Then he conceived a new task. All that he had hitherto done was but an awkward experiment or research; the time was come when he should erect the structure of his work. Of what work? He hesitated: his gifts as an artist, as a critic, as a philosopher, seduced him in various directions. Should he put his doctrine in the form of a system? No, it was a symbol and must be surrounded with poetry and rhythm. Could he not renew that forgotten form which was created by the thinkers of the most ancient Greece? Lucretius had handed down the model. Friedrich Nietzsche welcomed this idea; it would please him to translate his conception of nature into poetic language, into musical and measured prose. He sought, and his desire for a rhythmical language, for a living and, as it were, palpable form, suggested a new thought to him: could he not introduce at the centre of his work a human and prophetic figure, a hero? A name occurred to him; Zarathustra, the Persian apostle, the mystagogue of fire. A title, a subtitle, four lines rapidly written, announced the poem:
MIDDAY AND ETERNITY
Sign of a New Life
"Zarathustra, born on the borders of Lake Urumiyah, left his country when thirty years old, went towards the province of Aria, and in ten years of solitude composed the Zend-Avesta."
Henceforward his walks and meditations were no longer solitary. Friedrich Nietzsche never ceased to hear and gather the words of Zarathustra. In three distiches of a soft and almost tender seduction he tells how this companion entered into his life:
Sils-Maria
I sat there waiting—waiting for nothing, Enjoying, beyond good and evil, now The light, now the shade; there was only The day, the lake, the noon, time without end. Then, my friend, suddenly one became two—And Zarathustra passed by me.
In September the weather suddenly became cold and snowy. Friedrich Nietzsche had to leave the Engadine.