The Grave Song
“There is the island of graves, the silent one; there too are the graves of my youth. There I will carry an evergreen wreath of life.”
Resolving this in my heart, I traveled over the sea.—
O you visions and apparitions of my youth! O all you glances of love, you divine moments! How quickly you died for me! I remember you today as I remember my dead.
From you, my dearest dead, a sweet fragrance comes to me, a fragrance that loosens the heart and its tears. Truly, it shakes and loosens the heart of the lonely seafarer.
Still I am the richest and the most to be envied—I, the loneliest! For I had you, after all, and you have me still: say, for whom else have such rose apples fallen from the tree as for me?
Still I am the heir and the soil of your love, blooming in your memory with motley, wild-growing virtues, O you most beloved!
Ah, we were made to stay near one another, you sweet strange wonders; and you did not come to me and my desire like shy birds—no, as the trusting to the trusting one!
Yes, made for faithfulness, like me, and for tender eternities: must I now name you after your faithlessness, you divine glances and moments? No other name have I learned yet.
Truly, you died too quickly for me, you fugitives. Yet you did not flee me, nor did I flee you: we are innocent toward each other in our faithlessness.
To kill me, they strangled you, you songbirds of my hopes! Yes, at you, my dearest ones, malice always shot its arrows—to hit my heart!
And it hit! For you were always what lay closest to my heart, my possession and my being possessed: that is why you had to die young and all too early!
At the most vulnerable thing I possessed they shot the arrow: that was you, whose skin is like down, and still more like the smile that dies at a glance!
But this word I will speak to my enemies: what is all murder of human beings compared with what you have done to me!
Something more evil you have done to me than all murder of human beings; something irretrievable you have taken from me:—thus I speak to you, my enemies!
For you murdered the visions and dearest wonders of my youth! My playmates you took from me, the blissful spirits! To their memory I lay down this wreath and this curse.
This curse upon you, my enemies! For you made my eternal short, as a tone breaks off in the cold night! Barely as the flash of divine eyes did it come to me—as the blink of an eye!
Thus my purity once spoke in a good hour: “All beings shall be divine to me.”
Then you fell upon me with filthy ghosts; ah, where has that good hour fled now!
“All days shall be holy to me”—thus the wisdom of my youth once spoke: truly, the speech of a joyful wisdom!
But then you enemies stole my nights from me and sold them into sleepless torment: ah, where has that joyful wisdom fled now?
Once I craved happy omens from the birds: then you led an owl-monster across my path, a repulsive one. Ah, where did my tender craving flee then?
Once I vowed to renounce all disgust: then you transformed those near and nearest to me into boils full of pus. Ah, where did my noblest vow flee then?
As a blind man I once walked blissful ways: then you threw filth on the blind man’s way: and now he was disgusted by the old footpath of the blind.
And when I did my hardest and celebrated the victory of my overcomings: then you made those who loved me cry out that I was hurting them most.
Truly, that was always your doing: you embittered my best honey for me, and the industry of my best bees.
To my charity you always sent the most insolent beggars; around my pity you always crowded the incurably shameless. Thus you wounded my virtue in its faith.
And whenever I laid down my holiest as a sacrifice, at once your “piety” set its fatter offerings beside it: so that in the fumes of your fat even my holiest was suffocated.
And once I wanted to dance as I had never yet danced: away over all heavens I wanted to dance. Then you won over my dearest singer.
And now he struck up a gruesome, dull tune; ah, he tooted it in my ears like a gloomy horn!
Murderous singer, instrument of malice, most innocent one! I already stood ready for the best dance: then with your tones you murdered my rapture!
Only in the dance do I know how to speak the parable of the highest things:—and now my highest parable remained unspoken in my limbs!
Unspoken and unredeemed my highest hope remained! And all the visions and consolations of my youth died!
How did I ever bear it? How did I get over and overcome such wounds? How did my soul rise again out of these graves?
Yes, something invulnerable, unburiable is in me, something that bursts rocks: it is called my will. Silently it strides, and unchanged, through the years.
It wants to walk its course on my feet, my old will; hard of heart is its mind, and invulnerable.
Invulnerable am I only in my heel. You still live there and are unchanged, most patient one! You have always broken through all graves!
In you lives on too what was unredeemed in my youth; and as life and youth you sit here hoping on yellow ruins of graves.
Yes, you are still the shatterer of all graves for me: hail to you, my will! And only where there are graves are there resurrections.—
Thus sang Zarathustra.—