The Portable Nietzsche (42 page)

17.
The Awakening
: The titles of this and the following chapter might well be reversed; for it is this chapter that culminates in the ass festival, Niehrsche's version of the Black Mass. But “the awakening” here does not refer to the moment when an angry Moses holds his people accountable for their worship of the golden calf, but to the moment when “they have learned to laugh at themselves.” In this art, incidentally, none of the great philosophers excelled the author of Part Four of
Zarathustra.

8.
The Ass Festival:
Five of the participants try to justify themselves. The pope satirizes Catholicism (Luther was last made fun of at the end of the song in Chapter 16), while the conscientious in spirit develops a new theology —and suggests that Zarathustra himself is pretty close to being an ass.

19.
The Drunken Song
: Nietzsche's great hymn to joy invites comparison with Schiller's—minus Beethoven's music. That they use different German words is the smallest difference. Schiller writes:

Nietzsche wants the eternity of
this
life with all its agonies —and seeing that it flees, its eternal recurrence. As it is expressed in sections 9, 10, and 11, the conception of the eternal recurrence is certainly meaningful; but its formulation as a doctrine depended on Nietzsche's mistaken belief that science compels us to accept the hypothesis of the eternal recurrence of the same events at gigantic intervals. (See “On the Vision and the Riddle” and “The Convalescent,” both in Part Three, and, for a detailed discussion, my
Nietzsche,
11, II.)

20.
The Sign
: In “The Welcome,” Zarathustra repudiated the “higher men” in favor of “laughing lions.” Now a lion turns up and laughs, literally. And in place of the single dove in the New Testament, traditionally understood as a symbol of the Holy Ghost, we are presented with a whole flock. Both the lion and the doves were mentioned before (“On Old and New Tablets,” section 1) as the signs for which Zarathustra must wait, and now afford Nietzsche an opportunity to preserve his curious blend of myth, irony, and hymn to the very end.

And again months and years passed over Zarathustra's soul, and he did not heed them; but his hair turned white. One day when he sat on a stone before his cave and looked out—and one looks on the sea from there, across winding abysses—his animals walked about him thoughtfully and at last stood still before him.

“O Zarathustra,” they said, “are you perhaps looking out for your happiness?”

“What matters happiness?” he replied; “I have long ceased to be concerned with happiness; I am concerned with my work.”

“O Zarathustra,” the animals spoke again, “you say that as one having overmuch of the good. Do you not lie in a sky-blue lake of happiness?”

“You buffoons,” Zarathustra replied and smiled; “how well you chose your metaphor. But you also know that my happiness is heavy and not like a flowing wave of water: it presses me and will not leave me and acts like melted tar.”

Again the animals walked about him thoughtfully and then stood still before him. “O Zarathustra,” they said, “is that why you yourself are becoming ever yellower and darker, although your hair wants to look white and flaxen? You are in a dreadful mess!”

“What are you saying there, my animals?” Zarathustra said and laughed; “verily, I was abusive when I spoke of tar. What is happening to me, happens to every fruit when it grows ripe. It is the
honey
in my veins that makes my blood thicker and my soul calmer.”

“That is what it will be, Zarathustra,” the animals answered and nestled against him; “but do you not want to climb a high mountain today? The air is clear and one sees more of the world today than ever before.”

“Yes, my animals,” he replied, “your advice is excellent and quite after my own heart: I want to climb a high mountain today. But see to it that honey will be at hand there: yellow, white, good, ice-fresh, golden comb honey. For you should know that up there I want to offer the honey sacrifice.”

But when Zarathustra had reached the height he sent back the animals who had accompanied him, and he found himself alone. Then he laughed heartily, looked around, and spoke thus:

 

That I spoke of sacrifices and honey sacrifices was mere cunning and, verily, a useful folly. Up here I may speak more freely than before hermits' caves and hermits' domestic animals.

Why sacrifice? I squander what is given to me, I—a squanderer with a thousand hands; how could I call that sacrificing? And when I desired honey, I merely desired bait and sweet mucus and mucilage, which make even growling bears and queer, sullen, evil birds put out their tongues—the best bait, needed by hunters and fishermen. For if the world is like a dark jungle and a garden of delight for all wild hunters, it strikes me even more, and so I prefer to think of it, as an abysmal, rich sea—a sea full of colorful fish and crabs, which even gods might covet, that for their sakes they would wish to become fishermen and net-throwers: so rich is the world in queer things, great and small. Especially the human world, the human sea:
that
is where I now cast my golden fishing rod and say: Open up, you human abyss!

Open up and cast up to me your fish and glittering crabs! With my best bait I shall today bait the queerest human fish. My happiness itself I cast out far and wide, between sunrise, noon, and sunset, to see if many human fish might not learn to wriggle and wiggle from my happiness until, biting at my sharp hidden hooks, they must come up to
my
height—the most colorful abysmal groundlings, to the most sarcastic of all who fish for men. For
that
is what I am through and through: reeling, reeling in, raising up, raising, a raiser, cultivator, and disciplinarian, who once counseled himself, not for nothing: Become who you are!

Thus men may now come up to me; for I am still waiting for the sign that the time has come for my descent; I still do not myself go under, as I must do, under the eyes of men. That is why I wait here, cunning and mocking on high mountains, neither impatient nor patient, rather as one who has forgotten patience too, because his “passion” is over. For my destiny leaves me time; perhaps it has forgotten me. Or does it sit in the shade behind a big stone, catching flies? And verily, I like it for this, my eternal destiny: it does not hurry and press me, and it leaves me time for jests and sarcasm, so that I could climb this high mountain today to catch fish.

Has a man ever caught fish on high mountains? And even though what I want and do up here be folly, it is still better than if I became solemn down there from waiting, and green and yellow—a swaggering wrath-snorter from waiting, a holy, howling storm out of the mountains, an impatient one who shouts down into the valleys, “Listen or I shall whip you with the scourge of God!”

Not that I bear such angry men a grudge! They are good enough for my laughter. They must surely be impatient—these big noisy drums, which find their chance to speak today or never. I, however, and my destiny—we do not speak to the Today, nor do we speak to the Never; we have patience and time and overmuch time in which to speak. For one day it must yet come and may not pass. What must come one day and may not pass? Our great
Hazar:
that is, our great distant human kingdom, the Zarathustra kingdom of a thousand years. How distant may this “distant” be? What is that to me? But for all that, this is no less certain: with both feet I stand firmly on this ground, on eternal ground, on hard primeval rock, on this highest, hardest, primeval mountain range to which all winds come as to the “weathershed” and ask: where? and whence? and whither?

Laugh, laugh, my bright, wholesome sarcasm! From high mountains cast down your glittering mocking laughter! With your glitter bait me the most beautiful human fish! And whatever in all the seas belongs to me, my in-and-for-me in all things—
that
fish out for me, that bring up to me: for that I, the most sarcastic of all fishermen, am waiting.

Out, out, my fishing rod! Down, down, bait of my happiness! Drip your sweetest dew, honey of my heart! Bite, my fishing rod, into the belly of all black melancholy!

Out there, out there, my eye! Oh, how many seas surround me, what dawning human futures! And over me—what rose-red stillness! What unclouded silence!

The next day Zarathustra again sat on his stone before his cave, while the animals were roaming through the outside world to find new nourishment—also new honey, for Zarathustra had spent and squandered the old honey down to the last drop. But as he was sitting there, a stick in his hand, tracing his shadow on the ground, thinking—and verily, not about himself and his shadow—he was suddenly frightened, and he started: for beside his own shadow he saw another shadow. And as he looked around quickly and got up, behold, the soothsayer stood beside him—the same he had once feted at his table, the proclaimer of the great weariness who taught, “All is the same, nothing is worth while, the world is without meaning, knowledge strangles.” But his face had changed meanwhile; and when Zarathustra looked into his eyes, his heart was frightened again: so many ill tidings and ashen lightning bolts ran over this face.

The soothsayer, who had noticed what went on in Zarathustra's soul, wiped his hand over his face as if he wanted to wipe it away; and Zarathustra did likewise. And when both had thus silently composed and strengthened themselves, they shook hands as a sign that they wanted to recognize each other.

“Welcome,” said Zarathustra, “you soothsayer of the great weariness; not for nothing were you once my guest. Eat and drink with me again today, and forgive a cheerful old man for sitting at the table with you.”

“A cheerful old man?” the soothsayer replied, shaking his head; “but whatever you may be or want to be, Zarathustra, you shall not be up here much longer: soon your bark shall not be stranded any more.”

“But am I stranded?” Zarathustra asked, laughing.

“The waves around your mountain,” replied the soothsayer, “are climbing and climbing, the waves of great distress and melancholy; soon they will lift up your bark too, and carry you off.”

Zarathustra fell silent at that and was surprised.

“Do you not hear anything yet?” continued the soothsayer. “Does it not rush and roar up from the depth?”

Zarathustra remained silent and listened, and he heard a long, long cry, which the abysses threw to each other and handed on, for none wanted to keep it: so evil did it sound.

“You proclaimer of ill tidings,” Zarathustra said finally, “this is a cry of distress and the cry of a man; it might well come out of a black sea. But what is human distress to me? My final sin, which has been saved up for me—do you know what it is?”

“
Pity!
” answered the soothsayer from an overflowing heart, and he raised both hands. “O Zarathustra, I have come to seduce you to your final sin.”

And no sooner had these words been spoken than the cry resounded again, and longer and more anxious than before; also much closer now.

“Do you hear? Do you hear, O Zarathustra?” the soothsayer shouted. “The cry is for you. It calls you: Come, come, come! It is time! It is high time!”

Then Zarathustra remained silent, confused and shaken. At last he asked, as one hesitant in his own mind, “And who is it that calls me?”

“But you know that,” replied the soothsayer violently; “why do you conceal yourself? It is
the higher man
that cries for you!”

“The higher man?” cried Zarathustra, seized with horror. “What does he want? What does he want? The higher man! What does he want here?” And his skin was covered with perspiration.

The soothsayer, however, made no reply to Zarathustra's dread, but listened and listened toward the depth. But when there was silence for a long time, he turned his glance back and saw Zarathustra standing there trembling. “O Zarathustra,” he began in a sad tone of voice, “you are not standing there as one made giddy by his happiness: you had better dance lest you fall. But even if you would dance before me, leaping all your side-leaps, no one could say to me, ‘Behold, here dances the last gay man!' Anybody coming to this height, looking for
that
man, would come in vain: caves he would find, and caves behind caves, hiding-places for those addicted to hiding, but no mines of happiness or treasure rooms or new gold veins of happiness. Happiness—how should one find happiness among hermits and those buried like this? Must I still seek the last happiness on blessed isles and far away between forgotten seas? But all is the same, nothing is worth while, no seeking avails, nor are there any blessed isles any more.”

Thus sighed the soothsayer. At his last sigh, however, Zarathustra grew bright and sure again, like one emerging into the light out of a deep gorge. “No! No! Three times no!” he shouted with a strong voice and stroked his beard. “
That
I know better: there still are blessed isles. Be quiet about
that,
you sighing bag of sadness! Stop splashing about
that
, you raincloud in the morning! Do I not stand here even now, wet from your melancholy and drenched like a dog? Now I shake myself and run away from you to dry again; you must not be surprised at that. Do I strike you as discourteous? But this is
my
court. As for your higher man—well then, I shall look for him at once in those woods:
thence
came his cry. Perhaps an evil beast troubles him there. He is in
my
realm: there he shall not come to grief. And verily, there are many evil beasts around me.”