To Goethe1
The ever-enduring
is merely your parable!
God the all-blurring
your fiction unbearable…
World-wheel, the turning one
spawns goals each day:
Fate – sighs the yearning one,
the fool calls it – play.
World-play, the ruling one,
blends truth and tricks: –
The eternally fooling one
blends us – in the mix!…
Vogelfrei is an archaic expression used to declare someone an outlaw, literally ‘free as a bird’, and therefore not to be sheltered. In German the v and f are both pronounced as f adding alliteration to this name and the title Nietzsche makes of it. ‘Prince Vogelfrei’ here functions as Nietzsche’s nom de guerre or pseudonym.
Poet’s Calling
Stopped to rest one day, while walking,
seated under shady trees,
when I heard a ticking tocking
dainty rhythm on the breeze.
I grew angry – made some faces –
but I lost my anger quick
and, as if in poet’s paces,
started speaking tick tock tick.
As I sat, my verses making,
syllables and sounds did pour,
till I burst out laughing, shaking
for a quarter hour or more.
You a poet? You a poet?
Is your mind no longer good?
‘Yes, my man, you are a poet’
shrugs the pecker in the wood.
Whom do I await in bushes?
Whom do I, a robber, stalk?
Proverb? Image? My rhyme rushes
after it and makes it talk.
Anything that moves, you know it
serves to fuel my poet’s mood.
‘Yes, my man, you are a poet’
shrugs the pecker in the wood.
Rhymes, I think, must be like arrows:
when they pierce the lizard’s heart,
how he twitches, how it harrows,
how he leaps in fits and starts!
Wretched creatures, full of woe, it
kills you or it boils your blood!
‘Yes, my man, you are a poet’
shrugs the pecker in the wood.
Crooked proverbs full of hurry,
drunken wordlets how you throng!
See each word and sentence scurry
to the tick tock chain so long.
Worthless souls who can’t forgo it
find it fun? Are poets crude?
‘Yes, my man, you are a poet’
shrugs the pecker in the wood.
Do you mock me feathered joker?
Mentally I’m in rough shape,
might my feelings too be broken?
Fear my rage you jackanapes!
Still, the poet rhymes – and though it
spoiled his mood ’twas all he could.
‘Yes, my man, you are a poet’
shrugs the pecker in the wood.
In the South
I perch now midst the crooked arbour
and leave my weariness to sway.
A bird enticed me to this harbour,
within this nest I cool my ardour.
Yet where am I? Away! Away!
The sleeping sea, its colour fleeting,
a purple sail, pure indolence.
Rocks, fig trees, spires and harbour meeting,
around me idylls, sheep are bleating –
absorb me, southern innocence!
Just step by step – that is not living,
the German stride’s too dull for me.
I asked the wind to lift me heaving,
with birds I soared without misgiving, –
and south I flew across the sea.
Reason! A grim preoccupation,
too soon it brings us all the way!
In flight I saw my limitation, –
now juices flow for new creation,
for life renewed and dawn of play…
It’s wise to think in solitary,
but sing alone? – There wisdom ends!
I’ve come to sing your praises merry,
be still, sit down, and with me tarry
my little birds, my naughty friends!
So young so false and so beguiling,
it seems love looks upon me smiling
and offers ev’ry charm of youth?
Up north – I say it though I waver –
I loved a crone so old I quaver:
this woman bore the name of ‘truth’…
Pious Beppa
As long as I’m curvaceous,
being pious is no test.
To young girls God is gracious,
he loves the cute ones best.
He will forgive the friar,
forgive him certainly
that he, like other friars,
so wants to be with me.
He is no grey church father!
No, young and full of sap,
hung over he’ll still bother
to play the jealous chap.
I do not love the ageing,
he does not love the old:
How wondrous and engaging
when God’s designs unfold!
The Church, it knows of living,
it checks us thoroughly.
And always it’s forgiving –
who would not pardon me!
One whispers low and steady,
one kneels and wipes at tears,
and when the new sin’s ready
the old one disappears.
Praise God who loves a maiden
as pretty as she lives,
his heart by sin is laden,
which he himself forgives.
As long as I’m curvaceous,
being pious is no test:
When old and unsalacious,
the devil take the rest!
The Mysterious Bark2
Yesternight, all were asleep,
how the wind with steps uncertain
sighing through the streets did creep.
Rest was not in pillow, curtain,
poppy, slumber potion deep,
nor good conscience – which unburdens.
Finally I left my bed,
dressed and ran down to the shoreline.
Tender mild the night – 1 met
man and bark on sand in moonshine,
sleepy both, the man and pet: –
Sleepily the bark took to the brine.
Just one hour, more than one,
or was it a year? – my thinking
and all feeling left me, sinking
down to timeless tedium.
Chasms opened, I stood shrinking,
bounds dissolved: – then it was done!
– Morning came: On blackness seeping
rests a bark, it rides the swell…
What took place? Thus crying, weeping
hundreds ask: what was this? Hell? – –
Nothing happened! We were sleeping,
sleeping all – so well, so well.
Declaration of Love (whereby however the poet fell into a ditch)
Oh wonder! Does he fly?
He climbs aloft, and yet his pinions rest?
What lifts and bears him high?
What are his goal and course and limit’s test?
Star and eternity,
he lives now in the heights that living shuns,
forgives all jealousy – :
Who see him fly, they too are soaring ones!
Oh albatross! I know
that to the heights I am forever lured.
I thought of you: tears flow
and do not cease – I love you noble bird!
Song of a Theocritical Goatherd3
I lie here, stomach aching,
with bed bugs in my pants.
Close by, the noise they’re making!
I hear it, how they dance…
She was supposed to slip away
and join me as my lover.
I wait here like a stray –
there’s no sign of her.
She promised she would come,
how could she be untrue?
– Does she chase everyone
like my old goats do?
That silken dress, pray tell!
Proud girl, have you been good?
Does more than one buck dwell
in this little wood?
– Lethally love makes us wait,
it burns, it hardens!
As hot nights germinate
toadstools in gardens.
Love eats away at me
like seven deadly sins –
I’ll never eat again.
Farewell, dear onions!
The moon sets in the sea,
and stars fade from the sky.
Grey dawn comes ’round for me –
I just want to die.
‘These Vacillating People’
People who are vacillating
make my anger flame.
When they honour they are hating,
all their praise is self-contempt and shame.
I’m not bound by their convention
as I wander free,
in their gaze is apprehension,
poison-laced their hopeless jealousy.
May they curse me all to blazes,
spit for all to see!
Though they seek with helpless gazes,
none will ever find their mark in me.
Fool in Despair4
Oh! What I wrote on board and wall
with foolish heart and foolish scrawl,
was meant to help me decorate…
But you say: ‘Foolish hands desecrate –
and we the walls must expurgate,
remove all traces big and small!’
Allow me! This I can enjoy –
I’ve wielded sponge and broom for all
as critic and as water boy.
But, when I’ve finished your employ,
I ask you, you of super wit,
your wisdom on the walls to sh—.
Rimus remedium, or: How sick poets console themselves5
Time is dour,
a witch who drools incessantly,
drips hour upon hour.
In vain, disgust cries out of me:
‘Curse, curse the power
of eternity!’
World – brazen hard:
A glowing bull – it hears no moan.
Pain shoots through me and bores like a dart
into my bone:
‘World has no heart,
and stupid he, who’d therefore groan!’
Your poppies pour,
pour, fever! poison in my brain!
Too long already you bring me pain.
What would you ask? What? ‘For what reward?''
– – Ha! Curse the whore
And her disdain!
No! Please don’t go!
Outside it’s cold, I hear it raining –
I’ll cherish you without complaining.
– Here! Take my gold: it glitters so! –
‘Happiness’ – No?
Fever is sustaining? –
The door panes fly!
Rain lashes in, to my bed it climbs!
The lamp blows out – havoc is nigh!
– Who did not own a hundred rhymes,
betimes, betimes,
Would surely die!
‘My Happiness!’6
I see again the pigeons of San Marco:
The square is still, all bathed in sunny leisure.
In gentle morn I idly let my songs flow
like swarms of pigeons high into the azure –
And still caress
Them, tucking one more rhyme into their feathers
– my happiness!
You silent, blue-lit, silky heaven’s awning,
protectively above the coloured stone
I love, and fear, and envy – you are yawning…
Indeed I’d drink its soul into my own!
Would I let it egress? –
No, silence, feast for eyes, in splendour dawning!
– my happiness!
You tower stern, with lion force ascending
triumphantly, no effort, in full view!
Across the square your throaty peal suspending – :
In French you’d be its own accent aigu?
To stay would be duress
like yours, a bond of silken strands unending…
– my happiness!
Go, music, go! Let shadows start preparing
to grow into the brown and balmy night!
Too early in the day for chimes, the flaring
of gilded trim awaits a rosy light,
Much does the day compress,
much time for verses, prowling, secret sharing
– my happiness!
Toward New Seas7
Out there – thus I will; so doing
trust myself now and my grip.
Open lies the sea, its blueing
swallows my Genoese ship.
All things now are new and beaming,
space and time their noon decree – :
Only your eye – monstrous, gleaming
stares at me, infinity!
Sils-Maria8
There sat I, waiting, waiting, – yet for naught,
transcending good and evil, sometimes caught
in light, sometimes caught in shadow, all game,
all sea, all midday, all time without aim.
At once then, my friend! One turned into Two –
– and Zarathustra strode into my view…
To the Mistral. A Dance Song9
Mistral wind, you rain-cloud reaper,
sadness slayer, heaven sweeper
blustering, how I love you!
Are we not of one womb’s making,
first born of one fate unbreaking,
predetermined just we two?
Here on stony pathways sliding
I run to you dancing, gliding,
dancing as you pipe and sing:
You without a ship and rudder,
you as freedom’s freest brother,
over raging seas do spring.
Scarce awake, I heard you calling,
rushed to where the cliffs are falling
golden walled into the sea.
Hail! You came like rapids teeming,
glitter bright and diamond gleaming
from the peaks triumphantly.
’Cross the plains of heaven dashing
I saw horses, hooves a-flashing,
saw the carriage where you stand,
saw your hand and how it quivered
when it to the steeds delivered
lightning-like the whip’s command, –
Saw you toss the reins and plummet
faster from your airy summit,
diving like an arrow bright,
glowing as the distance closes,
like a ray of gold on roses
struck by daybreak’s early light.
On a thousand backs we’re dancing,
billow-backs and backs of chancing –
hail to dances new, I say!
Let us dance in every manner,
free – so shall be our art’s banner,
And our science – shall be gay!
From each flower let us garner
just one blossom for our honour,
for our wreath just two leaves worth!
Then like troubadours in riches
we shall dance ’tween saints and bitches,
dance our dance ’tween God and Earth!
He who cannot dance with twisters,
bandages his wounds and blisters,
bound and old and paralysed;
he who reeks of sanctimony,
honour-fools and virtues phony,
out of our paradise!
Let us whirl the dust in doses
into sickly people’s noses,
let us shoo these sickly flies!
This whole coast we must unshackle
from their shrivel-breasted cackle,
from these courage-vacant eyes!
Let us chase the overcasters,
world maligners, rain-cloud pastors,
let us tear the dark sky’s veil!
Let us roar… Free spirits’ spirit,
joy uplifts me when you’re near, it
makes me bluster like a gale! –
– And to mark this joy forever,
leave a will that time can’t sever,
take this wreath up where you are!
Hurl it higher, further, madder,
storm the sky on heaven’s ladder,
Hang it there – upon a star!
1 Nietzsche is here parodying the ‘Chorus Mysticus’ which concludes Goethe’s Faust. At issue are the poet’s need to fictionalize, and Goethe’s elevation of womanhood to a metaphysical ‘eternal feminine’. In Faust, the ‘eternal feminine’ (das Ewig-Weibliche) represented by the blessed Gretchen succeeds in helping to redeem Faust, and to pull him up into heaven: ‘Woman Eternal / Draws us on high’ (‘Das Ewig-Weibliche / Zieht uns hinan’) (lines 121io-121ii of Faust).
2 Cf. Nietzsche’s dithyramb ‘The Sun Sets’ (‘Die Sonne sinkt’) for the motif of the mysterious bark or skiff.
3 The Greek poet Theocritus (third century Be) is considered the father of pastoral poetry. A ‘theocritical’ goatherd, using word play, is thus both pastoral and critical of God (theo). This poem, with its terse irony and irregular meter, reminds one of the lyrics of Heinrich Heine, Nietzsche’s favourite lyric poet.
4 ‘Narrenhande beschmieren Tisch und Wande’, literally ‘a fool’s hands smear table and walls’, is a German proverb to the effect that clumsy people make a mess.
5 Latin for ‘rhyme as remedy’. Compare the dithyramb ‘Ariadne’s Lament’ from Nietzsche’s collection of poems entitled Dionysus Dithyrambs. In Zarathustra, the poem is featured in Part IV as the song of the magician. Ariadne, lover of Theseus, is abandoned by the Greek hero, even though she rescued him from the labyrinth of the Minotaur by weaving a thread for him to follow. The ‘glowing bull’ refers to Phalaris of Agrigentum (570–554 Be), a tyrant who tortured his enemies by roasting them alive in a brazen bull.
6 The refrain of this poem, ‘mein Glück! Mein Glück!’ is an emphatic statement of the kind of happiness (Glück) Nietzsche enjoys, though in order to preserve the four beats I use ‘my happiness’ only once.
7 Nietzsche frequently used the figure of Columbus and the metaphor of seafaring to symbolize the courage of the human spirit. In The Gay Science § 289 he reminds us that the moral earth, too, is round, as an exhortation to explore the realm of morals just as earlier explorers had ventured around the globe. A draft of this poem was titled ‘To L.’ (Lou von Salome).
8 Sils Maria is a town in south-eastern Switzerland, in the Engadine valley, where Nietzsche spent his summers.
9 The mistral wind of southern France is a strong north wind.