ON THE RABBLE

ON THE RABBLE

LIFE IS A WELL of delight;5 but where the rabble drinks, too, all wells are poisoned.

I like all that is clean; but I dislike seeing the grinning maws and the thirst of the unclean.

They cast their eyes down into the well: now their revolting smile shines up at me out of the well.

They have poisoned the holy water with their lustfulness; and when they called their filthy dreams delight, they poisoned the language too.

The flame is frustrated when they put their damp hearts to the fire; the spirit itself bubbles and smokes when the rabble approaches the fire.

In their hands all fruit grows syrupy and over-ripe: their glance makes the fruit tree unsteady and withered at the crown.

And many a one who turned away from life, turned away only from the rabble: he did not want to share well and flame and fruit with the rabble.

And many a one who went into the wilderness and suffered thirst with the beasts of prey merely did not want to sit around the cistern with filthy camel drivers.

And many a one who came along as a destroyer and as a hail-storm to all orchards, merely wanted to put his foot into the jaws of the rabble and so to stop its throat.

And the bite on which I gagged the most was not knowing that life itself requires hostility and death and torture-crosses:—

But once I asked and almost suffocated on my question: What? Does life have need of the rabble too?

Are poisoned wells necessary, and stinking fires and soiled dreams and maggots in the bread of life?

Not my hatred but my nausea gnawed hungrily at my life! Ah, I often grew weary of spirit when I found even the rabble rich in spirit!

And I turned my back on the rulers when I saw what they now call ruling: bargaining and haggling for power-with the rabble!

I dwelt with closed ears among people with strange tongues: so that the language of their bargaining and their haggling for power might remain strange to me.

And holding my nose, I walked displeased through all of yesterday and today: truly all of yesterday and today smells foully of the writing rabble!

Like a cripple who has gone deaf and blind and dumb-thus have I long lived, that I might not live with the power-and writing-and pleasure-rabble.

Wearily my spirit climbed steps, and cautiously; alms of delight were its refreshment; and life crept along like the blind on a cane.

Yet what happened to me? How did I save myself from nausea? Who rejuvenated my eyes? How did I fly to the height where the rabble no more sits at the well?

Did my nausea itself create wings for me and water-divining powers? Truly, I had to fly to the loftiest height to find the well of delight again!

Oh, I have found it, my brothers! Here on the loftiest height the well of delight gushes up for me! And here there is a life at which no rabble drinks!

You stream almost too violently, fountain of delight! And often you empty the cup again, by wanting to fill it!

And I must yet learn to approach you more modestly: all-too-violently my heart still streams towards you:—

My heart on which my summer burns, short, hot, melancholy, overjoyful: how my summer heart longs for your coolness!

Gone is the lingering distress of my spring! Gone the malice of my snowflakes in June! Summer have I become entirely, and summer noon!

A summer on the loftiest height with cold wells and blissful stillness: oh come, my friends, that the stillness may become yet more blissful!

For this is our height and our home: we live here too high and steep for all the unclean and their thirst.

Only cast your pure eyes into the well of my delight, friends! How should that make it muddy! It shall laugh back at you with its purity.

We build our nest on the tree Future; in our solitude eagles shall bring us food in their beaks!

Truly, food which the unclean could not share! They would think they were eating fire and burn their mouths!

Truly, we keep no homes here for the unclean! Their bodies and their spirits would call our happiness an ice cave!

And we want to live above them as strong winds, neighbors to the eagles, neighbors to the snow, neighbors to the sun: thus live strong winds.

And like a wind I will one day blow among them and with my spirit take the breath from their spirit: thus my future wills it.

Truly, Zarathustra is a strong wind to all the low; and he offers this advice to his enemies and all that spits and spews: “Take care not to spit against the wind!”—

Thus spoke Zarathustra.