The Song of Melancholy

1

When Zarathustra spoke these speeches, he stood near the entrance of his cave; but with the last words he slipped away from his guests and fled for a short while into the open air.

“O pure smells around me,” he cried, “O blissful stillness around me! But where are my animals? Come here, come here, my eagle and my serpent!

“Tell me, my animals: these higher humans, all of them—do they perhaps not smell good? O pure smells around me! Only now do I know and feel how I love you, my animals.”

—And Zarathustra spoke once more: “I love you, my animals!” But the eagle and the serpent pressed close to him as he spoke these words, and looked up at him. In this way the three of them were quietly together and sniffed and sipped the good air with one another. For the air out here was better than among the higher humans.

2

But hardly had Zarathustra left his cave when the old sorcerer rose, looked around cunningly, and said: “He has gone out!

“And already, you higher humans—let me tickle you with this name of praise and flattery, as he himself does—already my wicked spirit of deceit and sorcery is attacking me, my melancholy devil,

“—who is an adversary of this Zarathustra from the ground up: forgive him for it! Now he wants to work magic before you, it is just his hour; in vain I wrestle with this evil spirit.

“To all of you, whatever honors you may give yourselves with words, whether you call yourselves ‘the free spirits’ or ‘the truthful’ or ‘the penitents of the spirit’ or ‘the unfettered’ or ‘the great longers’—

“—to all of you who suffer from the great disgust as I do, for whom the old God has died and no new God yet lies in cradles and swaddling clothes,—to all of you my evil spirit and magic devil is well disposed.

“I know you, you higher humans, I know him,—I also know this fiend whom I love against my will, this Zarathustra: he himself often seems to me like a beautiful mask of a saint,

“—like a new, strange masquerade in which my evil spirit, the melancholy devil, takes pleasure:—I love Zarathustra, so it often seems to me, for the sake of my evil spirit.—

“But already he is attacking me and compelling me, this spirit of melancholy, this devil of evening twilight: and, truly, you higher humans, he has a craving—

“—just open your eyes!—he has a craving to come naked, whether male or female I do not know yet: but he is coming, he is compelling me, woe! open your senses!

“The day is dying away, evening is now coming to all things, even to the best things; hear now and see, you higher humans, what devil, whether man or woman, this spirit of evening melancholy is!”

Thus spoke the old sorcerer, looked around cunningly, and then reached for his harp.

3

When the air grows clear,
When the dew’s comfort
Already wells down to the earth,
Unseen and unheard as well:
—For tender shoes are worn
By the comforter dew, as by all who are mild in comfort—:
Do you remember then, do you remember, hot heart,
How once you thirsted,
For heavenly tears and the dripping of dew
Thirsted, scorched and weary,
While on yellow paths of grass
Malicious glances of the evening sun
Ran around you through black trees,
Blinding, glowing glances of the sun, gloating.

“A suitor of truth? You?—so they mocked—
No! Only a poet!
An animal, a cunning, preying, creeping one,
That has to lie,
That knowingly, willingly has to lie:
Lusting for prey,
Masked in colors,
A mask to itself,
To itself a prey—
That—a suitor of truth? No!
Only fool! Only poet!
Only speaking in colors,
Crying out in colors from a fool’s masks,
Climbing about on lying bridges of words,
On many-colored rainbows,
Between false heavens
And false earths,
Roaming about, floating about,—
Only fool! Only poet!…

“That—a suitor of truth?
Not still, rigid, smooth, cold,
Turned into an image,
Into a pillar of God,
Not set up before temples,
A god’s doorkeeper:
No! hostile to such statues of truth,
More at home in any wilderness than before temples,
Full of a cat’s mischief,
Leaping through every window
Whoosh! into every chance,
Sniffing toward every primeval forest,
Sniffing with an addict’s longing,
That you might run in primeval forests
Among brightly spotted beasts of prey
Sinfully healthy and colorful and beautiful,
With lusting chops,
Blissfully mocking, blissfully hellish, blissfully bloodthirsty,
Run preying, creeping, lying:…

“Or, like the eagle that long,
Long stares rigidly into abysses,
Into its abysses:…
—Oh, how they coil down here,
Downward, inward,
Into ever deeper depths!—
Then,
Suddenly,
In a straight line,
With flight unsheathed,
Swoop down on lambs,
Headlong, ravenous,
Lusting for lambs,
Hostile to all lamb-souls,
Fiercely hostile to all that looks
Sheeplike, lamb-eyed, curly-woolly,
Gray, with the goodwill of lamb and sheep!

“Thus
Eaglelike, pantherlike
Are the poet’s longings,
Are your longings beneath a thousand masks,
You fool! You poet!

“You who saw the human being
As god as well as sheep—:
To tear apart the god in the human being
As well as the sheep in the human being,
And tearing apart to laugh—

“That, that is your bliss! A panther’s and an eagle’s bliss! A poet’s and a fool’s bliss!”—

When the air grows clear,
When already the sickle of the moon
Green among the purple reds
And envious, creeps along:
—hostile to the day,
With every step secretly
Sickling away at hammocks of roses
Until they sink,
Sink down pale, toward night:

So I myself once sank
Out of my madness of truth,
Out of my longings of the day,
Weary of day, sick from light,
—sank downward, eveningward, shadowward:
By one truth
Burned and thirsty:
—do you still remember, do you remember, hot heart,
How you thirsted then?—
That I be banished
From all truth,
Only fool! Only poet!