Thus Spoke Zarathustra (21 page)

I dreamed I had renounced all life. I had become a night-watchman and grave-watchman yonder upon the lonely hill-fortress of death.

Up there I guarded death’s coffins: the musty vaults stood
full of these symbols of death’s victory. Life overcome regarded me from glass coffins.

I breathed the odour of dust-covered eternities: my soul lay sultry and dust-covered. And who could have ventilated his soul there?

Brightness of midnight was all around me, solitude crouched beside it; and, as a third, the rasping silence of death, the worst of my companions.

I carried keys, the rustiest of all keys; and I could open with them the most creaking of all doors.

When the wings of this door were opened, the sound ran through the long corridors like an evil croaking; this bird cried out ill-temperedly, it did not want to be awakened.

But it was even more fearful and heart-tightening when it again became silent and still all around and I sat alone in that malignant silence.

So did time pass with me and creep past, if time still existed: what did I know of it I But at last occurred that which awakened me.

Three blows were struck on the door like thunderbolts, the vault resounded and roared three times again: then I went to the door.

Alpa! I cried, who is bearing his ashes to the mountain? Alpa! Alpa! Who is bearing his ashes to the mountain?

And I turned the key and tugged at the door and exerted myself. But it did not open by so much as a finger’s breadth:

Then a raging wind tore the door asunder: whistling, shrilling and piercing it threw to me a black coffin:

And in the roaring and whistling and shrilling, the coffin burst asunder and vomited forth a thousand peals of laughter.

And from a thousand masks of children, angels, owls, fools, and child-sized butterflies it laughed and mocked and roared at me.

This terrified me dreadfully: it prostrated me. And I shrieked with horror as I had never shrieked before.

But my own shrieking awoke me – and I came to myself.

Thus Zarathustra narrated his dream and then fell silent:
for he did not yet know the interpretation of his dream. But the disciple whom he loved most arose quickly, grasped Zarathustra’s hand, and said:

Your life itself interprets to us this dream, O Zarathustra!

Are you yourself not the wind with a shrill whistling that tears open the doors of the fortress of death?

Are you yourself not the coffin full of motley wickednesses and angel-masks of life?

Truly, Zarathustra comes into all sepulchres like a thousand peals of children’s laughter, laughing at these night-watchmen and grave-watchmen, and whoever else rattles gloomy keys.

You will terrify and overthrow them with your laughter; fainting and reawakening will demonstrate your power over them.

And even when the long twilight and the weariness unto death appears, you will not set in our heaven, you advocate of life!

You have shown us new stars and new glories of the night; truly, you have spread out laughter itself above us like a motley canopy.

Henceforth laughter of children will always issue from coffins; henceforth a strong wind will always come, victorious, to all weariness unto death: of that you yourself are our guarantee and prophet!

Truly, you have dreamed
your enemies themselves
: that was your most oppressive dream!

But as you awoke from them and came to yourself, so shall they awake from themselves – and come to you!

Thus spoke the disciple; and all the others then pressed around Zarathustra and grasped his hands and sought to persuade him to leave his bed and his sadness and return to them. But Zarathustra sat upon his bed erect and with an absent expression. Like one who has returned home after being long in a strange land did he look upon his disciples and examine their faces; and as yet he did not recognize them. But when they raised him and set him upon his feet, behold, his eye was
suddenly transformed; he understood everything that had happened, stroked his beard, and said in a firm voice:

Well now! This has had its time; but see to it, my disciples, that we have a good meal, and quickly! Thus I mean to do penance for bad dreams!

The prophet, however, shall eat and drink beside me: and truly, I will yet show him a sea in which he can drown!

Thus spoke Zarathustra. Then, however, he gazed long into the face of the disciple who had interpreted the dream, and shook his head.

Of Redemption

As Zarathustra was going across the great bridge one day, the cripples and beggars surrounded him and a hunchback spoke to him thus:

Behold, Zarathustra! The people, too, learn from you and acquire belief in your teaching: but for the people to believe you completely, one thing is still needed – you must first convince even us cripples! Here now you have a fine selection and truly, an opportunity with more than one forelock! You can cure the blind and make the lame walk; and from him who has too much behind him you could well take a little away, too – that, I think, would be the right way to make the cripples believe in Zarathustra!

But Zarathustra replied thus to him who had spoken:

If one takes the hump away from the hunchback, one takes away his spirit – that is what the people teach. And if one gives eyes to the blind man, he sees too many bad things on earth: so that he curses him who cured him. But he who makes the lame man walk does him the greatest harm: for no sooner can he walk than his vices run away with him – that is what the people teach about cripples. And why should Zarathustra not learn from the people, if the people learn from Zarathustra?

But it is the least serious thing to me, since I have been among men, to see that this one lacks an eye and that one an
ear and a third lacks a leg, and there are others who have lost their tongue or their nose or their head.

I see and have seen worse things and many of them so monstrous that I should not wish to speak of all of them; but of some of them I should not wish to be silent: and they are, men who lack everything except one thing, of which they have too much – men who are no more than a great eye or a great mouth or a great belly or something else great – I call such men inverse cripples.

And when I emerged from my solitude and crossed over this bridge for the first time, I did not believe my eyes and looked and looked again and said at last: ‘That is an ear! An ear as big as a man!’ I looked yet more closely: and in fact under the ear there moved something that was pitifully small and meagre and slender. And in truth, the monstrous ear sat upon a little, thin stalk – the stalk, however, was a man! By the use of a magnifying glass one could even discern a little, envious face as well; and one could discern, too, that a turgid little soul was dangling from the stalk. The people told me, however, that the great ear was not merely a man, but a great man, a genius. But I have never believed the people when they talked about great men – and I held to my belief that it was an inverse cripple, who had too little of everything and too much of one thing.

When Zarathustra had spoken thus to the hunchback and to those whose mouthpiece and advocate he was, he turned to his disciples with profound ill-humour and said:

Truly, my friends, I walk among men as among the fragments and limbs of men!

The terrible thing to my eye is to find men shattered in pieces and scattered as if over a battle-field of slaughter.

And when my eye flees from the present to the past, it always discovers the same thing: fragments and limbs and dreadful chances – but no men!

The present and the past upon the earth – alas! my friends – that is
my
most intolerable burden; and I should not know how to live, if I were not a seer of that which must come.

A seer, a wilier, a creator, a future itself and a bridge to the future – and alas, also like a cripple upon this bridge: Zarathustra is all this.

And even you have often asked yourselves: Who is Zarathustra to us? What shall we call him? and, like me, you answer your own questions with questions.

Is he a promiser? Or a fulfiller? A conqueror? Or an inheritor? A harvest? Or a ploughshare? A physician? Or a convalescent?

Is he a poet? Or a genuine man? A liberator? Or a subduer? A good man? Or an evil man?

I walk among men as among fragments of the future: of that future which I scan.

And it is all my art and aim, to compose into one and bring together what is fragment and riddle and dreadful chance.

And how could I endure to be a man, if man were not also poet and reader of riddles and the redeemer of chance!

To redeem the past and to transform every ‘It was’ into an ‘I wanted it thus!’ – that alone do I call redemption!

Will – that is what the liberator and bringer of joy is called: thus I have taught you, my friends! But now learn this as well: The will itself is still a prisoner.

Willing liberates: but what is it that fastens in fetters even the liberator?

‘It was’: that is what the will’s teeth-gnashing and most lonely affliction is called. Powerless against that which has been done, the will is an angry spectator of all things past.

The will cannot will backwards; that it cannot break time and time’s desire – that is the will’s most lonely affliction.

Willing liberates: what does willing itself devise to free itself from its affliction and to mock at its dungeon?

Alas, every prisoner becomes a fool! The imprisoned will, too, releases itself in a foolish way.

It is sullenly wrathful that time does not run back; ‘That which was’ – that is what the stone which it cannot roll away is called.

And so, out of wrath and ill-temper, the will rolls stones
about and takes revenge upon him who does not, like it, feel wrath and ill-temper.

Thus the will, the liberator, becomes a malefactor: and upon all that can suffer it takes revenge for its inability to go backwards.

This, yes, this alone is
revenge
itself: the will’s antipathy towards time and time’s ‘It was’.

Truly, a great foolishness dwells in our will; and that this foolishness acquired spirit has become a curse to all human kind.

The spirit of revenge
: my friends, that, up to now, has been mankind’s chief concern; and where there was suffering, there was always supposed to be punishment.

‘Punishment’ is what revenge calls itself: it feigns a good conscience for itself with a lie.

And because there is suffering in the wilier himself, since he cannot will backwards – therefore willing itself and all life was supposed to be – punishment!

And then cloud upon cloud rolled over the spirit: until at last madness preached: ‘Everything passes away, therefore everything deserves to pass away!

‘And that law of time, that time must devour her children, is justice itself: thus madness preached.

‘Things are ordered morally according to justice and punishment. Oh, where is redemption from the stream of things and from the punishment “existence”?’ Thus madness preached.

‘Can there be redemption when there is eternal justice? Alas, the stone “It was” cannot be rolled away: all punishments, too, must be eternal!’ Thus madness preached.

‘No deed can be annihilated: how could a deed be undone through punishment? That existence too must be an eternally-recurring deed and guilt, this, this is what is eternal in the punishment “existence”!

‘Except the will at last redeem itself and willing become not-willing –’: but you, my brothers, know this fable-song of madness!

I led you away from these fable-songs when I taught you: ‘The will is a creator.’

All ‘It was’ is a fragment, a riddle, a dreadful chance – until the creative will says to it: ‘But I willed it thus!’

Until the creative will says to it: ‘But I will it thus! Thus shall I will it!’

But has it ever spoken thus? And when will this take place? Has the will yet been unharnessed from its own folly?

Has the will become its own redeemer and bringer of joy? Has it unlearned the spirit of revenge and all teeth-gnashing?

And who has taught it to be reconciled with time, and higher things than reconciliation?

The will that is the will to power must will something higher than any reconciliation – but how shall that happen? Who has taught it to will backwards, too?

But at this point of his discourse, Zarathustra suddenly broke off and looked exactly like a man seized by extremest terror. With terrified eyes he gazed upon his disciples; his eyes transpierced their thoughts and their reservations
²²
as if with arrows. But after a short time he laughed again and said in a soothed voice:

‘It is difficult to live among men because keeping silent is so difficult. Especially for a babbler.’

Thus spoke Zarathustra. The hunchback, however, had listened to the conversation and had covered his face the while; but when he heard Zarathustra laugh, he looked up in curiosity, and said slowly:

‘But why does Zarathustra speak to us differently than to his disciples?’

Zarathustra answered: ‘What is surprising in that? One may well speak in a hunchbacked manner to a hunchback!’
²³

‘Very good,’ said the hunchback; ‘and with pupils one may well tell tales out of school.

‘But why does Zarathustra speak to his pupils differently – than to himself?’

Of Manly Prudence

I
T
is not the height, it is the abyss that is terrible!

The abyss where the glance plunges
downward
and the hand grasps
upward
. There the heart grows giddy through its twofold will.

Ah, friends, have you, too, divined my heart’s twofold will?

That my glance plunges into the heights and that my hand wants to hold on to the depths and lean there – that, that is
my
abyss and my danger.

My will clings to mankind, I bind myself to mankind with fetters, because I am drawn up to the Superman: for my other will wants to draw me up to the Superman.