THE UGLIEST MAN
THE UGLIEST MAN
—AND AGAIN ZARATHUSTRA’S FEET ran through mountains and forests, and his eyes sought and sought, but they nowhere found whom they wanted to see, the great sufferer and crier of distress. But all the time he was on his way he rejoiced in his heart and was full of gratitude. “What good things,” he said, “has this day given me, as amends for its bad beginning! What strange interlocutors have I found!
“At their words I will now chew a long while as at good corn; my teeth shall grind and crush them small, until they flow like milk into my soul!”—
But when the path again curved round a rock, suddenly the landscape changed, and Zarathustra entered into a realm of death. Here black and red cliffs bristled up, without any grass, tree, or bird’s voice. For it was a valley which all animals avoided, even the beasts of prey, except that a species of ugly, thick, green snake came here to die when they became old. Therefore the shepherds called this valley: “Snake’s Death.”
But Zarathustra became absorbed in dark recollections, for it seemed to him that he had once before stood in this valley. And much heaviness settled on his mind, so that he walked slowly and always more slowly, and at last stood still. Then, however, when he opened his eyes, he saw something sitting by the wayside shaped like a man and yet hardly like a man, something unspeakable. And suddenly there came over Zarathustra a great shame, because he had gazed on such a thing: blushing to the very roots of his white hair, he turned aside his glance, and raised his foot that he might leave this evil place. But then the dead wilderness resounded: for from the ground a noise welled up, gurgling and rattling, as water gurgles and rattles at night through stopped-up water-pipes; and at last it turned into human voice and human speech:-it sounded thus:
“Zarathustra! Zarathustra! Read my riddle! Speak, speak! What is the revenge on the witness?
“I entice you back; here is slippery ice! See to it, see to it, that your pride does not break its legs here!
“You think yourself wise, you proud Zarathustra! Read then the riddle, you hard nutcracker,—the riddle that I am! Say then: who am I!”
-But when Zarathustra had heard these words-what do you think took place in his soul then? Pity overcame him; and he sank down suddenly, like an oak that has long withstood many lumber-jacks, —heavily, suddenly, to the terror even of those who meant to fell it. But immediately he got up again from the ground, and his face became stern.
“I know you well,” he said, with a brazen voice, “You are the murderer of God! Let me go.
“You could not endure him who saw you,—who ever saw you through and through, you ugliest man. You took revenge on this witness!”
Thus spoke Zarathustra and was about to go; but the unspeakable grasped at a corner of his garment and began again to gurgle and seek for words. “Stay,” he said at last—
—“stay! Do not pass by! I have divined what axe it was that struck you to the ground: hail to you, O Zarathustra, that you are again upon your feet!
“You have divined, I know it well, how he who killed him feels,the murderer of God. Stay! Sit down here beside me; it is not to no purpose.
“To whom would I go but to you? Stay, sit down! Do not however look at me! Honor thus—my ugliness!5
“They persecute me: now you are my last refuge. Not with their hatred, not with their henchmen—oh, I will mock such persecution, and be proud and cheerful!
“Has not all success so far been with the well-persecuted? And he who persecutes well learns readily to follow—when once he is—put behind! But it is their pity—
—“it is from their pity that I flee away and flee to you. O Zarathustra, protect me, you, my last refuge, you the only one who saw into me:
—“you have divined how the man feels who killed him. Stay! And if you will go, you impatient one, do not go the way that I came. That way is bad.
“Are you angry with me because I have already mangled language too long? Because I have already advised you? But know that it is I, the ugliest man,
—“who also has the largest, heaviest feet. Where I have gone, the way is bad. I tread all paths to death and destruction.
“But that you passed me by in silence; that you blushed, I saw it well: by that I knew you as Zarathustra.
“Every one else would have thrown his alms to me, his pity, in look and speech. But for that—I am not beggar enough: you understood that—
“for that I am too rich, rich in what is great, frightful, ugliest, most unspeakable! Your shame, O Zarathustra, honored me!
“With difficulty I removed myself from the importunate crowd of the pitiful-that I might find the only one who at present teaches that ‘pity importunes’—you, O Zarathustra!
—“whether it is the pity of a god, or whether it is human pity: it is offensive to modesty. And unwillingness to help may be nobler than the virtue that rushes to do so.
“But that, pity, is called virtue itself today by all little people—they have no reverence for great misfortune, great ugliness, great failure.
“I look beyond all these, as a dog looks over the backs of thronging flocks of sheep. They are little good-wooled good-willed grey people.
“As the heron looks contemptuously at shallow pools, with its head bent back, so I look at the throng of grey little waves and wills and souls.
“Too long have we acknowledged them to be right, those little people: thus we have at last given them power as well—and now they teach: ‘good is only what little people call good.’
“And ‘truth’ today is what the preacher spoke who himself sprang from them, that singular saint and advocate of the little people, who testified of himself ‘I—am the truth.’
“That immodest one has long made the little people greatly puffed up—he who taught no small error when he taught ‘I—am the truth.’
“Has an immodest one ever been answered more courteously?—You, however, O Zarathustra, passed him by, and spoke: ‘No! No! Three times no!’
“You warned against his error, you were the first to warn against pity—not all, not none, but you and your kind.
“You are ashamed of the shame of the great sufferer; and truly when you say ‘from pity there comes a grey cloud, take care, mankind!’
—“when you teach ‘all creators are hard, all great love is beyond pity:’ O Zarathustra, how well versed in weather signs you seem to me!
“But you yourself—warn yourself too against your pity! For many are on their way to you, many suffering, doubting, despairing, drowning, freezing ones—
“I warn you too against myself. You have read my best, my worst riddle, myself, and what I have done. I know the axe that fells you.
“But he—had to die: he looked with eyes which saw everything, —he saw men’s depths and dregs, all his hidden ignominy and ugliness.
“His pity knew no shame: he crept into my dirtiest corners. This most prying, over-intrusive, over-pitiful one had to die.
“He always saw me: on such a witness I would have revenge—or not live myself.
“The god who saw everything, even man: that god had to die! Man cannot bear it that such a witness should live.”
Thus spoke the ugliest man. But Zarathustra got up and prepared to go on: for he was chilled to the marrow.
“You unspeakable,” he said, “you warned me against your way. As thanks for it I recommend mine to you. Behold, up there is the cave of Zarathustra.
“My cave is large and deep and has many corners; there the best hidden finds his hiding place. And close beside it, there are a hundred lurking places and byways for creeping, fluttering, and hopping creatures.
“You outcast who cast yourself out, you will not live among men and men’s pity? Well then, do as I do! Thus you will learn from me too; only the doer learns.
“And speak first and foremost with my animals! The proudest animal and the wisest animal-they may well be the best counselors for us both!”—
Thus spoke Zarathustra and went his way, even more thoughtfully and slowly than before: for he asked himself many things, and hardly knew what to answer.
“How poor indeed is man,” he thought in his heart, “how ugly, how wheezing, how full of hidden shame!
“They tell me that man loves himself. Ah, how great must that self-love be! How much contempt is opposed to it!
“Even this man has loved himself, as he has despised himself,he seems to me a great lover and a great despiser.
“No one yet have I found who despised himself more deeply: even that is height. Ah, was he perhaps the higher man whose cry I heard?
“I love the great despisers. But man is something that must be overcome.”—