Thus Spoke Zarathustra (18 page)

They shot the arrow at the most vulnerable thing I possessed: and that was you, whose skin is like down and even more like the smile that dies at a glance!

But I will say this to my enemies: What is any manslaughter compared with what you did to me!

You did a worse thing to me than any manslaughter; you took from me the irretrievable – thus I speak to you, my enemies!

You murdered my youth’s visions and dearest marvels! You took from me my playfellows, those blessed spirits I To their memory do I lay this wreath and this curse.

This curse upon you, my enemies! You have cut short my eternity, as a note is cut short in the cold night! It came to me hardly as the twinkling of divine eyes – as a moment!

Thus in a happy hour my purity once spoke: ‘All creatures shall be divine to me.’

Then you surprised me with foul phantoms; alas, whither has that happy hour fled now?

‘All days shall be holy to me’ – thus the wisdom of my youth once spoke: truly, the speech of a joyful wisdom!

But then you, my enemies, stole my nights from me and sold them to sleepless torment: alas, whither has that joyful wisdom fled now?

Once I longed for happy bird-auspices: then you led an owl-monster across my path, an adverse sign. Alas, whither did my tender longings flee then?

I once vowed to renounce all disgust; then you transformed my kindred and neighbours into abscesses. Alas, whither did my noblest vow flee then?

Once, as a blind man, I walked on happy paths; then you threw filth in the blind man’s path: and now die old footpath disgusts him.

And when I achieved my most difficult task and celebrated the victory of my overcomings: then you made those whom I loved cry out that I hurt them most.

Truly, all that was your doing: you embittered my finest honey and the industry of my finest bees.

You have always sent the most insolent beggars to my liberality; you have always crowded the incurably shameless around my pity. Thus you have wounded my virtues’ faith.

And when I brought my holiest thing as a sacrifice, straightway your ‘piety’ placed its fatter gifts beside it: so that my holiest thing choked in the smoke of your fat.

And once I wanted to dance as I had never yet danced: I wanted to dance beyond all heavens. Then you lured away my favourite singer.

And then he struck up a gruesome, gloomy melody: alas, he trumpeted into my ears like a mournful horn!

Murderous singer, instrument of malice, most innocent man! I stood prepared for the finest dance: then you murdered my ecstasy with your tones!

I know how to speak the parable of the highest things only in the dance – and now my greatest parable has remained in my limbs unspoken!

My highest hope has remained unspoken and unachieved! And all the visions and consolations of my youth are dead!

How did I endure it? How did I recover from such wounds, how did I overcome them? How did my soul arise again from these graves?

Yes, something invulnerable, unburiable is within me, something that rends rocks: it is called
my Will
. Silently it steps and unchanging through the years.

It shall go its course upon my feet, my old Will; hard of heart and invulnerable is its temper.

I am invulnerable only in my heels. You live there and are always the same, most patient one! You will always break out of all graves!

In you too still live on all the unachieved things of my youth; and you sit as life and youth, hopefully, here upon yellow grave-ruins.

Yes, you are still my destroyer of all graves: Hail, my Will! And only where there are graves are there resurrections.

Thus sang Zarathustra.

Of Self-Overcoming

W
HAT
urges you on and arouses your ardour, you wisest of men, do you call it ‘will to truth’?

Will to the conceivability of all being: that is what I call your will!

You first want to
make
all being conceivable: for, with a healthy mistrust, you doubt whether it is in fact conceivable.

But it must bend and accommodate itself to you! Thus will your will have it. It must become smooth and subject to the mind as the mind’s mirror and reflection.

That is your entire will, you wisest men; it is a will to power; and that is so even when you talk of good and evil and of the assessment of values.

You want to create the world before which you can kneel: this is your ultimate hope and intoxication.

The ignorant, to be sure, the people – they are like a river down which a boat swims: and in the boat, solemn and disguised, sit the assessments of value.

You put your will and your values upon the river of becoming; what the people believe to be good and evil betrays to me an ancient will to power.

It was you, wisest men, who put such passengers in this boat and gave them splendour and proud names – you and your ruling will!

Now the river bears your boat along: it has to bear it. It is
of small account if the breaking wave foams and angrily opposes its keel!

It is not the river that is your danger and the end of your good and evil, you wisest men, it is that will itself, the will to power, the unexhausted, procreating life-will.

But that you may understand my teaching about good and evil, I shall relate to you my teaching about life and about the nature of all living creatures.

I have followed the living creature, I have followed the greatest and the smallest paths, that I might understand its nature.

I caught its glance in a hundredfold mirror when its mouth was closed, that its eye might speak to me. And its eye did speak to me.

But wherever I found living creatures, there too I heard the language of obedience. All living creatures are obeying creatures.

And this is the second thing: he who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures.

But this is the third thing I heard: that commanding is more difficult than obeying. And not only because the commander bears the burden of all who obey, and that this burden can easily crush him.

In all commanding there appeared to me to be an experiment and a risk: and the living creature always risks himself when he commands.

Yes, even when he commands himself: then also must he make amends for his commanding. He must become judge and avenger and victim of his own law.

How has this come about? thus I asked myself. What persuades the living creature to obey and to command and to practise obedience even in commanding?

Listen now to my teaching, you wisest men! Test in earnest whether I have crept into the heart of life itself and down to the roots of its heart!

Where I found a living creature, there I found will to power; and even in the will of the servant I found the will to be master.

The will of the weaker persuades it to serve the stronger; its will wants to be master over those weaker still: this delight alone it is unwilling to forgo.

And as the lesser surrenders to the greater, that it may have delight and power over the least of all, so the greatest, too, surrenders and for the sake of power stakes – life.

The devotion of the greatest is to encounter risk and danger and play dice for death.

And where sacrifice and service and loving glances are, there too is will to be master. There the weaker steals by secret paths into the castle and even into the heart of the more powerful – and steals the power.

And life itself told me this secret: ‘Behold,’ it said, ‘I am that
which must overcome itself again and again
.

‘To be sure, you call it will to procreate or impulse towards a goal, towards the higher, more distant, more manifold: but all this is one and one secret.

‘I would rather perish than renounce this one thing; and truly, where there is perishing and the falling of leaves, behold, there life sacrifices itself – for the sake of power!

‘That I have to be struggle and becoming and goal and conflict of goals: ah, he who divines my will surely divines, too, along what
crooked
paths it has to go!

‘Whatever I create and however much I love it – soon I have to oppose it and my love: thus will my will have it.

‘And you too, enlightened man, are only a path and footstep of my will: truly, my will to power walks with the feet of your will to truth!

‘He who shot the doctrine of “will to existence” at truth certainly did not hit the truth: this will – does not exist!

‘For what does not exist cannot will; but that which is in existence, how could it still want to come into existence?

‘Only where life is, there is also will: not will to life, but – so I teach you – will to power!

‘The living creature values many things higher than life itself; yet out of this evaluation itself speaks – the will to power!’

Thus life once taught me: and with this teaching do I solve the riddle of your hearts, you wisest men.

Truly, I say to you: Unchanging good and evil does not exist! From out of themselves they must overcome themselves again and again.

You exert power with your values and doctrines of good and evil, you assessors of values; and this is your hidden love and the glittering, trembling, and overflowing of your souls.

But a mightier power and a new overcoming grow from out your values: egg and egg-shell break against them.

And he who has to be a creator in good and evil, truly, has first to be a destroyer and break values.

Thus the greatest evil belongs with the greatest good: this, however, is the creative good.

Let us
speak
of this, you wisest men, even if it is a bad thing. To be silent is worse; all suppressed truths become poisonous.

And let everything that can break upon our truths – break! There is many a house still to build!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Of the Sublime Men

S
TILL
is the bottom of my sea: who could guess that it hides sportive monsters!

Imperturbable is my depth: but it glitters with swimming riddles and laughter.

Today I saw a sublime man, a solemn man, a penitent of the spirit: oh, how my soul laughed at his ugliness!

With upraised breast and in the attitude of a man drawing in breath: thus he stood there, the sublime man, and silent.

Hung with ugly truths, the booty of his hunt, and rich in torn clothes; many thorns, too, hung on him – but I saw no rose.

As yet he has not learned of laughter and beauty. This huntsman returned gloomily from the forest of knowledge.

He returned home from the fight with wild beasts: but a
wild beast still gazes out of his seriousness – a beast that has not been overcome!

He stands there like a tiger about to spring; but I do not like these tense souls, my taste is hostile towards all these withdrawn men.

And do you tell me, friends, that there is no dispute over taste and tasting? But all life is dispute over taste and tasting!

Taste: that is at the same time weight and scales and weigher; and woe to all living creatures that want to live without dispute over weight and scales and weigher!

If he grew weary of his sublimity, this sublime man, only then would his beauty rise up – and only then will I taste him and find him tasty.

And only if he turns away from himself will he jump over his own shadow – and jump, in truth, into
bis own
sunlight.

He has sat all too long in the shadows, the cheeks of the penitent of the spirit have grown pale; he has almost starved on his expectations.

There is still contempt in his eye, and disgust lurks around his mouth. He rests now, to be sure, but he has never yet lain down in the sunlight.

He should behave like the ox; and his happiness should smell of the earth and not of contempt for the earth.

I should like to see him as a white ox, snorting and bellowing as he goes before the plough: and his bellowing, too, should laud all earthly things!

His countenance is still dark; his hand’s shadow plays upon it. The sense of his eyes, too, is overshadowed.

His deed itself is still the shadow upon him: the hand darkens the doer.
¹⁸
He has still not overcome his deed.

To be sure, I love in him the neck of the ox: but now I want to see the eye of the angel, too.

He must unlearn his heroic will, too: he should be an exalted man and not only a sublime one – the ether itself should raise him up, the will-less one!

He has tamed monsters, he has solved riddles: but he should also redeem his monsters and riddles, he should transform them into heavenly children.

His knowledge has not yet learned to smile and to be without jealousy; his gushing passion has not yet grown calm in beauty.

Truly, his longing should be silenced and immersed not in satiety but in beauty! The generosity of the magnanimous man should include gracefulness.

With his arm laid across his head: that is how the hero should rest, that is also how he should overcome his rest.

But it is precisely to the hero that
beauty
is the most difficult of all things. Beauty is unattainable to all violent wills.

A little more, a little less: precisely that is much here, here that is the most of all.

To stand with relaxed muscles and unharnessed wills: that is the most difficult thing for all of you, you sublime men!

When power grows gracious and descends into the visible: I call such descending beauty.

And I desire beauty from no one as much as I desire it from you, you man of power: may your goodness be your ultimate self-overpowering.

I believe you capable of any evil: therefore I desire of you the good.

In truth, I have often laughed at the weaklings who think themselves good because their claws are blunt!

You should aspire to the virtue of the pillar: the higher it rises, the fairer and more graceful it grows, but inwardly harder and able to bear more weight.

Yes, you sublime man, you too shall one day be fair and hold the mirror before your own beauty.