Chapter 8: First Day
Cap. viii. [97]
[HI 37] But on the third night, [98] a desolate mountain range blocks my way, though a narrow valley gorge allows me to enter. The way leads inevitably between two high rock faces. My feet are bare and injure themselves on the jagged rocks. Here the path becomes slippery. One-half of the way is white, the other black. I step onto the black side and recoil horrified: it is hot iron. I step onto the white half: it is ice. But so it must be. I dart across and onward, and finally the valley widens into a mighty rocky basin. A narrow path winds up along vertical rocks to the mountain ridge at the top.
As I approach the top, a mighty booming resounds from the other side of the mountain like ore being pounded. The sound gradually swells, and echoes thunderously in the mountain. As I reach the pass, I see an enormous man approach from the other side.
Two bull horns rise from his great head, and a rattling suit of armor covers his chest. His black beard is ruffled and decked with exquisite stones. The giant is carrying a sparkling double axe in his hand, like those used to strike bulls. Before I can recover from my amazed fright, the giant is standing before me. I look at his face: it is faint and pale and deeply wrinkled. His almond-shaped eyes look at me astonished. Horror takes hold of me: this is Izdubar, the mighty, the bull-man. He stands and looks at me: his face speaks of consuming inner fear, and his hands and knees tremble. Izdubar, the powerful bull trembling? Is he frightened? I call out to him:
***
"Oh, Izdubar, most powerful, spare my life and forgive me for lying like a worm in your path."
Iz: "I do not want your life. Where do you come from?"
I: "I come from the West."
Iz: "You come from the West? Do you know of the Western lands? Is this the right way to the Western lands?" [99]
I: "I come from a Western land, whose coast washes against the great Western sea."
Iz: "Does the sun sink in that sea? Or does it touch the solid land in its decline?"
I: "The sun sinks far beyond the sea."
Iz: "Beyond the sea? What lies there?"
I: "There is nothing but empty space there. As you know, the earth is round and moreover it turns around the sun."
Iz: "Damned one, where do you get such knowledge? So there is no immortal land where the sun goes down to be reborn? Are you speaking the truth?"
His eyes flicker with fury and fear. He steps a thundering pace closer. I tremble.
I: "Oh, Izdubar, most powerful one, forgive my presumptuousness, but I'm really speaking the truth. I come from a land where this is proven science and where people live who travel round the world with their ships. Our scholars know through measurement how far the sun is from each point of the surface of the earth. It is a celestial body that lies unspeakably far out in unending space."
Iz: "Unending -- did you say? Is the space of the world unending, and we can never reach the sun?"
I: "Most powerful one, insofar as you are mortal, you can never reach the sun."
I see him overcome with suffocating fear.
Iz: "I am mortal -- and I shall never reach the sun, and never reach immortality?"
He smashes his axe with a powerful, clanging blow on the rock.
Iz: "Be gone, miserable weapon. You are not much use. How should you be of use against infinity, against the eternal void, / [37/38] and against the unreplenishible? There is no one left for you to conquer. Smash yourself, what's it worth!"
(In the West the sun sinks into the lap of glowing clouds in bright crimson.)
"So go away, sun, thrice-damned God, and wrap yourself in your immortality!"
(He snatches the smashed piece of his axe from the ground and hurls it toward the sun.)
"Here you have your sacrifice, your last sacrifice!"
He collapses and sobs like a child. I stand shaking and hardly dare stir.
Iz: "Miserable worm, where did you suckle on this poison?"
I: "Oh Izdubar, most powerful one, what you call poison is science. In our country we are nurtured on it from youth, and that may be one reason why we haven't properly flourished and remain so dwarfish. When I see you, however, it seems to me as if we are all somewhat poisoned." [100]
Iz: "No stronger being has ever cut me down, no monster has ever resisted my strength. But your poison, worm, which you have placed in my way has lamed me to the marrow. Your magical poison is stronger than the army of Tiamat." [101] (He lies as if paralyzed, stretched out on the ground.) "You Gods, help, here lies your son, cut down by the invisible serpent's bite in his heel. Oh, if only I had crushed you when I saw you, and never heard your words."
I: "Oh Izdubar, great and pitiable one, had I known that my knowledge could cut you down, I would have held my tongue. But I wanted to speak the truth."
Iz: "You call poison truth? Is poison truth? Or is truth poison? Do not our astrologers and priests also speak the truth? And yet theirs does not act like poison."
I: "Oh Izdubar, night is falling, and it will get cold up here. Shall I not fetch you help from men?"
Iz: "Let it be, and answer me instead."
I: "But we cannot philosophize here, of all places. Your wretched condition demands help."
Iz: "I say to you, let it be. If I should perish this night, so be it. Just give me an answer."
I: ''I'm afraid, my words are weak, if they are to heal."
Iz: "They cannot bring about something more grave. The disaster has already happened. So tell me what you know. Perhaps you even have a magic word that counteracts the poison."
I: "My words, ph most powerful one, are poor and have no magical power."
Iz: "No matter, speak!"
I: "I don't doubt that your priests speak the truth. It is certainly a truth, only it runs contrary to our truth."
Iz: ''Are there then two sorts of truth?"
I: "It seems to me to be so. Our truth is that which comes to us from the knowledge of outer things. The truth of your priests is that which comes to you from inner things."
Iz (half sitting up): "That was a salutary word."
I: ''I'm fortunate that my weak words have relieved you. Oh, if only I knew many more words that could help you. It has now grown cold and dark. I'll make a fire to warm us."
Iz: "Do that, as it might help." (I gathered wood and lit a big fire.) "The holy fire warms me. Now tell me, how did you make a fire so swiftly and mysteriously?"
I: ''All I need are matches. Look, they are small pieces of wood with a special substance at the tip. Rubbing them against the box produces fire."
Iz: "That is astonishing, where did you learn this art?"
I: "Everyone has matches where I come from. But this is the least of it. We can also fly with the help of useful machines." / 38/39
Iz: "You can fly like birds? If your words did not contain such powerful magic, I would say to you, you were lying."
I: I'm certainly not lying. Look, I also have a timepiece, for example, which shows the exact time of day."
Iz: "This is wonderful. It is clear that you come from a strange and marvelous land. You certainly come from the blessed Western lands. Are you immortal?"
I: "I -- immortal? There is nothing more mortal than we are."
Iz: "What? You are not even immortal and yet you understand such arts?"
I: "Unfortunately our science has still not yet succeeded in finding a method against death."
Iz: "Who then taught you such arts?"
I: "In the course of the centuries men have made many discoveries, through precise observation and the science of outer things."
Iz: "But this science is the awful magic that has lamed me. How can it be that you are still alive even though you drink from this poison every day?"
I: "We've grown accustomed to this over time, because men get used to everything. But we're still somewhat lamed. On the other hand, this science also has great advantages, as you've seen. What we've lost in terms of force, we've rediscovered many times through mastering the force of nature."
Iz: "Isn't it pathetic to be so wounded? For my part, I draw my own force from the force of nature. I leave the secret force to the cowardly conjurers and womanly magicians. If I crush another's skull to pulp, that will stop his awful magic."
I: "But don't you realize how the touch of our magic has worked upon you? Terribly, I think."
Iz: "Unfortunately, you are right."
I: "Now you perhaps see that we had no choice. We had to swallow the poison of science. Otherwise we would have met the same fate as you have: we'd be completely lamed, if we encountered it unsuspecting and unprepared. This poison is so insurmountably strong that everyone, even the strongest, and even the eternal Gods, perish because of it. If our life is dear to us, we prefer to sacrifice a piece of our life force rather than abandon ourselves to certain death."
Iz: "I no longer think that you come from the blessed Western lands. Your country must be desolate, full of paralysis and renunciation. I yearn for the East, where the pure source of our life-giving wisdom flows."
We sit silently at the flickering fire. The night is cold. Izdubar groans and looks up at the starry sky above.
Iz: "Most terrible day of my life -- unending -- so long -- so long -- wretched magical art -- our priests know nothing, or else they could have protected me from it -- even the Gods die, he says. Have you no Gods anymore?"
I: "No, words are all we have."
Iz: "But are these words powerful?"
I: "So they claim, but one notices nothing of this."
Iz: "We do not see the Gods either and yet we believe that they exist. We recognize their workings in natural events."
I: "Science has taken from us the capacity of belief." [102]
Iz: "What, you have lost that, too? How then do you live?"
I: "We live thus, with one foot in the cold and one foot in the hot, and for the rest, come what may!"
Iz: "You express yourself darkly."
I: "So it also is with us, it is dark."
Iz: "Can you bear it?"
I: "Not particularly well. I personally don't find myself at ease with it. For that reason, I've set out to the East, to the land of the rising sun, to seek the light that we lack. Where then does the sun rise?"
Iz: "The earth is, as you say, completely round. Thus the sun rises nowhere."
I: "I mean, do you have the light that we lack?" / 39/40
Iz: "Look at me: I flourished in the light of the Eastern world. From this you can measure how fruitful this light is. But if you come from such a dark land, then beware of such an overpowering light. You could go blind just as we all are somewhat blind."
I: "If your light is as fantastic as you are, then I will be careful."
Iz: "You do well by this."
I: "I long for your truth."
Iz: "As I long for the Western lands. I warn you."
Silence descends. It is late at night. We fall asleep next to the fire.
***
[2] [HI 40] I wandered toward the South and found the unbearable heat of solitude with myself. I wandered toward the North and found the cold death from which all the world dies. I withdrew to my Western land, where the men are rich in knowing and doing, and I began to suffer from the sun's empty darkness. And I threw everything from me and wandered toward the East, where the light rises daily. I went to the East like a child. I did not ask. I simply waited.
Cheerful flowery meadows and lovely spring forests hemmed my path. But in the third night, the heaviness came. It stood before me like a range of cliffs full of sorrowful desolation, and everything tried to deter me from following my life's path. But I found the entrance and the narrow way. The torment was great, since it was not for nothing that I had pushed the two dissipated and dissolute ones away from me. I unsuspectingly absorb what I reject. What I accept enters that part of my soul which I do not know; I accept what I do to myself, but I reject what is done to me.
So the path of my life led me beyond the rejected opposites, united in smooth and -- alas! -- extremely painful sides of the way which lay before me. I stepped on them but they burned and froze my soles. And thus I reached the other side. But the poison of the serpent, whose head you crush, enters you through the wound in your heel; and thus the serpent becomes more dangerous than it was before. Since whatever I reject is nevertheless in my nature. I thought it was without, and so I believed that I could destroy it. But it resides in me and has only assumed a passing outer form and stepped toward me. I destroyed its form and believed that I was a conqueror. But I have not yet overcome myself.
The outer opposition is an image of my inner opposition. Once I realize this, I remain silent and think of the chasm of antagonism in my soul. Outer oppositions are easy to overcome. They indeed exist, but nevertheless you can be united with yourself. They will indeed burn and freeze your soles, but only your soles. It hurts, but you continue and look toward distant goals.
As I rose to the highest point and my hope wanted to look out toward the East, a miracle happened: as I moved toward the East, one from the East hurried toward me and strove toward the sinking light. I wanted light, he wanted night. I wanted to rise, he wanted to sink. I was dwarfish like a child, while he was enormous like an elementally powerful hero. Knowledge lamed me, while he was blinded by the fullness of the light. And so we hurried toward each other; he, from the light; I, from the darkness; he, strong; I, weak; he, God; I, serpent; he, ancient; I, utterly new; he, unknowing; I, knowing; he, fantastic; I, sober; he, brave, powerful; I, cowardly, cunning. But we were both astonished to see one another on the border between morning and evening.
***
I was a child and grew like a greening tree and let the wind and distant cries and commotion of opposites / [40/41] blow calmly through my branches, I was a boy and mocked fallen heroes, I was a youth pushing aside their clutching grips left and right, and so I did not anticipate the Powerful, Blind, and Immortal One, who wandered longingly after the sinking sun, who wanted to cleave the ocean down to its bottom so he could descend into the source of life. That which hurries toward the rising is small, that which approaches the descent is great. Hence I was small, since I simply came from the depths of my descent. I had been where he yearned to be. He who descends is great, and it would be easy for him to smash me. A God who looks like the sun does not hunt worms. But the worm aims at the heel of the Powerful One and will prepare him for the descent that he needs. His power is great and blind. He is marvelous to look at and frightening. But the serpent finds its spot. A little poison and the great one falls. The words of the one who rises have no sound and taste bitter. It is not a sweet poison, but one that is fatal for all Gods.
***
Alas, he is my dearest, most beautiful friend, he who rushes across, pursuing the sun and wanting to marry himself with the immeasurable mother as the sun does. How closely akin, indeed how completely one are the serpent and the God! The word which was our deliverer has become a deadly weapon, a serpent that secretly stabs.
***
No longer do outer opposites stand in my way, but my own opposite comes toward me, and rises up hugely before me, and we block each other's way. The word of the serpent certainly defeats the danger, but my way remains barred, since I then had to fall from paralysis into blindness, just as the Powerful One fell into paralysis to escape his blindness. I cannot reach the blinding power of the sun, just as he, the Powerful One, cannot reach the ever-fruitful womb of darkness. I seem to be denied power, while he is denied rebirth, but I escape the blindness that comes with power and he escapes the nothingness that comes with death. My hope for the fullness of the light shatters, just as his longing for boundless conquered life shatters. I had felled the strongest, and the God climbs down to mortality.
***
[OB 41] The Mighty One fell, he lies on the ground. [103]
Power must subside for the sake of life.
The circumference of outer life should be made smaller.
Much more secrecy, solitary fires, fire, caverns, dark wide forests, sparsely peopled settlements, quietly flowing streams, silent winter and summer nights, small ships and carriages, and secure in dwellings the rare and precious.
From afar wanderers walk along solitary roads, looking here and there.
Hurrying becomes impossible, patience grows. / [41/42]
***
[OB 42] The noise of the days of the world falls silent, and the warming fire.
Sitting at the fire, the shades of those gone before wail softly and give news of the past.
Come to the solitary fire, you blind and lame ones and hear of both kinds of truth: the blind will be lamed and the lamed will be blinded, yet the shared fire warms both in the lengthening night.
An old secret fire burns between us, giving sparse light and ample warmth.
The primordial fire that conquers every necessity shall burn again, since the night of the world is wide and cold, and the need is great.
The well-protected fire brings together those from far away and those who are cold, those who do not see one another and cannot reach one another, and it conquers suffering and shatters need.
The words uttered at the fire are ambiguous and deep and show life the right way.
The blind shall be lamed, so that he will not run into the abyss, and the lamed shall be blind, so that he will not look at things beyond his reach with longing and contempt.
Both may be aware of their deep helplessness so that they will respect the holy fire again, as well as the shades sitting at the hearth, and the words that encircle the flames.
***
The ancients called the saving word the Logos, an expression of divine reason. [104] So much unreason / [42/43] was in man that he needed reason to be saved. If one waits long enough, one sees how the Gods all change into serpents and underworld dragons in the end. This is also the fate of the Logos: in the end it poisons us all. In time, we were all poisoned, but unknowingly we kept the One, the Powerful One, the eternal wanderer in us away from the poison. We spread poison and paralysis around us in that we want to educate all the world around us into reason.
Some have their reason in thinking, others in feeling. Both are servants of Logos, and in secret become worshipers of the serpent. [105]
You can subjugate yourself, shackle yourself in irons, whip yourself bloody every day: you have crushed yourself, but not overcome yourself. Precisely through this you have helped the Powerful One, strengthened your paralysis, and promoted his blindness. He would like to see it in others, and inflict it on them, and would like to force the Logos on you and others, longingly and tyrannically with blind obstinacy and vacant stubbornness. Give him a taste of Logos. He is afraid, and he already trembles from afar since he suspects that he has become outdated, and that a tiny droplet of the poison of Logos will paralyze him. But because he is your beautiful, much loved brother, you will act slavishly toward him and you would like to spare him as you have spared none of your fellow men. You spared no merry and no powerful means to strike your fellow men with the poisoned arrow. Paralyzed game is an unworthy prey. The powerful huntsman, who wrestles the bull to the ground and tears the lion to pieces and strikes the army of Tiamat, is your bow's worthy target. [106]
***
If you live as he whom you are, He will come running against you impetuously, and you can hardly miss him. He will lay violent hands on you and force you into slavery if you do not remember your terrible weapon, which you have always used in his service against yourself. You will be cunning, terrible, and cold if you make the beautiful and much loved fall. But you should not kill him, even if he suffers and writhes in unbearable agony. Bind the holy Sebastian to a tree and slowly and rationally shoot arrow after arrow into his twitching flesh. [107] When you do so, remind yourself that each arrow that strikes him spares one of your dwarfish and lame brothers. So you may shoot many arrows. But there is a misunderstanding that occurs all too frequently and is almost ineradicable: Men always want to destroy the beautiful and much loved outside of themselves, but never within themselves.
***
He, the beautiful and most loved one, came to me from the East, from just that place which I was seeking to reach. Admiringly I saw his power and magnificence, and I recognized that he was striving for precisely what I had abandoned, namely my dark human milling crowd of abjection. I recognized the blindness and unknowingness of his striving which worked against my desire, and I opened his eyes and lamed his powerful limbs with a poisoned stab. And he lay crying like a child, as that which he was, a child, a primordial grown child that required human Logos. So he lay before me, helpless, my blind God, who had become half-seeing and paralyzed. And compassion seized me, since it was plain to me that I should not let him die, he who approached me from the rising, from that place where he could be well, but which I could never reach. He whom I sought I now possessed. The East could give me nothing other than him, the sick and fallen one.
***
You need to undertake only half of the way, he will undertake the other half. If you go beyond him, blindness will befall you. If he goes beyond you, paralysis will befall him. Therefore, and insofar as it is the manner of the Gods to go beyond mortals, they become paralyzed, and become as helpless as children. Divinity and humanity should remain preserved, if man should remain before the God, and the God remain before man. The high-blazing flame is the middle way, whose luminous course runs between the human and the divine.
The divine primordial power is blind, since its face has become human. The human is the face of the Godhead. If the God comes near you, then plead for your life to be spared, since the God is loving horror. The ancients said: it is terrible to fall into the hands of the living God. [108] They spoke thus because they knew, since they were still close to the ancient forest, and they turned green like the trees in a childlike manner and ascended far away toward the East. / [43/44]
Consequently they fell into the hands of the living God. They learned to kneel and to lie with their faces down, to beg for pity, and they learned to live in servile fear and to be grateful. But he who saw him, the terrible beautiful one with his black velvet eyes and the long eyelashes, the eyes that do not see but merely gaze lovingly and fearfully, he has learned to cry out and whimper, so that he can at least reach the ear of the Godhead. Only your fearful cry can stop the God. And then you see that the God also trembles, since he stands confronting his face, his observing gaze in you, and he feels unknown power. The God is afraid of man.
***
If my God is lamed, I must stand by him, since I cannot abandon the much-loved. I sense that he is my lot, my brother, who abided and grew in the light while I was in the darkness and fed myself with poison. It is good to know such things: if we are surrounded by night, our brother stands in the fullness of the light, doing his great deeds, tearing up the lion and killing the dragon. And he draws his bow against ever more distant goals, until he becomes aware of the sun wandering high up in the sky and wants to catch it. But when he has discovered his valuable prey, then your longing for the light also awakens. You discard the fetters and take yourself to the place of the rising light. And thus you rush toward each other. He believed he could simply capture the sun and encountered the worm of the shadows. You thought that in the East you could drink from the source of the light, and catch the horned giant, before whom you fall to your knees. His essence is blind excessive longing and tempestuous force. My essence is seeing limitation and the incapacity of cleverness. He possesses in abundance what I lack. Consequently I will also not let him go, the Bull God, who once wounded Jacob's hip and whom I have now lamed. [109] I want to make his force my own.
It is therefore prudent to keep alive the severely afflicted so that his force continues to support me. We miss nothing more than divine force. We say, "Yes, indeed, this is how it should or could be. This or that should be achieved." We speak thus and stand thus, and look about us embarrassed, to see whether somehow something will occur. And should something happen, we look on and say: "Yes, indeed, we understand, it is this or that, or it is similar to this or that." And thus we speak and stand and look around to see whether somewhere something might happen. Something always happens, but we do not happen, since our God is sick. We have seen him dead with the venomous gaze of the Basilisk on his face, and we have understood that he is dead. We must think of his healing. And yet again I feel it quite clearly that my life would have broken in half had I failed to heal my God. Hence I abided with him in the long cold night. [Image 44] / [Image 45] [110] / [44/46]