The Homecoming
O solitude! You my homeland, solitude! Too long have I lived wild in wild strange lands not to come home to you with tears!
Now just shake your finger at me, as mothers do, no, smile at me, as mothers smile, now just say: “And who was it that once stormed away from me like a storm wind?—
“—who cried in parting: too long have I sat with solitude, and there I unlearned silence! That—you have learned now, I suppose?
“O Zarathustra, I know everything: and that you were more forsaken among the many, you single one, than you ever were with me!
“Forsakenness is one thing, solitude another: that—you have learned now! And that among human beings you will always be wild and strange:
“—wild and strange even when they love you: for above all they want to be spared!
“But here you are at home and in your own house; here you can say everything out and pour out all your reasons; nothing here is ashamed of hidden, hardened feelings.
“Here all things come caressing to your speech and flatter you: for they want to ride on your back. On every parable you ride here to every truth.
“Upright and forthright you may speak to all things here: and truly, it sounds like praise to their ears that someone speaks with all things—straight!
“But being forsaken is something else. For do you still remember, O Zarathustra? That time when your bird cried above you, as you stood in the forest, undecided where to go, unknowing, near a corpse:—
“—when you said: may my animals lead me! I found it more dangerous among human beings than among animals:—that was forsakenness!
“And do you still remember, O Zarathustra? When you sat on your island, a well of wine among empty buckets, giving and giving out, bestowing and pouring out among the thirsty:
“—until at last you sat thirsty and alone among the drunk and lamented by night: ‘Is taking not more blessed than giving? And stealing more blessed still than taking?’—that was forsakenness!
“And do you still remember, O Zarathustra? When your stillest hour came and drove you away from yourself, when with an evil whisper it said: ‘Speak and break!’—
“—when it made you sorry for all your waiting and silence and discouraged your humble courage: that was forsakenness!”—
O solitude! You my homeland, solitude! How blissfully and tenderly your voice speaks to me!
We do not question each other, we do not complain to each other, we go openly with each other through open doors.
For with you everything is open and bright; and here even the hours run on lighter feet. For in the dark time weighs more heavily on one than in the light.
Here the words and word-shrines of all being spring open for me: here all being wants to become word, all becoming wants to learn from me how to speak.
But down there—there all speech is in vain! There forgetting and passing by are the best wisdom: that—I have learned now!
Whoever wanted to grasp everything about human beings would have to handle everything. But for that my hands are too clean.
I do not even like breathing in their breath; ah, that I lived so long amid their noise and bad breath!
O blissful stillness around me! O pure smells around me! Oh, how this stillness draws pure breath from a deep chest! Oh, how it listens, this blissful stillness!
But down there—there everything speaks, there everything goes unheard. You may ring in your wisdom with bells: the shopkeepers in the marketplace will drown it out with the jingling of pennies!
Among them everything speaks, no one knows how to understand any longer. Everything falls into the water, nothing falls into deep wells any longer.
Among them everything speaks, nothing turns out well any longer and comes to an end. Everything cackles, but who still wants to sit quietly on the nest and hatch eggs?
Among them everything speaks, everything is talked to pieces. And what only yesterday was too hard for time itself and its tooth: today it hangs, scraped and gnawed, out of the mouths of the people of today.
Among them everything speaks, everything is betrayed. And what was once called the secret and secrecy of deep souls today belongs to the street trumpeters and other butterflies.
O human ways, you strange thing! You noise in dark lanes! Now you lie behind me again:—my greatest danger lies behind me!
In sparing and pitying lay always my greatest danger; and all human beings want to be spared and tolerated.
With truths held back, with a fool’s hand and a besotted heart and rich in the little lies of pity:—thus I always lived among human beings.
I sat among them in disguise, ready to mistake myself so that I might bear them, and gladly telling myself: “You fool, you do not know human beings!”
One unlearns human beings when one lives among human beings: there is too much foreground in all human beings—what use are farsighted, far-seeking eyes there!
And when they mistook me: fool that I was, I spared them for it more than myself: used to being hard against myself, and often even taking revenge on myself for this sparing.
Stung all over by poisonous flies and hollowed out, like a stone, by many drops of malice, so I sat among them and still told myself: “Everything small is innocent of its smallness!”
Especially those who call themselves “the good” I found to be the most poisonous flies: they sting in all innocence, they lie in all innocence; how could they be—just toward me!
Whoever lives among the good is taught by pity to lie. Pity makes the air stuffy for all free souls. For the stupidity of the good is unfathomable.
To hide myself and my riches—that I learned down there: for I found everyone still poor in spirit. That was the lie of my pity, that with everyone I knew,
—that in everyone I saw and smelled what was spirit enough for him and what was already too much spirit for him!
Their stiff wise men: I called them wise, not stiff—so I learned to swallow words. Their gravediggers: I called them researchers and examiners—so I learned to exchange words.
The gravediggers dig themselves into diseases. Under old rubble rest bad vapors. One should not stir up the swamp. One should live on mountains.
With blissful nostrils I breathe mountain freedom again! At last my nose is redeemed from the smell of all human ways!
Tickled by sharp air, as by sparkling wines, my soul sneezes—sneezes and cheers itself: Gesundheit!
Thus spoke Zarathustra.