"THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA: A BOOK FOR ALL AND NONE"
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, Levy, Oscar, Cohn, Paul V. (Paul Victor), and Ludovici, Anthony M. (Anthony Mario)
"Oh, the wretchedness of all them that give! Oh, the clouds that cover the face of my sun! That craving for desire! that burning hunger at the end of the feast!
"They take what I give them; but do I touch their soul? A gulf is there 'twixt giving and taking; and the smallest gulf is the last to be bridged.
"An appetite is born from out my beauty: would that I might do harm to them that I fill with light; would that I might rob them of the gifts I have given:—thus do I thirst for wickedness.
"To withdraw my hand when their hand is ready stretched forth like the waterfall that wavers, wavers even in its fall:—thus do I thirst for wickedness.
"For such vengeance doth my fulness yearn: to such tricks doth my loneliness give birth.
"My joy in giving died with the deed. By its very fulness did my virtue grow weary of itself.
"He who giveth risketh to lose his shame; he that is ever distributing groweth callous in hand and heart therefrom.
"Mine eyes no longer melt into tears at the sight of the suppliant's shame; my hand hath become too hard to feel the quivering of laden hands.
"Whither have ye fled, the tears of mine eyes and the bloom of my heart? Oh, the solitude of all givers! Oh, the silence of all beacons!
"Many are the suns that circle in barren space; to all that is dark do they speak with their light—to me alone are they silent.
"Alas, this is the hatred of light for that which shineth: pitiless it runneth its course.
"Unfair in its inmost heart to that which shineth; cold toward suns,—thus doth every sun go its way.
"Like a tempest do the suns fly over their course: for such is their way. Their own unswerving will do they follow: that is their coldness.
"Alas, it is ye alone, ye creatures of gloom, ye spirits of the night, that take your warmth from that which shineth. Ye alone suck your milk and comfort from the udders of light.
"Alas, about me there is ice, my hand burneth itself against ice!
"Alas, within me is a thirst that thirsteth for your thirst!
"It is night: woe is me, that I must needs be light! And thirst after darkness! And loneliness!
"It is night: now doth my longing burst forth like a spring,—for speech do I long.
"It is night: now do all gushing springs raise their voices. And my soul too is a gushing spring.
"It is night: now only do all lovers burst into song. And my soul too is the song of a lover."
Such things have never been written, never been felt, never been suffered: only a God, only Dionysus suffers in this way. The reply to such a dithyramb on the sun's solitude in light would be Ariadne. ... Who knows, but I, who Ariadne is! To all such riddles no one heretofore had ever found an answer; I doubt even whether any one had ever seen a riddle here. One day Zarathustra severely determines his life-task—and it is also mine. Let no one misunderstand its meaning. It's a yea-saying to the point of justifying, to the point of redeeming even all that is past.
"I walk among men as among fragments of the future: of that future which I see.
"And all my creativeness and effort is but this, that I may be able to think and recast all these fragments and riddles and dismal accidents into one piece.
"And how could I bear to be a man, if man were not also a poet, a riddle reader, and a redeemer of chance!
"To redeem all the past, and to transform every 'it was' into 'thus would I have it'—that alone would be my salvation!"
In another passage he defines as strictly as possible what to him alone "man" can be,—not a subject for love nor yet for pity—Zarathustra became master even of his loathing of man: man is to him a thing unshaped, raw material, an ugly stone that needs the sculptor's chisel.
"No longer to will, no longer to value, no longer to create! Oh, that this great weariness may never be mine!
"Even in the lust of knowledge, I feel only the joy of my will to beget and to grow; and if there be innocence in my knowledge, it is because my procreative will is in it.
"Away from God and gods did this will lure me: what would there be to create if there were gods?
"But to man doth it ever drive me anew, my burning, creative will. Thus driveth it the hammer to the stone.
"Alas, ye men, within the stone there sleepeth an image for me, the image of all my dreams! Alas, that it should have to sleep in the hardest and ugliest stone!
"Now rageth my hammer ruthlessly against its prison. From the stone the fragments fly: what's that to me?
"I will finish it: for a shadow came unto me—the stillest and lightest thing on earth once came unto me!
"The beauty of the Superman came unto me as a shadow. Alas, my brethren! What are the—gods to me now?"
Let me call attention to one last point of view. The line in italics is my pretext for this remark. A Dionysian life-task needs the hardness of the hammer, and one of its first essentials is without doubt the joy even of destruction. The command, "Harden yourselves!" and the deep conviction that all creators are hard, is the really distinctive sign of a Dionysian nature.