Thus Spoke Zarathustra (36 page)

‘That is why I climbed into these mountains, that I might at last celebrate a festival once more, as becomes an old pope and church-father: for know, I am the last pope! – a festival of pious memories and divine services.

‘But now he himself is dead, the most pious of men, that saint in the forest who used continually to praise his God with singing and muttering.

‘When I found his hut I no longer found him himself, but I did find two wolves in it, howling over his death – for all animals loved him. Then I hurried away.

‘Had I come into these forests and mountains in vain? Then my heart decided to seek another, the most pious of all those who do not believe in God – to seek Zarathustra!’

Thus spoke the old man and gazed with penetrating eyes at him who stood before him; Zarathustra, however, took the old pope’s hand and for a long time regarded it admiringly.

‘Behold, venerable man.’ he said then, ‘what a long and beautiful hand! It is the hand of one who has always distributed blessings. But now it holds fast him you seek, me, Zarathustra.

‘It is I, the godless Zarathustra, the same who says: Who is more godless than I, that I may rejoice in his teaching?’

Thus spoke Zarathustra and pierced with his glance the thoughts and reservations of the old pope. At last the latter began:

‘He who loved and possessed him most, he has now lost him the most also:

‘behold, am I myself not the more godless of us two now? But who could rejoice in that!’

‘You served him to the last,’ asked Zarathustra thoughtfully, after a profound silence, ‘do you know
how
he died? Is it true what they say, that pity choked him,

‘that he saw how
man
hung on the Gross and could not endure it, that love for man became his Hell and at last his death?’

The old pope, however, did not answer, but looked away shyly and with a pained and gloomy expression.

‘Let him go,’ said Zarathustra after prolonged reflection, during which he continued to gaze straight in the old man’s eye.

‘Let him go, he is finished. And although it honours you that you speak only good of this dead god, yet you know as well as I
who
he was; and that he followed strange paths.’

‘Between ourselves,’ said the old pope, becoming cheerful, ‘or, as I may say, spoken beneath three eyes’
⁴⁴
(for he was blind in one eye) ‘in divine matters I am more enlightened than Zarathustra himself – and may well be so.

‘My love served him long years, my will obeyed all his will. A good servant, however, knows everything, and many things, too, that his master hides from himself.

‘He was a hidden god, full of secrecy. Truly, he even came by a son through no other than secret and indirect means. At the door of faith in him stands adultery.

‘Whoever honours him as a god of love does not think highly enough of love itself. Did this god not also want to be judge? But the lover loves beyond reward and punishment.

‘When he was young, this god from the orient, he was hard and revengeful and built himself a Hell for the delight of his favourites.

‘But at length he grew old and soft and mellow and compassionate, more like a grandfather than a father, most like a tottery old grandmother.

‘Then he sat, shrivelled, in his chimney corner, fretting over his weak legs, world-weary, weary of willing, and one day suffocated through his excessive pity.’

‘Old pope,’ Zarathustra interposed at this point, ‘did you see
that
with your own eyes? It certainly could have happened like that: like that,
and
also otherwise. When gods die, they always die many kinds of death.

‘But very well! One way or the other, one way and the other – he is gone! He offended the taste of my ears and eyes, I will say no worse of him.

‘I love everything that is clear-eyed and honest of speech.

But he – you must know it, old priest, there was something of your nature about him, something of the priestly nature – he was ambiguous.

‘He was also indistinct. How angry he was with us, this shorter of wrath, because we mistook his meaning! But why did he not speak more clearly?

‘And if our ears were to blame, why did he give us ears that were unable to hear him properly? If there was dirt in our ears, very well! who put it there?

‘He had too many failures, this potter who had not learned his craft I But that he took vengeance on his pots and creations because they had turned out badly – that was a sin
against good taste
.

‘There is also good taste in piety:
that
said at last: Away with
such
a god! Better no god, better to produce destiny on one’s own account, better to be a fool, better to be God oneself!’

‘What do I hear!’ the old pope said at this point, pricking up his ears; ‘O Zarathustra, you are more pious than you believe, with such an unbelief! Some god in you has converted you to your godlessness.

‘Is it not your piety itself that no longer allows you to believe in a god? And your exceeding honesty will yet carry you off beyond good and evil, too!

‘For behold, what has been reserved for you? You have eyes and hand and mouth destined for blessing from eternity. One does not bless with the hand alone.

‘In your neighbourhood, although you would be the most godless, I scent a stealthy odour of holiness and well-being that comes from long benedictions: it fills me with joy and sorrow.

‘Let me be your guest, O Zarathustra, for a single night! Nowhere on earth shall I be happier now than with you!’

‘Amen! So shall it be!’ said Zarathustra in great astonishment, ‘up yonder leads the way, there lies Zarathustra’s cave.

‘Indeed, I would gladly lead you there myself, venerable man, for I love all pious men. But now a cry of distress calls me hurriedly away from you.

‘I will have no one come to harm in my domain; my cave is an excellent refuge. And most of all I should like to set every sad and sorrowful person again on firm land and firm legs.

‘Who, however, could lift
your
melancholy from your shoulders? I am too weak for that. Truly, we should have to wait a long time before someone reawakened your god for you.

‘For this old god no longer lives: he is quite dead.’

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

The Ugliest Man

A
ND
again Zarathustra’s feet ran through forests and mountains, and his eyes sought and sought, but him they desired to see, the great sufferer and crier of distress, was nowhere to be seen. All the time he was on his way, however, he rejoiced in his heart and was thankful. ‘What good things this day has given me,’ he said, ‘as recompense for having begun so badly! What strange discoursers I have found!

‘Now I will long chew their words as if they were fine corn; my teeth shall grind and crunch them small, until they flow into my soul like milk!’

But when the path again rounded a rock, all at once the scenery changed, and Zarathustra stepped into a kingdom of death. Here black and red cliffs projected up: no grass, no tree, no cry of birds. For it was a valley which all beasts avoided, even the beasts of prey; except that a kind of ugly, thick, green serpent, when it grew old, came here to die. Therefore the shepherds called this valley ‘Serpent’s Death’.

Zarathustra, however, was plunged into dark recollections, for it seemed to him as if he had stood in this valley once before. And many heavy things settled upon his mind: so that he went slowly and ever slower and at last stopped. Then, however, as he opened his eyes, he saw something sitting on the pathway, shaped like a man and yet hardly like a man, something unutterable. And all at once Zarathustra was overcome by the
great shame of having beheld such a thing: blushing to his white hair, he turned his glance away and lifted his foot to leave this evil spot. But then the dead wilderness resounded: for from the ground issued a gurgling, rasping sound such as water makes in stopped-up water-pipes at night; and at last a human voice and human speech emerged from it: it sounded thus:

‘Zarathustra! Zarathustra! Read my riddle! Speak, speak! What is the
revenge on the witness?

‘I entice you back, here is slippery ice! Take care, take care that your pride does not here break its legs!

‘You think yourself wise, proud Zarathustra! So read the riddle, you hard nut-cracker – the riddle that I am! So speak: who am I?’

But when Zarathustra had heard these words, what do you think then happened to his soul?
Pity overcame him
; and all at once he sank down, like an oak tree that has long withstood many woodchoppers, heavily, suddenly, to the terror even of those who wanted to fell it. But at once he arose from the ground and his countenance grew stern.

‘I know you well,’ he said in a brazen voice:
‘you are the murderer of God
! Let me go.

‘You could not
endure
him who saw
you
– who saw you unblinking and through and through, you ugliest man! You took revenge upon this witness!’

Thus spoke Zarathustra and made to depart; but the unutterable creature grasped for a corner of his garment and began again to gurgle and grope for speech. ‘Stay!’ he said at last,

‘stay! Do not go by! I have divined what axe it was that struck you to earth: Hail to you, O Zarathustra, that you are standing again!

‘You have divined, I know it well, how he feels who killed God – how the murderer of God feels. Stay I Sit beside me; it is not to no purpose.

‘To whom did I intend to go if not to you? Stay, sit down! But do not look at me! Honour thus – my ugliness!

‘They persecute me: now
you
are my last refuge.
Not
with
their hatred,
not
with their henchmen – oh, I would mock such persecution, I would be proud and glad of it!

‘Has not all success hitherto been with the well-persecuted? And he who persecutes well easily learns to
follow
⁴⁵
– for he is already – at the heels of others. But it is their
pity
,

‘it is their pity from which I flee and flee to you. O Zarathustra, my last refuge, protect me; you, the only one who can divine me:

‘you have divined how he feels who has killed
him
. Stay! And if you will go, impatient man, do not go the way I came.
That
way is bad.

‘Are you angry with me because I have mangled language too long? Because I have advised you? But know: it is I, the ugliest man,

‘who also have the biggest, heaviest feet. Where I have gone, the way is bad. I tread all roads to death and to destruction.

‘But that you went past me, silent; that you blushed, I saw it well: by that I knew you for Zarathustra.

‘Anyone else would have thrown me his alms, his pity, in glance and speech. But for that – I am not enough of a beggar, you have divined that –

‘for that I am too
rich
, rich in big things, in fearsome things, in the ugliest things, in the most unutterable things! Your shame, O Zarathustra,
honoured
me!

‘I escaped with difficulty from the importunate crowd of those who pity, that I might find the only one who today teaches “Pity is importunate” – you, O Zarathustra!

‘ – be it the pity of a god, be it human pity: pity is contrary to modesty. And unwillingness to help may be nobler than that virtue which comes running with help.

‘That
however, pity, is called virtue itself with all little people – they lack reverence for great misfortune, great ugliness, great failure.

‘I look beyond all these, as a dog looks over the backs of swarming flocks of sheep. They are little, well-meaning, well-woolled, colourless people.

‘As a heron looks contemptuously over shallow ponds, with
head thrown back: so do I look over the swarm of colourless little waves and wills and souls.

‘Too long have they been allowed right, these little people:
thus
at last they have been allowed power, too – now they teach: “Only that is good which little people call good.”

‘And “truth” today is what the preacher said who himself sprang from them, that strange saint and advocate of the little people who testified of himself “I – am the truth”.

‘This immodest man has long made the cock’s comb of the little people rise up in pride – he who taught no small error when he taught “I – am the truth”.

‘Was an immodest man ever answered more politely? But you, O Zarathustra, passed him by and said: “No! No! Thrice No!”

‘You warned against his error, as the first to do so, you warned against pity – no one else, only you and those of your kind.

‘You are ashamed of the shame of the great sufferer; and truly, when you say “A great cloud emerges from pity, take care mankind!”

‘When you teach “All creators are hard, all great love is beyond pity”: O Zarathustra, how well-read in weather-omens you seem to me!

‘You yourself, however – warn yourself too against
your
pity! For many are on their way to you, many suffering, doubting, despairing, drowning, freezing people –

‘I warn you too against myself. You have read my best, my worst riddle, me myself, and what I have done. I know the axe that fells you.

‘But he –
had
to die: he looked with eyes that saw
everything
– he saw the depths and abysses of man, all man’s hidden disgrace and ugliness.

‘His pity knew no shame: he crept into my dirtiest corners. This most curious, most over-importunate, over-compassionate god had to die.

‘He always saw
me
: I desired to take revenge on such a witness – or cease to live myself.

‘The god who saw everything,
even man
: this god had to die! Man could not
endure
that such a witness should live.’

Thus spoke the ugliest man. Zarathustra, however, rose and prepared to go: for he was chilled to his very marrow.