The Concealed Depth
Friedrich Nietzsche
Thus Spake Zarathustra

A reflection on the necessity of depth and concealment, where the soul's most profound truths are hidden beneath a mask of clarity to protect them from being violated.

...h diction and dice, I outwit the solemn assistants: all those stern watchers, shall my will and purpose elude. That no one might see down into my depth and into mine ultimate will—for that purpose did I devise the long clear silence. Many a shrewd one did I find: he veiled his countenance and made his water muddy, that no one might see therethrough and thereunder. But precisely unto him came the shrewder distrusters and nut-crackers: precisely from him did they fish his best-concealed fish!
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...
2
The Protective Surface
Friedrich Nietzsche
Beyond Good and Evil

A vision suggesting that a philosopher's adoration of superficial forms is a protective instinct, born from having previously dived too deep into the painful depths of reality.

...r ages may envy it: and how much naivete--adorable, childlike, and boundlessly foolish naivete is involved in this belief of the scholar in his superiority, in the good conscience of his tolerance, in the unsuspecting, simple certainty with which his instinct treats the religious man as a lower and less valuable type, beyond, before, and ABOVE which he himself has developed--he, the little arrogant dwarf and mob-man, the sedulously alert, head-and-hand drudge of "ideas," of "modern ideas"! 59.
Whoever has seen deeply into the world has doubtless divined what wisdom there is in the fact that men are superficial. It is their preservative instinct which teaches them to be flighty, lightsome, and false. Here and there one finds a passionate and exaggerated adoration of "pure forms" in philosophers as well as in artists: it is not to be doubted that whoever has NEED of the cult of the superficial to that extent, has at one time or another made an unlucky dive BENEATH it.
Perhaps there is even an order of rank with respect to those burnt children, the born artists who find the enjoyment of life only in trying to FALSIFY its image (as if taking wearisome revenge on it), one might guess to what degree life has disgusted them, by the extent to which they wish to see its image falsified, attenuated, ultrified, and deified,--one might reckon the homines religiosi among the artists, as their HIGHEST rank. It is the profound, suspicious fear of an incurable pessimism w...
2
Dance on Your Heads
Friedrich Nietzsche
Thus Spake Zarathustra

An exhortation to 'higher men' to embrace joy and dancing, suggesting that even the worst misfortunes can be overcome through a light-hearted and foolish happiness.

...garland crown: I myself have put on this crown, I myself have consecrated my laughter. No one else have I found to-day potent enough for this. Zarathustra the dancer, Zarathustra the light one, who beckoneth with his pinions, one ready for flight, beckoning unto all birds, ready and prepared, a blissfully light-spirited one:— Zarathustra the soothsayer, Zarathustra the sooth-laugher, no impatient one, no absolute one, one who loveth leaps and side-leaps; I myself have put on this crown! 19.
Lift up your hearts, my brethren, high, higher! And do not forget your legs! Lift up also your legs, ye good dancers, and better still if ye stand upon your heads! There are also heavy animals in a state of happiness, there are club-footed ones from the beginning. Curiously do they exert themselves, like an elephant which endeavoureth to stand upon its head. Better, however, to be foolish with happiness than foolish with misfortune, better to dance awkwardly than walk lamely. So learn, I pray you, my wisdom, ye higher men: even the worst thing hath two good reverse sides,— —Even the worst thing hath good dancing-legs: so learn, I pray you, ye…
So unlearn, I pray you, the sorrow-sighing, and all the populace-sadness! Oh, how sad the buffoons of the populace seem to me to-day! This to-day, however, is that of the populace. 20. Do like unto the wind when it rusheth forth from its mountain-caves: unto its own piping will it dance; the seas tremble and leap under its footsteps. That which giveth wings to asses, that which milketh the lionesses:— praised be that good, unruly spirit, which cometh like a hurricane unto all the present an...
Continue reading →
2
The Envious Friendship
Friedrich Nietzsche
Thus Spake Zarathustra

A personified dialogue with Life, who reminds Zarathustra that noise kills thought and that their relationship is defined by a playful, envious tension between wisdom and existence.

...her; let just thine arm sink! And art thou thirsty—I should have something; but thy mouth would not like it to drink!— —Oh, that cursed, nimble, supple serpent and lurking-witch! Where art thou gone? But in my face do I feel through thy hand, two spots and red blotches itch! I am verily weary of it, ever thy sheepish shepherd to be. Thou witch, if I have hitherto sung unto thee, now shalt THOU—cry unto me! To the rhythm of my whip shalt thou dance and cry! I forget not my whip?—Not I!”— 2.
Then did Life answer me thus, and kept thereby her fine ears closed: “O Zarathustra! Crack not so terribly with thy whip! Thou knowest surely that noise killeth thought,—and just now there came to me such delicate thoughts. We are both of us genuine ne’er-do-wells and ne’er-do-ills. Beyond good and evil found we our island and our green meadow—we two alone! Therefore must we be friendly to each other! And even should we not love each other from the bottom of our hearts,—must we then have a grudge against each other if we do not love each other perfectly? And that I am friendly to thee, and often too friendly, that knowest thou: and the reason…
— Thereupon did Life look thoughtfully behind and around, and said softly: “O Zarathustra, thou art not faithful enough to me! Thou lovest me not nearly so much as thou sayest; I know thou thinkest of soon leaving me. There is an old heavy, heavy, booming-clock: it boometh by night up to thy cave:— —When thou hearest this clock strike the hours at midnight, then thinkest thou between one and twelve thereon— —Thou thinkest thereon, O Zarathustra, I know it—of soon leaving me!”— “Yea,” answ...
Continue reading →
1
Break the New Table
Friedrich Nietzsche
Thus Spake Zarathustra

Nietzsche calls for the destruction of the 'new table' of weary nihilism and forced asceticism, which he views as a sermon for slavery preached by those who failed to learn life's best lessons.

...orld, or more wicked. “Let the world be as it is! Raise not a finger against it!” “Let whoever will choke and stab and skin and scrape the people: raise not a finger against it! Thereby will they learn to renounce the world.” “And thine own reason—this shalt thou thyself stifle and choke; for it is a reason of this world,—thereby wilt thou learn thyself to renounce the world.”— —Shatter, shatter, O my brethren, those old tables of the pious! Tatter the maxims of the world-maligners!— 16.
“He who learneth much unlearneth all violent cravings”—that do people now whisper to one another in all the dark lanes. “Wisdom wearieth, nothing is worth while; thou shalt not crave!”—this new table found I hanging even in the public markets. Break up for me, O my brethren, break up also that NEW table! The weary-o’-the-world put it up, and the preachers of death and the jailer: for lo, it is also a sermon for slavery:— Because they learned badly and not the best, and everything too early and everything too fast;
because they ATE badly: from thence hath resulted their ruined stomach;— —For a ruined stomach, is their spirit: IT persuadeth to death! For verily, my brethren, the spirit IS a stomach! Life is a well of delight, but to him in whom the ruined stomach speaketh, the father of affliction, all fountains are poisoned. To discern: that is DELIGHT to the lion-willed! But he who hath become weary, is himself merely “willed”; with him play all the waves. And such is always the nature of weak men: t...
3