Home > Authors Index > Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche > Thus Spake Zarathustra > This page
Thus Spake Zarathustra, a non-fiction book by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche |
||
Third Part - 50. On The Olive-Mount |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ THIRD PART L. ON THE OLIVE-MOUNT Winter, a bad guest, sitteth with me at home; blue are my hands with his friendly hand-shaking. I honour him, that bad guest, but gladly leave him alone. Gladly do I run away from him; and when one runneth WELL, then one escapeth him! With warm feet and warm thoughts do I run where the wind is calm--to the sunny corner of mine olive-mount. There do I laugh at my stern guest, and am still fond of him; because he cleareth my house of flies, and quieteth many little noises. For he suffereth it not if a gnat wanteth to buzz, or even two of them; also the lanes maketh he lonesome, so that the moonlight is afraid there at night. A hard guest is he,--but I honour him, and do not worship, like the tenderlings, the pot-bellied fire-idol. Better even a little teeth-chattering than idol-adoration!--so willeth my nature. And especially have I a grudge against all ardent, steaming, steamy fire-idols. Him whom I love, I love better in winter than in summer; better do I now mock at mine enemies, and more heartily, when winter sitteth in my house. Heartily, verily, even when I CREEP into bed--: there, still laugheth and wantoneth my hidden happiness; even my deceptive dream laugheth. I, a--creeper? Never in my life did I creep before the powerful; and if ever I lied, then did I lie out of love. Therefore am I glad even in my winter-bed. A poor bed warmeth me more than a rich one, for I am jealous of my poverty. And in winter she is most faithful unto me. With a wickedness do I begin every day: I mock at the winter with a cold bath: on that account grumbleth my stern house-mate. Also do I like to tickle him with a wax-taper, that he may finally let the heavens emerge from ashy-grey twilight. For especially wicked am I in the morning: at the early hour when the pail rattleth at the well, and horses neigh warmly in grey lanes:-- Impatiently do I then wait, that the clear sky may finally dawn for me, the snow-bearded winter-sky, the hoary one, the white-head,-- --The winter-sky, the silent winter-sky, which often stifleth even its sun! Did I perhaps learn from it the long clear silence? Or did it learn it from me? Or hath each of us devised it himself? Of all good things the origin is a thousandfold,--all good roguish things spring into existence for joy: how could they always do so--for once only! A good roguish thing is also the long silence, and to look, like the winter-sky, out of a clear, round-eyed countenance:-- --Like it to stifle one's sun, and one's inflexible solar will: verily, this art and this winter-roguishness have I learnt WELL! My best-loved wickedness and art is it, that my silence hath learned not to betray itself by silence. Clattering with diction and dice, I outwit the solemn assistants: all those stern watchers, shall my will and purpose elude. That no one might see down into my depth and into mine ultimate will--for that purpose did I devise the long clear silence. Many a shrewd one did I find: he veiled his countenance and made his water muddy, that no one might see therethrough and thereunder. But precisely unto him came the shrewder distrusters and nut-crackers: precisely from him did they fish his best-concealed fish! But the clear, the honest, the transparent--these are for me the wisest silent ones: in them, so PROFOUND is the depth that even the clearest water doth not--betray it.-- Thou snow-bearded, silent, winter-sky, thou round-eyed whitehead above me! Oh, thou heavenly simile of my soul and its wantonness! And MUST I not conceal myself like one who hath swallowed gold--lest my soul should be ripped up? MUST I not wear stilts, that they may OVERLOOK my long legs--all those enviers and injurers around me? Those dingy, fire-warmed, used-up, green-tinted, ill-natured souls--how COULD their envy endure my happiness! Thus do I show them only the ice and winter of my peaks--and NOT that my mountain windeth all the solar girdles around it! They hear only the whistling of my winter-storms: and know NOT that I also travel over warm seas, like longing, heavy, hot south-winds. They commiserate also my accidents and chances:--but MY word saith: "Suffer the chance to come unto me: innocent is it as a little child!" How COULD they endure my happiness, if I did not put around it accidents, and winter-privations, and bear-skin caps, and enmantling snowflakes! --If I did not myself commiserate their PITY, the pity of those enviers and injurers! --If I did not myself sigh before them, and chatter with cold, and patiently LET myself be swathed in their pity! This is the wise waggish-will and good-will of my soul, that it CONCEALETH NOT its winters and glacial storms; it concealeth not its chilblains either. To one man, lonesomeness is the flight of the sick one; to another, it is the flight FROM the sick ones. Let them HEAR me chattering and sighing with winter-cold, all those poor squinting knaves around me! With such sighing and chattering do I flee from their heated rooms. Let them sympathise with me and sigh with me on account of my chilblains: "At the ice of knowledge will he yet FREEZE TO DEATH!"--so they mourn. Meanwhile do I run with warm feet hither and thither on mine olive-mount: in the sunny corner of mine olive-mount do I sing, and mock at all pity.-- Thus sang Zarathustra. _ |
||