“Thou mayest have deceived subtler ones than I,” said Zarathustra sternly. “I am not on my guard against deceivers; I HAVE TO BE without precaution: so willeth my lot.
Thou, however,—MUST deceive: so far do I know thee! Thou must ever be equivocal, trivocal, quadrivocal, and quinquivocal! Even what thou hast now confessed, is not nearly true enough nor false enough for me!
Thou bad false coiner, how couldst thou do otherwise! Thy very malady wouldst thou whitewash if thou showed thyself naked to thy physician.
Thus didst thou whitewash thy lie before me when thou saidst: ‘I did so ONLY for amusement!’ There was also SERIOUSNESS therein, thou ART something of a penitent-in-spirit!
I divine thee well: thou hast become the enchanter of all the world; but for thyself thou hast no lie or artifice left,—thou art disenchanted to thyself!
Thou hast reaped disgust as thy one truth. No word in thee is any longer genuine, but thy mouth is so: that is to say, the disgust that cleaveth unto thy mouth.”—
—“Who art thou at all!” cried here the old magician with defiant voice, “who dareth to speak thus unto ME, the greatest man now living?”—and a green flash shot from his eye at Zarathustra. But immediately after he changed, and said sadly:
“O Zarathustra, I am weary of it, I am disgusted with mine arts, I am not GREAT, why do I dissemble! But thou knowest it well—I sought for greatness!
A great man I wanted to appear, and persuaded many; but the lie hath been beyond my power. On it do I collapse.
O Zarathustra, everything is a lie in me; but that I collapse—this my collapsing is GENUINE!”—
“It honoureth thee,” said Zarathustra gloomily, looking down with sidelong glance, “it honoureth thee that thou soughtest for greatness, but it betrayeth thee also. Thou art not great.
Thou bad old magician, THAT is the best and the honestest thing I honour in thee, that thou hast become weary of thyself, and hast expressed it: ‘I am not great.’
THEREIN do I honour thee as a penitent-in-spirit, and although only for the twinkling of an eye, in that one moment wast thou—genuine.
What the critics said
Ludovici argues that the magician is Wagner, recounting Nietzsche's youthful idealisation of him and the bitter break, and reads the dialogue as exposing what Nietzsche came to loathe in Wagner: his histrionics, vanity, equivocation and falseness, though Zarathustra still treats him as a higher man broken by modern values.