The Portable Nietzsche (35 page)

Loneliness can be the escape of the sick; loneliness can also be escape
from
the sick.

Let them
hear
me chatter and sigh with the winter cold, all these poor jealous jokers around me! With such sighing and chattering I still escape their heated rooms.

Let them suffer and sigh over my chilblains. “The ice of knowledge will yet freeze him to death!” they moan.

Meanwhile I run crisscross on my mount of olives with warm feet; in the sunny nook of my mount of olives I sing and I mock all pity.

Thus sang Zarathustra.

Thus, walking slowly among many peoples and through numerous towns, Zarathustra returned on roundabout paths to his mountains and his cave. And on the way he also came unexpectedly to the gate of the great city; but here a foaming fool jumped toward him with outspread hands and barred his way. This, however, was the same fool whom the people called “Zarathustra's ape”: for he had gathered something of his phrasing and cadences and also liked to borrow from the treasures of his wisdom. But the fool spoke thus to Zarathustra:

“O Zarathustra, here is the great city; here you could find nothing and lose everything. Why do you want to wade through this mire? Have pity on your foot! Rather spit on the city gate and turn back. Here is hell for a hermit's thoughts: here great thoughts are boiled alive and cooked till they are small. Here all great feelings decay: only the smallest rattleboned feelings may rattle here. Don't you smell the slaughterhouses and ovens of the spirit even now? Does not this town steam with the fumes of slaughtered spirit?

“Don't you see the soul hanging like a limp, dirty rag? And they still make newspapers of these rags!

“Don't you hear how the spirit has here been reduced to plays on words? It vomits revolting verbal swill. And they still make newspapers of this swill!

“They hound each other and know not where. They overheat each other and know not why. They tinkle with their tin, they jingle with their gold. They are cold and seek warmth from brandy; they are heated and seek coolness from frozen spirits; they are all diseased and sick with public opinions.

“All lusts and vices are at home here; but there are also some here who are virtuous: there is much serviceable, serving virtue—much serviceable virtue with pen fingers and hard sitting- and waiting-flesh, blessed with little stars on the chest and with padded, rumpless daughters. There is also much piety, and there are many devout lickspittles, batteries of fakers and flattery-bakers before the God of Hosts. For it is ‘from above' that the stars and the gracious spittle trickle; every starless chest longs above.

“The moon has her courtyard, and the courtyard has its mooncalves; to everything, however, that comes from the court, the beggarly mob and all serviceable beggarvirtue pray. ‘I serve, you serve, we serve'—thus all serviceable virtue prays to the prince, that the deserved star may finally be pinned on the narrow chest.

“The moon, however, still revolves around all that is earthly: So too the prince still revolves around that which is earthliest—but that is the gold of the shopkeeper. The God of Hosts is no god of gold bars; the prince proposes, but the shopkeeper disposes.

“By everything in you that is bright and strong and good, O Zarathustra, spit on this city of shopkeepers and turn back! Here all blood flows putrid and lukewarm and spumy through all the veins; spit on the great city which is the great swill room where all the swill spumes together. Spit on the city of compressed souls and narrow chests, of popeyes and sticky fingers—on the city of the obtrusive, the impudent, the scribbleand scream-throats, the overheated ambitious-conceited —where everything infirm, infamous, lustful, dusky, overmusty, pussy, and plotting putrefies together: spit on the great city and turn back!”

 

Here, however, Zarathustra interrupted the foaming fool and put his hand over the fool's mouth. “Stop at last!” cried Zarathustra; “your speech and your manner have long nauseated me. Why did you live near the swamps so long, until you yourself have become a frog and a toad? Does not putrid, spumy swamp-blood flow through your own veins now that you have learned to croak and revile thus? Why have you not gone into the woods? Or to plow the soil? Does not the sea abound in green islands? I despise your despising; and if you warned me, why did you not warn yourself?

“Out of love alone shall my despising and my warning bird fly up, not out of the swamp.

“They call you my ape, you foaming fool; but I call you my grunting swine: with your grunting you spoil for me my praise of folly. What was it that first made you grunt? That nobody flattered you sufficiently; you sat down to this filth so as to have reason to grunt much —to have reason for much
revenge
. For all your foaming is revenge, you vain fool; I guessed it well.

“But your fool's words injure me, even where you are right. And even if Zarathustra's words
were
a thousand times right, still
you
would always do wrong with my words.”

Thus spoke Zarathustra; and he looked at the great city, sighed, and long remained silent. At last he spoke thus: “I am nauseated by this great city too, and not only by this fool. Here as there, there is nothing to better, nothing to worsen. Woe unto this great city! And I wish I already saw the pillar of fire in which it will be burned. For such pillars of fire must precede the great noon. But this has its own time and its own destiny.

“This doctrine, however, I give you, fool, as a parting present: where one can no longer love, there one should pass
by.”

Thus spoke Zarathustra, and he passed by the fool and the great city.

Alas, all lies withered and gray that but recently stood green and colorful on this meadow. And how much honey of hope I carried from here to my beehives! These young hearts have all become old already—and not even old; only weary, ordinary, and comfortable. They put it, “We have become pious again.”

Only recently I saw them run out in the morning on bold feet: but the feet of their thirst for knowledge have grown weary, and now they even slander the courage they had in the morning. Verily, many among them once lifted their legs like dancers, cheered by the laughter in my wisdom; then they thought better of it. Just now I saw one groveling—crawling back to the cross. Around light and freedom they once fluttered like mosquitoes and young poets. A little older, a little colder—and already they are musty mystifiers and hearth-squatters.

Did their hearts perhaps grow faint because solitude swallowed me like a whale? Did their ears perhaps listen longingly long,
in vain,
for me and my trumpet and herald's calls? Alas, there are always only a few whose hearts long retain their courageous bearing and overbearing prankishness, and whose spirits also remain patient. The rest, however, are cowards. The rest—those are always by far the most, the commonplace, the superfluous, the all-too-many: all these are cowards.

Whoever is of my kind will also encounter the experiences of my kind: so his first companions will have to be corpses and jesters. His second companions, however, will call themselves his
believers:
a living swarm, much love, much folly, much beardless veneration. To these believers, whoever is of my kind among men should not tie his heart; those who know the changeful, cowardly nature of mankind should not believe in these springtimes and colorful meadows.

Were their ability different, their will would be different too. Those who are half-and-half spoil all that is whole. That leaves wilt—what is there to wail about? Let them fly and fall, O Zarathustra, and do not wail! It is better to blow among them with rustling winds— blow among these leaves, O Zarathustra, that everything wilted may run away from you even faster!

“We have become pious again”—so these apostates confess; and some among them are even too cowardly to confess it.

Those I look in the eye, and then I say it to their faces and to their blushing cheeks: you are such as pray again.

But it is a disgrace to pray! Not for everybody, but for you and me and whoever else has a conscience in his head too. For you it is a disgrace to pray!

You know it well: your cowardly devil within you, who would like to fold his hands and rest his hands in his lap and be more comfortable—this cowardly devil urges you, “There is a God.” With this, however, you belong to the light-shunning kind who cannot rest where there is light; now you must daily bury your head deeper in night and haze.

And verily, you chose the hour well, for just now the nocturnal birds are flying again. The hour has come for all light-shunning folk, the hour of evening and rest, when they do not rest. I hear and smell it: their hour for chase and procession has come—not indeed for a wild chase, but for a tame, lame, snooping, pussyfooting, prayer-muttering chase—for a chase after soulful sneaks: all the heart's mousetraps have now been set again. And wherever I lift a curtain a little night moth rushes out. Did it perhaps squat there together with another little night moth? For everywhere I smell little hidden communities; and wherever there are closets, there are new canters praying inside and the fog of canters.

They sit together long evenings and say, “Let us become as little children again and say ‘dear God!'”—their mouths and stomachs upset by pious confectioners.

Or they spend long evenings watching a cunning, ambushing, cross-marked spider, which preaches cleverness to the other spiders and teaches thus: “Under crosses one can spin well.”

Or they spend the day sitting at swamps with fishing rods, thinking themselves profound; but whoever fishes where there are no fish, I would not even call superficial.

Or they learn to play the harp with pious pleasure—from a composer of songs who would like to harp himself right into the hearts of young females; for he has grown weary of old females and their praise.

Or they learn to shudder from a scholarly half-madman who waits in dark rooms for the spirits to come to him—so his spirit will flee completely.

Or they listen to an old traveling, caviling zany who has learned the sadness of tones from sad winds; now he whistles after the wind and preaches sadness in sad tones.

And some of them have even become night watchmen: now they know how to blow horns and to walk about at night and to awaken old things that had long gone to sleep. I heard five sayings about old things last night at the garden wall: they came from such old, saddened, dried-up night watchmen.

“For a father, he does not care enough about his children: human fathers do this better.”

“He is too old. He does not care about his children at all any more”—thus the other night watchman replied.

“But does he
have
any children? Nobody can prove it, if he does not prove it himself. I have long wished he would for once prove it thoroughly.”

“Prove? As if
he
had ever proved anything! Proof is difficult for him; he considers it terribly important that one should have
faith
in him.”

“Sure! Sure! Faith makes him blessed, faith in him. That is the way of old people. We are no different ourselves.”

Thus the two old night watchmen and scarelights spoke to each other and then tooted sadly on their horns: so it happened last night at the garden wall. In me, however, my heart twisted with laughter and wanted to break and did not know whither, and sank into my diaphragm. Verily, this will yet be my death, that I shall suffocate with laughter when I see asses drunk and hear night watchmen thus doubting God. Is not the time long past for all such doubts too? Who may still awaken such old sleeping, light-shunning things?

For the old gods, after all, things came to an end long ago; and verily, they had a good gay godlike end. They did not end in a “twilight,” though this lie is told. Instead: one day they
laughed
themselves to death. That happened when the most godless word issued from one of the gods themselves—the word: “There is one god. Thou shalt have no other god before me!” An old grimbeard of a god, a jealous one, thus forgot himself. And then all the gods laughed and rocked on their chairs and cried, “Is not just this godlike that there are gods but no God?”

He that has ears to hear, let him hear!

 

Thus Zarathustra discoursed in the town which he loved and which is also called The Motley Cow. For from here he had only two more days to go to reach his cave and his animals again; but his soul jubilated continually because of the nearness of his return home.

O solitude! O my
home
, solitude! Too long have I lived wildly in wild strange places not to return home to you in tears. Now you may threaten me with your finger, as mothers threaten; now you may smile at me, as mothers smile; now you may say to me:

“And who was it that, like a storm, once stormed away from me? Who shouted in parting, ‘Too long I have sat with solitude; I have forgotten how to be silent!' That, I suppose, you have learned again now? O Zarathustra, I know everything. Also that you were more forsaken among the many, being one, than ever with me. To be forsaken is one thing, to be lonely, another: that you have learned now. And that among men you will always seem wild and strange—wild and strange even when they love you; for above all things they want
consideration.

“Here, however, you are in your own home and house; here you can talk freely about everything and pour out all the reasons; nothing here is ashamed of obscure, obdurate feelings. Here all things come caressingly to your discourse and flatter you, for they want to ride on your back. On every parable you ride to every truth. Here you may talk fairly and frankly to all things: and verily, it rings in their ears like praise when somebody talks straight to all things.