Second Part · XXXI. The Night-Song

The coldness and silence of suns

Whence have gone the tears of mine eye, and the down of my heart? Oh, the lonesomeness of all bestowers! Oh, the silence of all shining ones!

Many suns circle in desert space: to all that is dark do they speak with their light—but to me they are silent.

Oh, this is the hostility of light to the shining one: unpityingly doth it pursue its course.

Unfair to the shining one in its innermost heart, cold to the suns:—thus travelleth every sun.

Like a storm do the suns pursue their courses: that is their travelling. Their inexorable will do they follow: that is their coldness.

Zarathustra laments the loneliness and silence of all shining ones. The many suns circle in desert space and travel on pitilessly, each following its own will.

SolitudeThe loneliness of the shining ones is pictured as suns speaking to the dark but silent to one another.
Will to powerEach sun follows its own inexorable will, and that pitiless course is its coldness.

Commentary on this chapter

Nietzsche elsewhere

Composing Parts II and IIIFriedrich Nietzsche · Ecce Homo, 1888Nietzsche

Nietzsche says that 'The Night-Song' was composed in Rome above the Piazza Barberini, the second part in ten days at Sils, the third at Nice, with 'Old and New Tables' composed on the climb from the station to Eza, each part taking no more than ten days; his creative energy coincided with great bodily vigour, dancing, walking and laughter.

The dithyramb and the Night-SongFriedrich Nietzsche · Ecce Homo, 1888Nietzsche

Nietzsche says that Zarathustra speaks to his soul in the dithyramb, of which he is the inventor, citing 'Before Sunrise', and presents 'The Night-Song' as the immortal plaint of one condemned by his superabundance of light and power never to love.

What the critics said

Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, Introduction to Thus Spake Zarathustra (1905) — Partisan source: the author shaped Nietzsche's posthumous reputation and is not a reliable interpreter.

Composition of Parts One and TwoElisabeth Förster-Nietzsche · Introduction to Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1905biography

Förster-Nietzsche records that Part One was written in about ten days at Rapallo in February 1883, finished in the hour of Wagner's death, that it was met with incomprehension, that the 'Night-Song' was composed in a gloomy, lonely spring in Rome, and that Part Two was written in ten days at Sils Maria in summer 1883.