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ECCE HOMO

(_NIETZSCHES AUTOBIOGRAPHY_)

BY

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

TRANSLATED BY

ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI

POETRY RENDERED BY

PAUL V. COHN -- FRANCIS BICKLEY

HERMAN SCHEFFAUER -- DR. G. T. WRENCH

HYMN TO LIFE (_composed by F. NIETZSCHE_)

The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche

The First Complete and Authorised English Translation

Edited by Dr Oscar Levy

Volume Seventeen

T.N. FOULIS

13 & 15 FREDERICK STREET

EDINBURGH: AND LONDON

1911

CONTENTS

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

WHY I AM SO WISE

WHY I AM SO CLEVER

WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS

The Birth of Tragedy

Thoughts out of Season

Human, All-too-Human

The Dawn of Day

The Joyful Wisdom

Thus spake Zarathustra

Beyond Good and Evil

The Genealogy of Morals

The Twilight of the Idols

The Case of Wagner

WHY I AM A FATALITY

EDITORIAL NOTE TO POETRY

POETRY--

Songs, Epigrams, etc.

Dionysus-Dithyrambs

Fragments of Dionysus-Dithyrambs

HYMN TO LIFE, COMPOSED BY F. NIETZSCHE

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

_Ecce Homo_ is the last prose work that Nietzsche wrote. It is true

that the pamphlet _Nietzsche contra Wagner_ was prepared a month

later than the Autobiography; but we cannot consider this pamphlet as

anything more than a compilation, seeing that it consists entirely of

aphorisms drawn from such previous works as _Joyful Wisdom, Beyond

Good and Evil, The Genealogy of Morals,_ etc. Coming at the end of a

year in which he had produced the _Case of Wagner, The Twilight of the

Idols,_ and _The Antichrist, Ecce Homo_ is not only a coping-stone

worthy of the wonderful creations of that year, but also a fitting

conclusion to his whole life, in the form of a grand summing up of his

character as a man, his purpose as a reformer, and his achievement

as a thinker. As if half conscious of his approaching spiritual end,

Nietzsche here bids his friends farewell, just in the manner in which,

in the _Twilight of the Idols_ (Aph. 36, Part ix.), he declares that

every one should be able to take leave of his circle of relatives and

intimates when his time seems to have come--that is to say, while he

is still _himself_ while he still knows what he is about, and is able

to measure his own life and life in general, and speak of both in a

manner which is not vouchsafed to the groaning invalid, to the man

lying on his back, decrepit and exhausted, or to the moribund victim

of some wasting disease. Nietzsche's spiritual death, like his whole

life, was in singular harmony with his doctrine: he died suddenly

and proudly,--sword in hand. War, which he--and he alone among all

the philosophers of Christendom--had praised so whole-heartedly, at

last struck him down in the full vigour of his manhood, and left him

a victim on the battlefield--the terrible battlefield of thought, on

which there is no quarter, and for which no Geneva Convention has yet

been established or even thought of.

To those who know Nietzsche's life-work, no apology will be needed

for the form and content of this wonderful work. They will know, at

least, that a man either is, or is not, aware of his significance and

of the significance of what he has accomplished, and that if he is

aware of it, then self-realisation, even of the kind which we find

in these pages, is neither morbid nor suspicious, but necessary and

inevitable. Such chapter headings as "Why I am so Wise," "Why I am a

Fatality," "Why I write such Excellent Books,"--however much they may

have disturbed the equanimity, and "objectivity" in particular, of

certain Nietzsche biographers, can be regarded as pathological only

in a democratic age in which people have lost all sense of graduation

and rank and in which the virtues of modesty and humility have to be

preached far and wide as a corrective against the vulgar pretensions of

thousands of wretched nobodies. For little people can be endured only

as modest citizens; or humble Christians. If, however, they demand a

like modesty on the part of the truly great; if they raise their voices

against Nietzsche's lack of the very virtue they so abundantly possess

or pretend to possess, it is time to remind them of Goethe's famous

remark: "_Nur Lumpe sind bescheiden_" (Only nobodies are ever modest).

It took Nietzsche barely three weeks to write this story of his life.

Begun on the 15th of October 1888, his four-and-fourtieth birthday,

it was finished on the 4th of November of the same year, and, but

for a few trifling modifications and additions, is just as Nietzsche

left it. It was not published in Germany until the year 1908, eight

years after Nietzsche's death. In a letter dated the 27th of December

1888, addressed to the musical composer Fuchs, the author declares

the object of the work to be to dispose of all discussion, doubt, and

inquiry concerning his own personality, in order to leave the public

mind free to consider merely "the things for the sake of which he

existed" ("_die Dinge, derentwegen ich da bin_"). And, true to his

intention, Nietzsche's honesty in these pages is certainly one of

the most remarkable features about them. From the first chapter, in

which he frankly acknowledges the decadent elements within him, to

the last page, whereon he characterises his mission, his life-task,

and his achievement, by means of the one symbol, _Dionysus_ versus

_Christ,_--everything comes straight from the shoulder, without

hesitation, without fear of consequences, and, above all, without

concealment. Only in one place does he appear to conceal something, and

then he actually leads one to understand that he is doing so. It is in

regard to Wagner, the greatest friend of his life. "Who doubts," he

says, "that I, old artillery-man that I am, would be able if I liked to

point my heavy guns at Wagner?"--But he adds: "Everything decisive in

this question I kept to myself--I have loved Wagner" (p. 122).

To point, as many have done, to the proximity of all Nietzsche's autumn

work of the year 1888 to his breakdown at the beginning of 1889, and

to argue that in all its main features it foretells the catastrophe

that is imminent, seems a little too plausible, a little too obvious

and simple to require refutation. That Nietzsche really was in a state

which in medicine is known as _euphoria_--that is to say, that state

of highest well-being and capacity which often precedes a complete

breakdown, cannot, I suppose, be questioned; for his style, his

penetrating vision, and his vigour, reach their zenith in the works

written in this autumn of 1888; but the contention that the matter, the

substance, of these works reveals any signs whatsoever of waning mental

health, or, as a certain French biographer has it, of an inability to

"hold himself and his judgments in check," is best contradicted by

the internal evidence itself. To take just a few examples at random,

examine the cold and calculating tone of self-analysis in Chapter I. of

the present work; consider the reserve and the restraint with which the

idea in Aphorism 7 of that chapter is worked out,--not to speak of the

restraint and self-mastery in the idea itself, namely:--

"To be one's enemy's equal--this is the first condition of an

honourable duel. Where one despises one cannot wage war. Where one

commands, where one sees something beneath one, one ought not to wage

war. My war tactics can be reduced to four principles: First, I attack

only things that are triumphant--if necessary I wait until they become

triumphant. Secondly, I attack only those things against which I find

no allies, against which I stand alone--against which I compromise

nobody but myself.... Thirdly, I never make personal attacks--I use a

personality merely as a magnifying-glass, by means of which I render a

general, but elusive and scarcely noticeable evil, more apparent....

Fourthly, I attack only those things from which all personal

differences are excluded, in which any such thing as a background of

disagreeable experiences is lacking."

And now notice the gentleness with which, in Chapter II., Wagner--the

supposed mortal enemy, the supposed envied rival to Nietzsche--is

treated. Are these the words and the thoughts of a man who Has lost, or

who is losing control?

And even if we confine ourselves simply to the substance of this work

and put the question--Is it a new Nietzsche or the old Nietzsche that

we find in these pages? Is it the old countenance with which we are

familiar, or are the features distorted, awry, disfigured? What will

the answer be? Obviously there is no new or even deformed Nietzsche

here, because he is still faithful to the position which he assumed

in _Thus spake Zarathustra,_ five years previously, and is perfectly

conscious of this fidelity (see p. 141); neither can he be even on the

verge of any marked change, because the whole of the third chapter,

in which he reviews his life-work, is simply a reiteration and a

confirmation of his old points of view, which are here made all the

more telling by additional arguments suggested, no doubt, by maturer

thought. In fact, if anything at all is new in this work, it is its

cool certainty, its severe deliberateness, and its extraordinarily

incisive vision, as shown, for instance, in the summing up of the

genuine import of the third and fourth essays in the _Thoughts out of

Season_ (pp. 75-76, 80, 81, 82), a summing up which a most critical

analysis of the essays in question can but verify. Romanticism,

idealism, Christianity, are still scorned and despised; another

outlook, a nobler, braver, and more earthly outlook, is still upheld

and revered; the great yea to life, including all that it contains

that is terrible and questionable, is still pronounced in the teeth of

pessimists, nihilists, anarchists, Christians, and other decadents; and

Germany, "Europe's flatland," is still subjected to the most relentless

criticism. If there are any signs of change, besides those of mere

growth, in this work, they certainly succeed in eluding the most

careful search, undertaken with a full knowledge of Nietzsche's former

opinions, and it would be interesting to know precisely where they are

found by those writers whom the titles of the chapters, alone, seem so

radically to have perturbed.

But the most striking thing of all, the miracle, so to speak, of this

autobiography, is the absence from it of that loathing, that suggestion

of surfeit, with which a life such as the one Nietzsche had led, would

have filled any other man even of power approximate to his own. This

anchorite, who, in the last years of his life as a healthy human being,

suffered the experience of seeing even his oldest friends, including

Rhode, show the most complete indifference to his lot, this wrestler

with Fate, for whom recognition, in the persons of Brandes, Taine, and

Strindberg, had come all too late, and whom even support, sympathy, and

help, arriving as it did at last, through Deussen and from Madame de

Salis Marschlins, could no longer cheer or comfort,--this was the man

who was able notwithstanding to inscribe the device _amor fati_ upon

his shield on the very eve of his final collapse as a victim of the

unspeakable suffering he had endured.

And this final collapse might easily have been foreseen. Nietzsche's

sensorium, as his autobiography proves, was probably the most delicate

instrument ever possessed by a human being; and with this fragile

structure--the prerequisite, by the bye, of all genius,--his terrible

will compelled him to confront the most profound and most recondite

problems. We happen to know from another artist and profound thinker,

Benjamin Disraeli, who himself had experienced a dangerous breakdown,

what the consequences precisely are of indulging in excessive activity

in the sphere of the spirit, more particularly when that spirit is

highly organised. Disraeli says in _Contarini Fleming_ (Part iv. chap.

v.):--

"I have sometimes half believed, although the suspicion is

mortifying, that there is only one step between his state

who deeply indulges in imaginative meditation, and insanity;

for I well remember that at this period of my life, when

I indulged in meditation to a degree that would now be

impossible, and I hope unnecessary, my senses sometimes

appeared to be wandering."

And artists are the proper judges of artists,--not Oxford Dons, like

Dr. Schiller, who, in his imprudent attempt at dealing with something

for which his pragmatic hands are not sufficiently delicate, eagerly

av-ails himself of popular help in his article on Nietzsche in the

eleventh edition of the _Encyclopedia Britannica,_ and implies the

hackneyed and wholly exploded belief that Nietzsche's philosophy is

madness in the making. As German philosophies, however, are said to

go to Oxford only when they die, we may, perhaps, conclude from this

want of appreciation in that quarter, how very much alive Nietzsche's

doctrine still is.

Not that Nietzsche went mad so soon, but that he went mad so late is

the wonder of wonders. Considering the extraordinary amount of work

he did, the great task of the transvaluation of all values, which he

actually accomplished, and the fact that he endured such long years

of solitude, which to him, the sensitive artist to whom friends were

everything, must have been a terrible hardship, we can only wonder at

his great health, and can well believe his sister's account of the

phenomenal longevity and bodily vigour of his ancestors.

No one, however, who is initiated, no one who reads this work with

understanding, will be in need of this introductory note of mine; for,

to all who know, these pages must speak for themselves. We are no

longer in the nineteenth century. We have learned many things since

then, and if caution is only one of these things, at least it will

prevent us from judging a book such as this one, with all its apparent

pontifical pride and surging self-reliance, with undue haste, or with

that arrogant assurance with which the ignorance of "the humble" and

"the modest" has always confronted everything truly great.

ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.

PREFACE

1

As it is my intention within a very short time to confront my

fellow-men with the very greatest demand that has ever yet been made

upon them, it seems to me _above_ all necessary to declare here who

and what I am. As a matter of fact, this ought to be pretty well

known already, for I have not "held my tongue" about myself. But

the disparity which obtains between the greatness of my task and the

smallness of my contemporaries, is revealed by the fact that people

have neither heard me nor yet seen me. I live on my own self-made

credit, and it is probably only a prejudice to suppose that I am alive

at all. I do but require to speak to any one of the scholars who come

to the Ober-Engadine in the summer in order to convince myself that I

am _not_ alive.... Under these circumstances, it is a duty--and one

against which my customary reserve, and to a still greater degree the

pride of my instincts, rebel--to say: _Listen! for I am such and such a

person. For Heaven's sake do not confound me with any one else!_

2

I am, for instance, in no wise a bogey man, or moral monster. On the

contrary, I am the very opposite in nature to the kind of man that

has been honoured hitherto as virtuous. Between ourselves, it seems

to me that this is precisely a matter on which I may feel proud. I

am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus, and I would prefer to be

even a satyr than a saint. But just read this book! Maybe I have here

succeeded in expressing this contrast in a cheerful and at the same

time sympathetic manner--maybe this is the only purpose of the present

work.

The very last thing I should promise to accomplish would be to

"improve" mankind. I do not set up any new idols; may old idols only

learn what it costs to have legs of clay. To overthrow idols (idols

is the name I give to all ideals) is much more like my business. In

proportion as an ideal world has been falsely assumed, reality has been

robbed of its value, its meaning, and its truthfulness.... The "true

world" and the "apparent world"--in plain English, the fictitious world

and reality.... Hitherto the _lie_ of the ideal has been the curse of

reality; by means of it the very source of mankind's instincts has

become mendacious and false; so much so that those values have come to

be worshipped which are the exact _opposite_ of the ones which would

ensure man's prosperity, his future, and his great right to a future.

3

He who knows how to breathe in the air of my writings is conscious

that it is the air of the heights, that it is bracing. A man must be

built for it, otherwise the chances are that it will chill him. The

ice is near, the loneliness is terrible--but how serenely everything

lies in the sunshine! how freely one can breathe! how much, one feels,

lies beneath one! Philosophy, as I have understood it hitherto, is

a voluntary retirement into regions of ice and mountain-peaks--the

seeking--out of everything strange and questionable in existence,

everything upon which, hitherto, morality has set its ban. Through

long experience, derived from such wanderings in forbidden country, I

acquired an opinion very different from that which may seem generally

desirable, of the causes which hitherto have led to men's moralising

and idealising. The secret history of philosophers, the psychology of

their great names, was revealed to me. How much truth can a certain

mind endure; how much truth can it dare?--these questions became for

me ever more and more the actual test of values. Error (the belief in

the ideal) is not blindness; error is cowardice.... Every conquest,

every step forward in knowledge, is the outcome of courage, of hardness

towards one's self, of cleanliness towards one's self. I do not refute

ideals; all I do is to draw on my gloves in their presence.... _Nitimur

in vetitum;_ with this device my philosophy will one day be victorious;

for that which has hitherto been most stringently forbidden is, without

exception, Truth.

4

In my lifework, my _Zarathustra_ holds a place apart. With it, I gave

my fellow-men the greatest gift that has ever been bestowed upon them.

This book, the voice of which speaks out across the ages, is not only

the loftiest book on earth, literally the book of mountain air,--the

whole phenomenon, mankind, lies at an incalculable distance beneath

it,--but it is also the deepest book, born of the inmost abundance of

truth; an inexhaustible well, into which no pitcher can be lowered

without coming up again laden with gold and with goodness. Here it is

not a "prophet" who speaks, one of those gruesome hybrids of sickness

and Will to Power, whom men call founders of religions. If a man would

not do a sad wrong to his wisdom, he must, above all give proper

heed to the tones--the halcyonic tones--that fall from the lips of

Zarathustra:--

"The most silent words are harbingers of the storm; thoughts that come

on dove's feet lead the world.

"The figs fall from the trees; they are good and sweet, and, when they

fall, their red skins are rent.

"A north wind am I unto ripe figs.

"Thus, like figs, do these precepts drop down to you, my friends; now

drink their juice and their sweet pulp.

"It is autumn all around, and clear sky, and afternoon."

No fanatic speaks to you here; this is not a "sermon"; no faith is

demanded in these pages. From out an infinite treasure of light and

well of joy, drop by drop, my words fall out--a slow and gentle gait

is the cadence of these discourses. Such things can reach only the

most elect; it is a rare privilege to be a listener here; not every

one who likes can have ears to hear Zarathustra. Is not Zarathustra,

because of these things, a _seducer?_ ... But what, indeed, does he

himself say, when for the first time he goes back to his solitude? Just

the reverse of that which any "Sage," "Saint," "Saviour of the world,"

and other decadent would say.... Not only his words, but he himself is

other than they.

"Alone do I now go, my disciples! Get ye also hence, and alone! Thus

would I have it.

"Verily, I beseech you: take your leave of me and arm yourselves

against Zarathustra! And better still, be ashamed of him! Maybe he hath

deceived you.

"The knight of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but

also to hate his friends.

"The man who remaineth a pupil requiteth his teacher but ill. And why

would ye not pluck at my wreath?

"Ye honour me; but what if your reverence should one day break down?

Take heed, lest a statue crush you.

"Ye say ye believe in Zarathustra? But of; what account is Zarathustra?

Ye are my believers: but of what account are all believers?

"Ye had not yet sought yourselves when ye found me. Thus do all

believers; therefore is all believing worth so little.

"Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when ye have all

denied me will I come back unto you."

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.

On this perfect day, when everything is ripening, and not only the

grapes are getting brown, a ray of sunshine has fallen on my life: I

looked behind me, I looked before me, and never have I seen so many

good things all at once. Not in vain have I buried my four-and-fortieth

year to-day; I had the _right_ to bury it--that in it which still

had life, has been saved and is immortal. The first book of the

_Transvaluation of all Values, The Songs of Zarathustra, The Twilight

of the Idols,_ my attempt, to philosophise with the hammer--all these

things are the gift of this year, and even of its last quarter. _How

could I help being thankful to the whole of my life?_

That is why I am now going to tell myself the story of my life.

ECCE HOMO

HOW ONE BECOMES WHAT ONE IS

WHY I AM SO WISE

1

The happiness of my existence, its unique character perhaps, consists

in its fatefulness: to speak in a riddle, as my own father I am already

dead, as my own mother I still live and grow old. This double origin,

taken as it were from the highest and lowest rungs of the ladder of

life, at once a decadent and a beginning, this, if anything, explains

that neutrality, that freedom from partisanship in regard to the

general problem of existence, which perhaps distinguishes me. To the

first indications of ascending or of descending life my nostrils are

more sensitive than those of any man that has yet lived. In this domain

I am a master to my backbone--I know both sides, for I am both sides.

My father died in his six-and-thirtieth year: he was delicate, lovable,

and morbid, like one who is preordained to pay simply a flying visit--a

gracious reminder of life rather than life itself. In the same year

that his life declined mine also declined: in my six-and-thirtieth year

I reached the lowest point in my vitality,--I still lived, but my eyes

could distinguish nothing that lay three paces away from me. At that

time--it was the year 1879--I resigned my professorship at Bâle, lived

through the summer like a shadow in St. Moritz, and spent the following

winter, the most sunless of my life, like a shadow in Naumburg. This

was my lowest ebb. During this period I wrote _The Wanderer and His

Shadow._ Without a doubt I was conversant with shadows then. The winter

that followed, my first winter in Genoa, brought forth that sweetness

and spirituality which is almost inseparable from extreme poverty

of blood and muscle, in the shape of _The Dawn of Day,_ The perfect

lucidity and cheerfulness, the intellectual exuberance even, that this

work reflects, coincides, in my case, not only with the most profound

physiological weakness, but also with an excess of suffering. In the

midst of the agony of a headache which lasted three days, accompanied

by violent nausea, I was possessed of most singular dialectical

clearness, and in absolutely cold blood I then thought out things, for

which, in my more healthy moments, I am not enough of a climber, not

sufficiently subtle, not sufficiently cold. My readers perhaps know

to what extent I consider dialectic a symptom of decadence, as, for

instance, in the most famous of all cases--the case of Socrates. All

the morbid disturbances of the intellect, even that semi-stupor which

accompanies fever, have, unto this day, remained completely unknown to

me; and for my first information concerning their nature and frequency,

I was obliged to have recourse to the learned works which have been

compiled on the subject. My circulation is slow. No one has ever been

able to detect fever in me. A doctor who treated me for some time as

a nerve patient finally declared: "No! there is nothing wrong with

your nerves, it is simply I who am nervous." It has been absolutely

impossible to ascertain any local degeneration in me, nor any organic

stomach trouble, however much I may have suffered from profound

weakness of the gastric system as the result of general exhaustion.

Even my eye trouble, which sometimes approached so parlously near

to blindness, was only an effect and not a cause; for, whenever my

general vital condition improved, my power of vision also increased.

Having admitted all this, do I need to say that I am experienced in

questions of decadence? I know them inside and out. Even that filigree

art of prehension and comprehension in general, that feeling for

delicate shades of difference, that psychology of "seeing through brick

walls," and whatever else I may be able to do, was first learnt then,

and is the specific gift of that period during which everything in

me was subtilised,--observation itself, together with all the organs

of observation. To look upon healthier concepts and values from the

standpoint of the sick, and conversely to look down upon the secret

work of the instincts of decadence from the standpoint of him who is

laden and self-reliant with the richness of life--this has been my

longest exercise, my principal experience. If in anything at all, it

was in this that I became a master. To-day my hand knows the trick, I

now have the knack of reversing perspectives: the first reason perhaps

why a _Transvaluation of all Values_ has been possible to me alone.

2

For, apart from the fact that I am a decadent, I am also the reverse of

such a creature. Among other things my proof of this is, that I always

instinctively select the proper remedy when my spiritual or bodily

health is low; whereas the decadent, as such, invariably chooses those

remedies which are bad for him. As a whole I was sound, but in certain

details I was a decadent. That energy with which I sentenced myself

to absolute solitude, and to a severance from all those conditions in

life to which I had grown accustomed; my discipline of myself, and my

refusal to allow myself to be pampered, to be tended hand and foot, and

to be doctored--all this betrays the absolute certainty of my instincts

respecting what at that time was most needful to me. I placed myself

in my own hands, I restored myself to health: the first condition of

success in such an undertaking, as every physiologist will admit, is

that at bottom a man should be sound. An intrinsically morbid nature

cannot become healthy. On the other hand, to an intrinsically sound

nature, illness may even constitute a powerful stimulus to life, to

a surplus of life. It is in this light that I now regard the long

period of illness that I endured: it seemed as if I had discovered

life afresh, my own self included. I tasted all good things and even

trifles in a way in which it was not easy for others to taste them--out

of my Will to Health and to Life I made my philosophy.... For this

should be thoroughly understood; it was during those years in which my

vitality reached its lowest point that I ceased from being a pessimist:

the instinct of self-recovery forbade my holding to a philosophy of

poverty and desperation. Now, by what signs are Nature's lucky strokes

recognised among men? They are recognised by the fact that any such

lucky stroke gladdens our senses; that he is carved from one integral

block, which is hard, sweet, and fragrant as well. He enjoys that only

which is good for him; his pleasure, his desire, ceases when the limits

of that which is good for him are overstepped. He divines remedies for

injuries; he knows how to turn serious accidents to his own advantage;

that which does not kill him makes him stronger. He instinctively

gathers his material from all he sees, hears, and experiences. He is a

selective principle; he rejects much. He is always in his own company,

whether his intercourse be with books, with men, or with natural

scenery; he honours the things he chooses, the things he acknowledges,

the things he trusts. He reacts slowly to all kinds of stimuli, with

that tardiness which long caution and deliberate pride have bred in

him--he tests the approaching stimulus; he would not dream of meeting

it half-way. He believes neither in "ill-luck" nor "guilt"; he can

digest himself and others; he knows how to forget--he is strong enough

to make everything turn to his own advantage.

Lo then! I am the very reverse of a decadent, for he whom I have just

described is none other than myself.

3

This double thread of experiences, this means of access to two worlds

that seem so far asunder, finds in every detail its counterpart in my

own nature--I am my own complement: I have a "second" sight, as well

as a first. And perhaps I also have a third sight. By the very nature

of my origin I was allowed an outlook beyond all merely local, merely

national and limited horizons; it required no effort on my part to be

a "good European." On the other hand, I am perhaps more German than

modern Germans--mere Imperial Germans--can hope to be,--I, the last

anti-political German. Be this as it may, my ancestors were Polish

noblemen: it is owing to them that I have so much race instinct in my

blood--who knows? perhaps even the _liberum veto_[1] When I think of

the number of times in my travels that I have been accosted as a Pole,

even by Poles themselves, and how seldom I have been taken for a German,

it seems to me as if I belonged to those only who have a sprinkling

of German in them. But my mother, Franziska Oehler, is at any rate

something very German; as is also my paternal grandmother, Erdmuthe

Krause. The latter spent the whole of her youth in good old Weimar,

not without coming into contact with Goethe's circle. Her brother,

Krause, the Professor of Theology in Königsberg, was called to the

post of General Superintendent at Weimar after Herder's death. It is

not unlikely that her mother, my great grandmother, is mentioned in

young Goethe's diary under the name of "Muthgen." She married twice,

and her second husband was Superintendent Nietzsche of Eilenburg.

In 1813, the year of the great war, when Napoleon with his general

staff entered Eilenburg on the 10th of October, she gave birth to a

son. As a daughter of Saxony she was a great admirer of Napoleon, and

maybe I am so still. My father, born in 1813, died in 1849. Previous

to taking over the pastorship of the parish of Röcken, not far from

Lützen, he lived for some years at the Castle of Altenburg, where he

had charge of the education of the four princesses. His pupils are the

Queen of Hanover, the Grand-Duchess Constantine, the Grand-Duchess of

Oldenburg, and the Princess Theresa of Saxe-Altenburg. He was full of

loyal respect for the Prussian King, Frederick William the Fourth, from

whom he obtained his living at Röcken; the events of 1848 saddened him

extremely. As I was born on the 15 th of October, the birthday of the

king above mentioned, I naturally received the Hohenzollern names of

Frederick William. There was at all events one advantage in the choice

of this day: my birthday throughout the whole of my childhood was a day

of public rejoicing. I regard it as a great privilege to have had such

a father: it even seems to me that this embraces all that I can claim

in the matter of privileges--life, the great yea to life, excepted.

What I owe to him above all is this, that I do not need any special

intention, but merely a little patience, in order involuntarily to

enter a world of higher and more delicate things. There I am at home,

there alone does my inmost passion become free. The fact that I had

to pay for this privilege almost with my life, certainly does not

make it a bad bargain. In order to understand even a little of _my

Zarathustra,_ perhaps a man must be situated and constituted very much

as I am myself--with one foot beyond the realm of the living.

4

I have never understood the art of arousing ill-feeling against

myself,--this is also something for which I have to thank my

incomparable father,--even when it seemed to me highly desirable

to do so. However un-Christian it may seem, I do not even bear any

ill-feeling towards myself. Turn my life about as you may, you will

find but seldom--perhaps indeed only once--any trace of some one's

having shown me ill-will. You might perhaps discover, however, too

many traces of _goodwill...._ My experiences even with those on whom

every other man has burnt his fingers, speak without exception in their

favour; I tame every bear, I can make even clowns behave decently.

During the seven years in which I taught Greek to the sixth form of

the College at Bâle, I never had occasion to administer a punishment;

the laziest youths were diligent in my class. The unexpected has

always found me equal to it; I must be unprepared in order to keep my

self-command. Whatever the instrument was, even if it were as out of

tune as the instrument "man" can possibly be,--it was only when I was

ill that I could not succeed in making it express something that was

worth hearing. And how often have I not been told by the "instruments"

themselves, that they had never before heard their voices express such

beautiful things.... This was said to me most delightfully perhaps by

that young fellow Heinrich von Stein, who died at such an unpardonably

early age, and who, after having considerately asked leave to do

so, once appeared in Sils-Maria for a three days' sojourn, telling

everybody there that it was _not_ for the Engadine that he had come.

This excellent person, who with all the impetuous simplicity of a

young Prussian nobleman, had waded deep into the swamp of Wagnerism

(and into that of Dübringism[2] into the bargain!), seemed almost

transformed during these three days by a hurricane of freedom, like one

who has been suddenly raised to his full height and given wings. Again

and again I said to him that this was all owing to the splendid air;

everybody felt the same,--one could not stand 6000 feet above Bayreuth

for nothing,--but he would not believe me.... Be this as it may, if

I have been the victim of many a small or even great offence, it was

not "will," and least of all ill-will that actuated the offenders; but

rather, as I have already suggested, it was goodwill, the cause of no

small amount of mischief in f my life, about which I had to complain.

_My_ experience gave me a right to feel suspicious in regard to all

so-called "unselfish" instincts, in regard to the whole of "neighbourly

love" which is ever ready and waiting with deeds or with advice. To

me it seems that these instincts are a sign of weakness, they are an

example of the inability to withstand a stimulus--it is only among

decadents that this _pity_ is called a virtue. What I reproach the

pitiful with is, that they are too ready to forget shame, reverence,

and the delicacy of feeling which knows how to keep at a distance; they

do not remember that this gushing pity stinks of the mob, and that it

is next of kin to bad manners--that pitiful hands may be thrust with

results fatally destructive into a great destiny, into a lonely and

wounded retirement, and into the privileges with which great guilt

endows one. The overcoming of pity I reckon among the noble virtues;

In the "Temptation of Zarathustra" I have imagined a case, in which a

great cry of distress reaches his ears, in which pity swoops down upon

him like a last sin, and would make him break faith with himself. To

remain one's own master in such circumstances, to keep the sublimity

of one's mission pure in such cases,--pure from the many ignoble and

more short-sighted impulses which come into play in so-called unselfish

actions,--this is the rub, the last test perhaps which a Zarathustra

has to undergo--the actual proof of his power.

5

In yet another respect I am no more than my father over again, and as

it were the continuation of his life after an all-too-early death.

Like every man who has never been able to meet his equal, and unto

whom the concept "retaliation" is just as incomprehensible as the

notion of "equal rights," I have forbidden myself the use of any sort

of measure of security or protection--and also, of course, of defence

and "justification"--in all cases in which I have been made the victim

either of trifling or even _very great_ foolishness. My form of

retaliation consists in this: as soon as possible to set a piece of

cleverness at the heels of an act of stupidity; by this means perhaps

it may still be possible to overtake it. To speak in a parable: I

dispatch a pot of jam in order to get rid of a bitter experience....

Let anybody only give me offence, I shall "retaliate," he can be quite

sure of that: before long I discover an opportunity of expressing my

thanks to the "offender" (among other things even for the offence)--or

of _asking_ him for something, which can be more courteous even than

giving. It also seems to me that the rudest word, the rudest letter,

is more good-natured, more straightforward, than silence. Those--who

keep silent are almost always lacking in subtlety and refinement of

heart; silence is an objection, to swallow a grievance must necessarily

produce a bad temper--it even upsets the stomach. All silent people

are dyspeptic. You perceive that I should not like to see rudeness

undervalued; it is by far the most _humane_ form of contradiction, and,

in the midst of modern effeminacy, it is one of our first virtues; If

one is sufficiently rich for it, it may even be a joy to be wrong. If

a god were to descend to this earth, he would have to do nothing but

wrong--to take _guilt_ not punishment, on one's shoulders, is the first

proof of divinity.

6

Freedom from resentment and the understanding of the nature of

resentment--who knows how very much after all I am indebted to my long

illness for these two things? The problem is not exactly simple: a

man must have experienced both through his strength and through his

weakness, If illness and weakness are to be charged with anything at

all, it is with the fact that when they prevail, the very instinct of

recovery, which is the instinct of defence and of war in man, becomes

decayed. He knows not how to get rid of anything, how to come to

terms with anything, and how to cast anything behind him. Everything

wounds him. People and things draw importunately near, all experiences

strike deep, memory is a gathering wound. To be ill is a sort of

resentment in itself. Against this resentment the invalid has only

one great remedy--I call it _Russian fatalism,_ that fatalism which

is free from revolt, and with which the Russian soldier, to whom a

campaign proves unbearable, ultimately lays himself down in the snow.

To accept nothing more, to undertake nothing more, to absorb nothing

more--to cease entirely from reacting.... The tremendous sagacity

of this fatalism, which does not always imply merely the courage for

death, but which in the most dangerous cases may actually constitute

a self-preservative measure, amounts to a reduction of activity in

the vital functions, the slackening down of which is like a sort of

will to hibernate. A few steps farther in this direction we find the

fakir, who will sleep for weeks in a tomb.... Owing to the fact that

one would be used up too quickly if one reacted, one no longer reacts

at all: this is the principle. And nothing on earth consumes a man

more quickly than the passion of resentment. Mortification, morbid

susceptibility, the inability to wreak revenge, the desire and thirst

for revenge, the concoction of every sort of poison--this is surely the

most injurious manner of reacting which could possibly be conceived by

exhausted men. It involves a rapid wasting away of nervous energy, an

abnormal increase of detrimental secretions, as, for instance, that

of bile into the stomach. To the sick man resentment ought to be more

strictly forbidden than anything else--it is _his_ special danger:

unfortunately, however, it is also his most natural propensity. This

was fully grasped by that profound physiologist Buddha. His "religion,"

which it would be better to call a system of hygiene, in order to avoid

confounding it with a creed so wretched as Christianity, depended

for its effect upon the triumph over resentment: to make the soul

free therefrom was considered the first step towards recovery. "Not

through hostility is hostility put to flight; through friendship does

hostility end": this stands at the beginning of Buddha's teaching--this

is not a precept of morality, but of physiology. Resentment born of

weakness is not more deleterious to anybody than it is to the weak

man himself--conversely, in the case of that man whose nature is

fundamentally a rich one, resentment is a superfluous feeling, a

feeling to remain master of which is almost a proof of riches. Those

of my readers who know the earnestness-with which my philosophy wages

war against the feelings of revenge and rancour, even to the extent of

attacking the doctrine of "free will" (my conflict with Christianity

is only a particular instance of it), will understand why I wish to

focus attention upon my own personal attitude and the certainty of

my practical instincts precisely in this matter. In my moments of

decadence I forbade myself the indulgence of the above feelings,

because they were harmful; as soon as my life recovered enough riches

and pride, however, I regarded them again as forbidden, but this time

because they were _beneath_ me. That "Russian fatalism" of which I have

spoken manifested itself in me in such a way that for years I held

tenaciously to almost insufferable conditions, places, habitations,

and companions, once chance had placed them on my path--it was better

than changing them, than feeling that they could be changed, than

revolting against them.... He who stirred me from this fatalism, he

who violently tried to shake me into consciousness, seemed to me then

a mortal enemy--in point of fact, there was danger of death each time

this was done. To regard one's self as a destiny, not to wish one's

self "different"--this, in such circumstances, is sagacity, itself.

7

War, on the other hand, is something different. At heart I am a

warrior. Attacking belongs to my instincts. To _be able to be_ an

enemy, to _be_ an enemy--maybe these things presuppose a strong nature;

in any case all strong natures involve these things. Such natures need

resistance, consequently they go in search of obstacles: the pathos of

aggression belongs of necessity to strength as much as the feelings

of revenge and of rancour belong to weakness. Woman, for instance, is

revengeful; her weakness involves this passion, just as it involves

her susceptibility in the presence of other people's suffering. The

strength of the aggressor can be measured by the opposition which

he needs; every increase of growth betrays itself by a seeking out

of more formidable opponents--or problems: for a philosopher who

is combative challenges even problems to a duel. The task is not

to overcome opponents in general, but only those opponents against

whom one has to summon all one's strength, one's skill, and one's

swordsmanship--in fact, opponents who are one's equals.... To be one's

enemy's equal--this is the first condition of an honourable duel. Where

one despises, one cannot wage war. Where one commands, where one sees

something _beneath_ one, one _ought_ not to wage war. My war tactics

can be reduced to four principles A First, I attack only things that

are triumphant--if necessary I wait until they become triumphant.

Secondly, I attack only those things against which I find no allies,

against which I stand alone--against which I compromise nobody but

myself.... I have not yet taken one single step before the public eye,

which did not compromise me: that is _my_ criterion of a proper mode

of action. Thirdly, I never make personal attacks--I use a personality

merely as a magnifying-glass, by means of which I render a general,

but elusive and scarcely noticeable evil, more apparent. In this way I

attacked David Strauss, or rather the success given to a senile book by

the cultured classes of Germany--by this means I caught German culture

red-handed. In this way I attacked Wagner, or rather the falsity or

mongrel instincts of our "culture" which confounds the super-refined

with the strong, and the effete with the great. Fourthly, I attack

only those things from which all personal differences are excluded, in

which any such thing as a background of disagreeable experiences is

lacking. On the contrary, attacking is to me a proof of goodwill and,

in certain circumstances, of gratitude. By means of it, I do honour to

a thing, I distinguish a thing; whether I associate my name with that

of an institution or a person, by being _against_ or _for_ either,

is all the same to me. If I wage war against Christianity, I feel

justified in doing so, because in that quarter I have met with no fatal

experiences and difficulties--the most earnest Christians have always

been kindly disposed to me. I, personally, the most essential opponent

of Christianity, am far from holding the individual responsible for

what is the fatality of long ages.

May I be allowed to hazard a suggestion concerning one last trait

in my character, which in my intercourse with other men has led me

into some difficulties? I am gifted with a sense of cleanliness the

keenness of which is phenomenal; so much so, that I can ascertain

physiologically--that is to say, smell--the proximity, nay, the inmost

core, the "entrails" of every human soul.... This sensitiveness of mine

is furnished with psychological antennæ, wherewith I feel and grasp

every secret: the quality of concealed filth lying at the base of many

a human character which may be the inevitable outcome of base blood,

and which education may have veneered, is revealed to me at the first

glance. If my observation has been correct, such people, whom my sense

of cleanliness rejects, also become conscious, on their part, of the

cautiousness to which my loathing prompts me: and this does not make

them any more fragrant.... In keeping with a custom which I have long

observed,--pure habits and honesty towards myself are among the first

conditions of my existence, I would die in unclean surroundings,--I

swim, bathe, and splash about, as it were, incessantly in water, in

any kind of perfectly transparent and shining element. That is why

my relations with my fellows try my patience to no small extent; my

humanity does not consist in the fact that I understand the feelings

of my fellows, but that I can endure to understand.... My humanity

is a perpetual process of self-mastery. But I need solitude--that is

to say, recovery, return to myself, the breathing of free, crisp,

bracing air.... The whole of my _Zarathustra_ is a dithyramb in honour

of solitude, or, if I have been understood, in honour of purity. Thank

Heaven, it is not in honour of "pure foolery"![3] He who has an eye for

colour will call him a diamond. The loathing of mankind, of the rabble,

was always my greatest danger.... Would you hearken to the words spoken

by Zarathustra concerning deliverance from loathing?

"What forsooth hath come unto me? How did I deliver myself from

loathing? Who hath made mine eye younger? How did I soar to the height,

where there are no more rabble sitting about the well?

"Did my very loathing forge me wings and the strength to scent

fountains afar off? Verily to the loftiest heights did I need to fly,

to find once more the spring of joyfulness.

"Oh, I found it, my brethren! Up here, on the loftiest height, the

spring of joyfulness gusheth forth for me. And there is a life at the

well of which no rabble can drink with you.

"Almost too fiercely dost thou rush, for me, thou spring of joyfulness!

And ofttimes dost thou empty the pitcher again in trying to fill it.

"And yet must I learn to draw near thee more humbly. Far too eagerly

doth my heart jump to meet thee.

"My heart, whereon my summer burneth, my short, hot, melancholy,

over-blessed summer: how my summer heart yearneth for thy coolness!

"Farewell, the lingering affliction of my spring! Past is the

wickedness of my snowflakes in June! Summer have I become entirely, and

summer noontide!

"A summer in the loftiest heights, with cold springs and blessed

stillness: oh come, my friends, that the stillness may wax even more

blessed!

"For this is our height and our home: too high and steep is our

dwelling for all the unclean and their appetites.

"Do but cast your pure eyes into the well of my joyfulness, my friends!

How could it thus become muddy! It will laugh back at you with its

purity.

"On the tree called Future do we build our nest: eagles shall bring

food in their beaks unto us lonely ones!

"Verily not the food whereof the unclean might partake. They would

think they ate fire and would burn their mouths!

"Verily, no abodes for the unclean do we here hold in readiness! To

their bodies our happiness would seem an ice-cavern, and to their

spirits also!

"And like strong winds will we live above them, neighbours to the

eagles, companions of the snow, and playmates of the sun: thus do

strong winds live.

"And like a wind shall I one day blow amidst them, and take away their

soul's breath with my spirit: thus my future willeth it.

"Verily, a strong wind is Zarathustra to all low lands; and this is

his counsel to his foes and to all those who spit and spew: 'Beware of

spitting against the wind!'"

[Footnote 1: The right which every Polish deputy, whether a great or an

inferior nobleman, possessed of forbidding the passing of any measure

by the Diet, was called in Poland the _liberum veto_ (in Polish _nie

pozwalam_), and brought all legislation to a standstill.--TR.]

[Footnote 2: Eugen Dübring is a philosopher and political economist

whose general doctrine might be characterised as a sort of abstract

Materialism with an optimistic colouring.--TR.]

[Footnote 3: This, of course, is a reference to Wagner's _Parsifal._

See my note on p. 96 of _The Will to Power_ vol. i.--TR.]

WHY I AM SO CLEVER

1

Why do I know more things than other people? Why, in fact, am I so

clever? I have never pondered over questions that are not questions. I

have never squandered my strength. Of actual religious difficulties,

for instance, I have no experience. I have never known what it is to

feel "sinful." In the same way I completely lack any reliable criterion

for ascertaining what constitutes a prick of conscience: from all

accounts a prick of conscience does not seem to be a very estimable

thing.... Once it was done I should hate to leave an action of mine

in the lurch; I should prefer completely to omit the evil outcome,

the consequences, from the problem concerning the value of an action.

In the face of evil consequences one is too ready to lose the proper

standpoint from which one's deed ought to be considered. A prick of

conscience strikes me as a sort of "evil eye." Something that has

failed should be honoured all the more jealously, precisely because

it has failed--this is much more in keeping with my morality.--"God,"

"the immortality of the soul," "salvation," a "beyond"--to all these

notions, even as a child, I never paid any attention whatsoever, nor

did I waste any time upon them,--maybe I was never _naif_ enough for

that?--I am quite unacquainted with atheism as a result, and still

less as an event in my life: in me it is inborn, instinctive. I am

too inquisitive, too incredulous, too high spirited, to be satisfied

with such a palpably clumsy solution of things. God is a too palpably

clumsy solution of things; a solution which shows a lack of delicacy

towards us thinkers--at bottom He is really no more than a coarse

and rude _prohibition_ of us: ye shall not think!... I am much more

interested in another question,--a question upon which the "salvation

of humanity" depends to a far greater degree than it does upon any

piece of theological curiosity: I refer to nutrition. For ordinary

purposes, it may be formulated as follows: "How precisely must _thou_

feed thyself in order to attain to thy maximum of power, or _virtù_

in the Renaissance style,--of virtue free from moralic acid?" My

experiences in regard to this matter have been as bad as they possibly

could be; I am surprised that I set myself this question so late in

life, and that it took me so long to draw "rational" conclusions

from my experiences. Only the absolute worth-_1_ lessness of German

culture--its "idealism"--can to some extent explain how it was that

precisely in this matter I was so backward that my ignorance was almost

saintly. This "culture," which from first to last teaches one to lose

sight of actual things and to hunt after thoroughly problematic and

so-called ideal aims, as, for instance, "classical culture"--as if it

were not hopeless from the start to try to unite "classical" and

"German" in one concept. It is even a little comical--try and imagine

a "classically cultured" citizen of Leipzig!--Indeed, I can say, that

up to a very mature age, my food was entirely bad--expressed morally,

it was "impersonal," "selfless," "altruistic," to the glory of cooks

and all other fellow-Christians. It was through the cooking in vogue

at Leipzig, for instance, together with my first study of Schopenhauer

(1865), that I earnestly renounced my "Will to Live." To spoil one's

stomach by absorbing insufficient nourishment--this problem seemed to

my mind solved with admirable felicity by the above-mentioned cookery.

(It is said that in the year 1866 changes were introduced into this

department.) But as to German cookery in general--what has it not got

on its conscience! Soup _before_ the meal (still called _alla tedesca_

in the Venetian cookery books of the sixteenth century); meat boiled

to shreds, vegetables cooked with fat and flour; the degeneration of

pastries into paper-weights! And, if you add thereto the absolutely

bestial post-prandial drinking habits of the _ancients,_ and not alone

of the ancient Germans, you will understand where German intellect

took its origin--that is to say, in sadly disordered intestines....

German intellect is indigestion; it can assimilate nothing. But even

English diet, which in comparison with German, and indeed with French

alimentation, seems to me to constitute a "return to Nature,"--that is

to say, to cannibalism,--is profoundly opposed to my own instincts. It

seems to me to give the intellect heavy feet, in fact, Englishwomen's

feet.... The best cooking is that of Piedmont. Alcoholic drinks do

not agree with me; a single glass of wine or beer a day is amply

sufficient to turn life into a valley of tears for me;--in Munich live

my antipodes. Although I admit that this knowledge came to me somewhat

late, it already formed part of my experience even as a child. As a boy

I believed that the drinking of wine and the smoking of tobacco were at

first but the vanities of youths, and later merely bad habits. Maybe

the poor wine of Naumburg was partly responsible for this poor opinion

of wine in general. In order to believe that wine was exhilarating, I

should have had to be a Christian--in other words, I should have had to

believe in what, to my mind, is an absurdity. Strange to say, whereas

small quantities of alcohol, taken with plenty of water, succeed in

making me feel out of sorts, large quantities turn me almost into a

rollicking tar. Even as a boy I showed my bravado in this respect. To

compose a long Latin essay in one night, to revise and recopy it, to

aspire with my pen to emulating the exactitude and the terseness of my

model, Sallust, and to pour a few very strong grogs over it all--this

mode of procedure, while I was a pupil at the venerable old school of

Pforta, was not in the least out of keeping with my physiology, nor

perhaps with that of Sallust, however much it may have been alien to

dignified Pforta. Later on, towards the middle of my life, I grew more

and more opposed to alcoholic drinks: I, an opponent of vegetarianism,

who have experienced what vegetarianism is,--just as Wagner, who

converted me back to meat, experienced it,--cannot with sufficient

earnestness advise all more _spiritual_ natures to abstain absolutely

from alcohol. Water answers the purpose.... I have a predilection in

favour of those places where in all directions one has opportunities

of drinking from running brooks (Nice, Turin, Sils). _In vino Veritas_:

it seems that here once more I am at variance with the rest of the

world about the concept "Truth"--with me spirit moves on the face of

the waters.... Here are a few more indications as to my morality. A

heavy meal is digested more easily than an inadequate one. The first

principle of a good digestion is that the stomach should become active

as a whole. A man ought, therefore, to know the size of his stomach.

For the same reasons all those interminable meals, which I call

interrupted sacrificial feasts, and which are to be had at any table

d'hôte, are strongly to be deprecated. Nothing should be eaten between

meals, coffee should be given up--coffee makes one gloomy. Tea is

beneficial only in the morning. It should be taken in small quantities,

but very strong. It may be very harmful, and indispose you for the

whole day, if it be taken the least bit too weak. Everybody has his own

standard in this matter, often between the narrowest and most delicate

limits. In an enervating climate tea is not a good beverage with which

to start the day: an hour before taking it an excellent thing is to

drink a cup of thick cocoa, feed from oil. Remain seated as little as

possible, put no trust in any thought that is not born in the open, to

the accompaniment of free bodily motion--nor in one in which even the

muscles do not celebrate a feast. All prejudices take their origin in

the intestines. A sedentary life, as I have already said elsewhere, is

the real sin against the Holy Spirit.

2.

To the question of nutrition, that of locality and climate is next of

kin. Nobody is so constituted as to be able to live everywhere and

anywhere; and he who has great duties to perform, which lay claim

to all his strength, has, in this respect, a very limited choice.

The influence of climate upon the bodily functions, affecting their

acceleration or retardation, extends so far, that a blunder in the

choice of locality and climate is able not only to alienate a man from

his actual duty, but also to withhold it from him altogether, so that

he never even comes face to face with it. Animal vigour never acquires

enough strength in him in order to reach that pitch of artistic freedom

which makes his own soul whisper to him: I, alone, can do that.... Ever

so slight a tendency to laziness in the intestines, once it has become

a habit, is quite sufficient to make something mediocre, something

"German" out of a genius; the climate of Germany, alone, is enough to

discourage the strongest and most heroically disposed intestines. The

tempo of the body's functions is closely bound up with the agility or

the clumsiness of the spirit's feet; spirit itself is indeed only a

form of these organic functions. Let anybody make a list of the places

in which men of great intellect have been found, and are still found;

where wit, subtlety, and malice constitute happiness; where genius

is almost necessarily at home: all of them rejoice in exceptionally

dry air. Paris, Provence, Florence, Jerusalem, Athens--these names

prove something, namely: that genius is conditioned by dry air, by a

pure sky--that is to say, by rapid organic functions, by the constant

and ever-present possibility of procuring for one's self great and

even enormous quantities of strength. I have a certain case in mind

in which a man of remarkable intellect and independent spirit became

a narrow, craven specialist and a grumpy old crank, simply owing to

a lack of subtlety in his instinct for climate. And I myself might

have been an example of the same thing, if illness had not compelled

me to reason, and to reflect upon reason realistically. Now that I

have learnt through long practice to read the effects of climatic and

meteorological influences, from my own body, as though from a very

delicate and reliable instrument, and that I am able to calculate the

change in degrees of atmospheric moisture by means of physiological

observations upon myself, even on so short a journey as that from

Turin to Milan; I think with horror of the ghastly fact that my

whole life, until the last ten years,--the most perilous years,--has

always been spent in the wrong, and what to me ought to have been

the most forbidden, places. Naumburg, Pforta, Thuringia in general,

Leipzig, Bâle, Venice--so many ill-starred places for a constitution

like mine. If I cannot recall one single happy reminiscence of my

childhood and youth, it is nonsense to suppose that so-called "moral"

causes could account for this--as, for instance, the incontestable

fact that I lacked companions that could have satisfied me; for this

fact is the same to-day as it ever was, and it does not prevent me

from being cheerful and brave. But it was ignorance in physiological

matters--that confounded "Idealism"--that was the real curse of my

life. This was the superfluous and foolish element in my existence;

something from which nothing could spring, and for which there can be

no settlement and no compensation. As the outcome of this "Idealism"

I regard all the blunders, the great aberrations of instinct, and

the "modest specialisations" which drew me aside from the task of my

life; as, for instance, the fact that I became a philologist--why

not at least a medical man or anything else which might have opened

my eyes? My days at Bâle, the whole of my intellectual routine,

including my daily time-table, was an absolutely senseless abuse of

extraordinary powers, without the slightest compensation for the

strength that I spent, without even a thought of what I was squandering

and how its place might be filled. I lacked all subtlety in egoism,

all the fostering care of an imperative instinct; I was in a state

in which one is ready to regard one's self as anybody's equal, a

state of "disinterestedness," a forgetting of one's distance from

others--something, in short, for which I can never forgive myself.

When I had well-nigh reached the end of my tether, simply because I

had almost reached my end, I began to reflect upon the fundamental

absurdity of my life--"Idealism." It was _illness_ that first brought

me to reason.

3

After the choice of nutrition, the choice of climate and locality, the

third matter concerning which one must not on any account make a

blunder, is the choice of the manner in which one _recuperates one's

strength._ Here, again, according to the extent to which a spirit is

_sui generis,_ the limits of that which he can allow himself--in other

words, the limits of that which is beneficial to him--become more and

more confined. As far as I in particular am concerned, _reading_ in

general belongs to my means of recuperation; consequently it belongs

to that which rids me of myself, to that which enables me to wander

in strange sciences and strange souls--to that, in fact, about which

I am no longer in earnest. Indeed, it is while reading that I recover

from _my_ earnestness. During the time that I am deeply absorbed in

my work, no books are found within my reach; it would never occur

to me to allow any one to speak or even to think in my presence.

For that is what reading would mean.... Has any one ever actually

noticed, that, during the period of profound tension to which the

state of pregnancy condemns not only the mind, but also, at bottom,

the whole organism, accident and every kind of external stimulus acts

too acutely and strikes too deep? Accident and external stimuli must,

as far as possible, be avoided: a sort of walling-of-one's-self-in is

one of the primary instinctive precautions of spiritual pregnancy.

Shall I allow a strange thought to steal secretly over the wall?

For that is what reading would mean.... The periods of work and

fruit-fulness are followed by periods of recuperation: come hither,

ye delightful, intellectual, intelligent books! Shall I read German

books?... I must go back six months to catch myself with a book in

my hand. What was it? An excellent study by Victor Brochard upon the

Greek sceptics, in which my Laertiana[1] was used to advantage. The

sceptics!--the only _honourable_ types among that double-faced and

sometimes quintuple-faced throng, the philosophers!.... Otherwise I

almost always take refuge in the same books: altogether their number

is small; they are books which are precisely my proper fare. It is

not perhaps in my nature to read much, and of all sorts: a library

makes me ill. Neither is it my nature to love much or many kinds of

things. Suspicion or even hostility towards new books is much more

akin to my instinctive feeling than "toleration," _largeur de cœur,_

and other forms of "neighbour-love." ... It is to a small number of

old French authors, that I always return again and again; I believe

only in French culture, and regard everything else in Europe which

calls itself "culture" as a misunderstanding. I do not even take

the German kind into consideration.... The few instances of higher

culture with which I have met in Germany were all French in their

origin. The most striking example of this was Madame Cosima Wagner,

by far the most decisive voice in matters of taste that I have ever

heard. If I do not read, but literally love Pascal? as the most

instinctive sacrifice to Christianity, killing himself inch by inch,

first bodily, then spiritually, according to the terrible consistency

of this most appalling form of inhuman cruelty; if I have something

of Montaigne's mischievousness in my soul, and--who knows?--perhaps

also in my body; if my artist's taste endeavours to defend the names

of Molière, Corneille, and Racine, and not without bitterness, against

such a wild genius as Shakespeare--all this does not prevent me from

regarding even the latter-day Frenchmen also as charming companions.

I can think of absolutely no century in history, in which a netful of

more inquisitive and at the same time more subtle psychologists could

be drawn up together than in the Paris of the present day. Let me

mention a few at random--for their number is by no means small--Paul

Bourget, Pierre Loti, Gyp, Meilhac, Anatole France, Jules Lemaitre;

or, to point to one of strong race, a genuine Latin, of whom I am

particularly fond, Guy de Maupassant. Between ourselves, I prefer this

generation even to its masters, all of whom were corrupted by German

philosophy (Taine, for instance, by Hegel, whom he has to thank for

his misunderstanding of great men and great periods). Wherever Germany

extends her sway, she _ruins_ culture. It was the war which first saved

the spirit of France.... Stendhal is one of the happiest accidents of

my life--for everything that marks an epoch in it has been brought

to me by accident and never by means of a recommendation. He is quite

priceless, with his psychologist's eye, quick at forestalling and

anticipating; with his grasp of facts, which is reminiscent of the same

art in the greatest of all masters of facts (_ex ungue Napoleonem_);

and, last but not least, as an honest atheist--a specimen which is

both rare and difficult to discover in France--all honour to Prosper

Mérimée!... Maybe that I am even envious of Stendhal? He robbed

me of the best atheistic joke, which I of all people could have

perpetrated: "God's only excuse is that He does not exist" ... I myself

have said somewhere--What has been the greatest objection to Life

hitherto?--God....

4

It was Heinrich Heine who gave me the most perfect idea of what a

lyrical poet could be. In vain do I search through all the kingdoms of

antiquity or of modern times for anything to resemble his sweet and

passionate music. He possessed that divine wickedness, without which

perfection itself becomes unthinkable to me,--I estimate the value of

men, of races, according to the extent to which they are unable to

conceive of a god who has not a dash of the satyr in him. And with

what mastery he wields his native tongue! One day it will be said of

Heine and me that we were by far the greatest artists of the German

language that have ever existed, and that we left all the efforts that

mere Germans made in this language an incalculable distance behind

us. I must be profoundly related to Byron's _Manfred:_ of all the

dark abysses in this work I found the counterparts in my own soul--at

the age of thirteen I was ripe for this book. Words fail me, I have

only a look, for those who dare to utter the name of _Faust_ in the

presence of _Manfred._ The Germans are _incapable_ of conceiving

anything sublime: for a proof of this, look at Schumann! Out of anger

for this mawkish Saxon, I once deliberately composed a counter-overture

to _Manfred,_ of which Hans von Bülow declared he had never seen the

like before on paper: such compositions amounted to a violation of

Euterpe. When I cast about me for my highest formula of Shakespeare,

I find invariably but this one: that he conceived the type of Cæsar.

Such things a man cannot guess--he either is the thing, or he is not.

The great poet draws his creations only from out of his own reality.

This is so to such an extent, that often after a lapse of time he

can no longer endure his own work.... After casting a glance between

the pages of my _Zarathustra,_ I pace my room to and fro for half

an hour at a time, unable to overcome an insufferable fit of tears.

I know of no more heartrending reading than Shakespeare: how a man

must have suffered to be so much in need of playing the clown! Is

Hamlet _understood_? It is not doubt, but certitude that drives one

mad.... But in order to feel this, one must be profound, one must be

an abyss, a philosopher.... We all fear the truth.... And, to make a

confession; I feel instinctively certain and convinced that Lord Bacon

is the originator, the self-torturer, of this most sinister kind of

literature: what do I care about the miserable gabble of American

muddlers and blockheads? But the power for the greatest realism in

vision is not only compatible with the greatest realism in deeds,

with the monstrous in deeds, with crime--_it actually presupposes the

latter._ ... We do not know half enough about Lord Bacon--the first

realist in all the highest acceptation of this word--to be sure of

everything he did, everything he willed, and everything he experienced

in his inmost soul.... Let the critics go to hell! Suppose I had

christened my _Zarathustra_ with a name not my own,--let us say with

Richard Wagner's name,--the acumen of two thousand years would not have

sufficed to guess that the author of _Human, all-too-Human_ was the

visionary of _Zarathustra._

5

As I am speaking here of the recreations of my life, I feel I must

express a word or two of gratitude for that which has refreshed me by

far the most heartily and most profoundly. This, without the slightest

doubt, was my intimate relationship with Richard Wagner. All my other

relationships with men I treat quite lightly; but I would not have the

days I spent at Tribschen--those days of confidence, of cheerfulness,

of sublime flashes, and of profound moments--blotted from my life

at any price. I know not what Wagner may have been for others; but

no cloud ever darkened _our_ sky. And this brings me back again to

France,--I have no arguments against Wagnerites, and _hoc genus omne_

who believe that they do honour to Wagner by believing him to be

like themselves; for such people I have only a contemptuous curl of

my lip. With a nature like mine, which is so strange to everything

Teutonic, that even the presence of a German retards my digestion, my

first meeting with Wagner was the first moment in my life in which I

breathed freely: I felt him, I honoured him, as a foreigner, as the

opposite and the incarnate contradiction of all "German virtues." We

who as children breathed the marshy atmosphere of the fifties, are

necessarily pessimists in regard to the concept "German"; we cannot

be anything else than revolutionaries--we can assent to no state of

affairs which allows the canting bigot to be at the top. I care not

a jot whether this canting bigot acts in different colours to-day,

whether he dresses in scarlet or dons the uniform of a hussar.[2] Very

well, then! Wagner was a revolutionary--he fled from the Germans....

As an artist, a man has no home in Europe save in Paris; that subtlety

of all the five senses which Wagner's art presupposes, those fingers

that can detect slight gradations, psychological morbidity--all these

things can be found only in Paris. Nowhere else can you meet with

this passion for questions of form, this earnestness in matters of

_mise-en-scène,_ which is the Parisian earnestness _par excellence._

In Germany no one has any idea of the tremendous ambition that fills

the heart of a Parisian artist. The German is a good fellow. Wagner was

by no means a good fellow.... But I have already said quite enough

on the subject of Wagner's real nature (see _Beyond Good and Evil,_

Aphorism 269), and about those to whom he is most closely related.

He is one of the late French romanticists, that high-soaring and

heaven-aspiring band of artists, like Delacroix and Berlioz, who in

their inmost nacres are sick and incurable, and who are all fanatics

of _expression,_ and virtuosos through and through.... Who, in sooth,

was the first intelligent follower of Wagner? Charles Baudelaire, the

very man who first understood Delacroix--that typical decadent, in whom

a whole generation of artists saw their reflection; he was perhaps the

last of them too.... What is it that I have never forgiven Wagner?

The fact that he condescended to the Germans--that he became a German

Imperialist.... Wherever Germany spreads, she _ruins_ culture.

6

Taking everything into consideration, I could never have survived my

youth without Wagnerian music. For I was condemned to the society

of Germans. If a man wish to get rid of a feeling of insufferable

oppression, he has to take to hashish. Well, I had to take to Wagner.

Wagner is the counter-poison to everything essentially German--the fact

that he is a poison too, I do not deny. From the moment that _Tristan_

was arranged for the piano--all honour to you, Herr von Bülow!--I was

a Wagnerite. Wagner's previous works seemed beneath me--they were too

commonplace, too "German." ... But to this day I am still seeking for a

work which would be a match to _Tristan_ in dangerous fascination, and

possess the same gruesome and dulcet quality of infinity; I seek among

all the arts in vain. All the quaint features of Leonardo da Vinci's

work lose their charm at the sound of the first bar in _Tristan._

This work is without question Wagner's _non plus ultra_; after its

creation, the composition of the _Mastersingers_ and of the _Ring_ was

a relaxation to him. To become more healthy--this in a nature like

Wagner's amounts to going backwards. The curiosity of the psychologist

is so great in me, that I regard it as quite a special privilege

to have lived at the right time, and to have lived precisely among

Germans, in order to be ripe for this work. The world must indeed be

empty for him who has never been unhealthy enough for this "infernal

voluptuousness": it is allowable, it is even imperative, to employ a

mystic formula for this purpose. I suppose I know better than any one

the prodigious feats of which Wagner was capable, the fifty worlds of

strange ecstasies to which no one else had wings to soar; and as I am

alive to-day and strong enough to turn even the most suspicious and

most dangerous things to my own advantage, and thus to grow stronger,

I declare Wagner to have been the greatest benefactor of my life. The

bond which unites us is the fact that we have suffered greater agony,

even at each other's hands, than most men are able to bear nowadays,

and this will always keep our names associated in the minds of men.

For, just as Wagner is merely a misunderstanding among Germans, so, in

truth, am I, and ever will be. Ye lack two centuries of psychological

and artistic discipline, my dear countrymen!... But ye can never

recover the time lost.

7

To the most exceptional of my readers I should like to say just one

word about what I really exact from music. It must be cheerful and yet

profound, like an October afternoon. It must be original, exuberant,

and tender, and like a dainty, soft woman in roguishness and grace ... I

shall never admit that a German _can_ understand what music is. Those

musicians who are called German, the greatest and most famous foremost,

are all foreigners, either Slavs, Croats, Italians, Dutchmen--or Jews;

or else, like Heinrich Schütz, Bach, and Händel, they are Germans of

a strong race which is now extinct. For my own part, I have still

enough of the Pole left in me to let all other music go, if only I

can keep Chopin. For three reasons I would except Wagner's _Siegfried

Idyll,_ and perhaps also one or two things of Liszt, who excelled all

other musicians in the noble tone of his orchestration; and finally

everything that has been produced beyond the Alps_--this side_ of the

Alps.[3] I could not possibly dispense with Rossini, and still less

with my Southern soul in music, the work of my Venetian maestro, Pietro

Gasti. And when I say beyond the Alps, all I really mean is Venice.

If I try to find a new word for music, I can never find any other

than Venice. I know not how to draw any distinction between tears

and music. I do not know how to think either of joy, or of the south,

without a shudder of fear.

On the bridge I stood

Lately, in gloomy night.

Came a distant song:

In golden drops it rolled

Over the glittering rim away.

Music, gondolas, lights--

Drunk, swam far forth in the gloom....

A stringed instrument, my soul,

Sang, imperceptibly moved,

A gondola song by stealth,

Gleaming for gaudy blessedness.

--Hearkened any thereto?

8

In all these things--in the choice of food, place, climate, and

recreation--the instinct of self-preservation is dominant, and this

instinct manifests itself with least ambiguity when it acts as an

instinct of defence. To close one's eyes to much, to seal one's ears to

much, to keep certain things at a distance--this is the first principle

of prudence, the first proof of the fact that a man is not an accident

but a necessity. The popular word for this instinct of defence is

_taste._ A man's imperative command is not only to say "no" in cases

where "yes" would be a sign of "disinterestedness," but also to say

"no" _as seldom as possible._ One must part with all that which compels

one to repeat "no," with ever greater frequency. The rationale of this

principle is that all discharges of defensive forces, however slight

they may be, involve enormous and absolutely superfluous losses when

they become regular and habitual. Our greatest expenditure of strength

is made up of those small and most frequent discharges of it. The act

of keeping things off, of holding them at a distance, amounts to a

discharge of strength,--do not deceive yourselves on this point!--and

an expenditure of energy directed at purely negative ends. Simply by

being compelled to keep constantly on his guard, a man may grow so weak

as to be unable any longer to defend himself. Suppose I were to step

out of my house, and, instead of the quiet and aristocratic city of

Turin, I were to find a German provincial town, my instinct would have

to brace itself together in order to repel all that which would pour in

upon it from this crushed-down and cowardly world. Or suppose I were

to find a large German city--that structure of vice in which nothing

grows, but where every single thing, whether good or bad, is squeezed

in from outside. In such circumstances should I not be compelled to

become a hedgehog? But to have prickles amounts to a squandering of

strength; they even constitute a twofold luxury, when, if we only chose

to do so, we could dispense with them and open our hands instead....

Another form of prudence and self-defence consists in trying to

react as seldom as possible, and to keep one's self aloof from those

circumstances and conditions wherein one would be condemned, as it

were, to suspend one's "liberty" and one's initiative, and become a

mere reacting medium. As an example of this I point to the intercourse

with books. The scholar who, in sooth, does little else than handle

books--with the philologist of average attainments their number may

amount to two hundred a day--ultimately forgets entirely and completely

the capacity of thinking for himself. When he has not a book between

his fingers he cannot think. When he thinks, he responds to a stimulus

(a thought he has read),--finally all he does is to react. The scholar

exhausts his whole strength in saying either "yes" or "no" to matter

which has already been thought out, or in criticising it--he is no

longer capable of thought on his own account.... In him the instinct

of self-defence has decayed, otherwise he would defend himself against

books. The scholar is a decadent. With my own eyes I have seen gifted,

richly endowed, and free-spirited natures already "read to ruins" at

thirty, and mere wax vestas that have to be rubbed before they can give

off any sparks--or "thoughts." To set to early in the morning, at the

break of day, in all the fulness and dawn of one's strength, and to

read a book--this I call positively vicious!

9

At this point I can no longer evade a direct answer to the question,

_how one becomes what one is._ And in giving it, I shall have to

touch upon that masterpiece in the art of self-preservation, which is

_selfishness._ ... Granting that one's life-task--the determination and

the fate of one's life-task--greatly exceeds the average measure of

such things, nothing more dangerous could be conceived than to come

face to face with one's self by the side of this life-task. The fact

that one becomes what one is, presupposes that one has not the remotest

suspicion of what one is. From this standpoint even the blunders of

one's life have their own meaning and value, the temporary deviations

and aberrations, the moments of hesitation and of modesty, the

earnestness wasted upon duties which lie outside the actual life-task.

In these matters great wisdom, perhaps even the highest wisdom, comes

into activity: in these circumstances, in which _nosce teipsum_ would

be the sure road to ruin, forgetting one's self, misunderstanding

one's self, belittling one's self, narrowing one's self, and making

one's self mediocre, amount to reason itself. Expressed morally, to

love one's neighbour and to live for others and for other things

_may_ be the means of protection employed to maintain the hardest

kind of egoism. This is the exceptional case in which I, contrary

to my principle and conviction, take the side of the altruistic

instincts; for here they are concerned in subserving selfishness

and self-discipline. The whole surface of consciousness--for

consciousness _is_ a surface--must be kept free from any one of the

great imperatives. Beware even of every striking word, of every

striking attitude! They are all so many risks which the instinct runs

of "understanding itself" too soon. Meanwhile the organising "idea,"

which is destined to become master, grows and continues to grow into

the depths,--it begins to command, it leads you slowly back from your

deviations and aberrations, it prepares individual qualities and

capacities, which one day will make themselves felt as indispensable

to the whole of your task,--step by step it cultivates all the

serviceable faculties, before it ever whispers a word concerning the

dominant task, the "goal," the "object," and the "meaning" of it all.

Looked at from this standpoint my life is simply amazing. For the task

of _transvaluing values,_ more capacities were needful perhaps than

could well be found side by side in one individual; and above all,

antagonistic capacities which had to be free from the mutual strife

and destruction which they involve. An order of rank among capacities;

distance; the art of separating without creating hostility; to refrain

from confounding things; to keep from reconciling things; to possess

enormous multifariousness and yet to be the reverse of chaos--all

this was the first condition, the long secret work, and the artistic

mastery of my instinct. Its superior guardianship manifested itself

with such exceeding strength, that not once did I ever dream of what

was growing within me--until suddenly all my capacities were ripe, and

one day burst forth in all the perfection of their highest bloom. I

cannot remember ever having exerted myself, I can point to no trace of

_struggle_ in my life; I am the reverse of a heroic nature. To "will"

something, to "strive" after something, to have an "aim" or a "desire"

in my mind--I know none of these things from experience. Even at this

moment I look out upon my future--a _broad_ future!--as upon a calm

sea: no sigh of longing makes a ripple on its surface. I have not the

slightest wish that anything should be otherwise than it is: I myself

would not be otherwise.... But in this matter I have always been the

same. I have never had a desire. A man who, after his four-and-fortieth

year, can say that he has never bothered himself about _honours,

women,_ or _money_!--not that they did not come his way.... It was

thus that I became one day a University Professor--I had never had

the remotest idea of such a thing; for I was scarcely four-and-twenty

years of age. In the same way, two years previously, I had one day

become a philologist, in the sense that my _first_ philological work,

my start in every way, was expressly obtained by my master Ritschl for

publication in his _Rheinisches Museum._[4] (Ritschl--and I say it

in all reverence--was the only genial scholar that I have ever met.

He possessed that pleasant kind of depravity which distinguishes us

Thuringians, and which makes even a German sympathetic--even in the

pursuit of truth we prefer to avail ourselves of roundabout ways. In

saying this I do not mean to underestimate in any way my Thuringian

brother, the intelligent Leopold von Ranke....)

10

You may be wondering why I should actually have related all these

trivial and, according to traditional accounts, insignificant details

to you; such action can but tell against me, more particularly if I

am fated to figure in great causes. To this I reply that these trivial

matters--diet, locality, climate, and one's mode of recreation, the

whole casuistry of; self-love--are inconceivably more important than,

all that which has hitherto been held in high esteem! It is precisely

in this quarter that we must begin to learn afresh. All those things

which mankind has valued with such earnestness heretofore are not even

real; they are mere creations of fancy, or, more strictly speaking,

_lies_ born of the evil instincts of diseased and, in the deepest

sense, noxious natures--all the concepts, "God," "soul," "virtue,"

"sin," "Beyond," "truth," "eternal life." ... But the greatness of

human nature, its "divinity," was sought for in them.... All questions

of politics, of social order, of education, have been falsified, root

and branch, owing to the fact that the most noxious men have been

taken for great men, and that people were taught to despise the small

things, or rather the fundamental things, of life. If I now choose to

compare myself with those creatures who have hitherto been honoured as

the first among men, the difference becomes obvious. I do not reckon

the so-called "first" men even as human beings--for me they are the

excrements of mankind, the products of disease and of the instinct

of revenge: they are so many monsters laden with rottenness, so many

hopeless incurables, who avenge themselves on life.... I wish to be

the opposite of these people: it is my privilege to have the very

sharpest discernment for every sign of healthy instincts. There is no

such thing as a morbid trait in me; even in times of serious illness

I have never grown morbid, and you might seek in vain for a trace of

fanaticism in my nature. No one can point to any moment of my life

in which I have assumed either an arrogant or a pathetic attitude.

Pathetic attitudes are not in keeping with greatness; he who needs

attitudes is false.... Beware of all picturesque men! Life was easy--in

fact easiest--to me, in those periods when it exacted the heaviest

duties from me. Whoever could have seen me during the seventy days of

this autumn, when, without interruption, I did a host of things of

the highest rank--things that no man can do nowadays--with a sense of

responsibility for all the ages yet to come, would have noticed no sign

of tension in my condition, but rather a state of overflowing freshness

and good cheer. Never have I eaten with more pleasant sensations,

never has my sleep been better. I know of no other manner of dealing

with great tasks, than as _play_: this, as a sign of greatness, is

an essential prerequisite. The slightest constraint, a sombre mien,

any hard accent in the voice--all these things are objections to a

man, but how much more to his work!... One must not have nerves....

Even to _suffer_ from solitude is an objection--the only thing I have

always suffered from is "multitude."[5] At an absurdly tender age, in

fact when I was seven years old, I already knew that no human speech

would ever reach me: did any one ever see me sad on that account? At

present I still possess the same affability towards everybody, I am

even full of consideration for the lowest: in all this there is not

an atom of haughtiness or of secret contempt. He whom I despise soon

guesses that he is despised by me: the very fact of my existence is

enough to rouse indignation in all those who have polluted blood in

their veins. My formula for greatness in man is! _amor fati_: the fact

that a man wishes nothing to be different, either in front of him or

behind him, or for all eternity. Not only must the necessary be borne,

and on no account concealed,--all idealism is falsehood in the face of

necessity,--but it must also be _loved...._

[Footnote 1: Nietzsche, as is well known, devoted much time when a

student at Leipzig to the study of three Greek philosophers, Theognis,

Diogenes Laertius, and Democritus. This study first bore fruit in the

case of a paper, _Zur Geschichte der Theognideischen Spruchsammlung_,

which was subsequently published by the most influential journal of

classical philology in Germany. Later, however, it enabled Nietzsche to

enter for the prize offered by the University of Leipzig for an essay,

_De fontibus Diogenis Laertii._ He was successful in gaining the prize,

and the treatise was afterwards published in the _Rheinisches Museum,_

and is still quoted as an authority. It is to this essay, written when

he was twenty-three years of age, that he here refers.--TR.]

[Footnote 2: The favourite uniform of the German Emperor, William

II.--TR.]

[Footnote 3: In the latter years of his life, Nietzsche practically

made Italy his home.--TR.]

[Footnote 4: See note on page 37.]

[Footnote 5: The German words are, _Einsamkeit_ and _Vielsamkeit._ The

latter was coined by Nietzsche. The English word "multitude" should,

therefore, be understood as signifying multifarious instincts and

gifts, which in Nietzsche strove for ascendancy and caused him more

suffering than any solitude. Complexity of this sort, held in check

by a dominant instinct, as in Nietzsche's case, is of course the only

possible basis of an artistic nature.--TR.]

WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS

1

I am one thing, my creations are another. Here, before I speak of the

books themselves, I shall touch upon the question of the understanding

and misunderstanding with which they have met. I shall proceed to

do this in as perfunctory a manner as the occasion demands; for the

time has by no means come for this question. My time has not yet

come either; some are born posthumously. One s day institutions will

be needed in which men will live and teach, as I understand living

and teaching; maybe, also, that by that time, chairs will be founded

and endowed for the interpretation of _Zarathustra. _ But I should

regard it as a complete contradiction of myself, if I expected to

find ears and eyes for my truths to-day: the fact that no one listens

to me, that no one knows how to receive at my hands to-day, is not

only comprehensible, it seems to me quite the proper thing. I do not

wish to be mistaken for another--and to this end I must not mistake

myself. To repeat what I have already said, I can point to but few

instances of ill-will in my life: and as for literary ill-will, I

could mention scarcely a single example of it. On the other hand, I

have met with far too much _pure foolery_!... It seems to me that to

take up one of my books is one of the rarest honours that a man can

pay himself--even supposing that he put his shoes from off his feet

beforehand, not to mention boots.... When on one occasion Dr. Heinrich

von Stein honestly complained that he could not understand a word of

my _Zarathustra,_ I said to him that this was just as it should be: to

have understood six sentences in that book--that is to say, to have

lived them--raises a man to a higher level among mortals than "modern"

men can attain. With this feeling of distance how could I even wish to

be read by the "moderns" whom I know! My triumph is just the opposite

of what Schopenhauer's was--I say "_Non_ legor, _non_ legar."--Not

that I should like to underestimate the pleasure I have derived from

the innocence with which my works have frequently been contradicted.

As late as last summer, at a time when I was attempting, perhaps by

means of my weighty, all-too-weighty literature, to throw the rest of

literature off its balance, a certain professor of Berlin University

kindly gave me to understand that I ought really to make use of a

different form: no one could read such stuff as I wrote.--Finally, it

was not Germany, but Switzerland that presented me with the two most

extreme cases. An essay on _Beyond Good and Evil,_ by Dr. V. Widmann in

the paper called the _Bund,_ under the heading "Nietzsche's Dangerous

Book," and a general account of all my works, from the pen of Herr

Karl Spitteler, also in the _Bund,_ constitute a maximum in my life--I

shall not say of what.... The latter treated my _Zarathustra,_ for

instance as "_advanced exercises in style_," and expressed the wish

that later on I might try and attend to the question of substance as

well; Dr. Widmann assured me of his respect for the courage I showed

in endeavouring to abolish all decent feeling. Thanks to a little

trick of destiny, every sentence in these criticisms seemed, with

a consistency that I could but admire, to be an inverted truth. In

fact it was most remarkable that all one had to do was to "transvalue

all values," in order to hit the nail on the head with regard to me,

instead of striking my head with the nail.... I am more particularly

anxious therefore to discover an explanation. After all, no one can

draw more out of things, books included, than he already knows. A man

has no ears for that to which experience has given him no access. To

take an extreme case, suppose a book contains simply incidents which

lie quite outside the range of general or even rare experience--suppose

it to be the _first_ language to express a whole series of experiences.

In this case nothing it contains will really be heard at all, and,

thanks to an acoustic delusion, people will believe that where nothing

is heard there is nothing to hear.... This, at least, has been my

usual experience, and proves, if you will, the originality of my

experience. He who thought he had understood something in my work, had

as a rule adjusted something in it to his own image--not infrequently

the very opposite of myself, an "idealist," for instance. He who

understood nothing in my work, would deny that I was worth considering

at all.--The word "Superman," which designates a type of man that

would be one of nature's rarest and luckiest strokes, as opposed to

"modern" men, to "good" men, to Christians and other Nihilists,--a

word which in the mouth of Zarathustra, the annihilator of morality,

acquires a very profound meaning,--is understood almost everywhere, and

with perfect innocence, in the light of those values to which a flat

contradiction was made manifest in the figure of Zarathustra--that is

to say, as an "ideal" type, a higher kind of man, half "saint" and half

"genius." ... Other learned cattle have suspected me of Darwinism on

account of this word: even the "hero cult" of that great unconscious

and involuntary swindler, Carlyle,--a cult which I repudiated with

such roguish malice,--was recognised in my doctrine. Once, when I

whispered to a man that he would do better I to seek for the Superman

in a Cæsar Borgia than in a Parsifal, he could not believe his ears.

The fact that I am quite free from curiosity in regard to criticisms of

my books, more particularly when they appear in newspapers, will have

to be forgiven me. My friends and my publishers know this, and never

speak to me of such things. In one particular case, I once saw all the

sins that had been committed against a single book--it was _Beyond Good

and Evil;_ I could tell you a nice story about it. Is it possible that

the _National-Zeitung_--a Prussian paper (this comment is for the sake

of my foreign readers--for my own part, I beg to state, I read only _Le

Journal des Débats_)--really and seriously regarded the book as a "sign

of the times," or a genuine and typical example of Tory philosophy,[1]

for which the _Kreuz-Zeitung_ had not sufficient courage?...

2

This was said for the benefit of Germans: for everywhere else I have

my readers--all of them exceptionally intelligent men, characters that

have won their spurs and that have been reared in high offices and

superior duties; I have even real geniuses among my readers. In Vienna,

in St Petersburg, in Stockholm, in Copenhagen, in Paris, and New

York--I have been discovered everywhere: I have not yet been discovered

in Europe's flatland--Germany.... And, to make a confession, I rejoice

much more heartily over those who do not read me, over those who have

neither heard of my name nor of the word philosophy. But whithersoever

I go, here in Turin, for instance, every face brightens and softens

at the sight of me. A thing that has flattered me more than anything

else hitherto, is the fact that old market-women cannot rest until

they have picked out the sweetest of their grapes for me. To this

extent must a man be a philosopher.... It is not in vain that the

Poles are considered as the French among the Slavs. A charming Russian

lady will not be mistaken for a single moment concerning my origin.

I am not successful at being pompous, the most I can do is to appear

embarrassed.... I can think in German, I can feel in German--I can do

most things; but this is beyond my powers.... My old master Ritschl

went so far as to declare that I planned even my philological treatises

after the manner of a Parisian novelist--that I made them absurdly

thrilling. In Paris itself people are surprised at "_toutes mes audaces

et finesses_";--the words are Monsieur Taine's;--I fear that even in

the highest forms of the dithyramb, that salt will be found pervading

my work which never becomes insipid, which never becomes "German"--and

that is, wit.... I can do nought else. God help me! Amen.--We all know,

some of us even from experience, what a "long-ears" is. Well then, I

venture to assert that I have the smallest ears that have ever been

seen. This fact is not without interest to women--it seems to me they

feel that I understand them better!... I am essentially the anti-ass,

and on this account alone a monster in the world's history--in Greek,

and not only in Greek, I am the _Antichrist._

3

I am to a great extent aware of my privileges as a writer: in one

or two cases it has even been brought home to me how very much the

habitual > reading of my works "spoils" a man's taste. Other books

simply cannot be endured after mine, and least of all philosophical

ones. It is an incomparable distinction to cross the threshold of

this noble and subtle world--in order to do so one must certainly

not be a German; it is, in short, a distinction which one must have

deserved. He, however, who is related to me through loftiness of

will, experiences genuine raptures of understanding in my books:

for I swoop down from heights into which no bird has ever soared; I

know abysses into which no foot has ever slipped. People have told

me that it is impossible to lay down a book of mine--that I disturb

even the night's rest.... There is no prouder or at the same time more

subtle kind of books: they sometimes attain to the highest pinnacle

of earthly endeavour, cynicism; to capture their thoughts a man must

have the tenderest fingers as well as the most intrepid fists. Any

kind of spiritual decrepitude utterly excludes all intercourse with

them--even any kind of dyspepsia: a man must have no nerves, but he

must have a cheerful belly. Not only the poverty of a man's soul and

its stuffy air excludes all intercourse with them, but also, and to a

much greater degree, cowardice, uncleanliness, and secret intestinal

revengefulness; a word from my lips suffices to make the colour of

all evil instincts rush into a face. Among my acquaintances I have

a number of experimental subjects, in whom I see depicted all the

different, and instructively different, reactions which follow upon

a perusal of my works. Those who will have nothing to do with the

contents of my books, as for instance my so-called friends, assume an

"impersonal" tone concerning them: they wish me luck, and congratulate

me for having produced another work; they also declare that my writings

show progress, because they exhale a more cheerful spirit.... The

thoroughly vicious people, the "beautiful souls," the false from top to

toe, do not know in the least what to do with my books--consequently,

with the beautiful consistency of all beautiful souls, they regard

my work as beneath them. The cattle among my acquaintances, the mere

Germans, leave me to understand, if you please, that they are not

always of my opinion, though here and there they agree with me.... I

have heard this said even about _Zarathustra._ "Feminism," whether in

mankind or in man, is likewise a barrier to my writings; with it, no

one could ever enter into this labyrinth of fearless knowledge. To

this end, a man must never have spared himself, he must have been hard

in his habits, in order to be good-humoured and merry among a host of

inexorable truths. When I try to picture the character of a perfect

reader, I always imagine a monster of courage and curiosity, as well as

of suppleness, cunning, and prudence--in short, a born adventurer and

explorer. After all, I could not describe better than _Zarathustra_ has

done unto whom I really address myself: unto whom alone would he reveal

his riddle?

"Unto you, daring explorers and experimenters, and unto all who have

ever embarked beneath cunning sails upon terrible seas;

"Unto you who revel in riddles and in twilight, whose souls are lured

by flutes unto every treacherous abyss:

"For ye care not to grope your way along a thread with craven fingers;

and where ye are able to _guess,_ ye hate to _argue_?"

4

I will now pass just one or two general remarks about my _art of

style._ To communicate a state an inner tension of pathos by means

of signs, including the tempo of these signs,--that is the meaning of

every style; and in view of the fact that the multiplicity of inner

states in me is enormous, I am capable of many kinds of style--in

short, the most multifarious art of style that any man has ever had at

his disposal. Any style is _good_ which genuinely communicates an inner

condition, which does not blunder over the signs, over the tempo of the

signs, or over _moods_--all the laws of phrasing are the outcome of

representing moods artistically. Good style, in itself, is a piece of

sheer foolery, mere idealism, like "beauty in itself," for instance,

or "goodness in itself," or "the thing-in-itself." All this takes for

granted, of course, that there exist ears that can hear, and such men

as are capable and worthy of a like pathos, that those are not wanting

unto whom one may communicate one's self. Meanwhile my Zarathustra,

for instance, is still in quest of such people--alas! he will have to

seek a long while yet! A man must be worthy of listening to him....

And, until that time, there will be no one who will understand the art

that has been squandered in this book. No one has ever existed who has

had more novel, more strange, and purposely created art forms to fling

to the winds. The fact that such things were possible in the German

language still awaited proof; formerly, I myself would have denied

most emphatically that it was possible. Before my time people did not

know what could be done with the German language--what could be done

with language in general. The art of grand rhythm, of grand style in

periods, for expressing the tremendous fluctuations of sublime and

superhuman passion, was first discovered by me: with the dithyramb

entitled "The Seven Seals," which constitutes the last discourse of

the third part of _Zarathustra,_ I soared miles above all that which

heretofore has been called poetry.

5

The fact that the voice which speaks in my works is that of a

psychologist who has not his peer, is perhaps the first conclusion

at which a good reader will arrive--a reader such as I deserve, and

one who reads me just as the good old philologists used to read their

Horace. Those propositions about which all the world is fundamentally

agreed--not to speak of fashionable philosophy, of moralists and

other empty-headed and cabbage-brained people--are to me but ingenuous

blunders: for instance, the belief that "altruistic" and "egoistic";

are opposites, while all the time the "ego" itself is merely a "supreme

swindle," an "ideal." ... There are no such things as egoistic or

altruistic actions: both concepts are psychological nonsense. Or

the proposition that "man pursues happiness"; or the proposition

that "happiness is the reward of virtue." ... Or the proposition

that "pleasure and pain are opposites." ... Morality, the Circe of

mankind, has falsified everything psychological, root and branch--it

has demoralised everything, even to the terribly nonsensical point

of calling love "unselfish." A man must first be firmly poised, he

must stand securely on his two legs, otherwise he cannot love at

all. This indeed the girls know only too well: they don't care two

pins about unselfish and merely objective men.... May I venture to

suggest, incidentally, that I know women? This knowledge is part of my

Dionysian patrimony. Who knows? maybe I am the first psychologist of

the eternally feminine. Women all like me.... But that's an old story:

save, of course, the abortions among them, the emancipated ones, those

who lack the where-withal to have children. Thank goodness I am not

willing to let myself be torn to pieces! the perfect woman tears you

to pieces when she loves you: I know these amiable Mænads.... Oh! what

a dangerous, creeping, subterranean little beast of prey she is! And

so agreeable withal! ... A little woman, pursuing her vengeance, would

force open even the iron gates of Fate itself. Woman is incalculably

more wicked than man, she is also cleverer. Goodness in a woman is

already a sign of _degeneration._ All cases of "beautiful souls" in

women may be traced to a faulty physiological condition--but I go no

further, lest I should become medicynical. The struggle for equal

rights is even a symptom of disease; every doctor knows this. The more

womanly a woman is, the more she fights tooth and nail against rights

in general: the natural order of things, the eternal war between the

sexes, assigns to her by far the foremost rank. Have people had ears

to hear my definition of love? It is the only definition worthy of a

philosopher. Love, in its means, is war; in its foundation, it is the

mortal hatred of the sexes. Have you heard my reply to the question

how a woman can be cured, "saved" in fact?--Give her a child! A woman

needs children, man is always only a means, thus spake Zarathustra.

"The emancipation of women,"--this is the instinctive hatred of

physiologically botched--that is to say, barren--women for those of

their sisters who are well constituted: the fight against "man" is

always only a means, a pretext, a piece of strategy. By trying to rise

to "Woman _per se_," to "Higher Woman," to the "Ideal Woman," all they

wish to do is to lower the general level of women's rank: and there are

no more certain means to this end than university education, trousers,

and the rights of voting cattle. Truth to tell, the emancipated are

the anarchists in the "eternally feminine" world, the physiological

mishaps, the most deep-rooted instinct of whom is revenge. A whole

species of the most malicious "idealism"--which, by the bye, also

manifests itself in men, in Henrik Ibsen for instance, that typical

old maid--whose object is to poison the clean conscience, the natural

spirit, of sexual love.... And in order to leave no doubt in your minds

in regard to my opinion, which, on this matter, is as honest as it

is severe, I will reveal to you one more clause out of my moral code

against vice--with the word "vice" I combat every kind of! opposition

to Nature, or, if you prefer fine words, idealism. The clause reads:

"Preaching of chastity is a public incitement to unnatural practices.

All depreciation of the sexual life, all the sullying of it by means

of the concept 'impure,' is the essential crime against Life--is the

essential crime against the Holy Spirit of Life."

In order to give you some idea of myself as a psychologist, let me

take this curious piece of psychological analysis out of the book

_Beyond Good and Evil,_ in which it appears. I forbid, by the bye, any

guessing as to whom I am describing in this passage. "The genius of

the heart, as that great anchorite possesses it, the divine tempter

and born Pied Piper of consciences, whose voice knows how to sink into

the inmost depths of every soul, who neither utters a word nor casts a

glance, in which some seductive motive or trick does not lie: a part

of whose masterliness is that he understands the art of seeming--not

what he is, but that which will place a fresh constraint upon his

followers to press ever more closely upon him, to follow him ever more

enthusiastically and whole-heartedly.... The genius of the heart,

which makes all loud and self-conceited things hold their tongues and

lend their ears, which polishes all rough souls and makes them taste a

new longing--to lie placid as a mirror, that the deep heavens may be

reflected in them.... The genius of the heart which teaches the clumsy

and too hasty hand to hesitate and grasp more tenderly; which scents

the hidden and forgotten treasure, the pearl of goodness and sweet

spirituality, beneath thick black ice, and is a divining rod for every

grain of gold, long buried and imprisoned in heaps of mud and sand....

The genius of the heart, from contact with which every man goes away

richer, not 'blessed' and overcome, not as though favoured and crushed

by the good things of others; but richer in himself, fresher to

himself than before, opened up, breathed upon and sounded by a thawing

wind; more uncertain, perhaps, more delicate, more fragile, more

bruised; but full of hopes which as yet lack names, full of a new will

and striving, full of a new unwillingness and counter-striving." ...

[Footnote 1: _Junker-Philosophie._ The landed proprietors constitute

the dominating class in Prussia, and it is from this class that all

officers and higher officials are drawn. The _Kreuz-Zeitung_ is the

organ of the Junker party.--TR.]

"THE BIRTH Of TRAGEDY"

1

In order to be fair to the _Birth of Tragedy_ (1872) it is necessary

to forget a few things. It created a sensation and even fascinated by

means of its mistakes--by means of its application to Wagnerism, as

if the latter were the sign of an ascending tendency. On that account

alone, this treatise was an event in Wagner's life: thenceforward

great hopes surrounded the name of Wagner. Even to this day, people

remind me, sometimes in the middle of _Parsifal,_ that it rests on

my conscience if the opinion, that this movement is of great value

to culture, at length became prevalent I have often seen the book

quoted as "The Second Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music":

people had ears only for new formulæ for Wagner's art, his object

and his mission--and in this way the real hidden value of the book

was overlooked. "Hellenism and Pessimism"--this would have been a

less equivocal title, seeing that the book contains the first attempt

at showing how the Greeks succeeded in disposing: of pessimism--in

what manner they overcame it. ... Tragedy itself is the proof of

the fact that the Greeks were not pessimists: Schopenhauer blundered

here as he blundered in everything else.--Regarded impartially,

_The Birth of Tragedy_ is a book quite strange to its age: no one

would dream that it was begun in the thunder of the battle of Wörth.

I thought out these problems on cold September nights beneath the

walls of Metz, in the midst of my duties as nurse to the wounded; it

would be easier to think that it was written fifty years earlier. Its

attitude towards politics is one of indifference,--"un-German,"[1]

as people would say to-day,--it smells offensively of Hegel; only in

one or two formulæ is it infected with the bitter odour of corpses

which is peculiar to Schopenhauer. An idea--the antagonism of the two

concepts Dionysian and Apollonian--is translated into metaphysics;

history itself is depicted as the development of this idea; in tragedy

this antithesis has become unity; from this standpoint things which

theretofore had never been face to face are suddenly confronted, and

understood and illuminated by each other.... Opera and revolution,

for instance.... The two decisive innovations in the book are, first,

the comprehension of the Dionysian phenomenon among the Greeks--it

provides the first psychological analysis of this phenomenon, and

sees in it the single root of all Greek art; and, secondly, the

comprehension of Socraticism--Socrates being presented for the first

time as the instrument of Greek dissolution, as a typical decadent.

"Reason" _versus_ Instinct. "Reason" at any cost, as a dangerous,

life-undermining force. The whole book is profoundly and politely

silent concerning Christianity: the latter is neither Apollonian nor

Dionysian; it denies all æsthetic values, which are the only values

that _The Birth of Tragedy_ recognises. Christianity is most profoundly

nihilistic, whereas in the Dionysian symbol, the most extreme limits of

a yea-saying attitude to life are attained. In one part of the book the

Christian priesthood is referred to as a "perfidious order of goblins,"

as "subterraneans."

This start of mine was remarkable beyond measure. As a confirmation of

my inmost personal experience I had discovered the only example of this

fact that history possesses,--with this I was the first to understand

the amazing Dionysian phenomenon. At the same time, by recognising

Socrates as a decadent, I proved most conclusively that the certainty

of my psychological grasp of things ran very little risk at the hands

of any sort of moral idiosyncrasy: to regard morality itself as a

symptom of degeneration is an innovation, a unique event of the first

order in the history of knowledge. How high I had soared above the

pitifully foolish gabble about Optimism and Pessimism with my two new

doctrines! I was the first to see the actual contrast: the degenerate

instinct which turns upon life with a subterranean lust of vengeance

(Christianity, Schopenhauer's philosophy, and in some respects too

even Plato's philosophy--in short, the whole of idealism in its typical

forms), as opposed to a formula of the highest yea-saying to life,

born of an abundance and a superabundance of life--a I yea-saying free

from all reserve, applying even to suffering, and guilt, and all that

is questionable and strange in existence.... This last, most joyous,

most exuberant and exultant yea to life, is not only the highest,

but also the profoundest conception, and one which is most strictly

confirmed and supported by truth and science. Nothing that exists must

be suppressed, nothing can be dispensed with. Those aspects of life

which Christians and other Nihilists reject, belong to an incalculably

higher order in the hierarchy of values, than that which the instinct

of degeneration calls good, and _may_ call good. In order to understand

this, a certain courage is necessary, and, as a prerequisite of this,

a certain superfluity of strength: for a man can approach only as near

to truth as he has the courage to advance--that is to say, everything

depends strictly upon the measure of his strength. Knowledge, and

the affirmation of reality, are just as necessary to the strong man

as cowardice, the flight from reality--in fact, the "ideal"--are

necessary to the weak inspired by weakness.... These people are not

at liberty to "know,"--decadents stand in need of lies,--it is one of

their self-preservative measures. He who not only understands the word

"Dionysian," but understands _himself_ in that term, does not require

any refutation of Plato, or of Christianity, or of Schopenhauer--for

his nose _scents decomposition._

3

The extent to which I had by means of these doctrines discovered the

idea of "tragedy," the ultimate explanation of what the psychology of

tragedy is, I discussed finally in _The Twilight of the Idols_ (Aph.

5, part 10).... "The saying of yea to life, and even to its weirdest

and most difficult problems: the will to life rejoicing at its own

infinite vitality in the sacrifice of its highest types--that is what I

called Dionysian, that is what I meant as the bridge to the psychology

of the tragic poet. Not to cast out terror and pity, or to purge one's

self of dangerous passion by discharging it with vehemence,--this was

Aristotle's[2] misunderstanding of it,--but to be far beyond terror

and pity and to be the eternal lust of Becoming itself--that lust

which also involves the joy of destruction." ... In this sense I have

the right to regard myself as the first _tragic philosopher_--that is

to say, the most extreme antithesis and antipodes of a pessimistic

philosopher. Before my time no such thing existed as this translation

of the Dionysian phenomenon into philosophic emotion: tragic wisdom was

lacking; in vain have I sought for signs of it even among the great

Greeks in philosophy--those belonging to the two centuries before

Socrates. I still remained a little doubtful about Heraclitus, in whose

presence, alone, I felt warmer and more at ease than anywhere else.

The yea-saying to the impermanence and annihilation of things, which

is the decisive feature of a Dionysian philosophy; the yea-saying to

contradiction and war, the postulation of Becoming, together with the

radical rejection even of the concept _Being_-- in all these things, at

all events, I must recognise him who has come nearest to me in thought

hither to. The doctrine of the "Eternal Recurrence"--that is to say,

of the absolute and eternal repetition of all things in periodical

cycles--this doctrine of Zarathustra's might, it is true, have been

taught before. In any case, the Stoics, who derived nearly all their

fundamental ideas from Heraclitus, show traces of it.

A tremendous hope finds expression in this work. After all, I have

absolutely no reason to renounce the hope for a Dionysian future of

music. Let us look a century ahead, and let us suppose that my attempt

to destroy two millenniums of hostility to Nature and of the violation

of humanity be crowned with success That new party of life-advocates,

which will undertake the greatest of all tasks, the elevation and

perfection of mankind, as well as the relentless destruction of all

degenerate and parasitical elements, will make that _superabundance

of life_ on earth once more possible, out of which the Dionysian

state will perforce arise again. I promise the advent of a tragic

age: the highest art in the saying of yea to life, "tragedy," will be

born again when mankind has the knowledge of the hardest, but most

necessary of wars, behind it, without, however, suffering from that

knowledge.... A psychologist might add that what I heard in Wagnerian

music in my youth and early manhood had nothing whatsoever to do with

Wagner; that when I described Dionysian music, I described merely

what _I_ personally had heard--that I was compelled instinctively to

translate and transfigure everything into the new spirit which filled

my breast. A proof of this, and as strong a proof as you could have,

is my essay, _Wagner in Bayreuth_: in all its decisive psychological

passages I am the only person concerned--without any hesitation you may

read my name or the word "Zarathustra" wherever the text contains the

name of Wagner. The whole panorama of the _dithyrambic_ artist is the

representation of the already existing author of _Zarathustra,_ and

it is drawn with an abysmal depth which does not even once come into

contact with the real Wagner. Wagner himself had a notion of the truth;

he did not recognise himself in the essay.--In this way, "the idea of

Bayreuth" was changed into something which to those who are acquainted

with my _Zarathustra_ will be no riddle--that is to say, into the

Great Noon when the highest of the elect will consecrate themselves

for the greatest of all duties--who knows? the vision of a feast which

I may live to see.... The pathos of the first few pages is universal

history; the look which is discussed on page 105[3] of the book, is the

actual look of _Zarathustra;_ Wagner, Bayreuth, the whole of this petty

German wretchedness, is a cloud upon which an infinite Fata Morgana

of the future is reflected. Even from the psychological standpoint,

all the decisive traits in my character are introduced into Wagner's

nature--the juxtaposition of the most brilliant and most fatal forces,

a Will to Power such as no man has ever possessed--inexorable bravery

in matters spiritual, an unlimited power of learning unaccompanied by

depressed powers for action. Everything in this essay is a prophecy:

the proximity of the resurrection of the Greek spirit, the need of men

who will be counter-Alexanders, who will once more tie the Gordian knot

of Greek culture, after it has been cut. Listen to the world-historic

accent with which the concept "sense for the tragic" is introduced

on page 180: there are little else but world-historic accents in

this essay. This is the strangest kind of "objectivity" that ever

existed: my absolute certainty in regard to what I _am,_ projected

itself into any chance reality--truth about myself was voiced from out

appalling depths. On pages 174 and 175 the style of _Zarathustra_ is

described and foretold with incisive certainty, and no more magnificent

expression will ever be found than that on pages 144-147 for the event

for which _Zarathustra_ stands--that prodigious act of the purification

and consecration of mankind.

[Footnote 1: Those Germans who, like Nietzsche or Goethe, recognised

that politics constituted a danger to culture, and who appreciated the

literature of maturer cultures, such as that of France, are called

_un-deutsch_ (un-German) by Imperialistic Germans.--Tr.]

[Footnote 2: Aristotle's _Poetics_, c. vi.--Tr.]

[Footnote 3: This number and those which follow refer to _Thoughts out

of Season,_ Part I. in this edition of Nietzsche's Works.--TR.]

"THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON"

1

The four essays composing the _Thoughts out of Season_ are thoroughly

warlike in tone. They prove that I was no mere dreamer, that I delight

in drawing the sword--and perhaps, also, that my wrist is dangerously

supple. The first onslaught (1873) was directed against German culture,

upon which I looked down even at that time with unmitigated contempt

Without either sense, substance, or goal, it was simply "public

opinion." There could be no more dangerous misunderstanding than to

suppose that Germany's success at arms proved anything in favour of

German culture--and still less the triumph of this culture; over

that of France. The second essay (1874) brings to light that which

is dangerous, that which corrodes and poisons life in our manner of

pursuing scientific study: Life is diseased, thanks to this dehumanised

piece of clockwork and mechanism, thanks to the "impersonality" of

the workman, 1 and the false economy of the "division of labour." The

object, which is culture, is lost sight of: modern scientific activity

as a means thereto simply produces barbarism. In this treatise, the

"historical sense," of which this century is so proud, is for the first

time recognised as sickness, as a typical symptom of decay. In the

third and fourth essays, a sign-post is set up pointing to a higher

concept of culture, to a re-establishment of the notion "culture";

and two pictures of the hardest self-love and self-discipline are

presented, two essentially un-modern types, full of the most sovereign

contempt for all that which lay around them and was called "Empire,"

"Culture," "Christianity," "Bismarck," and "Success,"--these two types

were Schopenhauer and Wagner, _or,_ in a word, Nietzsche....

2

Of these four attacks, the first met with extraordinary success. The

stir which it created was in every way gorgeous. I had put my finger

on the vulnerable spot of a triumphant nation--I had told it that its

victory was not a red-letter day for culture, but, perhaps, something

very different. The reply rang out from all sides, and certainly not

only from old friends of David Strauss, whom I had made ridiculous

as the type of a German Philistine of Culture and a man of smug

self-content--in short, as the author of that suburban gospel of his,

called _The Old and the New Faith_ (the term "Philistine of Culture"

passed into the current language of Germany after the appearance of my

book). These old friends, whose vanity as Würtembergians and Swabians

I had deeply wounded in regarding their unique animal, their bird

of Paradise, as a trifle comic, replied to me as ingenuously and as

grossly as I could have wished. The Prussian replies were smarter; they

contained more "Prussian blue." The most disreputable attitude was

assumed by a Leipzig paper, the egregious _Grentzboten_; and it cost me

some pains to prevent my indignant friends in Bâle from taking action

against it. Only a few old gentlemen decided in my favour, and for

very diverse and sometimes unaccountable reasons. Among them was one,

Ewald of Göttingen, who made it clear that my attack on Strauss had

been deadly. There was also the Hegelian, Bruno Bauer, who from that

time became one of my most attentive readers. In his later years he

liked to refer to me, when, for instance, he wanted to give Herr von

Treitschke, the Prussian Historiographer, a hint as to where he could

obtain information about the notion "Culture," of which he (Herr von

T.) had completely lost sight. The weightiest and longest notice of my

book and its author appeared in Würzburg, and was written by Professor

Hoffmann, an old pupil of the philosopher von Baader. The essays made

him foresee a great future for me, namely, that of bringing about a

sort of crisis and decisive turning-point in the problem of atheism,

of which he recognised in me the most instinctive and most radical

advocate. It was atheism that had drawn me to Schopenhauer. The review

which received by far the most attention, and which excited the most

bitterness, was an extraordinarily powerful and plucky appreciation of

my work by Carl Hillebrand, a man who was usually so mild, and the last

_humane_ German who knew how to wield a pen. The article appeared in

the _Augsburg Gazette,_ and it can be read to-day, couched in rather

more cautious language, among his collected essays. In it my work was

referred to as an event, as a decisive turning-point, as the first sign

of an awakening, as an excellent symptom, and as an actual revival

of German earnestness and of German passion in things spiritual.

Hillebrand could speak only in the terms of the highest respect, of

the form of my book, of its consummate taste, of its perfect tact in

discriminating between persons and causes: he characterised it as the

best polemical work in the German language,--the best performance in

the art of polemics, which for Germans is so dangerous and so strongly

to be deprecated. Besides confirming my standpoint, he laid even

greater stress upon what I had dared to say about the deterioration of

language in Germany (nowadays writers assume the airs of Purists[1]

and can no longer even construct a sentence); sharing my contempt for

the literary stars of this nation, he concluded by expressing his

admiration for my courage--that "greatest courage of all which places

the very favourites of the people in the dock." ... The after-effects

of this essay of mine proved invaluable to me in my life. No one has

ever tried to meddle with me since. People are silent. In Germany

I am treated with gloomy caution: for years I have rejoiced in the

privilege of such absolute freedom of speech, as no one nowadays,

least of all in the "Empire," has enough liberty to claim. My paradise

is "in the shadow of my sword." At bottom all I had done was to put

one of Stendhal's maxims into practice: he advises one to make one's

entrance into society by means of a duel. And how well I had chosen my

opponent!--the foremost free-thinker of Germany. As a matter of fact,

quite a novel kind of free thought found its expression in this way:

up to the present nothing has been more strange and more foreign to my

blood than the whole of that European and American species known as

_litres penseurs._ Incorrigible blockheads and clowns of "modern ideas"

that they are, I feel much more profoundly at variance with them than

with any one of their adversaries. They also wish to "improve" mankind,

after their own fashion--that is to say, in their own image; against

that which I stand for and desire, they would wage an implacable war,

if only they understood it; the whole gang of them still believe in an

"ideal." ... I am the first _Immoralist_.

3

I should not like to say that the last two essays in the _Thoughts

out of Season,_ associated with the names of Schopenhauer and Wagner

respectively, serve any special purpose in throwing light upon these

two cases, or in formulating their psychological problems. This of

course does not apply to a few details. Thus, for instance, in the

second of the two essays, with a profound certainty of instinct I

already characterised the elementary factor in Wagner's nature as a

theatrical talent which in all his means and inspirations only draws

its final conclusions. At bottom, my desire in this essay was to do

something very different from writing psychology: an unprecedented

educational problem, a new understanding of self-discipline and

self-defence carried to the point of hardness, a road to greatness

and to world-historic duties, yearned to find expression. Roughly

speaking, I seized two famous and, theretofore, completely undefined

types by the forelock, after the manner in which one seizes

opportunities, simply in order to speak my mind on certain questions,

in order to have a few more formulas, signs, and means of expression

at my disposal. Indeed I actually suggest this, with most unearthly

sagacity, on page 183 of _Schopenhauer as Educator._ Plato made use

of Socrates in the same way--that is to say, as a cipher for Plato.

Now that, from some distance, I can look back upon the conditions of

which these essays are the testimony, I would be loth to deny that they

refer simply to me. The essay _Wagner in Bayreuth_ is a vision of my

own future; on the other hand, my most secret history, my development,

is written down in _Schopenhauer as Educator._ But, above all, the

_vow_ I made I What I am to-day, the place I now hold--at a height from

which I speak no longer with words but with thunderbolts!--oh, how

far I was from all this in those days! But I saw the land--I did not

deceive myself for one moment as to the way, the sea, the danger--_and_

success! The great calm in promising, this happy prospect of a future

which must not remain only a promise!--In this book every word has

been lived, profoundly and intimately; the most painful things are not

lacking in it; it contains words which are positively running with

blood. But a wind of great freedom blows over the whole; even its

wounds do not constitute an objection. As to what I understand by being

a philosopher,--that is to say, a terrible explosive in the presence

of which everything is in danger; as to how I sever my idea of the

philosopher by miles from that other idea of him which includes even a

Kant, not to speak of the academic "ruminators" and other professors of

philosophy,--concerning all these things this essay provides invaluable

information, even granting that at bottom, it is not "Schopenhauer as

Educator" but "Nietzsche as Educator," who speaks his sentiments in

it. Considering that, in those days, my trade was that of a scholar,

and perhaps, also, that I understood my trade, the piece of austere

scholar psychology which suddenly makes its appearance in this essay is

not without importance: it expresses the feeling of distance, and my

profound certainty regarding what was my real life-task, and what were

merely means, intervals, and accessory work to me. My wisdom consists

in my having been many things, and in many places, in order to become

one thing--in order to be able to attain to one thing. It was part of

my fate to be a scholar for a while.

[Footnote 1: The Purists constitute a definite body in Germany, which

is called the _Deutscher Sprach-Verein._ Their object is to banish

every foreign word from the language, and they carry this process of

ostracism even into the domain of the menu, where their efforts at

rendering the meaning of French dishes are extremely comical. Strange

to say, their principal organ, and their other publications, are by

no means free either from solecisms or faults of style, and it is

doubtless to this curious anomaly that Nietzsche here refers.--TR.]

"HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN"

1

_Human all-too-Human,_ with its two sequels, is the memorial of a

crisis. It is called a book for free spirits: almost every sentence in

it is 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. 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 and scornful. A certain spirituality, of noble taste, 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 hundredth

anniversary of Voltaire's death that served, so to speak, as an excuse

for the publication of the book as early as 1878. For Voltaire, as the

opposite of every one 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 forward--in my direction....

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 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 the other is quietly laid

upon ice; the ideal is not refuted,--it freezes. Here, for instance,

"genius" freezes; round 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

almost everywhere the "thing in itself" is freezing to death.

2

This book was begun during the first musical festival at Bayreuth; a

feeling of profound strangeness towards everything that surrounded

me there, is one of its first conditions. He who has any notion of

the visions which even at that time had flitted across my path, will

be able to guess what I felt when one day I came to my senses in

Bayreuth. It was just as if I had been dreaming. Where on earth was I?

I recognised nothing that I saw; I scarcely recognised Wagner. It was

in vain that I called up reminiscences. Tribschen--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 the initiated

who celebrated them, and who were far from lacking fingers for the

handling of delicate things: 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 and

cosmopolitanism in taste, to which alone Wagner's art can appeal, were

beside ourselves at the sight of Wagner bedecked with German virtues.

I think I know the Wagnerite, I have experienced three generations

of them, from Brendel of blessed memory, who confounded Wagner with

Hegel, to the "idealists" of the _Bayreuth Gazette,_ who confound

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 I--In very truth, a blood-curdling company! Nohl,

Pohl, and _Kohl_[1] and others of their kidney to infinity! There

was not a single abortion that was lacking among them--no, not even

the anti-Semite.--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

Bayreuthian stuffed, or, better still, preserved in spirit,--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

the festivities I suddenly packed my trunk and left the place for a

few weeks, 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 Klingenbrunn, deeply buried in the

recesses of the Bohmerwald, I carried my melancholy and my contempt of

Germans about with me like an illness--and, from time to time, under

the general title of "The Plough-share," I wrote a sentence or two down

in my note-book, nothing but severe psychological stuff, which it is

possible may have found its way into _Human, all-too-Human._

3

That which had taken place in me, then, was not only a breach with

Wagner--I was suffering from a general aberration of my instincts,

of which a mere isolated blunder, whether it were Wagner or my

professorship at Bâle, was nothing more than a symptom. I was seized

with a fit of impatience with myself; I saw that it was high time that

I should turn my thoughts upon my own lot. In a trice I realised, 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. I was ashamed of this false modesty....

Ten years were behind me, during which, to tell the 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 meticulous care and short-sighted eyes

through old Greek metricians--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 "idealities"

were worth the devil alone knew! A positively burning thirst overcame

me: and from that time forward I have done literally nothing else than

study physiology, 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 the relation between an

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 a narcotic--by

means of Wagner's art, for instance. After looking carefully 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,[2] only too many are condemned to determine their choice too

soon, and then to pine away beneath a burden that they can no longer

throw off.... Such creatures crave for Wagner as for an opiate,--they

are thus able to forget themselves, to be rid of themselves for a

moment.... What am I saying!--for five or six hours.

4

At this time my instincts turned resolutely against any further

yielding or following on my part, and any further misunderstanding

of myself. Every kind of life, the most unfavourable 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 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 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. 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 the necessity of lying still, of

having leisure, of waiting, and of exercising patience.... But all

this means thinking!... The state of 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, 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 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,_[3] in order to understand what this "return to myself"

actually meant: in itself it was the highest kind of recovery!... My

cure was simply the result of it.

5

_Human, all-too-Human,_ this monument of a course of vigorous

self-discipline, by means of which I put an abrupt end to all the

"Superior Bunkum," "Idealism," "Beautiful Feelings," and other

effeminacies that had percolated into my being, was written principally

in Sorrento; it was finished and given definite shape during a winter

at Bâle, under conditions far less favourable than those in Sorrento.

Truth to tell, it was Peter Gast, at that time a student at the

University of Bâle, 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--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 Bayreuth. Thanks to a miraculous flash of intelligence on the part

of chance, there reached me precisely at the same time a splendid copy

of the _Parsifal_ text, with the following inscription from Wagner's

pen: "To his dear friend Friedrich Nietzsche, from Richard Wagner,

Ecclesiastical Councillor." At this crossing of the two books I seemed

to hear an ominous note. Did it 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 I then

understood the move on my part for which it was high time. Incredible!

Wagner had become pious.

6

My attitude to myself at that time (1876), and the unearthly certitude

with which I grasped my life-task and all its world-historic

consequences, is well revealed throughout the book, but more

particularly in 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 on

that of another of my friends, the excellent Dr. Paul Rée--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 recognised from the

fact that, judging from the passage in question, he feels compelled to

regard the whole book as a 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, 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

Immoralist), "has attained by means of his incisive and decisive

analysis of human actions? 'The moral man,' he says is no nearer to the

intelligible (metaphysical) world than is the physical man, for there

is no intelligible world.' This theory, hardened and sharpened under

the hammer-blow of historical knowledge" (read _The Transvaluation

of all Values_), "may some time or other, perhaps in some future

period,--1890!--serve as the axe 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 the world with that Janus-face which all great

knowledge possesses."[4]

[Footnote 1: Nohl and Pohl were both writers on music; Kohl, however,

which literally means cabbage, is a slang expression, denoting superior

nonsense.--TR.]

[Footnote 2: Needless to say, Nietzsche distinguishes between

Bismarckian Germany and that other Germany--Austria, Switzerland, and

the Baltic Provinces--where the German language is also spoken.--TR.]

[Footnote 3: _Human, all-too-Human,_ Part II. in this edition.--TR.]

[Footnote 4: _Human, all-too-Human,_ vol. i. Aph. 37.]

"THE DAWN OF DAY:

THOUGHTS ABOUT MORALITY AS A PREJUDICE"

1

With this book I open my campaign against morality. Not that it is at

all redolent of powder--you will find quite other and much nicer smells

in it, provided that you have any keenness in your nostrils. There

is nothing either of light or of heavy artillery in its 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 a feeling

of timid caution in regard to everything which has hitherto been

honoured and even worshipped 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 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 neighbourhood of Genoa,

where I lived quite alone, and exchanged secrets with the ocean. Even

to this day, when by chance I happen 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 art in gently catching things which whisk rapidly and silently

away, moments which I call godlike lizards--not with the cruelty of

that young Greek god who simply transfixed the poor little beast;

but nevertheless with something pointed--with a pen. "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 red, as yet undiscovered, with which another

day--ah! a whole series of days, a whole world of new days!--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 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. This book closes with

the word "or?"--it is the only book which closes with an "or?".

2

My life-task is to prepare for humanity one supreme moment in which it

can come to its senses, a Great Noon in which it will turn its gaze

backwards and forwards, in which it will step from under the yoke

of accident and of priests, and for the first time set the question

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 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 of negation, of corruption, and of

degeneration has held such a seductive sway. The question concerning

the origin of moral valuations 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 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 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 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 egoism is regarded with hostility everywhere. He who

disagrees with me on this point, I regard as infected. But all the

world disagrees with me. To a physiologist a like antagonism between

values admits 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 its egoism, the

whole system degenerates. The physiologist insists upon the removal of

degenerated parts, he denies all fellow-feeling 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

preservation of that which is degenerate--this is what his dominion

costs humanity. What meaning have those lying concepts, those handmaids

of morality, "Soul," "Spirit," "Free will," "God," if their aim is not

the physiological ruin of mankind? When earnestness is diverted from

the instincts that aim at self-preservation and an increase of bodily

energy, _i.e._ at an _increase of life_; when anæmia 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 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

self-renunciation.

"JOYFUL WISDOM: LA GAYA SCIENZA"

1

_Dawn of Day_ is a yea-saying book, profound, but clear and kindly. The

same applies once more and in the highest degree to _La Gaya Scienza:_

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 abysmal depths from which "wisdom" has

here become joyful.

"Thou who with cleaving fiery lances

The stream of my soul from its ice dost 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 constraint,--

So it praises thy wondrous endeavour,

January, thou beauteous saint!"[1]

Who can be in any doubt as to what "glorious hoping" means here, when

he has realised the diamond beauty of the first of Zarathustra's

words as they appear in a glow of light at 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 in

Sicily, remind me quite forcibly of that Provencal notion of "_Gaya

Scienza,_" of that union of _singer, knight, and free spirit,_ which

distinguishes that wonderfully early culture of the Provencals from

all ambiguous cultures. The last poem of all, "To the Mistral,"--an

exuberant dance song in which, if you please, the new spirit dances

freely upon the corpse of morality,--is a perfect Provençalism.

[Footnote 1: Translated for _Joyful Wisdom_ by Paul V. Cohn.--TR.]

"THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA: A BOOK FOR ALL AND NONE"

1

I now wish to relate the history of _Zarathustra._ The fundamental

idea of the work, the _Eternal Recurrence,_ the highest formula of

a Yea-saying to life that can ever be attained, was first conceived

in the month of August 1881. 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 of the

Lake of Silvaplana, and I halted not far from Surlei, 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 _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 Recoaro, a small

mountain resort near Vicenza, where I spent the spring of 1881, I and

my friend and maestro, Peter Gast--who was also one who had been born

again, discovered that the phœnix music hovered over us, in lighter

and brighter plumage than it had ever worn before. If, therefore, I

now calculate from that day forward the sudden production of the book,

under the most unlikely circumstances, in February 1883,--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 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

elephant The interval was devoted to the _Gaya Scienza,_ which contains

hundreds of indications of 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 a mixed choir and orchestra), the score of which was

published in Leipzig two years ago by E. W. Fritsch, and which gave

perhaps no slight indication of my spiritual state during this year,

in which the essentially yea-saying pathos, 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, Miss Lou von Salome,

with whom I was then on friendly terms. He who is in any way able

to make some 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: "And if thou hast no bliss now

left to crown me--Lead on! Thou hast thy Sorrow still."

Maybe that my music is also great in this passage. (The last note of

the oboe, by the bye, is C sharp, not C. The latter is a misprint.)

During the following winter, I was living on that charmingly peaceful

Gulf of Rapallo, not far from Genoa, which cuts inland between Chiavari

and Cape Porto Fino. My health was not very good; the winter was cold

and exceptionally rainy; and the small _albergo_ in which I lived

was so close to the water that at night my sleep was disturbed if

the sea was rough. These circumstances were surely the very reverse

of favourable; 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 this winter and in the midst of these

unfavourable circumstances that my _Zarathustra_ originated. In the

morning I used to start out in a southerly direction up the glorious

road to Zoagli, which rises up through a forest of pines and gives

one a view far out to sea. In the afternoon, or as often as my health

allowed, I walked round the whole bay from Santa Margherita to beyond

Porto Fino. This spot affected me all the more deeply because it was

so dearly loved by the Emperor Frederick III. In the autumn of 1886 I

chanced to be there again when he was revisiting this small forgotten

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_.

2

In order to understand this type, you must 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 done already

in one of the last aphorisms (No. 382) of the fifth book of the _Gaya

Scienza_: "We new, nameless, and unfathomable creatures," so reads

the passage, "we firstlings of a future still unproved--we who have a

new end in view also require new means to that end, 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 day, and to sail round all the coasts

of this ideal 'Mediterranean Sea'; who, from the adventures of his

own inmost experience, would fain know how it feels to be a conqueror

and 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

godlike anchorite of yore;--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, and is compelled to

sacrifice it! And now, therefore, after having been long on the way,

we Argonauts of the ideal, 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 for

ever 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 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, 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, full of danger, the pursuit of

which we should be loath to urge upon any one, because we are not so

ready to acknowledge any one's _right to it:_ the ideal of a spirit who

plays ingenuously (that is to say, involuntarily, and as the outcome

of superabundant energy and power) with everything that, hitherto,

has been called holy, 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

at least a relaxation and temporary forgetfulness of self: the ideal

of a 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 in hearing, speech,

tone, look, morality, and duty, as their most lifelike and unconscious

parody--but with which, nevertheless, _great earnestness_ perhaps alone

begins, the first note of interrogation is affixed, the fate of the

soul changes, the hour hand moves, and tragedy begins."

3

Has any one at the end of the nineteenth century any distinct notion

of what poets of a stronger age understood by the word inspiration?

If not, 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 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 comes with 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 that one is utterly out of hand, with the very distinct

consciousness of an endless number of fine thrills and titillations

descending to one's very toes;--there is a depth of happiness in which

the most painful and gloomy parts do not act as antitheses to the rest,

but are produced and required as necessary shades of colour in such an

overflow of light. There is an instinct for rhythmic relations which

embraces a whole world of forms (length, the need of a wide-embracing

rhythm, is almost the measure 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 similes 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, as if all

things came to one, and offered themselves as similes. ("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. 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 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!"

4

For a few weeks afterwards I lay an invalid in Genoa. Then followed

a melancholy 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 go to Aquila--the opposite of Rome in every respect, and

actually founded 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

genuine enemy of the Church, a person very closely related to me, the

great Hohenstaufen, the Emperor Frederick II. 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 fear that on one occasion,

to avoid bad smells as much as possible, I actually inquired at the

Palazzo del Quirinale whether they could not provide a quiet room for

a philosopher. In a chamber high above the Piazza just mentioned, from

which one obtained a general view of Rome, and could hear the fountains

plashing far below, the loneliest of all songs was composed--"The

Night-Song." About this time I was obsessed by an unspeakably sad

melody, the refrain of which I recognised in the affords, "dead through

immortality," ... In the summer, finding myself once more in 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 part, have I required a day

longer. In the ensuing winter, beneath the halcyon 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

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 Eza--that

wonderful Moorish village in the rocks. During those moments when my

creative energy flowed most plentifully, 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 I could

then walk for seven or eight hours on end over the hills without a

suggestion of fatigue. I slept well and laughed a good deal--I was

perfectly robust and patient.

5

With the exception of these periods of industry lasting ten days, the

years I spent during the production of _Zarathustra,_ and 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 rancour of greatness:

everything great, whether a work or a deed, once it 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 one's back

which one could never have willed, something to which the knot of human

destiny is attached--and to be forced thenceforward to bear it on one's

shoulders! Why, it almost crushes one! The rancour of greatness! A

somewhat different experience is the uncanny silence that reigns about

one. 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 bear a greeting. At the best

one encounters a sort of revolt. This feeling of revolt, I suffered,

in varying degrees of intensity, at the hands of almost every one who

came near me; it would seem that nothing inflicts 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. A third thing is

the absurd susceptibility of the skin to small pin-pricks, 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 the first condition of every _creative_ act, of every 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

to move, and that one is much too open to sensations of coldness and

suspicion; for, 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 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....

6

This 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 "Dionysian" here became the

_highest_ deed; compared with it everything that other men have done

seems poor and limited. The fact that a Goethe or a Shakespeare 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, 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

Zarathustra's sandal--all this is the least of things, and gives no

idea of the distance, of the azure solitude, in which this work dwells.

Zarathustra has 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 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 descends is of boundless length;

he has seen further, he has willed further, and _gone_ further than

any other man. There is contradiction in every word that he utters,

this most yea-saying of all spirits. Through him all contradictions

are bound up into a new unity. The loftiest and the basest powers of

human nature, the sweetest, the lightest, and the most terrible, rush

forth from out one spring with everlasting certainty. Until his coming

no one knew what was height, or depth, 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 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 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 every

one! See with what delicate fingers he touches his very adversaries,

the priests, and how he 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 halcyonic

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 a prerequisite of greatness. In precisely

these limits of space and in 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 down deepest,

"The vastest soul that can run and stray and rove furthest in its own

domain,

"The most necessary soul, that out of desire flingeth itself to chance,

"The stable soul that plungeth into Becoming, the possessing soul that

must needs taste of willing and longing,

"The soul that flyeth from itself, and over-taketh 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

ebb and flow."

But this is the very idea of Dionysus. 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 regard to all that which has been affirmed

hitherto, remain nevertheless 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? how can he who has the

hardest and 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?--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 yea to Life." ... But this, once more,

is precisely the idea of Dionysus.

7

What language will such a spirit speak, when he speaks unto his soul?

The language of the _dithyramb._ I am the inventor of the dithyramb.

Hearken unto the manner in which Zarathustra speaks to his soul _Before

Sunrise_ (iii. 48). Before my time such emerald joys and divine

tenderness had found no tongue. Even the profoundest melancholy of

such a Dionysus takes shape as a dithyramb. 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 springs raise their voices. And my

soul too is a gushing spring.

"It is 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 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 begirt with light.

"Alas, why am I not dark and like unto the night! How joyfully would I

then suck at the breasts of light!

"And even you would I bless, ye twinkling starlets and glow-worms on

high! and be blessed in the gifts of your light.

"But in mine own light do I live, ever back into myself 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 I see expectant eyes and nights 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 their soul? A gulf is there

'twixt giving and taking; and the smallest gulf is the last to be

bridged.

"An appetite is born 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

have given:--thus do I thirst for wickedness.

"To withdraw my hand when their hand is ready stretched forth like the

waterfall that wavers, wavers even in its fall:--thus do I thirst for

wickedness.

"For such vengeance doth my fulness yearn: to such tricks doth my

loneliness give birth.

"My joy in giving died with the deed. By its very fulness did my virtue

grow weary of itself.

"He who giveth risketh to lose his shame; he that is ever distributing

groweth callous in hand and heart therefrom.

"Mine eyes no longer melt into tears at the sight of the suppliant's

shame; my hand hath become too hard to feel the quivering of laden

hands.

"Whither have ye fled, the tears of mine eyes and the bloom of my

heart? Oh, the solitude of all givers! Oh, 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.

"Alas, this is the hatred of light for that which shineth: pitiless it

runneth its course.

"Unfair in its inmost heart to that which shineth; cold toward

suns,--thus doth every sun go its way.

"Like a tempest do the suns 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 the udders of light.

"Alas, about me there is ice, my hand burneth itself against ice!

"Alas, within me is a thirst that thirsteth for your thirst!

"It is night: woe is me, that I must needs be light! And 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.

"It is night: now only do all lovers burst into song. And my soul too

is the song of a lover."

8

Such things have never been written, never been felt, never been

_suffered:_ only a God, only Dionysus suffers in this way. The reply

to such a dithyramb on the sun's solitude in light would be Ariadne.

... Who knows, but I, who Ariadne is! To all such riddles no one

heretofore had ever found an answer; I doubt even whether any one 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's a yea-saying to the point of justifying, to the point of redeeming

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 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 to transform every 'it was' into 'thus

would I have it'--that alone would be my salvation!"

In another passage he defines as strictly as possible what to him alone

"man" can be,--not a subject for love nor yet for pity--Zarathustra

became master even of his loathing of man: man is to him a thing

unshaped, raw material, an ugly stone that needs the 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 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 did this will lure me: what would there be to

create if there were gods?

"But to man doth it ever drive me anew, my burning, creative will.

Thus driveth it the hammer to the stone.

"Alas, ye men, within the stone there 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 against its prison._ 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--gods to me now?"

Let me call attention to one last point of view. The line in italics is

my pretext for this remark. A Dionysian 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 are hard,_ is the really distinctive sign

of a Dionysian nature.

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL:

"THE PRELUDE TO A PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE"

1

My work for the years that followed was prescribed as distinctly

as possible. Now that the yea-saying part of my life-task was

accomplished, there came the turn of the negative portion, both in

word and deed: the transvaluation of all values that had existed

hitherto, the great war,--the conjuring-up of the day when the fatal

outcome of the struggle would be decided. Meanwhile, I had slowly to

look about me for my peers, for those who, _out of strength,_ would

proffer me a helping hand in my work of destruction. From that time

onward, all my writings are so much bait: maybe I understand as much

about fishing as most people? If nothing was _caught,_ it was not I who

was at fault _There were no fish to come and bite._

2

In all its essential points, this book (1886) is a criticism of

_modernity,_ embracing the modern sciences, arts, even politics,

together with certain indications as to a type which would be the

reverse of modern man, or as little like him as possible, a noble

and yea-saying type. In this last respect the book is a _school

for gentlemen_--the term _gentleman_ being understood here in a

much more spiritual and radical sense than it has implied hitherto.

All those things of which the age is proud,--as, for instance,

far-famed "objectivity," "sympathy with all that suffers," "the

historical sense," with its subjection to foreign tastes, with its

lying-in-the-dust before _petits faits,_ and the rage for science,--are

shown to be the contradiction of the type recommended, and are

regarded as almost ill-bred. If you remember that this book follows

upon _Zarathustra,_ you may possibly guess to what system of diet it

owes its life. The eye which, owing to tremendous constraint, has

become accustomed to see at a great distance,--_Zarathustra_ is even

more far-sighted than the Tsar,--is here forced to focus sharply that

which is close at hand, the present time, the things that lie about

him. In all the aphorisms and more particularly in the form of this

book, the reader will find the same _voluntary_ turning away from those

instincts which made a _Zarathustra_ a possible feat. Refinement in

form, in aspiration, and in the art of keeping silent, are its more or

less obvious qualities; psychology is handled with deliberate hardness

and cruelty,--the whole book does not contain one single good-natured

word.... All this sort of thing refreshes a man. Who can guess the kind

of recreation that is necessary after such an expenditure of goodness

as is to be found in _Zarathustra_? From a theological standpoint--now

pay ye heed; for it is but on rare occasions that I speak as a

theologian--it was God Himself who, at the end of His great work,

coiled Himself up in the form of a serpent at the foot of the tree of

knowledge. It was thus that He recovered from being a God.... He had

made everything too beautiful.... The devil is simply God's moment of

idleness, on that seventh day.

"THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS: A POLEMIC"

The three essays which constitute this genealogy are, as regards

expression, aspiration, and the art of the unexpected, perhaps the

most curious things that have ever been written. Dionysus, as you know,

is also the god of darkness. In each case the beginning is calculated

to mystify; it is cool, scientific, even ironical, intentionally

thrust to the fore, intentionally reticent. Gradually less calmness

prevails; here and there a flash of lightning defines the horizon;

exceedingly unpleasant truths break upon your ears from out remote

distances with a dull, rumbling sound,--until very soon a fierce tempo

is attained in which everything presses forward at a terrible degree

of tension. At the end, in each case, amid fearful thunderclaps, a new

truth shines out between thick clouds. The truth of the first essays

the psychology of Christianity: the birth of Christianity out of the

spirit of resentment, not, as is supposed, out of the "Spirit,"--in

all its essentials, a counter-movement, the great insurrection against

the dominion of noble values. The second essay contains the psychology

of conscience: this is not, as you may believe, "the voice of God in

man"; it is the instinct of cruelty, which turns inwards once it is

unable to discharge itself outwardly. Cruelty is here exposed, for the

first time, as one of the oldest and most indispensable elements in the

foundation of culture. The third essay replies to the question as to

the origin of the formidable power of the ascetic ideal, of the priest

ideal, despite the fact that this ideal is essentially detrimental,

that it is a will to nonentity and to decadence. Reply: it flourished

not because God was active behind the priests, as is generally

believed, but because it was a _faute de mieux_--from the fact that

hitherto it has been the only ideal and has had no competitors. "For

man prefers to aspire to nonentity than not to aspire at all." But

above all, until the time of _Zarathustra_ there was no such thing

as a counter-ideal. You have understood my meaning. Three decisive

overtures on the part of a psychologist to a _Transvaluation of all

Values._--This book contains the first psychology of the priest.

"THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS:

HOW TO PHILOSOPHISE WITH THE HAMMER"

1

This work--which covers scarcely one hundred and fifty pages, with its

cheerful and fateful tone, like a laughing demon, and the production

of which occupied so few days that I hesitate to give their number--is

altogether an exception among books: there is no work more rich in

substance, more independent, more upsetting--more wicked. If any one

should desire to obtain a rapid sketch of how everything, before my

time, was standing on its head, he should begin reading me in this

book. That which is called "Idols" on the title page is simply the

old truth that has been believed in hitherto. In plain English, _The

Twilight of the Idols_ means that the old truth is on its last legs.

2

There is no reality, no "ideality," which has not been touched in

this book (touched! what a cautious euphemism!). Not only the eternal

idols, but also the youngest--that is to say, the most senile: modern

ideas, for instance. A strong wind blows between the trees and in

all directions fall the fruit--the truths. There is the waste of an

all-too-rich autumn in this book: you trip over truths. You even crush

some to death, there are too many of them. Those things that you can

grasp, however, are quite unquestionable; they are irrevocable decrees.

I alone have the criterion of "truths" in my possession. I alone _can_

decide. It would seem as if a second consciousness had grown up in me,

as if the "life-will" in me had thrown a light upon the downward path

along which it has been running throughout the ages. The _downward

path_--hitherto this had been called the road to "Truth." All obscure

impulse--"darkness and dismay"--is at an end, the "_good man_" was

precisely he who was least aware of the proper way.[1] And, speaking

in all earnestness, no one before me knew the proper way, the way

upwards: only after my time could men once more find hope, life-tasks,

and roads mapped out that lead to culture--_I am the joyful harbinger

of this culture._ ... On this account alone I am also a fatality.

3

Immediately after the completion of the above-named work, and without

letting even one day go by, I tackled the formidable task of the

_Transvaluation_ with a supreme feeling of pride which nothing could

equal; and, certain at each moment of my immortality, I cut sign after

sign upon tablets of brass with the sureness of Fate. The Preface

came into being on 3rd September 1888. When, after having written it

down, I went out into the open that morning, I was greeted by the most

beautiful day I had ever seen in the Upper Engadine--clear, glowing

with colour, and presenting all the contrasts and all the intermediary

gradations between ice and the south. I left Sils-Maria only on the

20th of September. I had been forced to delay my departure owing to

floods, and I was very soon, and for some days, the only visitor in

this wonderful spot, on which my gratitude bestows the gift of an

immortal name. After a journey that was full of incidents, and not

without danger to life,--as for instance at Como, which was flooded

when I reached it in the dead of night,--I got to Turin on the

afternoon of the 21 st. Turin is the only suitable place for me, and

it shall be my home henceforward. I took the same lodgings as I had

occupied in the spring, 6111 Via Carlo Alberto, opposite the mighty

Palazzo Carignano, in which Vittorio Emanuele was born; and I had a

view of the Piazza Carlo Alberto and above it across to the hills.

Without hesitating, or allowing myself to be disturbed for a single

moment, I returned to my work, only the last quarter of which had still

to be written. On the 30th September, tremendous triumph; the seventh

day; the leisure of a god on the banks of the Po.[2] On the same day,

I wrote the Preface to _The Twilight of the Idols,_ the correction of

the proofs of which provided me with recreation during the month of

September. Never in my life have I experienced such an autumn; nor

had I ever imagined that such things were possible on earth--a Claude

Lorrain extended to infinity, each day equal to the last in its wild

perfection.

[Footnote 1: A witty reference to Goethe's well-known passage in the

Prologue to _Faust_:--

"A good man, though in darkness and dismay,

May still be conscious of the proper way."

The words are spoken by the Lord.--TR. ]

[Footnote 2: There is a wonderful promenade along the banks of the Po,

for which Turin is famous, and of which Nietzsche was particularly

fond.--TR.]

"THE CASE OF WAGNER: A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM"

1

In order to do justice to this essay a man ought to suffer from the

fate of music as from an open wound.--From what do I suffer when I

suffer from the fate of music? From the fact that music has lost

its world-transfiguring, yea-saying character--that it is decadent

music and no longer the flute of Dionysus. Supposing, however, that

the fate of music be as dear to man as his own life, because joy and

suffering are alike bound up with it; then he will find this pamphlet

comparatively mild and full of consideration. To be cheerful in

such circumstances, and laugh good-naturedly with others at one's

self,--_ridendodicere severum_[1] when the _verum dicere_ would

justify every sort of hardness,--is humanity itself. Who doubts that

I, old artillery-man that I am, would be able if I liked to point my

_heavy_ guns at Wagner?--Everything decisive in this question I kept

to myself--I have loved Wagner.--After all, an attack upon a more than

usually subtle "unknown person" whom another would not have divined

so easily, lies in the meaning and path of my life-task. Oh, I have

still quite a number of other "unknown persons" to unmask besides a

Cagliostro of Music! Above all, I have to direct an attack against

the German people, who, in matters of the spirit, grow every day

more indolent, poorer in instincts, and more _honest_ who, with an

appetite for which they are to be envied, continue to diet themselves

on contradictions, and gulp down "Faith" in company with science,

Christian love together with anti-Semitism, and the will to power (to

the "Empire"), dished up with the gospel of the humble, without showing

the slightest signs of indigestion. Fancy this absence of party-feeling

in the presence of opposites! Fancy this gastric neutrality and

"disinterestedness"! Behold this sense of justice in the German palate,

which can grant equal rights to all,--which finds everything tasteful!

Without a shadow of a doubt the Germans are idealists. When I was last

in Germany, I found German taste striving to grant Wagner and the

_Trumpeter of Sakkingen_[2] equal rights; while I myself witnessed

the attempts of the people of Leipzig to do honour to one of the most

genuine and most German of musicians,--using German here in the old

sense of the word,--a man who was no mere German of the Empire, the

master Heinrich Schütz, by founding a Liszt Society, the object of

which was to cultivate and spread artful (_listige_[3]) Church music.

Without a shadow of doubt the Germans are idealists.

2

But here nothing shall stop me from being rude, and from telling the

Germans one or two unpleasant home truths: who else would do it if I

did not? I refer to their laxity in matters historical. Not only have

the Germans entirely lost the _breadth of vision_ which enables one

to grasp the course of culture and the values of culture; not only

are they one and all political (or Church) puppets; but they have

also actually _put a ban upon_ this very breadth of vision. A man

must first and foremost be "German," he must belong to "_the_ race";

then only can he pass judgment upon all values and lack of values

in history--then only can he establish them.... To be German is in

itself an argument, "Germany, Germany above all,"[4] is a principle;

the Germans stand for the "moral order of the universe" in history;

compared with the Roman Empire, they are the up-holders of freedom;

compared with the eighteenth century, they are the restorers of

morality, of the "Categorical Imperative." There is such a thing as

the writing of history according to the lights of Imperial Germany;

there is, I fear, anti-Semitic history--there is also history written

with an eye to the Court, and Herr von Treitschke is not ashamed

of himself. Quite recently an idiotic opinion _in historicis,_ an

observation of Vischer the Swabian æsthete, since happily deceased,

made the round of the German newspapers as a "truth" to which every

German _must assent_ The observation was this: "The Renaissance _and_

the Reformation only together constitute a whole--the æsthetic

rebirth, and the moral rebirth." When I listen to such things, I lose

all patience, and I feel inclined, I even feel it my duty, to tell the

Germans, for once in a way, all that they have on their conscience.

_Every great crime against culture for the last four centuries lies

on their conscience...._ And always for the same reason, always owing

to their bottomless cowardice in the face of reality, which is also

cowardice in the face of truth; always owing to the love of falsehood

which has become almost instinctive in them--in short, "idealism."

It was the Germans who caused Europe to lose the fruits, the whole

meaning of her last period of greatness--the period of the Renaissance.

At a moment when a higher order of values, values that were noble,

that said yea to life, and that guaranteed a future, had succeeded

in triumphing over the opposite values, the values of degeneration,

in the very seat of Christianity itself,--and _even in the hearts of

those sitting there,_--Luther, that cursed monk, not only restored the

Church, but, what was a thousand times worse, restored Christianity,

and at a time too when it lay defeated. Christianity, the _Denial of

the Will to Live,_ exalted to a religion! Luther was an impossible

monk who, thanks to his own "impossibility," attacked the Church,

and in so doing restored it! Catholics would be perfectly justified

in celebrating feasts in honour of Luther, and in producing festival

plays[5] in his honour. Luther and the "rebirth of morality"! May all

psychology go to the devil! Without a shadow of a doubt the Germans

are idealists. On two occasions when, at the cost of enormous courage

and self-control, an upright, unequivocal, and perfectly scientific

attitude of mind had been attained, the Germans were able to discover

back stairs leading down to the old "ideal" again, compromises between

truth and the "ideal," and, in short, formulæ for the right to reject

science and to perpetrate falsehoods. Leibniz and Kant--these two

great breaks upon the intellectual honesty of Europe! Finally, at a

moment when there appeared on the bridge that spanned two centuries

of decadence, a superior force of genius and will which was strong

enough to consolidate Europe and to convert it into a political and

economic unit, with the object of ruling the world, the Germans, with

their Wars of Independence, robbed Europe of the significance--the

marvellous significance, of Napoleon's life. And in so doing they laid

on their conscience everything that followed, everything that exists

to-day,--this sickliness and want of reason which is most opposed to

culture, and which is called Nationalism,--this _névrose nationale_

from which Europe is suffering acutely; this eternal subdivision of

Europe into petty states, with politics on a municipal scale: they have

robbed Europe itself of its significance, of its reason,--and have

stuffed it into a cul-de-sac. Is there any one except me who knows the

way out of this cul-de-sac? Does anyone except me know of an aspiration

which would be great enough to bind the people of Europe once more

together?

3

And after all, why should I not express my suspicions? In my case,

too, the Germans will attempt to make a great fate give birth merely

to a mouse. Up to the present they have compromised themselves with

me; I doubt whether the future will improve them. Alas! how happy I

should be to prove a false prophet in this matter! My natural readers

and listeners are already Russians, Scandinavians, and Frenchmen--will

they always be the same? In the history of knowledge, Germans are

represented only by doubtful names, they have been able to produce only

"_unconscious_" swindlers (this word applies to Fichte, Schelling,

Schopenhauer, Hegel, and Schleiermacher, just as well as to Kant or

Leibniz; they were all mere _Schleiermachers_).[6] The Germans must

not have the honour of seeing the first upright intellect in their

history of intellects, that intellect in which truth ultimately got the

better of the fraud of four thousand years, reckoned as one with the

German intellect. "German intellect" is my foul air: I breathe with

difficulty in the neighbourhood of this psychological uncleanliness

that has now become instinctive--an uncleanliness which in every

word and expression betrays a German. They have never undergone a

seventeenth century of hard self-examination, as the French have,--a

La Rochefoucauld, a Descartes, are a thousand times more upright

than the very first among Germans,--the latter have not yet had any

psychologists. But psychology is almost the standard of measurement

for the cleanliness or uncleanliness of a race.... For if a man is

not even clean, how can he be deep? The Germans are like women, you

can scarcely ever I fathom their depths--they haven't any, and that's

the end of it. Thus they cannot even be called shallow. That which is

called "deep" in Germany, is precisely this instinctive uncleanliness

towards one's self, of which I have just spoken: people refuse to be

clear in regard to their own natures. Might I be allowed, perhaps, to

suggest the word "German" as an international epithet denoting this

psychological depravity?--At the moment of writing, for instance, the

German Emperor is declaring it to be his Christian duty to liberate

the slaves in Africa; among us Europeans, then, this would be called

simply "German." ... Have the Germans ever produced even a book that

had depth? They are lacking in the mere idea of what constitutes a

book. I have known scholars who thought that Kant was deep. At the

Court of Prussia I fear that Herr von Treitschke is regarded as deep.

And when I happen to praise Stendhal as a deep psychologist, I have

often been compelled, in the company of German University Professors,

to spell his name aloud.

4

And why should I not proceed to the end? I am fond of clearing the

air. It is even part of my ambition to be considered as essentially a

despiser of Germans. I expressed my suspicions of the German character

even at the age of six-and-twenty (see _Thoughts out of Season,_

vol. ii. pp. 164, 165),--to my mind the Germans are impossible.

When I try to think of the kind of man who is opposed to me in all

my instincts, my mental image takes the form of a German. The first

thing I ask myself when I begin analysing a man, is, whether he has a

feeling for distance in him; whether he sees rank, gradation, and order

everywhere between man and man; whether he makes distinctions; for

this is what constitutes a gentleman. Otherwise he belongs hopelessly

to that open-hearted, open-minded--alas! and always very good-natured

species, _la canaille_! But the Germans are _canaille_--alas! they are

so good-natured! A man lowers himself by frequenting the society of

Germans: the German places every one on an equal footing. With the

exception of my intercourse with one or two artists, and above all

with Richard Wagner, I cannot say that I have spent one pleasant hour

with Germans. Suppose, for one moment, that the profoundest spirit

of all ages were to appear among Germans, then one of the saviours

of the Capitol would be sure to arise and declare that his own ugly

soul was just as great. I can no longer abide this race with which

a man is always in bad company, which; has no idea of nuances--woe

to me! I am a nuance--and which has not _esprit_ in its feet, and

cannot even walk withal! In short, the Germans have no feet at all,

they simply have legs. The Germans have not the faintest idea of how

vulgar they are--but this in itself is the acme of vulgarity,--they are

not even ashamed of being merely Germans. They will have their say in

everything, they regard themselves as fit to decide all questions; I

even fear that they have decided about me. My whole life is essentially

a proof of this remark. In vain have I sought among them for a sign of

tact and delicacy towards myself. Among Jews I did indeed find it, but

not among Germans. I am so constituted as to be gentle and kindly to

every one,--I have the right not to draw distinctions,--but this does

not prevent my eyes from being open. I except no one, and least of all

my friends,--I only trust that this has not prejudiced my reputation

for humanity among them? There are five or six things which I have

always made points of honour. Albeit, the truth remains that for many

years I have considered almost every letter that has reached me as a

piece of cynicism. There is more cynicism in an attitude of goodwill

towards me than in any sort of hatred. I tell every friend to his face

that he has never thought it worth his while to _study_ any one of my

writings: from the slightest hints I gather that they do not even know

what lies hidden in my books. And with regard even to my _Zarathustra,_

which of my friends would have seen more in it than a piece of

unwarrantable, though fortunately harmless, arrogance? Ten years have

elapsed, and no one has yet felt it a duty to his conscience to defend

my name against the absurd silence beneath which it has been entombed.

It was a foreigner, a Dane, who first showed sufficient keenness of

instinct and of courage to do this, and who protested indignantly

against my so-called friends. At what German University to-day would

such lectures on my philosophy be possible, as those which Dr. Brandes

delivered last spring in Copenhagen, thus proving once more his right

to the title psychologist? For my part, these things have never caused

me any pain; that which is _necessary_ does not offend me. _Amor fati_

is the core of my nature. This, however, does not alter the fact that

I love irony and even world-historic irony. And thus, about two years

before hurling the destructive thunderbolt of the _Transvaluation,_

which will send the whole of civilisation into convulsions, I sent

my _Case of Wagner_ out into the world. The Germans were given the

chance of blundering and immortalising their stupidity once more on my

account, and they still have just enough time to do it in. And have

they fallen in with my plans? Admirably! my dear Germans. Allow me to

congratulate you.

[Footnote 1: The motto of _The Case of Wagner._--TR.]

[Footnote 2: An opera by Nessler which was all the rage in Germany

twenty years ago.--TR.]

[Footnote 3: Unfortunately it is impossible to render this play on the

words in English.--TR.]

[Footnote 4: The German National Song (_Deutschland, Deutschland über

alles_).--TR.]

[Footnote 5: Ever since the year 1617 such plays have been produced by

the Protestants of Germany.--TR.]

[Footnote 6: _Schleiermacher_ literally means a weaver or maker of

veils.--TR.]

WHY I AM A FATALITY

1

I know my destiny. There will come a day when my name will recall

the memory of something formidable--a crisis the like of which has

never been known on earth, the memory of the most profound clash

of consciences, and the passing of a sentence upon all that which

theretofore had been believed, exacted, and hallowed. I am not a

man, I am dynamite. And with it all there is nought of the founder

of a religion in me. Religions are matters for the mob; after coming

in contact with a religious man, I always feel that I must wash my

hands.... I require no "believers," it is my opinion that I am too

full of malice to believe even in myself; I never address myself to

masses. I am horribly frightened that one day I shall be pronounced

"holy." You will understand why I publish this book beforehand--it is

to prevent people from wronging me. I refuse to be a saint; I would

rather be a clown. Maybe I am a clown. And I am notwithstanding, or

rather not _not_withstanding, the mouthpiece of truth; for nothing

more blown-out with falsehood has ever existed, than a saint. But

my truth is terrible: for hitherto _lies_ have been called truth.

_The Transvaluation of all Values,_ this is my formula for mankind's

greatest step towards coming to its senses--a step which in me became

flesh and genius. My destiny ordained that I should be the first decent

human being, and that I should feel myself opposed to the falsehood

of millenniums. I was the first to discover truth, and for the simple

reason that I was the first who became conscious of falsehood as

falsehood--that is to say, I smelt it as such. My genius resides in

my nostrils. I contradict as no one has contradicted hitherto, and am

nevertheless the reverse of a negative spirit. I am the harbinger of

joy, the like of which has never existed before; I have discovered

tasks of such lofty greatness that, until my time, no one had any idea

of such things. Mankind can begin to have fresh hopes, only now that I

have lived. Thus, I am necessarily a man of Fate. For when Truth enters

the lists against the falsehood of ages, shocks are bound to ensue,

and a spell of earthquakes, followed by the transposition of hills and

valleys, such as the world has never yet imagined even in its dreams.

The concept "politics" then becomes elevated entirely to the sphere

of spiritual warfare. All the mighty realms of the ancient order of

society are blown into space--for they are all based on falsehood:

there will be wars, the like of which have never been seen on earth

before. Only from my time and after me will politics on a large scale

exist on earth.

2

If you should require a formula for a destiny of this kind that has

taken human form, you will find it in my _Zarathustra_.

"And he who would be a creator in good and evil--verily, he must first

be a destroyer, and break values into pieces.

"Thus the greatest evil belongeth unto the greatest good: but this is

the creative good."

I am by far the most terrible man that has ever existed; but this does

not alter the fact that I shall become the most beneficent. I know the

joy of _annihilation_ to a degree which is commensurate with my power

to annihilate. In both cases I obey my Dionysian nature, which knows

not how to separate the negative deed from the saying of yea. I am the

first immoralist, and in this sense I am essentially the annihilator.

3

People have never asked me as they should have done, what the name

of Zarathustra precisely meant in my mouth, in the mouth of the

first immoralist; for that which distinguishes this Persian from all

others in the past is the very fact that he was the exact reverse

of an immoralist. Zarathustra was the first to see in the struggle

between good and evil the essential wheel in the working of things.

The translation of morality into the realm of metaphysics, as force,

cause, end-in-itself, is his work. But the very question suggests

its own answer. Zarathustra created this most portentous of all

errors,--morality; therefore he must be the first to expose it. Not

only because he has had longer and greater experience of the subject

than any other thinker,--all history is indeed the experimental

refutation of the theory of the so-called moral order of things,--but

because of the more important fact that Zarathustra was the most

truthful of thinkers. In his teaching alone is truthfulness upheld as

the highest virtue--that is to say, as the reverse of the cowardice

of the "idealist" who takes to his heels at the sight of reality.

Zarathustra has more pluck in his body than all other thinkers put

together. To tell the truth and to aim straight: that is the first

Persian virtue. Have I made myself clear? ... The overcoming of

morality by itself, through truthfulness, the moralist's overcoming of

himself in his opposite--in me--that is what the name Zarathustra means

in my mouth.

4

In reality two negations are involved in my title Immoralist. I first

of all deny the type of man that has hitherto been regarded as the

highest--the _good,_ the _kind,_ and the _charitable_; and I also

deny that kind of morality which has become recognised and paramount

as morality-in-itself--I speak of the morality of decadence, or, to

use a still cruder term, Christian morality. I would agree to the

second of the two negations being regarded as the more decisive, for,

reckoned as a whole, the overestimation of goodness and kindness seems

to me already a consequence of decadence, a symptom of weakness, and

incompatible with any ascending and yea-saying life. Negation and

annihilation are inseparable from a yea-saying attitude towards life.

Let me halt for a moment at the question of the psychology of the

good man. In order to appraise the value of a certain type of man, the

cost of his maintenance must be calculated,--and the conditions of his

existence must be known. The condition of the existence of the _good_

is falsehood: or, otherwise expressed, the refusal at any price to

see how reality is actually constituted. The refusal to see that this

reality is not so constituted as always to be stimulating beneficent

instincts, and still less, so as to suffer at all moments the intrusion

of ignorant and good-natured hands. To consider distress of all kinds

as an objection, as something which must be done away with, is the

greatest nonsense on earth; generally speaking, it is nonsense of the

most disastrous sort, fatal in its stupidity--almost as mad as the will

to abolish bad weather, out of pity for the poor, so to speak. In the

great economy of the whole universe, the terrors of reality (in the

passions, in the desires, in the will to power) are incalculably more

necessary than that form of petty happiness which is called "goodness";

it is even needful to practise leniency in order so much as to allow

the latter a place at all, seeing that it is based upon a falsification

of the instincts. I shall have an excellent opportunity of showing the

incalculably calamitous consequences to the whole of history, of the

credo of optimism, this monstrous offspring of the _homines optimi._

Zarathustra,[1] the first who recognised that the optimist is just as

degenerate as the pessimist, though perhaps more detrimental, says:

"_Good men never speak the truth. False shores and false harbours

were ye taught by the good. In the lies of the good were ye born and

bred. Through the good everything hath become false and crooked from

the roots._" Fortunately the world is not built merely upon those

instincts which would secure to the good-natured herd animal his paltry

happiness. To desire everybody to become a "good man," "a gregarious

animal," "a blue-eyed, benevolent, beautiful soul," or--as Herbert

Spencer wished--a creature of altruism, would mean robbing existence of

its greatest character, castrating man, and reducing humanity to a sort

of wretched Chinadom. _And this some have tried to do! It is precisely

this that men called morality._ In this sense Zarathustra calls "the

good," now "the last men," and anon "the beginning of the end"; and

above all, he considers them as _the most detrimental kind of men,_

because they secure their existence at the cost of Truth and at the

cost of the Future.

"The good--they cannot create; they are ever the beginning of the end.

"They crucify him who writeth new values on new tables; they sacrifice

_unto themselves_ the future; they crucify the whole future of humanity!

"The good--they are ever the beginning of the end.

"And whatever harm the slanderers of the world may do, _the harm of the

good is the most calamitous of all harm._"

5

Zarathustra, as the first psychologist of the good man, is perforce the

friend of the evil man. When a degenerate kind of man has succeeded

to the highest rank among the human species, his position must have

been gained at the cost of the reverse type--at the cost of the strong

man who is certain of life. When the gregarious animal stands in

the glorious rays of the purest virtue, the exceptional man must be

degraded to the rank of the evil. If falsehood insists at all costs on

claiming the word "truth" for its own particular standpoint, the really

truthful man must be sought out among the despised. Zarathustra allows

of no doubt here; he says that it was precisely the knowledge of the

good, of the "best," which inspired his absolute horror of men. And

it was out of this feeling of repulsion that he grew the wings which

allowed him to soar into remote futures. He does not conceal the fact

that his type of man is one which is relatively superhuman--especially

as opposed to the "good" man, and that the good and the just would

regard his superman as the _devil._

"Ye higher men, on whom my gaze now falls, this is the doubt that ye

wake in my breast, and this is my secret laughter: methinks ye would

call my Superman--the devil! So strange are ye in your souls to all

that is great, that the Superman would be terrible in your eyes for his

goodness."

It is from this passage, and from no other, that you must set out to

understand the goal to which Zarathustra aspires--the kind of man that

he conceives sees reality _as it is;_ he is strong enough for this--he

is not estranged or far removed from it, he is that reality himself, in

his own nature can be found all the terrible and questionable character

of reality: _only thus can man have greatness._

6

But I have chosen the title of Immoralist as a surname and as a badge

of honour in yet another sense; I am very proud to possess this name

which distinguishes me from all the rest of mankind. No one hitherto

has felt Christian morality beneath him; to that end there were needed

height, a remoteness of vision, and an abysmal psychological depth, not

believed to be possible hitherto. Up to the present Christian morality

has been the Circe of all thinkers--they stood at her service. What

man, before my time, had descended into the underground caverns from

out of which the poisonous fumes of this ideal--of this slandering

of the world--burst forth? What man had even dared to suppose that

they were underground caverns? Was a single one of the philosophers

who preceded me a psychologist at all, and not the very reverse of a

psychologist--that is to say, a "superior swindler," an "Idealist"?

Before my time there was no psychology. To be the first in this new

realm may amount to a curse; at all events, it is a fatality: _for one

is also the first to despise._ My danger is the loathing of mankind.

7

Have you understood me? That which defines me, that which makes me

stand apart from the whole of the rest of humanity, is the fact that

I _unmasked_ Christian morality. For this reason I was in need of a

word which conveyed the idea of a challenge to everybody. Not to have

awakened to these discoveries before, struck me as being the sign

of the greatest uncleanliness that mankind has on its conscience,

as self-deception become instinctive, as the fundamental will to

be blind to every phenomenon, all causality and all reality; in

fact, as an almost criminal fraud _in psychologicis._ Blindness in

regard to Christianity is the essence of criminality--for it is the

crime _against_ life. Ages and peoples, the first as well as the

last, philosophers and old women, with the exception of five or six

moments in history (and of myself, the seventh), are all alike in

this. Hitherto the Christian has been _the_ "moral being," a peerless

oddity, and, _as_ "a moral being," he was more absurd, more vain, more

thoughtless, and a greater disadvantage to himself, than the greatest

despiser of humanity could have deemed possible. Christian morality

is the most malignant form of all false too the actual Circe of

humanity: that which has corrupted mankind. It is not error as error

which infuriates me at the sight of this spectacle; it is not the

millenniums of absence of "goodwill," of discipline, of decency, and

of bravery in spiritual things, which betrays itself in the triumph of

Christianity; it is rather the absence of nature, it is the perfectly

ghastly fact that _anti-nature_ itself received the highest honours as

morality and as law, and remained suspended over man as the Categorical

Imperative. Fancy blundering in this way, _not_ as an individual,

_not_ as a people, but as a whole species! as _humanity_! To teach the

contempt of all the principal instincts of life; to posit falsely the

existence of a "soul," of a "spirit," in order to be able to defy the

body; to spread the feeling that there is something impure in the very

first prerequisite of life--in sex; to seek the principle of evil in

the profound need of growth and expansion--that is to say, in severe

self-love (the term itself is slanderous); and conversely to see a

higher moral value--but what am I talking about?--I mean the _moral

value per se,_ in the typical signs of decline, in the antagonism of

the instincts, in "selflessness," in the loss of ballast, in "the

suppression of the personal element," and in "love of one's neighbour"

(neighbouritis!). What! is humanity itself in a state of degeneration?

Has it always been in this state? One thing is certain, that ye are

taught only the values of decadence as the highest values. The morality

of self-renunciation is essentially the morality of degeneration; the

fact, "I am going to the dogs," is translated into the imperative,"

Ye shall all go to the dogs"--and not only into the imperative. This

morality of self-renunciation, which is the only kind of morality that

has been taught hitherto, betrays the will to nonentity--it denies life

to the very roots. There still remains the possibility that it is not

mankind that is in a state of degeneration, but only that parasitical

kind of man--the priest, who, by means of morality and lies, has

climbed up to his position of determinator of values, who divined in

Christian morality his road to power. And, to tell the truth, this

is my opinion. The teachers and I leaders of mankind--including the

theologians--have been, every one of them, decadents: hence their)

transvaluation of all values into a hostility towards; life; hence

morality. _The definition of morality;_ Morality is the idiosyncrasy of

decadents, actuated by a desire _to avenge themselves with success upon

life._ I attach great value to this definition.

8

Have you understood me? I have not uttered a single word which I had

not already said five years ago through my mouthpiece Zarathustra.

The unmasking of Christian morality is an event which unequalled in

history, it is a real catastrophe. The man who throws light upon it

is a _force majeure,_ a fatality; he breaks the history of man into

two. Time is reckoned up before him and after him. The lightning

flash of truth struck precisely that which theretofore had stood

highest: he who understands what was destroyed by that flash should

look to see whether he still holds anything in his hands. Everything

which until then was called truth, has been revealed as the most

detrimental, most spiteful, and most subterranean form of life; the

holy pretext, which was the "improvement" of man, has been recognised

as a ruse for draining life of its energy and of its blood. Morality

conceived as _Vampirism_.... The man who unmasks morality has also

unmasked the worthlessness of the values in which men either believe

or have believed; he no longer sees anything to be revered in the most

venerable man--even in the types of men that have been pronounced

holy; all he can see in them is the most fatal kind of abortions,

fatal, _because they fascinate._ The concept "God" was invented as

the opposite of the concept life--everything detrimental, poisonous,

and slanderous, and all deadly hostility to life, wad bound together

in one horrible unit in Him. The concepts "beyond" and "true world"

were invented in order to depreciate the only world that exists--in

order that no goal or aim, no sense or task, might be left to earthly

reality. The concepts "soul," "spirit," and last of all the concept

"immortal soul," were invented in order to throw contempt on the body,

in order to make it sick and "holy," in order to cultivate an attitude

of appalling levity towards all things in life which deserve to be

treated seriously, _i.e._ the questions of nutrition and habitation,

of intellectual diet, the treatment of the sick, cleanliness, and

weather. Instead of health, we find the "salvation of the soul"--that

is to say, a _folie circulate_ fluctuating between convulsions and

penitence and the hysteria of redemption. The concept "sin," together

with the torture instrument appertaining to it, which is the concept

"free will," was invented in order to confuse and muddle our instincts,

and to render the mistrust of them man's second nature! In the concepts

"disinterestedness" and "self-denial," the actual signs of decadence

are to be found. The allurement of that which is detrimental, the

inability to discover one's own advantage and self-destruction, are

made into absolute qualities, into the "duty," the "holiness," and

the "divinity" of man. Finally--to keep the worst to the last--by the

notion of the _good_ man, all that is favoured which is weak, ill,

botched, and sick-in-itself, which _ought to be wiped out._ The law

of selection is thwarted, an ideal is made out of opposition to the

proud, well-constituted man, to him who says yea to life, to him who

is certain of the future, and who guarantees the future--this man is

henceforth called the _evil_ one. And all this was believed in as

_morality!--Ecrasez l'infâme!_

9

Have you understood me? _Dionysus_ versus _Christ._

[Footnote 1: Needless to say this is Nietzsche, and no longer the

Persian.--TR.]

EDITORIAL NOTE TO POETRY

The editor begs to state that, contrary to his announcement in

the Editorial Note to _The Joyful Wisdom,_ in which he declared

his intention of publishing all of Nietzsche's poetry, he has

nevertheless withheld certain less important verses from publication.

This alteration in his plans is due to his belief that it is an

injustice and an indiscretion on the part of posterity to surprise an

author, as it were, in his _négligé,_ or, in plain English, "in his

shirt-sleeves." Authors generally are very sensitive on this point, and

rightly so: a visit behind the scenes is not precisely to the advantage

of the theatre, and even finished pictures not yet framed are not

readily shown by the careful artist. As the German edition, however,

contains nearly all that Nietzsche left behind, either in small

notebooks or on scraps of paper, the editor could not well suppress

everything that was not prepared for publication by Nietzsche himself,

more particularly as some of the verses are really very remarkable.

He has, therefore, made a very plentiful selection from the _Songs

and Epigrams,_ nearly all of which are to be found translated here,

and from the Fragments of the Dionysus Dithyrambs, of which over half

have been given. All the complete Dionysus Dithyrambs appear in this

volume, save those which are duplicates of verses already translated

in the Fourth Part of _Zarathustra._ These Dionysus Dithyrambs were

prepared ready for press by Nietzsche himself. He wrote the final

manuscript during the summer of 1888 in Sils Maria; their actual

composition, however, belongs to an earlier date.

All the verses, unless otherwise stated, have been translated by Mr.

Paul Victor Cohn.

SONGS, EPIGRAMS, ETC.

SONGS

TO MELANCHOLY[1]

O Melancholy, be not wroth with me

That I this pen should point to praise thee only,

And in thy praise, with head bowed to the knee,

Squat like a hermit on a tree-stump lonely.

Thus oft thou saw'st me,--yesterday, at least,--

Full in the morning sun and its hot beaming,

While, visioning the carrion of his feast,

The hungry vulture valleyward flew screaming.

Yet didst thou err, foul bird, albeit I,

So like a mummy 'gainst my log lay leaning!

Thou couldst not see these eyes whose ecstasy

Rolled hither, thither, proud and overweening.

What though they did not soar unto thine height,

or reached those far-off, cloud-reared precipices,

For _that_ they sank the deeper so they might

Within themselves light Destiny's abysses.

Thus oft in sullenness perverse and free,

Bent hideous like a savage at his altar,

There, Melancholy, held I thought of thee,

A penitent, though youthful, with his psalter.

So crouched did I enjoy the vulture's span,

The thunder of the avalanche's paces,

Thou spakest to me--nor wast false like man,

Thou spakest, but with stern and dreadful faces.

Harsh goddess thou of Nature wild and stark,

Mistress, that com'st with threats to daunt and quell me,

To point me out the vulture's airy are

And laughing avalanches, to repel me.

Around us gnashing pants the lust to kill,

The torment to win life in all its changes;

Alluring on some cliff, abrupt and chill,

Some flower craves the butterfly that ranges.

All this am I--shuddering I feel it all--

O butterfly beguiled, O lonely flower,

The vulture and the ice-pent waterfall,

The moaning storm--all symbols of thy power,--

Thou goddess grim before whom deeply bowed,

With head on knee, my lips with pæans bursting,

I lift a dreadful song and cry aloud

For Life, for Life, for Life--forever thirsting!

O vengeful goddess, be not wroth, I ask,

That I to mesh thee in my rhymes have striven.

He trembles who beholds thine awful mask;

He quails to whom thy dread right hand is given.

Song upon trembling song by starts and fits

I chant, in rhythm all my thought unfolding,

The black ink flows, the pointed goose-quill spits,

O goddess, goddess--leave me to my scolding!

AFTER A NIGHT STORM[2]

To-day in misty veils thou hangest dimly,

Gloomy goddess, o'er my window-pane.

Grimly whirl the pallid snow-flakes, grimly

Roars the swollen brook unto the plain.

Ah, by light of haggard levins glaring,

'Neath the untamed thunder's roar and roll,

'Midst the valley's murk wast thou preparing--

Sorceress! thy dank and poisoned bowl.

Shuddering, I heard through midnight breaking

Raptures of thy voice--and howls of pain.

Saw thy bright orbs gleam, thy right hand shaking

With the mace of thunder hurled amain.

Near my dreary couch I heard the crashes

Of thine armoured steps, heard weapons slam,

Heard thy brazen chain strike 'gainst the sashes,

And thy voice: "Come! hearken who I am!

The immortal Amazon they call me;

All things weak and womanish I shun;

Manly scorn and hate in war enthral me;

Victress I and tigress all in one!

Where I tread there corpses fall before me;

From mine eyes the furious torches fly,

And my brain thinks poisons. Bend, adore me!

Worm of Earth and Will o' Wisp--or die!"

HYMNS TO FRIENDSHIP

(_Two Fragments_)

1

Goddess Friendship, deign to hear the song

That we sing in friendship's honour!

Where the eye of friendship glances,

Filled with all the joy of friendship

Come thou nigh to aid me,

Rosy dawn in thy gaze and

In holy hand the faithful pledge of youth eternal.

2

Morning's past: the sun of noonday

Scorches with hot ray our heads.

Let us sit beneath the arbour

Singing songs in praise of friendship.

Friendship was our life's red dawning,

And its sunset red shall be.

THE WANDERER[3]

All through the night a wanderer walks

Sturdy of stride,

With winding vale and sloping height

E'er at his side.

Fair is the night:

On, on he strides, nor slackens speed,

And knows not where his path will lead.

A bird's song in the night is heard,

"Ah me, what hast thou done, O bird,

How dost thou grip my sense and feet

And pourest heart-vexation sweet

Into mine ear--I must remain,

To hearken fain:

Why lure me with inviting strain?"

The good bird speaks, staying his song:

"I lure not thee,--no, thou art wrong--

With these my trills

I lure my mate from off the hills--

Nor heed thy plight.

To me alone the night's not fair.

What's that to thee? Forth must thou fare,

On, onward ever, resting ne'er.

Why stand'st thou now?

What has my piping done to thee,

Thou roaming wight?"

The good bird pondered, silent quite,

"Why doth my piping change his plight?

Why stands he now,

That luckless, luckless, roaming wight?"

TO THE GLACIER

At noontide hour, when first,

Into the mountains Summer treads,

Summer, the boy with eyes so hot and weary,

Then too he speaks,

Yet we can only see his speech.

His breath is panting, like the sick man's breath

On fevered couch.

The glacier and the fir tree and the spring

Answer his call

--Yet we their answer only see.

For faster from the rock leaps down

The torrent stream, as though to greet,

And stands, like a white column trembling,

All yearning there.

And darker yet and truer looks the fir-tree

Than e'er before.

And 'twixt the ice-mass and the cold grey stone

A sudden light breaks forth--

Such light I once beheld, and marked the sign.

Even the dead man's eye

Surely once more grows light,

When, sorrowful, his child

Gives him embrace and kiss:

Surely once more the flame of light

Wells out, and glowing into life

The dead eye speaks: "My child!

Ah child, you know I love you true!"

So all things glow and speak--the glacier speaks,

The brook, the fir,

Speak with their glance the selfsame words:

We love you true,

Ah, child, you know we love you, love you true!

And he,

Summer, the boy with eyes so hot and weary,

Woe-worn, gives kisses

More ardent ever,

And will not go:

But like to veils he blows his words

From out his lips,

His cruel words:

"My greeting's parting,

My coming going,

In youth I die."

All round they hearken

And scarcely breathe

(No songster sings),

And shuddering run

Like gleaming ray

Over the mountain;

All round they ponder,--

Nor speak--

Twas at the noon,

At noontide hour, when first

Into the mountains Summer treads,

Summer, the boy with eyes so hot and weary.

AUTUMN[4]

'Tis Autumn:--Autumn yet shall break thy heart!

Fly away! fly away!--

The sun creeps 'gainst the hill

And climbs and climbs

And rests at every step.

How faded grew the world!

On weary, slackened strings the wind

Playeth his tune.

Fair Hope fled far--

He waileth after.

'Tis Autumn:--Autumn yet shall break thy heart!

Fly away! fly away!

O fruit of the tree,

Thou tremblest, fallest?

What secret whispered unto thee

The Night,

That icy shudders deck thy cheek,

Thy cheek of purple hue?

Silent art thou, nor dost reply--

Who speaketh still?--

'Tis Autumn:--Autumn yet shall break thy heart!

Fly away! fly away!--

"I am not fair,"--

So speaks the lone star-flower,--

"Yet men I love

And comfort men--

Many flowers shall they behold,

And stoop to me,

And break me, ah!--

So that within their eyes shall gleam

Remembrance swift,

_Remembrance of far fairer things than I_:--

I see it--see it--and I perish so."

'Tis Autumn:--Autumn yet shall break thy heart!

Fly away! fly away!

CAMPO SANTO DI STAGLIENO[5]

Maiden, in gentle wise

You stroke your lamb's soft fleece,

Yet flashing from your eyes

Both light and flame ne'er cease.

Creature of merry jest

And favourite near and far,

Pious with kindness blest,

Amorosissima!

What broke so soon the chain,

What does your heart deplore?

And who, pray, would not fain,

If you loved him, adore?--

You're mute, but from your eye,

The tear-drop is not far,

You're mute: you'll yearn and die,

Amorosissima?

THE LITTLE BRIG NAMED "LITTLE ANGEL"[6]

"Little Angel" call they me!--

Now a ship, but once a girl,

Ah, and still too much a girl!

My steering-wheel, so bright to see,

But for sake of love doth whirl.

"Little Angel" call they me,

With hundred flags to ornament,

A captain smart, on glory bent,

Steers me, puffed with vanity

(He himself's an ornament).

"Little Angel" call they me,

And where'er a little flame

Gleams for me, I, like a lamb,

Go my journey eagerly

(I was always such a lamb!).

"Little Angel" call they me--

Think you I can bark and whine

Like a dog, this mouth of mine

Throwing smoke and flame full free?

Ah, a devil's mouth is mine.

"Little Angel" call they me--

Once I spoke a bitter word,

That my lover, when he heard,

Fast and far away did flee:

Yes, I killed him with that word!

"Little Angel" call they me:

Hardly heard, I sprang so glib

From the cliff and broke a rib:

From my frame my soul went free,

Yes, escaped me through that rib.

"Little Angel" call they me--

Then my soul, like cat in flight

Straight did on this ship alight

Swiftly bounding--one, two, three!

Yes, its claws are swift to smite.

"Little Angel" call they me!--

Now a ship, but once a girl,

Ah, and still too much a girl!

My steering-wheel, so bright to see,

For sake of love alone doth whirl.

MAIDEN'S SONG

Yesterday with seventeen years

Wisdom reached I, a maiden fair,

I am grey-haired, it appears,

Now in all things--save my hair.

Yesterday, I had a thought,

Was't a thought?--you laugh and scorn!

Did you ever have a thought?

Rather was a feeling born.

Dare a woman think? This screed

Wisdom long ago begot:

"Follow woman must, not lead;

If she thinks, she follows not."

Wisdom speaks--I credit naught:

Rather hops and stings like flea:

"Woman seldom harbours thought;

If she thinks, no good is she!"

To this wisdom, old, renowned,

Bow I in deep reverence:

Now my wisdom I'll expound

In its very quintessence.

A voice spoke in me yesterday

As ever--listen if you can:

"Woman is more beauteous aye,

But more interesting--man!"

"PIA, CARITATEVOLE, AMOROSISSIMA"[7]

Cave where the dead ones rest,

O marble falsehood, thee

I love: for easy jest

My soul thou settest free.

To-day, to-day alone,

My soul to tears is stirred,

At thee, the pictured stone,

At thee, the graven word.

This picture (none need wis)

I kissed the other day.

When there's so much to kiss

Why did I kiss the--clay?

Who knows the reason why?

"A tombstone fool!" you laugh:

I kissed--I'll not deny--

E'en the long epitaph.

TO FRIENDSHIP

Hail to thee, Friendship!

My hope consummate,

My first red daybreak!

Alas, so endless

Oft path and night seemed,

And life's long road

Aimless and hateful!

Now life I'd double

In thine eyes seeing

Dawn-glory, triumph,

Most gracious goddess!

PINE TREE AND LIGHTNING

O'er man and beast I grew so high,

And speak--but none will give reply.

Too lone and tall my crest did soar:

I wait: what am I waiting for?

The clouds are grown too nigh of late,

'Tis the first lightning I await.

TREE IN AUTUMN

Why did ye, blockheads, me awaken

While I in blissful blindness stood?

Ne'er I by fear more fell was shaken--

Vanished my golden dreaming mood.

Bear-elephants, with trunks all greedy,

Knock first! Where have your manners fled?

I threw--and fear has made me speedy--

Dishes of ripe fruit--at your head.

AMONG FOES (OR AGAINST CRITICS)

(_After a Gipsy Proverb_)

Here the gallows, there the cord,

And the hangman's ruddy beard.

Round, the venom-glancing horde:--

Nothing new to me's appeared.

Many times I've seen the sight,

Now laughing in your face I cry,

"Hanging me is useless quite:

Die? Nay, nay, I cannot die!"

Beggars all! Ye envy me

Winning what ye never won!

True, I suffer agony,

But for you--your life is done.

Many times I've faced death's plight,

Yet steam and light and breath am I.

Hanging me is useless quite:

Die? Nay, nay, I cannot die!

THE NEW COLUMBUS[8]

"Dearest," said Columbus, "never

Trust a Genoese again.

At the blue he gazes ever,

Distance doth his soul enchain.

Strangeness is to me too dear--

Genoa has sunk and passed--

Heart, be cool! Hand, firmly steer!

Sea before me: land--at last?

Firmly let us plant our feet,

Ne'er can we give up this game--

From the distance what doth greet?

One death, one happiness, one fame.

IN LONESOMENESS[9]

The cawing crows

Townwards on whirring pinions roam;

Soon come the snows--

Thrice happy now who hath a home!

Fast-rooted there,

Thou gazest backwards--oh, how long!

Thou fool, why dare

Ere winter come, this world of wrong?

This world--a gate

To myriad deserts dumb and hoar!

Who lost through fate

What thou hast lost, shall rest no more.

Now stand'st thou pale,

A frozen pilgrimage thy doom,

Like smoke whose trail

Cold and still colder skies consume.

Fly, bird, and screech,

Like desert-fowl, thy song apart!

Hide out of reach,

Fool! in grim ice thy bleeding heart.

Firmly let us plant our feet,

Ne'er can we give up this game--

From the distance what doth greet?

One death, one happiness, one fame.

The cawing crows

Townwards on whirring pinions roam:

Soon come the snows--

Woe unto him who hath no home!

_My Answer_

The man presumes--

Good Lord!--to think that I'd return

To those warm rooms

Where snug the German ovens burn

My friend, you see

'Tis but thy folly drives me far,--

Pity for _thee_

And all that German blockheads are!

VENICE

ON the bridge I stood,

Mellow was the night,

Music came from far--

Drops of gold outpoured

On the shimmering waves.

Song, gondolas, light,

Floated a-twinkling out into the dusk.

The chords of my soul, moved

By unseen impulse, throbbed

Secretly into a gondola song,

With thrills of bright-hued ecstasy.

Had I a listener there?

[Footnote 1: Translated by Herman Scheffauer.]

[Footnote 2: Translated by Herman Scheffauer.]

[Footnote 3: This poem was written on the betrothal of one of

Nietzsche's Bâle friends.--TR.]

[Footnote 4: Translated by Herman Scheffauer.]

[Footnote 5: Campo Santo di Staglieno is the cemetery of Staglieno,

near Genoa. The poem was inspired by the sight of a girl

with a lamb on the tombstone, with the words underneath--

"Pia, caritatevole, amorosissima."]

[Footnote 6: Published by Nietzsche himself. The poem was inspired

by a ship that was christened _Angiolina,_ in memory of a

love-sick girl who leapt into the sea.--TR.]

[Footnote 7: See above, p. 157. Both poems were inspired by the same

tombstone.--TR.]

[Footnote 8: The Genoese is Nietzsche himself, who lived a great

part of his life at Genoa.--TR.]

[Footnote 9: Translated by Herman Scheffauer.]

EPIGRAMS

CAUTION: POISON![1]

He who cannot laugh at this had better not start reading;

For if he read and do not laugh, physic he'll be needing!

HOW TO FIND ONE'S COMPANY

With jesters it is good to jest:

Who likes to tickle, is tickled best.

THE WORD

I dearly love the living word,

That flies to you like a merry bird,

Ready with pleasant nod to greet,

E'en in misfortune welcome, sweet,

Yet it has blood, can pant you deep:

Then to the dove's ear it will creep:

And curl itself, or start for flight--

Whate'er it does, it brings delight.

Yet tender doth the word remain,

Soon it is ill, soon well again:

So if its little life you'd spare,

O grasp it lightly and with care,

Nor heavy hand upon it lay,

For e'en a cruel glance would slay!

There it would lie, unsouled, poor thing!

All stark, all formless, and all cold,

Its little body changed and battered,

By death and dying rudely shattered.

A dead word is a hateful thing,

A barren, rattling, ting-ting-ting.

A curse on ugly trades I cry

That doom all little words to die!

THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW

_A Book_

You'll ne'er go on nor yet go back?

Is e'en for chamois here no track?

So here I wait and firmly clasp

What eye and hand will let me grasp!

Five-foot-broad ledge, red morning's breath,

And under me--world, man, and death!

JOYFUL WISDOM

This is no book--for such, who looks?

Coffins and shrouds, naught else, are books!

What's dead and gone they make their prey,

Yet in my book lives fresh To-day.

This is no book--for such, who looks?

Who cares for coffins, shrouds, and spooks?

This is a promise, an act of will,

A last bridge-breaking, for good or ill;

A wind from sea, an anchor light,

A whirr of wheels, a steering right.

The cannon roars, white smokes its flame,

The sea--the monster--laughs and scents its game.

DEDICATION[2]

He who has much to tell, keeps much

Silent and unavowed.

He who with lightning-flash would touch

Must long remain a cloud!

THE NEW TESTAMENT[3]

Is this your Book of Sacred Lore,

For blessing, cursing, and such uses?--

Come, come now: at the very door

God some one else's wife seduces?

THE "TRUE GERMAN"

"O Peuple des meillures Tartuffes,

To you I'm true, I wis."

He spoke, but in the swiftest skiff

Went to Cosmopolis.

TO THE DARWINIANS[4]

A fool this honest Britisher

Was not ... But a Philosopher!

As _that_ you really rate him?

Set Darwin up by Goethe's side?

But majesty you thus deride--

_Genii majestatem_!

To HAFIZ

(_Toast Question of a Water-Drinker_)

What you have builded, yonder inn,

O'ertops all houses high:

The posset you have brewed therein

The world will ne'er drink dry.

The bird that once appeared on earth

As phœnix, is your, guest.

The mouse that gave a mountain birth

Is you yourself confessed!

You're all and naught, you're inn and wine,

You're phœnix, mountain, mouse.

Back to yourself to come you pine

Or fly from out your house.

Downward from every height you've sunk,

And in the depths still shine:

The drunkenness of all the drunk,

Why do you ask for--wine?

TO SPINOZA

Of "All in One" a fervent devotee

_Amore Dei,_ of reasoned piety,

Doff shoes! A land thrice holy this must be!--

Yet underneath this love there sate

A torch of vengeance, burning secretly

The Hebrew God was gnawed by Hebrew hate.

Hermit! Do I aright interpret thee?

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

That which he taught, has had its day,

That which he lived, shall live for aye:

Look at the man! No bondsman he!

Nor e'er to mortal bowed his knee!

TO RICHARD WAGNER

O You who chafe at every fetter's link,

A restless spirit, never free:

Who, though victorious aye, in bonds still cowered,

Disgusted more and more, and flayed and scoured,

Till from each cup of balm you poison drink,

Alas! and by the Cross all helpless sink,

You too, you too, among the overpowered!

For long I watched this play so weirdly shaped,

Breathing an air of prison, vault, and dread,

With churchly fragrance, clouds of incense spread,

And yet I found all strange/in terror gaped.

But now I throw my fool's cap o'er my head,

For I escaped!

MUSIC OF THE SOUTH[5]

All that my eagle e'er saw clear,

I see and feel in heart to-day

(Although my hope was wan and gray)

Thy song like arrow pierced mine ear,

A balm to touch, a balm to hear,

As down from heaven it winged its way.

So now for lands of southern fire

To happy isles where Grecian nymphs hold sport!

Thither now turn the ship's desire--

No ship e'er sped to fairer port.

A RIDDLE

A riddle here--can you the answer scent?

"When man discovers, woman must invent."----

TO FALSE FRIENDS

You stole, your eye's not clear to-day.

You only stole a thought, sir? nay,

Why be so rudely modest, pray?

Here, take another handful--stay,

Take all I have, you swine--you may

Eat till your filth is purged away.

FRIEND YORICK

Be of good cheer,

Friend Yorick! If this thought gives pain,

As now it does, I fear,

Is it not "God"? And though in error lain,

'Tis but your own dear child,

Your flesh and blood,

That tortures you and gives you pain,

Your little rogue and do-no-good,

See if the rod will change its mood!

In brief, friend Yorick, leave that drear

Philosophy--and let me now

Whisper one word as medicine,

My own prescription, in your ear,

My remedy against such spleen--

"Who loves his God, chastises him, I ween,"

RESOLUTION

I should be wise to suit my mood,

Not at the beck of other men:

God made as stupid as he could

The world--well, let me praise him then.

And if I make not straight my track,

But, far as may be, wind and bend,

That's how the sage begins his tack,

And that is how the fool will--end.

* * * * *

The world stands never still,

Night loves the glowing day--

Sweet sounds to ear "I will!"

And sweeter still "I may!"

THE HALCYONIAN[6]

Addressing me most bashfully,

A woman to-day said this:

"What would you be like in ecstasy,

If sober you feel such bliss?"

FINALE[6]

Laughter is a serious art.

I would do it better daily.

Did I well to-day or no?

Came the spark right from the heart?

Little use though head wag gaily,

If the heart contain no glow.

[Footnote 1: Translated by Francis Bickley.]

[Footnote 2: On the title-page of a copy of _Joyful Wisdom,_ dedicated

to Herr August Bungal.--TR.]

[Footnote 3: Translated by Francis Bickley.]

[Footnote 4: Translated by Francis Bickley.]

[Footnote 5: Probably written for Peter Gast, Nietzsche's faithful

friend, and a musician whose "Southern" music Nietzsche

admired.--TR.]

[Footnote 6: Translated by Francis Bickley.]

DIONYSUS-DITHYRAMBS

(1888)

These are the songs of Zarathustra which he sang to

himself so as to endure his last solitude.

OF THE POVERTY OF THE RICHEST

Ten years passed by--

Not a drop reached me,

No rain-fraught wind, no dew of love

--A rainless land....

Now entreat I my wisdom

Not to become stingy in this drought;

Overflow thyself, trickle thy dew,

Be thyself the rain of the parched wilderness!

I once bade the clouds

Depart from my mountains;

Once I said to them,

"More light, ye dark ones!"

To-day I entice them to come:

Make me dark with your udders:

--I would milk you,

Ye cows of the heights!

Milk-warm wisdom, sweet dew of love

I pour over the land.

Away, away, ye truths

That look so gloomy!

I will not have on my mountains

Bitter, impatient truths.

May truth approach me to-day

Gilded by smiles,

Sweetened by the sun, browned by love,--

A ripe truth I would fain break off from the tree.

To-day I stretch my hands

Toward the tresses of chance,

Wise enough to lead,

To outwit chance like a child.

To-day I will be hospitable

'Gainst the unwelcome,

'Gainst destiny itself I will not be prickly....

--Zarathustra is no hedgehog.

My soul,

Insatiable with its tongue,

Has already tasted of all things good and evil,

And has dived into all depths.

But ever, like the cork,

It swims to the surface again,

And floats like oil upon brown seas:

Because of this soul men call me fortunate.

Who are my father and mother?

Is not my father Prince Plenty?

And my mother Silent Laughter?

Did not the union of these two

Beget me, the enigmatic beast--

Me, the monster of light--

Me, Zarathustra, the squanderer of all wisdom?

Sick to-day from tenderness,

A dewy wind,

Zarathustra sits waiting, waiting on his mountains--

Sweet and stewing

In his own juice,

Beneath his own summit,

Beneath his ice,

Weary and happy,

A Creator on his seventh day.

--Silence!

A truth passes over me

Like a cloud,--

With invisible lightnings it strikes me,

On broad, slow stairs,

Its happiness climbs to me:

Come, come, beloved truth!

--Silence!

'Tis _my_ truth!

From timid eyes,

From velvet shudders,

Her glance meets mine,

Sweet and wicked, a maiden's glance.

She has guessed the reason of my happiness,

She has guessed me--ha! what is she thinking?

A purple dragon

Lurks in the abyss of her maiden's glance.

--Silence! My truth is speaking!--

"Woe to thee, Zarathustra!

Thou lookest like one

That hath swallowed gold:

They will slit up thy belly yet!

Thou art too rich,

Thou corrupter of many!

Thou makest too many jealous,

Too many poor....

Even on me thy light casts a shadow--

I feel chill: go away, thou rich one

Go away, Zarathustra, from the path of thy sun

BETWEEN BIRDS OF PREY

Who would here descend,

How soon

Is he swallowed up by the depths!

But thou, Zarathustra,

Still lovest the abysses,

Lovest them as doth the fir tree!

The fir flings its roots

Where the rock itself gazes

Shuddering at the depths,--

The fir pauses before the abysses

Where all around

Would fain descend:

Amid the impatience

Of wild, rolling, leaping torrents

It waits so patient, stern and silent,

Lonely....

Lonely!

Who would venture

Here to be guest--

To be thy guest?

A bird of prey, perchance

Joyous at others' misfortune,

Will cling persistent

To the hair of the steadfast watcher,

With frenzied laughter,

A vulture's laughter....

Wherefore so steadfast?

--Mocks he so cruel:

He must have wings, who loves the abyss,

He must not stay on the cliff,

As thou who hangest there!--

O Zarathustra,

Cruellest Nimrod!

Of late still a hunter of God,

A spider's web to capture virtue,

An arrow of evil!

Now

Hunted by thyself,

Thine own prey

Caught in the grip of thine own soul.

Now

Lonely to me and thee,

Twofold in thine own knowledge,

Mid a hundred mirrors

False to thyself,

Mid a hundred memories

Uncertain,

Weary at every wound,

Shivering at every frost,

Throttled in thine own noose,

Self-knower!

Self-hangman!

Why didst bind thyself

With the noose of thy wisdom?

Why luredst thyself

Into the old serpent's paradise?

Why stolest into

Thyself, thyself?...

A sick man now,

Sick of serpent's poison,

A captive now

Who hast drawn the hardest lot:

In thine own shaft

Bowed as thou workest,

In thine own cavern

Digging at thyself,

Helpless quite,

Stiff,

A cold corse

Overwhelmed with a hundred burdens,

Overburdened by thyself,

A knower!

A self-knower!

The wise Zarathustra!...

Thou soughtest the heaviest burden,

So foundest thou thyself,

And canst not shake thyself off....

Watching,

Chewing,

One that stands upright no more!

Thou wilt grow deformed even in thy grave,

Deformed spirit!

And of late still so proud

On all the stilts of thy pride!

Of late still the godless hermit,

The hermit with one comrade--the devil,

The scarlet prince of every devilment!...

Now--

Between two nothings

Huddled up,

A question-mark,

A weary riddle,

A riddle for vultures....

They will "solve" thee,

They hunger already for thy "solution,"

They flutter already about their "riddle,"

About thee, the doomed one!

O Zarathustra,

Self-knower!

Self-hangman!

THE SUN SINKS

I

Not much longer thirstest thou,

O burnt-up heart!

Promise is in the air,

From unknown mouths I feel a breath,

--The great coolness comes....

My sun stood hot above me at noonday:

A greeting to you that are coming,

Ye sudden winds,

Ye cool spirits of afternoon!

The air is strange and pure.

See how the night

Leers at me with eyes askance,

Like a seducer!...

Be strong, my brave heart,

And ask not "Why?"

2

The day of my life!

The sun sinks,

And the calm flood

Already is gilded.

Warm breathes the rock:

Did happiness at noonday

Take its siesta well upon it?

In green light

Happiness still glimmers up from the brown abyss

Day of my life!

Eventide's nigh,

Thy eye already

Glows half-broken,

Thy dew already

Pours out its tear-drops,

Already over the white seas

Walks the purple of thy love,

Thy last hesitating holiness....

3

Golden gaiety, come!

Thou, the sweetest foretaste--

Foretaste of death!

--Went I my way too swiftly?

Now that the foot grows weary,

Thine eye still catches me,

Thy happiness still catches me.

Around but waves and play.

Whatever was hard

--Sank into blue oblivion.

My boat now stands idle.

Storm and motion--how did it forget them!

Desire and Hope are drowned,

Sea and soul are becalmed.

Seventh Solitude!

Never felt!

Sweet certainty nearer,

Or warmer the sun's ray.

--Glows not the ice of my summit yet?

Silvery, light, a fish

Now my vessel swims out....

THE LAST DESIRE[1]

So would I die

As then I saw him die,

The friend, who like a god

Into my darkling youth

Threw lightning's light and fire:

Buoyant yet deep was he,

Yea, in the battle's strife

With the gay dancer's heart.

Amid the warriors

His was the lightest heart,

Amid the conquerors

His brow was dark with thought--

He was a fate poised on his destiny:

Unbending, casting thought into the past

And future, such was he.

Fearful beneath the weight of victory,

Yet chanting, as both victory and death

Came hand and hand to him.

Commanding even as he lay in death,

And his command that man annihilate.

So would I die

As then I saw him die,

Victorious and destroying.

THE BEACON

Here, where the island grew amid the seas,

A sacrificial rock high-towering,

Here under darkling heavens,

Zarathustra lights his mountain-fires,

A beacon for ships that have strayed,

A beacon for them that have an answer!...

These flames with grey-white belly,

In cold distances sparkle their desire,

Stretches its neck towards ever purer heights--

A snake upreared in impatience:

This signal I set up there before me.

This flame is mine own soul,

Insatiable for new distances,

Speeding upward, upward its silent heat.

Why flew Zarathustra from beasts and men?

Why fled he swift from all continents?

Six solitudes he knows already--

But even the sea was not lonely enough for him,

On the island he could climb, on the mount he

became flame,

At the seventh solitude

He casts a fishing-rod far o'er his head.

Storm-tossed seamen! Wreckage of ancient stars

Ye seas of the future! Uncompassed heavens!

At all lonely ones I now throw my fishing-rod.

Give answer to the flame's impatience,

Let me, the fisher on high mountains,

Catch my seventh, last solitude!----

FAME AND ETERNITY[2]

I

Speak, tell me, how long wilt thou brood

Upon this adverse fate of thine?

Beware, lest from thy doleful mood

A countenance _90_ dark is brewed

That men in seeing thee divine

A hate more bitter than the brine.

* * * *

Speak, why does Zarathustra roam

Upon the towering mountain-height?

Distrustful, cankered, dour, his home

Is shut so long from human sight?

* * * *

See, suddenly flames forth a lightning-flash,

The pit profound with thunderous challenge fights

Against the heavens, midst clamorous crack and crash

Of the great mountain! Cradled in the heights,

Born as the fruit of hate and lightning's love,

The wrath of Zarathustra dwells above

And looms with menace of a thundercloud.

* * * *

Ye, who have roofs, go quickly, creep and hide!

To bed, ye tenderlings! For thunders loud

Upon the blasts of storm triumphant ride,

And bastions and ramparts sway and rock,

The lightning sears the dusky face of night,

And eerie truths like gleams of Hades mock

The sense familiar. So in storm breaks forth

The flaming curse of Zarathustra's wrath.

2

This fame, which all the wide world loves,

I touch with gloves,

And scorning beat

Beneath my feet.

* * * *

Who hanker after the pay of it?

Who cast themselves in the way of it?

These prostitutes to gold,

These merchant folk. They fold

Their unctuous palms over the jingling fame,

Whose ringing chink wins all the world's acclaim.

* * * *

Hast thou the lust to buy? It needs no skill.

They are all venal. Let thy purse be deep,

And let their greedy paws unhindered creep

Into its depths. So let them take their fill,

For if thou dost not offer them enough,

Their "virtue" they'll parade, to hide their huff.

* * * *

They are all virtuous, yea every one.

Virtue and fame are ever in accord

So long as time doth run,

The tongues that prate of virtue as reward

Earn fame. For virtue is fame's clever bawd.

* * * *

Amongst these virtuous, I prefer to be

One guilty of all vile and horrid sin!

And when I see fame's importunity

So advertise her shameless harlotry,

Ambition turns to gall. Amidst such kin

One place alone, the lowest, would I win.

* * * *

This fame, which all the wide world loves,

I touch with gloves,

And scorning beat

Beneath my feet.

3

Hush! I see vastness!--and of vasty things

Shall man be dumb, unless he can enshrine

Them with his words? Then take the might which brings

The heart upon thy tongue, charmed wisdom mine!

* * * *

I look above, there rolls the star-strown sea.

O night, mute silence, voiceless cry of stars!

And lo! A sign! The heaven its verge unbars--

A shining constellation falls towards me.

4

O loftiest, star-clustered crown of Being!

O carved tablets of Eternity!

And dost thou truly bend thy way to me?

Thy loveliness, to all--obscurity,

What? Fear'st not to unveil before _my_ seeing?

* * * *

O shield of Destiny!

O carven tablets of Eternity!

Yea, verily, thou knowest--what mankind doth hate,

What I alone do love: thou art inviolate

To strokes of change and time, of fates the fate!

'Tis only thou, O dire Necessity,

Canst kindle everlasting love in me!

* * * *

O loftiest crown of Life! O shield of Fate!

That no desire can reach to invocate,

That ne'er defiled or sullied is by Nay,

Eternal Yea of life, for e'er am I thy Yea:

For I love thee, Eternity!

[Footnote 1: Translated by Dr. G. T. Wrench.]

[Footnote 2: Translated by Dr. G. T. Wrench.]

FRAGMENTS OF DIONYSUS-DITHYRAMBS

(1882-88)

SPEECHES, PARABLES, AND SIMILES

3

My home's in the highlands,

For the highlands I yearn not,

I raise not mine eyes aloft:

I am one that looks downward,

One that must bless,--All

blessers look downward.

11

Thus I began,

I unlearned all self-pity!

13

Not in shattering idols,

But in shattering the idol-worshipper in thee,

Consisted thy valour.

14

See, there stand

Those heavy cats of granite,

Those old, old Values.

Woe is me! How overthrow them?

* * * *

Scratching cats,

With paws that are fettered,

There they sit

And their glance is poison.

17

A lightning-flash became my wisdom:

With sword of adamant it clove me every

darkness!

19

A thought that still

Flows hot, like lava:

But all streams of lava

Build a fortress around them,

And every thought finally

Oppresses itself with laws.

20

Such is my will:

And since 'tis my will,

All goes as I wish--

That was my final wisdom:

I willed what I must,

And thus I forced every "must,"--

Since then has been for me no "must."

23

Deceit

Is war's whole art

The fox's skin

Is my secret shirt of mail

25

We of the new underworld

Grub for new treasures.

Godless it seemed to the ancients

To disturb the earth's bowels for treasures

And once more this godlessness revives,

Hear ye not earth's bowels thunder?

28

Looking for love and finding masks,

Finding accursed masks and having to break them!

29

Do I love you?

Yes, as the rider loves his steed,

That carryeth him to his goal.

30

His pity is cruel,

His loving hand-clasp bruises,

Give not a giant your hand!

31

Ye fear me?

Ye fear the taut-strung bow?

Ye fear a man might set his arrow to the bow?

33

I am naught but a word-maker.

What matter words?

What matter I?

34

Ah, my friends,

Whither has flown all that is called "good"?

Whither all good people?

Whither the innocence of all these falsehoods?

I call all good,

Leaves and grass, happiness, blessing, and rain.

35

Not through his sins and greatest follies.

Through his perfection I suffered,

As I suffered most from men.[1]

36

"Man is evil."

So spake the wisest

For my consolement.

37

And only when I to myself am a burden

Do ye fall heavy upon me!

38

Too soon, already

I laugh again:

For a foe 'tis easy

To make me amends.

39

Gentle am I towards man and chance;

Gentle with all men, and even with grasses:

A spot of sunshine on winter curtains,

Moist with tenderness,

A thawing wind to snow-bound souls:

* * * *

Proud-minded towards trifling

Gains, where I see the huckster's long finger,

'Tis aye my pleasure

To be bamboozled:

Such is the bidding of my fastidious taste.

40

A strange breath breathes and spits at me,

Am I a mirror, that straightway is clouded?

41

Little people,

Confiding, open-hearted,

But low-built portals,

Where only the low of stature can enter.

* * * *

How can I get through the city-gate

Who had forgotten to live among dwarfs?

42

My wisdom was like to the sun,

I longed to give them light,

But I only deceived them.

The sun of my wisdom

Blinded the eyes

Of these poor bats....

43

Blacker and eviller things didst thou see than ever

a seer did:

Through the revels of Hell no sage had ever

journeyed.

44

Back! on my heels too closely ye follow!

Back! lest my wisdom should tread on you, crush

you!

45

"He goes to hell who goes thy ways!"

So be it I to my hell

I'll pave the way myself with well-made maxims.

46

Your God, you tell me,

Is a God of love?

The sting of conscience

A sting from God?

A sting of love?

48

They chew gravel,

They lie on their bellies

Before little round things,

They adore all that falleth not down--

These last servants of God

Believers (in reality)!

50

They made their God out of nothing,

What wonder if now he is naught?

51

Ye loftier men! There have once been

More thoughtful times, more reflective,

Than is our to-day and to-morrow.

52

Our time is like a sick woman--

Let her but shriek, rave, scold,

And break the tables and dishes!

54

Ye mount?

Is it true that ye mount,

Ye loftier men?

Are ye not, pray,

Like to a ball

Sped to the heights

By the lowest that's in you?

Do ye not flee from yourselves, O ye climbers?

55

All that you thought

You had to despise,

Where you only renounced!

56

All men repeat the refrain!

No, no, and thrice say No!

What's all this yap-yap talk of heaven?

We would not enter the kingdom of heaven,

The kingdom of earth shall be ours?

57

The will redeemeth,

He that has nothing to do

In a Nothing finds food for trouble.

58

You cannot endure it more,

Your tyrannous destiny,

Love it--you're given no choice!

59

These alone free us from woes

(Choose now I)

Sudden death

Or long-drawn-out love.

60

Of death we are sure,

So why not be merry?

61

The worst of pleas

I have hidden from you--that life grew tedious!

Throw it away, that ye find it again to your taste!

62

Lonely days,

Ye must walk on valorous feet!

63

Loneliness

Plants naught, it ripens....

And even then you must have the sun for your

friend.

64

Once more must ye plunge in the throng--In

the throng ye grow hard and smooth.

Solitude withers

And lastly destroys.--

65

When on the hermit comes the great fear;

When he runs and runs

And knows not whither;

When the storms roar behind

And the lightning bears witness against him,

And his cavern breeds spectres

And fills him with dread.

67

Throw thy pain in the depths,

Man, forget! Man, forget!

Divine is the art of forgetting!

Wouldst fly?

Wouldst feel at home in the heights?

Throw thy heaviest load in the sea!

Here is the sea, hurl thyself in the sea!

Divine is the art of forgetting!

69

Look forward, never look back!

We sink to the depths

If we peer ever into the depths.

70

Beware, beware

Of warning the reckless!

Thy warning will drive them

To leap into every abyss!

71

Why hurled he himself from the heights?

What led him astray?

His pity for all that is lowly led him astray,

And now he lies there, broken, useless, and cold.

72

Whither went he? Who knows?

We only know that he sank.

A star went out in the desolate void,

And lone was the void.

73

What we have not

But need,

We must take.

And so a good conscience I took.

74

Who is there that could bestow right upon thee?

So take thy right!

75

O ye waves,

Wondrous waves, are ye wroth with me?

Do ye raise me your crests in wrath?

With my rudder I smite

Your folly full square.

This bark ye yourselves

To immortal life will carry along.

77

When no new voice was heard,

Ye made from old words

A law:

When life grows stark, there shoots up the law.

78

What none can refute

Ye say must be true?

Oh, ye innocents!

79

Art thou strong?

Strong as an ass? Strong as God?

Art thou proud?

So proud as to flaunt

Unashamed thy conceit?

80

Beware,

And ne'er beat the drum

Of thy destiny I

Go out of the way

From all pom-pom of fame!

* * * *

Be not known too soon!

Be one that has hoarded renown!

81

Wilt thou grasp at the thorns?

Thy fingers must pay.

Grasp at a poniard.

85

Be a tablet of gold,

They will grave upon thee

In golden script.

86

Upright he stands

With more sense of "justice"

In his outermost toe

Than I have in all my head.

A virtue-monster

Mantled in white.

87

Already he mimics himself,

Already weary he grows,

Already he seeks the paths he has trod--

Who of late still loved all tracks untrodden!

Secretly burnt--

Not for his faith,

Rather because he had lost the heart

To find new faith.

88

Too long he sat in the cage,

That runaway!

Too long he dreaded

A gaoler!

Timorous now he goeth his ways,

All things make him to stumble--

The shadow e'en of a stick makes him to stumble.

89

Ye chambers smoky and musty,

Ye cages and narrow hearts,

How could your spirit be free?

90

Narrow souls!

Huckster-souls!

When money leaps into the box

The soul leaps into it too![2]

92

Are ye women,

That ye wish to suffer

From that which ye love?

99

They are cold, these men of learning!

Would that a lightning-flash might strike their food,

And their mouths could learn to eat fire!

101

Your false love

For the past,

A love for the graves of the dead,

Is a theft from life

That steals all the future.

* * * *

An antiquary

Is a craftsman of dead things,

Who lives among coffins and skeletons.

103

Only the poet who can lie

Wilfully, skilfully,

Can tell the truth.

104

Our chase after truth,

Is't a chase after happiness?

105

Truth

Is a woman, no better,

Cunning in her shame:

Of what she likes best

She will know naught,

And covers her face....

To what doth she yield

But to violence?

Violence she needs.

Be hard, ye sages!

Ye must compel her,

That shamefaced Truth....

For her happiness

She needs constraint--She

is a woman, no better.

106

We thought evil of each other?

We were too distant,

But now in this tiny hut,

Pinned to one destiny,

How could we still be foes?

We must needs love those

Whom we cannot escape.

107

Love thy foe,

Let the robber rob thee:

The woman hears and--does it.

110

A proud eye

With silken curtains,

Seldom clear,

Honours him that may see it unveiled.

111

Sluggard eyes

That seldom love--

But when they love, the levin flashes

As from shafts of gold

Where a dagger keeps guard at the treasure of love.

117

They are crabs, for whom I have no fellow-feeling.

Grasp them, they pinch you;

Leave them alone, and they walk backward.

119

Crooked go great rivers and men,

Crooked, but turned to their goal;

That is their highest courage,

They dreaded not crooked paths.

121

Wouldst catch them?

Then speak to them

As to stray sheep:

"Your path, your path

You have lost!"

They follow all

That flatter them so:

"What? had we a path?"

Each whispers the other:

"It really seems that we have a path."

[The numbering given corresponds to that of the original,

several fragments having been omitted.--TR.]

[Footnote 1: Nietzsche here alludes to Christian perfection, which he

considers equivalent to harmlessness.--TR.]

[Footnote 2: Alluding to the saying of the Dominican monk Tetzel,

who sold indulgences in the time of Luther: "When money

leaps into the box, the soul leaps from hell to heaven!"--TR.]

HYMN TO LIFE.

_For Chorus and Orchestra._

WORDS BY LOU SALOMÉ. MUSIC BY FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.

Trans. BY HERMAN SCHEFFAUER. Arr. for Piano BY ADRIAN COLLINS. M.A.

[Illustration: score and lyrics]