On the Vision and the Riddle

1

When word got around among the sailors that Zarathustra was on the ship—for a man from the blissful islands had come aboard along with him—there arose great curiosity and expectation. But Zarathustra kept silent for two days and was cold and deaf with sadness, so that he answered neither glances nor questions. But on the evening of the second day he opened his ears again, though he still kept silent: for there was much that was strange and dangerous to listen to on this ship, which came from far away and meant to go farther still. And Zarathustra was a friend of all those who make long journeys and do not care to live without danger. And behold! at last, as he listened, his own tongue was loosened, and the ice of his heart broke:—then he began to speak thus:

To you, the bold seekers and searchers, and whoever has ever set out with cunning sails upon terrible seas—

to you, the riddle-drunk, the twilight-glad, whose souls are lured with flutes to every treacherous gorge:

—for you do not want to grope along a thread with cowardly hand; and where you can guess, there you hate to deduce—

to you alone I tell the riddle that I saw—the vision of the loneliest one.—

Gloomily I walked not long ago through the corpse-colored dusk—gloomy and hard, with pressed lips. Not only one sun had gone under for me.

A path that climbed defiantly through scree, a malicious, lonely path that no herb, no bush cheered any longer: a mountain path crunched under the defiance of my foot.

Striding mutely over the mocking clatter of pebbles, crushing the stone that made it slip: thus my foot forced its way upward.

Upward:—in defiance of the spirit that drew it downward, drew it toward the abyss, the Spirit of Gravity, my devil and archenemy.

Upward:—although he sat on me, half dwarf, half mole; lame; laming; dripping lead through my ear, leaden-drop thoughts into my brain.

“O Zarathustra,” he whispered mockingly, “syllable by syllable, you stone of wisdom! You threw yourself high, but every stone that is thrown must—fall!

“O Zarathustra, you stone of wisdom, you sling-stone, you star-shatterer! Yourself you threw so high—but every stone that is thrown—must fall!

“Condemned to yourself and to your own stoning: O Zarathustra, far indeed did you throw the stone—but upon you it will fall back!”

Then the dwarf fell silent; and that lasted a long time. But his silence oppressed me; and to be two in such a way is, truly, lonelier than to be one!

I climbed, I climbed, I dreamed, I thought—but everything oppressed me. I was like a sick man whom his bad torment makes weary, and whom a worse dream wakes again just as he falls asleep.—

But there is something in me that I call courage: until now it has struck dead every discouragement in me. This courage at last bade me stand still and say: “Dwarf! You! Or I!”—

For courage is the best slayer—courage that attacks: for in every attack there is a sound of trumpets and drums.

But the human being is the most courageous animal: with that he has overcome every animal. With trumpets and drums he has overcome even every pain; but human pain is the deepest pain.

Courage also strikes dead the dizziness at abysses: and where does the human being not stand at abysses! Is seeing itself not—seeing abysses?

Courage is the best slayer: courage strikes dead even pity. But pity is the deepest abyss: as deeply as the human being looks into life, so deeply does he look into suffering.

But courage is the best slayer, courage that attacks: it strikes dead even death, for it says: “Was that life? Well then! Once more!”

But in such a saying there is much sound of trumpets and drums. Whoever has ears, let him hear.—

2

“Stop! Dwarf!” I said. “I! Or you! But I am the stronger of us two—: you do not know my abysmal thought! That thought—you could not bear!”—

Then something happened that made me lighter: for the dwarf jumped down from my shoulder, the curious creature! And he squatted on a stone in front of me. But just where we had stopped there was a gateway.

“Look at this gateway! Dwarf!” I went on: “it has two faces. Two paths come together here: no one has ever yet walked them to the end.

“This long lane back: it lasts an eternity. And that long lane out there—that is another eternity.

“They contradict each other, these paths; they run head-on into each other:—and here, at this gateway, is where they come together. The name of the gateway is written above it: ‘Moment.’

“But whoever walked on along one of them—on and on, farther and farther: do you believe, dwarf, that these paths contradict each other eternally?”—

“Everything straight lies,” the dwarf murmured contemptuously. “All truth is crooked, time itself is a circle.”

“You Spirit of Gravity!” I said angrily, “do not make it too easy for yourself! Or I will leave you squatting where you squat, lamefoot—and I carried you high!

“Look,” I went on, “at this moment! From this gateway, Moment, a long eternal lane runs backward: behind us lies an eternity.

“Must not whatever of all things can walk have walked this lane once already? Must not whatever of all things can happen have happened, been done, run past once already?

“And if everything has already been here: what do you think, dwarf, of this moment? Must not this gateway too have—been here already?

“And are not all things knotted together so firmly that this moment draws all coming things after it? Therefore—itself as well?

“For whatever of all things can walk: out along this long lane too—it must walk once more!—

“And this slow spider that crawls in the moonlight, and this moonlight itself, and I and you in the gateway, whispering together, whispering of eternal things—must we not all have been here already?

“—and come back and walk in that other lane, out there, before us, in this long, dreadful lane—must we not come back eternally?—”

Thus I spoke, and ever more softly: for I was afraid of my own thoughts and the thoughts behind them. Then, suddenly, I heard a dog howl nearby.

Did I ever hear a dog howl like that? My thoughts ran back. Yes! When I was a child, in my most distant childhood:

—then I heard a dog howl like that. And I saw it too, bristling, its head raised, trembling, in the stillest midnight, when even dogs believe in ghosts:

—so that I felt pity for it. For just then the full moon, silent as death, was passing over the house, just then it stood still, a round glow—still on the flat roof, as if on someone else’s property:—

that was what terrified the dog back then: for dogs believe in thieves and ghosts. And when I heard such howling again, I felt pity once more.

Where was the dwarf now? And the gateway? And the spider? And all the whispering? Was I dreaming, then? Was I waking up? All at once I stood among wild cliffs, alone, desolate, in the most desolate moonlight.

But there lay a human being! And there! The dog, leaping, bristling, whimpering—now it saw me coming—then it howled again, then it screamed:—did I ever hear a dog scream so for help?

And, truly, what I saw, I never saw the like of. I saw a young shepherd, writhing, choking, twitching, his face distorted, and a heavy black snake was hanging out of his mouth.

Did I ever see so much disgust and pale horror on one face? He had been asleep, perhaps? Then the snake crawled into his throat—and there it bit fast.

My hand tore at the snake and tore:—in vain! it did not tear the snake out of his throat. Then it cried out of me: “Bite! Bite!

“Its head off! Bite!”—so it cried out of me, my horror, my hatred, my disgust, my pity, all my good and my bad cried out of me with one cry.—

You bold ones around me! You seekers, searchers, and whoever of you has set out with cunning sails upon unexplored seas! You riddle-glad!

Then guess the riddle for me that I beheld back then, then interpret for me the vision of the loneliest one!

For it was a vision and a foreseeing:—what did I see back then in parable? And who is it that must one day still come?

Who is the shepherd into whose throat the snake crawled thus? Who is the human being into whose throat everything heaviest, blackest will crawl thus?

—But the shepherd bit, as my cry had counseled him; he bit with a good bite! Far away he spat the snake’s head—: and sprang up.—

No longer shepherd, no longer human—one transformed, surrounded with light, who laughed! Never yet on earth has a human being laughed as he laughed!

O my brothers, I heard a laughter that was no human being’s laughter—and now a thirst gnaws at me, a longing that never grows still.

My longing for this laughter gnaws at me: oh, how do I bear to go on living! And how would I bear to die now!—

Thus spoke Zarathustra.