THE LAND OF CULTURE

THE LAND OF CULTURE 10

I FLEW TOO FAR into the future: a horror seized me.

And when I looked around me, behold! there time was my only contemporary.

Then I flew backwards, homewards—and always faster. Thus I came to you, you men of the present, and into the land of culture.

For the first time I brought an eye to see you and healthy desires: truly, I came with longing in my heart.

But how did it turn out with me? Although so alarmed—I had yet to laugh! Never did my eye see anything so mottled!

I laughed and laughed, while my foot still trembled and my heart as well: “Here indeed, is the home of all the paint pots,”—I said.

With fifty patches painted on faces and limbs-so you sat there to my astonishment, you men of the present!

And with fifty mirrors around you, which flattered your play of colors and repeated it!

Truly, you could wear no better masks, you men of the present, than your own faces! Who could—recognize you!

Written all over with the characters of the past, and these characters also penciled over with new characters-thus you have concealed yourselves well from all interpreters of signs!

And even if one could try the reins, who still believes that you have reins! You seem to be baked out of colors and scraps of paper glued together.

All times and peoples gaze many-colored from your veils; all customs and beliefs speak many-colored in your gestures.

He who would strip you of veils and wrappers, and paints and gestures, would have just enough left to scare the crows.

Truly, I am myself the scared crow that once saw you naked and without paint; and I flew away when the skeleton flirted with me.

I would rather be a day laborer in the underworld among the shades of the bygone!—Indeed the underworldlings are fatter and fuller than you!

This, yes this, is bitterness to my entrails, that I can endure you neither naked nor clothed, you men of the present!

All that is unfamiliar in the future, and whatever makes strayed birds shiver, is truly more familiar and cozy than your “reality.”

For thus you speak: “We are wholly real and without belief or superstition”: thus you thump your chests—ah, even with hollow chests!

Indeed, how would you be able to believe, you many-colored ones!—you who are pictures of all that has ever been believed!

You are walking refutations of belief and a fracture of all thought. Unbelievable: thus I call you, you real men!

In your spirits all ages babble in confusion; and the dreaming and babbling of all ages were even more real than your waking lives!

You are unfruitful: therefore you lack belief. But he who had to create, has always had his prescient dreams and astrological signs—and believed in belief!—

You are half-open doors at which gravediggers wait. And this is your reality: “Everything deserves to perish.”

Ah, how you stand there before me, you unfruitful ones; how lean your ribs! And indeed many of you have noticed that.

Many a one has said: “Surely a god stole something from me secretly while I slept? Truly, enough to make a little woman for himself!

“The poverty of my ribs is amazing!” thus many a man of the present has spoken.

Yes, you are laughable to me, you men of the present! And especially when you marvel at yourselves!

And woe to me if I could not laugh at your marveling, and had to swallow all that is repugnant in your bowels!

As it is, however, I will take you more lightly, since I have to carry what is heavy; and does it matter if beetles and dragonflies also alight on my load!

Truly, it shall not on that account become heavier to me! And not from you, you men of the present, shall my great weariness arise.—

Ah, where shall I now ascend with my longing! From all mountains I look out for fatherlands and motherlands.

But I have nowhere found a home: I am unsettled in every city and I depart from every gate.

The men of the present, to whom my heart once drove me, are alien to me and a mockery; and I have been driven from fatherlands and motherlands.

Thus I love only my children’s land, undiscovered in the remotest sea: I bid my sails to search and search for it.

To my children I will make amends for being the child of my fathers: and to all the future-for this present!—

Thus spoke Zarathustra.