Thus Spoke Zarathustra (34 page)

Thus sighed the prophet; with his last sigh, however, Zarathustra again became cheerful and assured, like one emerging from a deep chasm into the light. ‘No! No! Thrice No!’ he cried vigorously, and stroked his beard. ‘I know better! There still are blissful islands! Do not talk about such things, you sighing sack-cloth!

‘Cease to splash about such things, you morning rain-cloud! Do I not stand here already wet with your affliction and drenched as a dog?

‘Now I shall shake myself and run away from you, so that I may become dry again: you must not be surprised at that! Do you think me discourteous? But this is
my
court.

‘But concerning your Higher Man: very well! I shall seek him at once in those forests: his cry came from
there
. Perhaps he is being attacked by an evil beast.

‘He is in
my
domain: here he shall not come to harm! And truly, there are many evil beasts about me.’

With these words Zarathustra turned to go. Then the prophet said: ‘O Zarathustra, you are a rogue!

‘I know it: you want to be rid of me! You would rather run into the forests and waylay evil beasts!

‘But what good will it do you? In the evening you will have me back; I shall sit in your own cave, patient and heavy as a log – and wait for you!’

‘So be it!’ Zarathustra shouted behind him as he departed: ‘and whatever in my cave belongs to me also belongs to you, my guest!

‘But should you discover honey in there, very well! just lick it up, you growling bear, and sweeten your soul! For in the evening we must both be in good spirits,

‘in good spirits and glad that this day has ended! And you yourself shall dance to my songs as my dancing bear.

‘You do not believe it? You are shaking your head? Very well! Go on, old bear! But I too – am a prophet!’

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Conversation with the Kings

1

Z
ARATHUSTRA
had not been going an hour through his mountains and forests when all at once he saw a strange procession. Along just that path that he was going down came two kings, adorned with crowns and purple sashes and bright as flamingos: they drove before them a laden ass. ‘What do these kings want in my kingdom?’ said Zarathustra in astonishment to his heart, and quickly concealed himself behind a bush. But as the kings drew abreast of him, he said, half aloud like someone talking to himself: ‘Strange! Strange! I cannot make this out! I see two kings – and only one ass!’

Then the two kings halted, smiled, gazed at the place from which the voice had come, and then looked one another
in the face. ‘No doubt people think such things as that at home, too,’ said the king on the right, ‘but they do not utter them.’

The king on the left shrugged his shoulders and answered: ‘It is probably a goat-herd. Or a hermit who has lived too long among trees and rocks. For no company at all also corrupts good manners.’

‘Good manners?’ replied the other king indignantly and bitterly. ‘What is it we are avoiding, then? Is it not “good manners”? Our “good company”?

‘Truly, better to live among hermits and goat-herds than with our gilded, false, painted rabble – although it calls itself “good company”,

‘although it calls itself “nobility”. But there everything is false and rotten, most of all the blood, thanks to old, evil diseases and worse quacks.

‘I think the finest and dearest man today is a healthy peasant, uncouth, cunning, obstinate, enduring: that is the noblest type today.

‘The peasant is the finest man today; and the peasantry should be master! But ours is the kingdom of the rabble – I no longer let myself be taken in. Rabble, however, means: hotchpotch.

‘Rabble-hotchpotch: in that everything is mixed up with everything else, saint and scoundrel and gentleman and Jew and every beast out of Noah’s Ark.

‘Good manners! Everything is false and rotten with us. Nobody knows how to be respectful any more: it is from precisely
this
that we are running away. They are honey-mouthed, importunate dogs, they gild palm-leaves.

‘It is this disgust that chokes me, that we kings ourselves have become false, arrayed and disguised in the old, yellowed pomp of our grandfathers, show-pieces for the stupidest and the craftiest and whoever today traffics with power!

‘We
are not
the first of them – yet we have to
pretend
to be: we have at last become tired and disgusted with this deception.

‘Now we are avoiding the mob, all these ranters and scribbling-blue bottles, the stench of shopkeepers, the struggles of
ambition, the foul breath: faugh, to live among the mob,

‘faugh, to pretend to be the first among the mob! Ah, disgust! disgust! disgust! What do we kings matter any more!’

‘Your old illness is assailing you,’ the king on the left said at this point, ‘disgust is assailing you, my poor brother. But you know that someone can overhear us.’

Hereupon Zarathustra, who had kept his ears and eyes open to these speeches, rose from his hiding-place, stepped towards the kings and began:

‘He who has overheard you, he who likes to overhear you, O kings, is called Zarathustra.

‘I am Zarathustra, who once said: “What do kings matter any longer!” Forgive me, but I was glad when you said to one another: “What do we kings matter!”

‘This, however, is
my
kingdom and dominion: what might you be seeking in my kingdom? But perhaps on your way you have
found
what I am
seeking
: that is, the Higher Man.’

When the kings heard this they beat their breasts and said in a single voice: ‘We have been recognized!

‘With the sword of these words you have cut through the thickest darkness of our hearts. You have discovered our distress, for behold! we are on our way to find the Higher Man –

‘the man who is higher than we: although we are kings. We are leading this ass to him. For the Highest Man shall also be the highest lord on earth.

‘There is no harder misfortune in all human destiny than when the powerful of the earth are not also the first men. Then everything becomes false and awry and monstrous.

‘And when they are even the last men and more beast than man, then the value of the rabble rises higher and higher and at last the rabble-virtue says: Behold, I alone am virtue!’

‘What do I hear?’ answered Zarathustra; ‘what wisdom from kings! I am enchanted, and truly, I already feel the urge to compose a verse about it:

‘even if it should be a verse not suited to everyone’s ears. I long ago unlearned consideration for long ears. Very well! Come on!

(But here it happened that the ass, too, found speech: it said clearly and maliciously ‘Ye-a’.)

‘Once on a time – ’twas
A.D.
One, I think –
Thus spoke the Sybil, drunken without drink:
“How bad things go!
Decay! Decay! Ne’er sank the world so low!
Rome is now a harlot and a brothel too,
Rome’s Caesar’s a beast, and God himself – a Jew!”’

2

The kings were delighted with these lines of Zarathustra’s; and the king on the right said: ‘O Zarathustra, how well we did to come out and see you!

‘For your enemies have shown us your image in their mirror, from which you gazed with the grimace of a devil and with mocking laughter, so that we were afraid of you.

‘But what good was it! Again and again you stung our ears and hearts with your sayings. Then at last we said: What does it matter how he looks!

‘We must
hear
him, him who teaches: You should love peace as a means to new wars and a short peace more than a long!

‘No one ever spoke such warlike words: What is good? To be brave is good. It is the good war that hallows every cause.

‘O Zarathustra, at such words the blood of our fathers stirred in our bodies: it was like spring speaking to old wine-casks.

‘Our fathers loved life when swords were crossed like red-flecked serpents; they thought all suns of peace faint and feeble, but the long peace made them ashamed.

‘How they sighed, our fathers, when they saw resplendent, parched swords upon the wall! Like them, they thirsted for war. For a sword wants to drink blood and sparkles with its desire.’

As the kings thus eagerly talked and babbled of the happiness of their fathers, Zarathustra was overcome by no small
desire to mock their eagerness: for they were apparently very peaceable kings that he saw before him, with aged, refined faces. But he controlled himself. ‘Very well!’ he said, ‘yonder leads the way to Zarathustra’s cave; and this day shall have a long evening! But now a cry of distress calls me hurriedly away from you.

‘My cave will be honoured if kings would sit and wait in it: but, to be sure, you will have to wait a long time!

‘But really! What does it matter! Where today does one learn to wait better than in courts? And the whole virtue still remaining to kings – is it not today called:
being able
to wait!’

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

The Leech

A
ND
Zarathustra walked thoughtfully farther and deeper through forests and past swampy places; but, as happens with those who think on difficult things, on his way he unintentionally trod on a man. And behold, all at once a cry of pain and two curses and twenty little invectives spurted up into his face: so that in his fright he raised his stick and brought it down on the man he had trodden on. But he immediately came to his senses; and his heart laughed at the folly he had just committed.

‘Forgive me,’ he said to the man he had trodden on, who had angrily risen and sat down again, ‘forgive me and first of all accept a parable.

‘How a wanderer dreaming of distant things unintentionally stumbles over a dog on a lonely road, a dog lying in the sun:

‘how they both start up and let fly at one another like mortal enemies, these two, frightened to death: thus it happened with us.

‘And yet! And yet – how little was lacking for them to caress one another, this dog and this solitary! For they are both- solitaries!’

‘Whoever you may be,’ said the trodden-on man, still angry, ‘you have come too near me with your parable and not only with your foot!

‘For look, am I a dog?’ – and thereupon the sitting man arose and drew his naked arm from the swamp. For previously he had lain stretched out on the ground, concealed and unrecognizable, like someone lying in wait for swamp game.

‘But what are you doing!’ cried Zarathustra in alarm, for he saw that a great deal of blood was running down the naked arm, ‘what has happened to you? Has an evil beast bitten you, unhappy man?’

The bleeding man laughed, still irritated. ‘What is it to do with you!’ he said, and made to go off. ‘Here I am at home and in my domain. Whoever wants to question me, let him: but I shall hardly reply to a blockhead!’

‘You are wrong,’ said Zarathustra compassionately, and held him fast, ‘you are wrong: here you are not in your own home but in my kingdom, and I will have no one come to harm here.

‘But none the less, call me what you like – I am what I must be. I call myself Zarathustra.

‘Very well! Up yonder leads the way to Zarathustra’s cave: it is not far – will you not tend your wounds in my home?

‘Things have gone ill with you in this life, you unhappy man: first a beast bit you, and then – a man trod on you!’

But when the trodden-on man heard the name of Zarathustra, he changed. ‘What has happened to me!’ he cried;
‘who
concerns me in this life except this one man, Zarathustra, and that one beast that lives on blood, the leech?

‘For the sake of the leech I have lain here beside this swamp like a fisherman, and already my outstretched arm has been bitten ten times; now a fairer leech bites for my blood, Zarathustra himself!

‘Oh happiness! Oh wonder! Praised be this day, that lured me to this swamp! Praised be the best, liveliest cupping-glass alive today, praised be the great leech of conscience, Zarathustra!’

Thus spoke the man who had been trodden on; and Zarathustra rejoiced at his words and their fine, respectful manner. ‘Who are you?’ he asked, and offered him his hand, ‘between us there is still much to elucidate and dear up: but already, it seems to me, it is bright, broad daylight.’

‘I am the
conscientious man of the spirit
,’ answered the other, ‘and scarcely anyone is sterner, stricter, and more severe in things of the spirit than I, apart from him from whom I learned, Zarathustra himself.

‘Better to know nothing than half-know many things! Better to be a fool on one’s own account than a wise man at the approval of others! I – go to the root of things:

‘what matter if it be great or small? If it be swamp or sky? A hand’s breadth of ground is enough for me: if only it be thoroughly firm ground!

‘a hand’s breadth of ground: one can stand upon that. In truly conscientious knowledge there is nothing great and nothing small.’

‘So perhaps you are an expert on the leech?’ asked Zarathustra. ‘And do you probe the leech down to its ultimate roots, conscientious man?’

‘O Zarathustra,’ answered the man who was trodden on, ‘that would be a colossal task, how could I undertake it!

‘But what I am master of and expert on is the leech’s
brain
– that is
my
world!

‘And that too is a world! But forgive me that my pride here speaks out, for here I have not my equal. That is why I said “Here I am at home”.

‘How long have I probed this one thing, the brain of the leech, so that slippery truth should here no longer slip away from me! Here is
my
kingdom!

‘For its sake I have cast away all others, for its sake I have grown indifferent to all others; and close beside my knowledge couches my black ignorance.

‘The conscience of my spirit demands of me that I know one thing and apart from that know nothing: I am disgusted by all the semi-intellectual, all the vaporous, hovering, visionary.