8 passages
O lonesomeness! My HOME, lonesomeness! Too long have I lived wildly in wild remoteness, to return to thee without tears! Now threaten me with the finger as mothers threaten; now smile upon me as mothers smile; now say…
Zarathustra weeps on returning to lonesomeness, which answers in a mother's voice. It says he was more forsaken among the many than he ever was with it, and that here he can speak to all things directly.
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One thing is forsakenness, another matter is lonesomeness: THAT hast thou now learned!
Lonesomeness distinguishes forsakenness, felt among men, from lonesomeness itself.
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Another matter, however, is forsakenness. For, dost thou remember, O Zarathustra? When thy bird screamed overhead, when thou stoodest in the forest, irresolute, ignorant where to go, beside a corpse:— —When thou…
Lonesomeness recalls the corpse in the forest, the isle where he gave wine to the thirsty and was left thirsty himself, and the stillest hour that drove him out with 'Speak and succumb!'
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O lonesomeness! My home, lonesomeness! How blessedly and tenderly speaketh thy voice unto me! We do not question each other, we do not complain to each other; we go together openly through open doors. For all is open…
With lonesomeness there are no questions or complaints. Here all being wants to be spoken, while among men talking is vain and he dislikes even their breath.
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But down there—there speaketh everything, there is everything misheard. If one announce one’s wisdom with bells, the shopmen in the market-place will out-jingle it with pennies! Everything among them talketh; no one…
Down among men everything talks, is misheard, out-talked and betrayed, and nothing hatches or reaches the deep wells. He says his greatest danger now lies behind him.
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In indulging and pitying lay ever my greatest danger; and all human hubbub wisheth to be indulged and tolerated.
He states that pity and indulgence were his greatest danger among men.
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With suppressed truths, with fool’s hand and befooled heart, and rich in petty lies of pity:—thus have I ever lived among men. Disguised did I sit amongst them, ready to misjudge MYSELF that I might endure THEM, and…
Among men he sat disguised, misjudged himself to endure them, and was stung by petty wickedness. He found the good unjust and stupid, and pity made him hide what he knew.
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The grave-diggers dig for themselves diseases. Under old rubbish rest bad vapours. One should not stir up the marsh. One should live on mountains. With blessed nostrils do I again breathe mountain-freedom. Freed at last…
One should not stir the marsh but live on mountains. Breathing mountain freedom again, his soul sneezes and cheers itself.
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Nietzsche elsewhere
Nietzsche says that Zarathustra was written under an inspiration of revelatory force: thoughts flashed like lightning without choice, in an ecstasy where painful parts were required shades of light, and images offered themselves involuntarily, as Zarathustra says, 'all things came to one, and offered themselves as similes'.