The Convalescent

1

One morning, not long after his return to his cave, Zarathustra leaped up from his bed like a madman, cried out in a terrible voice, and behaved as though someone else were still lying on the bed who would not get up from it; and Zarathustra’s voice rang out so that his animals came running in alarm, and from all the caves and hiding places that neighbored Zarathustra’s cave all the creatures scurried away—flying, fluttering, crawling, leaping, according to the kind of foot and wing each had been given. But Zarathustra spoke these words:

Up, abysmal thought, out of my depth! I am your rooster and morning dawn, sleepy worm: up! up! My voice shall crow you awake yet!

Unfasten the fetters of your ears: listen! For I want to hear you! Up! Up! Here is thunder enough to make even graves learn to listen!

And wipe the sleep and all that is dull and blind out of your eyes! Hear me with your eyes too: my voice is a remedy even for those born blind.

And once you are awake, you shall stay awake for me eternally. It is not my way to wake great-grandmothers from their sleep only to bid them—go on sleeping!

You stir, stretch, rattle in your throat? Up! Up! Not rattle—you shall speak to me! Zarathustra the godless calls you!

I, Zarathustra, the advocate of life, the advocate of suffering, the advocate of the circle—I call you, my most abysmal thought!

Hail to me! You are coming—I hear you! My abyss speaks, I have turned my last depth inside out into the light!

Hail to me! Come here! Give me your hand—ha! let go! Haha!—Disgust, disgust, disgust—woe is me!

2

But scarcely had Zarathustra spoken these words when he fell down like a dead man and remained like a dead man for a long time. But when he came to himself again, he was pale and trembled and stayed lying down and for a long time would neither eat nor drink. This state lasted with him for seven days; but his animals did not leave him by day or night, except that the eagle flew out to fetch food. And whatever he fetched and robbed together he laid on Zarathustra’s bed: so that at last Zarathustra lay among yellow and red berries, grapes, rose apples, fragrant herbs, and pine cones. But at his feet two lambs were spread out, which the eagle had with difficulty robbed from their shepherds.

At last, after seven days, Zarathustra sat up on his bed, took a rose apple in his hand, smelled it, and found its smell lovely. Then his animals thought the time had come to speak with him.

“O Zarathustra,” they said, “now you have been lying like this for seven days, with heavy eyes: will you not at last stand on your feet again?

“Step out of your cave: the world is waiting for you like a garden. The wind is playing with heavy fragrances that want to come to you; and all the brooks would like to run after you.

“All things are longing for you, since you have stayed alone for seven days—step out of your cave! All things want to be your physicians!

“Has some new knowledge come to you, perhaps, a sour, heavy knowledge? Like leavened dough you lay there; your soul rose and swelled over all its edges.”—

—O my animals, answered Zarathustra, go on chattering like this and let me listen! It refreshes me so to hear you chatter: where there is chatter, the world already lies before me like a garden.

How lovely it is that there are words and sounds: are not words and sounds rainbows and illusory bridges between things eternally apart?

To each soul belongs another world; for each soul every other soul is an afterworld.

It is precisely between the most similar things that illusion lies most beautifully; for the smallest gap is the hardest to bridge.

For me—how could there be an outside-of-me? There is no outside! But we forget that with all sounds; how lovely it is that we forget!

Have not names and sounds been given to things so that the human being may refresh himself with things? It is a beautiful folly, speaking: with it the human being dances over all things.

How lovely is all speech and all the lying of sounds! With sounds our love dances on many-colored rainbows.—

—“O Zarathustra,” the animals said then, “to those who think as we do, all things themselves dance: they come and give one another their hands and laugh and flee—and come back.

“Everything goes, everything comes back; eternally rolls the wheel of being. Everything dies, everything blossoms again, eternally runs the year of being.

“Everything breaks, everything is joined anew; eternally the same house of being builds itself. Everything parts, everything greets itself again; eternally the ring of being stays true to itself.

“In every Now being begins; around every Here rolls the sphere There. The center is everywhere. Crooked is the path of eternity.”—

—O you jesters and barrel organs! answered Zarathustra, and smiled again, how well you know what had to be fulfilled in seven days:—

—and how that monster crawled into my throat and choked me! But I bit its head off and spat it away from me.

And you—you have already made a hurdy-gurdy song of it? But now I lie here, still weary from this biting and spitting away, still sick from my own redemption.

And you looked on at all of it? O my animals, are you cruel too? Did you want to watch my great pain, as human beings do? For the human being is the cruelest animal.

At tragedies, bullfights, and crucifixions he has felt best on earth until now; and when he invented hell for himself, behold, that was his heaven on earth.

When the great human being cries out—: quickly the small one comes running; and his tongue hangs out of his throat with lust. But he calls it his “pity.”

The small human being, especially the poet—how eagerly he accuses life in words! Listen to him, but do not fail to hear the joy that is in all accusing!

Such accusers of life: life overcomes them with a blink of the eye. “You love me?” says the impudent one. “Wait a little longer, I have no time for you yet.”

The human being is the cruelest animal toward himself; and in all who call themselves “sinners” and “cross-bearers” and “penitents,” do not fail to hear the lust that is in this lamenting and accusing!

And I myself—do I want to be the human being’s accuser with this? Ah, my animals, this alone have I learned so far, that the human being needs what is most evil in him for what is best in him—

—that everything most evil is his best power and the hardest stone for the highest creator; and that the human being must become better and more evil:—

It was not to this stake of torment that I was fastened, knowing: the human being is evil—but I cried as no one has yet cried:

“Ah, that his most evil is so very small! Ah, that his best is so very small!”

The great surfeit of the human being—it choked me and had crawled into my throat: and what the soothsayer foretold: “All is the same, nothing is worth it, knowledge chokes.”

A long twilight limped before me, a sadness weary unto death, drunk with death, which spoke with a yawning mouth.

“Eternally he returns, the human being of whom you are weary, the small human being”—so my sadness yawned and dragged its foot and could not fall asleep.

The human earth turned into a cave for me, its chest sank in, everything living became to me human mold and bones and crumbling past.

My sighing sat on all human graves and could no longer get up; my sighing and questioning croaked and choked and gnawed and lamented by day and night:

—“Ah, the human being returns eternally! The small human being returns eternally!”—

Naked I had once seen both, the greatest human being and the smallest human being: all too like each other—all too human even the greatest!

All too small the greatest!—That was my surfeit of the human being! And eternal return even of the smallest!—That was my surfeit of all existence!

Ah, disgust! Disgust! Disgust!—Thus spoke Zarathustra, and sighed and shuddered; for he remembered his sickness. But then his animals would not let him speak further.

“Speak no further, you convalescent!” his animals answered him. “Instead go out, where the world is waiting for you like a garden.

“Go out to the roses and bees and flocks of doves! But especially to the songbirds: so that you may learn singing from them!

“For singing is for the convalescent; the healthy may speak. And even if the healthy one wants songs, he wants other songs than the convalescent.”

—“O you jesters and barrel organs, do be silent!” answered Zarathustra, and smiled at his animals. “How well you know what comfort I invented for myself in seven days!

“That I must sing again—that comfort I invented for myself, and this convalescence: do you want to make a hurdy-gurdy song of that right away too?”

—“Speak no further,” his animals answered him once more; “rather, you convalescent, first make yourself a lyre, a new lyre!

“For behold, O Zarathustra! For your new songs you need new lyres.

“Sing and roar over, O Zarathustra, heal your soul with new songs: so that you may bear your great destiny, which has not yet been any human being’s destiny!

“For your animals know well, O Zarathustra, who you are and must become: behold, you are the teacher of the eternal return—that is now your destiny!

“That you must be the first to teach this teaching—how should this great destiny not also be your greatest danger and sickness!

“Behold, we know what you teach: that all things return eternally and we ourselves with them, and that we have already been here an eternal number of times, and all things with us.

“You teach that there is a great year of becoming, a monster of a great year: like an hourglass it must turn itself over again and again, so that it may run down and run out anew:—

“—so that all these years are the same as themselves, in the greatest and in the smallest too—so that we ourselves are the same as ourselves in every great year, in the greatest and in the smallest too.

“And if you wanted to die now, O Zarathustra: behold, we know too how you would speak to yourself then:—but your animals beg you not to die yet!

“You would speak, and without trembling, rather breathing a sigh of bliss: for a great heaviness and sultriness would be taken from you, you most patient one!—

“‘Now I die and vanish,’ you would say, ‘and in a moment I am a nothing. Souls are as mortal as bodies.

“‘But the knot of causes in which I am entangled returns—it will create me again! I myself belong to the causes of the eternal return.

“‘I come again, with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with this serpent—not to a new life or a better life or a similar life:

“‘—I come again eternally to this same, selfsame life, in the greatest and in the smallest too, so that I may again teach the eternal return of all things—

“‘—so that I may again speak the word of the great noon of earth and of human beings, so that I may again proclaim the Übermensch to human beings.

“‘I spoke my word, I break upon my word: so my eternal lot wills it—as a proclaimer I perish!

“‘The hour has now come when the one who goes under blesses himself. Thus ends Zarathustra’s going under.’”—

When the animals had spoken these words, they fell silent and waited for Zarathustra to say something to them: but Zarathustra did not hear that they were silent. Rather, he lay still, with his eyes closed, like one asleep, although he was not sleeping: for he was just then conversing with his soul. But the serpent and the eagle, finding him so silent, honored the great stillness around him and cautiously withdrew.