Fourth and Last Part · LXIX. The Shadow

Goalless and homesick: where is my home?

Nihilism (all is empty)The higher men Zarathustra's shadow

Too much hath become clear unto me: now it doth not concern me any more. Nothing liveth any longer that I love,—how should I still love myself?

‘To live as I incline, or not to live at all’: so do I wish; so wisheth also the holiest. But alas! how have _I_ still—inclination?

Have _I_—still a goal? A haven towards which MY sail is set?

A good wind? Ah, he only who knoweth WHITHER he saileth, knoweth what wind is good, and a fair wind for him.

What still remaineth to me? A heart weary and flippant; an unstable will; fluttering wings; a broken backbone.

This seeking for MY home: O Zarathustra, dost thou know that this seeking hath been MY home-sickening; it eateth me up.

‘WHERE is—MY home?’ For it do I ask and seek, and have sought, but have not found it. O eternal everywhere, O eternal nowhere, O eternal—in-vain!”

He laments that he has no goal, no fair wind, a weary heart and broken backbone, and that his search for a home has become his homesickness.

Nihilism (all is empty)Weariness of will, no love left and no goal, ending in 'eternal in-vain'.
The higher menThe shadow shows the despairing wanderer who has lost his goal and himself.

Commentary on this passage

What the critics said

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

The shadow: the goalless free spiritAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909interpretation

Ludovici reads the shadow as the bold, wayward free spirit who follows every daring movement of his age until he loses all goal and home, cries 'Nothing is true; all is permitted', and becomes wreckage, prone to being captured by a narrow faith.