the bygone, it findeth ever
the same: fragments and limbs and fearful chances--but no men!

The present and the bygone upon earth--ah! my friends--that is MY most
unbearable trouble; and I should not know how to live, if I were not a
seer of what is to come.

A seer, a purposer, a creator, a future itself, and a bridge to the
future--and alas! also as it were a cripple on this bridge: all that is
Zarathustra.

And ye also asked yourselves often: "Who is Zarathustra to us? What
shall he be called by us?" And like me, did ye give yourselves questions
for answers.

Is he a promiser? Or a fulfiller? A conqueror? Or an inheritor? A
harvest? Or a ploughshare? A physician? Or a healed one?

Is he a poet? Or a genuine one? An emancipator? Or a subjugator? A good
one? Or an evil one?

I walk amongst men as the fragments of the future: that future which I
contemplate.

And it is all my poetisation and aspiration to compose and collect into
unity what is fragment and riddle and fearful chance.

And how could I endure to be a man, if man were not also the composer,
and riddle-reader, and redeemer of chance!

To redeem what is past, and to transform every "It was" into "Thus would
I have it!"--that only do I call redemption!

Will--so is the emancipator and joy-bringer called: thus have I taught
you, my friends! But now learn this likewise: the Will itself is still a
prisoner.

Willing emancipateth: but what is that called which still putteth the
emancipator in chains?

"It was": thus is the Will's teeth-gnashing and lonesomest tribulation
called. Impotent towards what hath been done--it is a malicious
spectator of all that is past.

Not backward can the Will will; that it cannot break time and time's
desire--that is the Will's lonesomest tribulation.

Willing emancipateth: what doth Willing itself devise in order to get
free from its tribulation and mock at its prison?

Ah, a fool becometh every prisoner! Foolishly delivereth itself also the
imprisoned Will.

That time doth not run backward--that is its animosity: "That which
was": so is the stone which it cannot roll called.

And thus doth it roll stones out of animosity and ill-humour, and taketh
revenge on whatever doth not, like it, feel rage and ill-humour.

Thus did the Will, the emancipator, become a torturer; and on all
that is capable of suffering it taketh revenge, because it cannot go
backward.

This, yea, this alone is REVENGE itself: the Will