Third Part · XLVI. The Vision and the Enigma

Zarathustra tells the sailors his riddle

When it got abroad among the sailors that Zarathustra was on board the ship—for a man who came from the Happy Isles had gone on board along with him,—there was great curiosity and expectation. But Zarathustra kept silent for two days, and was cold and deaf with sadness; so that he neither answered looks nor questions. On the evening of the second day, however, he again opened his ears, though he still kept silent: for there were many curious and dangerous things to be heard on board the ship, which came from afar, and was to go still further. Zarathustra, however, was fond of all those who make distant voyages, and dislike to live without danger. And behold! when listening, his own tongue was at last loosened, and the ice of his heart broke. Then did he begin to speak thus:

To you, the daring venturers and adventurers, and whoever hath embarked with cunning sails upon frightful seas,—

To you the enigma-intoxicated, the twilight-enjoyers, whose souls are allured by flutes to every treacherous gulf:

—For ye dislike to grope at a thread with cowardly hand; and where ye can DIVINE, there do ye hate to CALCULATE—

To you only do I tell the enigma that I SAW—the vision of the lonesomest one.—

Gloomily walked I lately in corpse-coloured twilight—gloomily and sternly, with compressed lips. Not only one sun had set for me.

A path which ascended daringly among boulders, an evil, lonesome path, which neither herb nor shrub any longer cheered, a mountain-path, crunched under the daring of my foot.

Mutely marching over the scornful clinking of pebbles, trampling the stone that let it slip: thus did my foot force its way upwards.

On the ship Zarathustra stays silent for two days, then is moved by the sailors' tales of distant voyages and begins to speak. He addresses the daring adventurers and begins to tell of a gloomy climb up a lonesome mountain path.

SolitudeZarathustra calls his vision that of 'the lonesomest one' and tells it only after two days of cold, sad silence.

Commentary on this chapter

What the critics said

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

Spirit of gravity as guilty conscienceAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909interpretation

Ludovici argues that the spirit of gravity, the dwarf Zarathustra carries and defies, stands for the sense of guilt and sin that Christian and Judaic values have bred into men's instincts, and that Nietzsche can affirm the recurrence of life only once he has cast this dwarf off, announcing the doctrine in defiance of him.

Spirit of gravity as guilty conscienceAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909interpretation

Definition of the spirit of gravityAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909interpretation

Ludovici defines Nietzsche's 'spirit of gravity' as the oppressive, paralysing sense of guilt and sin.

Recurrence a daring conjectureAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909judgement

Ludovici grants that much can be said for the hypothesis of eternal recurrence but judges it a very daring conjecture, and doubts whether Nietzsche ever properly estimated its effect as a dogma on men's minds.

The shepherd as modern manAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909interpretation

Ludovici reads the shepherd as the man of today, the choking snake as the paralysing social values that threaten humanity, and 'Bite!' as Nietzsche's cry to mankind to change its values before it is too late.