XXIX. THE TARANTULAS.
‘Tis night: now do all gushing fountains speak louder. And my soul also is a gushing fountain. Here hangeth its web: touch this, so that it may tremble.
‘Tis night: now only do all songs of the loving ones awake. And my soul also is the song of a loving one.
Something unappeased, unappeasable, is within me; it longeth to find expression.
Light am I: ah, that I were night! But it is my lonesomeness to be begirt with light!
Ah, that I were dark and nightly!
And you yourselves would I bless, ye twinkling starlets and glow-worms aloft!—and would rejoice in the gifts of your light.
But I live in mine own light, I drink again into myself the flames that break forth from me.
I know not the happiness of the receiver; and oft have I dreamt that stealing must be more blessed than receiving.
It is my poverty that my hand never ceaseth bestowing; it is mine envy that I see waiting eyes and the brightened nights of longing.
Oh, the misery of all bestowers!
They take from me: but do I yet touch their soul?
A hunger ariseth out of my beauty: I should like to injure those I illumine; I should like to rob those I have gifted:—thus do I hunger for wickedness.
Withdrawing my hand when another hand already stretcheth out to it; hesitating like the cascade, which hesitateth even in its leap:—thus do I hunger for wickedness!
Such revenge doth mine abundance think of: such mischief welleth out of my lonesomeness. And when they become subtle and cold, it is not spirit, but envy, that maketh them so.
My happiness in bestowing died in bestowing; my virtue became weary of itself by its abundance!
He who ever bestoweth is in danger of losing his shame; to him who ever dispenseth, the hand and heart become callous by very dispensing.
Mine eye no longer overfloweth for the shame of suppliants; my hand hath become too hard for the trembling of filled hands.
Whence have gone the tears of mine eye, and the down of my heart?
Many suns circle in desert space: to all that is dark do they speak with their light—but to me they are silent. Verily, in their souls not only honey is lacking.
Oh, this is the hostility of light to the shining one: unpityingly doth it pursue its course.
Unfair to the shining one in its innermost heart, cold to the suns:—thus travelleth every sun.
Like a storm do the suns pursue their courses: that is their travelling.
Oh, ye only is it, ye dark, nightly ones, that extract warmth from the shining ones!
Ah, there is ice around me; my hand burneth with the iciness!
‘Tis night: alas, that I have to be light!
‘Tis night: now doth my longing break forth in me as a fountain,—for speech do I long. For thus speaketh justice UNTO ME: “Men are not equal.”
‘Tis night: now do all gushing fountains speak louder. And my soul also is a gushing fountain.
‘Tis night: now do all songs of loving ones awake.
Thus sang Zarathustra.
Good and evil, and rich and poor, and high and low, and all names of values: weapons shall they be, and sounding signs, that life must again and again surpass itself!
Aloft will it build itself with columns and stairs—life itself: into remote distances would it gaze, and out towards blissful beauties— THEREFORE doth it require elevation!
And because it requireth elevation, therefore doth it require steps, and variance of steps and climbers! To rise striveth life, and in rising to surpass itself.
And just behold, my friends! Here where the tarantula’s den is, riseth aloft an ancient temple’s ruins—just behold it with enlightened eyes!
Verily, he who here towered aloft his thoughts in stone, knew as well as the wisest ones about the secret of life!
That there is struggle and inequality even in beauty, and war for power and supremacy: that doth he here teach us in the plainest parable.
How divinely do vault and arch here contrast in the struggle: how with light and shade they strive against each other, the divinely striving ones.—
Thus, steadfast and beautiful, let us also be enemies, my friends! Divinely will we strive AGAINST one another!—
Alas! There hath the tarantula bit me myself, mine old enemy! Divinely steadfast and beautiful, it hath bit me on the finger!
“Punishment must there be, and justice”—so thinketh it: “not gratuitously shall he here sing songs in honour of enmity!”
Yea, it hath revenged itself! And alas! now will it make my soul also dizzy with revenge!
That I may NOT turn dizzy, however, bind me fast, my friends, to this pillar! Rather will I be a pillar-saint than a whirl of vengeance!
Verily, no cyclone or whirlwind is Zarathustra: and if he be a dancer, he is not at all a tarantula-dancer!—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
