The Portable Nietzsche (29 page)

If you seize them with your hands they raise a cloud of dust like flour bags, involuntarily; but who could guess that their dust comes from grain and from the yellow delight of summer fields? When they pose as wise, their little epigrams and truths chill me: their wisdom often has an odor as if it came from the swamps; and verily, I have also heard frogs croak out of it. They are skillful and have clever fingers: why would my simplicity want to be near their multiplicity? All threading and knotting and weaving their fingers understand: thus they knit the socks of the spirit.

They are good clockworks; but take care to wind them correctly! Then they indicate the hour without fail and make a modest noise. They work like mills and like stamps: throw down your seed-corn to them and they will know how to grind it small and reduce it to white dust.

They watch each other closely and mistrustfully. Inventive in petty cleverness, they wait for those whose knowledge walks on lame feet: like spiders they wait. I have always seen them carefully preparing poison; and they always put on gloves of glass to do it. They also know how to play with loaded dice; and I have seen them play so eagerly that they sweated.

We are alien to each other, and their virtues are even more distasteful to me than their falseness and their loaded dice. And when I lived with them, I lived above them. That is why they developed a grudge against me. They did not want to hear how someone was living over their heads; and so they put wood and earth and filth between me and their heads. Thus they muffled the sound of my steps: and so far I have been heard least well by the most scholarly. Between themselves and me they laid all human faults and weaknesses: “false ceilings” they call them in their houses. And yet I live over their heads with my thoughts; and even if I wanted to walk upon my own mistakes, I would still be over their heads.

For men are not equal: thus speaks justice. And what I want, they would have no right to want!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

“Since I have come to know the body better,” Zarathustra said to one of his disciples, “the spirit is to me only quasi-spirit; and all that is ‘permanent' is also a mere parable.”

“I have heard you say that once before,” the disciple replied; “and at that time you added, ‘But the poets lie too much.' Why did you say that the poets lie too much?”

“Why?” said Zarathustra. “You ask, why? I am not one of those whom one may ask about their why. Is my experience but of yesterday? It was long ago that I experienced the reasons for my opinions. Would I not have to be a barrel of memory if I wanted to carry my reasons around with me? It is already too much for me to remember my own opinions; and many a bird flies away. And now and then I also find a stray in my dovecot that is strange to me and trembles when I place my hand on it. But what was it that Zarathustra once said to you? That the poets lie too much? But Zarathustra too is a poet. Do you now believe that he spoke the truth here? Why do you believe that?”

The disciple answered, “I believe in Zarathustra.” But Zarathustra shook his head and smiled.

“Faith does not make me blessed,” he said, “especially not faith in me. But suppose somebody said in all seriousness, the poets lie too much: he would be right; we do lie too much. We also know too little and we are bad learners; so we simply have to lie. And who among us poets has not adulterated his wine? Many a poisonous hodgepodge has been contrived in our cellars; much that is indescribable was accomplished there. And because we know so little, the poor in spirit please us heartily, particularly when they are young females. And we are covetous even of those things which the old females tell each other in the evening. That is what we ourselves call the Eternal-Feminine in us. And, as if there were a special secret access to knowledge,
buried
for those who learn something, we believe in the people and their ‛wisdom.'

“This, however, all poets believe: that whoever pricks up his ears as he lies in the grass or on lonely slopes will find out something about those things that are between heaven and earth. And when they feel tender sentiments stirring, the poets always fancy that nature herself is in love with them; and that she is creeping to their ears to tell them secrets and amorous batteries; and of this they brag and boast before all mortals.

“Alas, there are so many things between heaven and earth of which only the poets have dreamed.

“And especially
above
the heavens: for all gods are poets' parables, poets' prevarications. Verily, it always lifts us higher—specifically, to the realm of the clouds: upon these we place our motley bastards and call them gods and overmen. For they are just light enough for these chairs—all these gods and overmen. Ah, how weary I am of all the imperfection which must at all costs become event! Ah, how weary I am of poets!”

When Zarathustra spoke thus, his disciple was angry with him, but he remained silent. And Zarathustra too remained silent; and his eye had turned inward as if he were gazing into vast distances. At last he sighed and drew a deep breath.

“I am of today and before,” he said then, “but there is something in me that is of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and time to come. I have grown weary of the poets, the old and the new: superficial they all seem to me, and shallow seas. Their thoughts have not penetrated deeply enough; therefore their feelings did not touch bottom.

“Some lust and some boredom: that has so far been their best reflection. All their harp jingling is to me the breathing and flitting of ghosts; what have they ever known of the fervor of tones?

“Nor are they clean enough for me: they all muddy their waters to make them appear deep. And they like to pose as reconcilers: but mediators and mixers they remain for me, and half-and-half and unclean.

“Alas, I cast my net into their seas and wanted to catch good fish; but I always pulled up the head of some old god. Thus the sea gave him who was hungry a stone. And they themselves may well have come from the sea. Certainly, pearls are found in them: they are that much more similar to hard shellfish. And instead of a soul I often found salted slime in them.

“From the sea they learned even its vanity: is not the sea the peacock of peacocks? Even before the ugliest buffalo it still spreads out its tail, and never wearies of its lace fan of silver and silk. Sulky, the buffalo stares back, close to the sand in his soul, closer still to the thicket, closest of all to the swamp. What are beauty and sea and peacock's finery to him? This parable I offer the poets. Verily, their spirit itself is the peacock of peacocks and a sea of vanity! The spirit of the poet craves spectators—even if only buffaloes.

“But I have grown weary of this spirit; and I foresee that it will grow weary of itself. I have already seen the poets changed, with their glances turned back on themselves. I saw ascetics of the spirit approach; they grew out of the poets.”

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

There is an island in the sea—not far from Zarathustra's blessed isles—on which a fire-spewing mountain smokes continually; and the people say of it, and especially the old women among the people say, that it has been placed like a huge rock before the gate to the underworld, and that the narrow path that leads to this gate to the underworld goes through the fire-spewing mountain.

Now it was during the time when Zarathustra was staying on the blessed isles that a ship anchored at the island with the smoking mountain and the crew went ashore to shoot rabbits. Around noon, however, when the captain and his men were together again, they suddenly saw a man approach through the air, and a voice said distinctly, “It is time! It is high time!” And when the shape had come closest to them—and it flew by swiftly as a shadow in the direction of the fire-spewing mountain—they realized with a great sense of shock that it was Zarathustra; for all of them had seen him before, except the captain, and they loved him as the people love—with a love that is mixed with an equal amount of awe. “Look there!” said the old helmsman. “There is Zarathustra descending to hell!”

At the time these seamen landed at the isle of fire there was a rumor abroad that Zarathustra had disappeared; and when his friends were asked, they said that he had embarked by night without saying where he intended to go. Thus uneasiness arose; and after three days the story of the seamen was added to this uneasiness; and now all the people said that the devil had taken Zarathustra. His disciples laughed at such talk to be sure, and one of them even said, “Sooner would I believe that Zarathustra has taken the devil.” But deep in their souls they were all of them full of worry and longing; thus their joy was great when on the fifth day Zarathustra appeared among them.

And this is the story of Zarathustra's conversation with the fire hound:

“The earth,” he said, “has a skin, and this skin has diseases. One of these diseases, for example, is called ‘man.' And another one of these diseases is called ‘fire hound': about
him
men have told each other, and believed, many lies. To get to the bottom of this mystery I went over the sea, and I have seen truth nuked—verily, barefoot up to the throat. Now I am informed concerning the fire hound, and also concerning all scumand overthrow devils, of whom not only old women are afraid.

“ ‘Out with you, fire hound! Out from your depth!' I cried. ‘And confess how deep this depth is! Whence comes what you are snorting up here? You drink copiously from the sea: your salty eloquence shows that. Indeed, for a hound of the depth you take your nourishment too much from the surface. At most, I take you for the earth's ventriloquist; and whenever I have heard overthrow- and scum-devils talking, I found them like you: salty, mendacious, and superficial. You know how to bellow and to darken with ashes. You are the best braggarts and great experts in the art of making mud seethe. Wherever you are, mud must always be nearby, and much that is spongy, cavernous, compressed—and wants freedom. Freedom is what all of you like best to bellow; but I have outgrown the belief in ”great events” wherever there is much bellowing and smoke.

“ ‘Believe me, friend Hellishnoise: the greatest events—they are not our loudest but our stillest hours. Not around the inventors of new noise, but around the inventors of new values does the world revolve; it revolves
inaudibly.

“ ‘Admit it! Whenever your noise and smoke were gone, very little had happened. What does it matter if a town became a mummy and a statue lies in the mud? And this word I shall add for those who overthrow statues: nothing is more foolish than casting salt into the sea and statues into the mud. The statue lay in the mud of your contempt; but precisely this is its law, that out of contempt life and living beauty come back to it. It rises again with more godlike features, seductive through suffering; and verily, it will yet thank you for having overthrown it, O you overthrowers. This counsel, however, I give to kings and churches and everything that is weak with age and weak in virtue: let yourselves be overthrown—so that you may return to life, and virtue return to you.'

“Thus I spoke before the fire hound; then he interrupted me crossly and asked, ‘Church? What is that?'

“ ‘Church?' I answered. ‘That is a kind of state—the most mendacious kind. But be still, you hypocritical hound! You know your own kind best! Like you, the state is a hypocritical hound; like you, it likes to talk with smoke and bellowing—to make himself believe, like you, that he is talking out of the belly of reality. For he wants to be by all means the most important beast on earth, the state; and they believe him too.'

“When I had said that, the fire hound carried on as if crazy with envy. ‘What?' he cried, ‘the most important beast on earth? And they believe him too?' And so much steam and so many revolting voices came out of his throat that I thought he would suffocate with anger and envy.

“At last, he grew calmer and his gasping eased; and as soon as he was calm I said, laughing, ‘You are angry, fire hound; so I am right about you! And that I may continue to be right, let me tell you about another fire hound. He really speaks out of the heart of the earth. He exhales gold and golden rain; thus his heart wants it. What are ashes and smoke and hot slime to him? Laughter flutters out of him like colorful clouds; nor is he well disposed toward your gurgling and spewing and intestinal rumblings. This gold, however, and this laughter he takes from the heart of the earth; for—know this—
the heart of the earth is of gold.'

“When the fire hound heard this he could no longer bear listening to me. Shamed, he drew in his tail, in a cowed manner said ‛bow-wow,' and crawled down into his cave.”

Thus related Zarathustra. But his disciples barely listened, so great was their desire to tell him of the seamen, the rabbits, and the flying man.

“What shall I think of that?” said Zarathustra; “am I a ghost then? But it must have been my shadow. I suppose you have heard of the wanderer and his shadow? This, however, is clear: I must watch it more closely—else it may yet spoil my reputation.”

And once more Zarathustra shook his head and wondered. “What shall I think of that?” he said once more. “Why did the ghost cry, ‘It is time! It is high timel' High time for
what
?”

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

“—And I saw a great sadness descend upon mankind. The best grew weary of their works. A doctrine appeared, accompanied by a faith: ‘All is empty, all is the same, all has beenl' And from all the hills it echoed: ‘All is empty, all is the same, all has been!' Indeed we have harvested: but why did all our fruit turn rotten and brown? What fell down from the evil moon last night? In vain was all our work; our wine has turned to poison; an evil eye has seared our fields and hearts. We have all become dry; and if fire should descend on us, we should turn to ashes; indeed, we have wearied the fire itself. All our wells have dried up; even the sea has withdrawn. All the soil would crack, but the depth refuses to devour. ‘Alas, where is there still a sea in which one might drown?' thus are we wailing across shallow swamps. Verily, we have become too weary even to die. We are still waking and living on—in tombs.”