XIV. The Friend

“One, is always too many about me”—thinketh the anchorite. “Always once one—that maketh two in the long run!” I and me are always too earnestly in conversation: how could it be endured, if there were not a friend? The…

The anchorite finds one always too many, since I and me soon make two. The friend is the cork that keeps their talk afloat, and our longing for a friend betrays our lack of faith in ourselves.

And often with our love we want merely to overleap envy. And often we attack and make ourselves enemies, to conceal that we are vulnerable. “Be at least mine enemy!”—thus speaketh the true reverence, which doth not…

Love can be a way of overleaping envy, and attack a way of hiding vulnerability. Reverence that dares not ask for friendship says 'Be at least mine enemy!' One should honour the enemy in one's friend.

Thou canst not adorn thyself fine enough for thy friend; for thou shalt be unto him an arrow and a longing for the Superman.

Showing oneself naked to a friend shocks him. The sleeping friend's face is one's own in a coarse mirror, which prompts the reminder that man must be surpassed.

Thou canst not adorn thyself fine enough for thy friend; for thou shalt be unto him an arrow and a longing for the Superman.

One must adorn oneself for a friend, because one is to be for him an arrow toward the Superman.

In divining and keeping silence shall the friend be a master: not everything must thou wish to see. Thy dream shall disclose unto thee what thy friend doeth when awake. Let thy pity be a divining: to know first if thy…

Not everything must be seen; one's dream shows what the friend does awake. Pity should be delicate and hard-shelled, and the friend should be air, solitude, bread and medicine. A slave cannot be a friend, nor a tyrant have friends.

Far too long hath there been a slave and a tyrant concealed in woman. On that account woman is not yet capable of friendship: she knoweth only love. In woman’s love there is injustice and blindness to all she doth not…

A slave and a tyrant have long been hidden in woman, so she knows only love, which has injustice, blindness and lightning-and-night in it. Women are still cats, birds or at best cows, and Zarathustra asks which men are capable of friendship.

There is comradeship: may there be friendship!

Zarathustra rebukes men's poverty and sordidness of soul, and closes by wishing that comradeship might become friendship.