Nietzsche: Night song

Many have heard about Nietzsche, not many have read any of his writing, and fewer still know about his poetry.

This is a crime that demands reparation…

Some might say that, to tell the truth, there seems to be poetry in most of Nietzsche’s writing, and certainly they wouldn’t be wrong, but I’m talking about this:

— What language will such a spirit speak when he speaks to himself? The language of the dithyramb. I am the inventor of the dithyramb. Listen to how Zarathustra speaks to himself before sunrise (3, 18): such emerald happiness, such divine tenderness did not have a tongue before me. Even the deepest melancholy of such a Dionysus still turns into a dithyramb. To give some indication of this, I choose the Night Song, the immortal lament at being condemned by the overabundance of light and power, by his sun-nature, not to love.

It is night: now all fountains speak louder. And my soul also is a fountain.

It is night: only now all songs of lovers awaken. And my soul also is the song of a lover.

Something unstilled, unstillable is within me, it wants to find expression. A craving for love is within me, it speaks the language of love.

Light am I: ah, that I were night! But it is my loneliness that I am girt with light!

Ah, that I were dark and nocturnal! How I would suck at the breasts of light!

And even you yourselves would I bless, you little twinkling stars and glowworms above!—and would be overjoyed with your gifts of light.

But I live in my own light, I drink back into myself the flames that break out of me.

I do not know the happiness of one who receives; and I have often dreamed that even stealing must be more blessed than receiving.

This is my poverty, that my hand never rests from giving; this is my envy, that I see waiting eyes and the illuminated nights of longing.

Oh misery of all givers! Oh darkening of my sun! Oh craving to crave! Oh ravenous hunger in satiation!

They take from me: but do I yet touch their soul? There is a cleft between giving and receiving; and the smallest cleft is the last to be bridged.

A hunger grows out of my beauty: I should like to hurt those for whom I shine, I should like to rob those to whom I give,—thus do I hunger for malice.

Withdrawing my hand when the other hand already reaches out to it; like a waterfall, which lingers even while it plunges: thus do I hunger for malice.

Such revenge my abundance plots, such spite wells up out of my loneliness.

My happiness in giving died in giving; my virtue became weary of itself in its overflow!

The danger of those who always give is that they lose their shame; the heart and hand of those who always dispense become callous from all the dispensing.

My eye no longer wells over at the shame of suppliants; my hand has become too hard for the trembling of filled hands.

Where have the tears of my eye gone and the down of my heart? Oh the loneliness of all givers! Oh the taciturnity of all who shine!

Many suns circle in barren space: to all that is dark they speak with their light—to me they are silent.

Oh this is the enmity of light toward those who shine: merciless it travels in its orbit.

In its innermost heart unjust toward those who shine, cold toward suns—thus travels every sun.

The suns travel like a storm in their orbits, they follow their inexorable will, that is their coldness.

Oh it is only you, you dark ones, you nocturnal ones, who create warmth out of that which shines! Oh only you drink milk and refreshment out of the udders of light!

Alas, ice is around me, my hand is burned by the iciness! Alas, thirst is within me, which languishes after your thirst!

It is night: alas that I must be light! And thirst for the nocturnal! And loneliness!

It is night: now my longing break out of me like a well,—for speech I long.

It is night: now all fountains speak louder. And my soul also is a fountain.

It is night: now all songs of lovers awaken. And my soul also is the song of a lover.—

What you just read is the “night song”, from Thus spoke Zarathustra, with the introduction Nietzsche gives of it in Ecce homo.

He describes the “Zarathustra” as perhaps the greatest gift ever giver to man, and talks about this dithyramb as the most felt, most suffered thing the world has seen: the suffering of a god. The suffering of Dionysus.