With a lit lantern, in the radiant hours of the morning, the madman ran out into the market place and cried out: “I seek God! I seek God!” Since many of the people gathered there did not believe in God, he provoked a great deal of laughter. Is he lost? Is he afraid? Has he departed on a long voyage? Or has he emigrated? - were hysterical reactions. They howled and laughed.
The madman leaped into their midst, and piercing them with his stare, said: “Where has God gone? I’ll tell you. We have killed Him. You and I- we both have killed him. But how did we do this? Where are we going to? Are we not plunging down? Are we not drifting through an infinite nothing? Don’t you still hear the sound of the undertakers? God is dead and will always remain so.”
“There has never been a greater deed; and those who are born after us, for the sake of this deed, shall belong to a history, higher than all up until this moment.”
With that he became silent and contemplated his listeners; and they too fell silent and stared at him in shock. Disappointed, he hurled his lamp at the ground and walked away, saying: “My time has not yet come. This monumental event is yet to come. It is yet to reach your ears, though long done. Thunder and lightening need time to strike; the light from the stars takes time to reach the earth. This deed is most distant that the distant stars, and yet they have done it themselves.”
Later that day, he was heard with his requiem in the churches. Dragged out and forced to account for himself, he had only one reply, “What are these churches, if not the graves and sepulchers of God?”
P.S. this is one of my favorite extracts written by the philosopher Nietzsche in his "Gay Sciences".
No comments:
Post a Comment