Thus Spoke Zarathustra (31 page)

‘Has perhaps a new knowledge come to you, a bitter, oppressive knowledge? You have lain like leavened dough, your soul has risen and overflowed its brim.’

‘O my animals,’ answered Zarathustra, ‘go on talking and let me listen! Your talking is such refreshment: where there is talking, the world is like a garden to me. How sweet it is, that words and sounds of music exist: are words and music not rainbows and seeming bridges between things eternally separated?

‘Every soul is a world of its own; for every soul every other soul is an afterworld.

‘Appearance lies most beautifully among the most alike; for the smallest gap is the most difficult to bridge.

‘For me – how could there be an outside-of-me? There is no outside! But we forget that, when we hear music; how sweet it is, that we forget!

‘Are things not given names and musical sounds, so that man may refresh himself with things? Speech is a beautiful foolery: with it man dances over all things.

‘How sweet is all speech and all the falsehoods of music! With music does our love dance upon many-coloured rainbows.’

‘O Zarathustra,’ said the animals then, ‘all things themselves dance for such as think as we: they come and offer their hand and laugh and flee – and return.

‘Everything goes, everything returns; the wheel of existence rolls for ever. Everything dies, everything blossoms anew; the year of existence runs on for ever.

‘Everything breaks, everything is joined anew; the same house of existence builds itself for ever. Everything departs, everything meets again; the ring of existence is true to itself for ever.

‘Existence begins in every instant; the ball There rolls around every Here. The middle is everywhere. The path of eternity is crooked.’

‘O you buffoons and barrel-organs!’ answered Zarathustra and smiled again;’ how well you know what had to be fulfilled in seven days:

‘and how that monster crept into my throat and choked me! But I bit its head off and spat it away.

‘And you – have already made a hurdy-gurdy song of it? I, however, lie here now, still weary from this biting and spitting away, still sick with my own redemption.

‘And you looked on at it all?
O my animals, are you, too, cruel? Did you desire to be spectators of my great pain, as men do? For man is the cruellest animal.

‘More than anything on earth he enjoys tragedies, bullfights, and crucifixions; and when he invented Hell for himself, behold, it was his heaven on earth.

‘When the great man cries out, straightway the little man comes running; his tongue is hanging from his mouth with lasciviousness. He, however, calls it his “pity”.

‘The little man, especially the poet – how zealously he accuses life in words! Listen to it, but do not overlook the delight that is in all accusation!

‘Such accusers of life: life overcomes them with a glance of its eye. “Do you love me?” it says impudently; “just wait a little, I have no time for you yet.”

‘Man is the cruellest animal towards himself; and with all who call themselves “sinners” and “bearers of the Cross” and “penitents” do not overlook the sensual pleasure that is in this complaint and accusation!

‘And I myself- do I want to be the accuser of man? Ah, my animals, this alone have I learned, that the wickedest in man is necessary for the best in him,

‘that all that is most wicked in him is his best
strength
and the hardest stone for the highest creator; and that man must grow better
and
wickeder:

‘To know: Man is wicked;
that
was to be tied to no torture-stake – but I cried as no one had cried before:

‘“Alas, that his wickedest is so very small! Alas, that his best is so very small!”

‘The great disgust at man –
it
choked me and had crept into my throat: and what the prophet prophesied: “It is all one, nothing is worth while, knowledge chokes.”

‘A long twilight limps in front of me, a mortally-weary,
death-intoxicated sadness which speaks with a yawn.

‘“The man of whom you are weary, the little man, recurs eternally” – thus my sadness yawned and dragged its feet and could not fall asleep.

‘The human earth became to me a cave, its chest caved in, everything living became to me human decay and bones and mouldering past.

‘My sighs sat upon all the graves of man and could no longer rise; my sighs and questions croaked and choked and gnawed and wailed by day and night:

‘“Alas, man recurs eternally! The little man recurs eternally!”

‘I had seen them both naked, the greatest man and the smallest man: all too similar to one another, even the greatest all too human!

‘The greatest all too small! – that was my disgust at man I And eternal recurrence even for the smallest! that was my disgust at all existence!

‘Ah, disgust! Disgust! Disgust!’ Thus spoke Zarathustra and sighed and shuddered; for he remembered his sickness. But his animals would not let him speak further.

‘Speak no further, convalescent!’ – thus his animals answered him, ‘but go out to where the world awaits you like a garden.

‘Go out to the roses and bees and flocks of doves! But go out especially to the song-birds, so that you may learn
singing
from them!

‘For convalescents should sing; let the healthy talk. And when the healthy man, too, desires song, he desires other songs than the convalescent.’

‘O you buffoons and barrel-organs, do be quiet!’ answered Zarathustra and smiled at his animals. ‘How well you know what comfort I devised for myself in seven days!

‘That I have to sing again –
that
comfort and
this
convalescence did I devise for myself: do you want to make another hurdy-gurdy song out of that, too?’

‘Speak no further,’ his animals answered once more; ‘rather first prepare yourself a lyre, convalescent, a new lyre!

‘For behold, O Zarathustra! New lyres are needed for your new songs.

‘Sing and bubble over, O Zarathustra, heal your soul with new songs, so that you may bear your great destiny, that was never yet the destiny of any man!

‘For your animals well know, O Zarathustra, who you are and must become: behold,
you are the teacher of the eternal recurrence
, that is now
your
destiny!

‘That you have to be the first to teach this doctrine – how should this great destiny not also be your greatest danger and sickness!

‘Behold, we know what you teach: that all things recur eternally and we ourselves with them, and that we have already existed an infinite number of times before and all things with us.

‘You teach that there is a great year of becoming, a colossus of a year: this year must, like an hour-glass, turn itself over again and again, so that it may run down and run out anew:

‘so that all these years resemble one another, in the greatest things and in the smallest, so that we ourselves resemble ourselves in each great year, in the greatest things and in the smallest.

‘And if you should die now, O Zarathustra: behold, we know too what you would then say to yourself – but your animals ask you not to die yet!

‘You would say – and without trembling, but rather gasping for happiness: for a great weight and oppression would have been lifted from you, most patient of men!

‘“Now I die and decay,” you would say, “and in an instant I shall be nothingness. Souls are as mortal as bodies.

“‘But the complex of causes in which I am entangled will recur – it will create me again! I myself am part of these causes of the eternal recurrence.

“‘I shall return, with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with this serpent –
not
to a new life or a better life or a similar life:

“‘I shall return eternally to this identical and self-same life,
in the greatest things and in the smallest, to teach once more the eternal recurrence of all things,

‘“to speak once more the teaching of the great noontide of earth and man, to tell man of the Superman once more.

‘“I spoke my teaching, I broke upon my teaching: thus my eternal fate will have it – as prophet do I perish!

‘“Now the hour has come when he who is going down shall bless himself. Thus –
ends
Zarathustra’s down-going.’”

When the animals had spoken these words they fell silent and expected that Zarathustra would say something to them: but Zarathustra did not hear that they were silent. On the contrary, he lay still with closed eyes like a sleeper, although he was not asleep: for he was conversing with his soul. The serpent and the eagle, however, when they found him thus silent, respected the great stillness around him and discreetly withdrew.

Of the Great Longing

O
MY
soul, I taught you to say ‘today’ as well as ‘once’ and ‘formerly’ and to dance your dance over every Here and There and Over-there.

O my soul, I rescued you from all corners, I brushed dust, spiders, and twilight away from you.

O my soul, I washed the petty shame and corner-virtue away from you and persuaded you to stand naked before the eyes of the sun.

With the storm which is called ‘spirit’ I blew across your surging sea; I blew all clouds away, I killed even that killer-bird
⁴⁰
called ‘sin’.

O my soul, I gave you the right to say No like the storm and to say Yes as the open sky says Yes: now, silent as light you stand, and you pass through denying storms.

O my soul, I gave you back freedom over created and uncreated things: and who knows as you know the delight of things to come?

O my soul, I taught you contempt that comes not as the
gnawing of a worm, the great, the loving contempt which loves most where it despises most.

O my soul, I taught you so to persuade that you persuade the elements themselves to come to you: like the sun that persuades the sea to rise even to its height.

O my soul, I took from you all obeying, knee-bending, and obsequiousness; I myself gave you the names ‘Dispeller of Care’ and ‘Destiny’.

O my soul, I gave you new names and many-coloured toys, I called you ‘destiny’ and ‘encompassment of encompassments’ and ‘time’s umbilical cord’ and ‘azure bell’.

O my soul, I gave your soil all wisdom to drink, all new wines and also all immemorially ancient strong wines of wisdom.

O my soul, I poured every sun and every night and every silence and every longing upon you: – then you grew up for me like a vine.

O my soul, now you stand superabundant and heavy, a vine with swelling udders and close-crowded golden-brown wine-grapes:

oppressed and weighed down by your happiness, expectant from abundance and yet bashful because of your expectancy.

O my soul, now there is nowhere a soul more loving and encompassing and spacious! Where could future and past be closer together than with you?

O my soul, I have given you everything and my hands have become empty through you: and now! now you ask me smiling and full of melancholy: ‘Which of us owes thanks?

‘does the giver not owe thanks to the receiver for receiving? Is giving not a necessity? Is taking not – compassion?’

O my soul, I understand the smile of your melancholy: your superabundance itself now stretches out longing hands!

Your fullness looks out over raging seas and searches and waits; the longing of over-fullness gazes out of the smiling heaven of your eyes!

And truly, O my soul I Who could behold your smile and not dissolve into tears? The angels themselves dissolve into tears through the over-kindness of your smile.

It is your kindness and over-kindness that wishes not to complain and weep: and yet your smile longs for tears, O my soul, and your trembling mouth for sobs.

‘Is all weeping not a complaining? And all complaining not an accusing?’ Thus you speak to yourself, and because of that,

O my soul, you will rather smile than pour forth your sorrow, pour forth in gushing tears all your sorrow at your fullness and at all the desire of the vine for the vintager and the vine-knife!

But if you will not weep nor alleviate in weeping your purple melancholy, you will have to
sing
, O my soul! Behold, I smile myself, who foretold you this:

to sing with an impetuous song, until all seas grow still to listen to your longing,

until, over still, longing seas, the boat glides, the golden marvel around whose gold all good, bad, marvellous things leap:

and many great and small beasts also, and everything that has light, marvellous feet that can run upon violet paths,

towards the golden marvel, the boat of free will, and to its master: he, however, is the vintager who waits with diamond-studded vine-knife,

your great redeemer, O my soul, the nameless one for whom only future songs will find a name! And truly, your breath is already fragrant with future songs,

already you glow and dream, already you drink thirstily from all deep, resounding wells of comfort, already your melancholy reposes in the bliss of future songs!

O my soul, now I have given you everything and even the last thing I had to give, and my hands have become empty through you: –
that I bade you sing
, behold, that was the last thing I had to give!

That I bade you sing, now say, say:
Which
of us now – owes thanks? But better still: sing for me, sing, O my soul! And let me pay thanks!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

The Second Dance Song

1

L
ATELY
I gazed into your eyes, O Life: I saw gold glittering in your eyes of night – my heart stood still with delight:

I saw a golden bark glittering upon dark waters, a submerging, surging, re-emerging golden tossing bark!

At my feet, my dancing-mad feet, you threw a glance, a laughing, questioning, melting tossing glance:

Twice only did you raise your castanets in your little hands – then my feet were already tossing in a mad dance.

My heels raised themselves, my toes listened for what you should propose: for the dancer wears his ears – in his toes!