“Zarathustra! Zarathustra! Read my riddle! Say, say! WHAT IS THE REVENGE ON THE WITNESS?
I entice thee back; here is smooth ice! See to it, see to it, that thy pride doth not here break its legs!
Thou thinkest thyself wise, thou proud Zarathustra! Read then the riddle, thou hard nut-cracker,—the riddle that I am! Say then: who am _I_!”
—When however Zarathustra had heard these words,—what think ye then took place in his soul? PITY OVERCAME HIM; and he sank down all at once, like an oak that hath long withstood many tree-fellers,—heavily, suddenly, to the terror even of those who meant to fell it. But immediately he got up again from the ground, and his countenance became stern.
“I know thee well,” said he, with a brazen voice, “THOU ART THE MURDERER OF GOD! Let me go.
Thou couldst not ENDURE him who beheld THEE,—who ever beheld thee through and through, thou ugliest man. Thou tookest revenge on this witness!”
What the critics said
Ludovici argues that in meeting the ugliest man Zarathustra shows the only right response to great misery, shame and reverence, against obtrusive pity, which is self-glorification; Nietzsche blushes for his race and wills a world where one need not blush for one's fellows.
Ludovici reads the ugliest man as the murderer of God by an atheism of the great ugly man who reveres beauty: an omniscient God's pity, lacking shame and reverence, could not be evaded and so must not exist; Zarathustra honours his self-contempt as the mark of a great despiser.
Ludovici reads the ugliest man as the murderer of God by an atheism of the great ugly man who reveres beauty: an omniscient God's pity, lacking shame and reverence, could not be evaded and so must not exist; Zarathustra honours his self-contempt as the mark of a great despiser.