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- Herausgeber: Notting Hill Editions
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
A new translation of this seminal work by the prize-winning translator of W.G. Sebald, Goethe, Rilke, Herta Müller and Elfriede Jelinek.In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche's infamous protagonist sets off on a grand and noble quest to find meaning in a secular world and to live joyfully alongside the knowledge of death. In this new translation by Michael Hulse – the first in English by a poet – Zarathustra is revealed in all his bold and ironic splendour as a man who prizes self worth above all else as a moral code to live by. Radical, uncategorisable, contradictory and often humorous, Thus Spake Zarathustra is a grand celebration of human existence by one of the most influential thinkers of the past two centuries.
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i
Notting Hill Editions is an independent British publisher. The company was founded by Tom Kremer (1930–2017), champion of innovation and the man responsible for popularising the Rubik’s Cube.
After a successful business career in toy invention Tom decided, at the age of eighty, to fulfil his passion for literature. In a fast-moving digital world Tom’s aim was to revive the art of the essay, and to create exceptional books that would be lingered over and cherished.
Hailed as ‘the shape of things to come’, the family-run press brings to print the most surprising thinkers of past and present.
iii
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
A Book for All and None
–
Friedrich Nietzsche
Translated by Michael Hulse
Introduction by Joanna Kavenna
Contents
ixJOANNA KAVENNA
– Introduction –
Some years ago, Tom Kremer (the founder of Notting Hill Editions) told me that he was going to commission a new translation of Thus Spake Zarathustra. He regarded it as the greatest work of European literature. Tom was a truly extraordinary person. Born in Transylvania, to a Hungarian-Jewish family, he survived the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen. After the war, he lived in Israel, South Africa and eventually the UK. He became a football coach, a teacher, an inventor; he popularised the Rubik’s Cube, wrote books, set up his own publishing house. Tom was in his eighties when I first met him but he was so robust and undaunted that it was genuinely a surprise when he died in 2017.
Before he died, Tom commissioned Michael Hulse to be his translator. This was an excellent idea because Hulse is such a distinguished poet as well as a renowned translator and critic. Readers may well know Hulse’s work through his seminal translations of W. G. Sebald, in which he brilliantly re-renders the elegiac atmosphere of the original German. He has also translated many other authors, most notably Rilke and Goethe. The poetic atmosphere of Thus Spake Zarathustra is also fundamental to the work. It’s a wild prose poem, a fantastical rhapsody. It was published between 1883 and 1885 in four parts. The subtitle is ironic: ‘A Book for All and None.’ At the time, sales were poor and Nietzsche published the last part at his own expense, having been dropped by his publisher.
Now, Nietzsche is a world-famous philosopher, though the metaphorical ambiguities of his style have often caused his work to be misunderstood. He debunked the old religious and philosophical traditions of binary thought – good/evil, God/devil. Despite this, he has often been read in line with such binary traditions, as categorically one thing or another: good/evil, God/devil. He despised xmonologic absolutes but his works were later appropriated by fascists in support of their own despicable monologic absolutes. He feared his work would one day be traduced yet he was opposed to clarity as a form of delusion. It is a further irony that any ostensibly factual claim about Nietzsche runs counter to his philosophical arguments against factual claims. His literary style is unbridled, provocative, contradictory, often humorous. He writes, possibly as a joke: ‘I am no man. I am dynamite.’ His work exceeds and explodes all traditional categories; it has also exploded across the world, influencing countless others including Georg Brandes, August Strindberg, Edvard Munch, W. B. Yeats, Martin Buber, Thomas Mann, André Gide, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Rainer Maria Rilke, Karl Jaspers, Albert Camus, Jacques Derrida, Ralph Ellison, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Luce Irigaray, Kelly Oliver, Marilyn Pearsall, Paul Tillich, Tamsin Lorraine and Maggie Nelson.
Nietzsche was born in 1844 in Röcken, Saxony, into a devout Lutheran family. His father was a pastor and died when Nietzsche was only four. After this, Nietzsche was raised by his mother and grandmother, along with his sister Elisabeth. At the age of twenty-five, he became a professor of classical philology at the University of Basel. He served as a medical orderly in the 1870 Franco-German War, and contracted diphtheria. He became friends with Wagner, wrote a highly Wagnerian book, The Birth of Tragedy (1872), but their friendship had cooled by the end of the 1870s. Around the same time, Nietzsche’s poor health made it increasingly untenable for him to teach. In 1879, the University of Basel gave him a pension, and for the following decade he lived in Switzerland, Italy and France. He was constantly ill, partly blind and yet he wrote Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883–5), Beyond Good and Evil (1886) and On the Geneaology of Morals (1887). In 1888 he produced a final flurry of works including Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist and Ecce Homo.
In 1889, Nietzsche broke down entirely. At the time, it was assumed that his madness was caused by syphilis, but there are other xitheories including tumours and strokes. From Turin, he sent frenzied letters to his friends, signing off as Dionysus. In his last letter, he wrote: ‘I am just having all anti-Semites shot.’ Finally he collapsed in the street and was confined to an asylum; later his sister took him under her care. He died, never having regained his sanity, in 1900.
After his death, Thus Spake Zarathustra became Nietzsche’s most famous work. By the First World War it was so popular that every German soldier heading off to the trenches was given a copy, to inspire them. This was an odd choice. Nietzsche wrote each part swiftly; Part II was written in ten days. It contains many of the ideas for which Nietzsche is most widely known: ‘God is Dead,’ eternal recurrence, and the übermensch or superhuman. The protagonist, Zarathustra, wanders through the world, encountering friends and foes, trying to impart his ideas. People variously threaten, ignore or worship him. The name is significant: Zarathustra is the pre-sixth century BCE Iranian prophet regarded as the founder of the religion of Zoroastrianism. The Greeks saw Zoroastrianism as the origin point of the dualistic view of the world, in which reality is portioned into opposites: God/devil, good/evil, soul/body, dark/light. In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche explains ‘what the name of Zarathustra precisely meant in my mouth’:
Zarathustra was the first to see in the struggle between good and evil the essential wheel in the working of things. The translation of morality into the realm of metaphysics, as force, cause, end-in-itself, is his work. [Zarathustra] created this most portentous of all errors […] he must be the first to expose it.
In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche argues against all metaphysical absolutes. Without God, they have no logic, because there is no eternal referent: ‘everlasting good and evil do not exist!’ Equally we should be suspicious of all absolute systems, not merely the theological: we should not worship science without question, nor the state, ‘the coldest of all cold monsters.’ Human life is not a journey towards a goal – eternal life or the kingdom of heaven: xii
The human is a rope, fastened between the animal and the superhuman – a rope across an abyss. […] What is great in the human is that it is a bridge and not an end in itself. What can be loved in the human is that it is both a crossing-over and a going-down.
The revised purpose of life is to become the superhuman. This is an idea that Nietzsche never clearly defines, typically enough, but it suggests a process of accepting mortal life as an end in itself, and living abundantly and without fear: ‘All the gods are dead; now we want the superhuman to live.’
The work is ironic, mischievous and full of contradictions and paradoxes. Zarathustra tells his followers to listen to him, then he tells them not to trust him. Perhaps he is deceiving them! He is the ‘laughing prophet,’ the ‘dancer,’ who wants to ‘kill the spirit of heaviness’: the despair that threatens those who live without God. Just as ‘all good things laugh’ so ‘all good things approach their goals obliquely.’ Eternal recurrence is another oblique approach but, fittingly, it recurs throughout the book. Imagine, says Zarathustra, that ‘we have already been here an infinite number of times, and all things with us.’ The superhuman can contend with the idea of eternal recurrence, of experiencing the same life over and over again, because they have lived well.
There are caveats to all Nietzsche’s arguments, and besides his meaning is never certain. Yet his dream of the laughing, dancing human – divested of heaviness, of cold eternal absolutes – remains radical even today. The path is fraught with danger; the rope is above an abyss, after all. In a letter, Nietzsche described Thus Spake Zarathustra as ‘an explosion of forces that have been building up over decades.’ The danger, he added, is that ‘the originator of such explosions can often get blown up.’ There are many interpretations, detonations, of Nietzsche’s life and work; this short introduction can barely begin to invoke them. If you are interested and would like to read further, then Sue Prideaux’s recent biography, I Am Dynamite, is a fascinating, nuanced portrait. Alexander Nehamas’s equally compelling Nietzsche: Life as Literature proposes that the ‘Nietzsche’ xiiiof the works is a persona, a literary character and not the ‘real’ man at all. Each translation of Nietzsche is also an interpretation and occurs at a specific moment in time. Thomas Common emphasised the mock-devotional aspects of Nietzsche’s style and based his 1909 translation on the King James Bible. Walter Kaufmann translated Nietzsche in the era of Camus and Sartre and presented Nietzsche as an early existentialist. There are also major translations by R. J. Hollingdale, Thomas Wayne, Graham Parkes, Clancy Martin and Adrian Del Caro, among others. Works of literature are not legal documents nor scientific papers. As the critic Eileen Battersby once wrote: ‘no translation … is absolute; that honour belongs to the original book.’
As for this translation: I mentioned earlier that Michael Hulse is a distinguished poet. He is the first poet to translate Thus Spake Zarathustra into English. This is worth stating, though it doesn’t mean that previous translations were unpoetic. Hulse was raised in both the UK and Germany; likewise, he has taught both in Germany and the UK. Until recently he was a professor of poetry and comparative literature at Warwick University. His collections include Knowing and Forgetting (1981), Empires and Holy Lands: Poems 1976–2000 (2002) and Half-Life (2013). In 1978, he was the inaugural winner of the UK’s National Poetry Competition, with ‘Dole Queue’. This poem includes the phrase: ‘I won’t / pretend to understand the world. I don’t.’ These lines are indicative of Hulse’s work, which is concerned with uncertainty, contradictory emotions, the mysterious bonds of love. He has won many further prizes, including the Eric Gregory and the Bridport. His translations have also been rightly lauded, most famously his translations of W. G. Sebald’s works – The Emigrants (1996), The Rings of Saturn (1998) and Vertigo (1999). These brought Sebald’s work to an international readership. He has also translated Elfriede Jelinek, Herta Müller, Alexander Kluge and Rainer Maria Rilke, among many others.
When Hulse first sent me this translation of Thus Spake Zarathustra, he said it might be best if I read without any prior statements xivfrom him about methods or precepts. This is absolutely fair enough. With this in mind, I won’t speculate here about Hulse’s philosophy of translation. As a reader, I can say that Nietzsche was an early exponent of an exclamatory, aphoristic style, which later became characteristic of modernist writers such as T. S. Eliot, Wittgenstein and Beckett – as well as later writers of tribute modernism. The style of Thus Spake Zarathustra is quite mixed: at times clear and arresting, then mystical and hieratic. Sometimes it is all of the above, at once. Hulse beautifully conveys this paradoxical style: ‘… be wary of the good and just! They like to crucify those who devise their own virtue – they hate the solitary. Be wary of holy simple-mindedness as well! Everything that is not simple-minded is unholy in its eyes; and it likes to play with fire – and to burn at the stake.’ These phrases are torrential; they draw us along like a fast-flowing river. Hulse is acutely sensitive to the spiralling metaphors of Nietzsche’s writing, and always finds exciting ways to render them. For example:
God is a thought that makes all straight things crooked and puts all standing things in a spin. What, are we to imagine time gone, and all transient things a mere lie? To think this is a whirling, dizzying experience for human bones, and sets the stomach heaving; truly, I call it the spinning sickness, to conjecture any such thing.
This passage escalates swiftly from a measured analogy of straight things becoming crooked to a series of whirling dizzying images that invoke whirling dizzying experience itself. Thus Spake Zarathustra always has this dynamic – explosive – energy. It depends on accumulation, irony, word play, dances with meaning. Hulse renders all these nuances, ambiguities and escalations in such wild, lovely poetry; his achievement is immense. He has crafted a bold, exhilarating translation of Nietzsche’s revolutionary work.
PART ONE
2
– Zarathustra’s Prologue –
1
When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he quit his home parts and the lake at his home and went up into the mountains. There he savoured the pleasures of his spirit and of his solitude, and for ten years they did not pall on him. At length, however, his heart underwent a change, and one morning he rose at dawn, stepped out before the sun, and addressed it in this way:
‘Great star, what happiness would you have without those to whom you bring light?
‘For ten years you have been coming up here to my cave. You would have wearied of your travails and of your own light, were it not for me, my eagle, and my serpent.
‘But every morning we awaited you, took of your superabundance, and blessed you for it.
‘Now, look, I have wearied of my wisdom, like the bee that has gathered too much honey. I am in need of hands outstretched.
‘I should like to give and distribute, till that time come when the wise among humankind rejoice in their foolishness once again, and the poor rejoice in their riches.
‘That that may be, I must go down into the depths, as you do in the evenings when you go down beyond the sea and, super-rich star, bring light to the underworld too.
‘Like you, I must go down, to borrow the phrase of humankind, to whom I mean to descend.
‘Bless me, then, steady eye that can gaze without envy on even the greatest of happiness.
‘Bless the cup that is full to overflowing, that the water may flow golden from it and bear the reflection of your rapture everywhere.
‘For the cup, you see, would be empty once more, and Zarathustra would be human again.’ 4
So began the going-down of Zarathustra.
2
Zarathustra went down from the mountains alone, and no one came his way. When he entered the forest, however, he happened upon an old man who had left his holy cabin to look for roots in the woods. And the old man said to Zarathustra:
‘This wayfarer is no stranger to me. He came by here years ago. His name was Zarathustra, but he has changed.
‘Back then, you were taking your ashes up into the mountains. Are you bringing your fire to the valleys now? Are you not afraid to be punished as a fire-raiser?
‘I’d know Zarathustra anywhere – his limpid eye, his mouth free of revulsion, his walk like a dancer’s.
‘But Zarathustra has been transformed. Zarathustra was become a child. Now Zarathustra is a man awoken. What, then, do you want among those who are asleep?
‘You dwelt in solitude as in an ocean, and the ocean bore you up. Perish the thought, but do you mean to step ashore? – do you mean to haul your own body about once again, yourself?’
Zarathustra answered: ‘I love humankind.’
‘And why did I go into the forest and desert?’ said the holy man. ‘Was it not because of the-all-too great love I bore humanity?
‘Now I love God: I do not love humanity. For me, humankind is too imperfect. To love humanity would be the end of me.’
Zarathustra answered: ‘What was I thinking, to speak of love? I am bearing a gift to humanity.’
‘Give them nothing,’ said the holy man. ‘You would do better to take something from them, and help them carry it. That will be of the greatest benefit to them. May it also be good for you!
‘And if you really want to give them something, let it be no more than alms, and let them beg for it.’
‘No,’ answered Zarathustra, ‘I am no alms-giver. I am not poor enough for that.’ 5
The holy man laughed at Zarathustra, and said to him: ‘Then see they accept your treasures. They are wary of hermits and do not believe that we come bearing gifts.
‘Our footfall in the streets has too solitary a sound – and if at night in their beds they hear a man go by, long before the sun is up, you can be sure they think it’s a thief and wonder where he’s heading.
‘Don’t go among humanity. Stay in the forest. You would do better to go to the animals. Why not be like me, a bear among bears, a bird among birds?’
‘And what does a holy man do in the forest?’ asked Zarathustra.
The holy man answered: ‘I make songs and sing them, and while I’m making up the songs I laugh and cry and rumble on in my way. That is how I praise God.
‘Singing, laughing, crying and rumbling on is how I give praise to the God who is my God. But what gift is it you bring us?’
When Zarathustra heard these words, he saluted the holy man and said: ‘Whatever could I give you? Let me go quickly, lest I take something from you.’ And so they parted, the old man and the other, laughing as two boys laugh.
But once Zarathustra was alone, he spake to his heart in this way: ‘Can it be possible? Can this old holy man in his forest really not have heard that God is dead?’
3
When Zarathustra reached the nearest town, on the edge of the forest, he found a crowd of people gathered in the marketplace there to watch a tightrope-walker who was due to perform. And Zarathustra spake thus to the people:
‘My teaching to you is of the superhuman. The time has come to go beyond the human. What have you done to go beyond it?
‘So far, every being has created something that went beyond itself. Do you mean to be the ebb of that great flood? Would you rather return to the condition of beasts than go beyond the human? 6
‘What is an ape in the eyes of humanity? An occasion for laughter or smarting shame. And that is what the human will be for the superhuman: an occasion for laughter or smarting shame.
‘The journey from worm to human lies behind you, and still there is much of the worm in you. At one time you were apes, and even now the human is more of an ape than any ape.
‘The wisest among you is no more than a riving and twining of plant life and ghost. But am I urging you to become plants or ghosts?
‘No – my teaching to you is of the superhuman!
‘The superhuman is the meaning of the earth. May your will say: so be it – let the superhuman be the meaning of the earth!
‘I call upon you, my brothers, to remain true to the earth and not believe those who would have you hope for things that lie beyond it. They are concocters of poisons, whether they do it knowingly or not.
‘They hold life in contempt. They are a dying breed. They have been poisoned themselves, and the world is weary of them. Let them be gone.
‘At one time, to sin against God was the gravest of sins. But God died, and with him the sinners of old. Now to sin against the earth is the most terrible of sins – and to prize the entrails of the inapprehensible more than the meaning of the earth.
‘At one time, the soul regarded the body with contempt, and in those days that contempt counted higher than all else. The soul wanted the body skinny, grisly and famished, the better to give it the slip and escape the earth.
‘But, oh, it was the soul itself that was skinny, grisly and famished, and what the soul delighted in was cruelty.
‘What of you then, my brothers? Say to me: what does your body tell you of your soul? Is your soul not poverty and filth and miserable contentment?
‘Humanity is truly a river of filth. It takes an ocean to absorb a river of filth without itself being defiled.
‘So you see, my teaching to you is of the superhuman. That is the ocean. That is where your measureless contempt can go under. 7
‘What is the greatest experience you could ever have? It is the hour of measureless contempt. The hour when you find even your own happiness, even your reason and virtue, revolting.
‘The hour when you say: “What good is my happiness? It is poverty and filth and miserable contentment. But my happiness should justify existence itself.”
‘The hour when you say: “What good is my reason? Does it crave knowledge as the lion craves the next meal? It is poverty and filth and miserable contentment.”
‘The hour when you say: “What good is my virtue? It has not driven me to distraction yet. How weary I am of my good and my evil! All of that is poverty and filth and miserable contentment.”
‘The hour when you say: “What good is my justice? I do not see that I am fire and hot coals. But the just man is fire and hot coals.”
‘The hour when you say: “What good is my pity? Is pity not the cross on which the one who loves humanity is nailed? But my pity is no crucifixion.”
‘Have you ever uttered such words? Have you ever cried out in that way? Had I but heard you cry out in that way!
‘It is not your sin but your sufficiency that cries out unto heaven. The meanness that is even in your sin cries out unto heaven.
‘Where is the lightning, to lick you with its tongue? Where is the madness, to afford you protection?
‘See, my teaching to you is of the superhuman. That is the lightning. That is the madness.’ –
When Zarathustra had said this much, a man in the crowd shouted out: ‘We’ve listened to the tightrope-walker long enough – now let’s see what he can do.’ And all the people laughed at Zarathustra. But the tightrope-walker himself, thinking the words were meant for him, began his performance.
4
But Zarathustra looked at the people and marvelled. Then he spake thus: 8
‘The human is a rope, fastened between the animal and the superhuman – a rope across an abyss.
‘A perilous crossing, a perilous transit, a perilous looking-back, a perilous shuddering and stopping.
‘What is great in the human is that it is a bridge and not an end in itself. What can be loved in the human is that it is both a crossing-over and a going-down.
‘I love those who cannot conceive of living except by going down, for they are the ones who cross over.
‘I love those who are filled with a great contempt, for it is they who venerate greatly, they who are the arrows of longing for the other bank.
‘I love those who do not first cast about beyond the stars for some reason to go down and be sacrificed, but who give themselves in sacrifice to the earth – that the earth, in the course of time, should be the province of the superhuman.
‘I love the one who lives in order to know, the one who wants to know so that one day the superhuman shall live, and so wills his own downfall.
‘I love the one who works and invents, that he may build a house for the superhuman and prepare the earth, animals and plants for him, for so he wills his own downfall.
‘I love the one who loves his own virtue, for virtue is the will to downfall and an arrow of longing.
‘I love the one who does not hold back a single drop of spirit for himself but wants to be unreservedly the spirit of his virtue, for so he strides as spirit across the bridge.
‘I love the one who makes of his virtue both his taste and his doom, for so he determines to live or not live for his virtue’s sake.
‘I love the one who does not want too many virtues. One virtue is more virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for doom to tangle in.
‘I love the one whose soul is spendthrift, who neither wants nor gives thanks, for he is always making gifts and has no intention of hoarding himself. 9
‘I love the one who feels shame when the dice fall in his favour, and demands: Am I a cheat, then? – for he wills his own destruction.
‘I love the one who casts golden words ahead of his deeds, and always delivers more than he promises, for he wills his own downfall.
‘I love the one who justifies the people of the future and redeems the people of the past, for he means to perish through the people of the present.
‘I love the one who chastises his god because he loves his god, for he must perish through the wrath of his god.
‘I love the one whose soul is deep even its capacity to bear wounds, the one who can perish of any little thing, for he goes gladly across the bridge.
‘I love the one whose soul is overfull, so that he forgets himself and all things are in him, for all things become his downfall.
‘I love the one who has a free spirit and a free heart, for his head is no more than the bowels of his heart, while his heart drives him on to his downfall.
‘I love all those who are heavy drops falling singly from the dark cloud that hangs over the human, for they prophesy the coming of the lightning, and as prophets they perish.
‘See, I am a prophet of the lightning and a heavy drop from the cloud: but the name for this lightning is the superhuman.’
5
When Zarathustra had spoken these words, he looked once again at the people and was silent. ‘There they stand,’ he said to his heart, ‘there they laugh: they do not understand me, I am not the mouth for these ears.
‘Must one first smash their ears, that they might learn to hear with their eyes? Must one make a great noise like a drum or a hellfire preacher? Or do they believe the stammerer alone?
‘They do have something they take pride in. But what do they call this thing they take pride in? Culture, they call it – it sets them apart from the goatherds. 10
‘Because of this, they do not care to hear the word “contempt” used of them. That being so, I shall address myself to their pride.
‘I shall speak to them of what is most contemptible: but that is the last human.’
And Zarathustra spake thus to the people:
‘It is time for the human to set itself a goal. It is time for the human to sow the seed of its highest hope.
‘His soil is still rich enough. But one day the soil will be poor and over-cultivated, and no tall tree will grow from it any more.
‘Alas! The time is coming when the human will no longer shoot the arrow of his longing out beyond humankind, and the string of his bow will have lost its tensile whish.
‘I tell you, one must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star. I say to you, you still have chaos in you.
‘Alas! The time is coming when humankind will no longer give birth to stars. The time of the most contemptible human is coming, the one who can no longer despise himself.
‘See, I show you the last human.
‘“What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?” asks the last human, and blinks.
‘The earth has now grown small, and on it capers the last human, who makes everything small. His race is as ineradicable as the flea; the last human lives longest.
‘“We have invented happiness,” say the last humans, and blink.
‘They have quit the regions where the living was hard: for one needs warmth. One still loves one’s neighbour and rubs against him: for one needs warmth.
‘To be sick and mistrusting count as sins with them, for they value paying attention, and the man who still stumbles over stones or men is a fool!
‘A little poison now and then makes for pleasant dreams. A lot of poison, at the last, makes for a pleasant death.
‘They still work, since work is a form of entertainment. But they make sure the entertainment doesn’t wear them out. 11
‘People no longer grow poor or rich, since either is too much trouble. Who would still rule? And who obey? Either is too much trouble.
‘No herdsman and one herd! Everyone wants the same thing, everyone is the same: anyone who feels differently about it is entering the madhouse of his own free will.
‘“In the old days, the whole world was mad,” say the most discerning, and blink.
‘They are clever and know everything that has happened: so there is no end to their mockery. They still squabble, but they soon make up – otherwise it ruins one’s digestion.
‘They have their little indulgence by day and their little indulgence by night: but they respect health.
‘“We have invented happiness,’ say the last humans, and they blink.
And here the first discourse of Zarathustra, also known as “The Prologue”, ended; for at this point the crowd’s shouting and jollity interrupted him. ‘Give us this last human, oh Zarathustra’ – so they cried – ‘make us these last humans! You can keep the superman!’ And all the people cheered and jeered. But Zarathustra was downcast, and said to his heart:
‘They do not understand me: I am not the mouth for these ears.
‘I must have lived in the mountains too long, and listened to the streams and trees too much: now I speak to them as if to goatherds.
‘Unmoved is my soul, and bright as the mountains in the morning. But they think I am cold, and a mocker, making fearful jokes. ‘And now they gaze upon me and laugh; and as they laugh they hate me still. There is ice in their laughter.’
6
But then something happened that left every mouth silent and every eye fixed. For the tightrope-walker had meanwhile begun his act, and, having emerged by a little door, was crossing the rope that was stretched between two towers above the marketplace and the crowd. 12Just as he was halfway across, the little door opened again and a brightly dressed clown of a fellow leapt out and stepped lively after the first. ‘Move along there, halt-foot,’ he shouted in a fearsome voice – ‘on with you, lazybones, sly-boots, paleface, or I’ll tickle you with my heels! What are you up to between these towers? You belong inside the tower, locked up – you’re getting in the way of a better man than you!’ And with every word he came closer and closer. But when he was only a single step behind him, the dreadful thing happened that left every mouth silent and every eye fixed: he let out a shriek like a devil and jumped over the man who was in his way. But the latter, seeing his rival victorious, lost his head and the rope; he threw away his pole and, falling even faster than it did, plummeted in a whirl of arms and legs. The marketplace and the crowd were like a sea when a storm breaks, turbulently parting, especially where the body was about to hit the ground.
Zarathustra, however, did not move, and the body fell right next to him, mangled and broken but not yet dead. After a while the injured man regained consciousness and saw Zarathustra kneeling beside him. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked at length. ‘I have long known that the devil would trip me up. Now he is dragging me off to hell. Are you trying to stop him?’
‘On my honour, friend,’ answered Zarathustra, ‘the things you are talking of do not exist – there is no devil, and no hell. Your soul will be dead even sooner than your body. Do not be afraid of anything any longer!’
The man looked up mistrustfully. ‘If what you say is true,’ he then said, ‘I am losing nothing if I lose my life. I am little more than an animal that has been taught to dance with blows and starvation rations.’
‘No need to think like that,’ said Zarathustra, – ‘you took danger as your calling. There is nothing to be despised in that. Now your calling has been your undoing: I shall bury you with my own hands.’
When Zarathustra had said this, the dying man made no further reply; but he motioned with his hand, as if he were groping for Zarathustra’s to thank him. 13
7
It had now grown evening, and the marketplace was mantled in darkness. The people went their ways, for even curiosity and terror tire. For his part, Zarathustra sat beside the dead man on the ground, lost in thought, oblivious to the time. At length, however, night fell and a cold wind blew about the lone figure – and Zarathustra arose and said to his heart:
‘Truly, it has been a fine catch for Zarathustra today! He did not catch a human, but he did catch a corpse.
‘Human existence is uncanny, and still it has no meaning; a clown of a fellow can spell doom to it.
‘I mean to teach people the meaning of their existence – the superhuman, the lightning-bolt from the dark cloud of the human.
‘Yet now I am still far from them, and my meaning does not speak to their minds. To humans, I am still the mean between a fool and a corpse.
‘Dark is the night, dark are the ways of Zarathustra. Come, cold and stiff companion! I shall carry you to where I shall bury you with my own hands.’
8
When Zarathustra had said this to his heart, he took up the corpse upon his back and set off. He had not walked a hundred paces when a man stole up to him and whispered in his ear – and, see! it was the clown who had been on the tower. ‘Get out of this town, oh Zarathustra,’ he said; ‘there are too many here who hate you. The good and the just hate you, and call you their enemy, who holds them in contempt; the faithful of the true faith hate you, and call you a public menace. It was fortunate for you that they laughed at you – and the truth is that you talked like a fool. It was fortunate for you that you gave company to that dead dog – for by abasing yourself in that way you survived for today. But get out of this town – or tomorrow it will be you I jump over, a living man over a dead one.’ And when he 14had said this, the man vanished; Zarathustra, for his part, walked on through the dark streets.
At the town gate he was met by the gravediggers, who thrust their torch into his face and, recognizing Zarathustra by its light, heaped derision upon him. ‘Zarathustra is carrying the dead dog away! Here’s a fine thing – Zarathustra’s turned gravedigger! Our hands are too dainty for this carcass, it seems. Is Zarathustra out to steal the devil’s portion? Go to it, then! And good eating! Here’s hoping the devil’s not a better thief than Zarathustra, or he’ll steal the two of them and eat up both!’ And they all laughed with their heads together.
Zarathustra made not a word of reply and went his way. When he had walked for two hours past woods and marshes, the hungry howling of wolves began to be too much for him, and he felt hungry himself and stopped at a lonely house where a light was burning.
‘Hunger is waylaying me like a robber,’ said Zarathustra. ‘My hunger is waylaying me in the woods and the marshes and in the deep of the night.
‘My hunger is strangely capricious. Often it comes upon me only after a meal, and today it did not come at all: wherever was it?’
And with that Zarathustra knocked on the door of the house. An old man appeared, carrying a light, and asked: ‘Who comes to me and my bad sleep?’
‘A living man and a dead man,’ said Zarathustra. ‘Give me something to eat and drink – I forgot them during the day. He who feeds the hungry restores his own soul: thus speaks wisdom.’
The old man went away, but returned presently and offered Zarathustra bread and wine. ‘These are bad parts for hungry people,’ he said. ‘That is why I live here as a hermit: animals and humans come to me. But tell your companion to eat and drink as well. He is wearier than you.’ Zarathustra answered: ‘My companion is dead. I don’t see myself persuading him to join me.’ ‘That’s none of my business,’ said the old man morosely. ‘Anyone who knocks at my door must take what I offer. Eat, both of you, and fare you well!’
After this, Zarathustra walked on for another two hours, trusting 15 to the track and the light of the stars: for he was accustomed to walking at night, and loved to look upon the face of all that sleeps. At daybreak, however, Zarathustra found himself in a deep forest, and unable to make out a track any more. So he laid the dead man in a hollow tree at his head (wanting to protect him from wolves) and himself lay down on the mossy ground. And at once he fell asleep, his body tired but his soul free of turmoil.
9
Zarathustra slept for a long time, and not only the glow of dawn lit his face but also the whole of the morning. At length, however, his eyes opened; in wonder he gazed into the forest and the silence, in wonder he gazed within himself. Then he jumped up quickly, like a seafarer who suddenly sees land, and rejoiced; for he saw a new truth. And then he spake thus to his heart:
‘A light has dawned on me. I need companions, living not dead, not corpses I carry with me wherever I go.
‘It is living companions I need, who follow me because they want to follow themselves – wherever I want to go.
‘A light has dawned on me. Zarathustra should speak not to the people but to companions. Zarathustra should not be the herdsman and dog to the flock.
‘To lure away many from the flock – that is why I have come. Let the people and the flock be angry with me; Zarathustra says the herdsmen are robbers.
‘I say herdsmen, yet they call themselves the good and the just. I say herdsmen, yet they call themselves the faithful of the true faith.
‘See them, the good and the just! Whom do they most hate? – him who breaks their tablets of values, the breaker, the law-breaker. But he is the creator.
‘See them, the faithful of all faiths! Whom do they most hate? – him who breaks their tablets of values, the breaker, the law-breaker. But he is the creator.
‘The creator seeks companions, not corpses, nor flocks, nor the 16faithful. The creator seeks fellow-creators, those who inscribe new values on new tablets.
‘The creator seeks companions, and fellow-harvesters; for all that he sees is ripe for harvesting. But he lacks the hundred sickles; so he plucks off ears of corn and is vexed.
‘The creator seeks companions, such as know how to whet their sickles. They will be called destroyers who hold good and evil in contempt – but it is they who bring in the harvest, they who celebrate.
‘Zarathustra seeks fellow-creators, fellow-harvesters, fellow-celebrators! What use are flocks and herdsmen and corpses to him?
‘And you, my first companion, fare you well! I have buried you well in your hollow tree, hidden you well from the wolves.
‘But I am leaving you. Our time is up. Between one dawn and the next a new truth came to me.
‘Neither a herdsman nor a gravedigger shall I be. I shall not even talk again with the people; I have spoken to a dead man for the last time.
‘My company shall be with the creators, the harvesters, the celebrators; I shall show them the rainbow and all the steps to the superhuman.
‘To the hermits I shall sing my song, and to pairs in solitude; and those who have ears to hear the unheard-of I shall make heavy-hearted with my happiness.
‘I shall go to my destination. I shall walk my way. I shall leap over those who hesitate and procrastinate. May my going be their going-down!’
10
Zarathustra had said this to his heart when the sun stood at midday. Then he looked askance into the sky, hearing above him the sharp call of a bird. And see, an eagle was flying wide circles through the air, and from it hung a serpent, not as prey but as a friend, coiled about the eagle’s neck. 17
‘Those are my animals!’ said Zarathustra, and rejoiced in his heart.
‘The proudest animal under the sun and the wisest animal under the sun are reconnoitring.
‘They want to know whether Zarathustra is still alive. Am I still alive, indeed?
‘I found it more dangerous among humans than among animals; Zarathustra walks a dangerous path. May my animals lead me!’
When Zarathustra had said this, he recalled the words of the holy man in the forest, sighed, and spoke thus to his heart:
‘Would that I were wiser! Would that I were wise in the very ground of me, like my serpent!
‘But I am asking for the impossible: so I ask my pride always to keep step with my wisdom.
‘And if one day my wisdom should desert me – ah, how she loves to fly away – may my pride fly together with my wisdom.’
– So began the going-down of Zarathustra. 18
– Zarathustra’s Discourses –
Of the Three Metamorphoses
There are three metamorphoses of the spirit. I shall name them for you: how the spirit becomes a camel, how the camel becomes a lion, and finally how the lion becomes a child.
There is much that is heavy for the spirit, for the strong spirit that bears burdens and is reverent; its strength demands what is heavy, and heaviest.
What is heavy? asks the spirit that bears burdens, and it kneels down like a camel, to be fully loaded.
What is heaviest, you heroes? asks the spirit that bears burdens – let me take it upon me and rejoice in my strength.
Is it not to abase oneself, that one’s pride be mortified? To let one’s foolishness shine forth, in mockery of one’s own wisdom?
Or is it to abandon our cause at the moment of its victory? To climb high mountains in order to tempt the tempter?
Or is it to feed on the acorns and grass of knowledge, and for the sake of truth to suffer hunger of the soul?
Or is it to be ill and send away those who give comfort, and befriend the deaf, who never hear what you want?
Or is it to wade into dirty water, if it is the water of truth, and not to shoo cold frogs and hot toads away?
Or is it to love those who hold us in contempt, and offer our hand to the ghost when it wants to frighten us?
The spirit that bears burdens takes up all of these heaviest of things, and, like a laden camel hastening into the desert, it hastens into its desert.
But in the loneliest desert the second metamorphosis occurs: there the spirit becomes a lion, determined to take freedom as its prey and be master of its own desert. 20
There it seeks its ultimate master; it will be an enemy to him and to his ultimate god, and it will struggle for victory with the great dragon.
What is this great dragon that the spirit declines to regard as its master and god any longer? The name of the great dragon is ‘Thou shalt’. But the spirit of the lion says, ‘I will’.
‘Thou shalt’ lies in its path, glistening with gold, a scaly beast, and every scale bears the glittering golden words ‘Thou shalt’.
The values of thousands of years glitter on those scales, and thus speaks the mightiest of all dragons: ‘All the value that things possess glitters on me.
‘All value has already been created, and all the value that has been created – is me. Truly, there shall be no more “I will”!’ Thus speaks the dragon.
My brothers, why is the lion needed in the spirit? Why is the beast of burden, which goes without and is reverent, not sufficient?
To create new values – even the lion is unable to do that. But to create its own freedom, for new creation – that the lion has the power to do.
To create one’s own freedom, and deliver a sacred ‘no’ even to duty: that, my brothers, is what the lion is needed for.
To assert the right to new values – that is the most fearful appropriation to make for a spirit that bears burdens and is reverent. Truly, to this spirit that is theft, and the business of a predator.
At one time it loved ‘Thou shalt’ as its holiest of holies; now it must discover delusion and caprice even in that holiest of holies, if it is to steal freedom from its love; the lion is needed for that theft.
But tell me, my brothers, what the child can do that even the lion could not? Whyever must the preying lion become a child?
The child is innocence and forgetting, a fresh start, a game, a wheel that rolls of itself, a prime movement, a holy saying of ‘yes’.
Yes, my brothers, a holy saying of ‘yes’ is required for the game of creation; the spirit now wills its own will, and the one who is lost to the world gains his own world. 21
I named three metamorphoses of the spirit to you: how the spirit became a camel, how the camel became a lion, and finally how the lion became a child.
Thus spake Zarathustra. And at that time he was staying in the town known as The Cow of Many Colours.
Of the Professorial Chairs of Virtue
A wise man was praised to Zarathustra for his fine discourse on sleep and virtue. He was greatly revered and rewarded for it, and all the young men sat before his chair. Zarathustra went to him and sat before his chair with all the young men. And thus spake the wise man:
Honour to sleep and shame in the face of it! That is the first thing! And one must avoid all who sleep badly and lie awake at night!
Even the thief feels shame in the face of sleep: he always goes softly by night. But the night watchman is shameless, and shamelessly he bears his horn.
Sleeping is no paltry art. You have to stay awake all day to do it.
Ten times a day you have to exercise self-discipline; this makes for a goodly weariness and is opium for the soul.
Ten times you must be reconciled with yourself; for self-discipline is bitterness, and you sleep badly if you are unreconciled.
You must discover ten truths a day; otherwise you will be seeking truth at night as well, and your soul will still be hungry.
You must laugh and be cheerful ten times a day; otherwise your stomach, the father of sorrows, will give you trouble in the night.
Few know it, but one must possess all the virtues if one is to sleep well. Shall I bear false witness? Shall I commit adultery?
Shall I covet my neighbour’s maidservant? None of these would be conducive to sound sleep.
And even if one possesses all the virtues, one must still bear one thing in mind: even these virtues should be sent to sleep at the proper time. 22
So that they do not squabble among themselves, those prim little misses! Nor about you, unhappy man!
Peace with God and the neighbour: thus good sleep would have it. And peace with the neighbour’s devil, too! Or else he will haunt you by night.
Honour the powers that be, and show them obedience, even the crooked powers! Thus good sleep would have it. How can I help it if power likes to walk on crooked legs?
To my mind, the best herdsman will always be the one who leads his sheep to the greenest pastures; that goes well with good sleep.
I do not want numerous honours, nor great treasures; they only inflame the spleen. But one sleeps badly if one has no good name and a tiny treasure.
The company of a few is more welcome to me than bad company; but they must come and go at the proper time. That goes well with good sleep.
The poor in spirit also please me greatly; they help one sleep. Blessèd are they, especially if one always agrees with them.
This is how the day goes by for the virtuous man. When night comes, I am wary of calling out for sleep. Sleep, the lord of the virtues, does not care to be called.
Instead I think over what I have done and thought that day. Ruminating, I ask myself, patient as a cow: in which ten ways did you exercise self-discipline?
And which were the ten reconciliations and the ten truths and the ten bouts of laughter that succoured my heart?
Weighing matters such as these, and cradled by forty thoughts, I presently yield as sleep, the lord of the virtues, takes me unbidden.
Sleep knocks on my eyes, and they grow heavy. Sleep touches my mouth, and it hangs open.
Truly, he comes to me on soft soles, the dearest of thieves, and steals my thoughts away; there I stand, as witless as this chair.
But I do not stand for much longer; already I am lying down. 23
When Zarathustra heard the wise man speak in this way, he laughed in his heart; for, as he listened, a light had dawned on him. And he spoke thus to his heart:
This wise man with his forty thoughts strikes me as a fool – though I do believe that he is an expert in sleeping.
