It wants to be kissed and sucked by the thirst of the sun; it wants to become air and height and light’s footpath and light itself!
Truly, I love life like the sun and all deep seas.
And to me this is knowledge: all that is deep shall ascend-to my height!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
SCHOLARS
As I LAY ASLEEP, a sheep ate at the ivy-wreath on my head—ate and said: “Zarathustra is no longer a scholar.”
It said this and went away stiffly and proudly. A child told me this.
I like to lie here where the children play, beside the ruined wall, among thistles and red poppies.
I am still a scholar to the children, and also to the thistles and red poppies. They are innocent even in their malice.
But to the sheep I am no longer a scholar: thus my fate will have it-bless it!
For this is the truth: I have left the house of the scholars and slammed the door behind me.
My soul sat hungry at their table for too long: I have not been schooled, as they have, to crack knowledge as one cracks nuts.
I love freedom and the air over fresh soil; I would rather sleep on ox skins than on their honors and dignities.
I am too hot and scorched with my own thought: often it is ready to take away my breath. Then I have to go into the open air and away from all dusty rooms.
But they sit coolly in the cool shade: they want to be mere spectators in everything and they take care not to sit where the sun burns on the steps.
Like those who stand in the street and gape at the passers-by: thus they too wait and gape at the thoughts that others have thought.
If one lays hold of them they involuntarily raise a dust like sacks of flour: but who could guess that their dust came from corn and from the yellow delight of summer fields?
When they pose as wise their petty sayings and truths make me shiver: their wisdom often smells as if it came from the swamp; and it’s true, I have even heard the frog croak in it!
They are clever, they have nimble fingers: what is my simplicity next to their multiplicity! Their fingers understand all threading and knitting and weaving: thus they knit the socks of the spirit!
They are good clocks: only be careful to wind them up properly! Then they indicate the hour without mistake and making a modest noise.
They work like mills and like pestles: just throw seed corn to them!-they know how to grind corn small and make white dust out of it.
They keep a sharp eye on one another and do not properly trust each other. Ingenious in little artifices, they wait for those whose knowledge walks on lame feet—they wait like spiders.
I have seen how carefully they prepare their poisons; and they always put on glass gloves to do it.
They also know how to play with loaded dice; and I found them playing so eagerly that they sweated.
We are strangers to each other, and their virtues are even more repugnant to my taste than their falsehoods and false dice.
And when I lived with them I lived above them. Therefore they took a dislike to me.
They wanted to hear nothing of any one walking above their heads; and so they put wood and earth and rubbish between me and their heads.
Thus they muffled the sound of my steps: and so far I have been least heard by the most learned.
All mankind’s faults and weaknesses they put between themselves and me—in their houses they call it a “false ceiling.”
But nevertheless I walk with my thoughts above their heads; and even if I walk on my own errors, still I am above them and their heads.
For men are not equal: so speaks justice. And what I desire they may not desire!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
ON POETS12
“SINCE I HAVE KNOWN the body better”—said Zarathustra to one of his disciples—“the spirit has been spirit only figuratively; and all that is ‘imperishable’—that too is only a simile.”
“I heard you say so once before,” answered the disciple, “and then you added: ‘But the poets lie too much.’ Why did you say that the poets lie too much?”13
“Why?” said Zarathustra. “You ask why? I am not one of those who may be questioned about their why.
“Is my experience only from yesterday? It was long ago that I experienced the reasons for my opinions.
“Should I not have to be a barrel of memory if I wanted to carry my reasons around with me?
“It is already too much for me even to retain my opinions; and many a bird flies away.
“And now and then I also find an unfamiliar stray in my dove-cote, which trembles when I lay my hand upon it.
“But what did Zarathustra once say to you? That the poets lie too much?-But Zarathustra too is a poet.
“Now you believe that he spoke the truth here? Why do you believe it?”
The disciple answered: “I believe in Zarathustra.” But Zarathustra shook his head and smiled.—
Belief does not make me blessed, he said, least of all belief in me.
But granting that some one did say in all seriousness that the poets lie too much: he was right—we do lie too much.
We also know too little and are bad learners: so we have to lie.
And which of us poets has not adulterated his wine? Many a poisonous mishmash has been produced in our cellars, many an indescribable thing has been done there.
And because we know little, therefore the poor in spirit please our hearts, especially when they are young women!
And we desire even those things which old women tell one another in the evening. This we call the eternal-feminine in us.
And we believe in the people and their “wisdom” as if there were a special secret entrance to knowledge which is blocked to those who have learned anything.
This, however, all poets believe: that whoever pricks up his ears when lying in the grass or on lonely slopes, learns something of the things that are between heaven and earth.
And if they experience tender emotions, then the poets always think that nature herself is in love with them:
And that she steals to their ear to whisper secrets into it, and amorous flatteries: of this they boast and pride themselves before all mortals!
Ah, there are so many things between heaven and earth of which only the poets have dreamed!14
And especially above the heavens: for all gods are poet’s parables, poet’s prevarications!
Truly, it always lifts us upward-that is to the land of the clouds: on these we set our motley bastards and call them gods and Übermenschen:15—
Are they not light enough for those chairs!—all these gods and Übermenschen?—
Ah, how weary I am of all these inadequate beings that are insisted on as actual! Ah, how weary I am of the poets!
When Zarathustra spoke thus his disciple was angry with him but was silent. And Zarathustra was silent too; and his eye looked inward as if it gazed into the far distance. At last he sighed and drew breath.-I am of today and before, he said then; but something is in me that is of tomorrow, and the day following, and time to come.
I became weary of the poets, of the old and of the new: to me they are all superficial and shallow seas.
They have not thought deeply enough: therefore their feeling did not touch bottom.
Some lust and some boredom: these have as yet been their best reflection.
All the jingling of their harps is to me the breathing and coughing of ghosts; what have they known so far of the fervor of tones!—
They are also not pure enough for me: they all muddy their waters to make them seem deep.
And they would like to prove themselves reconcilers: but to me they are mediators and meddlers, and half-and-half and impure!—
Ah, I cast my net into their sea and meant to catch good fish; but I always drew out the head of some old god.
Thus the sea gave the hungry a stone. And they themselves may well have come from the sea.
Certainly, one finds pearls in them: in
that way they are the more like hard mollusks. And instead of a soul I often found salty slime in them.
They have learned vanity too from the sea: is not the sea the peacock of peacocks?
It unfurls its tail even before the ugliest of all buffaloes it spread out its tail, it never tires of its lace fan of silver and silk.
The buffalo looks on disdainfully, his soul like the sand, more yet like the thicket, but most like the swamp.
What is beauty and sea and peacock-splendor to him! This parable I speak to the poets.
Truly, their spirit itself is the peacock of peacocks, and a sea of vanity!
The spirit of the poet seeks spectators: even if they are also buffaloes! —
But I became weary of this spirit: and I see the time coming when it will become weary of itself.
Already I have seen the poets transformed and their glance turned towards themselves.
I saw ascetics of the spirit approach: they grew out of the poets.
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
ON GREAT EVENTS
THERE IS AN ISLAND in the sea—not far from the happy islands of Zarathustra-on which a volcano always smokes; the people, and especially the old women among them, say that this island is placed as a rock before the gate of the underworld: but that the narrow downward path which leads to this gate goes through the volcano itself.
Now about the time that Zarathustra was living on the happy islands, it happened that a ship anchored at the island of the smoking mountain; and the crew went ashore to shoot rabbits. About noon, however, when the captain and his men were together again, they suddenly saw a man coming towards them through the air, and a voice said distinctly: “It is time! It is high time!” But when the figure was nearest to them-it flew past quickly however, like a shadow, in the direction of the volcano-then they recognized with the greatest surprise that it was Zarathustra; for they had all seen him before except the captain himself, and they loved him as the people love: in such a way that love and awe were combined in equal degree.
“Look at that!” said the old helmsman, “there goes Zarathustra to hell!”
About the same time that these sailors landed on the fire island, there was a rumor that Zarathustra had disappeared; and when his friends were asked about it, they said that he had gone on board a ship by night, without saying where he was going.
Thus there arose some uneasiness; but after three days the story of the ship’s crew came to add to this uneasiness-and now all the people said that the devil had taken Zarathustra. Of course his disciples laughed at this talk; and one of them even said: “I would sooner believe that Zarathustra has taken the devil.” But at the bottom of their hearts they were all full of anxiety and longing: so their joy was great when on the fifth day Zarathustra appeared among them.
And this is the story of Zarathustra’s conversation with the firedog:
The earth, he said, has a skin; and this skin has diseases. One of these diseases, for example, is called: “man.”
And another of these diseases is called “fire dog”: men have told many lies and been told many lies about him.
To fathom this secret I went over the sea: and I have seen truth naked, truly! barefoot to the neck.
Now I know how it is concerning the fire dog; and likewise concerning all the overthrow- and scum-devils which not only old women fear.
“Up with you, fire dog, out of your depth!” I cried, “and confess how deep that depth is! Whence comes that which you snort up?
“You drink deeply at the sea: your salty eloquence betrays that! Truly, for a dog of the depth you take your nourishment too much from the surface!
“At best I regard you as the ventriloquist of the earth: and every time I heard overthrow- and scum-devils speak, I found them like you: salty, lying, and superficial.
“You understand how to roar and to darken with ashes! You are the best braggarts, and have sufficiently learned the art of making mud boil.
“Where you are, there must always be mud at hand, and much that is spongy, hollow, and compressed: it wants to be freed.
“ ‘Freedom’ you all roar most eagerly: but I have unlearned belief in ‘great events,’ when there is much roaring and smoke about them.
“And believe me, friend hellish-noise! The greatest events—are not our loudest but our stillest hours. The world revolves not around the inventors of new noise but around the inventors of new values; it revolves inaudibly.
“Admit it! Once your noise and smoke passed away not much had taken place. What did it matter if a city had become mummified and a statue lay in the mud!
“And this I say also to the overthrowers of statues. It is certainly the greatest folly to throw salt into the sea and statues into the mud.
“The statue lay in the mud of your contempt: but just this is its law, that out of contempt its life and living beauty grow again!
“With more divine features it now arises, seductive in its suffering; and truly! it will yet thank you for overthrowing it, you subverters!
“But I offer this advice to kings and churches, and to all that is weak with age or virtue-let yourselves be overthrown! That you may again come to life, and that virtue may come to you!—”
Thus I spoke before the fire dog: then he interrupted me sullenly and asked: “Church? What is that?”
“Church?” I answered, “that is a kind of state, and indeed the most mendacious. But be silent, you deceptive dog! You surely know your own kind best!
“Like yourself the state is a deceptive dog; like you it likes to speak with smoke and roaring-to make believe, like you, that it speaks out of the belly of things.
“For it seeks by all means to be the most important beast on earth, the state; and people believe it too.”
When I had said this, the fire dog acted as if he were furious with envy. “What!” he cried, “the most important beast on earth? And people believe it too?” And so much steam and terrible shrieking came out of his throat that I thought he would choke with vexation and envy.
At last he became calmer and his panting subsided; but as soon as he was quiet I said laughingly:
“You are angry, fire dog: so I am right about you!
“And that I may continue to be right, hear about another fire dog: he really speaks from the heart of the earth.
“His breath exhales gold and golden rain: so his heart wants it. What are ashes and smoke and hot mud to him now!
“Laughter flutters from him like a mottled cloud; he does not like your gargling and spewing and griping of the bowels!
“But the gold and laughter—he takes these out of the heart of the earth: for, that you may know it—the heart of the earth is gold.”
When the firedog heard this he could no longer bear to listen to me. Abashed he drew in his tail, said “bow-wow!” in a cowed voice and crept down into his cave.-Thus related Zarathustra. But his disciples hardly listened to him: so great was their eagerness to tell him about the sailors, the rabbits, and the flying man.
“What am I to think of it!” said Zarathustra. “Am I indeed a ghost?
“But it must have been my shadow. Surely you have heard something of the Wanderer and his Shadow?
“But this is certain: I must guard it more closely—otherwise it will ruin my reputation.”
And once more Zarathustra shook his head and wondered. “What am I to think of it!” he said once more.
“Why did the ghost cry: ‘It is time! It is high time!’
“For what then is it-high time?”
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
THE SOOTHSAYER
“—AND I SAW A great sadness come over mankind. The best grew weary of their works.
“A teaching appeared, a faith ran beside it: All is empty, all is alike, all has been!’16
“And from all hills there re-echoed: All is empty, all is alike, all has been!’
“To be sure we have harvested: but why have all our fruits become rotten and brown? What fell last night
from the evil moon?
“All our labor was in vain, our wine has become poison, an evil eye has seared our fields and hearts.
“We have all become dry; and if fire should fall on us, then we should scatter like ashes—yes we have wearied fire itself.
“All our wells have dried up, even the sea has receded. The earth wants to break open, but the depths will not swallow us!
“ ‘Ah, where is there still a sea in which one could drown’: thus our cry rings-across shallow swamps.
“Truly, we have grown too tired even to die; now we stay awake and live on-in sepulchers!”
Thus Zarathustra heard a soothsayer speak; and his prophecy touched his heart and transformed him. He went about sorrowfully and wearily; and he became like those of whom the soothsayer had spoken.—
“Truly,” he said to his disciples, “the long twilight is not far off Ah, how shall I preserve my light through it! That it may not smother in this sorrowfulness! It shall be a light to remoter worlds and also to remotest nights!”
Thus Zarathustra went about grieved in his heart, and for three days he took no meat or drink, had no rest and forgot speech. At last it came to pass that he fell into a deep sleep. But his disciples sat around him in long watches of the night and waited anxiously to see if he would awake and speak again and recover from his misery.
And this is the speech that Zarathustra spoke when he awoke; his voice, however, came to his disciples as if from afar:
“Hear the dream that I dreamed, my friends, and help me to read its meaning!
“It is still a riddle to me, this dream; the meaning is hidden in it and encaged and does not yet fly above it on free wings.
“I dreamed I had renounced all life. I had become a night- and grave-watchman on the lonely mountain castle of death.
“There I guarded his coffins: the musty vaults stood full of those trophies of his victory. Out of glass coffins vanquished life gazed upon me.
“I breathed the odor of dusty eternities: my soul lay sultry and dusty. And who could have aired his soul there!
Thus Spoke Zarathustra Page 15