Thus Spoke Zarathustra (19 page)

Then your soul will shudder with divine desires; and there will be worship even in your vanity!

This indeed is the secret of the soul: only when the hero has deserted the soul does there approach it in dreams – the superhero.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Of the Land of Culture

I
FLEW
too far into the future: a horror assailed me.

And when I looked around, behold! time was my only contemporary.

Then I flew back, homeward – and faster and faster I flew: and so I came to you, you men of the present, and to the land of culture.

The first time I brought with me an eye to see you and healthy desires: truly, I came to you with longing in my heart.

But how did I fare? Although I was so afraid – I had to laugh! My eye had never seen anything so motley-spotted!

I laughed and laughed, while my foot still trembled and my heart as well: ‘Here must be the home of all the paint-pots!’ I said.

Painted with fifty blotches on face and limbs: thus you sat there to my astonishment, you men of the present!

And with fifty mirrors around you, flattering and repeating your opalescence!

Truly, you could wear no better masks than your own faces, you men of the present! Who could –
recognize
you!

Written over with the signs of the past and these signs over-daubed with new signs: thus you have hidden yourselves well from all interpreters of signs!

And if one tests your virility, one finds only sterility! You seem to be baked from colours and scraps of paper glued together.

All ages and all peoples gaze motley out of your veils; all customs and all beliefs speak motley out of your gestures.

He who tore away from you your veils and wraps and paint and gestures would have just enough left over to frighten the birds.

Truly, I myself am the frightened bird who once saw you naked and without paint; and I flew away when the skeleton made advances to me.

I would rather be a day-labourer in the underworld and
among the shades of the bygone! – Even the inhabitants of the underworld are fatter and fuller than you!

This, yes this is bitterness to my stomach, that I can endure you neither naked nor clothed, you men of the present!

And the unfamiliar things of the future, and whatever frightened stray birds, are truly more familiar and more genial than your ‘reality’.

For thus you speak: ‘We are complete realists, and without belief or superstition’: thus you thump your chests – alas, even without having chests!

But how should you be
able
to believe, you motley-spotted men! – you who are paintings of all that has ever been believed!

You are walking refutations of belief itself and the fracture of all thought.
Unworthy of belief
: that is what I call you, you realists!

All ages babble in confusion in your spirits; and the dreaming and babbling of all ages was more real than is your waking!

You are unfruitful:
therefore
you lack belief. But he who had to create always had his prophetic dreams and star-auguries -and he believed in belief!

You are half-open doors at which grave-diggers wait. And this
is your
reality: ‘Everything is worthy of perishing.’

Ah, how you stand there, you unfruitful men, how lean-ribbed! And, indeed, many of you have noticed that.

And they have said:’ Perhaps a god has secretly taken something from me there as I slept? Truly, sufficient to form a little woman for himself!

‘Amazing is the poverty of my ribs!’ That is how many a present-day man has spoken.

Yes, you are laughable to me, you men of the present! And especially when you are amazed at yourselves!

And woe to me if I could not laugh at your amazement and had to drink down all that is repulsive in your bowels.

However, I will make light of you, since I have
heavy things
to carry; and what do I care if beetles and dragonflies sit themselves on my bundle!

Truly, it shall not become heavier on that account! And the
great weariness shall not come to me from you, you men of the present.

Alas, whither shall I climb now with my longing? I look out from every mountain for fatherlands and motherlands.

But nowhere have I found a home; I am unsettled in every city and I depart from every gate.

The men of the present, to whom my heart once drove me, are strange to me and a mockery; and I have been driven from fatherlands and motherlands.

So now I love only my
children’s land
, the undiscovered land in the furthest sea: I bid my sails seek it and seek it.

I will make amends to my children for being the child of my fathers: and to all the future – for
this
present!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Of Immaculate Perception

W
HEN
the moon rose yesterday I thought it was about to give birth to a sun, it lay on the horizon so broad and pregnant.

But it was a liar with its pregnancy; and I will sooner believe in the man in the moon than in the woman.

To be sure, he is not much of a man, either, this timid night-reveller. Truly, he travels over the roofs with a bad conscience.

For he is lustful and jealous, the monk in the moon, lustful for the earth and for all the joys of lovers.

No, I do not like him, this tomcat on the roofs! All who slink around half-closed windows are repugnant to me!

Piously and silently he walks along on star-carpets: but I do not like soft-stepping feet on which not even a spur jingles.

Every honest man’s step speaks out: but the cat steals along over the ground. Behold, the moon comes along catlike and without honesty.

This parable I speak to you sentimental hypocrites, to you of ‘pure knowledge’! I call you – lustful!

You too love the earth and the earthly: I have divined you
well! – but shame and bad conscience is in your love – you are like the moon!

Your spirit has been persuaded to contempt of the earthly, but your entrails have not: these, however, are the strongest part of you!

And now your spirit is ashamed that it must do the will of your entrails and follows by-ways and lying-ways to avoid its own shame.

‘For me, the highest thing would be to gaze at life without desire and not, as a dog does, with tongue hanging out’ – thus speaks your mendacious spirit to itself:

‘To be happy in gazing, with benumbed will, without the grasping and greed of egotism – cold and ashen in body but with intoxicated moon-eyes!

‘For me, the dearest thing would be to love the earth as the moon loves it, and to touch its beauty with the eyes alone’ -thus the seduced one seduces himself.

‘And let this be called by me
immaculate
perception of all things: that I desire nothing of things, except that I may lie down before them like a mirror with a hundred eyes.’

Oh, you sentimental hypocrites, you lustful men! You lack innocence in desire: and therefore you now slander desiring!

Truly, you do not love the earth as creators, begetters, men joyful at entering upon a new existence!

Where is innocence? Where there is will to begetting. And for me, he who wants to create beyond himself has the purest will.

Where is beauty? Where I
have to will
with all my will; where I want to love and perish, that an image may not remain merely an image.

Loving and perishing: these have gone together from eternity. Will to love: that means to be willing to die, too. Thus I speak to you cowards!

But now your emasculated leering wants to be called ‘contemplation’! And that which lets cowardly eyes touch it shall be christened ‘beautiful’! Oh, you befoulers of noble names!

But it shall be your curse, you immaculate men, you of pure
knowledge, that you will never bring forth, even if you lie broad and pregnant on the horizon!

Truly, you fill your mouths with noble words: and are we supposed to believe that your hearts are overflowing, you habitual liars?

But
my
words are poor, despised, halting words: I am glad to take what falls from the table at your feast.

Yet with them I can still – tell the truth to hypocrites! Yes, my fish-bones, shells, and prickly leaves shall – tickle hypocrites’ noses!

There is always bad air around you and around your feasts: for your lustful thoughts, your lies and secrets are in the air!

Only dare to believe in yourselves – in yourselves and in your entrails! He who does not believe in himself always lies.

You have put on the mask of a god, you ‘pure’: your dreadful coiling snake has crawled into the mask of a god.

Truly, you are deceivers, you ‘contemplative’! Even Zarathustra was once the fool of your divine veneer; he did not guess at the serpent-coil with which it was filled.

Once I thought I saw a god’s soul at play in your play, you of pure knowledge! Once I thought there was no better art than your arts!

Distance concealed from me the serpent-filth, and the evil odour, and that a lizard’s cunning was prowling lustfully around.

But I
approached
you: then day dawned for me – and now it dawns for you – the moon’s love affair had come to an end!

Just look! There it stands, pale and detected – before the dawn!

For already it is coming, the glowing sun –
its
love of the earth is coming! All sun-love is innocence and creative desire!

Just look how it comes impatiently over the sea! Do you not feel the thirst and the hot breath of its love?

It wants to suck at the sea and drink the sea’s depths up to its height: now the sea’s desire rises with a thousand breasts.

It
wants
to be kissed and sucked by the sun’s thirst; it
wants
to become air and height and light’s footpath and light itself!

Truly, like the sun do I love life and all deep seas.

And this
I
call knowledge: all that is deep shall rise up – to my height!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Of Scholars

A
S
I lay asleep, a sheep ate at the ivy-wreath upon my head – ate and said: ‘Zarathustra is no longer a scholar.’

It spoke and went away stiffly and proud. A child told me of it.

I like to lie here where children play, beside the broken wall, among thistles and red poppies.

To children I am still a scholar, and to thistles and red poppies, too. They are innocent, even in their wickedness.

But to the sheep I am no longer a scholar: thus my fate will have it – blessed be my fate!

For this is the truth: I have left the house of scholars and slammed the door behind me.

Too long did my soul sit hungry at their table; 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 sleep on ox-skins rather than on their dignities and respectabilities.

I am too hot and scorched by my own thought: it is often about to take my breath away. Then I have to get into the open air and away from all dusty rooms.

But they sit cool in the cool shade: they want to be mere spectators in everything and they take care not to sit where the sun burns upon the steps.

Like those who stand in the street and stare at the people passing by, so they too wait and stare at thoughts that others have thought.

If one takes hold of them, they involuntarily raise a dust like sacks of flour; but who could guess that their dust derived from corn and from the golden joy of summer fields?

When they give themselves out as wise, their little sayings and truths make me shiver: their wisdom often smells as if it came from the swamp: and indeed, I have heard the frog croak in it!

They are clever, they have cunning fingers: what is
my
simplicity compared with their diversity? Their fingers understand all threading and knitting and weaving: thus they weave the stockings of the spirit!

They are excellent clocks: only be careful to wind them up properly! Then they tell the hour without error and make a modest noise in doing so.

They work like mills and rammers: just throw seed-corn into them! – they know how to grind corn small and make white dust of it.

They keep a sharp eye upon one another and do not trust one another as well as they might. Inventive in small slynesses, they lie in wait for those whose wills go upon lame feet – they lie in wait like spiders.

I have seen how carefully they prepare their poisons; they always put on protective gloves.

They also know how to play with loaded dice; and I found them playing so zealously that they were sweating.

We are strangers to one another, and their virtues are even more opposed to my taste than are their falsehoods and loaded dice.

And when I lived among them I lived above them. They grew angry with me for that.

They did not want to know that someone was walking over their heads; and so they put wood and dirt and rubbish between their heads and me.

Thus they muffled the sound of my steps: and from then on the most scholarly heard me the worst.

They put all the faults and weaknesses of mankind between themselves and me – they call this a ‘false flooring’ in their houses.

But I walk
above
their heads with my thoughts in spite of that; and even if I should walk upon my own faults, I should still be above them and their heads.

For men ate
not
equal: thus speaks justice. And what I desire
they
may not desire!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Of Poets

‘S
INCE
I have known the body better,’ said Zarathustra to one of his disciples, ‘the spirit has been only figuratively spirit to me; and all that is “intransitory” – that too has been only an “image”’.
¹⁹

‘I heard you say that 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?’