ON THE MOUNT OF OLIVES

ON THE MOUNT OF OLIVES8

WINTER, A BAD GUEST, sits with me at home; my hands are blue from his friendly handshake.

I honor him, this bad guest, but I like to let him sit alone. I like to run away from him; and if one runs well, then one escapes him!

With warm feet and warm thoughts I run where the wind is calm, to the sunny corner of my mount of olives.

There I laugh at my stern guest and am still fond of him, for he drives the flies from my house and stills many little noises.

For he will not permit even a mosquito to buzz, far less two of them; and he makes the lanes lonely, so that the moonlight is afraid there at night.

He is a hard guest, but I honor him, and I do not pray, like the pampered, to the potbellied fire-idol.

Better even a little chattering of teeth than idol-worship!-so wills my nature. And I especially have a grudge against all fire idols in heat, steaming and musky.

Whom I love I love better in winter than in summer; now I mock my enemies better and more heartily since winter sits in my house.

Heartily, truly, even when I crawl into bed-: even there my hidden happiness laughs and plays pranks; even my deceptive dream laughs.

I, a—crawler? Never in my life have I crawled before the powerful; and if I ever lied, I lied out of love. Therefore I am glad even in my winter bed.

A simple bed warms me more than a rich one, for I am jealous of my poverty. And in winter it is most faithful to me.

I begin each day with a wickedness, I mock winter with a cold bath: my stern roommate grumbles at that.

I also like to tickle him with a wax candle: so that he may finally let the sky emerge from an ashen gray twilight.

For I am especially wicked in the morning: at the early hour when the pail rattles at the well and horses neigh warmly in grey lanes:—

Then I wait impatiently for the bright sky to dawn for me at last, the snowbearded winter sky, the old man with his white hair,—

—the winter sky, the silent one, that often even stifles its sun!

Did I perhaps learn from him the long bright silence? Or did he learn it from me? Or has each of us devised it himself?

The origin of all good things is a thousandfold-all good playful things spring for joy into existence: how should they do so-once only!

Long silence is also a good playful thing, and to gaze like the winter sky from a bright, round eyed face:—

—like it, to stifle one’s sun and one’s inflexible solar will: truly, I have learned well this art and this winter playfulness!

It is my favorite sarcasm and art that my silence has learned not to betray itself by silence.

Clattering with discourse and dice, I outwit the solemn attendants: my will and my purpose shall elude all those stern inspectors.

That no one might see down into my profundity and my ultimate will—for that I devised my long bright silence.

So many clever I have found: they veiled their faces and mud-died their waters so that no one might see through and under them.

But precisely to them came the cleverer distrusters and nutcrackers: precisely their most hidden fish were fished out!

But the bright, the forthright, the transparent—these seem to me the cleverest silent ones: in them the depth is so profound that even the clearest water does not—betray it.—

You snowbearded silent winter sky, you round eyed white haired above me! Oh you heavenly likeness of my soul and its pranks!

And must I not hide myself, like one who has swallowed gold, so that they shall not slit open my soul?

Must I not walk on stilts that they overlook my long legs—all those enviers and injurers around me?

These smoky, lukewarm, bedraggled, moldy, fretful souls—how could their envy endure my happiness!

Thus I show them only the ice and winter of my peaks-and not that my mountain still winds all the sunny belts around it!

They hear only the whistling of my winter storms: and do not know that I also travel over warm seas, like longing, heavy, hot southern winds.

They even pity my accidents and chances:-but my word says: “Let chance come to me: it is innocent as a little child!”

How could they endure my happiness, if I did not put accidents and winter distress and polar bear caps and mantles of snow clouds around my happiness!

-if I myself did not pity their pity: the pity of those enviers and injurers!

-if I myself did not sigh before them and chatter with cold, and patiently let myself be wrapped in their pity!

This is the wise playfulness and benevolence of my soul, that it does not conceal its winters and glacial storms; it does not conceal its chilblains either.

To one person loneliness is the flight of the sick; to another it is the flight from the sick.

Let them hear me chattering and sighing with winter cold, all those poor squinting rascals around me! With such sighing and chattering I still escape their heated rooms.

Let them sympathize with me and sigh with me on account of my chilblains: “He will yet freeze to death on the ice of knowledge!” —so they complain.

Meanwhile I run with warm feet here and there on my mount of olives: I sing in the sunny corner of my mount of olives and mock all pity.—

Thus sang Zarathustra.