The Night Song
It is night: now do all leaping fountains speak louder. And my soul too is a leaping fountain.
It is night: only now do all songs of lovers awaken. And my soul too is the song of a lover.
Something unquenched, unquenchable, is in me, that wants to speak out. A craving for love is in me, that itself speaks the language of love.
Light am I: Ah, that I were night! But this is my solitude, that I am girded round with light….
I live in my own light, I drink back into myself the flames that break from me.
I do not know the joy of the receiver; and I have often dreamed that stealing must be more blessed than receiving.
It is my poverty that my hand never rests from giving; it is my envy that I see expectant eyes and illumined nights of desire….
Where have the tears of my eye and the bloom of my heart gone? Oh solitude of all givers! Oh silence of all light-givers!
Many suns circle in empty space: to all that is dark they speak with their light – to me they are silent….
It is night: Ah, that I must be light! And thirst for the things of night! And solitude!
It is night: now my longing breaks from me like a well-spring – I long for speech.
It is night: now do all leaping fountains speak louder. And my soul too is a leaping fountain.
It is night: only now do all songs of lovers awaken. And my soul too is the song of a lover.

…Thus sang Zarathustra.

Zarathustra is more a poet, is more a singer, is more a dancer than any other enlightened being has ever been. Even his prose is poetry, even his tears are pure joy, even his silence speaks, and speaks that which cannot be spoken. All his movements, all his gestures are that of a dancer, so full of grace, so full of beauty that he stands incomparable in the long history of mankind. He does not believe in a god, but he says, “I can believe in a god if he is capable of dance.” He believes in the dance of life, and he believes in the song the whole universe is made of.

He is a totally different kind of man than those you have become accustomed to know as saints, as sages, as messengers of god, as prophets, as messiahs. He is too human to pretend all that nonsense, and he is too proud of being human to be a prophet or a messiah.

He is so fulfilled as a human being, that even a god has nothing to give him. He is overflowing with love, overflowing with sharing, overflowing with dreams, the greatest dreams that have ever been dreamt – dreams of human beings going through a metamorphosis and becoming super-human, going beyond all that is animal in man, transcending all that is mean and ugly, reaching to the heights of pure consciousness, blissfulness, ecstasy and creativity.

Such a man is the rarest of the rare. Each of his words is so full of beauty, that even twenty-five centuries have not been able to take away their freshness, their originality. He has not been succeeded by anyone, he still remains alone in immense purity and ecstasy, and perhaps he will always remain without a companion – his height is such; Everest cannot have companions.

It is night: now do all leaping fountains speak louder. And my soul too is a leaping fountain.

There have been great human beings who have prayed that their souls should move from darkness to light, from death to immortality, from untruth to truth. Zarathustra is not one of them. He is capable of transforming the very darkness into a new dimension of existence. There is no need to create the contradiction between the darkness and the light, between the day and the night. The day has its own beauty, but it also has its flaws. Light is always superficial, it has no depth, light is always dependent. Dependent on certain fuel: as the fuel is finished the light is finished. The light is caused – it is an effect.