THE SUBLIME ONES
THE SUBLIME ONES
STILL IS THE BOTTOM of my sea: who would guess that it hides sportive monsters!
Imperturbable is my depth: but it sparkles with swimming riddles and laughter.
I saw a sublime one today, a solemn one, a penitent of the spirit: oh, how my soul laughed at his ugliness!
With upraised breast, and like those who draw in their breath: thus he stood, the sublime one, and in silence:
Overhung with ugly truths, the spoil of his hunting, and rich in torn clothes; many thorns also hung on him—but I saw no rose.
He had not yet learned laughing and beauty. This hunter returned gloomily from the forest of knowledge.
He returned home from the fight with wild beasts: but even yet a wild beast gazes out of his seriousness-an unconquered wild beast!
He always stands like a tiger about to spring; but I do not like those strained souls, my taste does not favor all these withdrawn men.
And you tell me, friends, that there is to be no dispute about taste and tasting? But all life is a dispute about taste and tasting!
Taste: that is weight and at the same time scales and weigher; and ah for every living thing that would live without any dispute about weight and scales and weigher!
If he became weary of his sublimity, this sublime one, only then would his beauty begin-and then only will I taste him and find him savory.
And only when he turns away from himself will he overleap his own shadow—and truly! into his sun.
Far too long he sat in the shade; the cheeks of the penitent of the spirit became pale; he almost starved on his expectations.
Contempt is still in his eye, and loathing hides in his mouth. To be sure, he now rests, but he has not yet lain down in the sunshine.
He should behave like the ox; and his happiness should smell of the earth, and not of contempt for the earth.
I would like to see him as a white ox, snorting and bellowing as he walks before the plough: and his bellowing should also praise all that is earthly!
His face is still dark; the shadow of his hand dances upon it. The sense of his eye too is overshadowed.
His deed itself is still the shadow upon him: his doing obscures the doer. He has not yet overcome his deed.
To be sure, I love in him the shoulders of the ox: but now I want to see also the eye of the angel.
He must unlearn his heroic will too: he shall be an exalted one, and not only a sublime one:-the ether itself should raise him, the will-less one!
He has subdued monsters, he has solved enigmas. But he should also redeem his monsters and enigmas; into heavenly children he should transform them.
As yet his knowledge has not learned to smile and to be without jealousy; as yet his gushing passion has not become calm in beauty.
Truly, not in satiety shall his longing cease and disappear, but in beauty! The generosity of the magnanimous should include gracefulness.
His arm across his head: that is how the hero should rest, and thus too he should overcome his rest.
But it is precisely to the hero that beauty is the hardest thing of all. Beauty is unattainable by all violent wills.
A little more, a little less: precisely this is more here, here it is the most.
To stand with relaxed muscles and with unharnessed will: that is the hardest for all of you, you sublime ones!
When power becomes gracious and descends into the visible: I call such descent beauty.
And from no one do I want beauty so much as from you, you powerful one: let your goodness be your last self-conquest.
I believe you capable of all evil: therefore I desire the good from you.
Truly, I have often laughed at the weaklings, who think themselves good because their claws are blunt!
You will strive after the virtue of the pillar: the higher it rises, the more beautiful and graceful it becomes, but inwardly harder and able to bear more weight.
Yes, you sublime one, one day you will also be beautiful, and hold up the mirror to your own beauty.
Then your soul will shudder with divine desires; and there will be worship even in your vanity!
For this is the secret of the soul: only when the hero has abandoned it does the superhero approach it in dreams.-Thus spoke Zarathustra.