Third Part · LIII. The Return Home

Three memories of forsakenness

Another matter, however, is forsakenness. For, dost thou remember, O Zarathustra? When thy bird screamed overhead, when thou stoodest in the forest, irresolute, ignorant where to go, beside a corpse:—

—When thou spakest: ‘Let mine animals lead me! More dangerous have I found it among men than among animals:’—THAT was forsakenness!

And dost thou remember, O Zarathustra? When thou sattest in thine isle, a well of wine giving and granting amongst empty buckets, bestowing and distributing amongst the thirsty:

—Until at last thou alone sattest thirsty amongst the drunken ones, and wailedst nightly: ‘Is taking not more blessed than giving? And stealing yet more blessed than taking?’—THAT was forsakenness!

And dost thou remember, O Zarathustra? When thy stillest hour came and drove thee forth from thyself, when with wicked whispering it said: ‘Speak and succumb!’—

—When it disgusted thee with all thy waiting and silence, and discouraged thy humble courage: THAT was forsakenness!”—

Lonesomeness recalls the corpse in the forest, the isle where he gave wine to the thirsty and was left thirsty himself, and the stillest hour that drove him out with 'Speak and succumb!'

SolitudeForsakenness is defined by concrete past episodes of isolation among men and in his own mission.
The bestowing virtueHe gave like a well among empty buckets and ended thirsty among the drunken.

Commentary on this chapter

Nietzsche elsewhere

Inspiration as revelationFriedrich Nietzsche · Ecce Homo, 1888Nietzsche

Nietzsche says that Zarathustra was written under an inspiration of revelatory force: thoughts flashed like lightning without choice, in an ecstasy where painful parts were required shades of light, and images offered themselves involuntarily, as Zarathustra says, 'all things came to one, and offered themselves as similes'.

What the critics said

Georg Brandes, Aristocratic Radicalism (1889)

The lies of pity and the mountain airGeorg Brandes · Aristocratic Radicalism, 1889exposition

Brandes says that Zarathustra's greatest danger among men lay in forbearance and pity, which taught him to lie among the good, and that he returns to the free mountain air to sit among broken and half-written tables awaiting the hour when the lion comes with the doves.

The lies of pity and the mountain airGeorg Brandes · Aristocratic Radicalism, 1889exposition

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

Nietzsche's account of inspirationElisabeth Förster-Nietzsche · Introduction to Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1905biography

Förster-Nietzsche quotes Ecce Homo, where Nietzsche describes writing Zarathustra as inspiration in the old sense: thoughts flashing up like lightning with necessity, ecstasy, and an involuntariness of images in which all things seem to come and want to become similes.

Anthony M. Ludovici, Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra (1909)

Pity as Nietzsche's greatest dangerAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909biography

Ludovici reads 'The Return Home' as autobiography: Nietzsche confesses that pity was his greatest danger, pitting the lawgiver's far-sighted love of posterity against a meaner sympathy for the neighbour from which he suffered, and returning to solitude to recover from his attempt to be all things to all men.