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llMFOMD°WIVERSHY°UBRARY
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/*• i
V
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THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The First Complete and Authorised English Translation ;
EDITED BY
Dr. OSCAR LEVY
VOLUME SEVENTEEN
ECCE HOMO
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t/677U
Of the First Edition of
Two Thousand Copies
this is
No.
710
^L
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FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
ECCE HOMO
( NIETZSCHE S AUTOBIOGRAPHY)
TRANSLATED BY
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI
POETRY RENDERED BY
PAUL V. COHN FRANCIS BICKLEY
HERMAN SCHEFFAUER Dr. G. T. WRENCH
HYMN TO LIFE (composed by F. NIETZSCHE)
NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
191 1
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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
168896
Printed by Morrison & Gibb Limitep, Edinburgh
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FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION OF
THE SCULPTOR
PROFESSOR KARL DONNDORF in STUTTGART
'N
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CONTENTS
Translator's Introduction
Author's Preface -
Why I am so Wise -
Why I am so Clever
Why I Write such Excellent Books
The Birth of Tragedy -
Thoughts out of Season
Human, A 11- too- Human
The Dawn of Day
Joyful Wisdom -
Thus spake Zarathustra
Beyond Good and Evil -
The Genealogy of Morals
The Twilight of the Idols
The Case of Wagner -
Why I am a Fatality
PAGE
vii
I
9
28
55
68
75
82
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114
116
118
121
131
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vi CONTENTS
PAGE
Editorial Note to Poetry - - - 145
Poetry—
Songs, Epigrams, etc. - 147
Dionysus-Dithyrambs - - - 173
Fragments of Dionysus-Dithyrambs - - 191
Hymn to Life, composed by F. Nietzsche - 209
id
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
Ecce Homo is the last prose work that Nietzsche
wrote. It is true that the pamphlet Nietzsche contra
Wagner was prepared a month later than the Auto-
biography ; but we cannot consider this pamphlet as
anything more than a compilation, seeing that it con-
sists entirely of aphorisms drawn from such previous
works as Joyful Wisdom, Beyond Good and Evil, The
Genealogy of Morals, etc. Coming at the end of a year
in which he had produced the Case of Wagner, The
Twilight of the Idols, and The Antichrist, Ecce Homo
is not only a coping-stone worthy of the wonderful
creations of that year, but also a fitting conclusion to
his whole life, in the form of a grand summing up of
his character as a man, his purpose as a reformer, and *
his achievement as a thinker. As if half conscious of
his approaching spiritual end, Nietzsche here bids his
friends farewell, just in the manner in which, in the
Twilight of the Idols (Aph. 36, Part ix.), he declares
that every one should be able totake leave of his circle
of relatives and intimates when his time seems to have
come — that is to say, while he is still himself while he
still knows what he is about, and is able to measure his
own life and life in general, and speak of both in a *
manner which is not vouchsafed to the groaning in-
valid, to the man lying on his back, decrepit and ex-
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viii TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
hausted, or to the moribund victim of some wasting
disease. Nietzsche's spiritual death, like his whole
life, was in singular harmony with his doctrine : he
died suddenly and proudly, — sword in hand. War,
which he — and he alone among all the philosophers
of Christendom — had praised so whole-heartedly, at
last struck him down in the full vigour of his man-
hood, and left him a victim on the battlefield — the
terrible battlefield of thought, on which there is no
quarter, and for which no Geneva Convention has yet
been established or even thought of.
To those who know Nietzsche's life-work, no apol-
ogy will be needed for the form and content of this
wonderful work. They will know, at least, that a man
either is, or is not, aware of his significance and of the
significance of what he has accomplished, and that if
he is aware of it, then self-realisation, even of the kind
which we find in these pages, is neither morbid nor
suspicious, but necessary and inevitable. Such chap-
ter headings as " Why I am so Wise," " Why I am a
Fatality," " Why I write such Excellent Books,"—
however much they may have disturbed the equan-
imity, and "objectivity" in particular, of certain
Nietzsche biographers, can be regarded as patho-
logical only i n a democratic age in which people ha ve
lost all sense of gradj J^QjRjnfl T an ^j and in which the
} virtues of modesty and humility have to be preached
far and wide as a corrective against the vulgar pre-
tensions of thousands of wretched nobodies. For
little people can be endured only as modest citizeps
or humble Christians. If, however, they demand a
like modesty on the part of the truly great ; if they
raise their voices against Nietzsche's lack of the very
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TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION ix
virtue they so abundantly possess or pretend to pos-
sess, it is time to remind them of Goethe's famous re-
mark: "Nur Lumpe sind bescheiden " (Only nobodies
are ever modest).
It took Nietzsche barely three weeks to write this
story of his life. Begun on the 1 5 th of October 1 888,
his four-and-fourtieth birthday, it was finished on the
4th of November of the same year, and, but for a few
trifling modifications and additions, is just as Nietz-
sche left it. It was not published in Germany until
the year 1908, eight years after Nietzsche's death. In
a letter dated the 27th of December 1888, addressed
to the musical composer Fuchs, the author declares
the object of the work to be to dispose of all discus-
sion, doubt, and inquiry concerning his own person-
ality, in order to leave the public mind free to consider
merely " the things for the sake of which he existed "
(" die Dinge> derentwegen ich da bin "). And, true to
his intention, Nietzsche's honesty in these pages is
certainly one of the most remarkable features about
them. From the first chapter, in which he frankly ac-
knowledges the decadent elements within him, to the
last page, whereon he characterises his mission, his
life-task, and his achievement, by means of the one
symbol , Dionysus versus Christ,— -everything comes
straight irom the shoulder, without hesitation, without
fear of consequences, and, above all, without conceal-
ment. Only in one place does he appear to conceal
something, and then he actually leads one to under-
stand that he is doing so. It is in regard to Wagner,
the greatest friend of his life. " Who doubts," he
says, " that I, old artillery-man that I am, would be
able if I liked to point my heavy guns at Wagner ? "
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x TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
— But he adds : " Everything decisive in thisquestion
I kept to myself— I have loved Wagner" (p. 122).
To point, as many have done, to the proximity of
all Nietzsche's autumn work of the year 1888 to his
breakdown at the beginning of 1889, and to argue
that in all its main features it foretells the catastrophe
that is imminent, seems a little too plausible, a little
too obvious and simple to require refutation. That
Nietzsche really was in a state which in medicine is
known i&euphoria — that is to say, that stateof highest
well-being and capacity which often precedes a com-
plete breakdown, cannot, I suppose, be questioned;
for his style, his penetrating vision, and his vigour,
reach their zenith in the works written in this autumn
of 1888 ; but the contention that the matter, the sub-
stance, of these works reveals any signs whatsoever
of waning mental health, or, as a certain French bio-
GHPhn* h ac -' f , ftf an inability to " holdTumself and_
his judgments in check, " is best contradicted by the
internal evidence itself To take just a few examples
at random, examine the cold and calculating tone
of self-analysis in Chapter I. of the present work; con-
siderthe reserve and the restraint with which the idea
in Aphorism 7 of that chapter is worked out, — not to
speak of the restraint and self-mastery in the idea
itself, namely : —
" To be one's enemy's equal — this is the first condition of an
honourable duel. Where one despises one cannot wage war.
Where one commands, where one sees something beneath one,
oneifigtf/nottowage war. My war tactics can be reduced to four
principles : First, I attack only things that are triumphant— if
necessary I wait until they become triumphant. Secondly, I
attack only those things against which I find no allies, against
which I stand alone — against which I compromise nobody but
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TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION xi
myself. . . . Thirdly, I never make personal attacks — I use a
personality merely as a magnifying-glass, by means of which I
render a general, but elusive and scarcely noticeable evil, more
apparent. . . . Fourthly, I attack only those things from which
all personal differences are excluded, in which any such thing
as a background of disagreeable experiences is lacking."
And now notice the gentleness with which, in
Chapter II., Wagner — the supposed mortal enemy,
the supposed envied rival to Nietzsche — is treated.
Are these the words and the thought s of a ma n who
has lqsL or wjio is losing, control ? ' " ~*
And even if we confineourselves~simply to the sub-
stance of this work and put the question — Is it a new
Nietzsche or the old Nietzsche that we find in these
pages ? Is it the old countenance with which we are
familiar, or are the features distorted, awry , disfigured ?
What will the answer be ? Obviously there is no new
or even deformed Nietzsche here, because he is still
faithful to the position which he assumed in Thus
spake Zarathustra, five years previously, and is per-
fectly conscious of this fidelity (see p. 141); neither
can he be even on the verge of any marked change,
because the whole of the third chapter, in which he
reviews his life-work, is simply a reiteration and a
confirmation of his old points of view, which are here
made all the more telling by additional arguments
suggested, no doubt, by maturer thought. In fact, if
anything at all is new in this work, it is its cool cer-
tainty, its severe deliberateness, and its extraordin-
arily incisive vision, as shown, for instance, in the sum-
ming up of the genuine import of the third and fourth
essays in the Thoughts out of Season (pp. 75-76, 80,
81, 82), a summing up which a most critical analysis
of the essays in question can but verify.
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xii TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
Romanticism,idealism,Christianity,arestillscorned
( and despised ; another outlook, a nobler, braver, and
| more earthly outlook, is still upheld and revered ; the
^ great yea to life, including all that it contains that is
terrible and questionable, is still pronounced in the
teethofpessimists,nihilists,anarchists,Christians,and
other decadents; an d Germany, " Europe's flatlan d," is
still subjected to the most relentless criticism. Ittliere
are any signs of change, besides those of mere growth,
in this work, they certainly succeed in eluding the
most careful search, undertaken with a full knowledge
of Nietzsche's former opinions, and it would be inter-
esting to know precisely where they are found by
those writers whom the titles of the chapters, alone,
seem so radically to have perturbed.
But the most striking thing of all, the miracle, so
to speak, of this autobiography, is the absence from
it of that loathing, that suggestion of surfeit, with
which a life such as the one Nietzsche had led, would
have filled any other man even of power approximate
to his own. This anchorite, who, in the last years of
his life as a healthy human being, suffered the ex-
perience of seeing even his oldest friends, including
Rhode, 6how the most complete indifference to his lot,
this wrestler with Fate, for whom recognition, in the
persons of Brandes, Taine, and Strindberg, had come
all too late, and whom even support, sympathy, and
help, arriving as it did at last, through Deussen and
from Madame de Salis Marschlins, could no longer
cheer or comfort, — this was the man who was able
notwithstanding to inscribe thedeviceamorfati upon
his shield on the very eve of his final collapse as a
victim of the unspeakable suffering he had endured,
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TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION xiii
And this final collapse might easily have been fore-
seen. Nietzsche's sensorium, as his autobiography
proves, was probably the most delicate instrument
ever possessed by ahuman being; and with this fragile
structure — the prerequisite, by the bye, of all genius,
— his terrible will compelled him to confront the most
profound and most recondite problems. We happen
to know from another artist and profound thinker,
Benjamin Disraeli, who himself had experienced a
dangerous breakdown, what the consequences pre-
cisely are of indulging in excessive activity in the
sphere of the spirit, more particularly when that spirit
is highly organised. Disraeli says in Contarini Flem-
ing (Part iv. chap, v.) : —
" I have sometimes half believed, although the suspicion is
mortifying, that there is only one step between his state who
deeply indulges in imaginative meditation, and insanity ; for I
well remember that at this period of my life, when I indulged
in meditation to a degree that would now be impossible, and
I hope unnecessary, my senses sometimes appeared to be
wandering."
And artists are the proper judges of artists, — not
Oxford Dons, like TV 5chfl 1eg . who, in his imprudent
attemptatdealingwithsomfediing for which his prag-
matic hands are not sufficiently delicate, eagerly av-
ails himself of popular help inh iaarticl eon Nietzsche
in the eleventh edition of the Ency tlopcedia Britannica %
and implies the hackneyed and wholly exploded belief
that Nietzschffo phi1f)Sftpl|y is maHnpgg infligypalqng',
As German philosophies, however, are said to go to
Oxford only when they die, we may, perhaps, conclude
from this want of appreciation in that quarter, how
very much alive Nietzsche's doctrine still is.
Not that Nietzsche went mad so soon, but that he
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xiv TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
went mad so late is the wonder of wonders. Con-
sidering the extraordinary amount of work he did,
the great task of the trans valuation of all values, which
he actually accomplished, and the fact that he endured
such long years of solitude, which to him, the sensitive
artist to whom friends were everything, must have
been a terrible hardship, we can only wonder at his
great health, and can well believe his sister's account ;
of the phenomenal longevity and bodily vigour of
his ancestors.
Noone, however, who is initiated, no onewho reads
this work with understanding, will be in need of this
introductory note of mine ; for, to all who know, these
pages must speak for themselves. We are no longer
in the nineteenth century. We have learned many
things since then, and if caution is only one of these
things, at least it will prevent us from judging a book
such as this one, with all its apparent pontifical pride
and surging self-reliance, with undue haste, or with
that arrogant assurance with which the ignorance
of a the humble " and " the modest " has always con-
fronted everything truly great.
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.
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PREFACE
As it is my intention within a very short time to
confront my fellow-men with the very greatest
demand that has ever yet been made upon them,
it seems to me above all nereqsflry fn rterlflra h*» r p>
who and what fl am. As a matter of fact, this
ought to be pretty well known already, for I have
not " held my tongue " about myself. But the
disparity which obtains between the greatness of
my task and the smallness of my contemporaries,
is revealed by the fact that people have neither
heard me nor yet seen me. I live on my own
self-made credit, and it is probably only a pre-
judice to suppose that I am alive at all. I do but
require to speak to any one of the scholars who
come to the Ober-Engadine in the summer in
order to convince myself that I am not alive. . . .
Under these circumstances, it is a duty — and one
against which my customary reserve, and to a still
greater degree the pride of my instincts, rebel —
to say : Listen ! for I am such and such a person.
For Heaven's sake do not confound me with any one
else /
2
I am, for instance, in no wise a bogey man, or
moral monster. On the contrary, I am the very
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2 - • p£ E £ AC g
opposite in nature to the kind of man that has
been honoured hitherto as virtuous. Between
ourselves, it seems to me that this is precisely a
matter on which I may feel proud. J am a d is-
ciple ofthe philo sopher Dionysus, and I would
i ^prefer~tol>e even a satyr than a saint. But just
read this book ! Maybe I have here succeeded in
expressing this contrast in a cheerful and at the
same time sympathetic manner — maybe this is the
only purpose of the present work.
./The very last thing I should promise to accom-
Iplish would be to " improve " mankind. I do not
set up any new idols ; may old idols only learn
what it costs to have legs of clay. To overthrow
idols (idols is the name I give to all ideals) is
much more like my business. In proportion as
an ideal world has been falsely assumed, reality
has been robbed of its value, its meaning, and its
truthfulness. . . . The " true world " and the " ap-
parent world" — in plain English, the fictitious
world and reality. . . . Hitherto the lie of the
ideal has been the curse of reality ; by means of
it the very source of mankind's instincts has be-
come mendacious and false; so much so that
those values have come to be worshipped which
are the exact opposite of the ones which would
ensure man's prosperity, his future, and his great
right to a future.
r
He who knows how to breathe in the air of my
writings is conscious that it is the air of the
heights, that it is bracing. A man must be built
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PREFACE 3
for it, otherwise the chances are that it will chill
him. The ice is near, the loneliness is terrible —
but how serenely everything lies in the sunshine !
how freely one can breathe ! how much, one feels,
lies beneath one! j Philosophy, as I have under-
s tood it hitherto, is_a_yoluntary retirement into
regions of ice_and_ mountain-peaks^—the seeking-
out of everything strange and questionable in
existencefe v ery thing upon which, hit herto , morality
Has set its ban. / Through long experience, de-
rived from such wanderings in forbidden country,
I acquired an opinion very different from that
which may seem generally desirable, of the causes
which hitherto have led to men's moralising and
idealising. The secret history of philosophers,
the psychology of their great names, was revealed
to me. How much truth can a certain mind en-
dure ; how much truth can it dare ? — these ques-
tions became for me ever more and more the actual
test of values. Error (the belief in the ideal) is
not blindness ; error is cowardice. . . . Every con-
quest, every step forward in knowledge, is the out-
come of courage, of hardness towards one's self, of
cleanliness towards one's self. I do not refute
ideals ; all I do is to draw on my gloves in their
presence. . % . Nitimur in vetitum ; with this de-
vice my philosophy will one day be victorious ;
for that which has hitherto been most stringently
forbidden is, without exception, Truth.
4
In my lifework, my Zarathustra holds a place
apart. With it, I gave my fellow-men the greatest I
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4 PREFACE
igift that has ever been bestowed upon them.
, This book, the voice of which speaks out across
] the ages, is not only the loftiest book on earth,
literally the book of mountain air, — the whole
phenomenon, mankind, lies at an incalculable dis-
tance beneath it, — but it is also the deepest book,
born of the inmost abundance of truth ; an inex-
haustible well, into which no pitcher can be
lowered without coming up again laden with gold
and with goodness. Here it is not a " prophet "
who speaks, one of those gruesome hybrids of
sickness and Will to Power, whom men call
founders of religions. If a man would not do a
sad wrong to his wisdom, he must, above all give
proper heed to the tones — the halcyonic tones —
that fall from the lips of Zarathustra : —
" The most silent words are harbingers of the
storm ; thoughts that come on dove's feet lead the
world.
" The figs fall from the trees ; they are good and
sweet, and, when they fall, their red skins are rent.
" A north wind am I unto ripe figs.
" Thus, like figs, do these precepts drop down
to you, my friends; now drink their juice and
their sweet pulp.
" It is autumn all around, and clear sky, and
afternoon."
No fanatic speaks to you here ; this is not a
" sermon " ; no faith is demanded in these pages.
From out an infinite treasure of light and.well of
joy, drop by drop, my words fall out — a slow and
gentle gait is the cadence of these discourses.
Such things can reach only the most elect ; it is
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PREFACE 5
a rare privilege to be a listener here ; not every
one who likes can have ears to hear Zarathustra.
Is not Zarathustra, because of these things, a
seducer 1 . . . But what, indeed, does he himself
say, when for the first time he goes back to his
solitude? Just the reverse of that which any
" Sage," " Saint," " Saviour of the world," and
other decadent would say. . . . Not only his
words, but he himself is other than they.
" Alone do I now go, my disciples ! Get ye also
hence, and alone ! Thus would I have it.
" Verily, I beseech you : take your leave of me
and arm yourselves against Zarathustra! And
better still, be ashamed of him ! Maybe he hath
deceived you.
" The knight of knowledge must be able not only
to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends.
" The man who remaineth a pupil requiteth his
teacher but ill. And why would ye not pluck at
my wreath?
" Ye honour me ; but what if your reverence
should one day break down ? Take heed, lest a
statue crush you.
"Ye say ye believe in Zarathustra? But of
what account is Zarathustra ? Ye are my be-
lievers : but of what account are all believers ?
"Ye had not yet sought yourselves when ye
found me. Thus do all believers ; therefore is all
believing worth so little.
" Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves ;
a nd only when ye nave ainienietf1ine~wiirr"c ome
back unto vou."
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
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On this perfect day, when everything is ripening,
and not only the grapes are getting brown, a ray
of sunshine has fallen on my life : I looked behind
me, I looked before me, and never have I seen so
many good things all at once. Not in vain have
I buried my four-and-fortieth year to-day ; I had
the right to bury it — that in it which still had life,
has been saved and is immortal. The first book
of the Transvaluation of all Values^ The Songs of
Zarathustra, The Twilight of the Idols, ji w attempts
to philosophise with the hammer — all these things
are the gift of this year, and even of its last quarter.
How could I help being thankful to the whole of my
life?
That is why I am now going to tell myself the
story of my life.
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ECCE HOMO
HOW ONE BECOMES WHAT ONE IS
WHY I AM SO WISE
The happiness of my existence, its unique char-
acter perhaps, consists in its fatefulness : to speak
in a riddle, as my own father I am already dead,
as my own mother I still live and grow old. This
double origin, taken as it were from the highest
and lowest rungs of the ladder of life, at once a
decadent and a beginning, this, if anything, ex-
plains that neutrality, that freedom from partisan- -
ship in regard to the general problem of existence,
which perhaps distinguishes me. To the first in-
dications of ascending or of descending life my
nostrils are more sensitive than those of any man
that has yet lived. In this domain I am a master
to my backbone — I know both sides, for I am
both sides. My father died in his six-and-thirtieth
year : he was delicate, lovable, and morbid, like one
who is preordained to pay simply a flying visit —
a gracious reminder of life rather than life itself.
In the same year that his life declined mine also
declined: in my six-and-thirtieth year I reached
the lowest point in my vitality, — I still lived, but
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IO ECCE HOMO
my eyes could distinguish nothing that lay three
paces away from me. At that time — it was the
year 1 879 — I resigned my professorship at B&le,
lived through the summer like a shadow in St.
Moritz, and spent the following winter, the most
sunless of my life, like a shadow in Naumburg.
This was my lowest ebb. During this period I
wrote The Wanderer and His Shadow. Without
a doubt I was conversant with shadows then. The
winter that followed, my first winter in Genoa,
brought forth that sweetness and spirituality which
is almost inseparable from extreme poverty of blood
and muscle, in the shape of The Dawn of Day,
The perfect lucidity and cheerfulness, the intel-
lectual exuberance even, that this work reflects,
coincides, in my case, not only with the most pro-
found physiological weakness, but also with an ex-
cess of suffering. In the midst of the agony of a
headache which lasted three days, accompanied by
violent nausea, I was possessed of most singular
dialectical clearness, and in absolutely cold blood
I then thought out things, for which, in my more
healthy moments, I am not enough of a climber,
not sufficiently subtle, not sufficiently cold. My
readers perhaps know to what extent I consider dia-
lectic a symptom of decadence, as, for instance, in
the most famous of all cases — the case of Socrates.
All the morbid disturbances of the intellect, even
that semi-stupor which accompanies fever, have,
unto this day, remained completely unknown to me;
and for my first information concerning their nature
and frequency, I was obliged to have recourse to
the learned works which have been compiled on the
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WHY I AM SO WISE II
subject. My circulation is slow. No one has ever
been able to detect fever in me. A doctor who
treated me for some time as a nerve patient finally
declared : " No ! there is nothing wrong with your
nerves, it is simply I who am nervous." It has
been absolutely impossible to ascertain any' local <
degeneration in me, nor any organic stomach
trouble, however much I may have suffered from
profound weakness of the gastric system as the
result of general exhaustion. Even my eye trouble,
which sometimes approached so parlously near to
blindness, was only an effect and not a cause ; for,
whenever my general vital condition improved, my
power of vision also increased. Having admitted
all this, do I need to say that I am experienced
in questions of decadence ? I know them inside
and out. Even that filigree art of prehension and
comprehension in general, that feeling for delicate
shades of difference, that psychology of "seeing
through brick walls," and whatever else I may be
able to do, was first learnt then, and is the specific
gift of that period during which everything in me
was subtilised, — observation itself, together with all
the organs of observation. To look upon healthier
concepts and values from the standpoint of the sick,
and conversely to look down upon the secret work
of the instincts of decadence from the standpoint
of him who is laden and self-reliant with the rich-
ness of life — this has been my longest exercise, my
principal experience. If in anything at all, it was
in this that I became a master. To-day my hand
knows the trick, I now have the knack of reversing
perspectives: the first reason perhaps why a Trans-
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12 ECCE HOMO
valuation of all Values has been possible to me
alone.
For, apart from the fact that I am a decadent, I
am also the reverse of such a creature. Among
other things my proof of this is, that I always
instinctively select the proper remedy when my
spiritual or bodily health is low ; whereas the de-
cadent, as such, invariably chooses those remedies
which are bad for him. As a whole I was sound,
but in certain details I was a decadent. That
energy with which I sentenced myself to absolute
solitude, and to a severance from all those condi-
tions in life to which I had grown accustomed ; my
discipline of myself, and my refusal to allow myself
to be pampered, to be tended hand and foot, and to
be doctored — all this betrays the absolute certainty
of my instincts respecting what at that time was
most needful to me. I placed myself in my own
hands, I restored myself to health : the first con-
dition of success in such an undertaking, as every
physiologist will admit, is that at bottom a man
should be sound. An intrinsically morbid nature
cannot become healthy. On the other hand, to an
intrinsically sound nature, illness may even con-
stitute a powerful stimulus to life, to a surplus of
life. It is in this light that I now regard the long
period of illness that I endured : it seemed as if I
had discovered life afresh, my own self included. I
tasted all good things and even trifles in a way in
which it was not easy for others to taste them —
out of my Will to Health and to Life I made my
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WHY I AM SO WISE 1 3
philosophy. . . .[jor this should be thoroughly
understood ; it was during those years in which my
vitality reached its lowest point that I ceased from
being a pessimist : the instinct of self-recovery for-
bade my holding to a philosophy of poverty and
desperation. Now, by what signs are Nature's
lucky strokes recognised among men ? They are
recognised by the fact that any such lucky stroke
gladdens our senses ; that he is carved from one
integral block, which is hard, sweet, and fragrant as
well. He enjoys that only which is good for him ;
his pleasure, his desire, ceases when the limits of
that which is good for him are overstepped. He
divines remedies for injuries; he knows how to turn
serious accidents to his own advantage ; that which
does not kill him makes him stronger. He in-
stinctively gathers his material from all he sees,
hears, and experiences. | He is a selective principle ;
he rejects much. He is always in his own com-
pany, whether his intercourse be with books, with
men, or with natural scenery; he honours the
things he chooses, the things he acknowledges, the
things he trusts. He reacts slowly to all kinds of
stimuli, with that tardiness which long caution and
deliberate pride have bred in him — he tests the
approaching stimulus ; he would not dream of
meeting it half-way. He believes neither in " ill-
luck" nor "guilt"; he can digest himself and others ;
he knows how to forget — he is strong enough to
make everything turn to his own advantage^
Lo then ! I am the very reverse of a decadent,
for he whom I have just described is none other
than myself.
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14 ECCE HOMO
This double thread of experiences, this means of
access to two worlds that seem so far asunder, finds
in every detail its counterpart in my own nature — I
am my own complement : I have a " second " sight,
as well as a first. And perhaps I also have a third
sight. By the very nature of my origin I was
allowed an outlook beyond all merely local, merely
national and limited horizons ; it required no effort
on my part to be a " good European." On the
other hand, I am perhaps more German than modern
Germans — mere Imperial Germans — can hope to
be, — I, the last anti-political German. Be this as
it may, my ancestors were Polish noblemen : it is
owing to them that I have so much race instinct in
my blood — who knows ? perhaps even the liberum
veto* When I think of the number of times in my
travels that I have been accosted as a Pole, even by
Poles themselves, and how seldom I have been taken
for a German, it seems to me as if I belonged to
those only who have a sprinkling of German in
them. But my mother, Franziska Oehler, is at any
rate something very German; as is also my paternal
grandmother, Erdmuthe Krause. The latter spent
the whole of her youth in good old Weimar, not
without coming into contact with Goethe's circle.
Her brother, Krause, the Professor of Theology in
* The right which every Polish deputy, whether a great or
an inferior nobleman, possessed of forbidding the passing of
any measure by the Diet, was called in Poland the liberum veto
(in Polish nie pozwalam\ and brought all legislation to a
standstill. — Tr.
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WHY I AM SO WISE IS
Konigsberg, was called to the post of General
Superintendent at Weimar after Herder's death.
It is not unlikely that her mother, my great grand-
mother, is mentioned in young Goethe's diary under
the name of " Muthgen." She married twice, and
her second husband was Superintendent Nietzsche
of Eilenburg. In 1 8 1 3, the year of the great war,
when Napoleon with his general staff entered Eilen-
burg on the 10th of October, she gave birth to a
son. As a daughter of Saxony she was a great
admirer of Napoleon, and maybe I am so still. My
father, born in 181 3, died in 1849. Previous to
taking over the pastorship of the parish of Rocken,
not far from Liitzen, he lived for some years at the
Castle of Altenburg, where he had charge of the
education of the four princesses. His pupils are the
Queen of Hanover,the Grand-Duchess Constantine,
the Grand-Duchess of Oldenburg, and the Princess
Theresa of Saxe-Altenburg. He was full of loyal
respect for the Prussian King, Frederick William the
Fourth, from whom he obtained his living at Rocken ;
the events of 1848 saddened him extremely. As
I was born on the 1 5 th of October, the birthday of
the king above mentioned, I naturally received the
Hohenzollern names of Frederick William. There
was at all events one advantage in the choice of
this day : my birthday throughout the whole of my
childhood was a day of public rejoicing. I regard
it as a great privilege to have had such a father : it
even seems to me that this embraces all that I can
claim in the matter of privileges — life, the great yea
to life, excepted. What I owe to him above all is
this, that I do not need any special intention, but
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1 6 ECCE HOMO
merely a little patience, in order involuntarily to
enter a world of higher and more delicate things.
There I am at home, there alone does my inmost
passion become free. The fact that I had to pay
for this privilege almost with my life, certainly does
not make it a bad bargain. In order to understand
even a little ofmyZarathustra, perhaps a man must
be situated and constituted very much as I am my-
self — with one foot beyond the realm of the living.
I have never understood the art of arousing ill-
feeling against myself, — this is also something for
which I have to thank my incomparable father, —
even when it seemed to me highly desirable to do
so. However un-Christian it may seem, I do not
even bear any ill-feeling towards myself. Turn my
life about as you may, you will find but seldom —
perhaps indeed only once — any trace of some one's
having shown me ill-will. You might perhaps dis-
cover, however, too many traces of good-vf\[\. . . .
My experiences even with those on whom every
other man has burnt his fingers, speak without ex-
ception in their favour ; I tame every bear, I can
make even clowns behave decently. During the
seven years in which I taught Greek to the sixth
form of the College at B&le, I never had occasion to
administer a punishment ; the laziest youths were
diligent in my class. The unexpected has always
found me equal to it; I must be unprepared in order
to keep my self-command. Whatever the instru-
ment was, even if it were as out of tune as the instru-
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WHY I AM SO WISE 1 7
merit " man " can possibly be, — it was only when
I was ill that I could not succeed in making it ex-
press something that was worth hearing. And how
often have I not been told by the " instruments "
themselves, that they had never before heard their
voices express such beautiful things. . . . This
was said to me most delightfully perhaps by that
young fellow Heinrich von Stein, who died at such
an unpardonably early age, and who, after having
considerately asked leave to do so, once appeared
in Sils-Maria for a three days' sojourn, telling every-
body there that it was not for the Engadine that he
had come. This excellent person, who with all the
impetuous simplicity of a young Prussian nobleman,
had waded deep into the swamp of Wagnerism
(and into that of Diihringism * into the bargain !),
seemed almost transformed during these three days
by a hurricane of freedom, like one who has been
suddenly raised to his full height and given wings.
Again and again I said to him that this was all
owing to the splendid air; everybody felt the same,
— one could not stand 6000 feet above Bayreuth
for nothing, — but he would not believe me. . . .
Be this as it may, if I have been the victim of many
a small or even great offence, it was not " will," and
least of all ///-will that actuated the offenders ; but
rather, as I have already suggested, it was good-
will, the cause of no small amount of mischief in
my life, about which I had to complain. /My ex-^U,
perience gave me a right to feel suspicious in regard
* Eugen Diihring is a philosopher and political economist
whose general doctrine might be characterised as a sort of
abstract Materialism with an optimistic colouring.— Tr.
b
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s
1 8 ECCE HOMO
to all so-called " unselfish " instincts, in regard to
the whole of "neighbourly love" which is ever ready
and waiting with deeds or with advice. To me it
seems that these instincts are a sign of weakness,
they are an example of the inability to withstand
a stimulus — it is only among decadents that this
pity is called a virtue. What I reproach the pitiful
with is, that they are too ready to forget shame,
reverence, and the delicacy of feeling which knows
how to keep at a distance ; they do not remember
that this gushing pity stinks of the mob, and that
it is next of kin to bad manners — that pitiful hands
may be thrust with results fatally destructive into
a great destiny, into a lonely and wounded retire-
ment, and into the privileges with which great guilt
endows one. The overcoming of pity I reckon
among the noble virtuesj In the " Temptation of
Zarathustra " I have imagined a case, in which a
great cry of distress reaches his ears, in which pity
swoops down upon him like a last sin, and would
make him break faith with himself. To remain
one's own master in such circumstances, to keep the
sublimity of one's mission pure in such cases, — pure
from the many ignoble and more Short-sighted im-
pulses which come into play in so-called unselfish
actions, — this is the rub, the last test perhaps which
a Zarathustra has to undergo — the actual proof of
his power.
5
In yet another respect I am no more than my
father over again, and as it were the continuation
of his life after an all-too-early death. Like every
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WHY I AM SO WISE 1 9
man who has never been able to meet his equal,
and unto whom the concept " retaliation " is just
as incomprehensible as the notion of " equal rights,"
I have forbidden myself the use of any sort of
measure of security or protection — and also, of
course, of defence and "justification" — in all
cases in which I have been made the victim either
of trifling or even very great foolishness. My form
of retaliation consists in this : as soon as possible
to set a piece of cleverness at the heels of an act
of stupidity ; by this means perhaps it may still
be possible to overtake it. To speak in a parable :
I dispatch a pot of jam in order to get rid of a
bitter experience. . . . Let anybody only give me
offence, I shall " retaliate," he can be quite sure
of that : before long I discover an opportunity of
expressing my thanks to the " offender " (among
other things even for the offence) — or of asking
him for something, which can be more courteous
even than giving. It also seems to me that the
rudest word, the rudest letter, is more jjood-
natured, more straightforward, than silence. £Those <
who keep silent are almost always lacking in
subtlety and refinement of heart ; silence is an
objection, to swallow a grievance must necessarily
produce a bad temper — it even upsets the stomach.
All silent people are dyspeptic. You perceive
that I should not like to see rudeness undervalued ;
it is by far the most humane form of contradiction,
and, in the midst of modern effeminacy, it is one
of our first virtuesj If one is sufficiently rich for
it, it may even be a joy to be wrong. If a god
were to descend to this earth, he would have to
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20 ECCE HOMO
do nothing but wrong — to take guilt, not punish-
ment, on one's shoulders > is the first proof of divinity.
6
Freedom from resentment and the understand-
ing of the nature of resentment — who knows how
very much after all I am indebted to my long ill*
ness for these two things ? The problem is not
exactly simple: a man must h^ve experienced
both through his strength and through his weak-
ness, (if illness and weakness are to be charged
with anything at all, it is with the fact that when
they prevail, the very instinct of recovery, which is
the instinct of defence and of war in man, becomes
decayed. He knows not how to get rid of any-
thing, how to come to terms with anything, and
how to cast anything behind him. Everything
wounds him. People and things draw importun-
ately near, all experiences strike deep, memory
is a gathering wound. To be ill is a sort of
resentment in itselfj Against this resentment
the invalid has only one great remedy — I call
it Russian fatalism^ that fatalism which is free
from revolt, and with which the Russian soldier,
to whom a campaign proves unbearable, ultimately
lays himself down in the snow. To accept noth-
ing more, to undertake nothing more, to absorb
nothing more — to cease entirely from reacting.
. . . The tremendous sagacity of this fatalism,
which does not always imply merely the courage
for death, but which in the most dangerous cases
may actually constitute a self-preservative measure,
amounts to a reduction of activity in the vital
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WHY I AM SO WISE 21
functions, the slackening down of which is like a
sort of will to hibernate. A few steps farther in
this direction we find the fakir, who will sleep for
weeks in a tomb Owing to the fact
that one would be used up too quickly if one
reacted, one no longer reacts at all : this is the
principle. And nothing on earth consumes a
man more quickly than the passion of resentment.
{Mortification, nvprbid susceptibility, the inability
to wreak revenge, the desire and thirst for re-
venge, the concoction of every sort of poison — this
is surely the most injurious manner of reacting
which could possibly be conceived by exhausted
men. It involves a rapid wasting away of nervous
energy, an abnormal increase of detrimental
secretions, as, for instance, that of bile into the
stomach. To the sick man resentment ought to
be more strictly forbidden than anything else —
it is his special danger: unfortunately, however,
it is also his most natural propensity. This was
fully grasped by that profound physiologist
Buddha. His "religion," which it would be
better to call a system of hygiene, in order to
avoid confounding it with a creed so wretched as
Christianity, depended for its effect upon the
triumph over resentment : to make the soul free
therefrom was considered the first step towards re-
covery. " Not through hostility is hostility put to
flight ; through friendship does hostility end": this
stands at the beginning of Buddha's teaching —
this is not a precept of morality, but of physiology.
Resentment born of weakness is not more deleteri-
ous to anybody than it is to the weak man himself
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22 ECCE HOMO
— conversely, in the case of that man whose nature
is fundamentally a rich one, resentment is a
superfluous feeling, a feeling to remain master of
which is almost a proof of richesr) Those of my
readers who know the earnestness - with which my
philosophy wages war against the feelings of re-
venge and rancour, even to the extent of attacking
the doctrine of " free will " (my conflict with Chris-
tianity is only a particular instance of it), will
understand why I wish to focus attention upon
my own personal attitude and the certainty of my
practical instincts precisely in this matter. In
my moments of decadence I forbade myself the
indulgence of the above feelings, because they
were hariuful ; as soon as my life recovered enough
riches and pride, however, I regarded them again
as forbidden, but this time because they were
beneath me. That " Russian fatalism " of which
I have spoken manifested itself in me in such a
way that for years I held tenaciously to almost
insufferable conditions, places, habitations, and
companions, once chance had placed them on my
path — it was better than changing them, than
feeling that they could be changed, than revolting
against them. . . . He who stirred me from
this fatalism, he who violently tried to shake me
into consciousness, seemed to me then a mortal
enemy — in point of fact, there was danger of
death each time this was done. To regard one's
self as a destiny, not to wish one's self " differ-
ent" — this, in such circumstances, is sagacity^
itself.
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WHY I AM SO WISE 23
War, on the other hand, is something different.
At heart I am a warrior. Attacking belongs to my
instincts. To be able to be an enemy, to be an
enemy — maybe these things presuppose a strong
nature ; in any case all strong natures involve
these things. Such natures need resistance, con-
sequently they go in search of obstacles : the
pathos of aggression belongs of necessity to
strength as much as the feelings of revenge and
of rancour belong to weakness. [Woman, for in-, ^ ^
stance, is revengeful ; her weakness involves this
passion, just as it involves her susceptibility in the
presence of other people's suffering. The strength
of the aggressor can be measured by the opposi-
tion which he needs; every increase of growth
betrays itself by a seeking out of more formidable
opponents — or problems : for a philosopher who
is combative challenges even problems to a duel.
The task is not to overcome opponents in general,
but only those opponents against whom one has
to summon all one's strength, one's skill, and one's
swordsmanship — in fact, opponents who are one's
equals. ... To be one's enemy's equal — this is
the first condition of an honourable duel. Where
one despises, one cannot wage war. Where one
commands, where one sees something beneath
one, one ought not to wage war. My war tactics
can be reduced to four principles :\First, I attack X
only things that are triumphant — lT-necessary I
N wait until they become triumphant. Secondly, I
attack only those things against which I find no
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24 ECCE HOMO
allies, against which I stand alone — against which
I compromise nobody but myself. ... I have
not yet taken one single step before the public
eye, which did not compromise me : that is my
criterion of a proper mode of action. Thirdly, I
never make personal attacks — I use a personality
merely as a magnifying-glass, by means of which
I render a general, but elusive and scarcely notice-
able evil, more apparent. In this way I attacked
David Strauss, or rather the success given to a
senile book by the cultured classes of Germany
— by this means I caught German culture red-
handed. In this way I attacked Wagner, or rather
the falsity or mongrel instincts of our " culture "
which confounds the super-refined with the strong,
and the effete with the great. Fourthly, I attack
only those things from which all personal differ-
ences are excluded, in which any such thing as a
background of disagreeable experiences is lacking.
On the contrary, attacking is to me a proof of
goodwill and, in certain circumstances, of gratitude.
By means of it, I do honour to a thing, I dis-
tinguish a thing ; whether I associate my name
with that of an institution or a person, by being
against ox for either, is all the same to me. If I
wage war against Christianity, I feel justified in
doing so, because in that quarter I have met with
no fatal experiences and difficulties — the most ear-
nest Christians have always been kindly disposed
to me. I, personally, the most essential opponent
of Christianity, am far from holding the individ-
ual responsible for what is the fatality of long
ages.
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WHY I AM SO WISE 2$
8
S May I be allowed to hazard a suggestion con-
cerning one last trait in my character, which in my
intercourse with other men has led me into some
difficulties ? I am gifted with a sense of cleanliness
the keenness of which is phenomenal ; so much so,
that I can ascertain physiologically — that is to say,
smell — the proximity, nay, the inmost core, the
" entrails " of every human soul. . . . This sensi- L
tiveness of mine is furnished with psychological
antennae, wherewith I feel and grasp every secret :
the quality of concealed filth lying at the base of
many a human character which may be the in-
evitable outcome of base blood, and which education
may have veneered, is revealed to me at the first
glance. If my observation has been correct, such
people, whom my sense of cleanliness rejects, also
become conscious, on their part, of the cautiousness
to which my loathing prompts me: and this does
not make them any more fragrant. , . . In keeping
with a custom which I have long observed, — pure
habits and honesty towards myself are among the
first conditions of my existence, I would die in
unclean surroundings, — I swim, bathe, and splash
about, as it were, incessantly in water, in any kind
of perfectly transparent and shining element. That
is why my relations with my fellows try my patience
to no small extent ; my humanity does not consist
in the fact that I understand the feelings of my
fellows, but that I can endure to understand. . . .
My humanity is a perpetual process of self-mastery .J
But I need solitude — that is to say, recovery,
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26 ECCE HOMO
return to myself, the breathing of free, crisp, brac-
ing air. . . . The whole of my Zarathustra is a
dithyramb in honour of solitude, or, if I have been
understood, in honour of purity. Thank Heaven,
it is not in honour of " pure foolery " ! # He who
has an eye for colour will call him a diamond.
The loathing of mankind, of the rabble, was always
my greatest danger. . . . Would you hearken to the
words spoken by Zarathustra concerning deliver-
ance from loathing?
" What forsooth hath come unto me ? How did I
deliver myself from loathing? Who hath made mine
eye younger ? How did I soar to the height, where
there are no more rabble sitting about the well ?
" Did my very loathing forge me wings and the
strength to scent fountains afar off? Verily to
the loftiest heights did I need to fly, to find once
more the spring of joyfulness.
" Oh, I found it, my brethren ! Up here, on the
loftiest height, the spring of joyfulness gusheth
forth for me. And there is a life at the well of
which no rabble can drink with you.
" Almost too fiercely dost thou rush, for me, thou
spring of joyfulness ! And ofttimes dost thou empty
the pitcher again in trying to fill it.
" And yet must I learn to draw near thee more
humbly. Far too eagerly doth my heart jump to
meet thee.
" My heart, whereon my summer burnetii, my
short, hot, melancholy, over-blessed summer : how
my summer heart yearneth for thy coolness !
* This, of course, is a reference to Wagner's Parsifal,
See my note on p. 96 of The Will to Power^ vol. i. — Tr.
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WHY I AM SO WISE 27
" Farewell, the lingering affliction of my spring !
Past is the wickedness of my snowflakes in June !
Summer have I become entirely, and summer noon-
tide!
" A summer in the loftiest heights, with cold
springs and blessed stillness : oh come, my friends,
that the stillness may wax even more blessed !
" For this is our height and our home : too high
and steep is our dwelling for all the unclean and
their appetites.
" Do but cast your pure eyes into the well of my
joyfulness, my friends ! How could it thus become
muddy ! It will laugh back at you with its purity.
" On the tree called Future do we build our nest :
eagles shall bring food in their beaks unto us lonely
ones!
" Verily not the food whereof the unclean might
partake. They would think they ate fire and would
burn their mouths !
" Verily, no abodes for the unclean do we here
hold in readiness ! To their bodies our happiness
would seem an ice-cavern, and to their spirits also !
" And like strong winds will we live above them,
neighbours to the eagles, companions of the snow,
and playmates of the sun : thus do strong winds
live.
" And like a wind shall I one day blow amidst
them, and take away their soul's breath with my
spirit : thus my future willeth it.
" Verily, a strong wind is Zarathustra to all low
lands ; and this is his counsel to his foes and to all
those who spit and spew: 'Beware of spitting
against the wind ! ' "
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WHY I AM SO CLEVER
Why do I know more things than other people ?
Why, in fact,am I so clever ? I have never pondered
over questions that are not questions. I have never
squandered my strength. Of actual religious diffi-
culties, for instance, I have no experience. I have
never known what it is to feel " sinful." In the
same way I completely lack any reliable criterion
for ascertaining what constitutes a prick of con-
science: from all accounts a prick of conscience
does not seem to be a very estimable thing. . . .
Once it was done I should hate to leave an action
r of mine in the lurch ; I should prefer completely to
omit the evil outcome, the consequences, from the
problem concerning the value of an action. In the
face of evil consequences one is too ready to lose
the proper standpoint from which one's deed ought
to be considered. A prick of conscience strikes me
as a sort of " evil eye." Something that has failed
should be honoured all the more jealously, precisely
because it has failed — this is much more in keeping
with my morality. — " God," " the immortality of the
soul," "salvation," a "beyond" — to all these notions,
even as a child, I never paid any attention whatso-
ever, nor did I waste any time upon them, — maybe
I was never naif enough for that ? — I am quite un-
acquainted with atheism as a result, and still less
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WHY I AM SO CLEVER 29
as an event in my life : in me it is inborn, instinc- |
tive. I am too inquisitive, too incredulous, too high
spirited, to be satisfied with such a palpably clumsy
solution of things. God is a too palpably clumsy
solution of things ; a solution which shows a lack of
delicacy towards us thinkers — at bottom He is really
no more than a coarse and rude prohibition of us :
ye shall not think ! ... I am much more interested
in another question, — a question upon which the
" salvation of humanity " depends to a far greater
degree than it does upon any piece of theological
curiosity : I refer to nutrition. For ordinary pur-
poses, it may be formulated as follows : " How pre-
cisely must thou feed thyself in order to attain to thy
maximum of power, or virtii in the Renaissance
style, — of virtue free fro m moralic acid ? " My J>C
experiencesln regard to this matter have been as
bad as they possibly could be ; I am surprised that
I set myself this question so late in life, and that it
took me so long to draw " rational " conclusions
from my experiences. Only the absolute worth- 1 -
lessness of German culture — its " idealism " — can
to some extent explain how it was that precisely in
this matter I was so backward that my ignorance
was almost saintly. This "culture," which from first
to last teaches one to lose sight of actual things and
to hunt after thoroughly problematic and so-called
ideal aims, as, for instance, " classical culture " — as
if it were not hopeless from the start to try to unite *
" classical " and " German " in one concept. It is
even a little comical — try and imagine a " classic-
ally cultured " citizen of Leipzig ! — Indeed, I can
say, that up to a very mature age, my food was en-
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30 ECCE HOMO
tirely bad — expressed morally, it was "impersonal,"
" selfless," " altruistic," to the glory of cooks and all
other fellow- Christians. It was through the cook-
ing in vogue at Leipzig, for instance, together
with my first study of Schopenhauer (1865), that
I earnestly renounced my "Will to Live." To
spoil one's stomach by absorbing insufficient
nourishment — this problem seemed to my mind
solved with admirable felicity by the above-men-
tioned cookery. (It is said that in the year
1866 changes were introduced into this depart-
ment.) But as to German cookery in general —
what has it not got on its conscience! Soup
before the meal (still called alia tedesca in the Vene-
tian cookery booljs of the sixteenth century) ; meat
boiled to shreds, vegetables cooked with fat and
flour; the degeneration of pastries into paper-
weights ! And, if you add thereto the absolutely
bestial post-prandial drinking habits of the ancients^
and not alone of the ancient Germans, you will
understand where German intellect took its origin —
that is to say, in sadly disordered intestines. . . .
German intellect is indigestion ; it can assimilate
nothing. But even English diet, which in com-
parison with German, and indeed with French ali-
mentation, seems to me to constitute a " return to
Nature," — that is to say, to cannibalism, — is pro-
foundly opposed to my own instincts. It seems
to me to give the intellect heavy feet, in fact,
Englishwomen's feet. . . . The best cooking is
that of Piedmont. Alcoholic drinks do not agree
with me ; a single glass of wine or beer a day is
amply sufficient to turn life into a valley of tears
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WHY I AM SO CLEVER 3 1
for me ; — in Munich live my antipodes. Although
I admit that this knowledge came to me somewhat
late, it already formed part of my experience even
as a child. As a boy I believed that the drinking
of wine and the smoking of tobacco were at first but
the vanities of youths, and later merely bad habits.
Maybe the poor wine of Naumburg was partly re-
sponsible for this poor opinion of wine in general.
In order to believe that wine was exhilarating, I
should have had to be a Christian — in other words,
I should have had to believe in what, to my mind, is
an absurdity. Strange to say, whereas small quan-
tities of alcohol, taken with plenty of water, suc-
ceed in making me feel out of sorts, large quanti-
ties turn me almost into a rollicking tar. Even as
a boy I showed my bravado in this respect. To
compose a long Latin essay in one night, to revise
and recopy it, to aspire with my pen to emulating
the exactitude and the terseness of my model,
Sallust, and to pour a few very strong grogs over
it all — this mode of procedure, while I was a pupil
at the venerable old school of Pforta, was not in the
least out of keeping with my physiology, nor per-
haps with that of Sallust, however much it may have
been alien to dignified Pforta. Later on, towards
the middle of my life, I grew more and more op-
posed to alcoholic drinks : I, an opponent of vege-
tarianism, who have experienced what vegetarian-
ism is, — just as Wagner, who converted me back
to meat, experienced it, — cannot with sufficient
earnestness advise all more spiritual natures to ab- ~
stain absolutely from alcohol. Water answers the
purpose. ... I have a predilection in favour of
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32 ECCE HOMO
those places where in all directions one has oppor-
tunities of drinking from running brooks (Nice,
Turin, Sils). In vino Veritas : it seems that here
once more I am at variance with the rest of the
world about the concept " Truth " — with me spirit
moves on the face of the waters. . . . Here are a
few more indications as to my morality. A heavy
meal is digested more easily than an inadequate one.
The first principle of a good digestion is that the
stomach should become active as a whole. A man
ought, therefore, to know the size of his stomach.
For the same reasons all those interminable meals,
which I call interrupted sacrificial feasts, and which
are to 6e had at any table d'h6te, are strongly
to be deprecated. Nothing should be eaten be-
tween meals, coffee should be given up — coffee
makes one gloomy. Tea is beneficial only in the
morning. It should be taken in. small quantities,
but very strong. It may be very harmful, and indis-
pose you for the whole day, if it be taken the least
bit too weak. Everybody has his own standard
in this matter,often between the narrowest and most
delicate limits. In an enervating climate tea is not
a good beverage with which to start the day : an
hour before taking it an excellent thing is to drink
a cup of thick cocoa, feed from oil. Remain seated
as little as possible, (put Ihb trust in any thought
that is not born in the open, to the accompaniment
of free bodily motionr — nor in- N one in which even
the muscles do not celebrate a fekst. QUI prejudices
take their origin in the intestines!^ A sedentary life,
as I have already said elsewhere, is the real sin
against the Holy Spirit.
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To the question of nutrition, that of locality and
climate is next of kin. Nobody is so constituted
as to be able to live everywhere and anywhere ;
and he who has great duties to perform, which lay
claim to all his strength, has, in this respect, a very
limited choice. The influence of climate upon the
bodily functions, affecting their acceleration or re-
tardation, extends so far, that a blunder in the
choice of locality and climate is able not only to
alienate a man from his actual duty, but also to
withhold it from him altogether, so that he never
even comes face to face with it. Animal vigour
never acquires enough strength in him in order to
reach that pitch of artistic freedom which makes
his own soul whisper to him : I, alone, can do
that. . . . QEver so slight a tendency to laziness in
the intestines, once it has become a habit, is quite
sufficient to make something mediocre, something
" German " out of a geniuspthe climate of Germany,
alone, is enough to discourage the strongest and
most heroically disposed intestines. The tempo of
the body's functions is closely bound up with the
agility or the clumsiness of the spirit's feet ; spirit
jitselkisjruisedj^
Jions^ Let anybody make a list of the places in
which men of great intellect have been found, and
are still found ; where wit, subtlety, and malice
constitute happiness ; where genius is almost neces-
sarily at home : all of them rejoice in exceptionally
dry air. Paris, Provence, Florence, Jerusalem,
Athens — these names prove something, namely :
c
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34 ECCE HOMO
that g^nm^is^TOndfljone^
sky — that is to say, by rapid organicjunctions, by
the constant and ever-present possibility of procur-
ing for one's self great jand even^normouaquantities
of strength. I have a certain case in mind in which
a man of remarkable intellect and independent
spirit became a narrow, craven specialist and a
grumpy old crank,simply owing to a lack of subtlety
in his instinct for climate. And I myself might
have been an example of the same thing, if illness
had not compelled me to reason, and to reflect upon
reason realistically. Now that I have learnt through
long practice to read the effects of climatic and
meteorological influences, from my own body, as
though from a very delicate and reliable instrument,
and that I am able to calculate the change in de-
grees of atmospheric moisture by means of physio-
logical observations upon myself, even on so short
a journey as that from Turin to Milan ; I think with
horror of the ghastly fact that my whole life, until
the last ten years, — the most perilous years, — has
always been spent in the wrong, and what to me
ought to have been the most forbidden, places.
Naumburg, Pforta, Thuringia in general, Leipzig,
B&le, Venice — so* many ill-starred places for a con-
stitution like mine. If I cannot recall one single
happy reminiscence of my childhood and youth, it
is nonsense to suppose that so-called " moral "
causes could account for this — as, for instance, the
incontestable fact that I lacked companions that
could have satisfied me ; for this fact is the same
to-day as it ever was, and it does not prevent me
from being cheerful and brave. But it was ignor-
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WHY I AM SO CLEVER 35
ance in physiological matters — that confounded
" Idealism " — that was the real curse of my life.
This was the superfluous and foolish element in my
existence; something from which nothing could
spring, and for which there can be no settlement
and no compensation. As the outcome of this
" Idealism " I regard all the blunders, the great ab-
errations of instinct, and the " modest specialisa-
tions " which drew me aside from the task of my
life ; as, for instance, the fact that I became a philo-
logist — why not at least a medical man or anything
else which might have opened my eyes ? My days
at B&le, the whole of my intellectual routine, in-
cluding my daily time-table, was an absolutely
senseless abuse of extraordinary powers, without
the slightest compensation for the strength that I
spent, without even a thought of what I was squan-
dering and how its place might be filled. I lacked
all subtlety in egoism, all the fostering care of an
imperative instinct ; I was in a state in which one
is ready to regard one's self as anybody's equal, a
state of " disinterestedness," a forgetting of one's
distance from others — something,in short, for which
I can never forgive myself. When I had well-nigh
reached the end of my tether, simply because I had
almost reached my end, I began to reflect upon the
fundamental absurdity of my life — " Idealism." It
was illness that first brought me to reason.
After the choice of nutrition,the choice of climate
and locality, the third matter concerning which one
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36 ECCE HOMO
must not on any account make a blunder, is the
choice of the manner in which one recuperates one's
strength. Here, again, according to the extent to
which a spirit is sui generis, the limits of that which
he can allow himself — in other words, the limits of
that which is beneficial to him — become more and
more confined. As far as I in particular am con-
cerned, reading in general belongs to my means
of recuperation ; consequently it belongs to that
which rids me of myself, to that which enables me
to wander in strange sciences and strange souls —
to that,in fact,aboutwhich I am no longer in earnest.
Indeed, it is while reading that I recover from my
earnestness. During the time that I am deeply
absorbed in my work, no books are found within my
reach ; it would never occur to me to allow any one
to speak or even to think in my presence. For that
is what reading would mean. . . . Has any one ever
actually noticed, that, during the period of.profound
tension to which the state of pregnancy condemns
not only the mind, but also, at bottom, the whole
organism, accident and every kind of external
stimulus acts too acutely and strikes too deep ? Ac-
cident and external stimuli must, as far as possible,
be avoided : a sort of walling-of-one's-self-in is one
of the primary instinctive precautions of spiritual
pregnancy. Shall I allow a strange thought to steal
secretly over the wall ? For that is what reading
would mean. . . . The periods of work and fruit-
fulness are followed by periods of recuperation :
come hither, ye delightful, intellectual, intelligent
books ! Shall I read German books ? . . . I must
go back six months to catch myself with a book in
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WHY I AM SO CLEVER 37
my hand. What was it ? An excellent study by
* Victor Brochard upon the Greek sceptics, in which
my Laertiana* was used to advantage. The
sceptics ! — the only honourable types among that
double-faced and sometimes quintuple-faced throng,
the philosophers ! . . . Otherwise I almost always
take refuge in the same books : altogether their
number is small ; they are books which are precisely
my proper fare. It is not perhaps in my nature to
read much, and of all sorts : a library makes me ill.
Neither is it my nature to love much or many kinds
of things. Suspicion or even hostility towards new
books is much more akin to my instinctive feeling
than " toleration," largeur de cceur, and other forms
of " neighbour-love." ... It is to a small number
of old French authors, that I always return again
and again ; I believe only in French culture, and
regard everything else in Europe which calls itself
" culture " as a misunderstanding. I do not even
take the German kind into consideration. . . . The
few instances of higher culture with which I have
* Nietzsche, as is well known, devoted much time when a
student at Leipzig to the study of three Greek philosophers,
Theognis, Diogenes Laertius, and Democritus. This study
first bore fruit in the case of a pa^er, Zur Geschichte der Theo-
gnideischen Spruchsammlung^ which was subsequently pub-
lished by the most influential journal of classical philology in
Germany. Later, however, it enabled Nietzsche to enter for
the prize offered by the University of Leipzig for an essay, De
fontibus Diogenis Laertiu He was successful in gaining the
prize, and the treatise was afterwards published in the
Rheinisches Museum^ and is still quoted as an authority. It
is to this essay, written when he was twenty- three years of age,
that he here refers. — Tr.
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38 ECCE HOMO
met in Germany were all French in their origin.
The most striking example of this was Madame
Cosima Wagner, by far the most decisive voice in
matters of taste that I have ever heard. If I do
not read, but literally love Pascal? as the most in-
stinctive sacrifice toChristianity,killing himself inch
by inch, first bodily, then spiritually, according to
the terrible consistency of this most appalling form
of inhuman cruelty ; if I have something of Mon-
taigne's mischievousness in my soul, and — who
knows ? — perhaps also in my body ; if my artist's
taste endeavours to defend the names of Moltere,^
Corneille, and Racine, and not without bitterness,
against such a wild genius as Shakespeare — all
this does not prevent me from regarding even the
latter-day Frenchmen also as charming companions.
I can think of absolutely no century in history, in
which a netful of more inquisitive and at the same
time more subtle psychologists could be drawn up
together than in the Paris of the present day. Let
me mention a few at random — for their number is
by no means small — Paul Bourget, Pierre Loti,V
Gyp, Meilhac, Anatole France, Jules Lemaitre ; or,
to point to one of strong race, a genuine Latin, of
whom I am particularly fond, Guy de Maupassant.^
Between ourselves, I prefer this generation even to
its masters, all of whom were corrupted by German
philosophy (Taine, for instance, by Hegel, whom he
has to thank for his misunderstanding of great men
and great periods). Wherever Germany extends
her sway, she ruins culture. It was the war which
first saved the spirit of France. . . .Stendhal is one
of the happiest accidents of my life — for everything
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WHY I AM SO CLEVER 39
that marks an epoch in it has been brought to me
by accident and never by means of a recommenda-
tion. He is quite priceless, with his psychologist's
eye, quick at forestalling and anticipating ; with his
grasp of facts, which is reminiscent of the same art
in the greatest of all masters of facts (exungue Napo-
leonetri) ; and, last but not least, as an honest atheist
— a specimen which is both rare and difficult to
discover in France — all honour to Prosper M&i- *
m6e ! . . . Maybe that I am even envious of Stend-
hal ? He robbed me of the best atheistic joke, which
I of all people could have perpetrated : " God's only
excuse is that He does not exist" ... I myself
have said somewhere — What has been the greatest
objection to Life hitherto ? — God.
It was Heinrich Heine who gave me the most
perfect idea of what a lyrical poet could be. In
vain do I search through all the kingdoms of an-
tiquity or of modern times for anything to resemble
his sweet and passionate music. He possessed that
divine wickedness, without which perfection itself
becomes unthinkable to me, — I estimate the value
of men, of races, according to the extent to which
they are unable to conceive of a god who has not a
dash of the satyr in him. And with what mastery he
wields his native tongue ! One day it will be said !
of Heine and me that we were by far the greatest !
artists of the German language that have ever ex-
isted, and that we left all the efforts that mere Ger-
mans made in this language an incalculable distance
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40 ECCE HOMO
behind us. I must be profoundly related to Byron's
Manfred: of all the dark abysses in this work I found
the counterparts in my own soul — at the age of
thirteen I was ripe for this book. Words fail me,
I have only a look, for those who dare to utter the
name of Faust in the presence of Manfred. The
Germans are incapable of conceiving anything sub-
lime : for a proof of this, look at Schumann ! Out
of anger for this mawkish Saxon, I once deliber-
ately composed a counter-overture to Manfred, of
which Hans von Biilow declared he had never
seen the like before on paper : such compositions
amounted to a violation of Euterpe. When I cast
about me for my highest formula of Shakespeare, I
find invariably but this one : that he conceived the
type of Caesar. Such things a man cannot guess —
he either is the thing, or he is not. The great poet
draws his creations only from out of his own reality.
This is so to such an extent, that often after a lapse
of time he can no longer endure his own work. . . .
After casting a glance between the pages of my
Zarathustra y I pace my room to and fro for half an
hour at a time, unable to overcome an insufferable
fit of tears. I know of no more heartrending read-
ing than Shakespeare: how a man must have
suffered to be so much in need of playing the clown I
Is Hamlet understood"! It is not doubt, but certi-
tude that drives one mad. . . . But in order to feel
this, one must be profound, one must be an abyss,
a philosopher. . . . We all fear the truth. . . . And,
to make a confession; ITeel instinctively certain and
convinced that Lord Bacon is the originator, the
self-torturer, of this most sinister kind of litera-
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WHY I AM SO CLEVER 4 1
ture: what do I care about the miserable gabble
of American muddlers and blockheads ? But the
power for the greatest realism in vision is not only
compatible with the greatest realism in deeds, with
the monstrous in deeds, with crime — it actually pre-
supposes the latter. . . . We do not know half enough
about Loftl Bacon — the first realist in all the highest
acceptation of this word — to be sure of everything
he did, everything he willed, and everything he ex-
perienced in his inmost soul. . . . Let the critics go
to hell ! Suppose I had christened my Zarathustra
with a name not my own, — let us say with Richard
Wagner's name, — the acumen of two thousand
years would not have sufficed to guess that the
author of Human, all-too-Human was the visionary
of Zarathustra.
5
As I am speaking here of the recreations of my
life, I feel I must express a word or two of gratitude
for that which has refreshed me by far the most
heartily and most profoundly. This, without the
slightest doubt, was my intimate relationship with
Richard Wagner. All my other relationships with
men I treat quite lightly ; but I would not have the
days I spent at Tribschen — those days of con-
fidence, of cheerfulness, of sublime flashes, and of
profound moments — blotted from my life at any
price. I know not what Wagner may have been
for others ; but no cloud ever darkened our sky.
And this brings me back again to France, — I have
no arguments against Wagnerites, and hoc genus
omne, who believe that they do honour to Wagner
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42 ECCE HOMO
by believing him to be like themselves ; for such
people I have only a contemptuous curl of my lip.
With a nature like mine, which is so strange to
everything Teutonic, that even the presence of a
German retards my digestion, my first meeting with
Wagner was the first moment in my life in which
I breathed freely : I felt him, I honoured him, as
a foreigner, as the opposite and the incarnate con-
tradiction of all " German virtues." We who as chil-
dren breathed the marshy atmosphere of the fifties,
are necessarily pessimists in regard to the concept
"German"; we cannot be anything else than revolu-
tionaries — we can assent to no state of affairs which
allows the canting bigot to be at the top. I care
not a jot whether this canting bigot acts in different
colours to-day, whether he dresses in scarlet or dons
the uniform of a hussar* Very well, then ! Wagner
was a revolutionary — he fled from the Germans. . . .
As an artist, a man has no home in Europe save
in Paris ; that subtlety of all the five senses which
Wagner's art presupposes, those fingers that can de-
tect slight gradations, psychological morbidity — all
these things can be found only in Paris. Nowhere
else can you meet with this passion for questions of
form, this earnestness in matters of fnise-en-scene,
which is the Parisian earnestness par excellence. In
Germany no one has any idea of the tremendous am-
bition that fills the heart of a Parisian artist. The
German is a good fellow. Wagner was by no means
a good fellow. . . . But I have already said quite
* The favourite uniform of the German Emperor, William
ii.— Tr.
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enough on the subject of Wagner's real nature (see
Beyond Good and Evi/ y Aphorism 269), and about
those to whom he is most closely related. He is one
of the late French romanticists, that high-soaring
and heaven-aspiring band of artists, like Delacroix
and Berlioz, who in their inmost nacres are sick and
incurable, and who are all fanatics of expression, and
virtuosos through and through. . . . Who, in sooth,
was the first intelligent follower of Wagner? Charles
Baudelaire, the very man who first understood Dela-
croix — that typical decadent, in whom a whole gen-
eration of artists saw their reflection ; he was per-
haps the last of them too. . . . What is it that I have t
never forgiven Wagner ? The fact that he conde- |
scended to the Germans — that he became a German r
Imperialist . . . Wherever Germany spreads, she]
ruins culture. >
Taking everything into consideration, I could
never have survived my youth without Wagnerian
music. For I was condemned to the society of
Germans. If a man wish to get rid of a feeling of
insufferable oppression, he has to take to hashish.
Well, I had to take to Wagner. Wagner is the
counter-poison to everything essentially German —
the fact that he is a poison too, I do not deny. From
the moment that Tristan was arranged for the piano
— all honour to you, Herr von Biilow ! — I was a
Wagnerite. Wagner's previous works seemed be-
neath me — they were too commonplace, too " Ger-
man." . . . But to this day I am still seeking for
a work which would be a match to Tristan in
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44 ECCE HOMO
dangerous fascination, and possess the same grue-
some and dulcet quality of infinity ; I seek among
all the arts in vain. All the quaint features of
Leonardo da Vinci's work lose their charm at the
sound of the first bar in Tristan. This work is
without question Wagner's non plus ultra ; after its
creation, the composition of the Mastersingers and
of the Ring was a relaxation to him. To become
more healthy — this in a nature like Wagner's
amounts to going backwards. The curiosity of the
psychologist is so great in me, that I regard it as
quite a special privilege to have lived at the right
time, and to have lived precisely among Germans,
in order to be ripe for this work. The world must
indeed be empty for him who has never been un-
healthy enough for this " infernal voluptuousness " :
it is allowable, it is even imperative, to employ a
mystic formula for this purpose. I suppose I know
better than any one the prodigious feats of which
Wagner was capable, the fifty worlds of strange
ecstasies to which no one else had wings to soar ;
and as I am alive to-day and strong enough to turn
even the most suspicious and most dangerous things
to my own advantage, and thus to grow stronger,
I declare Wagner to have been the greatest bene-
factor of my life. The bond which unites us is the
fact that we have suffered greater agony, even at
each other's hands, than most men are able to bear
nowadays, and this will always keep our names
associated in the minds of men. For, just as Wagner
is merely a misunderstanding among Germans, so,
in truth, am I, and ever wiH ,be. Ye lack two
centuries of psychological and artistic discipline, my
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WHY I AM SO CLEVER 45
dear countrymen ! . . . But ye can never recover
the time lost.
To the most exceptional of my readers I should
like to say just one word about what I really exact
from music. £lt must be cheerful and yet profound,
like an October afternoon. ) It must be original,
exuberant, and tender, and like a dainty,soft woman
in roguishness and grace. .) . . I shall never admit
that a German can understand what music is. Those
musicians who are called German, the greatest and
most famous foremost, are allforeigners,either Slavs,
Croats, Italians, Dutchmen — or Jews ; or else, like
Heinrich Schutz, Bach, and Handel, they are Ger-
mans of a strong race which is now extinct. For
my own part, I have still enough of the Pole left in
me to let all other music go, if only I can keep
Chopin. For three reasons I would except Wag-
ner's Siegfried Idyll, and perhaps also one or two
things of Liszt, who excelled all other musicians in
the noble tone of his orchestration ; and finally
everything that has been produced beyond the Alps
— this side of the Alps.* I could not possibly dis-
pense with Rossini, and still less with my Southern
soul in music, the work of my Venetian maestro,
Pietro Gasti. And when I say beyond the Alps, all
I really mean is Venice. If I try to find a new
word for music, I can never find any other than
Venice. I know not how to draw any distinction
* In the latter years of his life, Nietzsche practically made
Italy his home. — Tr.
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46 ECCE HOMO
between tears and music. I do not know how to
think either of joy, or of the south, without a
shudder of fear.
On the bridge I stood
Lately, in gloomy night.
Came a distant song :
In golden drops it rolled
Over the glittering rim away.
Music, gondolas, lights —
Drunk, swam far forth in the gloom. . . .
A stringed instrument, my soul,
Sang, imperceptibly moved,
A gondola song by stealth,
Gleaming for gaudy blessedness.
— Hearkened any thereto ?
8
In all these things — in the choice of food, place,
climate, and recreation — the instinct of self-pre-
servation is dominant, and this instinct manifests
itself with least ambiguity when it acts as an in-
stinct of defence. To close one's eyes to much,
to seal one's ears to much, to keep certain things
at a distance — this is the first principle of prudence,
the first proof of the fact that a man is not an
accident but a necessity. The popular word for
this instinct of defence is taste. A man's impera-
tive command is not only to say " no " in cases
where " yes " would be a sign of " disinterested-
ness," but also to say " no " as seldom as possible.
One must part with all that which compels one to
repeat "no," with ever greater frequency. The
rationale of this principle is that all discharges of
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defensive forces, however slight they may be, in-
volve enormous and absolutely superfluous losses
when they become regular and habitual. Our
greatest expenditure of strength is made up of
those small and most frequent discharges of it.
The act of keeping things off, of holding them at
a distance, amounts to a discharge of strength, —
do not deceive yourselves on this point ! — and an
expenditure of energy directed at purely negative
ends. Simply by being compelled to keep con-
stantly on his guard, a man may grow so weak as
to be unable any longer to defend himself. Sup-
pose I were to step out of my house, and, instead
of the quiet and aristocratic city of Turin, I were
to find a German provincial town, my instinct
would have to brace itself together in order to
repel all that which would pour in upon it from
this crushed-down and cowardly world. Or sup-
pose I were to find a large German city — that
structure of vice in which nothing grows, but
where every single thing, whether good or bad, is
squeezed in from outside. In such circumstances
should I not be compelled to become a hedgehog ?
But to have prickles amounts to a squandering of
strength ; they even constitute a twofold luxury,
when, if we only chose to do so, we could dispense
with them and open our hands instead. . . .
Another form of prudence and self-defence con-
sists in trying to react as seldom as possible, and
to keep one's self aloof from those circumstances
and conditions wherein one would be condemned,
as it were, to suspend one's " liberty " and one's
initiative, and become a mere reacting medium.
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48 ECCE HOMO
As an example of this I point to the intercourse
with books. The scholar who, in sooth, does little
else than handle books — with the philologist of
average attainments their number may amount to
two hundred a day — ultimately forgets entirely
and completely the capacity of thinking for him-
self. When he has not a book between his fingers
he cannot think. When he thinks, he responds to
a stimulus (a thought he has read), — finally all he
does is to react. The scholar exhausts his whole
strength in saying either " yes " or " no " to matter
which has already been thought out, or in criticis-
ing it — he is no longer capable of thought on his
own account. ... In him the instinct of self-
defence has decayed, otherwise he would defend
himself against books. The scholar is a decadent.
With my own eyes I have seen gifted, richly en-
dowed, and free-spirited natures already " read to
ruins " at thirty, and mere wax vestas that have
to be rubbed before they can give off any sparks
— or " thoughts." To set to early in the morning,
at the break of day, in all the fulness and dawn
of one's strength, and to read a book — this I call
positively vicious !
At this point I can no longer evade a direct
answer to the question, how one becomes what one
is. And in giving it, I shall have to touch upon
that masterpiece in the art of self-preservation,
which is selfishness. . . . Granting that one's life-
task — the determination and the fate of one's life-
task — greatly exceeds the average measure of
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WHY I AM SO CLEVER 49
such things, nothing more dangerous could be
conceived than to come face to face with one's
self by the side of this life-task. The fact that
one becomes what one is, presupposes that one
has not the remotest suspicion of what one is.
From this standpoint even the blunders of one's
life have their own meaning and value, the tem-
porary deviations and aberrations, the moments of
hesitation and of modesty, the earnestness wasted
upon duties which lie outside the actual life-task.
In these matters great wisdom, perhaps even the
highest wisdom, comes into activity : in these cir-
cumstances, in which nosce teipsum would be the
sure road to ruin, forgetting one's self, misunder-
standing one's self, belittling one's self, narrowing
one's self, and making one's self mediocre, amount
to reason itself. Expressed morally, to love one's
neighbour and to live for others and for other
things may be the means of protection employed
to maintain the hardest kind of egoism. This is
the exceptional case in which I, contrary to my
principle and conviction, take the side of the altru-
istic instincts ; for here they are concerned in sub-
serving selfishness and self-discipline. The whole
surface of consciousness — for consciousness is a
surface — must be kept free from any one of the
great imperatives. Beware even of every striking
word, of every striking attitude ! They are all so
many risks which the instinct runs of" understand-
ing itself" too soon. Meanwhile the organising
" idea," which is destined to become master, grows
and continues to grow into the depths, — it begins
to command, it leads you slowly back from your
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50 ECCE HOMO
deviations and aberrations, it prepares individual
qualities and capacities, which one day will make
themselves felt as indispensable to the whole of
your task, — step by step it cultivates all the ser-
viceable faculties, before it ever whispers a word
concerning the dominant task, the " goal," the
" object," and the " meaning " of it all. Looked
at from this standpoint my life is simply amazing.
For the task of transvaluing values, more capaci-
ties were needful perhaps than could well be found
side by side in one individual ; and above all, an-
tagonistic capacities which had to be free from the
mutual strife and destruction which they involve.
An order of rank among capacities ; distance ; the
art of separating without creating hostility ; to re-
frain from confounding things; to keep from re-
conciling things ; to possess enormous multifarious-
ness and yet to be the reverse of chaos — all this
was the first condition, the long secret work, and
the artistic mastery of my instinct. Its superior
guardianship manifested itself with such ex-
ceeding strength, that not once did I ever dream
of what was growing within me — until suddenly
all my capacities were ripe, and one day burst
forth in all the perfection of their highest bloom.
I cannot remember ever having exerted myself, I
can point to no trace of struggle in my life ; I am
the reverse of a heroic nature. To " will " some-
thing, to "strive" after something, to have an
" aim " or a " desire " in my mind — I know none
of these things from experience. Even at this
moment I look out upon my future — a broad
future ! — as upon a calm sea : no sigh of longing
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WHY I AM SO CLEVER 5 1
makes a ripple on its surface. I have not the
slightest wish that anything should be otherwise
than it is : I myself would not be otherwise. . . .
But in this matter I have always been the same.
I have never had a desire. A man who, after his
four-and-fortieth year, can say that he has never
bothered himself about honours, women, or money !
— not that they did not come his way. ... It was
thus that I became one day a University Professor
— I had never had the remotest idea of such a
thing; for I was scarcely four-and-twenty years
of age. In the same way, two years previously,
I had one day become a philologist, in the sense
that my first philological work, my start in every
way, was expressly obtained by my master Ritschl
for publication in h\s Rheinisches Museum.* (Ritschl
— and I say it in all reverence — was the only
genial scholar that I have ever met. He possessed
that pleasant kind of depravity which distinguishes
us Thuringians, and which makes even a German
sympathetic — even in the pursuit of truth we pre-
fer to avail ourselves of roundabout ways. In
saying this I do not mean to underestimate in any
way my Thuringian brother, the intelligent Leopold
von Ranke, . . .)
10
You may be wondering why I should actually
have related all these trivial and, according to tra-
ditional accounts, insignificant details to you ; such
action can but. tell against me, more particularly if
* See note on page 37.
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52 ECCE HOMO
I am fated to figure in great causes. To this I reply
that these trivial matters — diet, locality, climate,
and one's mode of recreation, the whole casuistry of;
self-love — are inconceivably more important than
all that which has hitherto been held in high esteem!
It is precisely in this quarter that we must begfti
to learn afresh. All those things which mankind
has valued with such earnestness heretofore are not
even real; they are mere creations of fancy, or,
more strictly speaking, lies born of the evil instincts
of diseased and, in the deepest sense, noxious
natures — all the concepts, " God," " soul," " virtue,"
"sin," "Beyond," "truth," "eternal life." ... But
the greatness of human nature, its " divinity," was
sought for in them. . . . All questions of politics,
of social ord^r, of education, have been falsified, root
and branch, owing to the fact that the most noxipus
men have been taken for great men, and that
people were taught to despise the small things,' or
rather the fundamental things, of life. If I now
choose to compare myself with those creatures who
have hitherto been honoured as the first among men,
the difference becomes obvious. I do not reckon
the so-called " first " men even as human beings —
for me they are the excrements of mankind, the
products of disease and of the instinct of revenge :
they are so many monsters laden with rottenness,
so many hopeless fcictitfables, who avenge them-
selves on life. . . . ^wish to be the opposite of
these people : it is my- privilege to have the very
sharpest discernment for every sign of healthy in-
stincts. There is no such thing as a morbid trait
in me : even in times of serious illness I have never
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WHY I AM SO CLEVER 53
grown morbid, and you might seek in vain for a
trace of fanaticism in my nature. No one can point 1
to any moment of my life in which I have assumed /
either an arrogant or a pathetic attitude. Pathetic f
attitudes are not in keeping with greatness; he whcj
needs attitudes is false. . . . Beware of all p ictur-
escjue men ! Life was easy — in fact easiest — to me,
in those periods when it exacted the heaviest duties
from me. Whoever could have seen me during the r
seventy days of this autumn, when, without inter-
ruption, I did a host of things of the highest rank —
things that no man can do nowadays — with a sense
of responsibility for all the ages yet to come, would
have noticed no sign of tension in my condition, but
rather a state of overflowing freshness and good
cheer. Never have I eaten with more pleasant sen-
sations, never has my sleep been better. I know of
no other manner of dealing with great tasks, than
as play : this, as a sign of greatness, is an essential
prerequisite. The slightest constraint, a sombre
mien, any hard accent in the voice — all these things
are objections to a man, but how much more to his
work ! . . . One must not have nerves. . . . Even
to suffer from solitude is an objection — the only
thing I have always suffered from is " multitude." *
* The German words are, Einsamkeit and Vielsamkeit.
The latter was coined by Nietzsche. The English word ,
" multitude " should, therefore, be understood as signifying
multifarious instincts and gifts, which in Nietzsche strove for
ascendancy and caused him more suffering than any solitude.
Complexity of this sort, held in check by a dominant instinct,
as in Nietzsche's case, is of course the only possible basis of
an artistic nature. — Tr.
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54 ECCE HOMO
At an absurdly tender age, in fact when I was seven
years old, I already knew that no human speech
would ever reach me : did any one ever see me sad
on that account? At present I still possess the same
affability towards everybody, I am even full of con-
sideration for the lowest : in all this there is not an
atom of haughtiness or of secret contempt. He
whom I despise soon guesses that he is despised by
me: the very fact of my existence is enough to rouse
indignation in all those who have polluted blood in
their veins. My formula for greatness in man isl
amor fati: the fact that a man wishes nothing to
be different, either in front of him or behind him,
or for all eternity. Not only must the necessary be
borne, and on no account concealed, — all idealism
is falsehood in the face of necessity, — but it must
also be loved. . . .
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS
I AM one thing, my creations are another. Here, \\
before I speak of the books themselves, I shall
touch upon the question of the understanding and
misunderstanding with which they have met. I
shall proceed to do this in as perfunctory a manner
as the occasion demands ; for the time has by no
means come for this question. My time has not
yet come either; some are born posthumously. One ^
day institutions will be needed in which men will
live and teach, as I understand living and teaching ;
maybe, also, that by that time, chairs will be
founded and endowed for the interpretation of
Zarathustra. But I should regard it as a complete
contradiction of myself, if I expected to find ears
and eyes for my truths to-day : the fact that no one ^
listens to me, that no one knows how to receive at
my hands to-day, is not only comprehensible, it
seems to me quite the proper thing. I do not wish
to be mistaken for another — and to this end I must
not mistake myself. To repeat what I have al-
ready said, I can point to but few instances of ill- \
will in my life : and as for literary ill-will, I could I
mention scarcely a single example of it. On the
other hand, I have met with far too much pure
foolery ! ... It seems to me that to take up one
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56 ECCE HOMO
of my books is one of the rarest honours that a man
can pay himself — even supposing that he put his
shoes from off his feet beforehand, not to mention
boots. . . . When on one occasion Dr. Heinrich von
Stein honestly complained that he could not under-
stand a word of my Zarathustra, I said to him that
this was just as it should be : to have understood
six sentences in that book — that is to say, to have
lived them — raises a man to a higher level among
mortals than " modern " men can attain. With
this feeling of distance how could I even wish to
be read by the " moderns " whom I know ! My
triumph is just the opposite of what Schopenhauer's
was — I say " Non legor, non legar." — Not that I
should like to underestimate the pleasure I have
derived from the innocence with which my works
have frequently been contradicted. As late as last
summer, at a time when I was attempting, perhaps
by means of my weighty, all-too-weighty literature,
to throw the rest of literature off its balance, a
\ certain professor of Berlin University kindly gave
i me to understand that I ought really to make use
of a different form : no one could read such stuff
as I wrote. — Finally, it was not Germany, but
Switzerland that presented me with the two most
extreme cases. An essay on Beyond Good and
Evil, by Dr. V. Widmann in the paper called the
Bund, under the heading " Nietzsche's Dangerous
Book," and a general account of all my works, from
the pen of Herr Karl Spitteler, also in the Bund,
constitute a maximum in my life — I shall not say
of what. . . . The lattertreditedmyZaratAustrafor in-
stance^ " advanced exercises in style? and expressed
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 57
the wish that later on I might try and attend to
the question of substance as well ; Dr. Widmann
assured me of his respect for the courage I showed l
in endeavouring to abolish all decent feeling. ;
Thanks to a little trick of destiny, every sentence
in these criticisms seemed, with a consistency that
I could but admire, to be an inverted truth. In
fact it was most remarkable that all one had to do
was to " transvalue all values," in order to hit the
nail on the head with regard to me, instead of
striking my head with the nail. ... I am more
particularly anxious therefore to discover an ex-
planation. After all, no one can draw more out of
things, books included, than he already knows. A
man has no ears for that to which experience has
given him no access. To take an extreme case,
suppose a book contains simply incidents which lie
quite outside the range of general or even rare ex-
perience — suppose it to be the first language to
express a whole series of experiences. In this case
nothing it contains will really be heard at all, and,
thanks to an acoustic delusion, people will believe
that where nothing is heard there is nothing to
hear. . . . This, at least, has been my usual experi-
ence, and proves, if you will, the originality of my
experience. He who thought he had understood
something in my work, had as a rule adjusted some-
thing in it to his own image — not infrequently the
very opposite of myself, an " idealist," for instance.
He who understood nothing in my work, would deny
that I was worth considering at all. — The word |
" Superman," which designates a type of man that
would be one of nature's rarest and luckiest strokes,
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5 8 ECCE HOMO
as opposed to " modern " men, to " good " men, to
Christians and other Nihilists, — a word which in the
mouth of Zarathustra, the annihilator of morality,
acquires a very profound meaning, — is understood
almost everywhere, and with perfect innocence, in
the light of those values to which a flat contradic-
tion was made manifest in the figure of Zarathustra
— that is to say, as an " ideal " type, a higher kind
of man, half " saint " and half " genius." . . . Other
learned cattle have suspected me of Darwinism on
account of this word : even the " hero cult " of that \
great unconscious and involuntaryswindler, Carlyle, ;
— a cult which I repudiated with such roguish
malice, — was recognised in my doctrine. Once,
when I whispered to a man that he would do better
I to seek for the Superman in a Caesar Borgia than in
a Parsifal, he could not believe his ears. The fact
> that I am quite free from curiosity in regard to
criticisms of my books, more particularly when they
appear in newspapers, will have to be forgiven me.
> My friends and my publishers know this, and never
speak to me of such things. In one particular case,
I once saw all the sins that had been committed
against a single book — it was Beyond Good and
Evil; I could tell you a nice story about it. Is it
possible that the National-Zeitung — a Prussian
paper (this comment is for the sake of my foreign
readers — for my own part, I beg to state, I read
only Le Journal des Dibats) — really and seriously
regarded the book as a " sign of the times," or a
genuine and typical example of Tory philosophy , #
* Junker-Philosophic The landed proprietors constitute
the dominating class in Prussia, and it is from this class that
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 59
for which the Kreuz-Zeitung had not sufficient
courage? . . .
This was said for the benefit of Germans : for
everywhere else I have my readers — all of them
exceptionally intelligent men, characters that have
won their spurs and that have been reared in high
offices and superior duties ; I have even real geniuses L
among my readers. In Vienna, in St Petersburg, u
in Stockholm, in Copenhagen, in Paris, and New ^
York — I have been discovered everywhere : I have I
not yet been discovered in Europe's flatland — \
Germany. . . . And, to make a confession, I re-
joice much more heartily over those who do not
read me, over those who have neither heard of my
name nor of the word philosophy. But whither-
soever I go, here in Turin, for instance, every |
face brightens and softens at the sight of me. \
A thing that has flattered me more than anything
else hitherto, is the fact that old market-women !
cannot rest until they have picked out the sweetest
of their grapes for me. To this extent must a man
be a philosopher. ... It is not in vain that the Poles
are considered as the French among the Slavs. A
charming Russian lady will not be mistaken for a
single moment concerning my origin. I am not
successful at being pompous, the most I can do is
to appear embarrassed. ... I can think in German,
I can feel in German — I can do most things ; but
this is beyond my powers. . . . My old master Ritschl
all officers and higher officials are drawn. The Kreuz-Zeitung
is the organ of the Junker party. — Tr.
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60 ECCE HOMO
went so far as to declare that I planned even my
philological treatises after the manner of a Parisian
novelist — that I made them absurdly thrilling.
In Paris itself people are surprised at " toutes mes
audaces et finesses " ; — the words are Monsieur
Taine's; — I fear that even in the highest forms of the
dithyramb, that salt will be found pervading my
work which never becomes insipid, which never be-
comes u German " — and that is, wit. ... I can do
nought else. God help me ! Amen. — We all know,
some of us even from experience, what a " long-
ears " is. Well then, I venture to assert that I
have the smallest ears that have ever been seen.
This fact is not without interest to women — it
seems to me they feel that I understand them
better ! ... I am essentially the anti-ass, and on
this account alone a monster in the world's history
— in Greek, and not only in Greek, I am the Anti-
christ
I am to a great extent aware of my privileges
as a writer : in one or two cases it has even been
brought home to me how very much the habitual
reading of my works " spoils " a man's taste. Other
books simply cannot be endured after mine, and
least of all philosophical ones. It is an incompar-
able distinction to cross the threshold of this noble
and subtle world — in order to do so one must
certainly not be a German ; it is, in short, a distinc-
tion which one must have deserved. He, however,
who is related to me through loftiness of will,
experiences genuine raptures of understanding in
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 6l
my books : for I swoop down from heights into
which no bird has ever soared ; I know abysses
into which no foot has ever slipped. People have
told me that it is impossible to lay down a book
of mine — that I disturb even the night's rest. . . .
There is no prouder or at the same time more
subtle kind of books : they sometimes attain to the
highest pinnacle of earthly endeavour, cynicism ;
to capture their thoughts a man must have the ten-
derest fingers as well as the most intrepid fists.
Any kind of spiritual decrepitude utterly excludes
all intercourse with them — even any kind of dys-
pepsia : a man must have no nerves, but he must
have a cheerful belly. Not only the poverty of a
man's soul and its stuffy air excludes all intercourse
with them, but also, and to a much greater degree,
cowardice, uncleanliness, and secret intestinal re-
vengefulness ; a word from my lips suffices to make
the colour of all evil instincts rush into a face.
Among my acquaintances I have a number of
experimental subjects, in whom I see depicted all
the different, and instructively different, reactions
which follow upon a perusal of my works. Those
who will have nothing to do with the contents of
my books, as for instance my so-called friends, as-
sume an "impersonal" tone concerning them : they
wish me luck, and congratulate me for having pro-
duced another work ; they also declare that my
writings show progress, because they exhale a more
cheerful spirit. . . . Thejthoroughly vicious people,
the " beautiful souls," the false from top to toe, do
not know in the least what to dp „with-my books —
consequently, with the. beautiful consistency of all
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62 ECCE HOMO
tea^ifuLsouls^ibey^regatd^my. work as beneath
them.^ The cattle among my acquaintances, the
mere Germans,leave me to understand, if you please,
that they are not always of my opinion, though here
and there they agree with me. ... I have heard
this said even about Zarathustra. "Feminism,"
whether in mankind or in man, is likewise a barrier
to my writings ; with it, no one could ever enter
into this labyrinth of fearless knowledge. To this
end, a man must never have spared himself, he must
have been hard in his habits, in order to be good-
humoured and merry among a host of inexorable
truths. When I try to picture the character of a per-
fect reader, I always imagine a monster of courage
and curiosity, as well as of suppleness, cunning, and
prudence — in short, a born adventurer and explorer.
After all, I could not describe better than Zara-
thustra has done unto whom I really address my-
self: unto whom alone would he reveal his riddle ?
" Unto you, daring explorers and experimenters,
and unto all who have ever embarked beneath
cunning sails upon terrible seas ;
" Unto you who revel in riddles and in twilight,
whose souls are lured by flutes unto every treacher-
ous abyss :
" For ye care not to grope your way along a
thread with craven fingers ; and where ye are able
to guess, ye hate to argue"
I will now pass just one or two general remarks
about my art of style. To communicate a state
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 63
an inner tension of pathos by means of signs, in-
cluding the tempo of these signs, — that is the
meaning of every style ; and in view of the fact ^
that the multiplicity of inner states in me is enor-
mous, I am capable of many kinds of style — in short,
the most multifarious art of style that any man has
ever had at his disposal. Any style is good which
genuinely communicates an inner condition, which
does not blunder over the signs, over the tempo of
the signs, or over moods — all the laws of phrasing
are the outcome of representing moods artistically.
Good style, in itself, is a piece of sheer foolery,
mere idealism, like " beauty in itself," for instance,
or "goodness in itself," or "the thing-in-itself."
All this takes for granted, of course, that there
exist ears that can hear, and such men as are cap-
able and worthy of a like pathos, that those are
not wanting unto whom one may communicate .
one's self. Meanwhile my Zarathustra, for instance,
is still in quest of such people — alas ! he will have
to seek a long while yet ! A man must be worthy
of listening to him. . . . And, until that time,
there will be no one who will understand the art
that has been squandered in this book. No one
has ever existed who has had more novel, more
strange, and purposely created art forms to fling
to the winds. The fact that such things were
possible in the German language still awaited
proof; formerly, I myself would have denied most
emphatically that it was possible. Before my time x t
people did not know what could be done with the
German language — what could be done with lan-
guage in general. The art of grand rhythm, of grand '
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64 ECCE HOMO
style in periods, for expressing the tremendous
fluctuations of sublime and superhuman passion,
was first discovered by me: with the dithyramb
entitled £ The Seven Seals," which constitutes the
1 last discourse of the third part of Zarathustra^ I
soared miles above all that which heretofore has
been called poetry.
5
The fad* that the voice which speaks in my
> works is that of a psychologist who has not his
peer, is perhaps the first conclusion at which a good
reader will arrive — a reader such as I deserve, and
one who reads me just as the good old philologists
used to read their Horace. Those propositions
about which all the world is fundamentally agreed
— not to speak of fashionable philosophy, of moral-
ists and other empty-headed and cabbage-brained
people — are to me but ingenuous blunders : for in-
stance, the belief that " altruistic " and " egoistic "
| are opposites, while all tfce time the " ego " itself is
merely a "supreme swindle," an "ideal." . . . There
are no such things as egoistic or altruistic actions :
both concepts are psychological nonsense. Or the
proposition that " man pursues happiness " ; or the
proposition that "happiness is the reward of virtue."
... Or the proposition that "pleasure and pain are
opposites." . . . Morality, the Circe of mankind, has
falsified everything psychological, root and branch
— it has bemoralised everything, even to the terribly
nonsensical point of callingiove "unselfish." A man
must first be firmly poised, he must stand securely
on his two legs, otherwise he cannot love at all.
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 65
This indeed the girls know only too well : they don't
care two pins about unselfish and me rely objective
men. . *^iSTay I venture to suggest, incidentally,
that I know women? This knowledge is part
of my Dionysian patrimony. Who knows ? may-
be I am the first psychologist of the eternally femi-
nine. Women all like m e. . . . But that's an old
story : save, of course, the abortions among them,
the emancipated ones, those who lack the where-
withal to have children. Thank goodness I am not
willing to let myself be torn to pieces ! the perfect
woman tears you to pieces when she loves you : I
know these amiable Maenads. . . . Oh! what a
dangerous, creeping, subterranean little beast of
prey she is! And so agreeable withal! . . . A little
woman, pursuing her vengeance, would force open
even the iron gates of Fate itself. Woman is incal-
culably more wicked than man, she is also cleverer.
Goodness in a woman is already a sign of degenera-
tion. All cases of " beautiful souls " in women may
be traced to a faulty physiological condition — but
I go no further, lest I should become medicynical.
The struggle for equal rights is even a symptom
of disease ; every doctor knows this. The more
womanly a woman is, the more she fights tooth and
nail against rights in general : the natural order of
things, the eternal war between the sexes, assigns
to her by far the foremost rank. Have people had
ears to hear my definition of love ? It is the only
definition worthy of a philosopher. Loye^ in its
mean s, is w ar ; in its foundation, it is the mortal
hatred of the^exes. Have you heard my reply to
the question how a woman can be cured, " saved "
E
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66 ECCE HOMO
in fact?— ^lyejier^a^ child ! A woman needs
\ chiElren, man is always only a means, thus spake
Zarathustra. " The emancipation of women," — this
is the instinctive hatred of physiologically botched
— that is to say, barren — women for those of their
sisters who are well constituted : the fight against
" man " is always only a means, a pretext, a piece
of strategy. By trying to rise to " Woman per se"
to " Higher Woman," to the " Ideal Woman," all
they wish to do is to lower the general level of
( women's rank : and there are no more certain means
I to this end than university education, trousers, and
the rights of voting cattle. Truth to tell, the emanci-
pated are the anarchists in the " eternally feminine "
world, the physiological mishaps, the most deep-
rooted instinct of whom is revenge. A whole species
of the most malicious " idealism " — which, by the
bye, also manifests itself in men, in Henrik Ibsen
for instance, that typical old maid — whose object
is to poison the clean conscience, the natural spirit,
of sexual love. . . . And in order to leave no doubt
in your minds in regard to my opinion, which, on
this matter, is as honest as it is severe, I will reveal
to you one more clause out of my moral code against
vice— with the word " vice " I combat every kind of \
opposition to Nature, or, if you prefer fine words, f
idealism. The clause reads : "Preaching of chastity/
is a public incitement to unnatural practices. All
depreciation of the sexual life, all the sullying of
it by means of the concept ' impure/ is the essen
tialcrimeagainstLife — is the essential crime against
the Holy Spirit of Life."
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f ,
In order to give you some idea of myself as a
psychologist, let me take this curious piece of
psychological analysis out pf the book Beyond Good
and Evil, in which it appears. I forbid, by the bye,
any guessing as to whom J am describing in this
passage. " The genius of the heart, as that great
anchorite possesses it, the divine tempter and born
Pied Piper of consciences, whose voice knows how
to sink into the inmost depths of every soul, who
neither utters a word nor casts a glance, in which
some seductive motive or trick does not lie : a part
of whose masterliness is that he understands the art
of seeming — not what he is, but that which will
place a fresh constraint upon his followers to press
ever more closely upon him, to follow him ever more
enthusiastically and whole-heartedly. . . . The
genius of the heart, which makes all loud and self-
conceited things hold their tongues and lend their
ears, which polishes all rough souls and makes them
taste a new longing — to lie placid as a mirror,
that the deep heavens may be reflected in them. . . .
The genius of the heart which teaches the clumsy
and too hasty hand to hesitate and grasp more
tenderly ; which scents the hidden and forgotten
treasure, the pearl of goodness and sweet spiritual-
ity, beneath thick black ice, and is a divining rod
for every grain of gold, long buried and imprisoned
in heaps of mud and sand. . . . The genius of the
heart, from contact with which every man goes away
richer, not € blessed * and overcome, not as though
favoured and crushed by the good things of others ;
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68 ECCE HOMO
but richer in himself, fresher to himself than before,
opened up, breathed upon and sounded by a thawing
wind ; more uncertain, perhaps, more delicate, more
fragile, more bruised ; but full of hopes which as
yet lack names, full of a new will and striving, full
of a new unwillingness and counter-striving." . . .
9AAV "The Birth of Tragedy"
In order to be fair to the Birth of Tragedy (1872)
it is necessary to forget a few things. It created
a sensation and even fascinated by means of its
mistakes — by means of its application to Wagner-
ism, as if the latter were the sign of an ascending
tendency. On that account alone, this treatise was
an event in Wagner's life: thenceforward great hopes
surrounded the name of Wagner. Even to this
day, people remind me, sometimes in the middle of
Parsifal, that it rests on my conscience if the opin-
ion, that this movement is of great value to culture,
at length became prevalent I have often seen the
book quoted as " The Second Birth of Tragedy
from the Spirit of Music " : people had ears only
for new formulae for Wagner's art, his object and
his mission — and in this way the real hidden value
of the book was overlooked. " Hellenism and
Pessimism " — this would have been a less equivocal
title, seeing that the book contains the first attempt
at showing ho wjhs Gregk ^su cceeded in disposing^
of pessimism — * n what manner they overcame it.
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&
. . . Tragedy itself is the proof of the fact that the
Greeks were not pessimist s: Schopen foanerhlijnHerefi
hereas he blundered in everything else. — Regarded
impartially, The Birth of Tragedy is a book quite
strange to its age : no one would dream that it was
begun in the thunder of the battle of Worth, I
thought out these problems on cold September
nights beneath the walls of Metz, in the midst of my
duties as nurse to the wounded; it would be easier to
think that it was written fifty years earlier. Its atti-
tude towards politics is one of indifference, — " un-
German, M # as people would say to-day, — it smells
offensively of Hegel* only in one or two formulae is
it infected with the bitter odour of corpses which is
p eculiar to Schopenhauer. An idea — t hf frj^agon-
"Tsm off the two c oncro^sJQitta}^^
-^-is translated into metaphysics ; history itself is
depicted as the development of this idea • in tr aced v
this antithesis has become unity* from this stand-
point things which theretofore had never been face
to face are suddenly confronted, and understood
and illuminated bv each othe r. . . . Opera and re- **
volution, for instance. . . . The two decisive inno-
vations in the book are, firg », «*"> fflmp^h^nginn nf
the Diony' siaq yfr e r)orrier|or^ among the Grgfikff — it
provides the first psychological analysis of this
phenomenon, and sees in it the single root of all
Greek art; and, secondly, the comprehension of
* Those Germans who, like Nietzsche or Goethe, recog^)
nised that politics constituted a danger to culture, and who J
appreciated the literature of maturer cultures, such as that J
of France, are called un-deutsch (un-German) by Imperial- \
istic Germans. — Tr. ^
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JO ECCE HOMO
f Socraticism — Socrates being presented for the first
time as the instrument of Greek dissolution, as
a typical decadent. " Reason " versus Instinct.
attitude to life are attained. In one part of the
book the Christian priesthood is referred to as a
" perfidious order of goblins," as " subterraneans."
This start of mine was remarkable beyond meas-
ure. As a confirmation of my inmost personal ex-
perience I had discovered the only example of this
f act that history p os sesses.— with this I was t he
ji rst to und erstand the amazing Dionysian pheno-
menon ^ At the same time,Jby recognisiog^^cr^tes^
as a de caden t. I proved most conclusively that the
certainty of my psychological grasp of things ran
very little risk at the hands of any sort of moral
idiosyncrasy: to regard morality itself as a symptom
of degeneration is an innovation, a unique event of
the first order in the history of knowledge. How
high I had soared above the pitifully foolish gabble
about Optimism and Pessimism with my two new
doctrines ! I was the first to see the actual contrast:
the degenerate instinct which turns upon life with
a subterranean lust of vengeance (Christianity,
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Schopenhauer's philosophy, and in some respects .
too even Plato's philosophy — in short, the whole of
idealism in its typical forms), as opposed to a
formula of the highest yea-saying to life, born of
an abundance and a superabundance of life — a '
yea-saying free from all reserve, applying even to
suffering, and guilt, and all that is questionable and
strange in existence. . . . This last, most joyous,
most exuberant and exultant yea to life, is not only
the highest, but also the profoundest conception,and
one which is most strictly confirmed and supported
by truth and science. Nothing that exists must be
suppressed, nothing can be dispensed with. Those
aspects of life which Christians and other Nihilists
reject, belong to an incalculably higher order in the
hierarchy of values, than that which the instinct of
degeneration calls good, and may call good. In
order to understand this, a certain courage is neces-
sary, and, as a prerequisite of this, a certain super-
fluity of strength : for a man can approach only as
near to truth as he has the courage to advance — that
is to say, eve rything depends strict ly upon the me^-
sure of his strengt h. Knowledge, and the affirmation \
r\¥ ratili+xT o«*a met oo nor>ocennr tr* 4-Vio efrf/^nrr mon »
reality, are just as necessary to the strong man
as cowardice, the flight from reality — in fact, the j
"ideal" — are necessaryto the weak inspired by weak- /
ness. . . . These people are not at liberty to "know,"
— jggadfint&sianri in oeed i of lies, — it is one of their
self-preservative measures. He who not only under- \
stands the word " Dionysian," but understands him- \
self in that term, does not require any refutation of
Plato, or of Christianity, or of Schopenhauer — for
his nose scents decomposition.
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The extent to which I had by means of these
doctrines discovered the idea of " tragedy," the ulti-
mate explanation of what the psychology of tragedy
Not to cast out terror and pity, or to purge one's self
of dangerous passion by discharging it with vehem-
ence, — this was Aristotle's* misunderstanding of
it, — but to be far beyond terror and pity afflfl to be
the eternal lust of ±^011^ 1 1^ itseli 1 — that lust which
also involves the joy of destruction /' . . . In this
sense I have the right to regard myself as the first
tragic philosopher — that is to say, the most extreme
antithesis and antipodes of a pessimistic philosopher.
Before my time no such thingexisted as this transla-
tion of the Dionysian phenomenon into philosophic
emotion : tragic wisdom was lacking ; in vain have
I sought for signs of it even among the great Greeks
in philosophy — those belonging to the two centuries
before Socrates. I still remained a little doubtful
about Heraclitus, in whose presence, alone, I felt
warmer and more at ease than anywhere else. The
yea-saying to the impermanence and annihilation
of things, which is the decisive feature of a Diony^
* Aristotle's Poetics^ c. vi. — Tr.
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 73
sian philosophy; the yea-saying to contradi ction
and war, the postulation of Becoming , together with
tha. radical rejection even of the concept BttHjgf—
i n all these th ings, at all events, I must recognise
h im who has come nearest to me InThought hitheF
to. TEie doctrinFoTIhe^EternaTTtecurrenc^ ^
^that is to sav. of the absolute and eternal repetition
f of all things jp p?riQflfc^) liY*?!?? — this doctrine of
Zarathustra's might, it is true, have been taught be-
fore. In any case, the Stoics, who derived nearly
all their fundamental ideas from Heraclitus, show
traces of it.
A tremendous hope finds expression in this work.
After all, I have absolutely no reason to renounce
the hope for a Dionysian future of music. Let us
look a century ahead, and let us suppose that my
attempt to destroy two millenniums of hostility to
Nature and of the violation of humanity be crowned
with success That new party of life-advocates,
which will undertake the greatest of all tasks, the
elevation and perfection of mankind, as well as the
relentless destruction of all degenerate and para-
sitical elements, will make that superabundance of
life on earth once more possible, out of which the
Dionysian state will perforce arise again. I promise
the advent of a tragic age : the highest art in the
saying of yea to life, " tragedy," will be born again
when mankind has the knowledge of the hardest,
but most necessary of wars, behind it, without, how-
ever, suffering from that knowledge. . . . A psycho-
logist might add that what I heard in Wagnerian
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74 ECCE HOMO
music in my youth and early manhood had nothing
whatsoever to do with Wagner ; that when I de-
scribed Dionysian music, I described merely what
/ personally had heard — that I was compelled in-
stinctively to translate and transfigure everything
into the new spirit which filled my breast. A proof
of this, and as strong a proof as you could have, is
my essay, Wagner in Bayreuth : in all its decisive
psychological passages I am the only person con-
cerned — without any hesitation you may read my
name or the word " Zarathustra " wherever the text
contains the name of Wagner. The whole pano-
rama of the dithyrambic artist is the representation
of the already existing author of Zarathustra, and
it is drawn with an abysmal depth which does not
even once come into contact with the real Wagner.
Wagner himself had a notion of the truth ; he did
not recognise himself in the essay. — In this way,
"the idea of Bayreuth" was changed into something
which to those who are acquainted with my Zara-
thustra will be no riddle — that is to say, into the
Great Noon when the highest of the elect will conse-
crate themselves for the greatest of all duties — who
knows ? the vision of a feast which I may live to
see. . . . The pathos of the first few pages is uni-
versal history ; the look which is discussed on page
1 05 * of the book, is the actual look of Zarathustra ;
Wagner, Bayreuth, the whole of this petty German
wretchedness, is a cloud upon which an infinite Fata
Morgana of the future is reflected. Even from the
* This number and those which follow refer to Thoughts out
of Season, Part I. in this edition of Nietzsche's Works. — Tr.
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 75
psychological standpoint, all the decisive traits in
my character are introduced into Wagner's nature
— the juxtaposition of the most brilliant and most
fatal forces, a Will to Power such as no man has ever
possessed — inexorable bravery in matters spiritual,
an unlimited power of learning unaccompanied by
depressed powers for action. Everything in this
essay is a prophecy : the proximity of the resur-
rection of the Greek spirit, the need of men who
will be counter-Alexanders, who will once more tie
the Gordian knot of Greek culture, after it has been
cut. Listen to the world-historic accent with which
the concept " sense for the tragic " is introduced on
page 1 80: there are little else but world-historic
accents in this essay. This is the strangest kind of
" objectivity " that ever existed : my absolute cer-
tainty in regard to what I am y projected itself into
any chance reality — truth about myself was voiced
from out appalling depths. On pages 174 and 175
the style of Zarathustra is described and foretold
with incisive certainty, and no more magnificent
expression will ever he found than that on pages
144-147 for the event for which Zarathustra stands
— that prodigious act of the purification and conse-
cration of mankind, s
"Thoughts out of Season"
1
The four essays composing the Thoughts out
of Season are thoroughly warlike in tone. They
prove that I was no mere dreamer, that I delight
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76 ECCE HOMO
in drawing the sword — and perhaps, also, that my
wrist is dangerously supple. The first onslaught
(1873) was directed against German culture, upon
which I looked down even at that time with un-
mitigated contempt Without either sense, sub-
stance, or goal, it was simply "public opinion."
/There could be no more dangerous misunder-
standing than to suppose that Germany's success
at arms proved anything in favour of German
culture — and still less the triumph of this culture
over that of France. The second essay (1874)
brings to light that which is dangerous, that which
corrodes and poisons life in our manner of pursu-
it ing scientific study : Life is diseased, thanks to this
dehumanised piece of clockwork and mechanism,
i j thanks to the " impersonality " of the workman,
' and the false economy of the " division of labour."
The object, which is culture, is lost sight of:
modern scientific activity as a means thereto simply
produces barbarism. In this treatise, the " histori-
cal sense," of which this century is so proud, is for
the first time recognised as sickness, as a typical
symptom of decay. In the third and fourth essays,
|! a sign-post is set up pointing to a higher concept
of culture, to a re-establishment of the notion
" culture " ; and two pictures of the hardest self-
love and self-discipline are presented, two essentially
un-modern types, full of the most sovereign con-
tempt for all that which lay around them and
was called "Empire," "Culture," "Christianity,"
"Bismarck," and "Success," — these two types
were Schopenhauer and Wagner, or, in a word,
Nietzsche. . . .
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 77
Of these four attacks, the first met with extra-
ordinary success. The stir which it created was in
every way gorgeous. I had put my finger on the
vulnerable spot of a triumphant nation — I had told
it that its victory was not a red-letter day for culture,
but, perhaps, something very different. The reply
rang out from all sides, and certainly not only from
old friends of David Strauss, whom I had made
ridiculous as the type of a German Philistine of
Culture and a man of smug self-content — in short,
as the author of that suburban gospel of his, called
The Old and the New Faith (the term " Philistine
of Culture " passed into the current language of
Germany after the appearance of my book). These
old friends, whose vanity as Wiirtembergians and
Swabians I had deeply wounded in regarding
their unique animal, their bird of Paradise, as a
trifle comic, replied to me as ingenuously and as
grossly as I could have wished. The Prussian
replies were smarter; they contained more" Prussian
blue." The most disreputable attitude was assumed
by a Leipzig paper, the egregious Grentzboten\ and
it cost me some pains to prevent my indignant
friends in Bile from taking action against it. Only
a few old gentlemen decided in my favour, and for
very diverse and sometimes unaccountable reasons.
Among them was one, Ewald of Gottingen, who
made it clear that my attack on Strauss had been
deadly. There was also the Hegelian, Bruno Bauer,
who from that time became one of my most atten-
tive readers. In his later years he liked to refer to
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78 ECCE HOMO
me, when, for instance, he wanted to give Herr
von Treitschke, the Prussian Historiographer, a
hint as to where he could obtain information about
the notion " Culture," of which he (Herr von T.)
had completely lost sight. The weightiest and
longest notice of my book and its author appeared
in Wurzburg, and was written by Professor Hoff-
mann, an old pupil of the philosopher von Baader.
The essays made him foresee a great future for me,
namely, that of bringing about a sort of crisis and
decisive turning-point in the problem of atheism,
of which he recognised in me the most instinctive
and most radical advocate. It was atheism that
had drawn me to Schopenhauer. The review which
received by far the, most attention, and which ex-
cited the most bitterness, was an extraordinarily
powerful and plucky appreciation of my work by
Carl Hillebrand, a man who was usually so mild,
and the last humane German who knew how to
wield a pen. The article appeared in the Augs-
burg Gazette^ and it can be read to-day, couched in
rather more cautious language, among his collected
essays. In it my work was referred to as an event,
as a decisive turning-point, as the first sign of
an awakening, as an excellent symptom, and as
an actual revival of German earnestness and of
German passion in things spiritual. Hillebrand
could speak only in the terms of the highest re-
spect, of the form of my book, of its consummate
taste, of its perfect tact in discriminating between
persons and causes : he characterised it as the best
polemical work in the German language, — the best
performance in the art of polemics, which for
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 79
Germans is so dangerous and so strongly to be
deprecated. Besides confirming my standpoint, he
laid even greater stress upon what I had dared to
say about the deterioration of language in Germany
(nowadays writers assume the airs of Purists * and
can no longer even construct a sentence) ; sharing
my contempt for the literary stars of this nation,
he concluded by expressing his admiration for my
courage — that " greatest courage of all which
places the very favourites of the people in the
dock." . . . The after-effects of this essay of mine
proved invaluable to me in my life. No one has
ever tried to meddle with me since. People are
silent. In Germany I am treated with gloomy
caution : for years I have rejoiced in the privilege
of such absolute freedom of speech, as no one now-
adays, least of all in the " Empire," has enough
liberty to claim. My paradise is " in the shadow
of my sword." At bottom all I had done was to
put one of Stendhal's maxims into practice : he
advises one to make one's entrance into society by
means of a duel. And how well I had chosen my
opponent ! — the foremost free-thinker of Germany.
As a matter of fact, quite a novel kind of free
* The Purists constitute a definite body in Germany, which
is called the Deutscher Sprach- Verein. Their object is to
banish every foreign word from the language, and they carry
this process of ostracism even into the domain of the menu,
where their efforts at rendering the meaning of French dishes
are extremely comical. Strange to say, their principal organ,
and their other publications, are by no means free either from
solecisms or faults of style, and it is doubtless to this curious
anomaly that Nietzsche here refers.— Tr,
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80 ECCE HOMO
thought found its expression in this way : up to
the present nothing has been more strange and
more foreign to my blood than the whole of that
European and American species known as litres
penseurs. Incorrigible blockheads and clowns of
" modern ideas " that they are, I feel much more
profoundly at variance with them than with any
one of their adversaries. They also wish to " im-
prove " mankind, after their own fashion — that is to
say, in their own image ; against that which I stand
for and desire, they would wage an implacable war,
if only they understood it ; the whole gang of them
still believe in an "ideal." ... I am the first
ImrnoralisL
I should not like to say that the last two essays
in the Thoughts out of Season, associated with the
names of Schopenhauer and Wagner respectively,
serve any special purpose in throwing light upon
these two cases, or in formulating their psycholo-
gical problems. This of course does not apply to
a few details. Thus, for instance, in the second
of the two essays, with a profound certainty of in-
stinct I already characterised the elementary factor
in Wagner's nature as a theatrical talent which in
all his means and inspirations only draws its final
conclusions. At bottom, my desire in this essay
was to do something very different from writing
psychology: an unprecedented educational prob-
lem, a new understanding of self-discipline and
self-defence carried to the point of hardness, a road
to greatness and to world-historic duties, yearned
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to find expression. Roughly speaking, I seized
two famous and, theretofore, completely undefined
types by the forelock, after the manner in which
one seizes opportunities, simply in order to speak
my mind on certain questions, in order to have a
few more formulas, signs, and means of expression
at my disposal. Indeed I actually suggest this,
with most unearthly sagacity, on page 183 of
Schopenhauer as Educator. Plato made use of
Socrates in the same way — that is to say, as a
cipher for Plato. Now that, from some distance,
I can look back upon the conditions of which these
essays are the testimony, I would be loth to deny
that they refer simply to me. The essay Wagner
in Bayreuth is a vision of my own future ; on the
other hand, my most secret history, my develop-
ment, is written down in Schopenhauer as Educator.
But, above all, the vow I made I What I am to- \
day, the place I now hold — at a height from which
I speak no longer with words but with thunderbolts 1
— oh, how far I was from all this in those days !
But I saw the land — I did not deceive myself for
one moment as to the way, the sea, the danger —
and success ! The great calm in promising, this
happy prospect of a future which must not remain
only a promise ! — In this book every word has been
lived, profoundly and intimately ; the most painful
things are not lacking in it; it contains words which
are positively running with blood. But a wind of
great freedom blows over the whole; even its
wounds do not constitute an objection. As to
what I understand by being a philosopher, — that \ 1
is to say, a terrible explosive in the presence of '
F
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82 ECCE HOMO
which everything is in danger ; as to how I sever
my idea of the philosopher by miles from that
other idea of him which includes even a Kant, not
to speak of the academic " ruminators " and other
professors of philosophy, — concerning all these
things this essay provides invaluable information,
even granting that at bottom, it is not " Schopen-
hauer as Educator " but " Nietzsche as Educator,"
who speaks his sentiments in it. Considering that,
in those days, my trade was that of a scholar, and
perhaps, also, that I understood my trade, the piece
of austere scholar psychology which suddenly
makes its appearance in this essay is not without
importance: it expresses the feeling of distance,
and my profound certainty regarding what was my
real life-task, and what were merely means, intervals,
and accessory work to me. My wisdom consists
in my having been many things, and in many places,
in order to become one thing — in order to be able
to attain to one thing. It was part of my fate to
be a scholar for a while.
" Human, all-too-Human "
Human, all- too-Human > with its two sequels, is
the memorial of a crisis. It is called a book for
free spirits : almost every sentence in it is the ex-
pression of a triumph — by means of it I purged my-
self of everything in me which was foreign to my
nature. Idealism is foreign to me : the title of the
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EiCELLENT BOOKS 83
book means : " Where ye see ideal things I see —
human, alas ! all-too-human things ! " . . . I know
men better. The word " free spirit " in this book
must not be understood as anything else than a spirit
that has become free, that has once more taken
possession of itself. My tone, the pitch of my voice,
has completely changed ; the book will be thought
clever, cool, and at times both hard and scornful. A
certain spirituality, of noble taste, seems to be ever
struggling to dominate a passionate torrent at its
feet. In this respect there is some sense in the fact
that it was the hundredth anniversary of Voltaire's
death that served, so to speak, as an excuse for the
publication of the book as early as 1878. For Vol-
taire, as the opposite of every one who wrote after
him, was above all a grandee of the intellect : pre-
cisely what I am also. The name of Voltaire on
one of my writings — that was verily a step forward
— in my direction. . . . Looking into this book a
little more closely, you perceive a pitiless spirit who
knows all the secret hiding-places in which ideals
are wont to skulk — where they find their dungeons,
and, as it were, their last refuge. With a torch in
my hand, the light of which is not by any means a
flickering one, I illuminate this nether world with
beams that cut like blades. It is war, but war with-
out powder and smoke, without warlike attitudes,
without pathos and contorted limbs — all these
things would still be "idealism." One error after the
other is quietly laid upon ice; the ideal is not refuted
— it freezes. Here, for instance, "genius" freezes;
round the corner the " saint " freezes ; under a thick
icicle the " hero " freezes ; and in the end " faith "
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84 ECCE HOMO
itself freezes. So-called " conviction " and also " pity "
are considerably cooled — and almost everywhere
the "thing in itself" is freezing to death.
This book was begun during the first musical fes-
tival at Bayreuth ; a feeling of profound strange-
ness towards everything that surrounded me there,
is one of its first conditions. He who has any
notion of the visions which even at that time had
flitted across my path, will be able to guess what
I felt when one day I came to my senses in Bay-
reuth. It was just as if I had been dreaming.
Where on earth was I ? I recognised nothing that
I saw ; I scarcely recognised Wagner. It was in
vain that I called up reminiscences. Tribschen —
remote island of bliss : not the shadow of a resem-
blance ! The incomparable days devoted to the lay-
ing of the first stone, the small group of the initi-
ated who celebrated them, and who were far from
lacking fingers for the handling of delicate things :
not the shadow of a resemblance ! What had hap-
penedt — Wagner had been translated into German!
! The Wagnerite had become master of Wagner !
— German art! the German master! German
beer ! . . . We who know only too well the kind
of refined artists and cosmopolitanism in taste, to
j which alone Wagner's art can appeal, were beside
ourselves at the sight of Wagner bedecked with
German virtues. I think I know the Wagnerite, I
have experienced three generations of them, from
Brendel of blessed memory, who confounded
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 85
Wagner with Hegel, to the " idealists " of the Bay-
reuth Gazette^ who confound Wagner with them-
selves, — I have been the recipient of every kind of
confession about Wagner, from " beautiful souls."
My kingdom for just one intelligent word 1 — In
very truth, a blood-curdling company ! Nohl, Pohl,
and Kohl* and others of their kidney to infinity !
There was not a single abortion that was lacking
among them — no, not even the anti-Semite. — Poor
Wagner ! Into whose hands had he fallen ? If only
he had gone into a herd of swine ! But among Ger-
mans ! Some day, for the edification of posterity,
one ought really to have a genuine Bayreuthian
stuffed, or, better still, preserved in spirit, — for it is
precisely spirit that is lacking in this quarter, — with
this inscription at the foot of the jar : " A sample
of the spirit whereon the ' German Empire ' was
founded." . . . But enough ! In the middle of the
festivities I suddenly packed my trunk and left the
place for a few weeks, despite the fact that a charm-
ing Parisian lady sought to comfort me ; I excused
myself to Wagner simply by means of a fatalistic
telegram. In a little spot called Klingenbrunn,
deeply buried in the recesses of the Bohmerwald, I
carried my melancholy and my contempt of Ger-
mans about with me like an illness — and, from time
to time, under the general title of " The Plough-
share," I wrote a sentence or two down in my note-
book, nothing but severe psychological stuff, which
* Nohl and Pohl were both writers on music ; Kohl,
however, which literally means cabbage, is a slang expres-
sion, denoting superior nonsense. — Tr.
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86 ECCE HOMO
it is possible may have found its way into Human,
all~too-Hutnan.
3
That which had taken place in me, then, was not
only a breach with Wagner — I was suffering from
a general aberration of my instincts, of which a
mere isolated blunder, whether it were Wagner or
my professorship at B&le, was nothing more than a
symptom. I was seized with a fit of impatience with
myself; I saw that it was high time that I should
turn my thoughts upon my own lot. In a trice I
realised, with appalling clearness, how much time
had already been squandered — how futile and how
senseless my whole existence as a philologist ap-
peared by the side of my life-task. I was ashamed
of this false modesty. . . . Ten years were behind
me, during which, to tell the truth, the nourishment
of my spirit had been at a standstill, during which I
had added not a single useful fragment to my know-
ledge, and had forgotten countless things in the
pursuit of a hotch-potch of dry-as-dust scholarship.
Tocrawlwithmeticulouscareand short-sighted eyes
through old Greek metricians — that is what I had
come to ! . . . Moved to pity I saw myself quite
thin, quite emaciated: realities were only too plainly
absent from my stock of knowledge, and what the
" idealities " were worth the devil alone knew ! A
positively burning thirst overcame me : and from
that time forward I have done literally nothing else
than study physiology, medicine, andnaturalscience
— I even returned to the actual study of history
only when my life-task compelled me to. It was
at that time, too, that I first divined the relation be-
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 87
tween an instinctively repulsive occupation, a so-
called vocation, which is the last thing to which one
is " called," and that need of lulling a feeling of
emptiness and hunger, by means of an art which
is a narcotic — by means of Wagner's art, for in-
stance. After looking carefully about me, I have
discovered that a large number of young men are
all in the same state of distress : one kind of un-
natural practice perforce leads to another. In Ger-
many, or rather, to avoid all ambiguity, in the
Empire,* only too many are condemned to deter-
mine their choice too soon, and then to pine away
beneath a burden that they can no longer throw .
off. . . . Such creatures crave for Wagner as for an
opiate, — they are thus able to forget themselves, to
be rid of themselves for a moment. . . . What am
I saying ! — for five or six hours.
4
At this time my instincts turned resolutely »
against any further yielding or following on my part, V
and any further misunderstanding of myself. Every '
kind of life, the most unfavourable circumstances,
illness, poverty — anything seemed to. me preferable
to that undignified " selfishness " into which I had
fallen ; in the first place, thanks to my ignorance and
youth, and in which I had afterwards remained
owing to laziness — the so-called " sense of duty."
At this juncture there came to my help, in a way
* Needless to say, Nietzsche distinguishes between Bis-
marckian Germany and that other Germany — Austria,
Switzerland, and the Baltic Provinces — where the German
language is also spoken.— Tr.
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88 ECCE HOMO
that I cannot sufficiently admire, and precisely at
the right time, that evil heritage which I derive
from my father's side of the family, and which, at
bottom, is no more than a predisposition to die
young. Illness slowly liberated me from the toils,
it spared me any sort of sudden breach, any sort
of violent and offensive step. At that time I lost
not a particle of the good will of others, but rather
added to my store. Illness likewise gave me the
right completely to reverse my mode of life ; it not
only allowed, it actually commanded, me to forget ;
it bestowed upon me the necessity of lying still,
of having leisure, of waiting, and of exercising
patience. . . . But all this means thinking ! . . .
The state of my eyes alone put an end to all book- C^
wormishness,or,in plain English — philology: I was
thus delivered from books ; for years I ceased from
reading, and this was the greatest boon I ever con-
ferred upon myself! (That nethermost self, which
was, as it were, entombed, and which had grown
dumb because it had been forced to listen perpetu-
ally to other selves (for that is what reading means !),
slowly awakened ; at first it was shy and doubtful,
but at last it spoke agaitis Never have I rejoiced
more over my condition tnan during the sickest and
most painful moments of my life. You have only
to examine The Dawn of Day, or, perhaps, The
Wanderer and his Shadow* in order to understand
what this "return to myself" actually meant: in
itself it was the highest kind of recovery ! . . . My
cure was simply the result of it.
* Human^ all- too- Human, Part II. in this edition. — Tr.
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Human, all-too-Human, this monument of a
cours^of vigorous selfdiscipline, by means of which
I put an abrupt end to all the " Superior Bunkum,"
" Idealism," " Beautiful Feelings," and other effem-
inacies that had percolated into my being, was
written principally in Sorrento ; it was finished and
given definite shape during a winter at B&le, under
conditions far less favourable than those in Sorrento.
Truth to tell, it was Peter Gast, at that time a
student at the University of B&le, and a devoted
friend of mine, who was responsible for the book.
With my head wrapped in bandages, and extremely
painful, I dictated while he wrote and corrected as
he went along — to be accurate, he was the real
composer, whereas I was only the author. When
the completed book ultimately reached me, — to
the great surprise of the serious invalid I then was,
— I sent, among others, two copies to Bayreuth.
Thanks to a miraculous flash of intelligence on the
part of chance, there reached me precisely at the
same time a splendid copy of the Parsifal text,
with the following inscription from Wagner's pen :
"To his dear friend Friedrich Nietzsche, from
Richard Wagner, Ecclesiastical Councillor." At
this crossing of the two books I seemed to hear an
ominous note. Did it not sound as if two swords
had crossed ? At all events we both felt this was
so, for each of us remained silent. At about this
time the first Bayreuth Pamphlets appeared : and
I then understood the move on my part for which
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90 ECCE HOMO
it was high time. Incredible ! Wagner had be-
come pious.
My attitude to myself at that time (1876), and
the unearthly certitude with which I grasped my
life-task and all its world-historic consequences, is
well revealed throughout the book, but more par-
ticularly in one very significant passage, despite
the fact that, with my instinctive cunning, I once
more circumvented the use of the little word " I,"
— not however, this time, in order to shed world-
historic glory on the names of Schopenhauer and
Wagner, but on that of another of my friends, the
excellent Dr. Paul R£e — fortunately much too
acute a creature to be deceived — others were less
subtle. Among my readers I have a number of
hopeless people, the typical German professor for
instance, who can always be recognised from the
fact that, judging from the passage in question, he
feels compelled to regard the whole book as a sort
of superior R^ealism. As a matter of fact it con-
tradicts five or six of my friend's utterances : only
read the introduction to The Genealogy of Morals
on this question. — The passage above referred to
reads : " What, after all, is the principal axiom to
which the boldest and coldest thinker, the author
of the book On the Origin of Moral Sensations "
(read Nietzsche, the first Immoralist), " has attained
by means of his incisive and decisive analysis of
human actions ? * The moral man/ he saj£ ' is no
nearer to the intelligible (metaphysical) wSnd than
is the physical man, for there is no intelligible
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 9 1
world.' This theory, hardened and sharpened under
the hammer-blow of historical knowledge "(read The
Transvaluation of all Values), " may some time or
other, perhaps in some future period, — 1890! —
serve as the axe which is applied to the root of the
' metaphysical need ' of man, — whether more as a
blessing than a curse to the general welfare it is
not easy to say ; but in any case as a theory with
the most important consequences, at once fruitful
and terrible, and looking into the world with that
Janus-face which all great knowledge possesses." *
"The Dawn of Day:
Thoughts about Morality as a Prejudice"
With this book I open my campaign against
morality. Not that it is at all redolent of powder —
you will find quite other and much nicer smells in
it, provided that you have any keenness in your
nostrils. There is nothing either of light or of heavy
artillery in its composition, and if its general end be
a negative one, its means are not so — means out of
which the end follows like a logical conclusion, not
like a cannon-shot. And if the reader takes leave
of this book with a feeling of timid caution in re-
gard to everything which has hitherto been honoured
and even worshipped under the name of morality, it
does not alter the fact that there is not one negative
* Human, all- too- Human, vol. i. Aph. 37.
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92 ECCE HOMO
word, not one attack, and not one single piece
of malice in the whole work — on the contrary, it
lies in the sunshine, smooth and happy, like a marine
animal, basking in the sun between two rocks. For,
after all, I was this marine animal : almost every sen-
tence in the book was thought out, or rather caught^
among that medley of rocks in the neighbourhood
' of Genoa, where I lived quite alone, and exchanged
secrets with the ocean. Even to this day, when by
chance I happen to turn over the leaves of this book,
almost every sentence seems to me like a hook by
means of which I draw something incomparable out
of the depths ; its whole skin quivers with delicate
shudders of recollection. This book is conspicuous
for no little art in gently catching things which
whisk rapidly and silently away, moments which 1
call godlike lizards — not with the cruelty of that
young Greek god who simply transfixed the poor
little beast ; but nevertheless with something pointed
— with a pen. " There are so many dawns which
have not yet shed their light" — this Indian maxim is
written over the doorway of this book. Where does
its author seek that new morning, that delicate red,
as yet undiscovered, with which another day — ah !
a whole series of days, a whole world of new days ! —
will begin? In the Transvaluation of all Values \
in an emancipation from all moral values, in a say-
ing of yea, and in an attitude of trust, to all that
which hitherto has been forbidden, despised, and
damned. This yea-saying book projects its light,
its love, its tenderness, over all evil things, it restores
to them their soul, their clear conscience, and their
superior right and privilege to exist on earth.
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 93
Morality is not assailed, it simply ceases to be
considered. This book closes with the word " or ? "
— it is the only book which closes with an " or ? ".
My life-task is to prepare for humanity onev
supreme moment in which it can come to its senses,
a Great Noon in which it will turn its gaze back-
wards and forwards, in which it will step from under
the yoke of accident and of priests, and for the first
time set the question of the Why and Wherefore of*
humanity as a whole — this life-task naturally fol-
lows out of the conviction that mankind does not
get on the right road of its own accord, that it is
by no means divinely ruled, but rather that it is
precisely under the cover of its most holy valuations
that the instinct of negation, of corruption, and of
degeneration has held such a seductive sway. The
question concerning the origin of moral valuations
is therefore a matter of the highest importance to
me because it determines the future of mankind.
The demand made upon us to believe that every-
thing is really in the best hands, that a certain book,
the Bible, gives us the definite and comforting as-
surance that there is a Providence that wisely rules
the fate of man, — when translated back into reality
amounts simply to this, namely, the will to stifle
the truth which maintains the reverse of all this,
which is that hitherto man has been in the worst
possible hands, and that he has been governed by
the physiologically botched, the men of cunning aftd
burning revengefulness, and the so-called " saints "
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94 ECCE HOMO
— those slanderers of the world and traducers of
humanity. The definite proof of the fact that the
priest (including the priest in disguise, the philo-
sopher) has become master, not only within a cer-
tain limited religious community, but everywhere,
and that the morality of decadence, the will to
nonentity, has become morality per se, is to be
found in this: that Altruism is now an absolute
value, and egoism is regarded with hostility every-
i where. He who* disagrees with me on this point,
I regard as infected. But all the world disagrees
with me. To a physiologist a like antagonism
between values admits of no doubt. If th§ most
insignificant organ within the body neglects, how-
ever slightly, to assert with absolute certainty its
self-preservative powers, its recuperative claims, and
its egoism, the whole system degenerates. The
physiologist insists upon the removal of' degener-
ated parts, he denies all fellow-feeling for such parts,
and has not the smallest feeling of pity for them.
But the desire of the priest is precisely the degenera-
tion of the whole of mankind ; hence his preservation
of that which is degenerate — this is what his dom-
inion costs humanity. What meaning have those
lying concepts, those handmaids of morality, " Soul,"
" Spirit," " Free will," " God," if their aim is not the
physiological ruin of mankind? When earnest-
ness is diverted from the instincts that aim at self-
preservation and an increase of bodily energy, i.e.
at an increase of life ; when anaemia is raised to an
ideal and the contempt of the body is construed as
" the salvation of the soul," what is all this if it is not
a recipe for decadence ? Loss of ballast, resistance
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 95
offered to natural instincts, selflessness, in fact — this
is what has hitherto been known as morality.
With The Dawn of Day I first engaged in a
struggle against the morality of self-renunciation.
" Joyful Wisdom :
La Gaya Scienza "
Dawn of Day is a yea-saying book, profound,
but clear and kindly. The same applies once
more and in the highest degree to La Gaya Scienza :
in almost every sentence of this book, profundity
and playfulness go gently hand in hand. A verse
which expresses my gratitude for the most wonder-
ful month of January which I have ever lived —
the whole book is a gift — sufficiently reveals the
abysmal depths from which " wisdom " has here
become joyful.
"Thou who with cleaving fiery lances
The stream of my soul from its ice dost free,
Till with a rush and a roar it advances
To enter with glorious hoping the sea :
Brighter to see and purer ever,
Free in the bonds of thy sweet constraint, —
So it praises thy wondrous endeavour,
January, thou beauteous saint ! " *
Who can be in any doubt as to what " glorious
hoping" means here, when he has realised the
* Translated {or Joyful Wisdom by Paul V. Cohn.— Tr.
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96 ECCE HOMO
. diamond beauty of the first of Zarathustra's words
as they appear in a glow of light at the close of
the fourth book ? Or when he reads the granite
sentences at the end of the third book, wherein a
fate for all times is first given a formula ? The
songs of Prince Free-as-a-Bird, which, for the most
part, were written in Sicily, remind me quite for-
cibly of that Provencal notion of " Gaya Scienza"
of that union of singer, knight, and free spirit, which
distinguishes that wonderfully early culture of the
Provencals from all ambiguous cultures. The last
poem of all ," To the Mistral," — an exuberant dance
song in which, if you please, the new spirit dances
freely upon the corpse of morality, — is a perfect
Provengalism.
"Thus Spake Zarathustra:
A Book for All and None "
I now wish to rglatethe history of Z arathus tra.
The fundamental idea~oi the work, the Eternal
Recurrence, the highest formula of a Yea-saying to
life that can ever be attained, was first conceived
in the month of August 1881. I made a note of
the idea on a sheet of paper, with the postscript :
" Six thousand feet beyond man and time." That
day I happened to be wandering through the
woods alongside of the Lake of Silvaplana, and I
halted not far from Surlei, beside a huge rock that
towered aloft like a pyramid. It was then that
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 97
the thought struck me. Looking back now, I
find that exactly two months before this inspira-
tion I had an omen of its coming in the form of
a sudden and decisive change in my tastes — more
particularly in music. The whole of Zarathustra
might perhaps be classified under the rubric jn,usic.
At all eventSjj!i£_essential condition oF its produc-
tion was asecond birth within" me of the art of
hearing. In Recoaro, a small mountain resort
near~Vicenza, where I spent the spring of 1881, I
and my friend and maestro, Peter Gast — who was
also one who had been born again, discovered that
the phoenix music hovered over us, in lighter and
brighter plumage than it had ever worn before.
If, therefore, I now calculate from that day for-
ward the sudden production of the book, under
the most unlikely circumstances, in February 1 883,
— the last part, out of which I quoted a few lines
in my preface, was written precisely in the hal-
lowed hour when Richard Wagner gave up the
ghost in Venice, — I come to the conclusion that
the period of gestation covered eighteen months.
This period of exactly eighteen months, might
suggest, at least to Buddhists, that I am in reality
a female elephant The interval was devoted to
the Gaya Scienza, which contains hundreds of
indications of the proximity of something unparal-
leled ; for, after all, it shows the beginning of
Zarathustra^ since it presents Zarathustrcts funda-
mental thought in the last aphorism but one of
the fourth book. To this interval also belongs
that Hymn to Life (for a mixed choir and or-
chestra), the score of which was published in
c
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98 ECCE HOMO
Leipzig two years ago by E. W. Fritsch, and
which gave perhaps no slight indication of my
spiritual stateduring^this year, in which the essen-
fialtyr^a-saymg pathos, which I ca ll the-tragic
tpatKbs, CGttipletelyJilkrime heart and limb. One
day people wHTsuig it to my memory. The text,
let it be well understood, as there is some mis-
understanding abroad on this point, is not by me ;
it was the astounding inspiration of a young
j Russian lady, Miss Lou von Salome, with whom I
I* was then on friendly terms. He who is in any
way able to make some sense of the last words of
the poem, will divine why I preferred and admired
it : there is greatness in them. Pain is not re-
garded as an objection to existence: "And if
thou hast no bliss now left to crown me — Lead
on ! Thou hast thy Sorrow still."
Maybe that my music is also great in this
passage. (The last note of the oboe, by the bye,
is C sharp, not C. The latter is a misprint.)
During the following winter, I was living on that
charmingly peaceful Gulf of Rapallo, not far from
Genoa, which cuts inland between Chiavari and
Cape Porto Fino. My health was not very good ;
the winter was cold and exceptionally rainy ; and
the small albergo in which I lived was so close to
the water that at night my sleep was disturbed
if the sea was rough. These circumstances were
surely the very reverse of favourable ; and yet, in
spite of it all, and as if in proof of my belief that
everything decisive comes to life _in_defiance of
every o bstac le, it was precisely during this winter
and in the midst of these unfavourable cir-
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cumstances that my Zarathustra originated. In
the morning I used to start out in a southerly
direction up the glorious road to Zoagli, which
rises up through a forest of pines and gives one a
view far out to sea. In the afternoon, or as often
as my health allowed, I walked round the whole
bay from Santa Margherita to beyond Porto Fino.
This spot affected me all the more deeply because
it was so dearly loved by the Emperor Frederick
III. In the autumn of 1886 I chanced to be
there again when he was revisiting this small for-
gotten world of happiness for the last time. It
was on these two roads that all Zarathustra
came to me, above all, Zarathustra himself as a
type — I ought rather to say that it was on these
walks that he waylaid me.
In order to understand this type, you must first
be quite clear concerning its fundamental physio -
l ogical condition : this condition is what I call /
great healthiness. In regard to this idea I cannot
make my meaning more plain or more personal
than I have done already in one of the last aphor-
isms (No. 382) of the fifth book of the Gaya
Scienza : " We new, nameless, and unfathomable
creatures," so reads the passage, " we firstlings
of a future still unproved — we who have a new
end in view also require new means to that end,
that is to say, a new healthiness, a stronger, keener, .
tougher, bolder, and merrier healthiness than any I
that has existed heretofore. He who longs to 1
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100 ECCE HOMO
feel in his own soul the whole range of values and
aims that have prevailed on earth until his day,
and to sail round all the coasts of this ideal
* Mediterranean Sea ' ; who, from the adventures
of his own inmost experience, would fain know
how it feels to be a conqueror and discoverer of
the ideal ; — as also how it is with the artist, the
saint, the legislator, the sage, the scholar, the man
of piety and the godlike anchorite of yore ; — such
a man requires one thing above all for his purpose,
and that is, great healthiness — such healthiness as
he not only possesses, but also constantly acquires
and must acquire, because he is continually sacri-
ficing it again, and is compelled to'^sacrifice it !
And now, therefore, after having been long on the
way, we Argonauts of the ideal, whose pluck is
greater than prudence would allow, and who are
often shipwrecked and bruised, but, as I have said,
healthier than people would like to admit, danger-
ously healthy, and for ever recovering our health —
it would seem as if we had before us, as a reward
for all our toils, a country still undiscovered, the
horizon of which no one has yet seen, a beyond
to every country and every refuge of the ideal that
man has ever known, a world so overflowing with
beauty, strangeness, doubt, terror, and divinity,
that both our curiosity and our lust of possession
are frantic with eagerness. Alas ! how in the
face of such vistas, and with such burning desire in
our conscience and consciousness, could we still
be content with the man of the present day ? This
is bad indeed; but, that we should regard his
worthiest aims and hopes with ill-concealed am use-
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS IOI
ment, or perhaps give them no thought at all, is in-
evitable. Another ideal now leads us on, a wonderful,
seductive ideal, full of danger, the pursuit of which
we should be loath to urge upon any one, because
we are not so ready to acknowledge any one's
right to it : the ideal of a spirit who plays ingenu-
ously (that is to say, involuntarily, and as the out-
come of superabundant energy and power) with
everything that, hitherto, has been called holy,
good, inviolable, and divine; to whom even the
loftiest thing that thp people have with reason
made their measure. of value would be no better
than a danger, a decay, and an abasement, or at
least a relaxatibn and temporary forgetfulness of
self: the ideal of a humanly superhuman well-being
and goodwill, which often enough will seem in-
human — as when, for instance, it stands beside all
past earnestness on earth, and all past solemnities
in hearing, speech, tone, look, morality, and duty,
as their most lifelike and unconscious parody —
but with which, nevertheless, great earnestness
perhaps alone begins, the first note of interroga-
tion is affixed, the fate of the soul changes, the
hour hand moves, and tragedy begins."
Ha)s any one at the end of the nineteenth century
any distinct notion of what poets of a stronger age
understood by the word inspiration ? If not, I will
describe it. I f one had tnesmallest vestige of super-
stition left in one, it would hardly be possible com-
pletely to set aside the idea that one is the mere
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{
1 02 ECCE HOMO
incarnation, mouthpiece, or medium of an almighty
power. The idea of revelation, in the sense that
something which profoundly convulses and upsets
one becomes suddenly visible and audible with inde-
scribable certainty and accuracy — describes the
simple fact. One hears — one does not seek ; one
takes — one does not ask who gives: a thought
suddenly flashes up like lightning, it comes with
necessity, without faltering — I have never had any
choice in the matter. There is an ecstasy so great
that the immense strain of it is sometimes relaxed
by a flood of tears, during which one's steps now in-
voluntarily rush and anon involuntarily lag. There
is the feeling that one is utterly out of hand, with
the very distinct consciousness of an endless number
of fine thrills and titillations descending to one's
very toes ; — there is a depth of happiness in which
the most painful and gloomy parts do not act as
antitheses to the rest, but are produced and required
as necessary shades of colour in such an overflow
of light. There is an instinct for rhythmic relations
which embraces a whole world of forms (length, the
need of a wide-embracing rhythm, is almost the
measure of the force of an inspiration, a sort of
counterpart to its pressure and tension). Every-
thing happens quite involuntarily, as if in a tem-
pestuous outburst of freedom, of absoluteness, of
power and divinity. The involuntary nature of the
figures and similes is the most remarkable thing ;
one loses all perception of what is imagery and
metaphor ; everything seems to present itself as the
readiest, the truest, and simplest means of expres-
sion. 1 1 actually seems, to use one of Zarathustra's
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own phrases, as if all things came to one, ana |
offered themselves as similes. (" Here do all things I
come caressingly to thy discourse and flatter thee,
for they would fain ride upon thy back. On every
simile thou ridest here unto every truth. Here fly
open unto thee all the speech and word shrines of
the world, here would all existence become speech,
here would all Becoming learn of thee how to
speak.") This is my experience of inspiration. I
do not doubt but that I should have to go back
thousands of years before I could find another who
could say to me : " It is mine also ! "
For a few weeks afterwards I lay an invalid in
Genoa. Then followed a melancholy spring in
Rome, where I only just managed to live — and this
was no easy matter. This city, which is absolutely
unsuited to the poet-author of Zarathustra, and for
the choice of which I was not responsible, made
me inordinately miserable. I tried to leave it. I
wanted to go to Aquila — the opposite of Rome in
every respect, and actually founded in a spirit of
hostility towards that city, just as I also shall found
a city some day, as a memento of an atheist and
genuine enemy of the Church, a person very closely
related to me, the great Hohenstaufen, the Emperor
Frederick II. But Fate lay behind it all : I had to
return again to Rome. In the end I was obliged
to be satisfied with the Piazza Barberini, after I had
exerted myself in vain to find an anti-Christian
quarter. I fear that on one occasion, to avoid bad
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104 ECCE HOMO
smells as much as possible, I actually inquired at
the Palazzo del Quirinale whether they could not
provide a quiet room for a philosopher. In a
chamber high above the Piazza just mentioned, from
which one obtained a general view of Rome, and
could hear the fountains plashing far below, the
loneliest of all songs was composed — "The Night-
Song." About this time I was obsessed by an un-
speakably sad melody ^ the refrain of which I
recognised in the affords, " dead through immor-
tality," ... In the summer, finding myself once
more in the sacred place where the first thought of
Zarathustr a flashed likej iJight,across my mind, I
conceived the second part. Ten da ys sufficed.
Neither for the second, the first, nor the third part,
have I required a day longer. In the ensuing winter,
beneath the halcyon sky of Nice, which then for the
first time poured its light into my life, I found the
third Zarathustra — and came to the end of my task:
the whole having occupied me scarcely a year.
Many hidden corners and heights in the country
round about Nice are hallowed for me by moments
that I can never forget. That decisive chapter,
entitled " Old and New Tables," was composed
during the arduous ascent from the station to Eza
— that wonderful Moorish village in the rocks.
Du ring those moments when my creative energy
flowedjnost plentifully, my musculaTlictivity was
ad way§ greaiesL The bo dy is inspired : let us waive
the question of " soul." I might often have been
seen dancing in those days, and I could then walk
for seven or eight hours on end over the hills
without a suggestion of fatigue. I slept well and
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laughed ajjood deal — I was perfectly robust and
patient
With the exception of these periods of industry
lasting ten days, the years I spent during the pro-
duction of Zarathustra y and thereafter*, were fof'me
years of unparallele d distress. A man pays dearly
for being intmortal : to this end he must die many
times over during his life. There is such a thing
as what I call the rancour of greatness : every thing
great, whether a work or a deed, .once it is com -
pleted, turns immediately against its author. The
very fact that he is its author makes him weak at
this time. He can no longer endure his deed. He
can no longer look it full in the face. To have
something at one's back which one could never have
willed, something to which the knot of human
destiny is attached — and to be forced thencefor-
ward to bear it on one's shoulders! Why, it almost
crushes one ! The rancour of greatness ! A some- l
what different experience is the uncanny silence that
reigns about one. Solitude has seven skins which
nothing can penetrate. One goes among men ; one
greets friends : but these things are only new
deserts, the looks of those one meets no longer bear
a greeting. At the best one encounters a sort of
revolt. This feeling of revolt, I suffered, in varying
degrees of intensity, at the hands of almost every
one who came near me ; it would seem that nothing
inflicts a deeper wound than suddenly to make one's
distance felt. Those noble natures are scarce who
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106 ECCE HOMO
know not how to live unless they can revere. A
third thing is the absurd susceptibility of the skin
to small pin-pricks, a kind of helplessness in the
presence of all small things. This seems to me a
necessary outcome of the appalling expenditure of
all defensive forces, which is the first condition of
every creative act, of every act which proceeds from
the most intimate, most secret, and most concealed
recesses of a man's being. The small defensive
forces are thus, as it were, suspended, and no fresh
energy reaches them. I even think it probable that
one does not digest so well, that one is less willing
to move, and that one is much too open to sensa-
tions of coldness and suspicion ; for, in a large
number of cases, suspicion is merely a blunder in
etiology. On one occasion when I felt like this I
became conscious of the proximity of a herd of cows,
some time before I could possibly have seen it with
my eyes, simply owing to a return in me of milder
and more humane sentiments : they communicated
warmth to me. . . .
This work stands alone. Do not let us mention
the poets in the same breath* nothing perhaps has
ever been produced out of such a superabundance
of strength. My concept " Dion^si^n " here be-
came the highest^ssA ; compared with it everything
that other men have done seems poor and limited.
The fact that a Goethe or a Shakespeare would not
for an instant have known how to take breath in
this atmosphere of passion and of the heights ; the
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 107
fact that by the side of Zarathustra, Dante is no \
more than a believer, and not one who first creates
the truth — that is to say, not a world-ruling spirit, 1
a Fate ; the fact that the poets of the Veda were
priests and not even fit to unfasten Zarathustra's
sandal — all this is the least of things, and gives no
idea of the distance, of the azure solitude, in which
this work dwells. Zarathustra has an eternal right
to say : " I draw around me circles and holy bound-
aries. Ever fewer are they that mount with me to
ever loftier heights. I build me a mountain range
of ever holier mountains." If all the spirit and
goodness of every great soul were collected together,
the whole could not create a single one of Zara-
thustra's discourses. The ladder upon which he
rises and descends is of boundless length ; he has L
seen further, he has willed further, and gone further
than any other man. There is contradiction in
every word that he utters, this most yea-saying of
all spirits. Through him all contradictions ardl
bound up into a new unity. The loftiest and th
basest powers of human nature, the sweetest, the
lightest, and the most terrible, rush forth from out
one spring with everlasting certainty. Until his
coming no one knew what was height, or depth,
and still less what was truth. There is not a single
passage in this revelation of truth which had already
been anticipated ancT divined by even the greatest
among men. Before Zarathustra there was no
wisdom, no probing of the soul, no art of speech : in
his book, the most familiar and most vulgar thing
utters unheard-of words. The sentence quivers with
passion. Eloquence has become music. Forks of
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108 ECCE HOMO
lightning are hurled towards futures of which no one
has ever dreamed before. The most powerful use
of parables that has yet existed is poor beside it,
and mere child's-play compared with this return of
language to the nature of imagery. See how Zara-
thustra goes down from the mountain and speaks
the kindest words to every one ! See with what
delicate fingers he touches his very adversaries, the
priests, and how he suffers with them from them-
selves ! Here, at every moment, man is overcome,
and the concept " S uperma n " becomes the greatest
reality, — out of sight, almost far away beneath him,
lies all that which heretofore has been called great
in man. The halcyonic brightness, the light feet,
the presence of wickedness and exuberance through-
out, and all that is the essence of the type Zara-
thustra, was never dreamt of before as a prerequisite
of greatness. In precisely these limits of space and
in this accessibility to opposites Zarathustra feels
himself the hi ghest ofjglLliuing things : and when
you hear how ne defines this highest, you will give
up trying to find his equal.
" The soul which hath the longest ladder and
can step down deepest,
" The vastest soul that can run and stray and
rove furthest in its own domain,
" The most necessary soul, that out of desire
flingeth itself to chance,
"The stable soul that plungeth^into Becoming,
the possessing soul that must needs taste of
willing and longing,
"The soul that flyeth from itself, and over-
taketh itself in the widest circle,
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 109
"The wisest soul that folly exhorteth most
sweetly,
"The most self-loving soul, in whom all things ! <j
have their rise, their ebb and flow."
But this is the very idea of Dionysus. Another
consideration leads to this idea. The psychological
problem presented by the type of Zarathustra is,
how can he, who in an unprecedented manner says
no, and acts no, in regard to all that which has been
affirmed hitherto, remain nevertheless a yea-saying
spirit ? how can he who bears the heaviest destiny
on his shoulders and whose very life-task is a
fatality, yet be the brightest and the most transcen-
dental of spirits — for Zarathustra is a dancer?
how can he who has the hardest and most terrible
grasp of reality, and who has thought the most
" abysmal thoughts," nevertheless avoid conceiving
these things as objections to existence, or even as
objections to the eternal recurrence of existence ? —
how is it that on the contrary he finds reasons for \
being himself the eternal affirmation of all things,
" the tremendous and unlimited saying of Yea and j
Amen "?..." Into every abyss do I bear the /
benediction of my yea to Life." . . . But this, once
more, is precisely the idea of Dionysus.
What language will such a spirit speak, when he
speaks unto his soul ? The language of the dithy-
ramb. I am the inventor of the dithyramb.
Hearken unto the manner in which Zarathustra
speaks to his soul Before Sunrise (iii. 48). Before
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IIO ECCE HOMO
my time such emerald joys and divine tenderness
had found no tongue. Even the profoundest
melancholy of such a Dionysus takes shape as a
dithyramb. As an example of this I take " The
Night-Song," — the immortal plaint of one who,
thanks to his superabundance of light and power,
thanks to the sun within him, is condemned never
to love.
" It is night : now do all gushing springs raise
their voices. And my soul too is a gushing
spring.
" It is night : now only do all lovers burst into
song. And my soul too is the song of a lover.
" Something unquenched and unquenchable is
within me, that would raise its voice. A craving
for love is within me, which itself speaketh the
language of love.
" Light am I : would that I were night ! But
this is my loneliness, that I am begirt with light
" Alas, why am I not dark and like unto the
night ! How joyfully would I then suck at the
breasts of light !
" And even you would I bless, ye twinkling star-
lets and glow-worms on high ! and be blessed in
the gifts of your light.
" But in mine own light do I live, ever back into
myself do I drink the flames I send forth.
" I know not the happiness of the hand stretched
forth to grasp ; and oft have I dreamt that steal-
ing must be more blessed than taking.
" Wretched am I that my hand may never rest
from giving : an envious fate is mine that I see ex-
pectant eyes and nights made bright with longing.
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" Oh, the wretchedness of all them that give !
Oh, the clouds that cover the face of my sun !
That craving for desire ! that burning hunger at
the end of the feast !
" They take what I give them ; but do I touch
their soul ? A gulf is there 'twixt giving and tak-
ing ; and the smallest gulf is the last to be bridged.
" An appetite is born from out my beauty : would
that I might do harm to them that I fill with
light ; would that I might rob them of the gifts
I have given : — thus do I thirst for wickedness.
"To withdraw my hand when their hand is
ready stretched forth like the waterfall that wavers,
wavers even in its fall: — thus do I thirst for
wickedness.
" For such vengeance doth my fulness yearn : to
such tricks doth my loneliness give birth.
" My joy in giving died with the deed. By its
very fulness did my virtue grow weary of itself.
" He who giveth risketh to lose his shame ; he
that is ever distributing groweth callous in hand
and heart therefrom.
"Mine eyes no longer melt into tears at the
sight of the suppliant's shame ; my hand hath be-
come too hard to feel the quivering of laden hands.
" Whither have ye fled, the tears of mine eyes and
the bloom of my heart ? Oh, the solitude of all
givers ! Oh, the silence of all beacons !
" Many are the suns that circle in barren space ;
to all that is dark do they speak with their light —
to me alone are they silent.
" Alas, this is the hatred of light for that which
shineth : pitiless it runneth its course.
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112 ECCE HOMO
" Unfair in its inmost heart to that which shineth ;
cold toward suns, — thus doth every sun go its way.
" Like a tempest do the suns fly over their course :
for such is their way. Their own unswerving will
do they follow : that is their coldness.
" Alas, it is ye alone, ye creatures of gloom, ye
spirits of the night, that take your warmth from that
which shineth. Ye alone suck your milk and com-
fort from the udders of light.
" Alas, about me there is ice, my hand burneth
itself against ice !
" Alas, within me is a thirst that thirsteth for
your thirst !
" It is night : woe is me, that I must needs
be light! And thirst after darkness! And
loneliness !
" It is night : now doth my longing burst forth
like a spring, — for speech do I long.
" It is night : now do all gushing springs raise
their voices. And my soul too is a gushing spring.
" It is night : now only do all lovers burst into
song. And my soul too is the song of a lover."
8
Such things have never been written, never been
felt, never been suffered', only a God, only Dionysus
suffers in this way. The reply to such a dithyramb
on the sun's solitude in light would be Ariadne.
. . . Who knows, but I, who Ariadne is ! To all
such riddles no one heretofore had ever found an
answer ; I doubt even whether any one had ever
seen a riddle here. One day Zarathustra severely
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 113
determines his life-task — and it is also mine. Let
j^- — —
no one misunderstand its meaning. I Ms a yea -
saying to the point of justifying, to the point of
redeeming even all that is past.
" I walk among men as among fragments of the
future : of that future which I see.
" And all my creativenes s and effort is but this,
that I may be able to think and recast all these
fragments and riddles and dismal accidents into
one piece.
" And how could I bear to be a man, if man
were not also a poet, a riddle reader, and a
redeemer of chance !
" To redeem all the past, and to transform every
' it was ' into ' thus would I have it ' — that alone
would be my salvation ! "
In another passage he defines as strictly as
possible what to him alone " man " can be, — not
a subject for love nor yet for pity — Zarathustra
became master even of his loathing of man : man
is to him a thing unshaped, raw material, an
ugly stone that needs the sculptor's chisel.
"No longer to will, no longer to value, no
longer to create ! Oh, that this great weariness
may never be mine !
" Even in the lust of knowledge, I feel only the
joy of my will to beget and to grow ; and if there
be innocence in my knowledge, it is because my
procreative will is in it.
" Away from God and gods did this will lure
me : what would there be to create if there were
gods?
" But to man doth it ever drive me anew, my
H
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114 ECCE HOMO
burning, creative will. Thus driveth it the hammer
to the stone.
" Alas, ye men, within the stone there sleepeth
an image for me, the image of all my dreams !
Alas, that it should have to sleep in the hardest
and ugliest stone !
" Now rageth my hammer ruthlessly against its
prison. From the stone the fragments fly : what's
that to me ?
" I will finish it : for a shadow came unto me —
the stillest and lightest thing on earth once came
unto me !
" The beauty of the Superman came unto me as
a shadow. Alas, my brethren ! What are the —
gods to me now ? "
Let me call attention to one last point of view.
The line in italics is my pretext for this remark.
(A Dionysian life-task needs the hardness of the
hammer, and one of its first essentials is without
doubt the joy even of destruction. The command,
" Harden yourselves ! " and the deep conviction that
ail creators are hard, is the really distinctive sign
of a Dionysian nature.
"Beyond Good and Evil: The Prelude ft
to a Philosophy of the Future"
i
My work for the years that followed was pre-
scribed as distinctly as possible. Now that the
yea-sayipgjiart of my life-task wasjj&compllshed,
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there came the turn of the negative portion, both
in word and deed : the transvaluation of all values
that had existed hitherto, t he great wa r, — the con-
juring-up of the day when the fatal outcome of the
struggle would be decided. Meanwhile, I had
slowly to look about me for my peers, for those
who, out of strength) would proffer me a helping
hand in my work of destru ction. r From that time
onward, all my writings are so much bait : maybe
I understand as much about fishing as most people ?.
If nothing was caught \ it was not I who was at
fault There were no fish to come and bite. v
In all its essential points, this book (1886) is
a criticism of modernity^ embracing the modern
sciences, arts, even politics, together with certain
indications as to a type which would be the reverse
of modern man, or as little like him as possible, a
noble and yea-saying type. In this last respect
the book is a school for gentlemen — the term
gentleman being understood here in a much more
spiritual and radical sense than it has implied hither-
to. All those things of which the age is proud, —
as, for instance, far-famed " objectivity," " sympathy
with all that suffers," " the historical sense," with
its subjection to foreign tastes, with its lying-in-the-
dust before petits faits, and the rage for science, —
are shown to be the contradiction of the type re-
commended, and are regarded as almost ill-bred.
If you remember that this book follows upon
Zarathustra, you may possibly guess to what
system of diet it owes its life. The eye which,
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Il6 ECCE HOMO
owing to tremendous constraint, has become
accustomed to see at a great distance, — Zara-
thustra is even more far-sighted than the Tsar, —
is here forced to focus sharply that which is close
at hand, the present time, the things that lie about
him. In all the aphorisms and more particularly
in the form of this book, the reader will find the
same voluntary turning away from those instincts
which made a Zarathustra a possible feat. Re-
finement in form, in aspiration, and in the art of
keeping silent, are its more or less obvious quali-
ties ; psychology is handled with deliberate hard-
ness and cruelty, — the whole book does not con-
tain one single good-natured word. . . . All this
sort of thing refreshes a man. Who can guess
the kind of recreation that is necessary after such
an expenditure of goodness as is to be found in
Zarathustra} From a theological standpoint —
now pay ye heed ; for it is but on rare occasions
that I speak as a theologian — it was God Himself
who, at the end of His great work, coiled Himself
up in the form of a serpent at the foot of the tree
of knowledge. It was thus that He recovered from
being a God. . . . He had made everything too
beautiful. . . . The devil is simply God's moment
of idleness, on that seventh day.
" The Genealogy of Morals :
A Polemic"
The three essays which constitute this genealogy
are, as regards expression, aspiration, and the art
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 117
of the unexpected, perhaps the most curious
things that have ever been written. Dionvsu s. as
you know, is also the god of darkness. In each
case the beginning is calculated to mystify ; it is
cool, scientific, even ironical, intentionally thrust
to the fore, intentionally reticent. Gradually les s
calmness preva ils ; here and there a flash of lig ht-
ning defines the horizon ; exceedingly unpleasant
truths break upon your ears from out remote dis-
tances with a dull, rumbling sound, — until very
soon a fierce tempo is attained in which everything
presses forward at a terrible degre e of tension.
At the end, in each case, amid fearful thunderclaps,
a new truth shines out between thick clouds. The
truth of the first essayls the~psych61ogy of Chris-
tianity : the birth of Christianity out of the spirit
of resentment, not, as is supposed, out of the
" Spirit," — in all its essentials, a counter-movement,
the great insurrection against the dominion of
noble values. The second essay contains the psy-
chology of conscience : this is not, as you may be-
lieve, " the voice of God in man " ; it is the instinct
of cruelty, which turns inwards once it is unable \
to discharge itself outwardly. Cruelty is here ex-
posed, for the first time, as one of the oldest and
most indispensable elements in the foundation of
culture. The third essay replies to the question
as to the origin of the formidable power of the
ascetic ideal, of the priest ideal, despite the fact
that this ideal is essentially detrimental, that it is
a will to nonentity and to decadence. Reply : it
flourished not because God was active behind the
priests, as is generally believed, but because it was
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Il8 ECCE HOMO
afaute de rnieux — from the fact that hitherto it
has been the only ideal and has had no competitors.
" For man prefers to aspire to nonentity than not
to aspire at all." But above all, until the time of
Zarathustra there was no such thing as a counte r-
ideal. You have understood my meaning. Three
decisive overtures on the part of a psychologist
to a Transvaluation of all Values. — This book
contains the first psychology of the priest.
"The Twilight of the Idols:
How to Philosophise with the Hammer"
This work — which covers scarcely one hundred
and fifty pages, with its cheerful and fateful tone,
like a laughing demon, and the production of which
occupied so few days that I hesitate to give their
number — is altogether an exception among books :
there is no work more rich in substance, more
independent, more upsetting — more wicked. If
any one should desire to obtain a rapid sketch
of how everything, before my time, was standing
on its head, he should begin reading me in this
book. That which is called " Idols " on the title
page is simply the old truth that has been be-
lieved in hitherto. In plain English, The Twi-
light of the Idols means that the old truth is on its
last legs.
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There is no reality, no "ideality" which has
not been touched in this book (touched ! what a
cautious euphemism !). Not only the eternal idols,
but also the youngest — that is to say, the most
senile : modern ideas, for instance. A strong
wind blows between the trees and in all directions
fall the fruit — the truths. There is the waste of
an all-too-rich autumn in this book : you trip over
truths. You even crush some to death, there are
too many of them. Those things that you can
grasp, however, are quite unquestionable ; they are
irrevocable decrees. I alone have the criterion of
" truths " in my possession. I alone can decide.
It would seem as if a second consciousness had
grown up in me, as if the " life- will " in me had
thrown a light upon the downward path along
which it has been running throughout the ages.
The downward path — hitherto this had been called
the road to " Truth." All obscure impulse —
" darkness and dismay " — is at an end, the "good
man " was precisely he who was least aware of the
proper way.* And, speaking in all earnestness,
no one before me knew the proper way, the way
upwards: only after my time could men once
more find hope, life-tasks, and roads mapped out
* A witty reference to Goethe's well-known passage in the
Prologue to Faust :—
"A good man, though in darkness and dismay,
May still be conscious of the proper way."
The words are spoken by the Lord. — Tr.
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120 ECCE HOMO
that lead to culture — / am the joyful harbinger of
this culture. . . . On this account alone I am also
a fatality.
Immediately after the completion of the above-
named work, and without letting even one day go
by, I tackled the formidable task of the Transvalua-
tion with a supreme feeling of pride which nothing
could equal ; and, certain at each moment of my
immortality, I cut sign after sign upon tablets of
brass with the sureness of Fate. The Preface came
into being on 3rd September 1888. When, after
having written it down, I went out into the open
that morning, I was greeted by the most beautiful
day I had ever seen in the Upper Engadine — clear,
glowing with colour, and presenting all the contrasts
and all the intermediary gradations between ice and
the south. I left Sils-Maria only on the 20th of
September. I had been forced to delay my depart-
ure owing to floods, and I was very soon, and for
some days, the only visitor in this wonderful spot,
on which my gratitude bestows the gift of an im-
mortal name. After a journey that was full of incid-
ents, and not without danger to life, — as for instance
at Como, which was flooded when I reached it in
the dead of night, — I got to Turin on the afternoon
of the 2 1 st. Turin is the only suitable place for
me, and it shall be my home henceforward. I took
the same lodgings as I had occupied in the spring,
6 111 Via Carlo Alberto, opposite the mighty Palazzo
Carignano, in which Vittorio Emanuele was born ;
and I had a view of the Piazza Carlo Alberto and
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 121
above it across to the hills. Without hesitating, ot
allowing myself to be disturbed for a single moment,
I returned to my work, only the last quarter of
which had still tobewritten. On the 30th September,
tremendous triumph ; the seventh day ; the leisure
of a god on the banks of the Po.* On the same
day, I wrote the Preface to The Twilight of the
Idols ; the correction of the proofs of which provided
me with recreation during the month of September.
Never in my life have I experienced such an
autumn ; nor had I ever imagined that such things
were possible on earth — a Claude Lorrain extended
to infinity, each day equal to the last in its wild
perfection.
"The Case of Wagner:
A Musician's Problem"
In order to do justice to this essay a man ought
to suffer from the fate of music as from an open
wound. — From what do I suffer when I suffer from
the fate of music ? From the fact that music has
lost its world-transfiguring, yea-saying character —
that it is decadent music and no longer the flute of
Dionysus. Supposing, however, that the fate of
music be as dear to man as his own life, because
joy and suffering are alike bound up with it ; then
he will find this pamphlet comparatively mild and
* There is a wonderful promenade along the banks of
the Po, for which Turin is famous, and of which Nietzsche
was particularly fond. — Tr.
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122 ECCE HOMO
full of consideration. To be cheerful in such circum-
stances, and laugh good-naturedly with others at
one's self, — ridendodicere severum* when the verutn
dicere would justify every sort of hardness, — is
humanity itself. Who doubts that I, old artillery-
man that I am, would be able if I liked to point
my heavy guns at Wagner ? — Everything decisive
in this question I kept to myself — I have loved
Wagner. — After all, an attack upon a more than
usually subtle " unknown person " whom another
would not have divined so easily, lies in the mean-
ing and path of my life-task. Oh, I have still quite
a number of other " unknown persons " to unmask
besides a Cagliostro of Music ! Above all, I have
to direct an attack against the German people, who,
in matters of the spirit, grow every day more in-
dolent, poorer in instincts, and more honest \ who,
with an appetite for which they are to be envied,
continue to diet themselves on contradictions, and
gulp down " Faith " in company with science,
Christian love together with anti-Semitism, and
the will to power (to the " Empire "), dished up with
the gospel of the humble, without showing the
slightest signs of indigestion. Fancy this absence
of party-feeling in the presence of opposites ! Fancy
this gastric neutrality and "disinterestedness"!
Behold this sense of justice in the German palate,
which can grant equal rights to all, — which finds
everything tasteful ! Without a shadow of a doubt
the Germans are idealists. When I was last in
Germany, I found German taste striving to grant
* The motto of The Case of Wagner.— Tk.
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 1 23
Wagner and the Trumpeter of Sakkingen * equal
rights; while I myself witnessed the attempts of the
people of Leipzig to do honour to one of the most
genuineand most German of musicians, — using Ger-
man here in the old sense of the word, — a man who
was no mere German of the Empire, the master
Heinrich Schutz, by founding a Liszt Society, the
object of which was to cultivate and spread artful
(listige t) Church music. Without a shadow of doubt
the Germans are idealists.
But here nothing shall stop me from being rude,
and from telling the Germans one or two unpleasant
home truths : who else would do it if I did not ?
I refer to their laxity in matters historical. Not
only have the Germans entirely lost the breadth of
vision which enables one to grasp the course of cul-
ture and the values of culture ; not only are they
one and all political (or Church) puppets ; but they
have also actually put a ban upon this very breadth
of vision. A man must first and foremost be " Ger-
man," he must belong to " the race " ; then only can
he pass judgment upon all values and lack of values
in history — then only can he establish them. ... To
be German is in itself an argument, " Germany,
Germany above all," J is a principle ; the Germans
* An opera by Nessler which was all the rage in Germany
twenty years ago. — Tr.
t Unfortunately it is impossible to render this play on the
words in English. — Tr.
% The German National Song {Deutschland^ Deutschland
iiber alks).—TR.
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124 ECCE HOMO
stand for the "moral order of the universe" in history;
compared with the Roman Empire, they are the up-
holders of freedom ; compared with the eighteenth
century, they are the restorers of morality, of the
" Categorical Imperative." There is such a thing
as the writing of history according to the lights of
Imperial Germany; there is, I fear, anti-Semitic
history — there is also history written with an eye
to the Court, and Herr von Treitschke is not
ashamed of himself. Quite recently an idiotic
opinion in historicis, an observation of Vischer the
Swabian aesthete, since happily deceased, made the
round of the German newspapers as a " truth " to
wliich every German must assent. The observation
was this : " The Renaissance and the Reformation
only together constitute a whole — the aesthetic re-
birth, and the moral rebirth." When I listen to
such things, I lose all patience, and I feel inclined,
I even feel it my duty, to tell the Germans, for once
in a way, all that they have on their conscience.
Every great crime against culture for the last four
centuries lies on their conscience. . . . And always
for the same reason, always owing to their bottom-
less cowardice in the face of reality, which is also
, cowardice in the face of truth ; always owing to the
love of falsehood which has become almost instinc-
tive in them — in short, "idealism." It was the
Germans who caused Europe to lose the fruits, the
whole meaning of her last period of greatness — the
period of the Renaissance. At a moment when a
higher order of values, values that were noble, that
said yea to life, and that guaranteed a future, had
succeeded in triumphing over the opposite values,
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 125
the values of degeneration, in the very seat of
Christianity itself, — and even in the hearts of those
sitting there y — Luther, that cursed monk, not only
restored the Church, but, what was a thousand times
worse, restored Christianity, and at a time too when
it lay defeated. Christianity, the Denial of the Will
to Live, exalted to a religion ! Luther was an im-
possible monk who, thanks to his own " impossi-
bility," attacked the Church, and in so doing restored
it ! Catholics would be perfectly justified in cele-
brating feasts in honour of Luther, and in produc-
ing festival plays * in his honour. Luther and the
" rebirth of morality " ! May all psychology go to
the devil ! Without a shadow of a doubt the Ger-
mans are idealists. On two occasions when, at the
cost of enormous courage and self-control, an up-
right, unequivocal, and perfectly scientific attitude
of mind had been attained, the Germans were able
to discover back stairs leading down to the old
" ideal " again, compromises between truth and the
" ideal," and, in short, formulae for the right to reject
science and to perpetrate falsehoods. Leibniz and
Kant — these two great breaks upon the intellectual
honesty of Europe ! Finally, at a moment when
there appeared on the bridge that spanned two cen-
turies of decadence, a superior force of genius and
will which was strong enough to consolidate Europe
and to convert it into a political and economic unit,
with the object of ruling the world, the Germans,
with their Wars of Independence, robbed Europe
* Ever since the year 1617 such plays have been produced
by the Protestants of Germany. — Tr.
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126 ECCE HOMO
[ of the significance — the marvellous significance, of
! Napoleon's life. And in so doing they laid on their
conscience everything that followed, everything that
exists to-day, — this sickliness and want of reason
which is most opposed to culture, and which is called
Nationalism, — this nforose nationale from which
Europe is suffering acutely; this eternal subdivision
of Europe into petty states, with politics on a muni-
cipal scale : they have robbed Europe itself of its
significance, of its reason, — and have stuffed it into
a cul-de-sac. Is there any one except me who
knows the way out of this cul-de-sac ? Does any-
one except me know of an aspiration which would
be great enough to bind the people of Europe once
more together ?
And after all, why should I not express my
suspicions? In my case, too, the Germans will
attempt to make a great fate give birth merely to
a mouse. Up to the present they have compro-
mised themselves with me; I doubt whether the
future will improve them. Alas ! how happy I
should be to prove a false prophet in this matter !
My natural readers and listeners are already Rus-
sians, Scandinavians, and Frenchmen — will they
always be the same ? In the history of knowledge,
Germans are represented only by doubtful names,
they have been able to produce only " unconscious "
swindlers (this word applies to Fichte, Schelling,
Schopenhauer, Hegel, and Schleiermacher, just as
well as to Kant or Leibniz ; they were all mere
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 1 27
Scfdeiertnachers).* The Germans must not have
the honour of seeing the first upright intellect in
their history of intellects, that intellect in which
truth ultimately got the better of the fraud of four
thousand years, reckoned as one with the German
intellect. " German intellect " is my foul air : I
breathe with difficulty in the neighbourhood of this
psychological uncleanliness that has now become
instinctive — an uncleanliness which in every word
and expression betrays a German. They have
never undergone a seventeenth century of hard self-
examination, as the French have, — a La Roche-
foucauld, a Descartes, are a thousand times more
upright than the very first among Germans, — the
latter have not yet had any psychologists. But
psychology is almost the standard of measurement
for the cleanliness or uncleanliness of a race. . . .
For if a man is not even clean, how can he be deep ?
The Germans are like women, you can scarcely ever
fathom their depths — they haven't any, and that's
the end of it. Thus they cannot even be called
shallow. That which is called " deep " in Germany,
is precisely this instinctive uncleanliness towards
one's self, of which I have just spoken : people refuse
to be clear in regard to their own natures. Might
I be allowed, perhaps, to suggest the word " Ger-
man " as an international epithet denoting this psy-
chological depravity ? — At the moment of writing, |
for instance, the German Emperor is declaring it to '
be his Christian duty to liberate the slaves in Africa ;
* Schleiermacher literally means a weaver or maker of veils.
— Tr.
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128 ECCE HOMO
among us Europeans, then, this would be called
simply " German." . . . Have the Germans ever
\ produced even a book that had depth ? They are
lacking in the mere idea of what constitutes a book.
I have known scholars who thought that Kant was
deep. At the Court of Prussia I fear that Herr
von Treitschke is regarded as deep. And when I
happen to praise Stendhal as a deep psychologist,
I have often been compelled, in the company of
German University Professors, to spell his name
aloud.
4
And why should I not proceed to the end ? I
am fond of clearing the air. It is even part of my
^ambition to be considered as essentially a despiser
)of Germans. I expressed my suspicions of the
German character even at the age of six-and-twenty
(see Thoughts out of Season, vol. ii. pp. 164, 165),
— to my mind the Germans are impossible. When
I try to think of the kind of man who is opposed
to me in all my instincts, my mental image takes
the form of a German. The first thing I ask my-
self when I begin analysing a man, is, whether he
has a feeling for distance in him ; whether he sees
rank, gradation, and order everywhere between man
and man ; whether he makes distinctions ; for this
is what constitutes a gentleman. Otherwise he be-
longs hopelessly to that open-hearted, open-minded
— alas ! and always very good-natured species, la
canaille ! But the Germans are canaille — alas !
they are so good-natured ! A man lowers himself
by frequenting the society of Germans : the German
places every one on an equal footing. With the
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 1 29
exception of my intercourse with one or two artists,
and above all with Richard Wagner, I cannot say
that I have spent one pleasant hour with Germans.
Suppose, for one moment, that the profoundest
spirit of all ages were to appear among Germans,
then one of the saviours of the Capitol would be
sure to arise and declare that his own ugly soul
was just as great. I can no longer abide this race
with which a man is always in bad company, which
has no idea of nuances — woe to me ! I am a nuance
— and which has not esprit in its feet, and cannot
even walk withal ! In short, the Germans have no
feet at all, they simply have legs. The Germans have
not the faintest idea of how vulgar they are — but this
in itself is the acme of vulgarity, — they are not even
ashamed of being merely Germans. They will have
their say in everything, they regard themselves as
fit to decide all questions ; I even fear that they
have decided about me. My whole life is essenti-
ally a proof of this remark. In vain have I sought
among them for a sign of tact and delicacy towards
myself. Among Jews I did indeed find it, but not
among Germans. I am so constituted as to be
gentle and kindly to every one, — I have the right
not to draw distinctions, — but this does not prevent
my eyes from being open. I except no one, and
least of all my friends, — I only trust that this has
not prejudiced my reputation for humanity among
them ? There are five or six things which I have
always made points of honour. Albeit, the truth
remains that for many years I have considered
almost every letter that has reached me as a piece
of cynicism. There is more cynicism in an attitude
1
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130 ECCE HOMO
of goodwill towards me than in any sort of hatred.
I tell every friend to his face that he has never
thought it worth his while to study any one of my
writings : from the slightest hints I gather that they
do not even know what lies hidden in my books.
And with regard even to my Zaratkustra, which of
my friends would have seen more in it than a piece
of unwarrantable, though fortunately harmless, ar-
rogance ? Ten years have elapsed, and no one has
yet felt it a duty to his conscience to defend my
name against the absurd silence beneath which it
has been entombed. It was a foreigner, a Dane,
who first showed sufficient keenness of instinct and
of courage to do this, and who protested indignantly
against my so-called friends. At what German
University to-day would such lectures on my philo-
sophy be possible, as those which Dr. Brandes de-
livered last spring in Copenhagen, thus proving once
more his right to the title psychologist ? For my
part, these things have never caused me any pain ;
that which is necessary does not offend me. Amor
fati is the core of my nature. This, however, does
not alter the fact that I love irony and even world-
historic irony. And thus, about two years before
hurling the destructive thunderbolt of the Trans-
valuation, which will send the whole of civilisation
into convulsions, I sent my Case of Wagner out
into the world. The Germans were given the chance
of blundering and immortalising their stupidity once
more on my account, and they still have just enough
time to do it in. And have they fallen in with my
plans? Admirably! my dear Germans. Allow
me to congratulate you.
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WHY I AM A FATALITY
I KNOW my destiny. There will come a day
when my name will recall the memory of some-
thing formidable — a crisis the like of which has
never been known on earth, the memory of the
most profound clash of consciences, and the passing
of a sentence upon all that which theretofore had
been believed, exacted, and hallowed. I am not a
man, I am dynamite. And with it all there is
nought of the founder of a religion in me. Re-
ligions are matters for the mob ; after coming in
contact with a religious man, I always feel that I
must wash my hands. . . . ^jrequire no "J ae-
lievers , " it jg_my_OBJnionJb^ of
malice Jo j>elieve^yeoJrL myself ; I ney&LJB3ress
m yself to masse s. I am horribly frightened that
one day I shall be pronounced " holy." You will
understand why I publish this book beforehand —
it is to prevent people from wronging me. I refuse
to be a saint ; I would rather be a clown. Maybe
I am a clown. And I am notwithstanding, or
rather not ^/withstanding, the mouthpiece of
truth ; for nothing more blown-out with falsehood
has ever existed, than a saint. But_jnytruth_is
terriblg : for hitherto lies have beencafled truth.
The Transvaluation of all Values, this is my formula
for mankind's greatest step towards coming to its
13*
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132 ECCE HOMO
senses — a step which in me became flesh and
genius. My destiny ordained that I should be the
first decent human being, and that I should feel
myself opposed to the falsehood of millenniums. I
was the first to discover ti^uth, and for the simple
reason that I was the first who became conscious
of falsehood as falsehood — that is to say, I smelt
it as such. My genius resides in my nostrils. J_
contradict as no one has^contradicted hitherto, and
t am_nevertheless the reverse of a negative spiri t _! _
: am the harbinger of joy, the like of which has never
existed- S e for e ; I have discovered tasks of such
lofty greatness that, until my time, no one had any
idea of such things. Mankind can begin to have
fresh hopes, only now that I have lived. Thus, I
am necessarily a man of Fate. For when Truth
enters the lists against the falsehood of ages, shocks
are bound to ensue, and a spell of earthquakes,
followed by the transposition of hills and valleys,
such as the world has never yet imagined even in
its dreams. The concept " politics " then becomes
elevated entirely to the sphere of spiritual warfare.
All the mighty realms of the ancient order of
society are blown into space — for they are all based
on falsehood : there will be wars, the like of which
have never been seen on earth before. Only from
my time and after me will politics on a large scale
exist on earth.
If you should require a formula for a destiny of
this kind that has taken human form, you will find
it in my Zarathustra.
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WHY I AM A FATALITY 1 33
" And he who would be a creator in good and
evil — verily, he must first be a destroyer, and break
values into pieces.
"Thus the greatest evil belongeth unto the
greatest good : but this is the creative good."
I am by far the most terrible man that has ever
existed ; but this does not alter the fact that I shall
become the most beneficent. I know the joy of
annihilation to a degree which is commensurate
with my power to annihilate. In both cases I obey
my Dionysian nature ? which knows not how to
separate the negative deed from thej sayinigrof yea.
I am the first immoralist, and in this sense^lim
essentially the annihilator.
People have never asked me as they should have
done, what the name of Zarathustra precisely meant
in my mouth, in the mouth of the first immoralist ;
for that which distinguishes this Persian from all
others in the past is the very fact that he was the
exact reverse of an immoralist. Zarathustra was
the first to see in the struggle between good and
evil the essential wheel in the working of things.
The translation of morality into the realm of meta-
physics, as force, cause, end-in-itself, is his work.
But the very question suggests its own answer. z
Zarathustra created this most portentous of all
errors, — morality ; therefore he must be the first
to expose it. Not only because he has had longer
and greater experience of the subject than any other
thinker, — all history is indeed the experimental re-
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134 ECCE HOMO
futation of the theory of the so-called moral order
of things, — but because of the more important fact
that Zarathustra was the most truthful of thinkers.
In his teaching alone is truthfulness upheld as the
highest virtue — that is to say, as the reverse of the
cowardice of the " idealist " who takes to his heels
at the sight of reality. Zarathustra has more pluck
in his body than all other thinkers put together.
To tell the truth and to aim straight : that is the
first Persian virtue. Have I made myself clear?
. . . The overcoming of morality by itself, through
truthfulness, the moralist's overcoming of himself in
his opposite — in me — that is what the name Zara-
thustra means in my mouth.
In reality two negations are involved in my title
Immoralist. I first of all deny the type of man
that has hitherto been regarded as the highest — the
good, the kind, and the charitable ; and I also deny
that kind of morality which has become recognised
and paramount as morality-in-itself — I speak of
the morality of decadence, or, to use a still cruder
term, Christian morality. I would agree to the
second of the two negations being regarded as the
more decisive, for, reckoned as a whole, the over-
estimation of goodness and kindness seems to me
already a consequence of decadence, a symptom of
weakness, and incompatible with any ascending and
yea-saying life. Negation and annihilation are in-
separable from a yea-saying attitude towards life.
Let me halt for a moment at the question of the
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WHY I AM A FATALITY 1 35
psychology of the good man. In order to appraise
the value of a certain type of man, the cost of his
maintenance must be calculated, — and the condi-
tions of his existence must be known. The con-
dition of the existence of the good is falsehood :
or, otherwise expressed, the refusal at any price to
see how reality is actually constituted. The refusal
to see that this reality is not so constituted as
always to be stimulating beneficent instincts, and
still less, so as to suffer at all moments the intrusion
of ignorant and good-natured hands. To consider
distress of all kinds as an objection, as something
which must be done away with, is the greatest non-
sense on earth ; generally speaking, it is nonsense
of the most disastrous sort, fatal in its stupidity —
almost as mad as the will to abolish bad weather,
out of pity for the poor, so to speak. In the great
economy of the whole universe, the terrors of reality
(in the passions, in the desires, in the will to power)
are incalculably more necessary than that form of
petty happiness which is called " goodness " ; it is
even needful to practise leniency in order so much
as to allow the latter a place at all, seeing that it
is based upon a falsification of the instincts. I shall
have an excellent opportunity of showing the incal-
culably calamitous consequences to the whole of
history, of the credo of optimism, this monstrous
offspring of the homines optimi. Zarathustra,* the
first who recognised that the optimist is just as
degenerate as the pessimist, though perhaps more
* Needless to say this is Nietzsche, and no longer the
Persian. — Tr.
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I36 ECCE HOMO
detrimental, says : " Good men never speak the
truth. False shores and false harbours were ye
taught by the good. In the lies of the good were
ye born and bred. Through the good everything
hath become false and crooked from the roots"
Fortunately the world is not built merely upon
those instincts which would secure to the good-
natured herd animal his paltry happiness. To desire
everybody to become a " good man," " a gregarious
animal/ " a blue-eyed, benevolent, beautiful soul,"
or — as Herbert Spencer wished — a creature of al-
truism, would mean robbing existence of its greatest
character, castrating man, and reducing humanity
to a sort of wretched Chinadom. And this some
have tried to do! It is precisely this that men
called morality. In this sense Zarathustra calls "the
good," now "the last men," and anon "the be-
ginning of the end " ; and above all, he considers
them as the most detrimental kind of men, because
they secure their existence at the cost of Truth and
at the cost of the Future.
" The good — they cannot create ; they are ever
the beginning of the end.
" They crucify him who writeth new values on
new tables; they sacrifice unto themselves the future;
they crucify the whole future of humanity !
" The good — they are ever the beginning of the
end.
" And whatever harm the slanderers of the world
may do, the harm of the good is the most calamitous
of all harm?
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WHY I AM A FATALITY 1 37
Zarathustra, as the first psychologist of the good
man, is perforce the friend of the evil man. When
a degenerate kind of man has succeeded to the
highest rank among the human species, his position
must have been gained at the cost of the reverse
type — at the cost of the strong man who is certain
of life. When the gregarious animal stands in the
glorious rays of the purest virtue, the exceptional
man must be degraded to the rank of the evil. If
falsehood insists at all costs on claiming the word
" truth " for its own particular standpoint, the really
truthful man must be sought out among the de-
spised. Zarathustra allows of no doubt here ; he
says that it was precisely the knowledge of the
good, of the " best," which inspired his absolute
horror of men. And it was out of this feeling of
repulsion that he grew the wings which allowed
him to soar into remote futures. He does not
conceal the fact that his type of man is one which
is relatively superhuman — especially as opposed to
the " good " man, and that the good and the just
would regard his superman as the devil.
" Ye higher men,on whom my gaze now falls, this
is the doubt that ye wake in my breast, and this is
my secret laughter : methinks ye would call my
Superman — the devil ! So strange are ye in your
souls to all that is great, that the Superman would
be terrible in your eyes for his goodness."
It is from this passage, and from no other, that
you must set out to understand the goal to which
Zarathustra aspires — the kind of man that he con-
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138 ECCE HOMO
^ceives sees reality as it is; he is strong enough for
this — he is not estranged or far removed from it,
he is that reality himself, in his own nature can be
found all the terrible and questionable character of
reality : only thus can man have greatness.
But I have chosen the title of Immoral is t as a
surname and as a badge of honour in yet another
sense ; I am very proud to possess this name which
distinguishes me from all the rest of mankind. No
one hitherto has felt Christian morality beneath
him ; to that end there were needed height, a re-
moteness of vision, and an abysmal psychological
depth, not believed to be possible hitherto. ^Up to
the present Christian morality has been the Circe of
all thinkers — they stood at her service. What man,
before my time, had descended into the under-
ground caverns from out of which the poisonous
fumes of this ideal — of this slandering of the world
— burst forth ? What man had even dared to sup-
pose that they were underground caverns ? Was
a single one of the philosophers who preceded me
a psychologist at all, and not the very reverse of a
psychologist — that is to say, a " superior swindler,"
an " Idealist " ? Before my time there was no
psychology. To be the first in this new realm
may amount to a curse ; at all events, it is a fatality :
for one is also the first to despise. My danger is the
loathing of mankind.
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WHY I AM A FATALITY <£&)
Have you understood me ? That which defines
me, that which makes me stand apart from the
whole of the rest of humanity, is the fact that I
unmasked Christian morality. For this reason I
was in need of a word which conveyed the idea of
a challenge to everybody. Not to have awakened
to these discoveries before, struck me as being the
sign of the greatest uncleanliness that mankind has
on its conscience, as self-deception become instinc-
tive, as the fundamental will to be blind to every
phenomenon, all causality and all reality ; in fact,
as an almost criminal fraud in psychologies. Blind-
n ess in regar d to^ Christianity is the essence of
cHminality^—for it is the crime against life. Ages
and peoples, the first as well as the last, philo-
sophers and old women, with the exception of five
or six moments in history (and of myself, the
seventh), are all alike in- this. Hitherto the Chris-
tian has been the " moral being," a peerless oddity,
and, as " a moral being," he was more absurd, more
vain, more thoughtless, and a greater disadvantage
to himself, than the greatest despiser of humanity
could have deemed possible. Christian m orality is
the, most malignant form of all falsehood^the actual
Circeof humanity : that which has corrupted man-
kind. It is not error as error which infuriates me
at the sight of this spectacle ; it is not the millen-
niums of absence of " goodwill," of discipline, of
decency, and of bravery in spiritual things, which
betrays itself in the triumph of Christianity ; it is
rather the absence of nature, it is the perfectly
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I40 ECCE HOMO
ghastly fact that anti-nature itself received the
highest honours as morality and as law, and re-
mained suspended over man as the Categorical Im-
perative. Fancy blundering in this way, not as an
individual, not as a people, but as a whole species !
as humanity ! To teach the contempt of all the
principal instincts of life ; to posit falsely the ex-
istence of a " soul," of a " spirit," in order to be able
to defy the body ; to spread the feeling that there
is something impure in the very first prerequisite
of life — in sex ; to seek the principle of evil in the
profound need of growth and expansion — that is to
say, in severe self-love (the term itself is slander-
ous) ; and conversely to see a higher moral value —
but what am I talking about ? — I mean the moral
value per se, in the typical signs of decline, in the
antagonism of the instincts, in " selflessness," in the
loss of ballast, in " the suppression of the personal
element," and in " love of one's neighbour " (neigh-
bour-itis !). What ! is humanity itself in a state
of degeneration ? Has it always been in this state ?
One thing is certain, that ye are taught only the
values of decadence as the highest values. The
morality of self-renunciation is essentially the mor-
ality of degeneration ; the fact, " I am going to the
dogs," is translated into the imperative, " Yeshall all
go to the dogs " — and not only into the imperative.
This morality of self-renunciation, which is the only
kind of morality that has been taught hitherto, be-
trays the will to nonentity — it denies life to the very
roots. There still remains the possibility that it
is not mankind that is in a state of degeneration,
but only that parasitical kind of man — the priest,
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WHY I AM A FATALITY 141
who, by means of morality and lies, has climbed up
to his position of determinator of values, whodivined
in Christian morality his road to power. And, to
tell the truth, this is my opinion. The teachers and i
leaders of mankind — including the theologians — j
have been, every one of them, decadents: hence their |
transvaluation of all values into a hostility towards;
life ; hence morality. The definition of morality ;':
Morality is the idiosyncrasy of decadents, actuated
by a desire to avenge themselves with success upon
life. I attach great value to this definition.
8
Have you understood me ? I have not uttered
a single word which I had not already said five
years ago through my mouthpiece Zarathustra.
The unmasking of Christian morality is an^event
wEich iTlinequalled in history, it tea real catas-
trophe^l TEe" man who throws light upon it is a
force majeure^ a fatality ; he breaks the history of
man into j woT" Time^is reckoned up before him
and after him. The lightning flash of truth struck
precisely that which theretofore had stood highest :
he who understands what was destroyed by that
flash should look to see whether he still holds any-
thing in his hands. Everything which until then
was called truth, has been revealed as the most de-
trimental, most spiteful, and most subterranean form
of life ; the holy pretext, which was the " improve-
ment " of man, has been recognised as a ruse for
draining life of its energy and of its blood. Mor-
ality conceived as Vampirism. . . . The man who
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142 ECCE HOMO
unmasks morality has also unmasked the worth-
lessness of the values in which men either believe
or have believed ; he no longer sees anything to be
revered in the most venerable man — even in the
types of men that have been pronounced holy ; all
he can see in them is the most fatal kind of ab-
ortions, fatal, because they fascinate. The concept
" God " was invented as the opposite of the concept
life — everything detrimental, poisonous, and slan-
derous, and all deadly hostility to life, wad bound
together in one horrible unit in Him. The concepts
" beyond " and " true world " were invented in order
to depreciate the only world that exists — in order
that no goal or aim, no sense or task, might be left
to earthly reality. The concepts " soul," " spirit,"
and last of all the concept " immortal soul," were
invented in order to throw contempt on the body,
in order to make it sick and " holy," in order to
cultivate an attitude of appalling levity towards all
things in life which deserve to be treated seriously,
i.e % the questions of nutrition and habitation, of in-
tellectual diet, the treatment of the sick, cleanli-
ness, and weather. Instead of health, we find the
" salvation of the soul " — that is to say, a folic cir-
culate fluctuating between convulsions and peni-
tence and the hysteria of redemption. The concept
" sin," together with the torture instrument apper-
taining to it, which is the concept " free will," was
invented in order to confuse and muddle our in-
stincts, and to render the mistrust of them man's
second nature! In the concepts "disinterested-
ness and "self-denial," the actual signs of de-
cadence are to be found. The allurement of that
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WHY I AM A FATALITY 143
which is detrimental, the inability to discover one's
own advantage and self-destruction, are made into
absolute qualities, into the " duty," the " holiness,"
and the " divinity " of man. Finally — to keep the
worst to the last — by the notion of the good man, /
all that is favoured which is weak, ill, botched, and 1
sick-in-itself, which ought to be wiped out. The law *
ofselectionjs thwarted, an ideal is made out of
opposition to the proud, well-constituted man, to
him who says yea to life, to him who is certain of
the future, and who guarantees the future — this ;
man is henceforth called the evil one. And all this I
was believed in as morality ! — Ecrasez Vinf&me ! t
Have you understood me? Dionysus versus
Christ.
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EDITORIAL NOTE TO POETRY
The editor begs to state that, contrary to his an-
nouncement in the Editorial Note to The Joyful
Wisdom^ in which he declared his intention of pub-
lishing all of Nietzsche's poetry, he has nevertheless
withheld certain less important verses from publi-
cation. This alteration in his plans is due to his
belief that it is an injustice and an indiscretion on
the part of posterity to surprise an author, as it
were, in his ntgligt, or, in plain English, "in his
shirt-sleeves." Authors generally are very sensitive
on this point, and rightly so: a visit behind the
scenes is not precisely to the advantage of the
theatre, and even finished pictures not yet framed
are not readily shown by the careful artist. As the
German edition, however, contains nearly all that
Nietzsche left behind, either in small notebooks or
on scraps of paper, the editor could not well sup-
press everything that was not prepared for publica-
tion by Nietzsche himself, more particularly as some
of the verses are really very remarkable. He has,
therefore, made a very plentiful selection from the
Songs and Epigrams, nearly all of which are to be
found translated here, and from the Fragments of
the Dionysus Dithyrambs, of which over half have
been given. All the complete Dionysus Dithyrambs
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I46 EDITORIAL NOTE TO POETRY
appear in this volume, save those which are dupli-
cates of verses already translated in the Fourth Part
of Zarathustra. These Dionysus Dithyrambs were
prepared ready for press by Nietzsche himself.
He wrote the final manuscript during the summer
of 1888 in Sils Maria; their actual composition,
however, belongs to an earlier date.
All the verses, unless otherwise stated, have been
translated by Mr. Paul Victor Cohn.
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SONGS, EPIGRAMS, Etc.
i47
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SONGS
To Melancholy*
O Melancholy, be not wroth with me
That I this pen should point to praise thee only,
And in thy praise, with head bowed to the knee,
Squat like a hermit on a tree-stump lonely.
Thus oft thou saw'st me, — yesterday, at least, —
Full in the morning sun and its hot beaming,
While, visioning the carrion of his feast,
The hungry vulture valleyward flew screaming.
Yet didst thou err, foul bird, albeit I,
So like a mummy 'gainst my log lay leaning !
Thou couldst not see these eyes whose ecstasy
Rolled hither, thither, proud and overweening.
What though they did not soar unto thine height,
Nor reached those far-off, cloud-reared precipices,
For that they sank the deeper so they might
Within themselves light Destiny's abysses.
Thus oft in sullenness perverse and free,
Bent hideous like a savage at his altar,
There, Melancholy, held I thought of thee,
A penitent, though youthful, with his psalter.
* Translated by Herman Scheffauer.
*49
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150 POETRY
So crouched did I enjoy the vulture's span,
The thunder of the avalanche's paces,
Thou spakest to me — nor wast false like man,
Thou spakest, but with stern and dreadful faces.
Harsh goddess thou of Nature wild and stark,
Mistress, that com'st with threats to daunt and
quell me,
To point me out the vulture's airy arc
And laughing avalanches, to repel me.
Around us gnashing pants the lust to kill,
The torment to win life in all its changes ;
Alluring on some cliff, abrupt and chill,
Some flower craves the butterfly that ranges.
All this am I — shuddering I feel it all —
butterfly beguiled, O lonely flower,
The vulture and the ice-pent waterfall,
The moaning storm — all symbols of thy power, —
Thou goddess grim before whom deeply bowed,
With head on knee, my lips with paeans bursting,
I lift a dreadful song and cry aloud
For Life, for Life, for Life — forever thirsting !
O vengeful goddess, be not wroth, I ask,
That I to mesh thee in my rhymes have striven.
He trembles who beholds thine awful mask ;
He quails to whom thy dread right hand is given.
Song upon trembling song by starts and fits
1 chant, in rhythm all my thought unfolding,
The black ink flows, the pointed goose-quill spits,
O goddess, goddess — leave me to my scolding !
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SONGS, EPIGRAMS, ETC. 151
After a Night Storm*
TO-DAY in misty veils thou hangest dimly,
Gloomy goddess, o'er my window-pane.
Grimly whirl the pallid snow-flakes, grimly
Roars the swollen brook unto the plain.
Ah, by light of haggard levins glaring,
'Neath the untamed thunder's roar and roll,
'Midst the valley's murk wast thou preparing —
Sorceress ! thy dank and poisoned bowl.
Shuddering, I heard through midnight breaking
Raptures of thy voice — and howls of pain.
Saw thy bright orbs gleam, thy right hand shaking
With the mace of thunder hurled amain.
Near my dreary couch I heard the crashes
Of thine armoured steps, heard weapons slam,
Heard thy brazen chain strike 'gainst the sashes,
And thy voice : " Come ! hearken who I am !
The immortal Amazon they call me ;
All things weak and womanish I shun ;
Manly scorn and hate in war enthral me ;
Victress I and tigress all in one !
Where I tread there corpses fall before me ;
From mine eyes the furious torches fly,
And my brain thinks poisons. Bend, adore me !
Worm of Earth and Will o' Wisp— or die ! "
* Translated by Herman Scheffauer.
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152 POETRY
Hymns to Friendship
{Two Fragments)
Goddess Friendship, deign to hear the song
That we sing in friendship's honour !
Where the eye of friendship glances,
Filled with all the joy of friendship
Come thou nigh to aid me,
Rosy dawn in thy gaze and
In holy hand the faithful pledge of youth eternal.
Morning's past : the sun of noonday
Scorches with hot ray our heads.
Let us sit beneath the arbour
Singing songs in praise of friendship.
Friendship was our life's red dawning,
And its sunset red shall be.
The Wanderer*
All through the night a wanderer walks
Sturdy of stride,
With winding vale and sloping height
E'er at his side.
Fair is the night :
On, on he strides, nor slackens speed,
And knows not where his path will lead.
* This poem was written on the betrothal of one of
Nietzsche's Bale friends.— Tr.
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SONGS, EPIGRAMS, ETC. 153
A bird's song in the night is heard,
" Ah me, what hast thou done, O bird,
How dost thou grip my sense and feet
And pourest heart-vexation sweet
Into mine ear — I must remain,
To hearken fain :
Why lure me with inviting strain ? "
The good bird speaks, staying his song :
" I lure not thee, — no, thou art wrong —
With these my trills
I lure my mate from off the hills —
Nor heed thy plight.
To me alone the night's not fair.
What's that to thee ? Forth must thou fare,
On, onward ever, resting ne'er.
Why stand'st thou now ?
What has my piping done to thee,
Thou roaming wight ? "
The good bird pondered, silent quite,
" Why doth my piping change his plight ?
Why stands he now,
That luckless, luckless, roaming wight ? "
To the Glacier
At noontide hour, when first,
Into the mountains Summer treads,
Summer, the boy with eyes so hot and weary,
Then too he speaks,
Yet we can only see his speech.
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154 POETRY
His breath is panting, like the sick man's breath
On fevered couch.
The glacier and the fir tree and the spring
Answer his call
— Yet we their answer only see.
For faster from the rock leaps down
The torrent stream, as though to greet,
And stands, like a white column trembling,
All yearning there.
And darker yet and truer looks the fir-tree
Than e'er before.
And 'twixt the ice-mass and the cold grey
stone
A sudden light breaks forth
Such light I once beheld, and marked the
sign.
Even the dead man's eye
Surely once more grows light,
When, sorrowful, his child
Gives him embrace and kiss :
Surely once more the flame of light
Wells out, and glowing into life
The dead eye speaks : " My child !
Ah child, you know I love you true ! "
So all things glow and speak — the glacier
speaks,
The brook, the fir,
Speak with their glance the selfsame words :
We love you true,
Ah, child, you know we love you, love you true !
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SONGS, EPIGRAMS, ETC. 155
And he,
Summer, the boy with eyes so hot and weary,
Woe-worn, gives kisses
More ardent ever,
And will not go :
But like to veils he blows his words
From out his lips,
His cruel words :
" My greeting's parting,
My coming going,
In youth I die."
All round they hearken
And scarcely breathe
(No songster sings),
And shuddering run
Like gleaming ray
Over the mountain ;
All round they ponder, —
Nor speak
Twas at the noon,
At noontide hour, when first
Into the mountains Summer treads,
Summer, the boy with eyes so hot and weary.
Autumn *
TlS Autumn : — Autumn yet shall break thy heart !
Fly away ! fly away ! —
The sun creeps 'gainst the hill
And climbs and climbs
And rests at every step.
* Translated by Herman Scheffauer.
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I $6 POETRY
How faded grew the world !
On weary, slackened strings the wind
Playeth his tune.
Fair Hope fled far —
He waileth after.
Tis Autumn : — Autumn yet shall break thy heart !
Fly away ! fly away !
fruit o' the tree,
Thou tremblest, fallest ?
What secret whispered unto thee
The Night,
That icy shudders deck thy cheek,
Thy cheek of purple hue ?
Silent art thou, nor dost reply —
Who speaketh still ? —
'Tis Autumn : — Autumn yet shall break thy heart !
Fly away ! fly away ! —
" I am not fair,"—
So speaks the lone star-flower, —
" Yet men I love
And comfort men —
Many flowers shall they behold,
And stoop to me,
And break me, ah ! —
So that within their eyes shall gleam
Remembrance swift,
Remembrance of far fairer things titan I : —
1 see it — see it — and I perish so."
'Tis Autumn : — Autumn yet shall break thy heart !
Fly away ! fly away !
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songs, epigrams, etc. 1 57
Campo Santo di Staglieno*
Maiden, in gentle wise
You stroke your lamb's soft fleece,
Yet flashing from your eyes
Both light and flame ne'er cease.
Creature of merry jest
And favourite near and far,
Pious v with kindness blest,
Amorosissima I
What broke so soon the chain,
What does your heart deplore ?
And who, pray, would not fain,
If you loved him, adore ? —
You're mute, but from your eye,
The tear-drop is not far,
You're mute : you'll yearn and die,
Amorosissima ?
The Little Brig named "Little Angel "f
" Little Angel " call they me ! —
Now a ship, but once a girl,
Ah, and still too much a girl !
My steering-wheel, so bright to see,
But for sake of love doth whirl.
* Campo Santo di Staglieno is the cemetery of Staglieno,
near Genoa. The poem was inspired by the sight of a girl
with a lamb on the tombstone, with the words underneath —
" Pia, caritatevole, amorosissima."
r Published by Nietzsche himself. The poem was inspired
by a ship that was christened Angiolina, in memory of a
love-sick girl who leapt into the sea. — Tr.
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I $8 POETRY
u Little Angel " call they me,
With hundred flags to ornament,
A captain smart, on glory bent.
Steers me, puffed with vanity
(He himself s an ornament).
" Little Angel " call they me,
And where'er a little flame
Gleams for me, I, like a lamb,
Go my journey eagerly
(1 was always such a lamb !).
" Little Angel " call they me—
Think you I can bark and whine
Like a dog, this mouth of mine
Throwing smoke and flame full free ?
Ah, a devil's mouth is mine.
" Little Angel " call they me—
Once I spoke a bitter word,
That my lover, when he heard,
Fast and far away did flee :
Yes, I killed him with that word !
" Little Angel " call they me :
Hardly heard, I sprang so glib
From the cliff and broke a rib :
From my frame my soul went free,
Yes, escaped me through that rib.
" Little Angel " call they me—
Then my soul, like cat in flight
Straight did on this ship alight
Swiftly bounding — one, two, three !
Yes, its claws are swift to smite.
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SONGS, EPIGRAMS, ETC. 1 59
" Little Angel " call they me !—
Now a ship, but once a girl,
Ah, and still too much a girl !
My steering-wheel, so bright to see,
For sake of love alone doth whirl.
Maiden's Song
Yesterday with seventeen years
Wisdom reached I, a maiden fair,
I am grey-haired, it appears,
Now in all things — save my hair.
Yesterday, I had a thought,
Was't a thought ? — you laugh and scorn !
Did you ever have a thought ?
Rather was a feeling born.
Dare a woman think ? This screed
Wisdom long ago begot :
" Follow woman must, not lead ;
If she thinks, she follows not."
Wisdom speaks — I credit naught :
Rather hops and stings like flea :
" Woman seldom harbours thought ;
If she thinks, no good is she ! "
To this wisdom, old, renowned,
Bow I in deep reverence :
Now my wisdom I'll expound
In its very quintessence.
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160 POETRY
A voice spoke in me yesterday
As ever — listen if you can :
" Woman is more beauteous aye,
But more interesting — man ! "
"Pia, Caritatevole, Amorosissima
Cave where the dead ones rest,
marble falsehood, thee
1 love : for easy jest
My soul thou settest free.
To-day, to-day alone,
My soul to tears is stirred,
At thee, the pictured stone,
At thee, the graven word.
This picture (none need wis)
I kissed the other day.
When there's so much to kiss
Why did I kiss the— clay ?
Who knows the reason why ?
" A tombstone fool ! " you laugh :
I kissed — I'll not deny —
E'en the long epitaph.
To Friendship
Hail to thee, Friendship !
My hope consummate,
My first red daybreak !
Alas, so endless
* See above, p. 1 57. Both poems were inspired by the same
tombstone. — Tr.
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SONGS, EPIGRAMS, ETC. l6l
Oft path and night seemed,
And life's long road
Aimless and hateful !
Now life Td double
In thine eyes seeing
Dawn-glory, triumph,
Most gracious goddess !
Pine Tree and Lightning
O'er man and beast I grew so high,
And speak — but none will give reply.
Too lone and tall my crest did soar :
I wait : what am I waiting for ?
The clouds are grown too nigh of late,
'Tis the first lightning I await.
Tree in Autumn
Why did ye, blockheads, me awaken
While I in blissful blindness stood?
Ne'er I by fear more fell was shaken —
Vanished my golden dreaming mood.
Bear-elephants, with trunks all greedy,
Knock first ! Where have your manners fled ?
I threw — and fear has made me speedy —
Dishes of ripe fruit — at your head.
h
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1 62 POETRY
Among # Foes (or Against Critics)
{After a Gipsy Proverb}
HERE the gallows, there the cord,
And the hangman's ruddy beard.
Round, the venom-glancing horde : —
Nothing new to me's appeared.
Many times IVe seen the sight,
Now laughing in your face I cry,
" Hanging me is useless quite :
Die ? Nay, nay, I cannot die ! "
Beggars all ! Ye envy me
Winning what ye never won !
True, I suffer agony,
But for you — your life is done.
Many times IVe faced death's plight,
Yet steam and light and breath am I.
Hanging me is useless quite :
Die ? Nay, nay, I cannot die !
The New Columbus*
" Dearest," said Columbus, " never
Trust a Genoese again.
At the blue he gazes ever,
Distance doth his soul enchain.
Strangeness is to me too dear —
Genoa has sunk and passed —
Heart, be cool ! Hand, firmly steer !
Sea before me : land — at last ?
♦The Genoese is Nietzsche himself, who lived a great
part of his life at Genoa. — Tr.
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SONGS, EPIGRAMS, ETC. 1 63
Firmly let us plant our feet,
Ne'er can we give up this game —
From the distance what doth greet ?
One death, one happiness, one fame.
In Lonesomeness *
The cawing crows
Townwards on whirring pinions roam ;
Soon come the snows —
Thrice happy now who hath a home !
Fast-rooted there,
Thou gazest backwards — oh, how long !
Thou fool, why dare
Ere winter come, this world of wrong ?
This world — a gate
To myriad deserts dumb and hoar !
Who lost through fate
What thou hast lost, shall rest no more.
Now stand'st thou pale,
A frozen pilgrimage thy doom,
Like smoke whose trail
Cold and still colder skies consume.
Fly, bird, and screech,
Like desert-fowl, thy song apart !
Hide out of reach,
Fool ! in grim ice thy bleeding heart.
* Translated by Herman Scheffauer.
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1 64 POETRY
The cawing crows
Town wards on whirring pinions roam :
Soon come the snows —
Woe unto him who hath no home !
My Answer
The man presumes —
Good Lord ! — to think that I'd return
To those warm rooms
Where snug the German ovens burn
My friend, you see
'Tis but thy folly drives me far, —
Pity for thee
And all that German blockheads are !
Venice
On the bridge I stood,
Mellow was the night,
Music came from far —
Drops of gold outpoured
On the shimmering waves.
Song, gondolas, light,
Floated a-twinkling out into the dusk.
The chords of my soul, moved
By unseen impulse, throbbed
Secretly into a gondola song,
With thrills of bright-hued ecstasy.
Had I a listener there?
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EPIGRAMS
Caution : Poison ! *
He who cannot laugh at this had better not start
reading ;
For if he read and do not laugh, physic he'll be
needing !
How to find One's Company
With jesters it is good to jest :
Who likes to tickle, is tickled best.
The Word
I DEARLY love the living word,
That flies to you like a merry bird,
Ready with pleasant nod to greet,
E'en in misfortune welcome, sweet,
Yet it has blood, can pant you deep :
Then to the dove's ear it will creep :
And curl itself, or start for flight —
Whate'er it does, it brings delight.
Yet tender doth the word remain,
Soon it is ill, soon well again :
* Translated by Francis Bickley.
165
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1 66 POETRY
So if its little life you'd spare,
O grasp it lightly and with care,
Nor heavy hand upon it lay,
For e'en a cruel glance would slay !
There it would lie, unsouled, poor thing !
All stark, all formless, and all cold,
Its little body changed and battered,
By death and dying rudely shattered.
A dead word is a hateful thing,
A barren, rattling, ting-ting-ting.
A curse on ugly trades I cry
That doom all little words to die !
The Wanderer and his Shadow
^ A Book
You'll ne'er go on nor yet go back ?
Is e'en for chamois here no track ?
So here I wait and firmly clasp
What eye and hand will let me grasp !
Five-foot-broad ledge, red morning's breath,
And under me — world, man, and death !
Joyful Wisdom
This is no book — for such, who looks ?
Coffins and shrouds, naught else, are books !
What's dead and gone they make their prey,
Yet in my book lives fresh To-day.
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SONGS, EPIGRAMS, ETC. 1 67
This is no book — for such, who looks ?
Who cares for coffins, shrouds, and spooks ?
This is a promise, an act of will,
A last bridge-breaking, for good or ill ;
A wind from sea, an anchor light,
A whirr of wheels, a steering right.
The cannon roars, white smokes its flame,
The sea — the monster — laughs and scents its game.
Dedication *
He who has much to tell, keeps much
Silent and unavowed.
He who with lightning-flash would touch
Must long remain a cloud !
The New Testament
^
Is this your Book of Sacred Lore,
For blessing, cursing, and such uses ? —
Come, come now : at the very door
God some one else's wife seduces ?
The " True German "
" O PEUPLE des meillures Tartuffes,
To you I'm true, I wis."
He spoke, but in the swiftest skiff
Went to Cosmopolis.
* On the title-page of a copy of Joyful Wisdom^ dedicated
to Herr August Bungal. — Tr.
t Translated by Francis Bickley.
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I 68 POETRY
To the Darwinians*
A FOOL this honest Britisher
Was not . . . But a Philosopher !
As that you really rate him ?
Set Darwin up by Goethe's side ?
But majesty you thus deride —
Genii majestatem !
To Hafiz
{Toast Question of a Water-Drinker)
What you have builded, yonder inn,
O'ertops all houses high :
The posset you have brewed therein
The world will ne'er drink dry.
The bird that once appeared on earth
As phoenix, is your, guest.
The mouse that gave a mountain birth
Is you yourself confessed !
You're all and naught, you're inn and wine,
You're phoenix, mountain, mouse.
Back to yourself to come you pine
Or fly from out your house.
Downward from every height you've sunk,
And in the depths still shine :
The drunkenness of all the drunk,
Why do you ask for — wine ?
* Translated by Francis Bickley.
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SONGS, EPIGRAMS, ETC. 1 69
To Spinoza
Of " All in One " a fervent devotee
Amore Dei, of reasoned piety,
Doff shoes ! A land thrice holy this must be ! —
Yet underneath this love there sate
A torch of vengeance, burning secretly
The Hebrew God was gnawed by Hebrew hate.
Hermit ! Do I aright interpret thee ?
Arthur Schopenhauer
That which he taught, has had its day,
That which he lived, shall live for aye :
Look at the man ! No bondsman he !
Nor e'er to mortal bowed his knee !
To Richard Wagner
O YOU who chafe at every fetter's link,
A restless spirit, never free :
Who, though victorious aye, in bonds still cowered,
Disgusted more and more, and flayed and scoured,
Till from each cup of balm you poison drink,
Alas ! and by the Cross all helpless sink,
You too, you too, among the overpowered !
For long I watched this play so weirdly shaped,
Breathing an air of prison, vault, and dread,
With churchly fragrance, clouds of incense spread,
And yet I found all strange/in terror gaped.
But now I throw my fool's cap o'er my head,
For I escaped !
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170 POETRY
Music of the South*
All that my eagle e'er saw clear,
I see and feel in heart to-day
(Although my hope was wan and gray)
Thy song like arrow pierced mine ear,
A balm to touch, a balm to hear,
As down from heaven it winged its way.
So now for lands of southern fire
To happy isles where Grecian nymphs hold sport !
Thither now turn the ship's desire —
No ship e'er sped to fairer port.
A Riddle
A RIDDLE here — can you the answer scent ?
" When man discovers, woman must invent."
To False Friends
You stole, your eye's not clear to-day.
You only stole a thought, sir ? nay,
Why be so rudely modest, pray ?
Here, take another handful — stay,
Take all I have, you swine — you may
Eat till your filth is purged away.
Friend Yorick
Be of good cheer,
Friend Yorick ! If this thought gives pain,
As now it does, I fear,
'* Probably written for Peter Gast, Nietzsche's faithful
friend, and a musician whose " Southern " music Nietzsche
admired. — Tk
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SONGS, EPIGRAMS, ETC. 171
Is it not " God " ? And though in error lain,
Tis but your own dear child,
Your flesh and blood,
That tortures you and gives you pain,
Your little rogue and do-no-good,
See if the rod will change its mood !
In brief, friend Yorick, leave that drear
Philosophy — and let me now
Whisper one word as medicine,
My own prescription, in your ear,
My remedy against such spleen —
" Who loves his God, chastises him, I ween. ,,
Resolution
I SHOULD be wise to suit my mood,
Not at the beck of other men :
God made as stupid as he could
The world — well, let me praise him then.
And if I make not straight my track,
But, far as may be, wind and bend,
That's how the sage begins his tack,
And that is how the fool will — end.
The world stands never still,
Night loves the glowing day —
Sweet sounds to ear " I will ! "
And sweeter still " I may 1 "
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172 POETRY
The Halcyonian *
Addressing me most bashfully,
A woman to-day said this :
" What would you be like in ecstasy,
If sober you feel such bliss ? "
Finale *
Laughter is a serious art.
I would do it better daily.
Did I well to-day or no ?
Came the spark right from the heart ?
Little use though head wag gaily,
If the heart contain no glow.
* Translated by Francis Bickley.
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DIONYSUS-DITHYRAMBS
(1888)
These are the songs of Zarathustra which he sang to
himself so as to endure his last solitude.
173
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DIONYSUS-DITHYRAMBS
Of the Poverty of the Richest
Ten years passed by —
Not a drop reached me,
No rain-fraught wind, no dew of love
— A rainless land. . . .
Now entreat I my wisdom
Not to become stingy in this drought ;
Overflow thyself, trickle thy dew,
Be thyself the rain of the parched wilderness !
I once bade the clouds
Depart from my mountains ;
Once I said to them,
" More light, ye dark ones ! "
To-day I entice them to come :
Make me dark with your udders :
— I would milk you,
Ye cows of the heights !
Milk-warm wisdom, sweet dew of love
I pour over the land.
Away, away, ye truths
That look so gloomy !
I will not have on my mountains
Bitter, impatient truths.
'75
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176 POETRY
May truth approach me to-day
Gilded by smiles,
Sweetened by the sun, browned by love, —
A ripe truth I would fain break off from the tree.
To-day I stretch my hands
Toward the tresses of chance,
Wise enough to lead,
To outwit chance like a child.
To-day I will be hospitable
'Gainst the unwelcome,
'Gainst destiny itself I will not be prickly. . . .
— Zarathustra is no hedgehog.
My soul,
Insatiable with its tongue,
Has already tasted of all things good and evil,
And has dived into all depths.
But ever, like the cork,
It swims to the surface again,
And floats like oil upon brown seas :
Because of this soul men call me fortunate.
Who are my father and mother ?
Is not my father Prince Plenty ?
And my mother Silent Laughter ?
Did not the union of these two
Beget me, the enigmatic beast —
Me, the monster of light —
Me, Zarathustra, the squanderer of all wisdom ?
Sick to-day from tenderness,
A dewy wind,
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DIONYSUS-DITHYRAMBS 1 77
Zarathustra sits waiting, waiting on his moun-
tains —
Sweet and stewing
In his own juice,
Beneath his own summit,
Beneath his ice,
Weary and happy,
A Creator on his seventh day.
— Silence !
A truth passes over me
Like a cloud, —
With invisible lightnings it strikes me,
On broad, slow stairs,
Its happiness climbs to me :
Come, come, beloved truth !
— Silence !
Tis my truth !
From timid eyes,
From velvet shudders,
Her glance meets mine,
Sweet and wicked, a maiden's glance.
She has guessed the reason of my happiness,
She has guessed me — ha! what is she thinking?
A purple dragon
Lurks in the abyss of her maiden's glance.
— Silence ! My truth is speaking ! —
" Woe to thee, Zarathustra I
Thou lookest like one
That hath swallowed gold :
They will slit up thy belly yet !
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178 POETRY
Thou art too rich,
Thou corrupter of many !
Thou makest too many jealous,
Too many poor. . . .
Even on me thy light casts a shadow —
I feel chill : go away, thou rich one
Go away, Zarathustra, from the path of thy sun ! "
Between Birds of Prey
Who would here descend,
How soon
Is he swallowed up by the depths !
But thou, Zarathustra,
Still lovest the abysses,
Lovest them as doth the fir tree !
The fir flings its roots
Where the rock itself gazes
Shuddering at the depths, —
The fir pauses before the abysses
Where all around
Would fain descend :
Amid the impatience
Of wild, rolling, leaping torrents
It waits so patient, stern and silent,
Lonely. . . .
Lonely I
Who would venture
Here to be guest —
To be thy guest ?
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DIONYSUS-DITHYRAMBS 1 79
A bird of prey, perchance
Joyous at others' misfortune,
Will cling persistent
To the hair of the steadfast watcher,
With frenzied laughter,
A vulture's laughter. . . .
Wherefore so steadfast ?
— Mocks he so cruel :
He must have wings, who loves the abyss,
He must not stay on the cliff,
As thou who hangest there ! —
O Zarathustra,
Cruellest Nimrod !
Of late still a hunter of God,
A spider's web to capture virtue,
An arrow of evil !
Now
Hunted by thyself,
Thine own prey
Caught in the grip of thine own soul.
Now
Lonely to me and thee,
Twofold in thine own knowledge,
Mid a hundred mirrors
False to thyself,
Mid a hundred memories
Uncertain,
Weary at every wound,
Shivering at every frost,
Throttled in thine own noose,
Self-knower !
Self-hangman !
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Why didst bind thyself
With the noose of thy wisdom ?
Why luredst thyself
Into the old serpent's paradise ?
Why stolest into
Thyself, thyself? . . .
A sick man now,
Sick of serpent's poison,
A captive now
Who hast drawn the hardest lot :
\ In thine own shaft
Bowed as thou workest,
In thine own cavern
Digging at thyself,
Helpless quite,
Stiff,
A cold corse
Overwhelmed with a hundred burdens,
Overburdened by thyself,
A knower !
A self-knower !
The wise Zarathustra ! . . .
?
Thou soughtest the heaviest burden,
So foundest thou thyself,
And canst not shake thyself off. . . .
Watching,
Chewing,
One that stands upright no more !
Thou wilt grow deformed even in thy grave,
Deformed spirit !
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DIONYSUS-DITHYRAMBS 1 8 1
And of late still so proud
On all the stilts of thy pride !
Of late still the godless hermit,
The hermit with one comrade — the devil,
The scarlet prince of every devilment ! . . .
Now —
Between two nothings
Huddled up,
A question-mark,
A weary riddle,
A riddle for vultures. . . .
They will " solve " thee,
They hunger already for thy " solution,"
They flutter already about their " riddle,"
About thee, the doomed one !
O Zarathustra,
Self-knower !
Self-hangman !
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I 82 POETRY
The Sun Sinks
Not much longer thirstest thou,
O burnt-up heart !
Promise is in the air,
From unknown mouths I feel a breath,
— The great coolness comes. . . .
My sun stood hot above me at noonday :
A greeting to you that are coming,
Ye sudden winds,
Ye cool spirits of afternoon !
The air is strange and pure.
See how the night
Leers at me with eyes askance,
Like a seducer ! . . .
Be strong, my brave heart,
And ask not "Why?"
The day of my life !
The sun sinks,
And the calm flood
Already is gilded.
Warm breathes the rock :
Did happiness at noonday
Take its siesta well upon it ?
In green light
Happiness still glimmers up from the brown abyss
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DIONYSUS-DITHYRAMBS 1 83
Day of my life !
Eventide's nigh,
Thy eye already
Glows half-broken,
Thy dew already
Pours out its tear-drops,
Already over the white seas
Walks the purple of thy love,
Thy last hesitating holiness. . . .
3
Golden gaiety, come !
Thou, the sweetest foretaste —
Foretaste of death !
— Went I my way too swiftly ?
Now that the foot grows weary,
Thine eye still catches me,
Thy happiness still catches me.
Around but waves and play.
Whatever was hard
— Sank into blue oblivion.
My boat now stands idle.
Storm and motion — how did it forget them !
Desire and Hope are drowned,
Sea and soul are becalmed.
Seventh Solitude !
Never felt I
Sweet certainty nearer,
Or warmer the sun's ray.
— Glows not the ice of my summit yet ?
Silvery, light, a fish,
Now my vessel swims out. . . .
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1 84 POETRY
The Last Desire *
So would I die
As then I saw him die,
The friend, who like a god
Into my darkling youth
Threw lightning's light and fire :
Buoyant yet deep was he,
Yea, in the battle's strife
With the gay dancer's heart.
Amid the warriors
His was the lightest heart,
Amid the conquerors
His brow was dark with thought —
He was a fate poised on his destiny :
Unbending, casting thought into the past
And future, such was he.
Fearful beneath the weight of victory,
Yet chanting, as both victory and death
Came hand and hand to him.
Commanding even as he lay in death,
And his command that man annihilate.
So would I die
As then I saw him die,
Victorious and destroying.
* Translated by Dr. G. T. Wrench.
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DIONYSUS-DITHYRAMBS 1 8 5
The Beacon
Here, where the island grew amid the seas,
A sacrificial rock high-towering,
Here under darkling heavens,
Zarathustra lights his mountain-fires,
A beacon for ships that have strayed,
A beacon for them that have an answer ! . . .
These flames with grey-white belly,
In cold distances sparkle their desire,
Stretches its neck towards ever purer heights —
A snake upreared in impatience :
This signal I set up there before me.
This flame is mine own soul,
Insatiable for new distances,
Speeding upward, upward its silent heat.
Why flew Zarathustra from beasts and men ?
Why fled he swift from all continents ?
Six solitudes he knows already —
But even the sea was not lonely enough for him,
On the island he could climb, on the mount he
became flame,
At the seventh solitude
He casts a fishing-rod far o'er his head.
Storm-tossed seamen ! Wreckage of ancient stars
Ye seas of the future ! Uncompassed heavens !
At all lonely ones I now throw my fishing-rod.
Give answer to the flame's impatience,
Let me, the fisher on high mountains,
Catch my seventh, last solitude !
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1 86 POETRY
Fame and Eternity*
Speak, tell me, how long wilt thou brood
Upon this adverse fate of thine ?
Beware, lest from thy doleful mood
A countenance so dark is brewed
That men in seeing thee divine
A hate more bitter than the brine.
Speak, why does Zarathustra roam
Upon the towering mountain-height ?
Distrustful, cankered, dour, his home
Is shut so long from human sight?
* * * *
See, suddenly flames forth a lightning-flash,
The pit profound with thunderous challenge fights
Against the heavens, midst clamorous crack and
crash
Of the great mountain ! Cradled in the heights,
Born as the fruit of hate and lightning's love,
The wrath of Zarathustra dwells above
And looms with menace of a thundercloud.
Ye, who have roofs, go quickly, creep and hide !
To bed, ye tenderlings ! For thunders loud
Upon the blasts of storm triumphant ride,
And bastions and ramparts sway and rock,
♦Translated by Dr. G. T. Wrench.
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DIONYSUS-DITHYRAMBS 1 87
The lightning sears the dusky face of night,
And eerie truths like gleams of Hades mock
The sense familiar. So in storm breaks forth
The flaming curse of Zarathustra's wrath.
This fame, which all the wide worltf loves,
I touch with gloves,
And scorning beat
Beneath my feet.
Who hanker after the pay of it ?
Who cast themselves in the way of it ?
These prostitutes to gold,
These merchant folk. They fold
Their unctuous palms over the jingling fame,
Whose ringing chink wins all the world's acclaim.
Hast thou the lust to buy ? It needs no skill.
They are all venal. Let thy purse be deep,
And let their greedy paws unhindered creep
Into its depths. So let them take their fill,
For if thou dost not offer them enough,
Their " virtue " they'll parade, to hide their huff.
They are all virtuous, yea every one.
Virtue and fame are ever in accord
So long as time doth run,
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1 88 POETRY
The tongues that prate of virtue as reward
Earn fame. For virtue is fame's clever bawd.
Amongst these virtuous, I prefer to be
One guilty of all vile and horrid sin !
And when I see fame's importunity
So advertise her shameless harlotry,
Ambition turns to gall. Amidst such kin
One place alone, the lowest, would I win.
This fame, which all the wide world loves,
I touch with gloves,
And scorning beat
Beneath my feet.
Hush ! I see vastness ! — and of vasty things
Shall man be dumb, unless he can enshrine
Them with his words ? Then take the might which
brings
The heart upon thy tongue, charmed wisdom
mine!
I look above, there rolls the star-strown sea.
O night, mute silence, voiceless cry of stars !
And lo ! A sign ! The heaven its verge unbars —
A shining constellation falls towards me.
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DIONYSUS-DITHYRAMBS 1 89
O loftiest, star-clustered crown of Being !
O carved tablets of Eternity !
And dost thou truly bend thy way to me ?
Thy loveliness, to all— obscurity,
What ? Fear'st not to unveil before my seeing ?
O shield of Destiny !
O carven tablets of Eternity !
Yea, verily, thou knowest — what mankind doth
hate,
What I alone do love : thou art inviolate
To strokes of change and time, of fates the fate !
'Tis only thou, O dire Necessity,
Canst kindle everlasting love in me !
O loftiest crown of Life ! O shield of Fate !
That no desire can reach to invocate,
That ne'er defiled or sullied is by Nay,
Eternal Yea of life, for e'er am I thy Yea :
For I love thee, Eternity !
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FRAGMENTS
OF DIONYSUS-DITHYRAMBS
(1882-88)
•9»
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FRAGMENTS OF DIONYSUS-
DITHYRAMBS
Speeches, Parables, and Similes
3
My home's in the highlands,
For the highlands I yearn not,
I raise not mine eyes aloft :
I am one that looks downward,
One that must bless, —
All blessers look downward.
ii
Thus I began,
I unlearned all self-pity !
13
Not in shattering idols,
But in shattering the idol-worshipper in thee,
Consisted thy valour.
14
See, there stand
Those heavy cats of granite,
Those old, old Values.
Woe is me ! How overthrow them ?
* * * *
Scratching cats,
With paws that are fettered,
There they sit
And their glance is poison.
N
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194 POETRY
A lightning-flash became my wisdom :
With sword of adamant it clove me every
darkness !
19
A thought that still
Flows hot, like lava :
But all streams of lava
Build a fortress around them,
And every thought finally
Oppresses itself with laws.
20
Such is my will :
And since 'tis my will,
All goes as I wish —
That was my final wisdom :
I willed what I must,
And thus I forced every " must," —
Since then has been for me no " must."
23
Deceit
Is war's whole art
The fox's skin
Is my secret shirt of mail*
25
We of the new underworld
Grub for new treasures.
Godless it seemed to the ancients >
To disturb the earth's bowels for treasures :
And once more this godlessness revives,
Hear ye not earth's bowels thunder ?
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FRAGMENTS OF DIONYSUS-DITHYRAMBS 1 95
28
Looking for love and finding masks,
Finding accursed masks and having to break
them!
29
Do I love you ?
Yes, as the rider loves his steed,
That carryeth him to his goal.
30
His pity is cruel,
His loving hand-clasp bruises,
Give not a giant your hand !
3i
Ye fear me ?
Ye fear the taut-strung bow ?
Ye fear a man might set his arrow to the bow ?
33
I am naught but a word-maker.
What matter words ?
What matter I ?
34
Ah, my friends,
Whither has flown all that is called "good "?
Whither all good people ?
Whither the innocence of all these falsehoods ?
I call all good,
Leaves and grass, happiness, blessing, and rain.
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196 POETRY
35
Not through his sins and greatest follies.
Through his perfection I suffered,
As I suffered most from men. *
36
" Man is evil."
So spake the wisest
For my consolement.
37
And only when I to myself am a burden
Do ye fall heavy upon me !
38
Too soon, already
I laugh again :
For a foe 'tis easy
To make me amends.
.39
Gentle am I towards man and chance ;
Gentle with all men, and even with grasses :
A spot of sunshine on winter curtains,
Moist with tenderness,
A thawing wind to snow-bound souls :
* * * *
Proud-minded towards trifling
Gains, where I see the huckster's long finger,
Tis aye my pleasure
To be bamboozled :
Such is the bidding of my fastidious taste.
* Nietzsche here alludes to Christian perfection, which he
considers equivalent to harmlessness. — Tr.
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FRAGMENTS OF DIONYSUS-DITHYRAMBS 197
40
A strange breath breathes and spits at me,
Am I a mirror, that straightway is clouded ?
4i
Little people,
Confiding, open-hearted,
But low-built portals,
Where only the low of stature can enter.
* * * *
How can I get through the city-gate
Who had forgotten to live among dwarfs ?
42
My wisdom was like to the sun,
I longed to give them light,
But I only deceived them.
The sun of my wisdom
Blinded the eyes
Of these poor bats. . . .
43
Blacker and eviller things didst thou see than ever
a seer did :
Through the revels of Hell no sage had ever
journeyed.
44
Back ! on my heels too closely ye follow !
Back ! lest my wisdom should tread on you, crush
you!
45
" He goes to hell who goes thy ways ! "
So be it I to my hell
I'll pave the way myself with well-made maxims.
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198 POETRY
4 6
Your God, you tell me,
Is a God of love ?
The sting of conscience
A sting from God ?
A sting of love ?
48
They chew gravel,
They lie on their bellies
Before little round things,
They adore all that falleth not down—
These last servants of God
Believers (in reality) !
50
They made their God out of nothing,
What wonder if now he is naught ?
Ye loftier men ! There have once been
More thoughtful times, more reflective,
Than is our to-day and to-morrow.
52
Our time is like a sick woman —
Let her but shriek, rave, scold,
And break the tables and dishes !
54
Ye mount ?
Is it true that ye mount,
Ye loftier men ?
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FRAGMENTS OF DIONYSUS-DITHYRAMBS 199
Are ye not, pray,
Like to a ball
Sped to the heights
By the lowest that's in you ?
Do ye not flee from yourselves, O ye climbers ?
55
All that you thought
You had to despise,
Where you only renounced !
56
All men repeat the refrain !
No, no, and thrice say No !
What's all this yap-yap talk of heaven ?
We would not enter the kingdom of heaven,
The kingdom of earth shall be ours?
57
The will redeemeth,
He that has nothing to do
In a Nothing finds food for trouble.
58
You cannot endure it more,
Your tyrannous destiny,
Love it — you're given no choice !
59
These alone free us from woes
(Choose now I)
Sudden death
Or long-drawn-out love.
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200 POETRY
60
Of death we are sure,
So why not be merry ?
61
The worst of pleas
I have hidden from you — that life grew tedious !
Throw it away, that ye find it again to your taste !
62
Lonely days,
Ye must walk on valorous feet !
63
Loneliness
Plants naught, it ripens. . . .
And even then you must have the sun for your
friend.
64
Once more must ye plunge in the throng —
In the throng ye grow hard and smooth.
Solitude withers
And lastly destroys. -
65
When on the hermit comes the great fear ;
When he runs and runs
And knows not whither ;
When the storms roar behind
And the lightning bears witness against him,
And his cavern breeds spectres
And fills him with dread.
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FRAGMENTS OF DIONYSUS-DITHYRAMBS 201
67
Throw thy pain in the depths,
Man, forget ! Man, forget !
Divine is the art of forgetting !
Wouldstfly?
Wouldst feel at home in the heights ?
Throw thy heaviest load in the sea !
Here is the sea, hurl thyself in the sea !
Divine is the art of forgetting !
69
Look forward, never look back !
We sink to the depths
If we peer ever into the depths.
70
Beware, beware
Of warning the reckless !
Thy warning will drive them
To leap into every abyss !
7i
Why hurled he himself from the heights ?
What led him astray ?
His pity for all that is lowly led him astray,
And now he lies there, broken, useless, and cold.
72
Whither went he ? Who knows ?
We only know that he sank.
A star went out in the desolate void,
And lone was the void.
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202 POETRY
73
What we have not
But need,
We must take.
And so a good conscience I took.
74
Who is there that could bestow right upon thee ?
So take thy right !
75
O ye waves,
Wondrous waves, are ye wroth with me ?
Do ye raise me your crests in wrath ?
With my rudder I smite
Your folly full square.
This bark ye yourselves
To immortal life will carry along.
77
When no new voice was heard,
Ye made from old words
A law:
When life grows stark, there shoots up the law.
78
What none can refute
Ye say must be true ?
Oh, ye innocents !
79
Art thou strong?
Strong as an ass ? Strong as God ?
Art thou proud ?
So proud as to flaunt
Unashamed thy conceit ?
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FRAGMENTS OF DIONYSUS-DITHYRAMBS 203
80
Beware,
And ne'er beat the drum
Of thy destiny I
Go out of the way
From all pom-pom of fame !
* * * *
Be not known too soon !
Be one that has hoarded renown !
81
Wilt thou grasp at the thorns ?
Thy fingers must pay.
Grasp at a poniard.
85
Be a tablet of gold,
They will grave upon thee
In golden script.
86
Upright he stands
With more sense of "justice"
In his outermost toe
Than I have in all my head.
A virtue-monster
Mantled in white.
87
Already he mimics himself,
Already weary he grows,
Already he seeks the paths he has trod —
Who of late still loved all tracks untrodden !
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204 POETRY
Secretly burnt —
Not for his faith,
Rather because he had lost the heart
To find new faith.
88
Too long he sat in the cage,
That runaway !
Too long he dreaded
A gaoler !
Timorous now he goeth his ways,
All things make him to stumble —
The shadow e'en of a stick makes him to stumble.
89
Ye chambers smoky and musty,
Ye cages and narrow hearts,
How could your spirit be free ?
90
Narrow souls !
Huckster-souls !
When money leaps into the box
The soul leaps into it too ! *
92
Are ye women,
That ye wish to suffer
From that which ye love ?
* Alluding to the saying of the Dominican monk Tetzel,
who sold indulgences in the time of Luther : " When money
leaps into the box, the soul leaps from hell to heaven ! " — Tr.
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FRAGMENTS OF DIONYSUS-DITHYRAMBS 205
99
They are cold, these men of learning !
Would that a lightning-flash might strike their
food,
And their mouths could learn to eat fire !
IOI
Your false love
For the past,
A love for the graves of the dead,
Is a theft from life
That steals all the future.
* * * *
An antiquary
Is a craftsman of dead things,
Who lives among coffins and skeletons.
103
Only the poet who can lie
Wilfully, skilfully,
Can tell the truth.
104
Our chase after truth,
Is't a chase after happiness?
Truth
Is a woman, no better,
Cunning in her shame :
Of what she likes best
She will know naught,
And covers her face. . .
To what doth she yield
105
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206 POETRY
But to violence ?
Violence she needs.
Be hard, ye sages !
Ye must compel her,
That shamefaced Truth. . . .
For her happiness
She needs constraint —
She is a woman, no better.
106
We thought evil of each other ?
We were too distant,
But now in this tiny hut,
Pinned to one destiny,
How could we still be foes ?
We must needs love those
Whom we cannot escape.
107
Love thy foe,
Let the robber rob thee :
The woman hears and— does it.
no
A proud eye
With silken curtains,
Seldom clear,
Honours him that may see it unveiled.
in
Sluggard eyes
That seldom love —
But when they love, the levin flashes
As from shafts of gold
Where a dagger keeps guard at the treasure of love.
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FRAGMENTS OF DIONYSUS-DITHYRAMBS 207
117
They are crabs, for whom I have no fellow-feeling.
Grasp them, they pinch you ;
Leave them alone, and they walk backward.
119
Crooked go great rivers and men,
Crooked, but turned to their goal ;
That is their highest courage,
They dreaded not crooked paths.
121
Wouldst catch them ?
Then speak to them
As to stray sheep :
" Your path, your path
You have lost ! "
They follow all
That flatter them so :
"What? had we a path?"
Each whispers the other :
" It really seems that we have a path."
[The numbering given corresponds to that of the original,
several fragments having been omitted. — Tr.]
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HYMN TO LIFE.
For Chorus and Orchestra.
Words by Lou Salome. Music by Friedrich Nietzsche.
Trans, by Herman Schbffaubr. Arr. for Piano bv Adrian Collins. M.A.
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THE WORKS OF
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
First Complete and Authorised English Translation, in 18 Volumes.
Edited by Dr. OSCAR LEVY.
I. THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY. Translated by William/
A. Haussmann, B. A., Ph.D., with Biographical Introduction by
the Author's Sister, Portrait and Facsimile. [Second Edition.
II. EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY AND OTHER _
ESSAYS. Translated by M. A. MOggb, Ph.D. Crown 8vo.
III. THE FUTURE OF OUR fcDUCATIONAL
INSTITUTIONS. Translated by J. M. Kennedy.
[Second Edition.
IV. THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON, Vol I. Trans-
lated by A. M. Ludovici, with Editorial Note. [Second Edition.
V. THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON, Vol. II. Trans-
lated, with Introduction, by Adrian Collins, M.A.
[Second Edition.
VI. HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN, Vol. I. Translated by
Helen Zimmbrn, with Introduction by J. M. Kennedy.
[Second Edition.
VII. HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN, Vol. II. Translated,
with Introduction, by Paul V. Cohn, B.A.
VIII. THE CASE OF WAGNER: We Philologists, &c.
Translated by A. M. Ludovici. Crown 8vo. [Third Edition. * — *
IX. THE DAWN OF DAY. Translated, with Intro-
duction, by T. M. Kennedy.
X. THE JOYFUL WISDOM. Translated, with Intro-
duction, by Thomas Common.
XI. THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA. Revised Trans- -
lation by T. Common, with Introduction by Mrs. Foerstbr-
Nibtzsche, and Commentary by A. M. Ludovici. .
[Second Edition.
XII. BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL. Translated by Helen
Zimmbrn, with Introduction by T. Common. [Third Edition. *• —
XIII. THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS. Translated by
Horace B. Samuel, M.A, with Introductory Note. •—
XIV. THE WILL TO POWER, Vol. I. Translated, with
Introduction, by A. M. Ludovici. [Second Edition.
XV. THE WILL TO POWER, Vol. II. Translated, with
Introduction, by A. M. Ludovicl
XVI. THE TWILIGHT OF IDOLS, THE ANJI- -
CHRIST, &c Translated by A M. Ludovici. Crown 8vo.
XVII. ECCE HOMO AND POETRY. Translated by A. M.
Ludovici. Crown 8vo. -
Ready, Spring 1912.
SUPPLEMENTARY ESSAYS AND INDEX. Crown 8vo.
It is claimed for these translations that they have been written by accom-
plished German scholars, who have spared no pains to render the poetical,
passionate, racy, and witty style of Nietzsche in adeauate English. Original
and valuable introductions are prefixed to all the translations, giving all details
as to dates, circumstances, Nietzsche's development, &c, so that each volume
may be bought separately.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, Publishers, NEW YORK.
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STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES
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