The Shadow

But hardly had the voluntary beggar run off and Zarathustra was alone with himself again when he heard a new voice behind him, calling: “Stop! Zarathustra! Wait, will you! It’s me, O Zarathustra, me, your shadow!” But Zarathustra did not wait, for a sudden annoyance came over him at all the crowding and thronging in his mountains. “Where has my solitude gone?” he said.

“Truly, it is getting to be too much for me; these mountains are swarming, my kingdom is no longer of this world, I need new mountains.

“My shadow calls me? What does my shadow matter! Let him run after me! I—will run away from him.”—

Thus spoke Zarathustra to his heart and ran away. But the one who was behind him followed after him: so that soon there were three runners, one behind the other, namely the voluntary beggar in front, then Zarathustra, and third and last his shadow. They had not run like this for long when Zarathustra came to his senses about his folly and with one jerk shook off all his annoyance and weariness.

“What!” he said. “Have not the most ridiculous things always happened among us old hermits and saints?

“Truly, my folly has grown tall in the mountains! Now I hear six old fool’s legs clattering one behind the other!

“But may Zarathustra be afraid of a shadow? Besides, it seems to me, when all is said and done, that he has longer legs than I.”

Thus spoke Zarathustra, laughing with his eyes and his entrails; he stopped and turned around quickly—and behold, he nearly threw his follower and shadow to the ground in doing so: so closely was the shadow already following at his heels, and so weak was he too. For when he examined him with his eyes, he was startled as at a sudden ghost: so thin, blackish, hollow, and outlived did this follower look.

“Who are you?” asked Zarathustra vehemently. “What are you doing here? And why do you call yourself my shadow? I do not like you.”

“Forgive me,” answered the shadow, “that it is I; and if you do not like me, well then, O Zarathustra! in that I praise you and your good taste.

“I am a wanderer who has already walked much at your heels: always on the way, but without a goal, without a home too: so that truly little is lacking for me to be the eternal Wandering Jew, except that I am not eternal, and not a Jew either.

“What? Must I forever be on the way? Whirled by every wind, unsettled, driven on? O earth, you have become too round for me!

“I have sat on every surface already; like weary dust I have fallen asleep on mirrors and windowpanes: everything takes from me, nothing gives, I am growing thin,—I am almost like a shadow.

“But you, O Zarathustra, I flew and trailed after the longest, and though I hid myself from you, still I was your best shadow: wherever you sat, I sat too.

“With you I haunted the farthest, coldest worlds, like a ghost that runs of its own free will over winter roofs and snow.

“With you I strove into everything forbidden, worst, farthest: and if anything about me is virtue, it is that I had no fear of any prohibition.

“With you I broke whatever my heart ever revered; I overturned all boundary stones and images, I ran after the most dangerous wishes,—truly, I once ran right over every crime.

“With you I unlearned faith in words and values and great names. When the devil sheds his skin, does not his name fall off too? For that is skin as well. The devil himself is perhaps—skin.

“‘Nothing is true, everything is permitted’: so I told myself. Into the coldest waters I plunged, with head and heart. Alas, how often I stood there afterward naked as a red crab!

“Alas, where did all my goodness go, and all my shame, and all my faith in the good! Alas, where is that lying innocence I once possessed, the innocence of the good and of their noble lies!

“Too often, truly, I followed close on the heels of truth: then it kicked me in the head. Sometimes I thought I was lying, and behold! only then did I hit upon—the truth.

“Too much has become clear to me: now nothing concerns me anymore. Nothing lives anymore that I love,—how should I still love myself?

“‘To live as I desire, or not to live at all’: so I will it, so the holiest wills it too. But woe! how do I still have—desire?

“Do I—still have a goal? A harbor toward which my sail is running?

“A good wind? Alas, only one who knows where he is sailing also knows which wind is good and is his sailing wind.

“What is left me now? A heart weary and insolent; an unsettled will; fluttering wings; a broken backbone.

“This seeking for my home: O Zarathustra, do you know, this seeking was my visitation; it is eating me up.

“‘Where is—my home?’ For that I ask and seek and have sought, and that I have not found. O eternal everywhere, O eternal nowhere, O eternal—in vain!”

Thus spoke the shadow, and Zarathustra’s face grew long at his words. “You are my shadow!” he said at last, with sadness.

“Your danger is no small one, you free spirit and wanderer! You have had a bad day: see to it that a still worse evening does not come upon you!

“To such unsettled ones as you, even a prison seems blissful in the end. Have you ever seen how captured criminals sleep? They sleep peacefully, they enjoy their new security.

“Beware that in the end a narrow faith does not capture you, a hard, strict delusion! For now everything that is narrow and firm seduces and tempts you.

“You have lost the goal: woe, how will you laugh off and live down this loss? With it—you have lost the way too!

“You poor rover, you dreamer, you weary butterfly! Do you want a rest and a home for this evening? Then go up to my cave!

“That way leads the path to my cave. And now I want to run away from you again quickly. Already something lies on me like a shadow.

“I want to run alone, so that it grows bright around me again. For that I must still be merrily on my legs a long while. But in the evening there will be—dancing at my place!”—

Thus spoke Zarathustra.