Third Part · LX. The Seven Seals

A dancer's virtue and laughing wickedness

If my virtue be a dancer’s virtue, and if I have often sprung with both feet into golden-emerald rapture:

If my wickedness be a laughing wickedness, at home among rose-banks and hedges of lilies:

—For in laughter is all evil present, but it is sanctified and absolved by its own bliss:—

And if it be my Alpha and Omega that everything heavy shall become light, every body a dancer, and every spirit a bird: and verily, that is my Alpha and Omega!—

Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of rings—the ring of the return?

Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love thee, O Eternity!

FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY!

Zarathustra calls his virtue a dancer's, and says that in laughter all evil is present but absolved. He names his Alpha and Omega: every body a dancer, every spirit a bird.

Laughter, dance and lightnessHis virtue is a dancer's and his wickedness a laughing one, sanctified by its own bliss.
The spirit of gravityHis Alpha and Omega is that everything heavy shall become light, the reverse of the spirit of gravity.

Commentary on this chapter

What the critics said

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

Zarathustra is not the place to beginAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909interpretation

Ludovici argues that Zarathustra, though Nietzsche's opus magnum, should not be read first: many chapters are nearly meaningless without knowledge of Nietzsche's life and friendships, and its philosophical views are best clarified by his other works, which he himself regarded as preparation for it.

Seven Seals: paean to recurrenceAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909exposition

Ludovici describes 'The Seven Seals' as Zarathustra's final paean to Eternity and to the marriage-ring of rings, the ring of the Eternal Recurrence.