Of the Flies of the Marketplace
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Flee, my friend, into your solitude!
I see you dazed by the noise of the great men and stung by the pricks of the petty ones.
The forest and the rock know how to be silent with you, they are worthy of your silence.
Become again like the tree you love, the broad-branched one: silently and attentively it hangs above the sea.
Where solitude ends, the marketplace begins;
And where the marketplace begins, the noise of great actors and the buzzing of poisonous flies also begins.
Even the finest things in the world are worthless if no one performs them:
The people call such performers “great men”.
The people understand little of what is great—that is, what is creative.
But they have a sense for all performers and actors of great things.
The world revolves around the creators of new values—unseen it revolves.
But fame and the people revolve around the actors: such is the course of the world.
The actor has spirit—but little conscience of the spirit.
He always believes in that which makes others believe most strongly—in himself!
Tomorrow he will have a new belief, and the day after an even newer one.
He has quick senses, like the people, and shifting moods.
To overturn—that is for him to prove.
To drive mad—that is for him to convince.
And blood counts to him as the best of all reasons.
A truth that slips only into refined ears he calls a lie and nothingness.
Truly, he only believes in gods who make a loud noise in the world!
The marketplace is full of solemn clowns,
And the people pride themselves on their great men! These are their rulers of the hour.
But the hour presses them: thus they press you.
And from you too, they want a Yes or a No.
Woe unto you if you would place your chair between For and Against!
Because of these uncompromising and pressing ones, be without envy, you lover of truth!
Never yet has truth clung to the arm of an uncompromising one.
Because of these sudden ones, return to your security:
Only in the marketplace are you assaulted with Yes? or No?
Slow is the experience of all deep wells:
Long must they wait to know what fell into their depths.
All great things occur away from the marketplace and fame:
The inventors of new values have always dwelled far from the marketplace and fame.
Flee, my friend, into your solitude:
I see you stung by poisonous flies.
Flee to where rough, strong air blows!
Flee into your solitude!
You lived too near to the petty and the pitiful.
Flee their invisible revenge!
They are nothing to you but revenge.
Lift not your arm against them!
Innumerable are they, and it is not your fate to be a flyswatter.
Innumerable are the petty and the pitiful;
And to many a proud structure, rain-drops and weeds have brought ruin.
You are no stone—but already you have become hollow from many drops.
You will break and shatter from many more.
Weary I see you from the poisonous flies;
Bleeding from a hundred wounds I see you; and your pride even refuses to be angry.
They want blood from you in all innocence;
Blood is what their bloodless souls crave—and so they sting in all innocence.
But you, deep one, suffer too deeply even from small wounds;
And before you are healed, the same poison-worm crawls again across your hand.
You are too proud for me to kill these gluttons.
But beware lest it become your doom to bear all their poisonous injustice!
They buzz around you even with their praise:
Intrusiveness is their praise.
They want the closeness of your skin and your blood.
They flatter you like a god or a devil;
They whimper before you like before a god or a devil.
What does it matter! Flatterers they are and whiners—nothing more.
They often present themselves to you as charming.
But that has always been the cleverness of cowards.
Yes, the cowards are clever!
They think much of you with their narrow souls—you are always suspect to them!
Everything that is much thought about becomes suspect.
They punish you for all your virtues.
They truly forgive you only—your mistakes.
Because you are gentle and just of heart, you say:
“They are not to blame for their small existence.”
But their narrow soul thinks: “All great existence is guilt.”
Even when you are kind to them, they still feel despised by you;
And they repay your goodness with hidden wounds.
Your wordless pride always goes against their taste;
They rejoice when once you are humble enough to be vain.
What we recognise in a person—that we also inflame in him.
So beware of the petty!
Before you they feel small, and their baseness glows and burns in invisible revenge against you.
Did you not notice how often they fell silent when you approached,
And how their strength left them, like smoke from a dying fire?
Yes, my friend, you are a bad conscience to your neighbours:
For they are unworthy of you.
Thus they hate you and would gladly drink your blood.
Your neighbours will always be poisonous flies;
That which is great in you—that alone makes them more poisonous and ever more fly-like.
Flee, my friend, into your solitude,
To where the rough, strong air blows.
It is not your fate to be a flyswatter. –
Thus spoke Zarathustra.