296. Alas! what are you, after all, my written and painted thoughts! Not long ago you were so variegated, young and malicious, so full of thorns and secret spices, that you made me sneeze and laughand now? You have already doffed your novelty, and some of you, I fear, are ready to become truths, so immortal do they look, so pathetically honest, so tedious! And was it ever otherwise? What then do we write and paint, we mandarins with Chinese brush, we immortalisers of things which LEND themselves to writing, what are we alone capable of painting? Alas, only that which is just about to fade and begins to lose its odour! Alas, only exhausted and departing storms and belated yellow sentiments! Alas, only birds strayed and fatigued by flight, which now let themselves be captured with the handwith OUR hand! We immortalize what cannot live and fly much longer, things only which are exhausted and mellow! And it is only for your AFTERNOON, you, my written and painted thoughts, for which alone I have colours, many colours, perhaps, many variegated softenings, and fifty yellows and browns and greens and reds;but nobody will divine thereby how ye looked in your morning, you sudden sparks and marvels of my solitude, you, my old, belovedEVIL thoughts!
From the Heights
By F W Nietzsche
Translated by L. A. Magnus
1.
MIDDAY of Life! Oh, season of delight!
My summer's park!
Uneaseful joy to look, to lurk, to hark
I peer for friends, am ready day and night,
Where linger ye, my friends? The time is right!
2.
Is not the glacier's grey today for you
Rosegarlanded?
The brooklet seeks you, wind, cloud, with longing thread
And thrust themselves yet higher to the blue,
To spy for you from farthest eagle's view.
3.
My table was spread out for you on high
Who dwelleth so
Starnear, so near the grisly pit below?
My realmwhat realm hath wider boundary?
My honeywho hath sipped its fragrancy?
4.
2.
Is not the glacier's grey today for you
Rosegarlanded?
The brooklet seeks you, wind, cloud, with longing thread
And thrust themselves yet higher to the blue,
To spy for you from farthest eagle's view.
3.
My table was spread out for you on high
Who dwelleth so
Starnear, so near the grisly pit below?
My realmwhat realm hath wider boundary?
My honeywho hath sipped its fragrancy?
4.
Friends, ye are there! Woe me,yet I am not
He whom ye seek?
Ye stare and stopbetter your wrath could speak!
I am not I? Hand, gait, face, changed? And what
I am, to you my friends, now am I not?
5.
Am I an other? Strange am I to Me?
Yet from Me sprung?
A wrestler, by himself too oft selfwrung?
Hindering too oft my own self's potency,
Wounded and hampered by selfvictory?
6.
I sought whereso the wind blows keenest. There
I learned to dwell
Where no man dwells, on lonesome icelorn fell,
And unlearned Man and God and curse and prayer?
Became a ghost haunting the glaciers bare?
7.
Ye, my old friends! Look! Ye turn pale, filled o'er
With love and fear!
Go! Yet not in wrath. Ye could ne'er live here.
Here in the farthest realm of ice and scaur,
A huntsman must one be, like chamois soar.
8.
An evil huntsman was I? See how taut
My bow was bent!
Strongest was he by whom such bolt were sent
Woe now! That arrow is with peril fraught,
Perilous as none.Have yon safe home ye sought!
9.
Ye go! Thou didst endure enough, oh, heart;
Strong was thy hope;
Unto new friends thy portals widely ope,
Let old ones be. Bid memory depart!
Wast thou young then, nowbetter young thou art!
10.
What linked us once together, one hope's tie
(Who now doth con
Those lines, now fading, Love once wrote thereon?)
Is like a parchment, which the hand is shy
To touchlike crackling leaves, all seared, all dry.
11.
Oh! Friends no more! They arewhat name for those?
Friends' phantomflight
Knocking at my heart's windowpane at night,
Gazing on me, that speaks "We were" and goes,
Oh, withered words, once fragrant as the rose!
12.
Pinings of youth that might not understand!
For which I pined,
Which I deemed changed with me, kin of my kind:
But they grew old, and thus were doomed and banned:
None but new kith are native of my land!
13.
Midday of life! My second youth's delight!
My summer's park!
Unrestful joy to long, to lurk, to hark!
I peer for friends!am ready day and night,
For my new friends. Come! Come! The time is right!
14.
This song is done,the sweet sad cry of rue
Sang out its end;
A wizard wrought it, he the timely friend,
The middayfriend,no, do not ask me who;
At midday 'twas, when one became as two.
15.
We keep our Feast of Feasts, sure of our bourne,
Our aims selfsame:
The Guest of Guests, friend Zarathustra, came!
The world now laughs, the grisly veil was torn,
And Light and Dark were one that weddingmorn.