The Wanderer

It was midnight when Zarathustra set out across the ridge of the island, so that he might reach the other shore by early morning: for there he meant to board a ship. There was a good roadstead there, where foreign ships too liked to drop anchor; they took along many a one who wanted to cross the sea from the blissful islands. Now as Zarathustra climbed the mountain, he thought along the way of his many solitary wanderings since his youth, and of how many mountains and ridges and summits he had already climbed.

I am a wanderer and a mountain climber, he said to his heart; I do not love the plains, and it seems I cannot sit still for long.

And whatever may still come to me as fate and experience—there will be a wandering in it, and a mountain climbing: in the end one experiences only oneself.

The time is past when accidents could still befall me; and what could still befall me now that is not already my own!

It only returns, it finally comes home to me—my own Self, and whatever of it has long been abroad and scattered among all things and accidents.

And one thing more I know: I stand now before my last summit and before what has been saved up for me the longest. Alas, I must go up my hardest path! Alas, I have begun my loneliest wandering!

But whoever is of my kind does not escape such an hour: the hour that speaks to him: “Only now do you go your way of greatness! Summit and abyss—they are now joined in one!

“You go your way of greatness: what until now was called your last danger has now become your last refuge!

“You go your way of greatness: now this must be your best courage, that there is no longer any path behind you!

“You go your way of greatness; here no one shall creep after you! Your own foot has erased the path behind you, and over it stands written: Impossibility.

“And if from now on all ladders fail you, then you must know how to climb even upon your own head: how else would you climb upward?

“Upon your own head and away over your own heart! Now what is mildest in you must become the hardest.

“Whoever has always spared himself much grows sickly in the end from all his sparing. Praised be what makes hard! I do not praise the land where butter and honey—flow!

“To learn to look away from oneself is necessary in order to see much:—this hardness is needed by everyone who climbs mountains.

“But whoever, as a knower, is intrusive with his eyes, how should he see more of all things than their foregrounds!

“But you, O Zarathustra, wanted to see the ground of all things and their background: so you must climb over yourself—up, upward, until you have even your stars beneath you!

“Yes! To look down upon myself and even upon my stars: that alone I would call my summit, that is what remained for me as my last summit!—”

Thus spoke Zarathustra to himself as he climbed, comforting his heart with hard little maxims: for he was sore at heart as never before. And when he reached the top of the ridge, behold, there lay the other sea spread out before him: and he stood still and was silent a long time. But the night was cold at this height, and clear, and bright with stars.

I recognize my lot, he said at last with sadness. Well then! I am ready. My last solitude has just begun.

Ah, this black, sorrowful sea below me! Ah, this pregnant nocturnal sullenness! Ah, fate and sea! To you I must now climb down!

I stand before my highest mountain and before my longest wandering: that is why I must first go down deeper than I ever climbed:

—deeper down into pain than I ever climbed, right into its blackest flood! So my fate wills it: Well then! I am ready.

Where do the highest mountains come from? I once asked. Then I learned that they come out of the sea.

This testimony is written in their rock and in the walls of their summits. It is from the deepest that the highest must come to its height.—

Thus spoke Zarathustra on the peak of the mountain, where it was cold; but when he came near the sea and at last stood alone among the cliffs, he had grown weary on the way and more full of longing than ever before.

Everything is still asleep now, he said; even the sea is asleep. Drunk with sleep and strange, its eye gazes at me.

But it breathes warmly, I feel that. And I feel too that it is dreaming. Dreaming, it writhes on hard pillows.

Listen! Listen! How it groans with evil memories! Or evil expectations?

Ah, I am sad with you, you dark monster, and vexed even with myself for your sake.

Ah, that my hand is not strong enough! Gladly, truly, would I redeem you from evil dreams!—

And as Zarathustra spoke thus, he laughed at himself with melancholy and bitterness. “What! Zarathustra!” he said, “do you want to sing comfort even to the sea?

“Ah, you loving fool Zarathustra, you overblissful one, so full of trust! But that is how you always were: always you came trustingly to everything terrible.

“Even every monster you wanted to stroke. A whiff of warm breath, a little soft shaggy fur on the paw—: and at once you were ready to love it and to lure it.

“Love is the danger of the loneliest one, love of everything, if only it is alive! Laughable, truly, are my folly and my modesty in love!”—

Thus spoke Zarathustra, and laughed a second time: but then he thought of the friends he had left—and as though he had wronged them with his thoughts, he was angry with himself for his thoughts. And soon it came to pass that the one who had laughed wept:—from wrath and longing Zarathustra wept bitterly.