The Portable Nietzsche (46 page)

“There you have learned,” Zarathustra interrupted the speaker, “how right giving is harder than right receiving, and that to give presents well is an art and the ultimate and most cunning master-art of graciousness.”

“Especially today,” answered the voluntary beggar; “today, I mean, when everything base has become rebellious and shy and, in its own way, arrogant—I mean, in the way of the mob. For the hour has come, you know it, for the great, bad, long, slow revolt of the mob and slaves: it grows and grows. Now the base are outraged by any charity and any little giving away; and the overrich should beware. Whoever drips today, like bulging bottles out of all-too-narrow necks—such bottles they like to seize today to break their necks. Lascivious greed, galled envy, aggrieved vengefulness, mob pride: all that leaped into my face. It is no longer true that the poor are blessed. But the kingdom of heaven is among the cows.”

“And why is it not among the rich?” asked Zarathustra temptingly as he warded off the cows, which were breathing trustingly on the peaceful man.

“Why do you tempt me?” he replied. “You yourself know it even better than I. What was it after all that drove me to the poorest, O Zarathustra? Was it not that I was nauseated by our richest men? By the convicts of riches, who pick up their advantage out of any rubbish, with cold eyes, lewd thoughts; by this rabble that stinks to high heaven; by this gilded, false mob whose fathers have been pickpockets or carrion birds or ragpickers—with women, obliging, lascivious, and forgetful: for none of them is too far from the whores—mob above and mob below! What do ‘poor' and ‘rich' matter today? This difference I have forgotten. I fled, farther, ever farther, till I came to these cows.”

Thus spoke the peaceful man, and he himself breathed hard and sweated as he spoke, so that the cows were amazed again. But Zarathustra kept looking into his face, smiling as he spoke so harshly, and silently he shook his head. “You do yourself violence, you sermonizer on the mount, when you use such harsh words. Your mouth was not formed for such harshness, nor your eyes. Nor, it seems to me, your stomach either: it is offended by all such wrath and hatred and frothing. Your stomach wants gentler things: you are no butcher. You seem much more like a plant-and-root man to me. Perhaps you gnash grain. Certainly, however, you are averse to the joys of the flesh and you love honey.”

“You have unriddled me well,” answered the voluntary beggar, his heart relieved. “I love honey; I also gnash grain, for I sought what tastes lovely and gives a pure breath; also what takes a long time, a day's and a mouth's work for gentle idlers and loafers. Nobody, to be sure, has achieved more than these cows: they invented for themselves chewing the cud and lying in the sun. And they abstain from all grave thoughts, which bloat the heart.”

“Well then!” said Zarathustra. “You should also see
my
animals, my eagle and my serpent: their like is not to be found on earth today. Behold, there goes the way to my cave: be its guest tonight. And talk with my animals of the happiness of animals—till I myself return home. For now a cry of distress urgently calls me away from you. You will also find new honey in my cave, ice-fresh golden comb honey: eat that! But now quickly take leave from your cows, you who are so strange, so lovely!—though it may be hard for you. For they are your warmest friends and teachers.”

“Excepting one whom I love still more,” answered the voluntary beggar. “You yourself are good, and even better than a cow, O Zarathustra.”

“Away, away with you, you wicked flatterer!” Zarathustra cried with malice. “Why do you corrupt me with such praise and honeyed flattery? Away, away from me!” he cried once more and brandished his stick at the affectionate beggar, who ran away quickly.

But as soon as the voluntary beggar had run away and Zarathustra was alone again, he heard a new voice behind him, shouting, “Stop, Zarathustra! Wait! It is I, O Zarathustra, I, your shadow!” But Zarathustra did not wait, for a sudden annoyance came over him at the many intruders and obtruders in his mountains. “Where has my solitude gone?” he said. “Verily, it is becoming too much for me; this mountain range is teeming, my kingdom is no longer of
this
world, I need new mountains. My shadow calls me? What does my shadow matter? Let him run after me! I shall run away from him.”

Thus spoke Zarathustra to his heart, and he ran away. But he who was behind him followed him, so that soon there were three runners, one behind the other, first the voluntary beggar, then Zarathustra, and third and last his shadow. It was not long that they ran this way before Zarathustra realized his folly and with a single shrug shook off all discontent and disgust. “Well!” he said; “have not the most ridiculous things always happened among us old hermits and saints? Verily, my folly has grown tall in the mountains. Now I hear six old fools' legs clattering along in a row. But may Zarathustra be afraid of a shadow? Moreover, it seems to me that he has longer legs than I.”

Thus spoke Zarathustra, laughing with his eyes and entrails; he stopped quickly and turned around—and behold, he almost threw his follower and shadow to the ground: so close was the shadow by then, and so weak too. And when Zarathustra examined him with his eyes, he was startled as by a sudden ghost: so thin, swarthy, hollow, and outlived did this follower look. “Who are you?” Zarathustra asked violently. “What are you doing here? And why do you call yourself my shadow? I do not like you.”

“Forgive me,” answered the shadow, “that it is I; and if you do not like me, well then, O Zarathustra, for that I praise you and your good taste. I am a wanderer who has already walked a great deal at your heels—always on my way, but without any goal, also without any home; so that I really lack little toward being the Eternal Jew, unless it be that I am not eternal, and not a Jew. How? Must I always be on my way? Whirled by every wind, restless, driven on? O earth, thou hast become too round for me!

“I have already sat on every surface; like weary dust, I have gone to sleep on mirrors and windowpanes: everything takes away from me, nothing gives, I become thin—I am almost like a shadow. But after you, O Zarathustra, I flew and blew the longest; and even when I hid from you I was still your best shadow: wherever you sat, I sat too.

“With you I haunted the remotest, coldest worlds like a ghost that runs voluntarily over wintery roofs and snow. With you I strove to penetrate everything that is forbidden, worst, remotest; and if there is anything in me that is virtue, it is that I had no fear of any forbiddance. With you I broke whatever my heart revered; I overthrew all boundary stones and images; I pursued the most dangerous wishes: verily, over every crime I have passed once. With you I unlearned faith in words and values and great names. When the devil sheds his skin, does not his name fall off too? For that too is skin. The devil himself is perhaps—skin.

“ ‘Nothing is true, all is permitted': thus I spoke to myself. Into the coldest waters I plunged, with head and heart. Alas, how often have I stood there afterward, naked as a red crab! Alas, where has all that is good gone from me—and all shame, and all faith in those who are good? Alas, where is that mendacious innocence that I once possessed, the innocence of the good and their noble lies?

“Too often, verily, did I follow close on the heels of truth: so she kicked me in the face. Sometimes I thought I was lying, and behold, only then did I hit the truth. Too much has become clear to me: now it no longer concerns me. Nothing is alive any more that I love; how should I still love myself? ‘To live as it pleases me, or not to live at all': that is what I want, that is what the saintliest want too. But alas, how could anything please me any more? Do I have a goal any more? A haven toward which my sail is set? A good wind? Alas, only he who knows where he is sailing also knows which wind is good and the right wind for him. What is left to me now? A heart, weary and impudent, a restless will, flutter-wings, a broken backbone. Trying thus to find my home—O Zarathustra, do you know it?—trying this was my trial; it consumes me. ‘Where is—my home?' I ask and search and have searched for it, but I have not found it. O eternal everywhere, O eternal nowhere, O eternal—in vain!”

Thus spoke the shadow, and Zarathustra's face grew long as he listened. “You are my shadow,” he finally said sadly. “Your danger is no small one, you free spirit and wanderer. You have had a bad day; see to it that you do not have a still worse evening. To those who are as restless as you, even a jail will at last seem bliss. Have you ever seen how imprisoned criminals sleep? They sleep calmly, enjoying their new security. Beware lest a narrow faith imprison you in the end—some harsh and severe illusion. For whatever is narrow and solid seduces and tempts you now.

“You have lost your goal; alas, how will you digest and jest over this loss? With this you have also lost your way. You poor roaming enthusiast, you weary butterfly! Would you have a rest and home this evening? Then go up to my cave. Up there goes the path to my cave.

“And now let me quickly run away from you again. Even now a shadow seems to lie over me. I want to run alone so that it may become bright around me again. For that, I shall still have to stay merrily on my legs a long time. In the evening, however, there will be dancing in my cave.”

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

And Zarathustra ran and ran and did not find anybody any more, and he was alone and found himself again and again, and he enjoyed and quaffed his solitude and thought of good things for hours. But around the hour of noon, when the sun stood straight over Zarathustra's head, he came to an old crooked and knotty tree that was embraced, and hidden from itself, by the rich love of a grapevine; and yellow grapes hung from it in abundance, inviting the wanderer. Then he felt the desire to quench a slight thirst and to break off a grape; but even as he was stretching out his arm to do so, he felt a still greater desire for something else: namely, to lie down beside the tree at the perfect noon hour, and to sleep.

This Zarathustra did; and as soon as he lay on the ground in the stillness and secrecy of the many-hued grass, he forgot his slight thirst and fell asleep. For, as Zarathustra's proverb says, one thing is more necessary than another. Only his eyes remained open: for they did not tire of seeing and praising the tree and the love of the grapevine. Falling asleep, however, Zarathustra spoke thus to his heart:

Still! Still! Did not the world become perfect just now? What is happening to me? As a delicate wind dances unseen on an inlaid sea, light, feather-light, thus sleep dances on me. My eyes he does not close, my soul he leaves awake. Light he is, verily, feather-light. He persuades me, I know not how. He touches me inwardly with caressing hands, he conquers me. Yes, he conquers me and makes my soul stretch out: how she is becoming long and tired, my strange soul! Did the eve of a seventh day come to her at noon? Has she already roamed happily among good and ripe things too long? She stretches out long, long—longer. She lies still, my strange soul. Too much that is good has she tasted; this golden sadness oppresses her, she makes a wry mouth.

Like a ship that has sailed into its stillest cove—now it leans against the earth, tired of the long voyages and the uncertain seas. Is not the earth more faithful? The way such a ship lies close to, and nestles to, the land—it is enough if a spider spins its thread to it from the land: no stronger ropes are needed now. Like such a tired ship in the stillest cove, I too rest now near the earth, faithful, trusting, waiting, tied to it with the softest threads.

O happiness! O happiness! Would you sing, O my soul? You are lying in the grass. But this is the secret solemn hour when no shepherd plays his pipe. Refrain! Hot noon sleeps on the meadows. Do not sing! Still! The world is perfect. Do not sing, you winged one in the grass, O my soul—do not even whisper! Beholdstill! —the old noon sleeps, his mouth moves: is he not just now drinking a drop of happiness, an old brown drop of golden happiness, golden wine? It slips over him, his happiness laughs. Thus laughs a god. Still!

“O happiness, how little is sufficient for happiness!” Thus I spoke once and seemed clever to myself. But it was a blasphemy:
that
I have learned now. Clever fools speak better. Precisely the least, the softest, lightest, a lizard's rustling, a breath, a breeze, a moment's glance—it is
little
that makes the best happiness. Still!

What happened to me? Listen! Did time perhaps fly away? Do I not fall? Did I not fall—listen!—into the well of eternity? What is happening to me? Still! I have been stung, alas—in the heart? In the heart! Oh break, break, heart, after such happiness, after such a sting. How? Did not the world become perfect just now? Round and ripe? Oh, the golden round ring—where may it fly? Shall I run after it? Quick! Still! (And here Zarathustra stretched and felt that he was asleep.)

“Upl” he said to himself; “you sleeper! You noon napper! Well, get up, old legs! It is time and overtime; many a good stretch of road still lies ahead of you. Now you have slept out—how long? Half an eternity! Well! Up with you now, my old heart! After such a sleep, how long will it take you to—wake it off?” (But then he fell asleep again, and his soul spoke against him and resisted and lay down again.) “Leave me alone! Still! Did not the world become perfect just now? Oh, the golden round ball!”

“Get up!” said Zarathustra, “you little thief, you lazy little thief of time! What? Still stretching, yawning, sighing, falling into deep wells? Who are you? O my soul!” (At this point he was startled, for a sunbeam fell from the sky onto his face.) “O heaven over me!” he said, sighing, and sat up. “You are looking on? You are listening to my strange soul? When will you drink this drop of dew which has fallen upon all earthly things? When will you drink this strange soul? When, well of eternity? Cheerful, dreadful abyss of noon! When will you drink my soul back into yourself?”