The Portable Nietzsche

by Friedrich Nietzsche

  But when Zarathustra had reached the height he sent back the animals who had accompanied him, and he found himself alone. Then he laughed heartily, looked around, and spoke thus:

  That I spoke of sacrifices and honey sacrifices was mere cunning and, verily, a useful folly. Up here I may speak more freely than before hermits’ caves and hermits’ domestic animals.

  Why sacrifice? I squander what is given to me, I—a squanderer with a thousand hands; how could I call that sacrificing? And when I desired honey, I merely desired bait and sweet mucus and mucilage, which make even growling bears and queer, sullen, evil birds put out their tongues—the best bait, needed by hunters and fishermen. For if the world is like a dark jungle and a garden of delight for all wild hunters, it strikes me even more, and so I prefer to think of it, as an abysmal, rich sea—a sea full of colorful fish and crabs, which even gods might covet, that for their sakes they would wish to become fishermen and net-throwers: so rich is the world in queer things, great and small. Especially the human world, the human sea: that is where I now cast my golden fishing rod and say: Open up, you human abyss!

  Open up and cast up to me your fish and glittering crabs! With my best bait I shall today bait the queerest human fish. My happiness itself I cast out far and wide, between sunrise, noon, and sunset, to see if many human fish might not learn to wriggle and wiggle from my happiness until, biting at my sharp hidden hooks, they must come up to my height—the most colorful abysmal groundlings, to the most sarcastic of all who fish for men. For that is what I am through and through: reeling, reeling in, raising up, raising, a raiser, cultivator, and disciplinarian, who once counseled himself, not for nothing: Become who you are!

  Thus men may now come up to me; for I am still waiting for the sign that the time has come for my descent; I still do not myself go under, as I must do, under the eyes of men. That is why I wait here, cunning and mocking on high mountains, neither impatient nor patient, rather as one who has forgotten patience too, because his “passion” is over. For my destiny leaves me time; perhaps it has forgotten me. Or does it sit in the shade behind a big stone, catching flies? And verily, I like it for this, my eternal destiny: it does not hurry and press me, and it leaves me time for jests and sarcasm, so that I could climb this high mountain today to catch fish.

  Has a man ever caught fish on high mountains? And even though what I want and do up here be folly, it is still better than if I became solemn down there from waiting, and green and yellow—a swaggering wrath-snorter from waiting, a holy, howling storm out of the mountains, an impatient one who shouts down into the valleys, “Listen or I shall whip you with the scourge of God!”

  Not that I bear such angry men a grudge! They are good enough for my laughter. They must surely be impatient—these big noisy drums, which find their chance to speak today or never. I, however, and my destiny—we do not speak to the Today, nor do we speak to the Never; we have patience and time and overmuch time in which to speak. For one day it must yet come and may not pass. What must come one day and may not pass? Our great Hazar: that is, our great distant human kingdom, the Zarathustra kingdom of a thousand years. How distant may this “distant” be? What is that to me? But for all that, this is no less certain: with both feet I stand firmly on this ground, on eternal ground, on hard primeval rock, on this highest, hardest, primeval mountain range to which all winds come as to the “weathershed” and ask: where? and whence? and whither?

  Laugh, laugh, my bright, wholesome sarcasm! From high mountains cast down your glittering mocking laughter! With your glitter bait me the most beautiful human fish! And whatever in all the seas belongs to me, my in-and-for-me in all things—that fish out for me, that bring up to me: for that I, the most sarcastic of all fishermen, am waiting.

  Out, out, my fishing rod! Down, down, bait of my happiness! Drip your sweetest dew, honey of my heart! Bite, my fishing rod, into the belly of all black melancholy!

  Out there, out there, my eye! Oh, how many seas surround me, what dawning human futures! And over me—what rose-red stillness! What unclouded silence!

  THE CRY OF DISTRESS

  The next day Zarathustra again sat on his stone before his cave, while the animals were roaming through the outside world to find new nourishment—also new honey, for Zarathustra had spent and squandered the old honey down to the last drop. But as he was sitting there, a stick in his hand, tracing his shadow on the ground, thinking—and verily, not about himself and his shadow—he was suddenly frightened, and he started: for beside his own shadow he saw another shadow. And as he looked around quickly and got up, behold, the soothsayer stood beside him—the same he had once feted at his table, the proclaimer of the great weariness who taught, “All is the same, nothing is worth while, the world is without meaning, knowledge strangles.” But his face had changed meanwhile; and when Zarathustra looked into his eyes, his heart was frightened again: so many ill tidings and ashen lightning bolts ran over this face.

  The soothsayer, who had noticed what went on in Zarathustra’s soul, wiped his hand over his face as if he wanted to wipe it away; and Zarathustra did likewise. And when both had thus silently composed and strengthened themselves, they shook hands as a sign that they wanted to recognize each other.

  “Welcome,” said Zarathustra, “you soothsayer of the great weariness; not for nothing were you once my guest. Eat and drink with me again today, and forgive a cheerful old man for sitting at the table with you.”

  “A cheerful old man?” the soothsayer replied, shaking his head; “but whatever you may be or want to be, Zarathustra, you shall not be up here much longer: soon your bark shall not be stranded any more.”

  “But am I stranded?” Zarathustra asked, laughing.

  “The waves around your mountain,” replied the soothsayer, “are climbing and climbing, the waves of great distress and melancholy; soon they will lift up your bark too, and carry you off.”

  Zarathustra fell silent at that and was surprised.

  “Do you not hear anything yet?” continued the soothsayer. “Does it not rush and roar up from the depth?”

  Zarathustra remained silent and listened, and he heard a long, long cry, which the abysses threw to each other and handed on, for none wanted to keep it: so evil did it sound.

  “You proclaimer of ill tidings,” Zarathustra said finally, “this is a cry of distress and the cry of a man; it might well come out of a black sea. But what is human distress to me? My final sin, which has been saved up for me—do you know what it is?”

  “Pity!” answered the soothsayer from an overflowing heart, and he raised both hands. “O Zarathustra, I have come to seduce you to your final sin.”

  And no sooner had these words been spoken than the cry resounded again, and longer and more anxious than before; also much closer now.

  “Do you hear? Do you hear, O Zarathustra?” the soothsayer shouted. “The cry is for you. It calls you: Come, come, come! It is time! It is high time!”

  Then Zarathustra remained silent, confused and shaken. At last he asked, as one hesitant in his own mind, “And who is it that calls me?”

  “But you know that,” replied the soothsayer violently; “why do you conceal yourself? It is the higher man that cries for you!”

  “The higher man?” cried Zarathustra, seized with horror. “What does he want? What does he want? The higher man! What does he want here?” And his skin was covered with perspiration.

  The soothsayer, however, made no reply to Zarathustra’s dread, but listened and listened toward the depth. But when there was silence for a long time, he turned his glance back and saw Zarathustra standing there trembling. “O Zarathustra,” he began in a sad tone of voice, “you are not standing there as one made giddy by his happiness: you had better dance lest you fall. But even if you would dance before me, leaping all your side-leaps, no one could say to me, ‘Behold, here dances the last gay man!’ Anybody coming to this height, looking for that man, would come in vain: caves he would find, and caves behi
nd caves, hiding-places for those addicted to hiding, but no mines of happiness or treasure rooms or new gold veins of happiness. Happiness—how should one find happiness among hermits and those buried like this? Must I still seek the last happiness on blessed isles and far away between forgotten seas? But all is the same, nothing is worth while, no seeking avails, nor are there any blessed isles any more.”

  Thus sighed the soothsayer. At his last sigh, however, Zarathustra grew bright and sure again, like one emerging into the light out of a deep gorge. “No! No! Three times no!” he shouted with a strong voice and stroked his beard. “That I know better: there still are blessed isles. Be quiet about that, you sighing bag of sadness! Stop splashing about that, you raincloud in the morning! Do I not stand here even now, wet from your melancholy and drenched like a dog? Now I shake myself and run away from you to dry again; you must not be surprised at that. Do I strike you as discourteous? But this is my court. As for your higher man—well then, I shall look for him at once in those woods: thence came his cry. Perhaps an evil beast troubles him there. He is in my realm: there he shall not come to grief. And verily, there are many evil beasts around me.”

  With these words Zarathustra turned to leave. Then the soothsayer said, “O Zarathustra, you are a rogue! I know it: you want to get rid of me. You would sooner run into the woods and look for evil beasts. But what will it avail you? In the evening you will have me back anyway; in your own cave I shall be sitting, patient and heavy as a block—waiting for you.”

  “So be it!” Zarathustra shouted back as he was walking away. “And whatever is mine in my cave belongs to you too, my guest. And if you should find honey in there—well, then, lick it up, you growling bear, and sweeten your soul. For in the evening we should both be cheerful—cheerful and gay that this day has come to an end. And you yourself shall dance to my songs as my dancing bear. You do not believe it? You shake your head? Well then, old bear! But I too am a soothsayer.”

  Thus spoke Zarathustra.

  CONVERSATION WITH THE KINGS

  1

  Zarathustra had not yet walked an hour in his mountains and woods when he suddenly saw a strange procession. On the very path he wanted to follow down, two kings were approaching, adorned with crowns and crimson belts and colorful as flamingos; and they were driving a laden ass before them. “What do these kings want in my realm?” Zarathustra said in his heart, surprised, and quickly he hid behind a bush. But when the kings came close he said half aloud, as if talking to himself, “Strange! Strange! How does this fit together? Two kings I see—and only one ass!”

  The two kings stopped, smiled, looked in the direction from which the voice had come, and then looked at each other. “Something of the sort may have occurred to one of us too,” said the king at the right; “but one does not say it.” The king at the left, however, shrugged his shoulders and replied, “It may well be a goatherd. Or a hermit who has lived too long among rocks and trees. For no society at all also spoils good manners.”

  “Good manners?” the other king retorted angrily and bitterly; “then what is it that we are trying to get away from? Is it not ‘good manners’? Our ‘good society’? It is indeed better to live among hermits and goatherds than among our gilded, false, painted mob—even if they call themselves ‘good society,’ even if they call themselves ‘nobility.’ They are false and foul through and through, beginning with the blood, thanks to bad old diseases and worse quacks. Best and dearest to me today is a healthy peasant, coarse, cunning, stubborn, enduring: that is the noblest species today. The peasant is the best type today, and the peasant type should be master. But it is the realm of the mob; I shall not be deceived any more. Mob, however, means hodgepodge. Mob-hodgepodge: there everything is mixed up in every way, saint and scamp and Junker and Jew and every kind of beast out of Noah’s ark. Good manners! Everything among us is false and foul. Nobody knows how to revere any longer: we are trying to get away from precisely that. They are saccharine, obtrusive curs; they gild palm leaves.

  “This nausea suffocates me: we kings ourselves have become false, overhung and disguised with ancient yellowed grandfathers’ pomp, showpieces for the most stupid and clever and anyone who haggles for power today. We are not the first and yet must represent them: it is this deception that has come to disgust and nauseate us. We have tried to get away from the rabble, all these scream-throats and scribbling bluebottles, the shopkeepers’ stench, the ambitious wriggling, the foul breath—phew for living among the rabble! Phew for representing the first among the rabble! Nausea! Nausea! Nausea! What do we kings matter now?”

  “Your old illness is upon you,” the king at the left said at this point; “nausea is seizing you, my poor brother. But you know that somebody is listening to us.”

  Immediately Zarathustra, who had opened his ears and eyes wide at this talk, rose from his hiding-place, walked toward the kings, and began, “He who is listening to you, he who likes to listen to you, O kings, is called Zarathustra. I am Zarathustra, who once said, ‘What do kings matter now?’ Forgive me, I was delighted when you said to each other, ‘What do we kings matter now?’ Here, however, is my realm and my dominion: what might you be seeking in my realm? But perhaps you found on your way what I am looking for: the higher man.”

  When the kings heard this, they beat their breasts and said as with one voice, “We have been found out. With the sword of this word you cut through our hearts’ thickest darkness. You have discovered our distress, for behold, we are on our way to find the higher man—the man who is higher than we, though we are kings. To him we are leading this ass. For the highest man shall also be the highest lord on earth. Man’s fate knows no harsher misfortune than when those who have power on earth are not also the first men. That makes everything false and crooked and monstrous. And when they are even the last, and more beast than man, then the price of the mob rises and rises, and eventually the virtue of the mob even says, ‘Behold, I alone am virtue!’ ”

  “What did I just hear?” replied Zarathustra. “What wisdom in kings! I am delighted and, verily, even feel the desire to make a rhyme on this—even if it should be a rhyme which is not fit for everybody’s ears. I have long become unaccustomed to any consideration for long ears. Well then!” (But at this point it happened that the ass too got in a word; but he said clearly and with evil intent, Yea-Yuh. )

  “Once—in the year of grace number one, I think—

  The Sibyl said, drunken without any drink,

  ‘Now everything goes wrong! Oh, woe!

  Decay! The world has never sunk so low!

  Rome sank to whoredom and became a stew,

  The Caesars became beasts, and God—a Jew!’”

  2

  These rhymes of Zarathustra delighted the kings; but the king at the right said, “O Zarathustra, how well we did to go forth to see you! For your enemies showed us your image in their mirror: there you had the mocking grimace of a devil, so that we were afraid of you. But what could we do? Again and again you pierced our ears and hearts with your maxims. So we said at last: what difference does it make how he looks? We must hear him who teaches: ‘You shall love peace as a means to new wars, and the short peace more than the long!’ Nobody ever spoke such warlike words: ‘What is good? To be brave is good. It is the good war that hallows any cause.’ Zarathustra, the blood of our fathers stirred in our bodies at such words: it was like the speech of spring to old wine barrels. When the swords ran wild like snakes with red spots, our fathers grew fond of life; the sun of all peace struck them as languid and lukewarm, and any long peace caused shame. How our fathers sighed when they saw flashing dried-up swords on the wall! Like them, they thirsted for war. For a sword wants to drink blood and glistens with desire.”

  When the kings talked thus and chatted eagerly of the happiness of their fathers, Zarathustra was overcome with no small temptation to mock their eagerness: for obviously they were very peaceful kings with old and fine faces. But he restrained himself. “Well!” he said, �
�that is where the path leads; there lies Zarathustra’s cave; and this day shall yet have a long evening. Now, however, a cry of distress calls me away from you urgently. My cave is honored if kings want to sit in it and wait: only, you will have to wait long. But what does it matter? Where does one now learn better how to wait than at court? And all the virtue left to kings today—is it not called: being able to wait?”

  Thus spoke Zarathustra.

  THE LEECH

  And thoughtfully Zarathustra went farther and deeper, through woods and past swampy valleys; but as happens to everybody who reflects on grave matters, he stepped on a man unwittingly. And behold, all at once a cry of pain and two curses and twenty bad insults splashed into his face and startled him so that he raised his stick and beat the man on whom he had stepped. A moment later, however, he recovered his senses, and his heart laughed at the folly he had just committed.

  “Forgive me,” he said to the man he had stepped on, who had angrily risen and sat down; “forgive me and, above all, listen to a parable first. As a wanderer who dreams of distant matters will unwittingly stumble over a sleeping dog on a lonely road—a dog lying in the sun—and both start and let fly at each other like mortal enemies, because both are mortally frightened: thus it happened to us. And yet—and yet, how little was lacking, and they might have caressed each other, this dog and this lonely man. For after all they were both lonely.”

  “Whoever you may be,” said the man he had stepped on, still angry, “your parable too offends me, and not only your foot. After all, am I a dog?” And at that the seated man got up and pulled his bare arm out of the swamp. For at first he had been lying stretched out on the ground, concealed and unrecognizable, as one lying in wait for some swamp animal.

  “But what are you doing?” cried Zarathustra, startled, for he saw that much blood was flowing down the bare arm. “What has happened to you? Did a bad animal bite you, you poor wretch?”