Thus Spoke Zarathustra (23 page)

‘In order to see
much
one must learn to
look away
from oneself – every mountain-climber needs this hardness.

‘But he who, seeking enlightenment, is over-eager with his eyes, how could he see more of a thing than its foreground!

‘You, however, O Zarathustra, have wanted to behold the ground of things and their background:
²⁴
so you must climb above yourself – up and beyond, until you have even your stars
under
you!’

Yes! To look down upon myself and even upon my stars: that alone would I call my
summit
, that has remained for me as my
ultimate
summit!

Thus spoke Zarathustra to himself as he climbed, consoling his heart with hard sayings: for his heart was wounded as never before. And when he arrived at the top of the mountain ridge, behold, there lay the other sea spread out before him: and he stood and was long silent. But the night at this height was cold and dear and bright with stars.

I know my fate (he said at last with sadness). Well then! I am ready. My last solitude has just begun.

Ah, this sorrowful, black sea beneath me! Ah, this brooding reluctance! Ah, destiny and sea! Now I have to
go down
to you!

I stand before my highest mountain and my longest
wandering: therefore I must first descend deeper than I have ever descended,

– deeper into pain than I have ever descended, down to its blackest stream! So my destiny will have it. Well then! I am ready.

Whence arise the highest mountains? I once asked. Then I learned that they arise from the sea.

This testimony is written into their stones and into the sides of their summits. The highest must arise to its height from the deepest.

Thus spoke Zarathustra on the mountain summit, where it was cold; when he drew near to the sea, however, and at length stood alone beneath the cliffs, he had grown weary on the way and more yearning than he was before.

Everything is still asleep (he said); even the sea is asleep. Its eye looks at me drowsily and strangely.

But it breathes warmly; I feel it. And I feel, too, that it is dreaming. Dreaming, it writhes upon a hard pillow.

Listen! Listen! How it groans with wicked memories! Or with wicked expectations?

Ah, I am sad with you, dark monster, and angry even with myself for your sake.

Alas, that my hand has insufficient strength! In truth, I should dearly like to release you from your bad dreams!

And as Zarathustra thus spoke, he laughed at himself with melancholy and bitterness. What, Zarathustra! he said, do you want to sing consolation even to the sea?

Ah, you fond fool, Zarathustra, too eager to trust! But that is what you have always been: you have always approached trustfully all that is fearful.

You have always wanted to caress every monster. A touch of warm breath, a little soft fur on its paw – and at once you have been ready to love and entice it.

Love
is the danger for the most solitary man, love of any thing
if only it is alive!
Indeed, my foolishness and modesty in love is laughable!

Thus spoke Zarathustra and laughed again: but then he
thought of the friends he had left, and he was angry with himself because of his thoughts, as if he had injured his friends with them. And forthwith the laughing man wept – for anger and longing did Zarathustra weep bitterly.

Of the Vision and the Riddle

1

W
HEN
it became rumoured among the sailors that Zarathustra was on the ship – for a man from the Blissful Islands had gone on board at the same time as he – a great curiosity and expectancy arose. But Zarathustra was silent for two days and was cold and deaf for sorrow, so that he responded neither to looks nor to questions. But on the evening of the second day he opened his ears again, although he still remained silent: for there were many strange and dangerous things to hear on this ship, which had come from afar and had yet further to go. Zarathustra, however, was a friend to all who take long journeys and do not want to live without danger. And behold! in listening his tongue was loosened, and the ice of his heart broke: then he started to speak thus:

To you, the bold venturers and adventurers and whoever has embarked with cunning sails upon dreadful seas,

to you who are intoxicated by riddles, who take pleasure in twilight, whose soul is lured with flutes to every treacherous abyss –

for you do not desire to feel for a rope with cowardly hand; and where you can
guess
you hate to
calculate
–

to you alone do I tell this riddle that I
saw
– the vision of the most solitary man.

Lately I walked gloomily through a deathly-grey twilight, gloomily and sternly with compressed lips. Not only one sun had gone down for me.

A path that mounted defiantly through boulders and rubble, a wicked, solitary path that bush or plant no longer cheered: a mountain path crunched under my foot’s defiance.

Striding mute over the mocking clatter of pebbles, trampling the stones that made it slip: thus my foot with effort forced itself upward.

Upward – despite the spirit that drew it downward, drew it towards the abyss, the Spirit of Gravity, my devil and archenemy.

Upward – although he sat upon me, half dwarf, half mole; crippled, crippling; pouring lead-drops into my ear, leaden thoughts into my brain.

‘O Zarathustra,’ he said mockingly, syllable by syllable, ‘you stone of wisdom! You have thrown yourself high, but every stone that is thrown must – fall!

‘O Zarathustra, you stone of wisdom, you projectile, you star-destroyer! You have thrown yourself thus high, but every stone that is thrown – must fall!

‘Condemned by yourself and to your own stone-throwing: O Zarathustra, far indeed have you thrown your stone, but it will fall back upon
you
!’

Thereupon the dwarf fell silent; and he long continued so. But his silence oppressed me; and to be thus in company is truly more lonely than to be alone!

I climbed, I climbed, I dreamed, I thought, but everything oppressed me. I was like a sick man wearied by his sore torment and reawakened from sleep by a worse dream.

But there is something in me that I call courage: it has always destroyed every discouragement in me. This courage at last bade me stop and say: ‘Dwarf! You! Or I!’

For courage is the best destroyer – courage that
attacks
: for in every attack there is a triumphant shout.

Man, however, is the most courageous animal: with his courage he has overcome every animal. With a triumphant shout he has even overcome every pain; human pain, however, is the deepest pain.

Courage also destroys giddiness at abysses: and where does man not stand at an abyss? Is seeing itself not – seeing abysses?

Courage is the best destroyer: courage also destroys pity. Pity, however, is the deepest abyss: as deeply as man looks into life, so deeply does he look also into suffering.

Courage, however, is the best destroyer, courage that attacks: it destroys even death, for it says: ‘Was
that
life? Well then! Once more!’

But there is a great triumphant shout in such a saying. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

2

‘Stop, dwarf!’ I said. ‘I! Or you! But I am the stronger of us two – you do not know my abysmal thought! That thought – you could not endure!’

Then something occurred which lightened me: for the dwarf jumped from my shoulder, the inquisitive dwarf! And he squatted down upon a stone in front of me. But a gateway stood just where we had halted.

‘Behold this gateway, dwarf!’ I went on: ‘it has two aspects. Two paths come together here: no one has ever reached their end.

‘This long lane behind us: it goes on for an eternity. And that long lane ahead of us – that is another eternity.

‘They are in opposition to one another, these paths; they abut on one another: and it is here at this gateway that they come together. The name of the gateway is written above it: “Moment”.

‘But if one were to follow them further and ever further and further: do you think, dwarf, that these paths would be in eternal opposition?’

‘Everything straight lies,’ murmured the dwarf disdainfully. ‘All truth is crooked, time itself is a circle.’

‘Spirit of Gravity!’ I said angrily, ‘do not treat this too lightly! Or I shall leave you squatting where you are, Lame-foot – and I have carried you
high
!

‘Behold this moment!’ I went on. ‘From this gateway Moment a long, eternal lane runs
back
: an eternity lies behind us.

‘Must not all things that
can
run have already run along this lane? Must not all things that
can
happen
have
already happened, been done, run past?

‘And if all things have been here before: what do you think
of this moment, dwarf? Must not this gateway, too, have been here – before?

‘And are not all things bound fast together in such a way that this moment draws after it all future things?
Therefore
– draws itself too?

‘For all things that
can
run
must
also run once again forward along this long lane.

‘And this slow spider that creeps along in the moonlight, and this moonlight itself, and I and you at this gateway whispering together, whispering of eternal things – must we not all have been here before?

‘ – and must we not return and run down that other lane out before us, down that long, terrible lane – must we not return eternally?’

Thus I spoke, and I spoke more and more softly: for I was afraid of my own thoughts and reservations. Then, suddenly, I heard a dog
bowling
nearby.

Had I ever heard a dog howling in that way? My thoughts ran back. Yes! When I was a child, in my most distant childhood:

– then I heard a dog howling in that way. And I saw it, too, bristling, its head raised, trembling in the stillest midnight, when even dogs believe in ghosts:

– so that it moved me to pity. For the full moon had just gone over the house, silent as death, it had just stopped still, a round glow, still upon the flat roof as if upon a forbidden place:

that was what had terrified the dog: for dogs believe in thieves and ghosts. And when I heard such howling again, it moved me to pity again.

Where had the dwarf now gone? And the gateway? And the spider? And all the whispering? Had I been dreaming? Had I awoken? All at once I was standing between wild cliffs, alone, desolate in the most desolate moonlight.

But there a man was lying!
And there! The dog, leaping, bristling, whining; then it saw me coming – then it howled again, then it
cried out
– had I ever heard a dog cry so for help?
²⁵

And truly, I had never seen the like of what I then saw. I
saw a young shepherd writhing, choking, convulsed, his face distorted; and a heavy, black snake was hanging out of his mouth.

Had I ever seen so much disgust and pallid horror on a face? Had he, perhaps, been asleep? Then the snake had crawled into his throat – and there it had bitten itself fast.

My hands tugged and tugged at the snake – in vain! they could not tug the snake out of the shepherd’s throat. Then a voice cried from me: ‘Bite! Bite!

‘Its head off! Bite!’ – thus a voice cried from me, my horror, my hate, my disgust, my pity, all my good and evil cried out of me with a single cry.

You bold men around me! You venturers, adventurers, and those of you who have embarked with cunning sails upon undiscovered seas! You who take pleasure in riddles!

Solve for me the riddle that I saw, interpret to me the vision of the most solitary man!

For it was a vision and a premonition:
what
did I see in allegory? And
who
is it that must come one day?

Who
is the shepherd into whose mouth the snake thus crawled?
Who
is the man into whose throat all that is heaviest, blackest will thus crawl?

The shepherd, however, bit as my cry had advised him; he bit with a good bite! He spat far away the snake’s head – and sprang up.

No longer a shepherd, no longer a man – a transformed being, surrounded with light,
laughing
! Never yet on earth had any man laughed as he laughed!

O my brothers, I heard a laughter that was no human laughter – and now a thirst consumes me, a longing that is never stilled.

My longing for this laughter consumes me: oh how do I endure still to live! And how could I endure to die now!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Of Involuntary Bliss

W
ITH
such riddles and bitterness in his heart did Zarathustra fare across the sea. When he was four days’ journey from the Blissful Islands and from his friends, however, he had overcome all his pain – triumphantly and with firm feet he again accepted his destiny.
²⁶
And then Zarathustra spoke thus to his rejoicing conscience:

I am again alone and willingly so, alone with the pure sky and the open sea; and again it is afternoon around me.

It was afternoon when I once found my friends for the first time, it was afternoon, too, when I found them a second time – at the hour when all light grows stiller.

For whatever happiness that is still travelling between heaven and earth now seeks shelter in a luminous soul:
with happiness
all light has now grown stiller.

O afternoon of my life! Once my happiness, too, climbed down into the valley to seek a shelter: there it found these open, hospitable souls.

O afternoon of my life! What have I not given away that I might possess one thing: this living plantation of my thoughts and this dawn of my highest hope!

Once the creator sought companions and children of
his
hope: and behold, it turned out that he could not find them, except he first create them himself.