet I have no time for you.”
Towards himself
man is the cruelest animal; and in all who call themselves “sinners” and “bearers of the cross” and “penitents,” do not overlook the voluptuousness in their complaints and accusations!
And I myself-do I want to be man’s accuser? Ah, my animals, this alone have I learned, that man needs what is most evil in him for what is best in him,—
—that whatever is most evil is his best power, and the hardest stone for the highest creator; and that man must grow better and more evil:—
Not to this torture-stake was I tied, that I know: man is evil—rather that I cried as no one has cried before:
“Ah, that his most evil is so very small! Ah, that his best is so very small!”
The great disgust with man—it choked me and had crept into my throat: and what the soothsayer truly said: “All is the same, nothing is worthwhile, knowledge chokes.”
A long twilight limped on before me, a mortally weary, dead drunk sadness which spoke with a yawning mouth.
“He returns eternally, the man of whom you are weary, the small man”—so my sadness yawned and dragged its feet and could not go to sleep.
Man’s earth became a cave to me, its breast sunken, everything living became to me human decay and bones and mouldering past.
My sighs sat on all human graves and could no longer rise; my sighs and questions croaked and gagged and gnawed and wailed day and night:
—“Ah, man recurs eternally! The small man recurs eternally!”18
Once I saw both of them 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 the eternal recurrence even of the smallest!-that was my disgust at all existence!
Ah, Nausea! Nausea! Nausea!19—Thus spoke Zarathustra, and sighed and shuddered; for he remembered his sickness. But his animals would not let him speak further.
“Say no more, you convalescent!”—so answered his animals, “but go out where the world waits for you like a garden.
“Go out to the roses and bees and flocks of doves! But especially to the songbirds: so that you may learn singing from them!
“Singing is precisely for the convalescent; let the healthy talk. And when the healthy too wants songs, he wants different songs than the convalescent.”
—“O you jokers and barrel-organs, be silent!” replied Zarathustra, and smiled at his animals. “How well you know what consolation I invented for myself in seven days!
That I have to sing once more—that consolation I invented for myself and this convalescence: would you also make another hurdy-gurdy song out of that?”
—“Say no more,” his animals replied again; “rather, you convalescent, first prepare a lyre for yourself, 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: that you may bear your great destiny, which has not yet been any one’s destiny!
“For your animals know it well, O Zarathustra, who you are and must become: behold, you are the teacher of the eternal return,— that is now your destiny!
“That you must be the first to teach this teaching-how could this great destiny not be your greatest danger and sickness!
“Behold, we know what you teach: that all things eternally return and we ourselves with them, and that we have already existed an infinite number of times, and all things with us.
“You teach that there is a great year of becoming, a monster of a great year: it must, like an hourglass, turn itself over again and again, so that it may run down and run out again:—
—“so that all these years are alike in what is greatest and also in what is smallest, so that we ourselves are alike in every great year, in what is greatest and also in what is smallest.
“And if you wanted to 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 speak and without trembling, rather gasping with happiness: for a great weight and oppression would be taken from you, you most patient one!—
“ ‘Now I die and disappear,’ you would say, ‘and in a moment I am nothing. Souls are as mortal as bodies.
“ ‘But the knot of causes in which I am intertwined returns,-it will create me again! I myself am part of the causes of the eternal return.
“ ‘I come again with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with this snake—not to a new life or a better life or a similar life:
—“ ‘I come again eternally to this identical and selfsame life, in its greatest and its smallest, to teach again the eternal return of all things,—
—“ ‘to speak again the word of the great noon of earth and man, to proclaim the Übermensch to man again.
“ ‘I spoke my word, I break on my word: thus my eternal lot wants it—as a proclaimer I perish!
“ ‘Now the hour has come for him who goes under to bless himself. Thus—ends Zarathustra’s going under.’ ”—
When the animals had spoken these words they were silent and waited for Zarathustra to say something to them: but Zarathustra did not hear that they were silent. On the contrary, he lay quietly with closed eyes like a sleeper, although he was not asleep: for he was conversing with his soul. The serpent, however, and the eagle, when they found him thus silent, respected the great stillness around him and discreetly withdrew.
ON 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 Yonder.
O my soul, I delivered you from all nooks, I brushed dust, spiders and twilight from you.
O my soul, I washed the petty shame and the nook-virtue from you and persuaded you to stand naked before the eyes of the sun.
With the storm that is called “spirit” I blew across your surging sea; I blew all clouds away, I even strangled the strangler 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: you are as still as light and now you walk through denying storms.
O my soul, I gave you back the freedom over the created and the uncreated: and who knows, as you know, the voluptuousness of future things?
O my soul, I taught you the contempt that does not come like the gnawing of a worm, the great, the loving contempt, which loves most where it despises most.
O my soul, I taught you to be so persuasive that you persuade even the elements themselves to come to you: like the sun, which persuades the sea to rise even to its height.
O my soul, I took all obeying and knee-bending and obsequiousness from you; I myself gave you the names, “cessation of need” and “destiny.”
O my soul, I have given you new names and colorful toys, I have called you “destiny” and “circumference of circumferences” 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 old strong wines of wisdom.
O my soul, I poured every sun out on you and every night and every silence and every longing:-then you grew up for me as a vine.
O my soul, now you stand exuberant and heavy, a vine with swelling udders and full clusters of golden brown grapes:—
—crowded and weighed down by your happiness, waiting from superabundance and yet bashful in your expectancy.
O my soul, there is nowhere a soul more loving and comprehensive 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 been made empty by you—and now! Now you say to 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 receiving not—mercy?”—
O my soul, I understand the smile of your melancholy: your over-abundance itself now stre
tches out longing hands!
Your fullness looks forth over raging seas, and seeks and waits: the longing of overfullness looks forth from the smiling heaven of your eyes!
And truly, O my soul! Who could see your smiling and not melt into tears? The angels themselves melt into tears through the overgraciousness of your smiling.
It is your graciousness and overgraciousness that does not want to complain and weep: and yet, O my soul, your smile longs for tears, and your trembling mouth for sobs.
“Is not all weeping complaining? And all complaining, accusing?” Thus you speak to yourself, and therefore, O my soul, you will rather smile than pour forth your grief—
—pour forth in gushing tears all your grief at your fullness and at the craving of the vine for the vintner and his knife!
But if you will not weep, not weep out your purple melancholy, then you will have to sing, O my soul!—Behold, I myself smile, I who foretold this to you:
—sing with a roaring song until all seas grow still to listen to your longing,—
—until over still longing seas the bark glides, the golden marvel, around whose gold all good, bad, marvelous things leap:—
—also many great and small beasts, and everything that has light marvelous feet, that can run on paths as blue as violets,—
—towards the golden marvel, the voluntary bark and its master: he, however, is the vintner who is waiting with his diamondstudded knife,—
—your great deliverer, O my soul, the nameless one-for whom only future songs will find names! And truly, your breath is already fragrant with future songs,—
—already you glow and dream, already you drink thirstily at all deep echoing 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 that I have, and all my hands have been made empty by you:—that I bade you sing, behold, that was the last I had to give!
Thus Spoke Zarathustra Page 23
