And what have I hated more than passing clouds, and whatever tainteth thee? And mine own hatred have I even hated, because it tainted thee!
The passing clouds I detest—those stealthy cats of prey: they take from thee and me what is common to us—the vast unbounded Yea- and Amen-saying.
These mediators and mixers we detest—the passing clouds: those half-and-half ones, that have neither learned to bless nor to curse from the heart.
Rather will I sit in a tub under a closed heaven, rather will I sit in the abyss without heaven, than see thee, thou luminous heaven, tainted with passing clouds!
And oft have I longed to pin them fast with the jagged gold-wires of lightning, that I might, like the thunder, beat the drum upon their kettle-bellies:—
—An angry drummer, because they rob me of thy Yea and Amen!—thou heaven above me, thou pure, thou luminous heaven! Thou abyss of light!—because they rob thee of MY Yea and Amen.
For rather will I have noise and thunders and tempest-blasts, than this discreet, doubting cat-repose; and also amongst men do I hate most of all the soft-treaders, and half-and-half ones, and the doubting, hesitating, passing clouds.
Nietzsche elsewhere
Nietzsche says that the psychological problem of the type is how one who says and does No to everything hitherto affirmed, bears the heaviest destiny and thinks the most abysmal thoughts, can still be a dancer who finds no objection even to the eternal recurrence of existence but becomes himself 'the tremendous and unlimited saying of Yea and Amen'; this is precisely the idea of Dionysus.
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.