Fourth and Last Part · LXX. Noontide

Awakening and the call to the noontide abyss

“Get up,” said Zarathustra, “thou little thief, thou sluggard! What! Still stretching thyself, yawning, sighing, falling into deep wells?

Who art thou then, O my soul!” (and here he became frightened, for a sunbeam shot down from heaven upon his face.)

“O heaven above me,” said he sighing, and sat upright, “thou gazest at me? Thou hearkenest unto my strange soul?

When wilt thou drink this drop of dew that fell down upon all earthly things,—when wilt thou drink this strange soul—

—When, thou well of eternity! thou joyous, awful, noontide abyss! when wilt thou drink my soul back into thee?”

Thus spake Zarathustra, and rose from his couch beside the tree, as if awakening from a strange drunkenness: and behold! there stood the sun still exactly above his head. One might, however, rightly infer therefrom that Zarathustra had not then slept long.

Zarathustra rouses himself, frightened by a sunbeam on his face. He asks heaven when it will drink his strange soul back into itself, then rises as if from drunkenness and sees that he has slept only briefly.

The great noontideZarathustra wakes to find the sun still overhead and addresses heaven as the joyous, awful noontide abyss.
Self-overcomingHe scolds his soul as a little thief and sluggard and asks who it is, then asks heaven when it will drink his soul back.

Commentary on this chapter

What the critics said

Anthony M. Ludovici, Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra (1909)

Noontide: man comes of ageAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909interpretation

Ludovici explains that with Nietzsche man came of age at the noon of life: the gods and superstitions of our childhood withdraw, we are responsible for our actions, and having lived our morning under chance we must make our afternoon our own.