Page:Thus Spake Zarathustra - Thomas Common - 1917.djvu/168

 And especially above the heavens: for all gods are poet-symbolisations, poet-sophistications!

Ever are we drawn aloft- that is, to the realm of the clouds: on these do we set our gaudy puppets, and then call them gods and supermen:-

Are not they light enough for those chairs!- all these gods and supermen?-

Ah, how I am weary of all the inadequate that is insisted on as actual! Ah, how I am weary of the poets!

When Zarathustra so spoke, his disciple resented it, but was silent. And Zarathustra also was silent; and his eye directed itself inwardly, as if it gazed into the far distance. At last he sighed and drew breath.-

I am of today and heretofore, said he then; but something is in me that is of the morrow, and the day following, and the hereafter.

I became weary of the poets, of the old and of the new: superficial are they all to me, and shallow seas.

They did not think sufficiently into the depth; therefore their feeling did not reach to the bottom.

Some sensation of voluptuousness and some sensation of tedium: these have as yet been their best contemplation.

Ghost-breathing and ghost-whisking, seems to me all the jingle-jangling of their harps; what have they known hitherto of the fervor of tones!-

They are also not pure enough for me: they all muddle their water that it may seem deep.

And rather would they thereby prove themselves reconcilers: but mediaries and mixers are they to me, and half-and-half, and impure!-

Ah, I cast indeed my net into their sea, and meant to catch