BEFORE SUNRISE

BEFORE SUNRISE

O HEAVEN ABOVE ME, you pure one! Deep one! You abyss of light! Gazing on you I tremble with godlike desires.

To cast myself into your height—that is my depth! To hide myself in your purity—that is my innocence!

The god is veiled by his beauty: thus you hide your stars. You do not speak: thus you proclaim your wisdom to me.

Mute over the raging sea you have risen for me today; your love and your modesty make a revelation to my raging soul.

That you came to me beautiful, veiled in your beauty, that you spoke to me mutely, manifest in your wisdom:

Oh, how could I fail to divine all the modesty of your soul! Before the sun you came to me—the loneliest.

We have been friends from the beginning: we have grief and dread and ground in common; even the sun is common to us.

We do not speak to each other, because we know too much-: we are silent together, we smile our knowledge to each other.

Are you not the light of my fire? Do you not have the sister soul to my insight?

Together we learned everything; together we learned to ascend beyond ourselves to ourselves and to smile cloudlessly:—

—to smile down cloudlessly out of luminous eyes and out of miles of distance, when constraint and purpose and guilt steam beneath us like rain.

And I wandered alone: for what did my soul hunger by night and in labyrinthine paths? And I climbed mountains: whom did I ever seek upon mountains, if not you?

And all my wandering and mountain climbing: it was merely sheer necessity and a help in my helplessness—my whole will wants only to fly, to fly into you!

And what have I hated more than passing clouds and whatever defiles you? And I have even hated my own hatred because it defiled you!

I detest the passing clouds, those stealthy cats of prey: they take from you and me what we have in common-the uncanny boundless Yes-and Amen-saying.

We detest these mediators and mixers, the passing clouds: those half-and-half ones, that have learned neither to bless nor to curse from the heart.

I would rather sit in a tub under closed heavens, rather sit in the abyss without a heaven, than see you, luminous heaven, defiled with passing clouds!

And often I have longed to pin them fast with the jagged golden wires of lightning, that I might, like the thunder, drum upon their hollow bellies:—

—an angry drummer, because they rob me of your Yes and Amen!—You heaven above me, you purer! More luminous! You abyss of light!-because they rob you of my Yes! and Amen!

For I would rather have noise and thunder and storm curses, than this deliberate doubting cat’s repose; and also among men I hate most of all the soft-treaders and half-and-half ones and the doubting, hesitating passing clouds.

And “he who cannot bless shall learn to curse!”—this clear teaching fell to me from the clear heaven; this star stands in my heaven even in dark nights.

I, however, am a blesser and a Yes-sayer, if only you are around me, you pure one! Light! You abyss of light!-then into all abysses I carry my beneficent Yes-saying.

I have become a blesser and a Yes-sayer: and therefore I fought long and was a fighter, that I might one day have my hands free for blessing.

This, however, is my blessing: to stand above everything as its own heaven, its round roof, its azure bell and eternal security: and blessed is he who blesses thus!

For all things are baptized at the well of eternity and beyond good and evil; but good and evil themselves are only fugitive shadows and damp afflictions and passing clouds.

Truly, it is a blessing and not a blasphemy when I teach: “Above all things stands the heaven of chance, the heaven of innocence, the heaven of accident, the heaven of mischievousness.”6

“By Chance”7—that is the oldest nobility in the world, I gave that back to all things, I emancipated them from bondage under purpose.

I set this freedom and heavenly cheerfulness like an azure bell above all things, when I taught that over them and through them no “eternal will”—wills.

I set this mischievousness and folly in place of that will, when I taught: “In everything one thing is impossible—rationality!”

A little reason, to be sure, a seed of wisdom scattered from star to star—this leaven is mixed in all things: for the sake of folly, wisdom is mixed in all things!

A little wisdom is indeed possible; but I have found this blessed certainty in all things: that on the feet of chance they prefer—to dance.

O heaven above me, you pure one! High! This is now your purity to me, that there is no eternal reason-spider and -spiderweb:—

—that to me you are a dance floor for divine chances, that to me you are a god’s table for divine dice and dice players!—

But you blush? Did I speak the unspeakable? Did I blaspheme, when I meant to bless you?

Or is it the shame of being two that makes you blush!-Are you telling me to go and be silent, because now—day comes?

The world is deep-: and deeper than day had ever been aware. Not everything may be uttered in the presence of day. But the day is coming: so let us part!

O heaven above me, you modest one! Glowing one! 0 you, my happiness before sunrise! The day is coming: so let us part!—

Thus spoke Zarathustra.