Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and No One by Friedrich Nietzsche & R. J. Hollingdale

Author:Friedrich Nietzsche & R. J. Hollingdale
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780140441185
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 1972-03-15T07:00:00+00:00

I am a wanderer and a mountain-climber (he said to his heart), I do not like the plains and it seems I cannot sit still for long.

And whatever may yet come to me as fate and experience – a wandering and a mountain-climbing will be in it: in the final analysis one experiences only oneself.

The time has passed when accidents could befall me; and what could still come to me that was not already my own?

It is returning, at last it is coming home to me – my own Self and those parts of it that have long been abroad and scattered among all things and accidents.

And I know one thing more: I stand now before my last summit and before the deed that has been deferred the longest. Alas, I have to climb my most difficult path! Alas, I have started upon my loneliest wandering!

But a man of my sort does not avoid such an hour: the hour that says to him: ‘Only now do you tread your path of greatness! Summit and abyss – they are now united in one!

‘You are treading your path of greatness: now what was formerly your ultimate danger has become your ultimate refuge!

‘You are treading your path of greatness: now it must call up all your courage that there is no longer a path behind you!

‘You are treading your path of greatness: no one shall steal after you here! Your foot itself has extinguished the path behind you, and above that path stands written: Impossibility.

‘And when all footholds disappear, you must know how to climb upon your own head: how could you climb upward otherwise?

‘Upon your own head and beyond your own heart! Now the gentlest part of you must become the hardest.

‘He who has always been very indulgent with himself sickens at last through his own indulgence. All praise to what makes hard! I do not praise the land where butter and honey – flow!

‘In order to see much one must learn to look away from oneself – every mountain-climber needs this hardness.

‘But he who, seeking enlightenment, is over-eager with his eyes, how could he see more of a thing than its foreground!

‘You, however, O Zarathustra, have wanted to behold the ground of things and their background:24 so you must climb above yourself – up and beyond, until you have even your stars under you!’

Yes! To look down upon myself and even upon my stars: that alone would I call my summit, that has remained for me as my ultimate summit!

Thus spoke Zarathustra to himself as he climbed, consoling his heart with hard sayings: for his heart was wounded as never before. And when he arrived at the top of the mountain ridge, behold, there lay the other sea spread out before him: and he stood and was long silent. But the night at this height was cold and dear and bright with stars.

I know my fate (he said at last with sadness). Well then! I am ready. My last solitude has just begun.

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