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Second Part · XLII. Redemption

Zarathustra's alarm and the hunchback's question

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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 their thoughts and arrear-thoughts. But after a brief space he again laughed, and said soothedly:

“It is difficult to live amongst men, because silence is so difficult— especially for a babbler.”—

Thus spake Zarathustra. The hunchback, however, had listened to the conversation and had covered his face during the time; but when he heard Zarathustra laugh, he looked up with curiosity, and said slowly:

“But why doth Zarathustra speak otherwise unto us than unto his disciples?”

Zarathustra answered: “What is there to be wondered at! With hunchbacks one may well speak in a hunchbacked way!”

“Very good,” said the hunchback; “and with pupils one may well tell tales out of school.

But why doth Zarathustra speak otherwise unto his pupils—than unto himself?”—

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.

Commentary on this chapter

Nietzsche elsewhere

Yea-saying to the point of redeeming the pastFriedrich Nietzsche · Ecce Homo, 1888Nietzsche

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'.

What the critics said

Redemption as 'Thus would I have it'Anthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909interpretation

Ludovici explains that the great men in 'Redemption' are inverse cripples with one faculty overdeveloped, and that Nietzsche's redemption is the ability to say of all that is past 'Thus would I have it'; the inability to say it is the source of revenge and of punishment, its euphemism, while the man grateful even for his enemies and calamities knows neither revenge nor despair.