Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche [top fiction books of all time .TXT] 📗

alarming than before⁠—also much nearer. “Hearest thou? Hearest thou, O Zarathustra?” called out the soothsayer, “the cry concerneth thee, it calleth thee: Come, come, come; it is time, it is the highest time!”⁠—

Zarathustra was silent thereupon, confused and staggered; at last he asked, like one who hesitateth in himself: “And who is it that there calleth me?”

“But thou knowest it, certainly,” answered the soothsayer warmly, “why dost thou conceal thyself? It is the higher man that crieth for thee!”

“The higher man?” cried Zarathustra, horror-stricken: “what wanteth he? What wanteth he? The higher man! What wanteth he here?”⁠—and his skin covered with perspiration.

The soothsayer, however, did not heed Zarathustra’s alarm, but listened and listened in the downward direction. When, however, it had been still there for a long while, he looked behind, and saw Zarathustra standing trembling.

“O Zarathustra,” he began, with sorrowful voice, “thou dost not stand there like one whose happiness maketh him giddy: thou wilt have to dance lest thou tumble down!

“But although thou shouldst dance before me, and leap all thy side-leaps, no one may say unto me: ‘Behold, here danceth the last joyous man!’

“In vain would anyone come to this height who sought him here: caves would he find, indeed, and back-caves, hiding-places for hidden ones; but not lucky mines, nor treasure-chambers, nor new gold-veins of happiness.

“Happiness⁠—how indeed could one find happiness among such buried-alive and solitary ones! Must I yet seek the last happiness on the Happy Isles, and far away among forgotten seas?

“But all is alike, nothing is worth while, no seeking is of service, there are no longer any Happy Isles!”⁠⸺

Thus sighed the soothsayer; with his last sigh, however, Zarathustra again became serene and assured, like one who hath come out of a deep chasm into the light. “Nay! Nay! Three times Nay!” exclaimed he with a strong voice, and stroked his beard⁠—“that do I know better! There are still Happy Isles! Silence thereon, thou sighing sorrow-sack!

“Cease to splash thereon, thou rain-cloud of the forenoon! Do I not already stand here wet with thy misery, and drenched like a dog?

“Now do I shake myself and run away from thee, that I may again become dry: thereat mayest thou not wonder! Do I seem to thee discourteous? Here however is my court.

“But as regards the higher man: well! I shall seek him at once in those forests: from thence came his cry. Perhaps he is there hard beset by an evil beast.

“He is in my domain: therein shall he receive no scath! And verily, there are many evil beasts about me.”⁠—

With those words Zarathustra turned around to depart. Then said the soothsayer: “O Zarathustra, thou art a rogue!

“I know it well: thou wouldst fain be rid of me! Rather wouldst thou run into the forest and lay snares for evil beasts!

“But what good will it do thee? In the evening wilt thou have me again: in thine own cave will I sit, patient and heavy like a block⁠—and wait for thee!”

“So be it!” shouted back Zarathustra, as he went away: “and what is mine in my cave belongeth also unto thee, my guest!

“Shouldst thou however find honey therein, well! just lick it up, thou growling bear, and sweeten thy soul! For in the evening we want both to be in good spirits;

“⁠—In good spirits and joyful, because this day hath come to an end! And thou thyself shalt dance to my lays, as my dancing-bear.

“Thou dost not believe this? Thou shakest thy head? Well! Cheer up, old bear! But I also⁠—am a soothsayer.”

Thus spake Zarathustra.

LXIII Talk with the Kings I

Ere Zarathustra had been an hour on his way in the mountains and forests, he saw all at once a strange procession. Right on the path which he was about to descend came two kings walking, bedecked with crowns and purple girdles, and variegated like flamingoes: they drove before them a laden ass. “What do these kings want in my domain?” said Zarathustra in astonishment to his heart, and hid himself hastily behind a thicket. When however the kings approached to him, he said half-aloud, like one speaking only to himself: “Strange! Strange! How doth this harmonise? Two kings do I see⁠—and only one ass!”

Thereupon the two kings made a halt; they smiled and looked towards the spot whence the voice proceeded, and afterwards looked into each other’s faces. “Such things do we also think among ourselves,” said the king on the right, “but we do not utter them.”

The king on the left, however, shrugged his shoulders and answered: “That may perhaps be a goatherd. Or an anchorite who hath lived too long among rocks and trees. For no society at all spoileth also good manners.”

“Good manners?” replied angrily and bitterly the other king: “what then do we run out of the way of? Is it not ‘good manners’? Our ‘good society’?

“Better, verily, to live among anchorites and goatherds, than with our gilded, false, over-rouged populace⁠—though it call itself ‘good society.’

“⁠—Though it call itself ‘nobility.’ But there all is false and foul, above all the blood⁠—thanks to old evil diseases and worse curers.

“The best and dearest to me at present is still a sound peasant, coarse, artful, obstinate and enduring: that is at present the noblest type.

“The peasant is at present the best; and the peasant type should be master! But it is the kingdom of the populace⁠—I no longer allow anything to be imposed upon me. The populace, however⁠—that meaneth, hodgepodge.

“Populace-hodgepodge: therein is everything mixed with everything, saint and swindler, gentleman and Jew, and every beast out of Noah’s ark.

“Good manners! Everything is false and foul with us. No one knoweth any longer how to reverence: it is that precisely that we run away from. They are fulsome obtrusive dogs; they gild palm-leaves.

“This loathing choketh me, that we kings ourselves have become false, draped and disguised with the old faded pomp of our ancestors, showpieces for the stupidest, the craftiest, and whosoever at present trafficketh for power.

“We are