03 - Thus Spake Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzsche

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Part one, Chapter three, Backworldsman, Once on a time, Zarathustra
also cast his fancy beyond man, like all backworldsmen, the
work of a suffering and tortured god. Did the world
then seem to me the dream and diction of a god?
Did the world then seem to me? Colored vapors before

(00:24):
the eyes of a divinely dissatisfied one, good and evil
and joy and woe? And I in thou colored vapors?
Did they seem to me? Before creative eyes? The creator
wished to look away from himself. Thereupon he created the
world intoxicating joy. It is for the sufferer to look

(00:44):
away from his suffering and forget himself, intoxicating joy and
self forgetting. Did the world once seem to me? This
world the eternally imperfect, an eternal contradiction's image and imperfect image,
oxicating joy to its imperfect creator. Thus did the world
once seem to me? Thus, once on a time did

(01:09):
I also cast my fancy beyond man, like all backworldsmen,
beyond man? Forsooth ah ye, brethren, that God whom I
created was human work and human madness, Like all the gods,
a man was he and only a poor fragment of
a man and ego. Out of mine own ashes and glow,

(01:31):
it came unto me that phantom. And verily it came
not unto me from the beyond. What happened, my brethren,
I surpassed myself, the suffering one. I carried mine own
ashes to the mountain. A brighter flame I contrived for myself,
and lo, thereupon the phantom withdrew from me to me

(01:55):
the convalescent. Would it now be suffering and torment to
believe in such phantoms? Suffering? Would it now be to
me and humiliation? Thus speak I to backworldsman suffering? Was
it an impotence that created all backworlds? And the short
madness of happiness which only the greatest sufferer experienceth. Weariness

(02:19):
which seeketh to get to the ultimate with one leap,
with a death leap, a poor, ignorant weariness, unwilling even
to will any longer, that created all gods and backworlds.
Believe me, my brethren, it was the body which despaired
of the body. It groped with the fingers of the
infatuated spirit at the ultimate walls. Believe me, my brethren,

(02:44):
it was the body, which despaired of the earth. It
heard the bowels of existence speaking unto it, and then
it sought to get through the ultimate walls with its head,
and not with its head, only into the other world.
But that other world is well concealed from man, that
dehumanized inhuman world, which is a celestial nott And the

(03:08):
bowels of existence do not speak unto man except as
man Verily, it is difficult to prove all being, and
hard to make it speak. Tell me, ye, brethren, is
not the strangest of all things best proved? Yeay, This ego,
with its contradiction and perplexity, speaketh most uprightly of its being,

(03:31):
this creating, willing, evaluing ego, which is the measure and
value of things, And this most upright existence, the ego.
It speaketh of the body, and still implieth the body,
even when it museth and raveth and fluttereth with broken wings.

(03:52):
Always more uprightly learneth it to speak the ego, And
the more it learneth, the more doth it find titles
and honors for the body and in their earth. A
new pride taught me mine ego, and that teach I
unto men no longer to thrust one's head into the
sand of celestial things, but to carry it freely, a

(04:12):
terrestrial head, which giveth meaning to the earth. A new will.
I teach unto men to choose that path which man
hath followed blindly, and to approve of it, and no
longer slink aside from it, like the sick and perishing.
The sick and perishing. It was they who despised the

(04:34):
body and the earth, and invented the heavenly world and
the redeeming blood drops. But even those sweet and sad
poisons they borrowed from the body and the earth. From
their misery, they sought escape, and the stars were too
remote for them. Then they sighed, oh, that there were

(04:56):
heavenly paths by which to steal into another existence and
into happiness. Then they contrived for themselves their bypaths and
bloody drafts. Beyond the sphere of their body and this earth.
They now fancied themselves transported these ungrateful ones. But to
what did they owe the convulsion and rapture of their

(05:19):
transport to their body and this earth. Gentle is Zarathustra
to the sickly Verily, he is not indulgent at their
modes of consolation and ingratitude. May they become convalescents and overcomers,
and create higher bodies for themselves. Neither is Zarathusta indignant

(05:39):
at a convalescent who looketh tenderly on his delusions, and
at midnight stealeth round the grave of his God. But
sickness and a sick frame remain even in his tears.
Many sickly ones have there always been among those who
muse and languish for God violently. They hate the discerning
ones and the latest of virtues, which is uprightness backward.

(06:05):
They always gaze toward dark ages. Then, indeed were delusion
and faith something different. Raving of the reason was likeness
to God, and doubt was sin too well. Do I
know those god like ones? They insist on being believed in,
and that doubt is sin too well? Also do I

(06:27):
know what they themselves most believe in? Verily, not in
backworlds and redeeming blood drops. But in the body do
they also believe most? And their own body is for
them the thing in itself. But it is a sickly
thing to them, And gladly would they get out of

(06:48):
their skin Therefore hearken they to the preachers of death,
and themselves preach backworlds. Hearken, rather, my brethren, to the
voice of the health body. It is a more upright
and pure voice. More uprightly and purely speaketh the healthy body,

(07:08):
perfect and square built, and it speaketh of the meaning
of the earth. Thus spake Zarathustra. End of Part one,
Chapter three,