Sunday, April 16, 2006

Zarathustra 4

Zarathustra, however, beheld the people andwas amazed. then he spoke thus:
"Man is a rope, tied beweeen beast and overman-a rope over an abyss. A dangerous across, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and stopping.
"What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under.
"I lover those who do not know how to live, except by going under, for they are those who cross over.
"I love those who do not first seek behind the stars for a reason to go under and be a sacrifice, but who sacrifice themselves for the earth, that the earth may some day become the overman's.
"I love him who works and invents to build a house for the overman and to prepare earth, animal, and plant for him: for thus he wants to go under.
"I love him who loves his virtue, for virtue is the will to go under and an arrow of longing.
"I love him who does not hold back one drop of spirit for himself, but wants to be entirely the spirit of his virtue: thus he strides over the bridge as spirit.
"I love him who does not hold back one drop of spirit for himself, but wants to be entirely the spirit of his virtue: thus he strides over the bridge as spirit.
"I love him who makes his virtue his addiction and his catastrophe: for his virtue's sake he wants to live on and to live no longer.
"I love him who does not want to have too many virtues. One virtue is more virtue than two, because it is more of a noose on which his catastrophe may hang.
-from Thus Spake Zarathustra

this book is full of powerful imagery, but even I admit that it doesn't make much sense, but still, it says many things.


Five years have past; five summers; with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.-Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods
Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone
-wordsworth "lines composed above tintern abbey"

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