A Book for Everyone and No One
1
I SHALL now tell the story of Zarathustra. The basic conception of the work, the idea of eternal recurrence, the highest formula of affirmation that can possibly be attained − belongs to the August of the year 1881: it was jotted down on a piece of paper with the inscription: ‘6,000 feet beyond man and time’. I was that day walking through the woods beside the lake of Silva-plana; I stopped beside a mighty pyramidal block of stone which reared itself up not far from Surlei. Then this idea came to me. − If I reckon a couple of months back from this day I find as an omen a sudden and profoundly decisive alteration in my taste, above all in music. The whole of Zarathustra might perhaps be reckoned as music; − certainly a rebirth of the art of hearing was a precondition of it. In a little mountain resort not far from Vicenza, Recoaro, where I spent the spring of the year 1881, I discovered together with my maestro and friend Peter Gast, who was likewise ‘reborn’, that the phoenix music flew past us with lighter and more luminous wings than it had ever exhibited before. If on the other hand I reckon from that day forwards to the sudden delivery accomplished under the most improbable circumstances in February 1883 − the closing section, from which I have quoted a couple of sentences in the Foreword, was completed precisely at that sacred hour when Richard Wagner died in Venice − the pregnancy is seen to have lasted eighteen months. This term of precisely eighteen months might suggest, at least to Buddhists, that I am really a female elephant. − The interval is occupied by the ‘gaya scienza’, which bears a hundred signs of the proximity of something incomparable; finally it gives the opening of Zarathustra itself, it gives in the penultimate piece of the fourth book the fundamental idea of Zarathustra. − Also belonging to this interval is that Hymn to Life (for mixed chorus and orchestra) the score of which was published two years ago by E. W. Fritzsch of Leipzig: a perhaps not insignificant symptom of the condition of this year, when I was possessed to the highest degree by the affirmative pathos par excellence, which I call the tragic pathos. It will one day be sung to my memory. − The text, I may state expressly because a misunderstanding exists about it, is not by me: it is the astonishing inspiration of a young Russian lady with whom I was then friendly, Fräulein Lou von Salomé. He who knows how to extract any meaning at all from the closing words of the poem will divine why I preferred and admired it: they possess greatness. Pain does not count as an objection to life: ‘Have you no more happiness to give me, well then! still do you have your pain…’ Perhaps my music is also great at this point. [Last note of the clarinet in A is C sharp not C. Printing error.) − I lived the following winter in the pleasandy quiet bay of Rapallo not far from Genoa which cuts in between Chiavari and the promontory of Porto Fino. My health was not of the best; the winter cold and exceedingly wet; a small albergo situated right against the sea, so that at night the high tide made sleep impossible, offered all in all the very opposite of what one might desire. In spite of this, and almost as a proof of my proposition that everything decisive comes about ‘in spite of, it was during this winter and under these unfavourable conditions that my Zarathustra came into existence. − In the mornings I climbed in a southerly direction into the heights along the glorious route to Zoagli, past pine-trees and with a vast view of the sea; in the afternoons, whenever my health permitted I walked around the entire bay from Santa Margherita to Porto Fino. This place and this landscape is even closer to my heart through the great love Kaiser Friedrich the Third felt for it; in the autumn of 1886 I happened to be on this coast again when he visited this little forgotten world of happiness for the last time. − It was on these two walks that the whole of the first Zarathustra came to me, above all Zarathustra himself, as a type: more accurately, be stole up on me…
2
To understand this type one has first to become clear as to its physiological presupposition: it is that which I call great health. I do not know how to illustrate this conception better or more personally than I have already done in one of the last sections of the fifth book of the ‘gaya scienza’. ‘We new, nameless, ill-understood’ − it says there − ‘we premature-born of a yet undemonstrated future, we need for a new goal also a new means, namely a new health, a stronger, shrewder, tougher, more daring, more cheerful health than any has been hitherto. He whose soul thirsts to have experienced the whole compass of values and desiderata and to have sailed around every coast of this “Middle Sea” of ideals, who wants to know from the adventures of his own most personal experience how a conqueror and discoverer of the ideal feels, likewise how an artist, a saint, a lawgiver, a sage, a scholar, a man of piety, a divine hermit of the old stamp feels: he needs one thing before all else, great health − a health such as one does not merely have but has continually to win because one has again and again to sacrifice it… And now, after having been thus under way for a long time, we Argonauts of the ideal, braver perhaps than is prudent and often enough shipwrecked and come to grief but, as said, healthier than others would like us to be, dangerously healthy, healthy again and again − it seems to us as if we have, as a reward, a yet undiscovered country before us whose boundaries none has ever seen, a land beyond all known lands and corners of the ideal, a world so overfull of the beautiful, strange, questionable, terrible and divine that our curiosity and our thirst for possession are both beside themselves so that nothing can any longer satisfy us!… How, after such prospects and with such a ravenous hunger in conscience and knowledge, could we remain content with the man of the present? It is hard enough to remain serious when we regard his worthiest hopes and objectives, and perhaps we do not even regard them any more… Another ideal runs ahead of us, a strange, seductive, dangerous ideal to which we do not want to convert anyone because we do not easily admit that anyone has a right to it: the ideal of a spirit who naively, that is to say impulsively and from overflowing plenitude and power, plays with everything hitherto called holy, good, untouchable, divine; for whom the highest things by which the people reasonably enough take their standards would signify something like a danger, a corruption, a degradation, or at least a recreation, a blindness, a temporary self-forgetfulness; the ideal of a human-super-human well-being and well-wishing which will often enough seem inhuman, for example when it is set beside the whole of earthly seriousness hitherto, beside every kind of solemnity in gesture, word, tone, glance, morality and task as their most corporal involuntary parody − and with which, in spite of all that, perhaps the great seriousness first arises, the real question-mark is first set up, the destiny of the soul veers round, the clock-hand moves on, the tragedy begins…’
3
− Has anyone at the end of the nineteenth century a distinct conception of what poets of strong ages called inspiration? If not, I will describe it. − If one had the slightest residue of superstition left in one, one would hardly be able to set aside the idea that one is merely incarnation, merely mouthpiece, merely medium of overwhelming forces. The concept of revelation, in the sense that something suddenly, with unspeakable certainty and subtlety, becomes visible, audible, something that shakes and overturns one to the depths, simply describes the fact. One hears, one does not seek; one takes, one does not ask who gives; a thought flashes up like lightning, with necessity, unfalteringly formed − I have never had any choice. An ecstasy whose tremendous tension sometimes discharges itself in a flood of tears, while one’s steps now involuntarily rush along, now involuntarily lag; a complete being outside of oneself with the distinct consciousness of a multitude of subtle shudders and trickles down to one’s toes; a depth of happiness in which the most painful and gloomy things appear, not as an antithesis, but as conditioned, demanded, as a necessary colour within such a superfluity of light; an instinct for rhythmical relationships which spans forms of wide extent − length, the need for a wide-spanned rhythm is almost the measure of the force of inspiration, a kind of compensation for its pressure and tension… Everything is in the highest degree involuntary but takes place as in a tempest of a feeling of freedom, of absoluteness, of power, of divinity… The involuntary nature of image, of metaphor is the most remarkable thing of all; one no longer has any idea what is image, what metaphor, everything presents itself as the readiest, the truest, the simplest means of expression. It really does seem, to allude to a saying of Zarathustra’s, as if the things themselves approached and offered themselves as metaphors (− ‘here all things come caressingly to your discourse and flatter you: for they want to ride upon your back. Upon every image you here ride to every truth. Here, the words and word-chests of all existence spring open to you; all existence here wants to become words, all becoming here wants to learn speech from you −’). This is my experience of inspiration; I do not doubt that one has to go back thousands of years to find anyone who could say to me ‘it is mine also’. −
4
I lay ill for a couple of weeks in Genoa. There followed a melancholy spring in Rome, where I merely put up with life − it was not easy. This place, the most improper in the world for the poet of Zarathustra and which I had not chosen voluntarily, vexed me beyond measure; I tried to get away − I wanted to go to Aquila, the counter-concept to Rome, founded out of enmity towards Rome, as I shall one day found a place to the memory of an atheist and enemy of the church comme il faut, to one who is most closely related to me, the great Hohenstaufen emperor Friedrich the Second. But a fatality hung over it all: I had to return. I finally acquiesced in the piazza Barberini after I had grown weary of trying to find an anti-Christian quarter. I am afraid that once, in an effort to escape the bad odours as much as possible, I asked at the palazzo del Quirinale itself whether they did not have a quiet room for a philosopher. − On a loggia high above the said piazza, from which one has a view across Rome and deep beneath the rustling of the fontana can be heard, that loneliest song was written that ever was written, the Night Song; at this time a melody of unspeakable melancholy went on continually around me whose refrain I rediscovered in the words’dead of immortality…’In the summer, returned home to the sacred spot where the first lightning of the Zarathustra idea had flashed to me, I found the second Zarathustra. Ten days sufficed; in no case, neither with the first nor with the third and last did I require more. The following winter, beneath the halcyon sky of Nice, which then shone into my life for the first time, I found the third Zarathustra − and was done. The whole took hardly a year. Many hidden places and heights in the landscape of Nice are for me consecrated by unforgettable moments; that decisive chapter which bears the title ‘Of Old and New Law-Tables’ was composed during the most painful climb from the station to the marvellous Moorish hill castle Eza − my muscular agility has always been greatest when my creative power has flowed most abundantly. The body is inspired: let us leave the ‘soul’ out of it… I could often have been seen dancing; at that time I could walk for seven or eight hours in the mountains without a trace of tiredness. I slept well, I laughed a lot − I was perfectly vigorous and perfectly patient.
5
Apart from these ten-day works the years during and above all after Zarathustra were a state of distress without equal. One pays dearly for being immortal: one has to die several times while alive. − There is something I call the rancune of what is great: everything great, a work, a deed, once it is completed forthwith turns against him who did it. Precisely because he did it he is from then on *weak−*he can no longer endure his deed, he can no longer look it in the face. To have something behind one that one ought never to have willed, something within which the knot of destiny of mankind is tied−and from then on to have it on one!…. It almost crushes… The rancune of what is great! − A second thing is the horrible silence one hears around one. Solitude has seven skins; nothing can get through them. One encounters people, one greets friends: new desolation, no glance offers a greeting. At best a kind of revolt. I experienced such a revolt, in very varying degrees but from almost everyone who was close to me; it seems that nothing gives greater offence than suddenly to let a distance become perceptible − noble natures who do not know how to live without venerating are rare. − A third thing is the absurd susceptibility of the skin to pinpricks, a kind of helplessness in the face of everything small. This seems to me to be conditioned by the tremendous expenditure of all defensive energies presupposed by every creative deed, every deed that comes from the most personal, innermost, deepest part of one’s being. The minor defensive capabilities are thereby as it were suspended; they no longer receive any energy. − I also venture to suggest that one digests less well, prefers not to move, is all too vulnerable to feeling cold as well as mistrust − mistrust which is in many cases merely an etiological error. While in such a condition I once sensed the proximity of a herd of cows even before I saw them through the return of milder, more philanthropic thoughts: that had warmth in it.…
6
This work stands altogether alone. Let us leave the poets aside: perhaps nothing at all has ever been done out of a like superfluity of strength. My concept ‘dionysian’ has here become the supreme deed; compared with it all the rest of human activity seems poor and conditional. That a Goethe, a Shakespeare would not for a moment have known how to breathe in this tremendous passion and solitude, that Dante is, compared with Zarathustra, merely a believer and not one who first creates truth, a world-ruling spirit, a destiny−that the poets of the Veda are priests and not even worthy to unloose the latchet of the shoes of a Zarathustra−all this is the least of it, and gives no idea of the distance, of the azure solitude, in which this work lives. Zarathustra has an eternal right to say: ‘I form circles and holy boundaries around myself; fewer and fewer climb with me upon higher and higher mountains − I build a mountain range out of holier and holier mountains.’ Reckon into a single sum the spirit and goodness of all great souls: all of them together would not be capable of producing one of Zarathustra’s discourses. The ladder upon which he climbs up and down is tremendous; he has seen further, willed further, been able further than any other human being. He contradicts with every word, this most affirmative of all spirits; all opposites are in him bound together into a new unity. The highest and the lowest forces of human nature, the sweetest, most frivolous and most fearsome stream forth out of one fountain with immortal certainty. Until then one does not know what height, what depth is; one knows even less what truth is. There is no moment in this revelation of truth which would have been anticipated or divined by even one of the greatest. There is no wisdom, no psychology, no art of speech before Zarathustra: the nearest things, the most everyday things here speak of things unheard of. The aphorism trembling with passion; eloquence become music; lightning-bolts hurled ahead to hitherto undivined futures. The mightiest capacity for metaphor which has hitherto existed is poor and child’s play compared with this return of language to the nature of imagery. − And how Zarathustra condescends and says the kindest things to everyone! How he takes even his opponents, the priests, with gentle hands and suffers from them with them! − Here man is overcome every moment, the concept ‘superman’ here becomes the greatest reality − all that has hitherto been called great in man lies at an infinite distance beneath it. The halcyon, light feet, the ubiquity of wickedness and exuberance and whatever else is typical of the type Zarathustra has never been dreamed of as essential to greatness. It is in precisely this compass of space, in this access to opposites that Zarathustra feels himself to be the highest species of all existing things, and when one hears how he defines this one will refrain from seeking what is like him.
− the soul which possesses the longest ladder and can descend the deepest,
the most spacious soul, which can run and stray and roam the farthest into itself,
the most necessary soul, which out of joy hurls itself into chance,
the existing soul which plunges into becoming, the possessing soul which wants to partake in desire and longing −
the soul fleeing from itself which retrieves itself in the widest sphere,
the wisest soul, to which foolishness speaks sweetest,
the soul that loves itself the most, in which all things have their current and counter-current and ebb and flow −
But that is the concept of Dionysos himself. − Another consideration leads to the same conclusion. The psychological problem in the type of Zarathustra is how he, who to an unheard-of degree says No, does No to everything to which one has hitherto said Yes, can none the less be the opposite of a spirit of denial; how he, a spirit bearing the heaviest of destinies, a fatality of a task, can none the less be the lightest and most opposite − Zarathustra is a dancer −: how he, who has the harshest, the most fearful insight into reality, who has thought the ‘most abysmal thought’, none the less finds in it no objection to existence, nor even to the eternal recurrence of existence − rather one more reason to be himself the eternal Yes to all things, ‘the tremendous unbounded Yes and Amen’… ‘Into every abyss I still bear the blessing of my affirmation’… But that is the concept of Dionysos once more.
7
− What language will such a spirit speak when he speaks with himself alone? The language of the dithyramb. I am the inventor of the dithyramb. Hear how Zarathustra speaks with himself before sunrise: such an emerald happiness, such a divine tenderness still had no tongue before me. Even the deepest melancholy of such a Dionysos still becomes a dithyramb; I take, as an indication, the Night Song − the immortal lament that through his superabundance of light and power, through his nature as a sun, he is condemned not to love.
It is night: now do all leaping fountains speak louder. And my soul too is a leaping fountain.
It is night: only now do all songs of lovers awaken. And my soul too is the song of a lover.
Something unquenched, unquenchable is in me, that wants to speak out. A craving for love is in me that itself speaks the language of love.
Light am I: ah, that I were night! But this is my solitude, that I am girded round with light.
Ah, that I were dark and obscure! How I would suck at the breasts of light!
And I should bless you, you little sparkling stars and glowworms above! − and be happy in your gifts of light.
But I live in my own light, I drink back into myself the flames that break from me.
I do not know the joy of the receiver; and I have often dreamed that stealing must be more blessed than receiving.
It is my poverty that my hand never rests from giving; it is my envy that I see expectant eyes and illumined nights of desire.
Oh wretchedness of all givers! Oh eclipse of my sun! Oh craving for desire! Oh ravenous hunger in satiety!
They take from me: but do I yet touch their souls? A gulf stands between giving and receiving; and the smallest gulf must be bridged at last.
A hunger grows from out of my beauty: I should like to rob those to whom I give − thus do I hunger after wickedness.
Withdrawing my hand when another hand already reaches out to it; hesitating, like the waterfall that hesitates even in its plunge − thus do I hunger after wickedness.
Such vengeance does my abundance concoct: such spite wells from my solitude.
My joy in giving died in giving, my virtue grew weary of itself through its abundance!
The danger for him who always gives is that he may lose his shame; the hand and heart of him who distributes grow callous through sheer distributing.
My eye no longer overflows with the shame of suppliants; my hand has become too hard for the trembling of hands that have been filled.
Where have the tears of my eye and the bloom of my heart gone? Oh solitude of all givers! Oh silence of all light-givers!
Many suns circle in empty space: to all that is dark they speak with their light − to me they are silent.
Oh, this is the enmity of light towards what gives light: unpitying it travels its way.
Unjust towards the light-giver in its inmost heart, cold towards suns − thus travels every sun.
Like a storm the suns fly along their courses; that is their travelling. They follow their inexorable will; that is their coldness.
Oh, it is only you, obscure, dark ones, who extract warmth from light-givers! Oh, only you drink milk and comfort from the udders of light!
Ah, ice is around me, my hand is burned with ice! Ah, thirst is in me, which yearns after your thirst!
It is night: ah, that I must be light! And thirst for the things of night! And solitude!
It is night: now my longing breaks from me like a well-spring − I long for speech.
It is night: now do all leaping fountains speak louder. And my soul too is a leaping fountain.
It is night: only now do all songs of lovers awaken. And my soul too is the song of a lover. −
8
The like of this has never been written, never felt, never suffered: thus does a god suffer, a Dionysos. The reply to such a dithyramb of a sun’s solitude in light would be Ariadne… Who knows except me what Ariadne is!… Of all such riddles no one has hitherto had the solution, I doubt whether anyone even saw a riddle here. − On one occasion Zarathustra strictly defines his task − it is also mine − the meaning of which cannot be misunderstood: he is affirmative to the point of justifying, of redeeming even the entire past.
I walk among men as among fragments of the future: of that future which I scan.
And it is all my art and aim to compose into one and bring together what is fragment and riddle and dreadful chance.
And how could I endure to be a man, if man were not also poet and reader of riddles and the redeemer of chance!
To redeem the past and to transform every ‘It was’ into an ‘I wanted it thus!’ − that alone would I call redemption.
In another place he defines as strictly as possible what alone ‘man’ can be for him − not an object of love, not to speak of pity − Zarathustra has also mastered great disgust at man: to him man is formlessness, material, an ugly stone which requires the sculptor.
No more to will and no more to evaluate and no more to create! ah, that this great lassitude may ever stay far from me!
In knowing and understanding, too, I feel only my will’s delight in begetting and becoming; and if there be innocence in my knowledge it is because will to begetting is in it.
This will lured me away from God and gods; for what would there be to create if gods − existed!
But again and again it drives me to mankind, my ardent, creative will; thus it drives the hammer to the stone.
Ah you men, I see an image sleeping in the stone, the image of my visions! Ah, that it must sleep in the hardest, ugliest stone!
Now my hammer rages fiercely against its prison. Fragments fly from the stone: what is that to me?
I will complete it: for a shadow came to me − the most silent, the lightest of all things came to me!
The beauty of the superman came to me as a shadow: what are the gods to me now!…
I emphasize one final point: the italicized line provides the occasion. Among the decisive preconditions for a dionysian task is the hardness of the hammer, joy even in destruction. The imperative ‘become hard’, the deepest certainty that all creators are hard, is the actual mark of a dionysian nature. −