On the Land of Culture

Too far into the future I flew: a horror came over me.

And when I looked around me, behold! time was my only contemporary.

Then I fled back, homeward—and ever faster: so I came to you, you people of today, and into the land of culture.

For the first time I brought an eye along for you, and good desire: truly, with longing in my heart I came.

But what happened to me? Frightened as I was—I had to laugh! Never had my eye seen anything so motley-speckled!

I laughed and laughed, while my foot was still trembling and my heart as well: “Why, here is the home of all the paint pots!”—I said.

Painted with fifty blotches on face and limbs: thus you sat there to my astonishment, you people of today!

And with fifty mirrors around you, which flattered your play of colors and repeated it!

Truly, you could wear no better mask, you people of today, than your own face! Who could—recognize you!

Written all over with the signs of the past, and these signs too painted over with new signs: thus you have hidden yourselves well from all interpreters of signs!

And even if one is a tester of kidneys: who would still believe that you have kidneys! You seem to be baked out of colors and out of glued-together scraps of paper.

All ages and peoples look out motley from your veils; all customs and faiths speak motley from your gestures.

Whoever took away from you your veils and wraps and colors and gestures would keep just enough left over to scare the birds with.

Truly, I myself am the frightened bird that once saw you naked and without color; and I flew away when the skeleton beckoned to me with love.

I would rather be a day laborer in the underworld, among the shades of the past!—fatter and fuller than you, after all, are even the people of the underworld!

This, yes, this is bitterness to my bowels, that I can bear you neither naked nor clothed, you people of today!

All that is uncanny in the future, and whatever ever made stray birds shudder, is truly homelier still and cozier than your “reality.”

For thus you speak: “Real we are, entirely, and without faith and superstition”: thus you puff out your chests—ah, even without chests!

Yes, how should you be able to believe, you motley-speckled ones!—you who are paintings of everything that was ever believed!

Walking refutations of faith itself you are, and the breaking of the limbs of all thoughts. Unbelievable ones: that is what I call you, you real ones!

All ages babble against one another in your spirits; and the dreams and babble of all ages were more real still than your waking is!

Barren you are: that is why you lack faith. But whoever had to create always had his truth-dreams and star-signs as well—and believed in believing!—

Half-open gates you are, at which gravediggers wait. And this is your reality: “Everything deserves to perish.”

Ah, how you stand before me, you barren ones, how lean in the ribs! And many a one of you, I suppose, has seen this for himself.

And he said: “Can it be that a god secretly took something from me while I slept? Truly, enough to make himself a little female from it!

“Wondrous is the poverty of my ribs!” thus many a one of today has spoken.

Yes, you make me laugh, you people of today! And especially when you wonder at yourselves!

And woe to me if I could not laugh at your wondering and had to drink down everything repulsive from your bowls!

But as it is, I will take you more lightly, since I have something heavy to carry; and what is it to me if beetles and winged worms settle on my bundle too!

Truly, it shall not grow heavier for me on that account! And not from you, you people of today, shall the great weariness come to me.—Ah, where shall I climb now with my longing! From all mountains I look out for fatherlands and motherlands.

But home I found nowhere: restless am I in all cities, and a departure at all gates.

Strange to me and a mockery are the people of today, to whom my heart lately drove me; and I am driven out of fatherlands and motherlands.

So I love only my children’s land now, the undiscovered one, in the farthest sea: I bid my sails seek and seek for it.

In my children I want to make up for being the child of my fathers: and to all the future—for this present!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.