Second Part · XXXI. The Night-Song

Light that longs to be night

Light am I: ah, that I were night! But it is my lonesomeness to be begirt with light!

Ah, that I were dark and nightly! How would I suck at the breasts of light!

And you yourselves would I bless, ye twinkling starlets and glow-worms aloft!—and would rejoice in the gifts of your light.

But I live in mine own light, I drink again into myself the flames that break forth from me.

I know not the happiness of the receiver; and oft have I dreamt that stealing must be more blessed than receiving.

It is my poverty that my hand never ceaseth bestowing; it is mine envy that I see waiting eyes and the brightened nights of longing.

Oh, the misery of all bestowers! Oh, the darkening of my sun! Oh, the craving to crave! Oh, the violent hunger in satiety!

Zarathustra says he is light and wishes he were dark, so that he could suck at the breasts of light. He lives in his own light and knows only giving, and he calls this the misery of all bestowers.

The bestowing virtueThe giver's overflow becomes his poverty: he can only give and never knows the happiness of receiving.
SolitudeHe is lonely because he is surrounded by his own light.

Commentary on this chapter

Nietzsche elsewhere

Composing Parts II and IIIFriedrich Nietzsche · Ecce Homo, 1888Nietzsche

Nietzsche says that 'The Night-Song' was composed in Rome above the Piazza Barberini, the second part in ten days at Sils, the third at Nice, with 'Old and New Tables' composed on the climb from the station to Eza, each part taking no more than ten days; his creative energy coincided with great bodily vigour, dancing, walking and laughter.

The dithyramb and the Night-SongFriedrich Nietzsche · Ecce Homo, 1888Nietzsche

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.

What the critics said

Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, Introduction to Thus Spake Zarathustra (1905) — Partisan source: the author shaped Nietzsche's posthumous reputation and is not a reliable interpreter.

Composition of Parts One and TwoElisabeth Förster-Nietzsche · Introduction to Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1905biography

Förster-Nietzsche records that Part One was written in about ten days at Rapallo in February 1883, finished in the hour of Wagner's death, that it was met with incomprehension, that the 'Night-Song' was composed in a gloomy, lonely spring in Rome, and that Part Two was written in ten days at Sils Maria in summer 1883.