THE SHADOW

THE SHADOW

BUT SCARCELY HAD THE voluntary beggar gone in haste, and Zarathustra was again alone, when he heard behind him a new voice that called out: “Stop! Zarathustra! Wait! It is I, O Zarathustra, I, your shadow!” But Zarathustra did not wait, for a sudden irritation came over him on account of the crowd and the crowding in his mountains. “Where has my solitude gone?” he said.

“Truly, it is getting to be too much for me; these mountains are swarming, my kingdom is no longer of this world, I need new mountains.

“My shadow calls me? What matters my shadow! Let it run after me! I—run away from it.”

Thus spoke Zarathustra to his heart and ran away. But the one behind followed after him, so that immediately there were three runners, one after the other, namely, foremost the voluntary beggar, then Zarathustra, and thirdly and hindmost his shadow. But not long had they run thus when Zarathustra became conscious of his folly and shook off with one jerk all his irritation and disgust.

“What!” he said, “haven’t the most ludicrous things always happened to us old hermits and saints?

“Truly, my folly has grown high in the mountains! Now I hear six foolish old legs rattling behind one another!

“But is Zarathustra really afraid of his own shadow? And anyway I think that it has longer legs than mine.”

Thus spoke Zarathustra, and, laughing with his eyes and his guts, he stood still and turned around quickly-and behold, in doing so he almost threw his shadow and follower to the ground, so closely had the latter followed at his heels and so weak was he. For when Zarathustra scrutinized him with his glance, he was frightened as if he suddenly saw a ghost, so slight, dark, hollow and spent this follower seemed.

“Who are you?” asked Zarathustra vehemently, “what are you doing here? And why do you call yourself my shadow? I do not like you.”

“Forgive me,” answered the shadow, “that it is I; and you do not like me, well then, O Zarathustra! I admire you and your good taste for that.

“I am a wanderer, who has already walked long at your heels; always on the way, but without a goal, also without a home: so that truly, I am not far from being the Eternal Jew, except that I am not eternal and not a Jew.

“What? Must I ever be on the way? Whirled by every wind, unsettled, driven about? O earth, you have become too round for me!

“On every surface I have already sat, like tired dust I have fallen asleep on mirrors and windowpanes: everything takes from me, nothing gives; I become thin—I am almost like a shadow.

“But I have fled to you and followed you longest, O Zarathustra, and although I hid myself from you, I was nevertheless your best shadow: wherever you have sat I sat there too.

“I wandered about with you in the remotest, coldest worlds, like a ghost that voluntarily haunts winter roofs and snows.

“With you I have striven into all the forbidden, all the worst and the furthest: and if there is anything of virtue in me, it is that I have had no fear of any prohibition.

“With you I have broken up whatever my heart revered, I have overthrown all border stones and statues, I pursued the most dangerous wishes-truly, I once went beyond every crime.

“With you I unlearned the belief in words and values and great names. When the devil sheds his skin doesn’t his name also fall away? It is also skin. The devil himself is perhaps-skin.

“ ‘Nothing is true, everything is permitted’: so I said to myself. Into the coldest water I plunged with head and heart. Ah, how often I stood there naked on that account, like a red crab!

“Ah, where have all my goodness and all my shame and all my belief in the good gone! Ah, where is the lying innocence which I once possessed, the innocence of the good and of their noble lies!

“Too often, truly, I followed close on the heels of truth: then it kicked me in the face. Sometimes I meant to lie, and behold! then only did I hit—the truth.

“Too much has become clear to me: now it does not concern me any more. Nothing that I love lives any longer—how should I still love myself?

“ ‘To live as I wish, or not to live at all’: so I want it; so also the holiest want it. But ah! how do I still have-desire?

“Do I—still have a goal? A haven towards which my sail is set?

“A good wind? Ah, only he who knows where he sails, knows what wind is good, and a fair wind for him.

“What still remains to me? A heart weary and insolent; a restless will; fluttering wings; a broken backbone.

“This seeking for my home: O Zarathustra, you know that this seeking has been my home-sickening, it consumes me.

‘Where is—my home?’ I ask and seek and have sought for it, I have not found it. O eternal everywhere, O eternal nowhere, O eternal-in vain!”

Thus spoke the shadow and Zarathustra’s face lengthened at his words. “You are my shadow!” he said at last sadly.

“Your danger is not small, you free spirit and wanderer! You have had a bad day: see that a still worse evening does not overtake you!

“To such unsettled ones as you at last even a prison seems bliss. Have you ever seen how captured criminals sleep? They sleep quietly, they enjoy their new security.

“Beware or else in the end a narrow faith will capture you, a hard, rigorous illusion! For now everything that is narrow and fixed seduces and tempts you.

“You have lost your goal. Ah, how will you get over and laugh away that loss? With that—you have also lost your way!

“You poor traveler, rambler, you tired butterfly! would you have a rest and a home this evening? Then go up to my cave!

“There leads the way to my cave. And now I will run quickly away from you again. Already it is as if a shadow lay upon me.

“I will run alone, so that it may again become bright around me. Therefore I must still be a long time merrily upon my legs. But in the evening we shall—dance!”____

Thus spoke Zarathustra.