6 passages
Too far did I fly into the future: a horror seized upon me. And when I looked around me, lo! there time was my sole contemporary. Then did I fly backwards, homewards—and always faster. Thus did I come unto you, ye…
Zarathustra says he flew too far into the future and was seized with horror. He flew back to the land of culture, came with longing, and found himself laughing at the motley colours he saw.
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With fifty patches painted on faces and limbs—so sat ye there to mine astonishment, ye present-day men! And with fifty mirrors around you, which flattered your play of colours, and repeated it! Verily, ye could wear no…
He describes present-day men as painted with fifty patches and surrounded by flattering mirrors. Their faces are their masks and all times and peoples show through their gestures. Without the paint there would be only a scarecrow, and he fled when he saw the skeleton naked.
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This, yea this, is bitterness to my bowels, that I can neither endure you naked nor clothed, ye present-day men! All that is unhomelike in the future, and whatever maketh strayed birds shiver, is verily more homelike…
He can bear them neither naked nor clothed, and says the unsettling future is more homelike than their 'reality'. They claim to be real and free of faith, yet they are pictures of everything ever believed and so refute belief. Being unfruitful, they lack belief, and they are half-open doors where grave-diggers wait.
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Perambulating refutations are ye, of belief itself, and a dislocation of all thought.
Zarathustra calls the 'real' men untrustworthy because they contradict belief itself.
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Alas, how ye stand there before me, ye unfruitful ones; how lean your ribs! And many of you surely have had knowledge thereof. Many a one hath said: “There hath surely a God filched something from me secretly whilst I…
He mocks their lean ribs and their complaint that a God has filched something from them, as in the story of Eve's creation. He laughs at their self-wonder and says the beetles that alight on his load will not make it heavier.
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Ah, whither shall I now ascend with my longing! From all mountains do I look out for fatherlands and motherlands. But a home have I found nowhere: unsettled am I in all cities, and decamping at all gates. Alien to me,…
Zarathustra looks from every mountain for a home but finds none, and says present-day men are alien to him. He loves only the children's land in the remotest sea. He will make amends to his children for being the child of his fathers.
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What the critics said
Ludovici says 'The Land of Culture' epitomises Nietzsche's attack on the scholars of his day as sterile because they believe in nothing, and that its last verses explain his altruism: he rejects Christian pity and neighbour-love both as degenerative slave-values and because he can love only his children's land, redeeming his fathers' errors in his children.