Thus Spoke Zarathustra (44 page)

‘What is happening to me?’ thought Zarathustra, in his astonished heart, and slowly lowered himself on to the great stone that lay beside the exit of his cave. But, as he was clutching about, above and underneath himself, warding off the tender birds, behold, then something even stranger occurred: for in doing so he clutched unawares a thick, warm mane of hair; at the same time, however, a roar rang out in front of him – the gentle, protracted roar of a lion.

‘The sign has come
’ said Zarathustra, and his heart was transformed. And in truth, when it grew clear before him, there lay at his feet a sallow, powerful animal that lovingly pressed its head against his knee and would not leave him, behaving like a dog that has found his old master again. The doves, however, were no less eager than the lion with their love; and every time a dove glided across the lion’s nose, the lion shook its head and wondered and laughed.

While this was happening, Zarathustra said but one thing:
‘My children are near, my children
’ then he grew quite silent. His heart, however, was loosened, and tears fell from his eyes down upon his hands. And he no longer paid attention to anything, and sat there motionless and no longer warding off the animals. Then the doves flew back and forth and sat
upon his shoulder and fondled his white hair and did not weary of tenderness and rejoicing. The mighty lion, however, continually licked the tears that fell down upon Zarathustra’s hands, roaring and growling shyly as he did so. Thus did these animals.

All this lasted a long time, or a short time: for, properly speaking, there is
no
time on earth for such things. In the meantime, however, the Higher Men in Zarathustra’s cave had awakened and arranged themselves for a procession, that they might go to Zarathustra and offer him their morning greeting: for they had discovered when they awoke that he was no longer among them. But when they reached the door of the cave, and the sound of their steps preceded them, the lion started violently, suddenly turned away from Zarathustra, and leaped up to the cave, roaring fiercely; the Higher Men, however, when they heard its roaring, all cried out as with a single throat and fled back and in an instant had vanished.

But Zarathustra himself, bewildered and spell-bound, raised himself from his seat, gazed about him, stood there amazed, questioned his heart, recollected, and saw he was alone. ‘What was it I heard?’ he slowly said at last, ‘what has just happened to me?’

And at once his memory returned and he comprehended in a glance all that had happened between yesterday and today. ‘This here is the stone,’ he said and stroked his beard, ‘on
this
did I sit yesterday morning; and here did the prophet come to me, and here I first heard the cry which I heard even now, the great cry of distress.

‘O you Higher Men, it was
of your
distress that old prophet prophesied to me yesterday morning,

‘he tried to seduce and tempt me to your distress: O Zarathustra, he said to me, I have come to seduce you to your ultimate sin.

‘To my ultimate sin?’ cried Zarathustra and laughed angrily at his own words.
‘What
has been reserved for me as my ultimate sin?’

And once more Zarathustra became absorbed in himself
and sat himself again on the great stone and meditated. Suddenly, he leaped up -

‘Pity! Pity for the Higher Man
!’ he cried out, and his countenance was transformed into brass. ‘Very well!
That
– has had its time!

‘My suffering and my pity – what of them! For do I aspire after
happiness?
I aspire after my
work
!

‘Very well! The lion has come, my children are near, Zarathustra has become ripe, my hour has come!

‘This is my morning, my day begins: rise up now, rise up, great noontide!’

Thus spoke Zarathustra and left his cave, glowing and strong, like a morning sun emerging from behind dark mountains.

NOTES

1
.
Untergeben
has three meanings: to descend or go down; to set (as of the sun); and to be destroyed or to go under. There is much play upon this triple meaning throughout the book. The noun
Untergang
is treated in a similar way.

2
.
Übergang und Untergang
. The antithesis
über
(over) and
unter
(under) is very frequently employed. It is not always possible to bring this out fully in translation.

3
.
Rede
= discourse;
Vorrede
= prologue. The play on words is lost in translation.

4
.
Breeber
= breaker;
Verbrecher
normally = criminal. ‘Law-breaker’ retains the verbal repetition.

5
.
Hintenveltler
is a coinage meaning ‘those who believe in an after life’. It gains force from its similarity to the word
Hinter-wäldler
= backwoodsmen.

6
. The Danish writer Soren Kierkegaard (1813–55), who advocated a return to Christianity by means of a ‘leap’ from unbelief into belief, is perhaps being criticized here. Much in this chapter reads like a refutation of Kierkegaard.

7
. The phrase derives from the expression
Mit dem Kopfe durch die Wand wollen
= to run full tilt at everything.

8
.
Geist
means spirit, mind, and intellect – the human under standing. I have generally rendered it as spirit because this seems to me to include intellect and mind while intellect is too narrow in meaning and understanding too cumbrous for the contexts in which
Geist
occurs. In
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Geist
never has any supernatural connotation. Where spirit in the sense of soul
(Seele)
is intended, I have used the word soul.

9
.
Denken
= to think,
bedenklich
= suspicious – a neat play upon words lost in translation.

10
. The people referred to are the Persians. The two following are the Jews and the Germans.

11
.
Nächsten
= neighbour and nearest, and throughout this chapter
Ferruten
(= the most distant), the opposite of nearest, is also made to mean the opposite of neighbour, i.e. the people of the most distant future. Hence the continual antithesis between
“neighbour’ and ‘most distant’ – an antithesis not quite so clear in translation as in the original.

12
. An untranslatable pun. ‘To give a person a paw’ means to strike him across the hand with a cane.

13
. There is a play upon words here that can hardly be transmitted in translation. ‘
Nicht nur fort sollst du dich pflanzen, sondern binauf!’ ‘Fortpflanzen
’ means to propagate (biological) and to trans plant (botanical); ‘
binpflanzen
’ means to plant out (in the sense of planting out cuttings from a single, original plant). The sentence means: You should not only propagate yourself, transplant your self in the future just as you are; you should see to it that your children are something higher and less confined than you.

14
. The reference is to the first line of the final verse of Goethe’s
Faust
Part Two: All that is transitory is but an image. See also note 19.

15
. In German
gerecht
(just) and
geräcbt
(revenged) are pronounced identically.

16
.
Hoch und steil leben
means literally to live in a high and steep place, figuratively to live nobly and boldly.

17
.
Blicke
= glances;
Augenblicke
= moments. But by a quibble
‘Augenblicke
’ can be made to mean ‘glances of the eyes’
(Augen —
eyes). This word-play is lost in translation.

18
. ‘Doer’ is in German (in this case)
Handelnden
– giving a play upon the word ‘hand’.

19
.The final ‘Mystic Chorus’ of Goethe’s
Faust
Part Two is burlesqued in this chapter. Verbal references to it will be clear from the following literal translation:

All that is transitory
Is but an image;
The unattainable
Here becomes reality;
The indescribable
Here it is done!
The eternal-womanly
Draws up upward!

20
.
The Wanderer and his Shadow
is the title of one of Nietzsche’s books (the Third Part of
Human, All Too Human)
.

21
. The prophet is Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), who also appears in Part Four.

22
.
Gedanken und Hintergedanken
: the antithesis is lost in translation.

23
.
Bucklichte
= hunchback;
bucklicht reden
= to speak crossly.

24
.
Grund
= ground and reason. The pun is amplified in ‘foreground’ (superficial reasons) and ‘background’ (fundamental reasons).

25
. This scene is a memory from Nietzsche’s childhood. Nietzsche’s father died following a fall, and it seems that Nietzsche was attracted to the scene by the frightened barking of a dog: he found his father lying unconscious. It is not entirely clear why the scene should have been evoked at this point. The most likely suggestion is that Nietzsche at one time thought that events recurred within historical time, and was troubled by the idea that he might meet the same death as his father. (The idea seems to have assumed the nature of an obsession: its origin probably lay in Nietszche’s fear of madness, which was strengthened by the fact that his father died insane. The insanity was caused by the fall, but Nietzsche was probably doubtful whether the fall did not merely bring to the surface an inherited weakness.) This old idea may have come into the author’s mind at this point, and have been included in the text as a cryptic ‘history’ of the theory of the eternal recurrence. What follows is, of course, symbolic and not actual.

26
. For ‘accepted his destiny’ the author here uses the idiom ‘stood upon his destiny’, giving point to the words ‘with firm feet’, which in translation may seem puzzling.

27
.
Himmel
means both ‘sky’ and ‘heaven’.

28
.
Von Ohngefähr
means ‘by chance’ – but the author treats the noun as a proper name and ennobles it by adding
‘von
’, the ordinary designation of nobility.

29
. I have left this paragraph as it stands because a properly idiomatic translation would alter the original more than is justified.
Es gibt sich
, as well as meaning ‘it is given’, is employed idiomatically to mean ‘it will get better’, or simply as the verbal equivalent of a shrug of the shoulders.
Es nimmt sich
– ‘it is taken’ – has no such idiomatic connotation, and is employed by the author simply as an (untranslatable) antithesis to
es gibt sich
.

30
. A pun on the two meanings of
Geist
– spirit and intellect.

31
.
Dämmerten
– a scornful reference to Wagner’s
Gotter- dämmerung
(The Twilight of the Gods).

32
. The bray of an ass is rendered in German
la
(pronounced ee-ah), which sounds and looks very much like
Ja
= yes. I have adopted Thomas Common’s translation of this as ‘Ye-a’ (the best that can be done, I think). Thomas Common always translates
Ja
as ‘yea’, in accordance with the notion that
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
is mock-Biblical throughout. The author employs this humorous device to great effect in Part Four.

33
. The imagery of this section derives from the saying
Waster bat keine Balken
= Water is not planked over, Praise the sea but keep on dry land.
Im Fluss
means ‘in flux’, but also ‘in the river’ and ‘flowing’. Later in the same section, ‘Have not all railings and gangways fallen into the water and come to nothing’ refers to the expression
ins Wasser fallen
, which means to melt away, to come to nothing, as well as, literally, to fall into the water. This method of reducing an abstract idea to a concrete image by means of everyday idioms is of the essence of Nietzsche’s art – and one reason why the vividness of his style is often dimmed in translation.

34
. A play upon
Vorspiel
= prologue, and
Beispiel
= example.

35
. A play upon
Unterbalt
= maintenance, and
Unterbaltung
= entertainment.

36
. A play upon
Eheschliessen
= marriage contract, and
Ehebrechen
= literally marriage breaking, usually adultery. The literal meaning of
Ehebrechen
is played upon in the following paragraphs.

37
. A play upon
Versprechen
= promise, and
Verseben
= mistake. The words balance one another because
sprecben
by itself means’ to speak’, and
seben
means’ to see’.

38
. A play, frequent in
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
, upon
versuchen
= to experiment, to attempt, and
suchen
= to seek.

39
. A malicious reference to the opening of Act Three of Wagner’s
Siegfried
, in which the Wanderer (Wotan) calls up Erda, the Earth Mother, from her sleep, and after a fifteen-minute colloquy bids her return to sleep, The style of this whole passage imitates that of the Wanderer’s summons.