《查拉图斯特拉如是说·第一部》第37节
XX. CHILD AND MARRIAGE. I have a question for thee alone, my brother: like a sounding-lead, cast I this question into thy soul, that I may know its depth. Thou art young, and desirest child and marriage. But I ask thee: Art thou a man ENTITLED to desire a child? Art thou the victorious one, the self-conqueror, the ruler of thy passions, the master of thy virtues? Thus do I ask thee. Or doth the animal speak in thy wish, and necessity? Or isolation? Or discord in thee? I would have thy victory and freedom long for a child. Living monuments shalt thou build to thy victory and emancipation. Beyond thyself shalt thou build. But first of all must thou be built thyself, rectangular in body and soul. Not only onward shalt thou propagate thyself, but upward! For that purpose may the garden of marriage help thee! A higher body shalt thou create, a first movement, a spontaneously rolling wheel—a creating one shalt thou create. Marriage: so call I the will of the twain to create the one that is more than those who created it. The reverence for one another, as those exercising such a will, call I marriage. Let this be the significance and the truth of thy marriage. But that which the many-too-many call marriage, those superfluous ones—ah, what shall I call it? Ah, the poverty of soul in the twain! Ah, the filth of soul in the twain! Ah, the pitiable self-complacency in the twain! Marriage they call it all; and they say their marriages are made in heaven. Well, I do not like it, that heaven of the superfluous! No, I do not like them, those animals tangled in the heavenly toils! Far from me also be the God who limpeth thither to bless what he hath not matched! Laugh not at such marriages! What child hath not had reason to weep over its parents? Worthy did this man seem, and ripe for the meaning of the earth: but when I saw his wife, the earth seemed to me a home for madcaps. Yea, I would that the earth shook with convulsions when a saint and a goose mate with one another. This one went forth in quest of truth as a hero, and at last got for himself a small decked-up lie: his marriage he calleth it. That one was reserved in intercourse and chose choicely. But one time he spoilt his company for all time: his marriage he calleth it. Another sought a handmaid with the virtues of an angel. But all at once he became the handmaid of a woman, and now would he need also to become an angel. Careful, have I found all buyers, and all of them have astute eyes. But even the astutest of them buyeth his wife in a sack.
注释摘要
这一节《孩子与婚姻》里，查拉图斯特拉把婚姻这件事从日常习俗的层面猛然拉到了存在的高度。他在开头就用一个很重的意象定下基调：把问题像铅锤一样抛入灵魂深处，去测量那个人的深度。这不是世俗的关怀，不是问对方是否到了婚龄、是否有人选，而是问：你有没有资格渴望一个孩子。资格的条件被他一条条列出——你要先是“胜利者、自我征服者、驾驭你诸激情的人、你诸美德的主人”。换句…