I am a wanderer, who has already walked much at your heels; always on my way, but without goal, without home too, such that very little is lacking, truly, and I would be the Eternal Jew – except that I am not eternal and neither am I Jew.?

What? Must I always be on my way? Whirled by every wind, unsteady, driven out? Oh earth, you have become too round for me!?

I’ve already sat on every surface, like weary dust I have slept on mirrors and window panes: Everything takes from me, nothing gives, and I grow thin – I almost resemble a shadow.?

But after you, oh Zarathustra, I’ve flown and followed longest, and even when I concealed myself from you, I was still your best shadow: wherever you sat, I sat too.

With you I have haunted the remotest, coldest worlds, like a ghost that runs voluntarily over winter rooftops and snow.?

With you I strived to enter everything forbidden, worst, remotest; and if anything of mine is a virtue, then it is that I have feared no ban.?

With you I smashed anything my heart ever honored, I overthrew all boundary stones and images, I pursued the most dangerous wishes – indeed, I have passed over every crime once.?

With you I unlearned my faith in words and values and great names. When the devil sheds his skin, does his name not fall off too? For it too is skin. Perhaps the devil himself is – skin.

‘Nothing is true, all is permitted’: thus I persuaded myself. I plunged into the coldest waters, with head and heart. Oh how often I paid for it by standing there naked as a red crab!

Oh where has all my goodness and all my shame and all my faith in the good gone! Oh where has that mendacious innocence that I once possessed gone, the innocence of the good and their noble lies!?

Too often, to be sure, I followed on the heels of truth: and it kicked me in the head. Sometimes I believed I was lying and behold – that’s where I first hit – the truth.?

Too much became clear to me, now it doesn’t matter to me anymore. Nothing that I love lives anymore – how am I supposed to still love myself??

‘Live as I please or don’t live at all’ – that’s how I want it, and that’s how the saintliest person wants it too. But alas, how could I still have – pleasure??

Do I – still have a goal? A harbor toward which my sail turns??

A good wind? Indeed, only the one who knows where he’s sailing knows also which wind is good and which is his favorable wind.
What did I have left? A heart weary and insolent; a restless will; fluttering wings; a broken backbone.?

Ever a visitor, searching for my home, oh Zarathustra, you well know, this visiting was my visitation, and it devours me.?

‘Where is – my home?’ I asked, and I search and searched for it, but I have not found it. Oh eternal everywhere, oh eternal nowhere, oh eternal – in vain!”