Thus Spoke Zarathustra

by Friedrich Nietzsche

  “How long have I investigated this one thing, the brain of the leech, so that here the slippery truth might no longer slip from me! Here is my domain!

  “For the sake of this I cast everything else aside, for the sake of this everything else becomes indifferent to me; and close beside my knowledge lies my black ignorance.

  “My spiritual conscience requires of me that it should be so, that I should know one thing and not know everything else: I am disgusted by all the half-spirited, all the hazy, hovering, and visionary.

  “Where my honesty ends I am blind, and also want to be blind. But where I want to know I also want to be honest, namely, hard, rigorous, strict, cruel, inexorable.

  “Because you once said, O Zarathustra: ‘Spirit is life that itself cuts into life,’ that led and seduced me to your teaching. And truly, with my own blood I have increased my own knowledge!”

  —“As the evidence indicates,” broke in Zarathustra; for the blood was still flowing down the naked arm of the conscientious one. For ten leeches had bitten into it.

  “O you strange fellow, how much this evidence tells me, namely from you yourself! And perhaps I could not pour all of it into your strict ears!

  “Well then! We part here! But I would like to meet you again. Up there is the way to my cave: tonight you will be my welcome guest!

  “I would also like to make amends to your body for Zarathustra treading upon you with his feet: I shall think about that. Just now, however, a cry of distress calls me hastily away from you.”

  Thus spoke Zarathustra.

  THE MAGICIAN

  1

  But when Zarathustra had gone around a rock he saw on the same path, not far below him, a man who threw his limbs about like a maniac, and at last tumbled to the ground on his belly. “Stop!” Zarathustra said then to his heart, “he there must surely be the higher man, from him came that dreadful cry of distress,—I will see if I can help him.” But when he ran to the spot where the man lay on the ground, he found a trembling old man who stared; and all of Zarathustra’s efforts to lift him and set him again on his feet were in vain. The unfortunate one, too, did not seem to notice that someone was beside him; on the contrary, he continually looked around with pathetic gestures, like one forsaken by and isolated from all the world. At last, however, after much trembling, convulsion, and contortion, he began to wail thus:Who warms me, who loves me still?

  Give hot hands!

  Give charcoal-warmers of the heart!

  Stretched out, shuddering,

  Like the half dead, whose feet one warms—

  Shaken, ah! by unknown fevers,

  Shivering with sharp icy frost-arrows,

  Hunted by you, thought!

  Unnamable! Veiled! Terrible!

  You hunter behind clouds!

  Struck down by your lightning bolt,

  You mocking eye that stares at me from the dark:

  —thus I lie, bent, twisted, convulsed

  With all eternal torture,

  Struck

  By you, cruelest hunter,

  You unknown—god!

  Strike deeper!

  Strike yet once more!

  Stake through, break this heart!

  Why this torture

  With blunt-toothed arrows?

  Why do you keep looking,

  Not tired of human pain,

  Pleased to see suffering with gods’ lightning eyes?

  You do not want to kill,

  Only torture, torture?

  Why—torture me,

  You sadistic, unknown God?—

  Ha ha! You are stealing near?

  In such midnight

  What do you want? Speak!

  You crowd me, press me—

  Ha! far too closely!

  Away! Away!

  You hear me breathing,

  You overhear my heart,

  You jealous—

  Jealous of what?

  Away! Away! Why the ladder?

  Do you want in,

  Into my heart, Climb in, deep into my most secret

  Thoughts to climb?

  Shameless! Unknown—thief!

  What do you want with your stealing?

  What do you want with your listening?

  What do you want with your torturing,

  You torturer!

  You—hangman-god!

  Or shall I, like the dogs,

  Roll for you?

  Cringing, enraptured, beside myself,

  Wag with love-for you?

  In vain! Stick further,

  Cruelest thorn! No,

  No dog—I am only your game,

  Cruelest hunter!

  Your proudest captive,

  You robber behind clouds!

  Speak at last!

  You lightning-veiled! Unknown! Speak,

  What do you want, highway-ambusher, from—me?

  What do you want, unknown—God?—

  What? Ransom?

  What do you want with ransom?

  Demand much—my pride advises that!

  And be brief—my other pride advises that!

  Ha ha!

  Me—you want? Me?

  Me—entirely? ...

  Ha ha!

  And torture me, fool that you are,

  Racking my pride?

  Give love to me—who still warms me?

  Who still loves me?-give hot hands,

  Give charcoal-warmers of the heart,

  Give me, the loneliest,

  Whom ice, ah! sevenfold ice Has taught to long for enemies,

  For enemies themselves,

  Give, yes yield,

  Cruelest enemy,

  to me—yourself!

  Away!

  He himself fled,

  My single last companion,

  My great enemy,

  My unknown

  My hangman-god!—

  —No! Come back,

  With all your tortures!

  To the last of all the lonely

  O come back!

  All the streams of my tears run

  Their course to you!

  And my last heart’s flame—

  Flares up to you!

  O come back,

  My unknown God! My pain!

  My last-happiness!

  2

  —But here Zarathustra could no longer restrain himself, took his stick and struck the wailer with all his might. “Stop it!” he shouted at him with furious laughter, “stop this, you actor! You counterfeiter! You liar from the ground up!3 I know you well!

  “I will warm your legs for you, you evil magician, for such as you I know very well how—to make things hot!”

  —“Leave off,” the old man said and sprang up from the ground, “strike me no more, 0 Zarathustra! I did it only for fun!

  “That kind of thing belongs to my art; it was you that I wanted to try out when I gave this performance. And truly, you have seen quite through me!

  “But you too-have given me no small proof of yourself: you are hard, you wise Zarathustra! You strike hard with your ‘truths,’ your stick forces from me—this truth!”

  —“Do not flatter me,” answered Zarathustra, still excited and frowning, “you actor from the ground up! You are false: why do you speak-of truth!

  “You peacock of peacocks, you sea of vanity; what did you represent before me, you evil magician; whom was I meant to believe in when you wailed in this way?”

  “The ascetic of the spirit,” said the old man, “it was him—I represented; you yourself once invented this expression—

  “—The poet and magician who at last turns his spirit against himself, the transformed one who freezes through his evil science and conscience.

  “And just admit it: it was a long while, 0 Zarathustra, before you discovered my trick and lie! You believed in my distress when you held my head with both your hands,—

  “—I heard you lament ‘he has been loved too little, loved too little!’ That I so far deceived you made my
malice rejoice in me.”

  “You may have deceived subtler ones than I,” said Zarathustra sternly. “I am not on my guard against deceivers, I must be without caution: so my lot wants it.

  “But you—must deceive: so far do I know you! You must ever be equivocal, tri- quadri-, quinquivocal! Even what you just confessed is not nearly true enough nor false enough for me!

  “You bad counterfeiter, how could you do otherwise! You would even rouge your disease if you showed yourself naked to your physician.

  “Thus you rouged your lie before me when you said: ‘I did so only for fun!’ There was also seriousness in it, you are something of an ascetic of the spirit!

  “I divine you well: you have become the enchanter of all, but against yourself you have no lie or cunning left—you are disenchanted with yourself!

  “You have reaped disgust as your one truth. No word in you is genuine any more, but your mouth is so: that is, the disgust that clings to your mouth.”—

  —“Well who are you!” the old magician cried then with defiant voice, “who dares to speak thus to me, the greatest man living today?”—and a green flash shot from his eye at Zarathustra. But immediately afterward he changed, and said sadly:

  “O Zarathustra, I am weary of it, I am disgusted with my arts, I am not great, why do I dissemble! But you know it well—I sought greatness!

  “I wanted to appear to be a great man and persuaded many: but this lie is beyond my strength. It is breaking me.

  “O Zarathustra, everything about me is a lie; but that I am breaking-this my breaking is genuine!”—

  “It honors you,” said Zarathustra gloomily and looking aside, “it honors you that you sought greatness, but it betrays you too. You are not great.

  “You bad old magician, that is the best and the most honest thing I honor in you, that you have become weary of yourself, and have expressed it: ‘I am not great.’

  “In that I honor you as an ascetic of the spirit, and although only for the twinkling of an eye, in that one moment you were-genuine.

  “But tell me, what are you looking for here in my forests and rocks? And lying down in my way, how did you want to try me?—

  —in what did you test me?”

  Thus spoke Zarathustra, and his eyes sparkled. The old magician was silent for a while, then he said: “Did I seek to test you? I—only seek.

  “O Zarathustra, I seek a genuine one, a right one, a simple one, an unequivocal one, a man of all honesty, a vessel of wisdom, a saint of knowledge, a great man!

  “Don’t you know it, O Zarathustra? I seek Zarathustra.”

  —And here there was a long silence between them; but Zarathustra became profoundly absorbed in thought, so that he shut his eyes. But afterwards coming back to his companion in the conversation, he grasped the hand of the magician and said, full of politeness and cunning:

  “Well! The way leads up there, there is the cave of Zarathustra. In it you may seek him whom you would like to find.

  “And ask counsel of my animals, my eagle and my serpent: they shall help you to seek. But my cave is large.

  “I myself, to be sure—I have as yet seen no great man. For what is great, even the subtlest eye today is too coarse. It is the kingdom of the mob.

  “I have found many who stretched and inflated themselves, and the people cried: ‘Look there, a great man!’ But what good are all bellows! In the end, wind comes out.

  “At last the frog bursts which has inflated itself too long: then out comes wind. To prick a swollen one in the belly, I call that good fun. Hear that, you boys!

  “Today belongs to the mob: who still knows what is great and what is small! Who could successfully seek greatness there! Only a fool: fools succeed.

  “You seek for great men, you strange fool? Who taught you to? Is today the time for it? Oh, you evil seeker, why do you—seek to test me?”4—

  Thus spoke Zarathustra, comforted in his heart, and went laughing on his way.

  RETIRED FROM SERVICE

  BUT NOT LONG AFTER Zarathustra had freed himself from the magician, he again saw a person sitting beside the path which he followed, namely a tall, black man, with a haggard, pale face: this man grieved him exceedingly. “Ah,” he said to his heart, “there sits disguised misery, that looks to me like the priestly sort: what does it want in my domain?

  “What! Hardly have I escaped from that magician: must another necromancer cross my path,—

  “—Some wizard with the laying-on of hands, some somber wonder worker by the grace of God, some anointed world-slanderer: may the devil take him!

  “But the devil is never in his proper place: he always comes too late, that damned dwarf and clubfoot!”—

  Thus cursed Zarathustra impatiently in his heart, and he considered how he might slip past the black man with his face turned: but behold, it came about otherwise. For at the same moment the sitting one had already seen him; and not unlike one whom an unexpected happiness overtakes, he sprang to his feet and went straight towards Zarathustra.

  “Whoever you are, you traveler,” he said, “help a strayed one, a seeker, an old man, who may easily come to grief here!

  “The world here is strange to me and remote, I heard wild beasts howling, too; and he who could have given me protection, he is no more.

  “I was seeking the last pious man, a saint and a hermit, who, alone in his forest, had not yet heard of what all the world knows today.”

  “What does all the world know today?” asked Zarathustra. “Perhaps this, that the old God, in whom all the world once believed, no longer lives?”

  “You say it,” answered the old man sorrowfully. “And I served that old God until his last hour.

  “But now I am retired from service, without master, and yet not free; likewise I am no longer merry even for an hour, except in recollections.

  “Therefore I climbed into these mountains, that I might finally have a festival for myself once more, as becomes an old pope and church-father: for I am the last pope!-a festival of pious recollections and divine services.

  “But now he himself is dead, the most pious of men, the saint in the forest, who praised his God constantly with singing and mumbling.

  “I no longer found him when I discovered his hut—but I found two wolves inside it, which howled on account of his death,—for all animals loved him. Then I hurried away.

  “Did I thus come in vain into these forests and mountains? Then my heart determined that I should seek another, the most pious of all those who do not believe in God—, my heart determined that I should seek Zarathustra!”

  Thus spoke the old man and gazed with keen eyes at him who stood before him. But Zarathustra seized the hand of the old pope and regarded it a long while with admiration.

  “Behold, you venerable one,” he said then, “what a fine and long hand! That is the hand of one who has always dispensed blessings. But now it holds fast him whom you seek, me, Zarathustra.

  “It is I, Zarathustra the godless, who says: ‘Who is ungodlier than I, that I may delight in his instruction?’ ”—

  Thus spoke Zarathustra, and penetrated with his glances the thoughts and afterthoughts of the old pope. At last the latter began:

  “He who most loved and possessed him has now also lost him most—:

  “—Lo, I myself am surely the most godless of us at present? But who could rejoice at that!”—

  —“You served him to the last?” asked Zarathustra thoughtfully, after a deep silence, “You know how he died? Is it true what they say, that pity choked him,

  “—that he saw how man hung on the cross, and could not endure it;—that his love for man became his hell, and at last his death?”—

  But the old pope did not answer, but looked aside timidly, with a painful and dark expression.

  “Let him go,” said Zarathustra, after prolonged meditation, still looking the old man straight in the eye.

  “Let him go, he is gone. And though it honors you that you speak only
in praise of this dead one, yet you know as well as I who he was, and that he went curious ways.”

  “To speak before three eyes,” said the old pope cheerfully (he was blind in one eye), “I am more enlightened than Zarathustra himself in divine matters-and appropriately so.

  “My love served him for long years, my will followed all his will. A good servant, however, knows everything, and many a thing which a master hides even from himself.

  “He was a hidden god, full of secrecy. Truly, he did not come by his son otherwise than by secret ways. At the door of his faith stands adultery.

  “Whoever extols him as a God of love, does not think highly enough of love itself. Did not that God want also to be judge? But the loving one loves irrespective of reward and punishment.

  “When he was young, that God out of the orient, then he was harsh and vengeful, and built a hell for the delight of his favorites.

  “But at last he became old and soft and mellow and pitiful, more like a grandfather than a father, but most like a tottering old grandmother.

  “There he sat shriveled in his chimney-corner, fretting on account of his weak legs, world-weary, will-weary, and one day he suffocated of his all-too-great pity.”—

  “You old pope,” said Zarathustra interposing, “have you seen that with your eyes? It could well have happened in that way: in that way, and also otherwise. When gods die they always die many kinds of death.

  “Well! At all events, one way or other—he is gone! He offended the taste of my ears and eyes; worse than that I should not like to say against him.

  “I love everything that looks bright and speaks honestly. But he—you know it, indeed, you old priest, there was something of your type in him, the priest-type—he was equivocal.

  “He was also vague. How he raged at us, this wrath-snorter, because we understood him badly! But why did he not speak more clearly?

  “And if the fault lay in our ears, why did he give us ears that heard him badly? If there was dirt in our ears, well! who put it in them?

  “Too much miscarried with him, this potter who had not learned thoroughly! That he took revenge on his pots and creations, however, because they turned out badly—that was a sin against good taste.