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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Why I write such excellent books. Part two Human, All
Too Human? One Human, All Too Human, with its two sequels,
is a memorial of a crisis. It is called a
book for free spirits. Almost every sentence in it is
(00:23):
the expression of a triumph. By means of it, I
purged myself of everything in me which was foreign to
my nature. Idealism is foreign to me. The title of
the book means, where ye see ideal things, I see
human alas all too human things. I know men better.
(00:49):
The word free spirit in this book must not be
understood as anything else than a spirit that has become free,
that has once more taken possession of itself. My tone,
the pitch of my voice, has completely changed. The book
will be thought clever, cool, and at times both hard
(01:12):
and scornful. A certain spirituality of noble tastes seems to
be ever struggling to dominate a passionate torrent at its feet.
In this respect, there is some sense in the fact
that it was the one hundredth anniversary of Voltaire's death
that served, so to speak, as an excuse for the
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publication of the book as early as eighteen seventy eight.
For Voltaire as the opposite of everyone who wrote after him,
was above all a grandee of the intellect, precisely what
I am. Also the name of Voltaire on one of
my writings. That was verily a step forwards in my direction.
(02:01):
Looking into this book a little more closely, you perceive
a pitiless spirit who knows all the secret hiding places
in which ideals are wont to skulk, where they find
their dungeons, and, as it were, their last refuge. With
a torch in my hand, the light of which is
not by any means a flickering one, I illuminate this
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nether world with beams that cut like blades. It is war,
but war without powder, and smoke without warlike attitudes, without pathos,
and contorted limbs. All these things would still be idealism.
One error after another is quietly laid upon ice. The
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ideal is not refuted. It freezes. Here. For instance, Genius
freezes around the corner, the Saint freezes under a thick icicle,
the hero freezes, and in the end, faith itself freezes.
So called conviction and also pity are considerably cooled, and
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almost everywhere the thing in itself is freezing to death. Two.
This book was begun during the first musical festival at
by Right, A feeling of profound strangeness towards everything that
surrounded me. There is one of its first conditions. He
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who has any notion of the visions which even at
that time had flitted across my path, we'll be able
to guess what I felt. When one day I came
to my senses in by Right. It was just as
if I had been dreaming. Where on earth was I?
I recognized nothing that I saw. I scarcely recognized Wagner.
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It was in vain that I called up reminiscences Tribschen,
the remote island of Bliss. Not the shadow of a resemblance.
The incomparable days devoted to the laying of the first stone,
the small group of initiates who celebrated them, and who
were far from lacking fingers for the handling of delicate things,
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not the shadow of a resemblance. What had happened, Wagner
had been translated into German. The Wagnerite had become master
of Wagner German art, the German master German beer. We
who know only too well the kind of refined artists
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and cosmopolitanism in taste to which alone Wagner's art can appeal,
were besides ourselves at the sight of Wagner bedecked with
German virtues. I think I know the Wagner write. I
have experienced three generations of them, from Brendel of blessed Memory,
who confounded Wagner with Hegel, to the idealists of by
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the Right Gazette, who confounded Wagner with themselves. I have
been the recipient of every kind of confession about Wagner,
from beautiful souls my kingdom for just one intelligent word
in very truth, a blood curdling company, Nol Pole and
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Cole and others of their kidney to infinity. Translator's footnote.
Knol and a Poll were both writers on music. Coal, however,
which literally means cabbage is slang expression denoting superior nonsense.
And translator's note, there was not a single abortion that
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was lacking among them. No, not even the antisemite poor Wagner,
into whose hands had he fallen if only he had
gone into a herd of swine. But among Germans some
day for the edification of posterity, one ought really to
have a genuine Bayroutien stuffed, or better still preserved in spirit.
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For it is precisely spirit that is lacking in this quarter.
With this inscription at the foot of the jar a
sample of the spirit whereon the German Empire was founded.
But enough, in the middle of festivities, I suddenly packed
my trunk and left the place for a few weeks.
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Despite the fact that a charming Parisian lady sought to
comfort me, I excused myself to Wagner simply by means
of a fatalistic telegram in a little spot called Klingenbrung,
deeply buried in the recesses of the Boumwald, I carried
my melancholy and my contempt for Germans about with me
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like an illness, and from time to time, under the
general title of the plowshare, I wrote a sentence or
two down in my note books, nothing but severe psychological stuff,
which it is possible may have found its way into
human all too human. Three. That which had taken place
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in me then was not only a brooch with Wagner.
I was suffering from a general aberration of my instincts,
of which had mere isolated blunder. Whether it were Wagner
or my professorship at Balah was nothing more than a symptom.
I was seized with a fit of impatience with myself.
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I saw that it was high time that I should
turn my thoughts upon my own lot. In a thrice,
I realized with appalling clearness, how much time had already
been squandered, how futile and how senseless my whole existence
as a philologist appeared by the side of my life task.
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I was ashamed of this false modesty. Ten years were
behind me, during which, to tell a truth, the nourishment
of my spirit had been at a standstill, during which
I had added not a single useful fragment to my knowledge,
and had forgotten countless things in the pursuit of a
hotch potch of dry as dust scholarship to crawl with
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meticulous care and short sighted eyes through old Greek metricans,
that is what I had come to. Moved to pity.
I saw myself, quite thin, quite emaciated. Realities were only
too plainly absent from my stock of knowledge, and what
the ideal it is were worth the devil alone, you
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are positively burning. Thirst overcame me, and from that time
forward I had done literally nothing else than study psychology,
medicine and natural science. I even returned to the actual
study of history only when my life task compelled me to.
It was at that time, too, that I first divined
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the relation between the instinctively repulsive occupation, a so called vocation,
which is the last thing to which one is called,
and that need of lulling a feeling of emptiness and
hunger by means of an art which is an narcotic
by means of Wagner's art. For instance, after looking carefully
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about me, I have discovered that a large number of
young men are all in the same state of distress.
One kind of unnatural practice perforce leads to another. In Germany,
or rather to avoid all ambiguity in the Empire, only
too many are condemned to determine their choice too soon
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and then to pine away beneath a burden that they
can no longer throw off. Translator's footnote. Needless to say,
nietzsure distinguishes between Bismarcki in Germany and that other Germany, Austria,
Switzerland and the Baltic provinces where the German language is
also spoken, and of translator's note, such creatures crave for
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Wagner as for an Opate, They are thus able to
forget themselves, to be rid of themselves for a moment.
What am I saying? For five or six hours? Four?
At this time my instincts turn resolutely against any further
yielding or following on my part, and any further misunderstanding
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of myself. Every kind of life, the most unfavorable circumstances, illness, poverty,
anything seemed to me preferable to that undignified selfishness into
which I had fallen in the first place, thanks to
my ignorance and youth, and in which I had afterwards
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remained owing to laziness, the so called sense of duty.
At this juncture there came to my help in a
way that I cannot sufficiently admire, and precisely at the
right time that evil heritage which I derive from my
father's side of the family, and which at bottom is
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no more than a predisposition to die young. Illness slowly
liberated me from the toils. It spared me any sort
of sudden breach, any sort of violent and offensive step.
At that time I lost not a particle of the
good will of others, but rather added to my store
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illness likewise gave me the right completely to reverse my
mode of life. It not only allowed, it actually commanded
me to forget. It bestowed upon me in the necessity
of lying still, of having leisure, of waiting, and of
exercising patience. But all this means thinking the state of
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my eyes alone put an end to all book wormishness,
or in plain English philology. I was thus delivered from books.
For years I ceased from reading. And this was the
greatest boon I ever conferred upon myself, that nethermost self,
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which was, as it were, entombed, and which had grown
dumb because it had been forced to listen perpetually to
other selves. For that is what reading means. Slowly awakened.
At first, it was shy and doubtful, but at last
it spoke again. Never have I rejoiced more over my
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condition than during the sickest and most painful moments of
my life. You have only to examine the dawn of Day,
or perhaps the Wanderer and his Shadow Translator's footnote, Human
All to Human Part two in this edition end translator's
footnote in order to understand what this returned to myself
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actually meant. In itself. It was the highest kind of recovery.
My cure was simply the result of it. Five human
all to human. This monument of a course of vigorous
self discipline, by means of which I put an abrupt
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end to all the superior Buncombe idealism, beautiful feelings and
other effeminisis that had percolated into my being, was written
principally in Sorrento. It was finished and given definitive shape
during a winter at Bala, under conditions far less favorable
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than those in Sorrento. Truth to tell, it was Peter Gast,
at that time, a student at the University of Bala
and a devoted friend of mine, who was responsible for
the book. With my head wrapped in bandages and extremely painful,
I dictated while he wrote and corrected as he went along.
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To be accurate. He was the real composer, whereas I
was only the author. When the completed book ultimately reached me,
to the great surprise of the serious invalid I then
was I sent, among others, two copies to buy right
thanks to a miraculous flash of intelligence on the part
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of chance, there reached me precisely at the same time
a splendid copy of the past of our text with
the following inscription from Wagner's pen to his dear friend
Friedrischnietzsche from Richard Wagner, Ecclesiastical Counselor. At this crossing of
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the two books, I seemed to hear an ominous note.
Did not sound as if two swords had crossed At
all events. We both felt this was so, for each
of us remained silent. At about this time the first
Bayreuth pamphlets appeared, and then I understood the move on
my part, for which it was high time incredible. Wagner
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had become pious six attitude to myself at that time
eighteen seventy six, and the unearthly certitude with which I
grasped my life task and all its world historical consequences,
is well revealed throughout the book, but more particularly in
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one very significant passage. Despite the fact that with my
instinctive cunning, I once more circumvented the use of the
little word. I not, however, this time, in order to
shed world historic glory on the names of Schopenhauer and Wagner,
but that on another of my friends, the excellent doctor
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Paul Ree fortunately much too acute a creature to be deceived.
Others were less subtle. Among my readers, I have a
number of hopeless people, the typical German professor, for instance,
who can always be recognized from the fact that, judging
from the passage in question, he feels compelled to regard
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the whole books as sort of superior realism. As a
matter of fact, it contradicts five or six of my
friend's utterances. Only read the Introduction to the Genealogy of
Morals on this question. The passage above referred to reads, what,
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after all, is the principal axiom to which the boldest
and coldest thinker, the author of the book on the
Origin of Moral Sensations Read Nietzsche, the first moralist, has
attained by means of his incisive and decisive analysis of
human actions. The moral man, he says, is no nearer
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to the intelligible metaphysical world than the physical man, for
there is no intelligible world. This theory hardened and sharpened
under the hammer blow of his life. Historical knowledge read
the transvaluation of all values may some time or other,
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perhaps in some future period eighteen ninety serve as the
acts which is applied to the root of the metaphysical
need of man. Whether more as a blessing than a
curse to the general welfare, it is not easy to say.
But in any case, as a theory with the most
important consequences, at once fruitful and terrible, and looking into
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the world with that Janus face which all great knowledge possesses.
Translates footnote Human All to Human, Volume one, Aphorism, thirty seven,
end translator's footnote the dawn of day. Thoughts about morality
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as a prejudice one with this book, I open my
campaign against morality, not that it is at all redolent
of powder. You will find quite another and much nicer
smells in it, provided that you have any keenness in
your nostrils. There is nothing either of light or of
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heavy artillery in his composition. And if its general end
be a negative one, its means are not so, means
out of which the end follows like a logical conclusion,
not like a cannon shot. And if the reader takes
leave of this book with the feeling of timid caution
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in regard to everything which has hitherto been honored and
even worshiped under the name of morality, it does not
alter the fact that there is not one negative word,
not one attack, and not one single piece of malice
in the whole work. On the contrary, it lies in
the sunshine, smooth and happy, like a marine animal basking
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in the sun between two rocks. For after all, I
was this marine animal. Almost every sentence in the book
was thought out, or rather caught among that medley of rocks,
in the neighborhood of Genoa, where I lived quite alone,
and exchange secrets with the ocean. Even to this day,
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when by chance I happened to turn over the leaves
of this book, almost every sentence seems to me like
a hook, by means of which I draw something incomparable
out of the depths. Its whole skin quivers with delicate
shudders of recollection. This book is conspicuous for no little
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art in gently catching things which whisk rapidly and silently away,
moments of which I call godlike lizards, not with a
cruelty of that young Greek god who simply transfercs the
poor little beast, but nevertheless with something pointed with a pen.
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There are so many dawns which have not yet shed
their light. This Indian maxim is written over the doorway
of this book, Where does its author seek that new morning,
that delicate read as yet undiscovered, with which another day ah,
The whole series of days, a whole world of new days,
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will begin in the transvaluation of all values, in an
emancipation from all moral values, in a saying of Yea,
and in an attitude of trust to all that which
hitherto has been forbidden, despised, and damned. This yea saying
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book projects its light, its love, its tenderness over all
evil things. It restores to them their soul, their clear conscience,
and their superior right and privilege to exist on earth.
Morality is not assailed. It simply ceases to be considered.
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This book closes with a word or It is the
only book which closes with an or two. My life
task is to prepare for humanity one supreme moment in
which it can come to its senses, a great noon,
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in which it will turn its gaze backwards and forwards,
in which it will step from under the yoke of
accidents and of priests, and for the first time set
the questions of the why and wherefore of humanity as
a whole. This life task naturally follows out of the
conviction that mankind does not get on the right road
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of its own accord, that it is by no means
divinely ruled, but rather that it is precisely under the
cover of its most holy valuations, that the instinct ob
negation of corruption out of degeneration, have held such a
seductive sway. The question concerning the origin of moral valuations
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is therefore a matter of the highest importance to me,
because it determines the future of mankind. The demand made
upon us to believe that everything is really in the
best hands, that a certain book, the Bible, gives us
the definite and comforting assurance that there is a providence
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that wisely rules the fate of man, when translated back
into reality, amounts simply to this, namely, the will to
stifle the truth which maintains the reverse of all this,
which is that hitherto man has been in the worst
possible hands, and that he has been governed by the
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physiologically botched, the men of cunning and burning revengefulness, and
the so called saints, those slanderers of the world and
traducers of humanity. The definite proof of the fact that
the priest, including the priest in disguise the philosopher, has
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become master not only within a certain limited religious community,
but everywhere, And that the morality of decadence, the will
to nonentity, has become morality per se, is to be
found in this, that altruism is now an absolute value,
and egotism is regarded with hostility everywhere. He who disagrees
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with me on this point are regarded as infected. All
the world disagrees with me. To a psychologist alike, antagonism
between values omits of no doubt. If the most insignificant
organ within the body neglects, however slightly, to assert with
absolute certainty its self preservative powers, its recuperative claims, and
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its egotism, the whole system degenerates. The psychologist insists upon
the removal of degenerated parts. He denies all fellow feelings
for such parts, and has not the smallest feeling of
pity for them. But the desire of the priest is
precisely the degeneration of the whole of mankind. Hence his
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preservation of that which is degenerate. This is what his
dominion costs humanity. What meaning have those lying concepts whose
handmaids of morality, soul, space, free will, God, if that
aim is not the physiological ruin of mankind, when earnestness
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is diverted from the instincts that aim at self preservation
and an increase if bodily energy, i e. At an
increase of life, When anemia is raised to an ideal,
and the contempt of the body is construed as the
salvation of the soul. What is all this if it
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is not a recipe for decadence, loss of ballast, resistance
offered to natural instincts, selflessness. In fact, this is what
has hitherto been known as morality. With the dawn of day,
I first engaged in a struggle against the morality of
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self renunciation, joyful wisdom, Lagayachiensa one dawn of day is
a yea saying book, profound but clear and kindly. The
same applies once more, and in the highest degree to Lagayachiensa,
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in almost every sentence of this book. Profundity and playfulness
go gently hand in hand. A verse which expresses my
gratitude for the most wonderful month of January which I
have ever lived. The whole book is a gift sufficiently
reveals the abyssmal depths from which wisdom has here become
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joyful Thou, who, with cleaving fiery lances the stream of
my soul from its ice doth free, till with a
rush and a roar it advances to enter with glorious hoping,
the sea brighter to see, and purer ever free in
the bonds of thy sweet constraints, so it praises thy
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wondrous endeavor. January, Thou beauteous saint. Translator's note translated for
Joyful Wisdom by Paul V. Cohen and translator's note, Who
can here be in any doubt as to what glorious
hoping means? Here when he has realized the diamond beauty
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of the first of Zarathustra's words as they appear in
the glow of light are the close of the fourth book,
or when he reads the granite sentences at the end
of the third book, wherein a fate for all times
is first given a formula. The songs of Prince Free
as a Bird, which for the most part were written
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in sicily, remind me quite forcibly of that provincial notion
of Gaya Scienza, of that union of singer, knight and
free Spirit, which distinguishes that wonderfully early culture of the
Pavensals from all ambiguous cultures. The last poem of all,
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to the Mistral, is an exuberant dance song in which,
if you please, the new Spirit dances freely upon the
corpse of morality. Is a perfect Pavan salism. Thus spake Zarathustra,
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a book for all and none one. I now wish
to relate the history of Zarathustra. The fundamental idea of
the work, the eternal recurrence, the highest formula of a
yay saying to life that can ever be attained, was
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first conceived in the month of August eighte teen eighty one.
I made a note of the idea on a sheet
of paper with the PostScript six thousand feet beyond man
and time. That day I happened to be wandering through
the woods alongside the lake of silver Plana, and I halted,
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not far from Surli, beside a huge rock that towered
aloft like a pyramid. It was then that the thought
struck me. Looking back now, I find that exactly two
months before this inspiration I had an omen of its
coming in the form of a sudden and decisive change
in my tastes, more particularly in music. The whole of
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Zarathustra might perhaps be classified under the rubric music. At
all events, the essential condition of its production was a
second birth within me of the art of hearing. In Recrao,
a small mountain resort near Vicenza, where I spent the
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spring of eighteen eighty one, I and my friend Maestro
Peter Gast, who was also one who had been born again,
discovered that the Phoenix music hovered over us in lighter
and brighter plumage than it had ever worn before. If therefore,
I now calculated from that day forward the sudden production
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of the book and the most unlikely circumstances. In February
eighteen eighty three, the last part out of which I
quoted a few lines in my preface, was written precisely
in the Hallowed hour. When Richard Wagner gave up the
ghost in Venice, I come to the conclusion that the
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period of gestation covered eighteen months. This period of exactly
eighteen months might suggest, at least to Buddhists, that I
am in reality a female elephants. The interval was devoted
to the Gaya Scienza, which contains hundreds of indications of
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the proximity of something unparalleled. For after all, it shows
the beginning of Zarathustra, since it presents Zarathustra's fundamental thought
in the last aphorism. But one of the fourth book
to this interval also belongs that hymn to Life for
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a mixed choir and orchestra, the score of which was
published in Leipzig two years ago by E. V. Fritsch,
and which gave perhaps no slight indication of my spiritual
state during this year in which the essentially Yea saying Pathos,
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which I call the tragic Pathos, completely filled me heart
and limb. One day people will sing it to my memory.
The text, let it be well understood, as there is
some misunderstanding abroad on this point, is not by me.
It was the astounding inspiration of a young Russian lady,
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Miss lou von Salomey, with whom I was then on
friendly terms. He who is in any way able to
make sense of the last words of the poem will
divine why I preferred and admired it. There is greatness
in them. Pain is not regarded as an objection to existence,
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and if thou hast noblest left to crown me. Lead
on thou hast thy sorrow. Still may be that my
music is also great. In this passage, the last note
of the oboe by the bye is c sharp. Not
see the latter is a misprint. During the following winter,
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I was living on that charming, peaceful Gulf of Rapallo,
not far from Genoa, which cuts inland between Chaivari and
Cape Porto Fino. My health was not very good. The
winter was cold and exceptionally rainy, and the small albago
in which I lived was so close to the water
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that at night my sleep was disturbed if the sea
was rough. These circumstances were surely the very reverse of favorable.
And yet in spite of it all, and as if
in proof of my belief that everything decisive comes to
life in defiance of every obstacle, it was precisely during
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this winter, and in the midst of these unfavorable circumstances,
that my Zarathustra originated. In the morning I used to
start out in a southerly direction up the glorious road
to Tsali, which rises up through a of pines and
gives one a view far out to sea. In the afternoon,
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or as often as my health allowed, I walked round
the whole bay from Saint Margherita to beyond Porta Fino.
This spot affected me all the more deeply because it
was so dearly loved by the Emperor Frederick the Third.
In the autumn of eighteen eighty six, I chanced to
be there again when he was revisiting this small, forgotten
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world of happiness for the last time. It was on
these two roads that all Zarathustra came to me. Above
all Zarathustra himself as a type, I ought rather to
say that it was on these walks that he waylaid
me two. In order to understand this type, you must
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first be quite clear concerning its fundamental physiological condition. This
condition is what I call great healthiness. In regard to
this idea, I cannot make my meaning more plain or
more personal than I have already done. In one of
the last aphorisms, number three hundred and eighty two of
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the fifth book of the gay Jasienza, we knew nameless
and unfathomable creatures, so reads the passage. We first things
of a future still unproved. We who have a new
end in view, also require new means to that end,
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that is to say, a new healthiness, a stronger, keener, tougher, bolder,
and merrier healthiness than any that has existed. Heretofore, he
who longs to feel in his own soul the whole
range of values and aims that have prevailed on earth
until his, and to sail around all the coasts of
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this ideal Mediterranean. See who from the adventures of his
own inmost experience, would fain know how it feels to
be a conqueror and a discoverer of the ideal, As
also how it is with the artist, the saint, the legislator,
the sage, the scholar, the man of piety, and the
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godlike anchorite of your Such a man requires one thing
above all for his purpose, and that is great healthiness,
such healthiness as he not only possesses, but also constantly acquires,
and must acquire, because he is continually sacrificing it again,
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and is compelled to sacrifice it. And now, therefore, after
having been long on the way, we argonauts of the idea,
whose pluck is greater than prudence would allow, and who
are often shipwrecked and bruised. But as I have said,
healthier than people would like to admit, dangerously healthy, and
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forever recovering our health. It would seem as if we
had before us, as a reward for all our toils
a country still undiscovered, the horizon of which no one
has yet seen, a beyond to every country and every
refuge of the ideal that man has ever known, a
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world so overflowing with beauty, strangeness, doubt, terror, and divinity,
that both our curiosity and our lust of possession are
frantic with eagerness. Alas how, in the face of such vistas,
and with such burning desire in our conscience and consciousness,
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could we still be content with the man of the
present day. This is bad, indeed, But that we should
regard his worthiest aims and hopes with ill concealed amusement,
or perhaps give them no thought at all, is inevitable.
Another ideal now leads us on, a wonderful, seductive ideal
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full of danger, the pursuit of which we should be
loath to urge upon anyone, because we are not so
ready to acknowledge anyone's right to it. The ideal of
a spirit who plays ingeniously, that is to say, involuntarily
and as the outcome of superabundant energy and power, with
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everything that hitherto has been called wholly good, inviolable, and divine,
to whom even the loftiest thing that the people have
with reason made their measure of value, would be no
better than a danger, a decay, and an abasement, or
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at least a relaxation and temporary forgetfulness of self, the
ideal of humanly superhuman well being and goodwill, which often
enough will seem inhuman as when, for instance, it stands
beside all past earnestness on earth and all past solemnities.
(40:28):
In hearing speech tone look morality and duty as their
most lifelike, an unconscious parody, but with which nevertheless great earnestness,
perhaps alone begins. The first note of interrogation is affixed,
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the fate of the soul changes, the hour hand moves,
and tragedy begins. Three. Has anyone, at the end of
the nineteenth century any distinct notion of what poets of
a strong age understood by the word inspiration, If not,
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I will describe it. If one had the smallest vestige
of superstition left in one, it would hardly be possible
completely to set aside the idea that one is the
mere incarnation, mouthpiece, or medium of an almighty power. The
idea of revelation, in the sense that something which profoundly
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convulses and upsets one becomes suddenly visible and audible with
indescribable certainty and accuracy, describes the simple fact one hears,
one does not seek, one takes, one does not ask.
Who gives a thought suddenly flashes up like lightning. It
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comes within a necessity, without faltering. I have never had
any choice in the matter. There is an ecstasy so
great that the immense strain of it is sometimes relaxed
by a flood of tears, during which one's steps now
involuntarily rush and anon involuntarily lag. There is the feeling
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that one is utterly out of hand with the very
distinct consciousness of an endless number of fine thrills and
titillations to sending to one's very toes. There is a
depth of happiness in which the most painful and gloomy
paths do not act as antitheses to the rest, but
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are produced and required as necessary shades of color. In
such an overflow of light, there is an instinct for
rhythmic relations which embraces a whole world forms length. The
need of a wide embracing rhythm is almost the measure
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of the force of an inspiration, a sort of counterpart
to its pressure and tension. Everything happens quite involuntarily, as
if in a tempestuous outburst of freedom, of absoluteness, of
power and divinity. The involuntary nature of the figures and
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similism is the most remarkable thing. One loses all perception
of what is imagery and metaphor. Everything seems to present
itself as the readiest, the truest, and simplest means of expression.
It actually seems to use one of Zarathustra's own phrases,
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as if all things came to one and offered themselves
as similis. Here do all things come caressingly to thy
discourse and flatter THEE, For they would fain ride upon thy,
back on every simile. Thou ridest here unto every truth,
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Here fly open, unto THEE, all the speech and word
shrines of the world. Here would all existence become speech.
Here would all becoming learn of THEE how to speak.
This is my experience of inspiration. I do not doubt,
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but that I should have to go back thousands of
years before I could find another who could say to
me it is mine also four For a few weeks afterwards,
I lay an invalid in Genoa. Then followed a melancholy
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spring in Rome, where I only just managed to live.
And this was no easy matter. This city, which is
absolutely unsuited to the poet author of Zarathustra, and for
the choice of which I was not responsible, made me
inordinately miserable. I tried to leave it. I wanted to
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go to Aquilla, the opposite of Rome in every respect,
and actually found it in a spirit of hostility towards
that city, just as I also shall found a city
some day as a memento of an atheist and a
genuine enemy of the Church, a person very closely related
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to me, the Great Hohenstaufen, the Emperor Frederick the Second.
But fate lay behind it all I had to return
again to Rome. In the end, I was obliged to
be satisfied with the Piazza Barberini. After I had exerted
myself in Vain to find an anti Christian quarter. I
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fear that on one occasion, to avoid bad smells as
much as possible. I actually inquired at the Palazzo del
Curinali whether they could not provide a quiet room for
a philosopher in a chamber high above the piazza I
just mentioned, from which one obtained a general view of
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Rome and could hear the fountains splashing far below. The
loneliest of all songs, as composed the Night Song. About
this time I was obsessed by an unspeakably sad melody,
the refrain of which I recognized in the words dead
through immortality. In the summer, finding myself once more in
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the sacred place where the first thought of Zarathustra flashed
like a light across my mind, I conceived the second
part ten days sufficed. Neither for the second, the first,
nor the third parts have ever required a day longer.
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In the ensuing winter, beneath the halkon sky of Nice,
which then for the first time poured its light into
my life, I found the third Zarathustra and came to
the end of my task, the whole having occupied me
scarcely a year. Many hidden corners and heights in the
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country round about Nice are hallowed for me by moments
that I can never forget that decisive chapter entitled Old
and New Tables, was composed during the arduous ascent from
the station to Etza, that wonderful Moorish village in the rocks.
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During those moments when my creative energy flowed most plentiful,
my muscular activity was always greatest. The body is inspired.
Let us waive the question of soul. I might often
have been seen dancing in those days, and could then
walk for seven or eight hours on end over the
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hills without a suggestion or fatigue. I slept well and
laughed a good deal. I was perfectly robust and patient. Five.
With the exception of these periods of industry lasting ten days,
the years I spent during the production of Zarathustra and
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thereafter were for me years of unparalleled distress. A man
pays dearly for being immortal. To this end, he must
die many times over during his life. There is such
a thing as what I call the rancor of greatness.
Everything great, whether a work or a deed, once it
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is completed, turns immediately against its author. The very fact
that he is its author makes him weak. At this time,
he can no longer endure his deed. He can no
longer look it full in the face. To have something
at on's back which one could never have willed, something
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to which the knot of human destiny is attached, and
to be forced henceforth to bear it on one's shoulders,
Why it almost crushes one the rancor of greatness. A
somewhat different experience is the uncanny silence that reigns about one.
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Solitude has seven skins, which nothing can penetrate. One goes
among men, one greets friends, but these things are only
new deserts. The looks of those one meets no longer
bears greeting at the best when encounters a sort of revolt.
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This feeling of revolt I suffered in varying degrees of
intensity at the hands of almost everyone who came near me.
It would seem that nothing inflects a deeper wound than
suddenly to make one's distance felt. Those noble natures are scarce,
who know not how to live unless they can revere.
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A third thing is the absurd susceptibility of the skin
to small pinpricks, a kind of helplessness in the presence
of all small things. This seems to me a necessary
outcome of the appalling expenditure of all defensive forces, which
is a first condition of every creative act, of every
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act which proceeds from the most intimate, most secret, and
most concealed recesses of a man's being. The small defensive
forces are thus, as it were, suspended, and no fresh
energy reaches them. I even think it probable that one
does not digest so well, that one is less willing
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to move, and that one is much too open to
sensations of coldness and suspicion. Four. In a large number
of cases, suspicion is merely a blunder in etiology. On
one occasion when I felt like this, I became conscious
of the proximity of a herd of cows, some time
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before I could possibly have seen it with my eyes,
simply owing to a return in me of milder and
more humane sentiments, They communicated warmth to me. Six. This
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work stands alone. Do not let us mention the poets
in the same breath. Nothing perhaps, has ever been produced
out of such a superabundance of strength. My concept Deunesian
here became the highest deed. Compared with it, everything that
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other men have done seems poor and limited. The fact
that a girt or a shakspeare would not for an
instant have known how to take breath in this atmosphere
of passion and of the heights. The fact that by
the side of Zarathustra, Dante is no more than a believer,
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and not one who first creates the truth, that is
to say, not a world ruling spirit a fate. The
fact that the poets of the Veda were priests and
not even fit to unfasten zarathia Ustra's sandal. All this
is the least of things, and gives no idea of
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the distance of the azure solitude in which this work dwells.
Zarathustra as an eternal right to say, I draw around
me circles and holy boundaries. Ever fewer are they that
mount with me to ever loftier heights. I build me
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a mountain range of ever holier mountains. If all the
spirit and goodness of every great soul were collected together,
the whole could not create a single one of Zarathustra's discourses.
The ladder upon which he rises and ascends is of
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boundless length. He has seen further, he has willed further,
and gone further than any other man. There is contradiction
in every word he utters, this most yea saying of
all spirits. Through him, all contradictions are bound up into
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a new unity. The loftiest and the basest powers of
human nature, the sweetest, the lightest, and the most terrible,
rushed forth from out One's spring with everlasting certainty. Until
his coming, no one knew what was height or depth,
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and still less what was truth. There is not a
single passage in this revelation of truth which had already
been anticipated and divined by even the greatest among men.
Before Zarathustra, there was no wisdom, no probing of the soul,
no art of speech. In his book, the most familiar
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and most vulgar thing utters unheard of words. The sentence
quivers with passion. Eloquence has become music. Forks of lightning
are hurled towards futures of which no one has ever
dreamed before. The most powerful use of parables that has
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yet existed is poor beside it and mere child's play
compared with this return of language to the nature of imagery.
See how Zarathustra goes down from the mountain and speaks
the kindest words to everyone. See with what delicate fingers
he touches his very adversaries, the priests, and how he
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suffers with them from themselves. Here at every moment, man
is overcome, and the concept superman becomes the greatest reality.
Out of sight, almost far away beneath him lies all
that which heretofore has been called great in man, the
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haliconic brightness, the light feet, the presence of wickedness and
exuberance throughout, and all that is the essence of the
type Zarathustra was never dreamt of before as the prequisite
of greatness. In precisely these limits of space, and in
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this accessibility to opposites, Zarathustra feels himself the highest of
all living things. And when you hear how he defines
this highest, you will give up trying to find his equal.
The soul which hath the longest ladder and can step
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down deepest, the vastest soul that can run and stray
and row furthest in its own domain, the most necessary
soul that out of desireeth itself into chance, The stable
soul that plungeth into becoming, The possessing soul that must
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needs taste of willing and longing, the soul that flareth
from itself, an overtaketh itself in the widest circle, the
wisest soul, that folly exhorteth most sweetly, the most self
loving soul in whom all things have their rise, their
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ebb and flow. But this is the very idea of dionysis.
Another consideration leads to this idea. The psychological problem presented
by the type of Zarathustra is, how can he who,
in an unprecedented manner says no and acts no in
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regard to all that which has been affirmed hitherto remained
never less a yea saying spirit. How can he who
bears the heaviest destiny on his shoulders, and whose very
life task is a fatality, yet be the brightest and
the most transcendental of spirits. For Zarathustra is a dancer.
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How can he who has the hardest and the most
terrible grasp of reality, and who has thought the most
abysmal thoughts nevertheless avoid conceiving these things as objections to existence,
or even as objections to the eternal recurrence of existence.
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How is it that, on the contrary, he finds reasons
for being himself the eternal affirmation of all things, the
tremendous and unlimited saying of yea and Amen into every
abyss do I bear the benediction of my to life.
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But this once more is precisely the idea of Dionysus. Seven.
What language will such a spirit speak when he speaks
unto his soul? The language of the diaphram. I am
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the inventor of the diaphram. Hearken unto the manner in
which Zarathustras speaks to his soul before sunrise Part three
forty eight, before my time, such emerald joys and divine
tenderness had found no tongue. Even the profoundest melancholy of
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such a Dionysus takes shape as a diaphram. As an
example of this, I take the night song, the immortal
plaint of one who, thanks to his superabundance of light
and power, thanks to the Sun within him, is condemned
never to love. It is night, now do all gushing
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springs raise their voices, And my soul too is a
gushing spring. Tis night now only do all lovers burst
into song, And my soul too is the song of
a lover. Something unquenched and unquenchable is within me that
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would raise its voice. A craving for love is within me,
which itself speaketh the language of love. Light? Am I
would that I were night? But this is my loneliness,
that I am brigot with light. Alas, why am I
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not dark? And like under the night? How joyfully would
I then suck the breasts of light? And even you
would I bless ye, twinkling starlets and glow worms on high,
and be blest in the gifts of your light. But
in mine own light? Do I live ever? Back into myself?
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Do I drink the flames I send forth? I know
not the happiness of the hand stretched forth to grasp
and oft? Have I dreamt that stealing must be more
blessed than taking? Wretched? Am I that my hand may
never rest from giving? An envious fate is mine? That
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I see expectant eyes and knights made bright with longing.
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
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their soul? A gulf is there TwixT giving and taking,
And the smallest gulf is the last to be bridged.
An appetite is borne 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
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have given? Thus do I thirst for wickedness to withdraw
my hand when their hand is already stretched forth? Like
the water fall that wavers, wavers even in its fall.
Thus do I thirst for wickedness for such vengeance? Doth
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my fullness yearn to such tricks? Doth my loneliness give birth?
My joy in giving died with the deed, but its
very fullness. Did my virtue grow weary of itself? He
who giveth risketh to lose his shame, He that is
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ever distributing, groweth callous in hand and heart. Therefrom my
eyes no longer melt into tears at the sight of
the supply and shame. My hand hath become too hard
to feel the quivering of laden hands. Whither have you
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fled the tears of mine eyes and the bloom of
my heart? Oh, the solitude of all givers, O 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?
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Alas this is the hatred of light for them which
shineth pitiless, It runneth its course unfair in its inmost heart,
to that which shineth cold towards suns. Thus doth every
sun go its way like a tempest? Do the suns
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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
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the udders of light. Alas about me there is ice.
My hand burneth itself against ice. Alas within me is
a thirst. The thirsteth for your thirst. It is night,
oh to me that I must needs be light and
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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.
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It is night now only do all lovers burst into song?
And my soul too is the song of a lover.
Eight Such things have never been written, never been felt,
never been suffered. Only a god, only Dionysus suffers in
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this way. The reply to such a diaphragm on the
sound solitude in light would be Ariadne, who knows by
who Ariadne is. To all such riddles, no one heretofore,
had ever found an answer. I doubt even whether anyone
(01:06:13):
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 is a yea saying,
to the point of justifying, to the point of redeeming,
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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
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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 transform
every it was into Thus would I have it that
alone would be my salvation. In another passage, he defines,
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as strictly as possible, what to him alone man can
be not a subject for love, nor yet for pity.
Zarathustra became muster even of his loathing of man. Man
is to him a thing unshaped, raw material, an ugly
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stone that needs a 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
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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 do this
will allure me? What would there be to create if
there were gods? But to man? Doth it ever drive
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me anew? My burning creative will Thus driveth it the
hammer to the stone. Alas, ye, men, within the stone
that 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
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against its prism. 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
(01:09:17):
gods to me? Now? Let me call attention to one
last point of view. The line in italics is my
pretext for this remark narrator's note. The line reads narrageth
my hammer ruthlessly against its prison and narrator's note. A
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Deunesian 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 a heart. Is the really distinctive
(01:10:03):
sign of a Deunesian nature, and of why I write
such excellent books. Part two