"It is night: woe is me, that I must needs be light! And thirst after darkness! And loneliness!
"It is night: now doth my longing burst forth like a spring,—for speech do I long.
"It is night: now do all gushing springs raise their voices. And my soul too is a gushing spring.
"It is night: now only do all lovers burst into song. And my soul too is the song of a lover."
8
Such things have never been written, never been felt, never been suffered: only a God, only Dionysus suffers in this way. The reply to such a dithyramb on the sun's solitude in light would be Ariadne. ... Who knows, but I, who Ariadne is! To all such riddles no one heretofore had ever found an answer; I doubt even whether any one had ever seen a riddle here. One day Zarathustra severely determines his life-task—and it is also mine. Let no one misunderstand its meaning. It's a yea-saying to the point of justifying, to the point of redeeming even all that is past.
"I walk among men as among fragments of the future: of that future which I see.
"And all my creativeness and effort is but this, that I may be able to think and recast all these fragments and riddles and dismal accidents into one piece.
"And how could I bear to be a man, if man were not also a poet, a riddle reader, and a redeemer of chance!
"To redeem all the past, and to transform every 'it was' into 'thus would I have it'—that alone would be my salvation!"