Thus Spoke Zarathustra (33 page)

Oh how should I not lust for eternity and for the wedding ring of rings – the Ring of Recurrence!

Never yet did I find the woman by whom I wanted children, unless it be this woman, whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!

For I love you, O Eternity!

7

If ever I spread out a still sky above myself and flew with my own wings into my own sky:

if, playing, I have swum into deep light-distances and bird-wisdom came to my freedom:

but thus speaks bird-wisdom: ‘Behold, there is no above, no below! Fling yourself about, out, back, weightless bird I Sing! speak no more!

‘are not all words made for the heavy? Do not all words lie to the light? Sing! speak no more!’

Oh how should I not lust for eternity and for the wedding ring of rings – the Ring of Recurrence!

Never yet did I find the woman by whom I wanted children, unless it be this woman, whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!

For I love you, O Eternity!

PART FOUR

Alas, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the compassionate? And what in the world has caused more suffering than the follies of the compassionate?

Woe to all lovers who cannot surmount pity
!

Thus spoke the Devil to me once: Even God has bis Hell: it is bis love for man
.

And I lately beard him say these words: God is dead; God has died of bit pity for man
.

ZARATHUSTRA:     
‘
Of the Compassionate
’

The Honey Offering

A
ND
again months and years passed over Zarathustra’s soul, and he did not heed it; his hair, however, grew white. One day, as he was sitting upon a stone before his cave and gazing silently out – but the outlook there is of the sea and tortuous abysses – his animals went thoughtfully around him and at last placed themselves in front of him.

‘O Zarathustra,’ they said, ‘are you perhaps looking out for your happiness?’ – ‘Of what account is happiness?’ he answered. ‘For long I have not aspired after happiness, I aspire after my work.’ ‘O Zarathustra,’ said the animals then, ‘you say that as one who has too many good things. Do you not lie in a sky-blue lake of happiness?’ ‘You buffoons,’ answered Zarathustra and smiled, ‘how well you chose that image! But you know too that my happiness is heavy and not like a liquid wave: it oppresses me and will not leave me, and behaves like molten pitch.’

Then his animals again went thoughtfully around him and placed themselves once more in front of him. ‘O Zarathustra,’ they said, ‘is
that
why you yourself are growing ever darker and more sallow, although your hair looks white and flaxen? Behold, you are sitting in your pitch!’ ‘What are you saying, my animals?’ said Zarathustra laughing. ‘Truly, I spoke slander when I spoke of pitch. What is happening to me happens to all fruits that grow ripe. It is the
honey
in my veins that makes my blood thicker, and my soul quieter.’ ‘It will be so, O Zarathustra,’ answered the animals and pressed towards him; ‘but would you not like to climb a high mountain today? The air is clear, and today one can see more of the world than ever.’ ‘Yes, my animals,’ he answered, ‘your advice is admirable and after my own inclination: today I will climb a high mountain! But take care that I have honey ready to hand
there, yellow, white, fine, ice-cool golden honey in the comb. For I intend to offer the honey offering.’

But when Zarathustra had reached the summit he sent home the animals which had accompanied him, and found that he was now alone: then he laughed with his whole heart, looked around him and spoke thus:

That I spoke of offerings and honey offerings was merely a ruse and, truly, a useful piece of folly! Up here I can speak more freely than before hermits’ caves and hermits’ pets.

Offer – what? I squander what is given me, I, a squanderer with a thousand hands: how could I call that – an offering!

And when I desired honey, I desired only bait and sweet syrup and gum, which even grumbling bears and strange, sullen, wicked birds are greedy for:

the finest bait, such as huntsmen and fishermen need. For although the world is like a dark animal-jungle and a pleasure-ground for all wild huntsmen, it seems to me to be rather and preferably an unfathomable, rich sea,

a sea full of many-coloured fishes and crabs for which even the gods might long and become fishers and casters of nets: so rich is the world in strange things, great and small!

Especially the human world, the human sea: now I cast my golden fishing-rod into
it
and say: Open up, human abyss!

Open up and throw me your fishes and glistening crabs! With my finest bait shall I bait today the strangest human fish!

My happiness itself shall I cast far and wide, between sunrise, noontide, and sunset, to see if many human fishes will not learn to kick and tug at my happiness,

until they, biting on my sharp, hidden hooks, have to come up to
my
height, the most multicoloured groundlings of the abyss to the most wicked of all fishers of men.

For I am
he
, from the heart and from the beginning, drawing, drawing towards me, drawing up to me, raising up, a drawer, trainer, and taskmaker who once bade himself, and not in vain: ‘Become what you are!’

Thus men may now come
up
to me: for I am still waiting for the signs that it is time for my descent; as yet I do not myself go down, as I must, among men.

Therefore I wait here, cunning and scornful upon high mountains, not impatient, not patient, on the contrary one who has unlearned even patience, because he no longer ‘suffers in patience’.
⁴¹

For my destiny is allowing me time: has it forgotten me? Or is it sitting in the shadows behind a great stone catching flies?

And truly, I am grateful to my eternal destiny for not hunting and harrying me and for allowing me time for buffooneries and mischief: so that today I have climbed this high mountain to catch fish.

Has a man ever caught fish on a high mountain? And if what I want and do up here is a stupidity, better to do it than to become solemn and green and sallow by waiting down there,

to become by waiting a pompous shorter of wrath, a holy howling storm from the mountains, an impatient man crying down into the valleys: ‘Listen, or I shall lash you with the scourge of God!’

Not that I should be angry with such wrathful men on that account! They are good enough for a laugh! How impatient they must be, these great alarm-drums that must find a voice today or never!

But I and my destiny – we do not speak to Today, neither do we speak to the Never: we have patience and time and more than time. For it must come one day and may not pass by.

What must come one day and may not pass by? Our great Hazar, our great, far-off empire of man, the thousand-year empire of Zarathustra.

How far off may that ‘far off’ be? What do I care! But I am not less certain of it on that account – I stand securely with both feet upon this foundation,

upon this eternal foundation, upon hard, primordial rock, upon this highest, hardest primordial hill to which all the
winds come as to the dividing-place of storms, asking Where? and Whence? and Whither?

Here laugh, laugh my bright and wholesome wickedness! Down from high mountains cast your glistening, mocking laughter. With your glistening bait for me the fairest human fish!

And what belongs to
me
in all seas, my in-and-for-me in all things – fish
it
out for me, bring
it
here to me: I wait for it, I the wickedest of all fishermen.

Away, away my hook! In, down, bait for my happiness! Drop down your sweetest dew, honey of my heart! Bite, my hook, into the belly of all black affliction!

Gaze out, gaze out, my eye! Oh how many seas round about me, what dawning human futures! And above me – what rosy stillness! What cloudless silence!

The Cry of Distress

T
HE
following day Zarathustra was again sitting upon the stone before his cave while the animals were roving about in the world outside fetching fresh food – and fresh honey, too: for Zarathustra had consumed and squandered the old honey to the last drop. But as he was sitting there with a stick in his hand, tracing the shadow of his figure in the ground, thinking (and truly!) not about himself and his shadow – all at once he started back in alarm: for he saw another shadow beside his own. And as he quickly rose and looked around, behold, there stood beside him the prophet, the same that had once eaten and drunk at his table, the prophet of the great weariness who taught: ‘It is all one, nothing is worth while, the world is without meaning, knowledge chokes.’ But his face had changed in the interim; and when Zarathustra looked into the prophet’s eyes, his heart was again startled: so many evil prophecies and ashen lightning-flashes passed across this face!

The prophet, who had perceived what was going on in Zarathustra’s soul, wiped his hand over his face, as if he
wanted to wipe it away; Zarathustra did the same. And when each had silently composed and reassured himself, they shook hands as a sign that they wanted to recognize one another.

‘Welcome to you,’ said Zarathustra, ‘you prophet of the great weariness; not in vain shall you once have been guest at my table. Eat and drink with me today also, and forgive a cheerful old man for sitting down at table with you!’ ‘A cheerful old man?’ answered the prophet, shaking his head. ‘But whoever you are or want to be, O Zarathustra, you have little time left up here to be it – in a little time your boat shall no longer sit in the dry!’ ‘Am I then sitting in the dry?’ asked Zarathustra, laughing. ‘The waves around your mountain rise and rise,’ answered the prophet, ‘waves of great distress and affliction: soon they will lift your boat too, and carry you away.’ Thereupon Zarathustra was silent and wondered. ‘Do you still hear nothing?’ the prophet went on. ‘Does not the sound of rushing and roaring arise from the depths?’ Zarathustra was again silent and listened: then he heard a long, protracted cry, which the abysses threw from one to another, for none of them wanted to retain it, so evil did it sound.

‘You preacher of evil,’ said Zarathustra at last, ‘that is a cry of distress and a human cry, perhaps it comes from out a black sea. But what is human distress to me! The ultimate sin that is reserved for me – perhaps you know what it is called?’

‘Pity
!’ answered the prophet from an overflowing heart, and raised both hands aloft – ‘O Zarathustra, I come to seduce you to your ultimate sin!’ –

And hardly were these words spoken than the cry rang out again, and more protracted and more distressful than before, and much nearer. ‘Do you hear? Do you hear, O Zarathustra?’ cried the prophet. ‘The cry is meant for you, it calls to you: Come, come, come, it is time, it is high time!’

Hereupon Zarathustra was silent, confused, and deeply shaken; at last he asked like one undecided: ‘And who is it that calls me?’

‘But you know who it is,’ answered the prophet vehemently, ‘why do you hide yourself? It is the
Higher Man
that cries for you!’

‘The Higher Man?’ cried Zarathustra, horror-struck. ‘What does
he
want? What does
he
want? The Higher Man! What does he want here?’ – and his skin was covered with sweat.

The prophet, however, did not respond to Zarathustra’s anguish, but listened intently towards the depths. But when it had remained quiet there for a long time, he turned his gaze back and saw Zarathustra standing and trembling.

‘O Zarathustra,’ he began in a scornful voice, ‘you do not stand there like one made giddy by happiness: you will have to dance if you are not to fall over!

‘But even if you were to dance before me and indulge in all your tricks, no one could say: “Behold, here dances the last happy man!”

‘Anyone who sought
him
here would visit these heights in vain: he would find caves, certainly, and backwood-caves, hiding-places for the hidden, but not mines of happiness and treasure-houses and new gold-veins of happiness.

‘Happiness – how could man find happiness with such buried men and hermits! Must I yet seek ultimate happiness upon blissful islands and far away among forgotten seas?

‘But it is all one, nothing is worth while, seeking is useless, and there are no blissful islands any more!’