The Portable Nietzsche (23 page)

There is also another selfishness, an all-too-poor and hungry one that always wants to steal—the selfishness of the sick: sick selfishness. With the eyes of a thief it looks at everything splendid; with the greed of hunger it sizes up those who have much to eat; and always it sneaks around the table of those who give. Sickness speaks out of such craving and invisible degeneration; the thievish greed of this selfishness speaks of a diseased body.

Tell me, my brothers: what do we consider bad and worst of all? Is it not
degeneration
? And it is degeneration that we always infer where the gift-giving soul is lacking. Upward goes our way, from genus to overgenus. But we shudder at the degenerate sense which says, “Everything for me.” Upward flies our sense: thus it is a parable of our body, a parable of elevation. Parables of such elevations are the names of the virtues.

Thus the body goes through history, becoming and fighting. And the spirit—what is that to the body? The herald of its fights and victories, companion and echo.

All names of good and evil are parables: they do not define, they merely hint. A fool is he who wants knowledge of them!

Watch for every hour, my brothers, in which your spirit wants to speak in parables: there lies the origin of your virtue. There your body is elevated and resurrected; with its rapture it delights the spirit so that it turns creator and esteemer and lover and benefactor of all things.

When your heart flows broad and full like a river, a blessing and a danger to those living near: there is the origin of your virtue.

When you are above praise and blame, and your will wants to command all things, like a lover's will: there is the origin of your virtue.

When you despise the agreeable and the soft bed and cannot bed yourself far enough from the soft: there is the origin of your virtue.

When you will with a single will and you call this cessation of all need “necessity”: there is the origin of your virtue.

Verily, a new good and evil is she. Verily, a new deep murmur and the voice of a new well!

Power is she, this new virtue; a dominant thought is she, and around her a wise soul: a golden sun, and around it the serpent of knowledge.

Here Zarathustra fell silent for a while and looked lovingly at his disciples. Then he continued to speak thus, and the tone of his voice had changed:

Remain faithful to the earth, my brothers, with the power of your virtue. Let your gift-giving love and your knowledge serve the meaning of the earth. Thus I beg and beseech you. Do not let them fly away from earthly things and beat with their wings against eternal walls. Alas, there has always been so much virtue that has flown away. Lead back to the earth the virtue that flew away, as I do—back to the body, back to life, that it may give the earth a meaning, a human meaning.

In a hundred ways, thus far, have spirit as well as virtue flown away and made mistakes. Alas, all this delusion and all these mistakes still dwell in our body: they have there become body and will.

In a hundred ways, thus far, spirit as well as virtue has tried and erred. Indeed, an experiment was man. Alas, much ignorance and error have become body within us.

Not only the reason of millennia, but their madness too, breaks out in us. It is dangerous to be an heir. Still we fight step by step with the giant, accident; and over the whole of humanity there has ruled so far only nonsense—no sense.

Let your spirit and your virtue serve the sense of the earth, my brothers; and let the value of all things be posited newly by you. For that shall you be fighters! For that shall you be creators!

With knowledge, the body purifies itself; making experiments with knowledge, it elevates itself; in the lover of knowledge all instincts become holy; in the elevated, the soul becomes gay.

Physician, help yourself: thus you help your patient too. Let this be his best help that he may behold with his eyes the man who heals himself.

There are a thousand paths that have never yet been trodden—a thousand healths and hidden isles of life. Even now, man and man's earth are unexhausted and undiscovered.

Wake and listen, you that are lonely! From the future come winds with secret wing-beats; and good tidings are proclaimed to delicate ears. You that are lonely today, you that are withdrawing, you shall one day be the people: out of you, who have chosen yourselves, there shall grow a chosen people—and out of them, the overman. Verily, the earth shall yet become a site of recovery. And even now a new fragrance surrounds it, bringing salvation—and a new hope.

When Zarathustra had said these words he became silent, like one who has not yet said his last word; long he weighed his staff in his hand, doubtfully. At last he spoke thus, and the tone of his voice had changed.

Now I go alone, my disciples. You too go now, alone. Thus I want it. Verily, I counsel you: go away from me and resist Zarathustra! And even better: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he deceived you.

The man of knowledge must not only love his enemies, he must also be able to hate his friends.

One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil. And why do you not want to pluck at my wreath?

You revere me; but what if your reverence tumbles one day? Beware lest a statue slay you.

You say you believe in Zarathustra? But what matters Zarathustra? You are my believers—but what matter all believers? You had not yet sought yourselves: and you found me. Thus do all believers; therefore all faith amounts to so little.

Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you.

Verily, my brothers, with different eyes shall I then seek my lost ones; with a different love shall I then love you.

And once again you shall become my friends and the children of a single hope—and then shall I be with you the third time, that I may celebrate the great noon with you.

And that is the great noon when man stands in the middle of his way between beast and overman and celebrates his way to the evening as his highest hope: for it is the way to a new morning.

Then will he who goes under bless himself for being one who goes over and beyond; and the sun of his knowledge will stand at high noon for him.

‟Dead are all gods
:
now we want the overman to live”
—on that great noon, let this be our last will.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

1.
The Child with the Mirror:
Transition to Part Two with its partly new style: “A new speech comes to me. . . . My spirit no longer wants to walk on worn soles.”

2.
Upon the Blessed Isles
: The creative life versus belief in God: “God is a conjecture.” The polemic against the opening lines of the final chorus in Goethe's
Faust
is taken up again in the chapter “On Poets” (see comments, p. 193). But the lines immediately following in praise of impermanence and creation are thoroughly in the spirit of Goethe.

3. On
the Pitying
: A return to the style of Part One and a major statement of Nietzsche's ideas on pity,
ressentiment,
and repression.

4. On Priests: Relatively mild, compared to the portrait of the priest in
The Antichrist
five years later.

5.
On the Virtuous
: A typology of different conceptions of virtue, with vivisectional intent. Nietzsche denounces “the filth of the words: revenge, punishment, reward, retribution,” which he associates with Christianity; but also that rigorism for which “virtue is the spasm under the scourge” and those who “call it virtue when their vices grow lazy.” The pun on “I am just” is, in German:
wenn sie sagen: “ich bin gerecht,” so klingt es immer gleich wie: “ich bin gerächt!”

6.
On the Rabble
: The theme of Zarathustra's nausea is developed
ad nauseam
in later chapters.
La Nausée
—to speak in Sartre's terms—is one of his chief trials, and its eventual conquest is his greatest triumph. “I often grew weary of the spirit when I found that even the rabble had
esprit”
may help to account for some of Nietzsche's remarks elsewhere. Generally he celebrates the spirit—not in opposition to the body but as
mens sana in corpore sano.

7.
On the Tarantulas
: One of the central motifs of Nietzsche's philosophy is stated in italics: “that man be delivered from revenge.” In this chapter, the claim of human equality is criticized as an expression of the
ressentiment
of the subequal.

8.
On the
Famous Wise Men
: One cannot serve two masters: the people and the truth. The philosophers of the past have too often rationalized popular prejudices. But the service of truth is a passion and martyrdom, for “spirit is the life that itself cuts into life: with its agony it increases its own knowledge.” The song of songs on the spirit in this chapter may seem to contradict Nietzsche's insistence, in the chapter “On the Despisers of the Body,” that the spirit is a mere instrument. Both themes are central in Nietzsche's thought, and their apparent contradiction is partly due to the fact that both are stated metaphorically. For, in truth, Nietzsche denies any crude dualism of body and spirit as a popular prejudice. The life of the spirit and the life of the body are aspects of a single life. But up to a point the contradiction can also be resolved metaphorically: life uses the spirit against its present form to attain a higher perfection. Man's enhancement is inseparable from the spirit; but Nietzsche denounces the occasional efforts of the spirit to destroy life instead of pruning it.

9.
The Night Song
: “Light am I; ah, that I were night!”

10.
The Dancing Song
: Life and wisdom as jealous women.

11.
The Tomb Song
: “Invulnerable am I only in the heel.”

12. On
Self-Overcoming:
The first long discussion of the will to power marks, together with the chapters “On the Pitying” and “On the Tarantulas,” one of the high points of Part Two. Philosophically, however, it raises many difficulties. (See my
Nietzsche
, 6, III.)

13.
On Those Who Are Sublime:
The doctrine of self-overcoming is here guarded against misunderstandings: far from favoring austere heroics, Nietzsche praises humor (and practices it: witness the whole of
Zarathustra
, especially Part Four) and, no less, gracefulness and graciousness. The three sentences near the end, beginning “And there is nobody . . . ,” represent a wonderfully concise statement of much of his philosophy.

14.
On the Land of Education
: Against modern eclecticism and lack of style. “Rather would I be a day laborer in Hades . . .”: in the
Odyssey,
the shade of Achilles would rather be a day laborer on the smallest field than king of all the dead in Hades.
Zarathustra
abounds in similar allusions. “Everything deserves to perish,” for example, is an abbreviation of a dictum of Goethe's Mephistopheles.

15. On
Immaculate Perception
: Labored sexual imagery, already notable in “The Dancing Song,” keeps this critique of detachment from becoming incisive. Not arid but, judged by high standards, a mismatch of message and metaphor. Or put positively: something of a personal document. Therefore the German references to the sun as feminine have been retained in translation. “Loving and perishing
(Lieben und Untergehn
)” do not rhyme in German either.

16.
On
Scholars:
Nietzsche's, not Zarathustra's, autobiography.

17.
On Poets:
This chapter is full of allusions to the final chorus in Goethe's
Faust
, which might be translated thus:

18.
On Great Events:
How successful Nietzsche's attempts at narrative are is at least debatable. Here the story aistracts from his statement of his anti-political attitude. But the curious mixture of the solemn and frivolous, myth, epigram, and “bow-wow,” is of course entirely intentional. Even the similarity between the ghost's cry and the words of the white rabbit in
Alice in Wonderland
probably would not have dismayed Nietzsche in the least.

19.
The Soothsayer
: In the chapter “On the Adder's Bite” a brief parable introduces some of Zarathustra's finest sayings; but here the parable is offered for its own sake, and we feel closer to Rimbaud than to Proverbs. The soothsayer reappears in Part Four.

20.
On Redemption.
In the conception of inverse cripples and the remarks on revenge and punishment Zarathustra's moral pathos reappears to some extent; but the mood of the preceding chapter figures in his subsequent reflections, which lead up to, but stop short of, Nietzsche's notion of the eternal recurrence of the same events.

21.
On Human Prudence
: First: better to be deceived occasionally than always to watch out for deceivers. Second: vanity versus pride. Third: men today (1883) are too concerned about petty evil, but great things are possible only where great evil is harnessed.

22.
The Stillest Hour
. Zarathustra cannot yet get himself 10 proclaim the eternal recurrence and hence he must leave in order to “ripen.”