Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra

THIRD PART. 50. L. ON THE OLIVE-MOUNT. (continued)

But the clear, the honest, the transparent--these are for me the wisest silent ones: in them, so PROFOUND is the depth that even the clearest water doth not--betray it.--

Thou snow-bearded, silent, winter-sky, thou round-eyed whitehead above me! Oh, thou heavenly simile of my soul and its wantonness!

And MUST I not conceal myself like one who hath swallowed gold--lest my soul should be ripped up?

MUST I not wear stilts, that they may OVERLOOK my long legs--all those enviers and injurers around me?

Those dingy, fire-warmed, used-up, green-tinted, ill-natured souls--how COULD their envy endure my happiness!

Thus do I show them only the ice and winter of my peaks--and NOT that my mountain windeth all the solar girdles around it!

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

They commiserate also my accidents and chances:--but MY word saith: "Suffer the chance to come unto me: innocent is it as a little child!"

How COULD they endure my happiness, if I did not put around it accidents, and winter-privations, and bear-skin caps, and enmantling snowflakes!

--If I did not myself commiserate their PITY, the pity of those enviers and injurers!

--If I did not myself sigh before them, and chatter with cold, and patiently LET myself be swathed in their pity!

This is the wise waggish-will and good-will of my soul, that it CONCEALETH NOT its winters and glacial storms; it concealeth not its chilblains either.

To one man, lonesomeness is the flight of the sick one; to another, it is the flight FROM the sick ones.