O heaven above me, thou pure, thou deep heaven! Thou abyss of light! Gazing on thee, I tremble with divine desires. Up to thy height to toss myself—that is MY depth! In thy purity to hide myself—that is MINE innocence!…
Before dawn Zarathustra speaks to the heaven as to a friend. Both keep silent because they know too much, and all his wandering was only a seeking of it.
Read in the book →And what have I hated more than passing clouds, and whatever tainteth thee? And mine own hatred have I even hated, because it tainted thee! The passing clouds I detest—those stealthy cats of prey: they take from thee…
He hates the clouds as mediators and mixers who can neither bless nor curse. He longs to drum on their bellies with lightning.
Read in the book →A blesser have I become and a Yea-sayer: and therefore strove I long and was a striver, that I might one day get my hands free for blessing.
He who cannot bless shall learn to curse. Zarathustra calls himself a blesser who carries his Yea into all abysses.
Read in the book →For all things are baptized at the font of eternity, and beyond good and evil; good and evil themselves, however, are but fugitive shadows and damp afflictions and passing clouds. Verily, it is a blessing and not a…
Above all things stands the heaven of chance, hazard and wantonness. Hazard is the oldest nobility, and rationality is impossible in everything.
Read in the book →That thou art to me a dancing-floor for divine chances, that thou art to me a table of the Gods, for divine dice and dice-players!
The heaven is pure because no eternal reason-cobweb hangs in it. It is a dancing-floor for divine chances.
Read in the book →The world is deep:—and deeper than e’er the day could read.
The heaven blushes and Zarathustra asks if he has said unspeakable things. Day comes, so they must part.
Read in the book →This is an experiment in interactive reading, and in using AI to help you grow. Thus Spake Zarathustra is notoriously difficult for a modern reader; yet taken as a set of mental exercises, it is guaranteed to transform your thinking by the time you reach the end. Along the way you will have help from the companion, who is always beside the book.
Do you accept the challenge?
Nietzsche elsewhere
Nietzsche says that the psychological problem of the type is how one who says and does No to everything hitherto affirmed, bears the heaviest destiny and thinks the most abysmal thoughts, can still be a dancer who finds no objection even to the eternal recurrence of existence but becomes himself 'the tremendous and unlimited saying of Yea and Amen'; this is precisely the idea of Dionysus.
Nietzsche says that Zarathustra speaks to his soul in the dithyramb, of which he is the inventor, citing 'Before Sunrise', and presents 'The Night-Song' as the immortal plaint of one condemned by his superabundance of light and power never to love.