XXXIX. Poets

“Since I have known the body better”—said Zarathustra to one of his disciples—“the spirit hath only been to me symbolically spirit; and all the ‘imperishable’—that is also but a simile.” “So have I heard thee say once…

Zarathustra says the spirit and the 'imperishable' are only similes. A disciple asks why he said poets lie too much. Zarathustra refuses to give reasons, admits he is a poet himself, and rejects the disciple's belief in him.

But granting that some one did say in all seriousness that the poets lie too much: he was right—WE do lie too much. We also know too little, and are bad learners: so we are obliged to lie. And which of us poets hath not…

Zarathustra includes himself among the poets who adulterate their wine and delight in old wives' tales. He mocks their conceit that nature confides in them.

And especially ABOVE the heavens: for all Gods are poet-symbolisations, poet-sophistications!

Poets set gaudy puppets on the clouds and call them Gods and Supermen. Zarathustra is weary of the inadequate passed off as actual.

When Zarathustra so spake, his disciple resented it, but was silent. And Zarathustra also was silent; and his eye directed itself inwardly, as if it gazed into the far distance. At last he sighed and drew breath.— I am…

After a silence, Zarathustra says something in him belongs to the morrow. He finds the poets superficial, given to voluptuousness and tedium, and impure mixers.

Ah, I cast indeed my net into their sea, and meant to catch good fish; but always did I draw up the head of some ancient God. Thus did the sea give a stone to the hungry one. And they themselves may well originate from…

Zarathustra's net catches the head of an ancient God, and he finds salt slime where a soul should be. He compares the vain sea to a peacock spreading its tail before a disdainful buffalo, a parable for the poets.

Penitents of the spirit have I seen appearing; they grew out of the poets.

Zarathustra says he is weary of the poet's spirit and expects it to weary of itself. He has seen poets change and turn their gaze on themselves.