Thus Spake Zarathustra [83]
and dancing.
This however is my teaching: he who wisheth one day to fly, must first learn standing and walking and running and climbing and dancing:--one doth not fly into flying!
With rope-ladders learned I to reach many a window, with nimble legs did I climb high masts: to sit on high masts of perception seemed to me no small bliss;--
--To flicker like small flames on high masts: a small light, certainly, but a great comfort to cast-away sailors and ship-wrecked ones!
By divers ways and wendings did I arrive at my truth; not by one ladder did I mount to the height where mine eye roveth into my remoteness.
And unwillingly only did I ask my way--that was always counter to my taste! Rather did I question and test the ways themselves.
A testing and a questioning hath been all my travelling:--and verily, one must also LEARN to answer such questioning! That, however,--is my taste:
--Neither a good nor a bad taste, but MY taste, of which I have no longer either shame or secrecy.
"This--is now MY way,--where is yours?" Thus did I answer those who asked me "the way." For THE way--it doth not exist!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
LVI. OLD AND NEW TABLES.
1.
Here do I sit and wait, old broken tables around me and also new half- written tables. When cometh mine hour?
--The hour of my descent, of my down-going: for once more will I go unto men.
For that hour do I now wait: for first must the signs come unto me that it is MINE hour--namely, the laughing lion with the flock of doves.
Meanwhile do I talk to myself as one who hath time. No one telleth me anything new, so I tell myself mine own story.
2.
When I came unto men, then found I them resting on an old infatuation: all of them thought they had long known what was good and bad for men.
An old wearisome business seemed to them all discourse about virtue; and he who wished to sleep well spake of "good" and "bad" ere retiring to rest.
This somnolence did I disturb when I taught that NO ONE YET KNOWETH what is good and bad:--unless it be the creating one!
--It is he, however, who createth man's goal, and giveth to the earth its meaning and its future: he only EFFECTETH it THAT aught is good or bad.
And I bade them upset their old academic chairs, and wherever that old infatuation had sat; I bade them laugh at their great moralists, their saints, their poets, and their Saviours.
At their gloomy sages did I bid them laugh, and whoever had sat admonishing as a black scarecrow on the tree of life.
On their great grave-highway did I seat myself, and even beside the carrion and vultures--and I laughed at all their bygone and its mellow decaying glory.
Verily, like penitential preachers and fools did I cry wrath and shame on all their greatness and smallness. Oh, that their best is so very small! Oh, that their worst is so very small! Thus did I laugh.
Thus did my wise longing, born in the mountains, cry and laugh in me; a wild wisdom, verily!--my great pinion-rustling longing.
And oft did it carry me off and up and away and in the midst of laughter; then flew I quivering like an arrow with sun-intoxicated rapture:
--Out into distant futures, which no dream hath yet seen, into warmer souths than ever sculptor conceived,--where gods in their dancing are ashamed of all clothes:
(That I may speak in parables and halt and stammer like the poets: and verily I am ashamed that I have still to be a poet!)
Where all becoming seemed to me dancing of Gods, and wantoning of Gods, and the world unloosed and unbridled and fleeing back to itself:--
--As an eternal self-fleeing and re-seeking of one another of many Gods, as the blessed self-contradicting, recommuning, and refraternising with one another of many Gods:--
Where all time seemed to me a blessed mockery of moments, where necessity was freedom itself, which played happily with the goad of freedom:--
Where I also found again mine old devil and arch-enemy, the spirit of gravity, and all that it created: constraint, law, necessity and consequence
This however is my teaching: he who wisheth one day to fly, must first learn standing and walking and running and climbing and dancing:--one doth not fly into flying!
With rope-ladders learned I to reach many a window, with nimble legs did I climb high masts: to sit on high masts of perception seemed to me no small bliss;--
--To flicker like small flames on high masts: a small light, certainly, but a great comfort to cast-away sailors and ship-wrecked ones!
By divers ways and wendings did I arrive at my truth; not by one ladder did I mount to the height where mine eye roveth into my remoteness.
And unwillingly only did I ask my way--that was always counter to my taste! Rather did I question and test the ways themselves.
A testing and a questioning hath been all my travelling:--and verily, one must also LEARN to answer such questioning! That, however,--is my taste:
--Neither a good nor a bad taste, but MY taste, of which I have no longer either shame or secrecy.
"This--is now MY way,--where is yours?" Thus did I answer those who asked me "the way." For THE way--it doth not exist!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
LVI. OLD AND NEW TABLES.
1.
Here do I sit and wait, old broken tables around me and also new half- written tables. When cometh mine hour?
--The hour of my descent, of my down-going: for once more will I go unto men.
For that hour do I now wait: for first must the signs come unto me that it is MINE hour--namely, the laughing lion with the flock of doves.
Meanwhile do I talk to myself as one who hath time. No one telleth me anything new, so I tell myself mine own story.
2.
When I came unto men, then found I them resting on an old infatuation: all of them thought they had long known what was good and bad for men.
An old wearisome business seemed to them all discourse about virtue; and he who wished to sleep well spake of "good" and "bad" ere retiring to rest.
This somnolence did I disturb when I taught that NO ONE YET KNOWETH what is good and bad:--unless it be the creating one!
--It is he, however, who createth man's goal, and giveth to the earth its meaning and its future: he only EFFECTETH it THAT aught is good or bad.
And I bade them upset their old academic chairs, and wherever that old infatuation had sat; I bade them laugh at their great moralists, their saints, their poets, and their Saviours.
At their gloomy sages did I bid them laugh, and whoever had sat admonishing as a black scarecrow on the tree of life.
On their great grave-highway did I seat myself, and even beside the carrion and vultures--and I laughed at all their bygone and its mellow decaying glory.
Verily, like penitential preachers and fools did I cry wrath and shame on all their greatness and smallness. Oh, that their best is so very small! Oh, that their worst is so very small! Thus did I laugh.
Thus did my wise longing, born in the mountains, cry and laugh in me; a wild wisdom, verily!--my great pinion-rustling longing.
And oft did it carry me off and up and away and in the midst of laughter; then flew I quivering like an arrow with sun-intoxicated rapture:
--Out into distant futures, which no dream hath yet seen, into warmer souths than ever sculptor conceived,--where gods in their dancing are ashamed of all clothes:
(That I may speak in parables and halt and stammer like the poets: and verily I am ashamed that I have still to be a poet!)
Where all becoming seemed to me dancing of Gods, and wantoning of Gods, and the world unloosed and unbridled and fleeing back to itself:--
--As an eternal self-fleeing and re-seeking of one another of many Gods, as the blessed self-contradicting, recommuning, and refraternising with one another of many Gods:--
Where all time seemed to me a blessed mockery of moments, where necessity was freedom itself, which played happily with the goad of freedom:--
Where I also found again mine old devil and arch-enemy, the spirit of gravity, and all that it created: constraint, law, necessity and consequence