Page:Thus Spake Zarathustra - Thomas Common - 1917.djvu/199



1.
WHEN it got abroad among the sailors that Zarathustra was on board the ship- for a man who came from the Blessed isles had gone on board along with him,- there was great curiosity and expectation. But Zarathustra kept silent for two days, and was cold and deaf with sadness; so that he neither answered looks nor questions. On the evening of the second day, however, he again opened his ears, though he still kept silent: for there were many curious and dangerous things to be heard on board the ship, which came from afar, and was to go still further. Zarathustra, however, was fond of all those who make distant voyages, and dislike to live without danger. And behold! when listening, his own tongue was at last loosened, and the ice of his heart broke. Then did he begin to speak thus:

To you, the daring venturers and adventurers, and whoever has embarked with cunning sails upon frightful seas,-

To you the enigma-intoxicated, the twilight-enjoyers, whose souls are allured by flutes to every treacherous gulf:

-For you dislike to grope at a thread with cowardly hand; and where you can divine, there do you hate to calculate-

To you only do I tell the enigma that I saw- the vision of the most lonesome one.-

Gloomily walked I lately in corpse-colored twilight- gloomily and sternly, with compressed lips. Not only one sun had set for me.

A path which ascended daringly among boulders, an evil, lonesome path, which neither herb nor shrub any longer