7 passages
When Zarathustra went one day over the great bridge, then did the cripples and beggars surround him, and a hunchback spake thus unto him: “Behold, Zarathustra! Even the people learn from thee, and acquire faith in thy…
On the great bridge a hunchback asks Zarathustra to heal the cripples so that the people will believe him. Zarathustra answers that he sees worse: 'reversed cripples' who are one huge organ, like the ear as big as a man.
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When Zarathustra had spoken thus unto the hunchback, and unto those of whom the hunchback was the mouthpiece and advocate, then did he turn to his disciples in profound dejection, and said: Verily, my friends, I walk…
Turning to his disciples, Zarathustra says he walks among men as among the limbs of a battlefield. He lives only as a seer of the future who composes fragments into unity and redeems chance.
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To redeem what is past, and to transform every “It was” into “Thus would I have it!”—that only do I call redemption!
Zarathustra defines redemption.
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Will—so is the emancipator and joy-bringer called: thus have I taught you, my friends! But now learn this likewise: the Will itself is still a prisoner. Willing emancipateth: but what is that called which still putteth…
The will is the emancipator but is chained by the 'It was', the stone it cannot roll back. Out of rage it torments whatever can suffer, and this is revenge itself.
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THE SPIRIT OF REVENGE: my friends, that hath hitherto been man’s best contemplation; and where there was suffering, it was claimed there was always penalty. “Penalty,” so calleth itself revenge. With a lying word it…
The spirit of revenge turns suffering into punishment and all life into penalty. Madness then preaches that everything must perish and that the only escape is for willing to become non-willing.
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Away from those fabulous songs did I lead you when I taught you: “The Will is a creator.” All “It was” is a fragment, a riddle, a fearful chance—until the creating Will saith thereto: “But thus would I have it.”— Until…
Zarathustra contrasts the fabulous song of madness with his teaching that the will is a creator. He asks whether the will has ever unlearned revenge and been taught to will backwards.
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—But at this point in his discourse it chanced that Zarathustra suddenly paused, and looked like a person in the greatest alarm. With terror in his eyes did he gaze on his disciples; his glances pierced as with arrows…
Zarathustra breaks off in alarm, then laughs and says silence is hard for a babbler. The hunchback asks why he speaks differently to his disciples, and Zarathustra says one may speak in a hunchbacked way with hunchbacks.
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Nietzsche elsewhere
Nietzsche says that only Dionysus suffers as in the Night-Song, whose answer would be Ariadne, and that Zarathustra's life-task, which is also his own, is a yea-saying that justifies and redeems all that is past, quoting the passage on recasting fragments and turning every 'it was' into 'thus would I have it'.