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Meanwhile do I sail along on uncertain seas; chance flattereth me, smooth-tongued chance; forward and backward do I gaze—, still see I no end.
As yet hath the hour of my final struggle not come to me—or doth it come to me perhaps just now? Verily, with insidious beauty do sea and life gaze upon me round about:
O afternoon of my life! O happiness before eventide! O haven upon high seas! O peace in uncertainty! How I distrust all of you!
Verily, distrustful am I of your insidious beauty! Like the lover am I, who distrusteth too sleek smiling.
As he pusheth the best-beloved before him—tender even in severity, the jealous one—, so do I push this blissful hour before me.
Away with thee, thou blissful hour! With thee hath there come to me an involuntary bliss! Ready for my severest pain do I here stand:—at the wrong time hast thou come!
Away with thee, thou blissful hour! Rather harbour there—with my children! Hasten! and bless them before eventide with MY happiness!
There, already approacheth eventide: the sun sinketh. Away—my happiness!—
Thus spake Zarathustra. And he waited for his misfortune the whole night; but he waited in vain. The night remained clear and calm, and happiness itself came nigher and nigher unto him. Towards morning, however, Zarathustra laughed to his heart, and said mockingly: “Happiness runneth after me. That is because I do not run after women. Happiness, however, is a woman.”
O heaven above me, thou pure, thou deep heaven! Thou abyss of light! Gazing on thee, I tremble with divine desires.
Up to thy height to toss myself—that is MY depth! In thy purity to hide myself—that is MINE innocence!
The God veileth his beauty: thus hidest thou thy stars. Thou speakest not: THUS proclaimest thou thy wisdom unto me.
Mute o’er the raging sea hast thou risen for me to-day; thy love and thy modesty make a revelation unto my raging soul.
In that thou camest unto me beautiful, veiled in thy beauty, in that thou spakest unto me mutely, obvious in thy wisdom:
Oh, how could I fail to divine all the modesty of thy soul! BEFORE the sun didst thou come unto me—the lonesomest one.
We have been friends from the beginning: to us are grief, gruesomeness, and ground common; even the sun is common to us.
We do not speak to each other, because we know too much—: we keep silent to each other, we smile our knowledge to each other.
Art thou not the light of my fire? Hast thou not the sister-soul of mine insight?
Together did we learn everything; together did we learn to ascend beyond ourselves to ourselves, and to smile uncloudedly:—
—Uncloudedly to smile down out of luminous eyes and out of miles of distance, when under us constraint and purpose and guilt steam like rain.
And wandered I alone, for WHAT did my soul hunger by night and in labyrinthine paths? And climbed I mountains, WHOM did I ever seek, if not thee, upon mountains?
And all my wandering and mountain-climbing: a necessity was it merely, and a makeshift of the unhandy one:—to FLY only, wanteth mine entire will, to fly into THEE!
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.
And “he who cannot bless shall LEARN to curse!”—this clear teaching dropt unto me from the clear heaven; this star standeth in my heaven even in dark nights.
I, however, am a blesser and a Yea-sayer, if thou be but around me, thou pure, thou luminous heaven! Thou abyss of light!—into all abysses do I then carry my beneficent Yea-saying.
A blesser have I become and a Yea-sayer: and therefore strove I long and was a striver, that I might one day get my hands free for blessing.
This, however, is my blessing: to stand above everything as its own heaven, its round roof, its azure bell and eternal security: and blessed is he who thus blesseth!
For all things are baptized at the font of eternity, and beyond good and evil; good and evil themselves, however, are but fugitive shadows and damp afflictions and passing clouds.
Verily, it is a blessing and not a blasphemy when I teach that “above all things there standeth the heaven of chance, the heaven of innocence, the heaven of hazard, the heaven of wantonness.”
“Of Hazard”—that is the oldest nobility in the world; that gave I back to all things; I emancipated them from bondage under purpose.
This freedom and celestial serenity did I put like an azure bell above all things, when I taught that over them and through them, no “eternal Will”—willeth.
This wantonness and folly did I put in place of that Will, when I taught that “In everything there is one thing impossible—rationality!”
A LITTLE reason, to be sure, a germ of wisdom scattered from star to star—this leaven is mixed in all things: for the sake of folly, wisdom is mixed in all things!
A little wisdom is indeed possible; but this blessed security have I found in all things, that they prefer—to DANCE on the feet of chance.
O heaven above me! thou pure, thou lofty heaven! This is now thy purity unto me, that there is no eternal reason-spider and reason-cobweb:—
—That thou art to me a dancing-floor for divine chances, that thou art to me a table of the Gods, for divine dice and dice-players!—
