Before Sunrise

O sky above me, you pure one! You deep one! You abyss of light! Gazing at you I shudder with godlike desires.

To throw myself into your height—that is my depth! To hide myself in your purity—that is my innocence!

The god is veiled by his beauty: so you hide your stars. You do not speak: thus you proclaim your wisdom to me.

Mute over the roaring sea you have risen for me today; your love and your shame speak revelation to my roaring soul.

That you came to me beautiful, veiled in your beauty, that you speak to me mutely, manifest in your wisdom:

Oh, how should I not guess everything that is bashful in your soul! Before the sun you came to me, the loneliest one.

We are friends from the beginning: grief and dread and ground we have in common; even the sun we have in common.

We do not speak to each other, because we know too much—: we are silent to each other, we smile our knowledge to each other.

Are you not the light to my fire? Do you not have the sister soul to my insight?

Together we learned everything; together we learned to climb above ourselves to ourselves and to smile cloudlessly:—

—to smile cloudlessly down from bright eyes and from miles away, when beneath us compulsion and purpose and guilt steam like rain.

And when I wandered alone: for what did my soul hunger in nights and on wrong paths? And when I climbed mountains, whom did I ever seek on mountains, if not you?

And all my wandering and mountain climbing: it was only a necessity and a makeshift of the helpless:—to fly is all my whole will wants, to fly into you!

And whom did I hate more than drifting clouds and everything that stains you? And I hated even my own hatred, because it stained you!

I bear a grudge against the drifting clouds, these sneaking cats of prey: they take from you and me what we have in common—the tremendous, unbounded saying of Yes and Amen.

We bear a grudge against these mediators and mixers, the drifting clouds: these half-and-halfs, who have learned neither to bless nor to curse from the ground up.

I would rather sit in a barrel under a closed sky, rather sit in the abyss without a sky, than see you, sky of light, stained with drifting clouds!

And often I have longed to pin them fast with jagged golden wires of lightning, so that, like the thunder, I might beat the kettledrum on their kettle-bellies:—

—an angry kettledrummer, because they rob me of your Yes! and Amen!, you sky above me, you pure one! You bright one! You abyss of light!—because they rob you of my Yes! and Amen!

For I would rather have noise and thunder and storm-curses than this deliberate, doubting cat-calm; and among human beings too I hate most of all the soft-steppers and half-and-halfs and doubting, hesitating drifting clouds.

And “whoever cannot bless shall learn to curse!”—this bright teaching fell to me from a bright sky; this star still stands in my sky even in black nights.

But I am one who blesses and a Yes-sayer, if only you are around me, you pure one! You bright one! You abyss of light!—into all abysses I carry my blessing, my saying of Yes, even then.

I have become one who blesses and one who says Yes: and for that I wrestled long and was a wrestler, so that one day I might get my hands free for blessing.

But this is my blessing: to stand over each and every thing as its own sky, as its round roof, its azure bell and eternal security: and blessed is he who blesses thus!

For all things are baptized at the well of eternity and beyond good and evil; but good and evil themselves are only intervening shadows and damp afflictions and drifting clouds.

Truly, it is a blessing and not a blasphemy when I teach: “Over all things stands the sky Chance, the sky Innocence, the sky Accident, the sky High Spirits.”

“By accident”—that is the oldest nobility in the world; I gave it back to all things, I redeemed them from their bondage under purpose.

This freedom and sky-cheerfulness I set like an azure bell over all things when I taught that over them and through them no “eternal will”—wills.

This high spirit and this folly I put in the place of that will when I taught: “In everything one thing is impossible—rationality!”

A little reason, to be sure, a seed of wisdom scattered from star to star—this leaven is mixed into all things: for the sake of folly, wisdom is mixed into all things!

A little wisdom is possible, to be sure; but this blissful certainty I found in all things: that they would rather—dance on the feet of chance.

O sky above me, you pure one! You lofty one! This is what your purity is to me now, that there is no eternal reason-spider and no reason-spider’s web:—

—that you are to me a dance floor for godlike chances, that you are to me a gods’ table for godlike dice and dice players!—

But you blush? Did I speak the unspeakable? Did I blaspheme when I meant to bless you?

Or is it the shame of being two that made you blush?—Do you bid me go and be silent because now—the day is coming?

The world is deep—: and deeper than the day has ever conceived. Not everything may have words before the day. But the day is coming: so let us part now!

O sky above me, you bashful one! You glowing one! O you my happiness before sunrise! The day is coming: so let us part now!—

Thus spoke Zarathustra.