XXXIII. The Grave-Song

“Yonder is the grave-island, the silent isle; yonder also are the graves of my youth. Thither will I carry an evergreen wreath of life.” Resolving thus in my heart, did I sail o’er the sea.— Oh, ye sights and scenes of…

Zarathustra sails to the grave-island to lay a wreath for the visions and loves of his youth, whom he now calls his dead ones. He says he still possesses them and cannot name them except by their faithlessness.

To kill ME, did they strangle you, ye singing birds of my hopes! Yea, at you, ye dearest ones, did malice ever shoot its arrows—to hit my heart! And they hit it! Because ye were always my dearest, my possession and my…

He says his enemies killed his dearest ones to wound him and calls this worse than manslaughter. He lays down the wreath together with a curse, for they made his eternity brief as a dying tone.

Thus spake once in a happy hour my purity: “Divine shall everything be unto me.” Then did ye haunt me with foul phantoms; ah, whither hath that happy hour now fled! “All days shall be holy unto me”—so spake once the…

He recalls each youthful vow of purity, joyous wisdom and charity, and how his enemies soured it. They sent phantoms, an owl-monster, beggars and fatter offerings, and finally seduced his minstrel, so his greatest dance stayed unspoken in his limbs.

How did I ever bear it? How did I survive and surmount such wounds? How did my soul rise again out of those sepulchres? Yea, something invulnerable, unburiable is with me, something that would rend rocks asunder: it is…

Asking how he survived such wounds, he answers that his Will, silent, unchanged and hard of heart, is vulnerable only in the heel. He hails it as the demolisher of graves.

Yea, thou art still for me the demolisher of all graves: Hail to thee, my Will! And only where there are graves are there resurrections.

Zarathustra hails his Will and says resurrection requires graves.