Who would here descend,
How soon
Is he swallowed up by the depths!
But thou, Zarathustra,
Still lovest the abysses,
Lovest them as doth the fir tree!
The fir flings its roots
Where the rock itself gazes
Shuddering at the depths,--
The fir pauses before the abysses
Where all around
Would fain descend:
Amid the impatience
Of wild, rolling, leaping torrents
It waits so patient, stern and silent,
Lonely....
Lonely!
Who would venture
Here to be guest--
To be thy guest?
A bird of prey, perchance
Joyous at others' misfortune,
Will cling persistent
To the hair of the steadfast watcher,
With frenzied laughter,
A vulture's laughter....
Wherefore so steadfast?
--Mocks he so cruel:
He must have wings, who loves the abyss,
He must not stay on the cliff,
As thou who hangest there!--
O Zarathustra,
Cruellest Nimrod!
Of late still a hunter of God,
A spider's web to capture virtue,
An arrow of evil!
Now
Hunted by thyself,
Thine own prey
Caught in the grip of thine own soul.
Now
Lonely to me and thee,
Twofold in thine own knowledge,
Mid a hundred mirrors
False to thyself,
Mid a hundred memories
Uncertain,
Weary at every wound,
Shivering at every frost,
Throttled in thine own noose,
Self-knower!
Self-hangman!
Why didst bind thyself
With the noose of thy wisdom?
Why luredst thyself
Into the old serpent's paradise?
Why stolest into
Thyself, thyself?...
A sick man now,
Sick of serpent's poison,
A captive now
Who hast drawn the hardest lot:
In thine own shaft
Bowed as thou workest,
In thine own cavern
Digging at thyself,
Helpless quite,
Stiff,
A cold corse
Overwhelmed with a hundred burdens,
Overburdened by thyself,
A knower!
A self-knower!
The wise Zarathustra!...
Thou soughtest the heaviest burden,
So foundest thou thyself,
And canst not shake thyself off....
Watching,
Chewing,
One that stands upright no more!
Thou wilt grow deformed even in thy grave,
Deformed spirit!
And of late still so proud
On all the stilts of thy pride!
Of late still the godless hermit,
The hermit with one comrade--the devil,
The scarlet prince of every devilment!...
Now--
Between two nothings
Huddled up,
A question-mark,
A weary riddle,
A riddle for vultures....
They will "solve" thee,
They hunger already for thy "solution,"
They flutter already about their "riddle,"
About thee, the doomed one!
O Zarathustra,
Self-knower!
Self-hangman!