ON POETS
ON POETS12
“SINCE I HAVE KNOWN the body better”—said Zarathustra to one of his disciples—“the spirit has been spirit only figuratively; and all that is ‘imperishable’—that too is only a simile.”
“I heard you say so once before,” answered the disciple, “and then you added: ‘But the poets lie too much.’ Why did you say that the poets lie too much?”13
“Why?” said Zarathustra. “You ask why? I am not one of those who may be questioned about their why.
“Is my experience only from yesterday? It was long ago that I experienced the reasons for my opinions.
“Should I not have to be a barrel of memory if I wanted to carry my reasons around with me?
“It is already too much for me even to retain my opinions; and many a bird flies away.
“And now and then I also find an unfamiliar stray in my dove-cote, which trembles when I lay my hand upon it.
“But what did Zarathustra once say to you? That the poets lie too much?-But Zarathustra too is a poet.
“Now you believe that he spoke the truth here? Why do you believe it?”
The disciple answered: “I believe in Zarathustra.” But Zarathustra shook his head and smiled.—
Belief does not make me blessed, he said, least of all belief in me.
But granting that some one did say in all seriousness that the poets lie too much: he was right—we do lie too much.
We also know too little and are bad learners: so we have to lie.
And which of us poets has not adulterated his wine? Many a poisonous mishmash has been produced in our cellars, many an indescribable thing has been done there.
And because we know little, therefore the poor in spirit please our hearts, especially when they are young women!
And we desire even those things which old women tell one another in the evening. This we call the eternal-feminine in us.
And we believe in the people and their “wisdom” as if there were a special secret entrance to knowledge which is blocked to those who have learned anything.
This, however, all poets believe: that whoever pricks up his ears when lying in the grass or on lonely slopes, learns something of the things that are between heaven and earth.
And if they experience tender emotions, then the poets always think that nature herself is in love with them:
And that she steals to their ear to whisper secrets into it, and amorous flatteries: of this they boast and pride themselves before all mortals!
Ah, there are so many things between heaven and earth of which only the poets have dreamed!14
And especially above the heavens: for all gods are poet’s parables, poet’s prevarications!
Truly, it always lifts us upward-that is to the land of the clouds: on these we set our motley bastards and call them gods and Übermenschen:15—
Are they not light enough for those chairs!—all these gods and Übermenschen?—
Ah, how weary I am of all these inadequate beings that are insisted on as actual! Ah, how weary I am of the poets!
When Zarathustra spoke thus his disciple was angry with him but was silent. And Zarathustra was silent too; and his eye looked inward as if it gazed into the far distance. At last he sighed and drew breath.-I am of today and before, he said then; but something is in me that is of tomorrow, and the day following, and time to come.
I became weary of the poets, of the old and of the new: to me they are all superficial and shallow seas.
They have not thought deeply enough: therefore their feeling did not touch bottom.
Some lust and some boredom: these have as yet been their best reflection.
All the jingling of their harps is to me the breathing and coughing of ghosts; what have they known so far of the fervor of tones!—
They are also not pure enough for me: they all muddy their waters to make them seem deep.
And they would like to prove themselves reconcilers: but to me they are mediators and meddlers, and half-and-half and impure!—
Ah, I cast my net into their sea and meant to catch good fish; but I always drew out the head of some old god.
Thus the sea gave the hungry a stone. And they themselves may well have come from the sea.
Certainly, one finds pearls in them: in that way they are the more like hard mollusks. And instead of a soul I often found salty slime in them.
They have learned vanity too from the sea: is not the sea the peacock of peacocks?
It unfurls its tail even before the ugliest of all buffaloes it spread out its tail, it never tires of its lace fan of silver and silk.
The buffalo looks on disdainfully, his soul like the sand, more yet like the thicket, but most like the swamp.
What is beauty and sea and peacock-splendor to him! This parable I speak to the poets.
Truly, their spirit itself is the peacock of peacocks, and a sea of vanity!
The spirit of the poet seeks spectators: even if they are also buffaloes! —
But I became weary of this spirit: and I see the time coming when it will become weary of itself.
Already I have seen the poets transformed and their glance turned towards themselves.
I saw ascetics of the spirit approach: they grew out of the poets.
Thus spoke Zarathustra.