《查拉图斯特拉如是说·第四部》第18节
Thus spake the hoary man, and gazed with keen eyes at him who stood before him. Zarathustra however seized the hand of the old pope and regarded it a long while with admiration. “Lo! thou venerable one,” said he then, “what a fine and long hand! That is the hand of one who hath ever dispensed blessings. Now, however, doth it hold fast him whom thou seekest, me, Zarathustra. It is I, the ungodly Zarathustra, who saith: ‘Who is ungodlier than I, that I may enjoy his teaching?’”— Thus spake Zarathustra, and penetrated with his glances the thoughts and arrear-thoughts of the old pope. At last the latter began: “He who most loved and possessed him hath now also lost him most—: —Lo, I myself am surely the most godless of us at present? But who could rejoice at that!”— —“Thou servedst him to the last?” asked Zarathustra thoughtfully, after a deep silence, “thou knowest HOW he died? Is it true what they say, that sympathy choked him; —That he saw how MAN hung on the cross, and could not endure it;—that his love to man became his hell, and at last his death?”— The old pope however did not answer, but looked aside timidly, with a painful and gloomy expression. “Let him go,” said Zarathustra, after prolonged meditation, still looking the old man straight in the eye. “Let him go, he is gone. And though it honoureth thee that thou speakest only in praise of this dead one, yet thou knowest as well as I WHO he was, and that he went curious ways.” “To speak before three eyes,” said the old pope cheerfully (he was blind of one eye), “in divine matters I am more enlightened than Zarathustra himself—and may well be so. My love served him long years, my will followed all his will. A good servant, however, knoweth everything, and many a thing even which a master hideth from himself. He was a hidden God, full of secrecy. Verily, he did not come by his son otherwise than by secret ways. At the door of his faith standeth adultery. Whoever extolleth him as a God of love, doth not think highly enough of love itself. Did not that God want also to be judge? But the loving one loveth irrespective of reward and requital. When he was young, that God out of the Orient, then was he harsh and revengeful, and built himself a hell for the delight of his favourites. At last, however, he became old and soft and mellow and pitiful, more like a grandfather than a father, but most like a tottering old grandmother. There did he sit shrivelled in his chimney-corner, fretting on account of his weak legs, world-weary, will-weary, and one day he suffocated of his all-too-great pity.”—
注释摘要
这一节以“最后一个教皇”的出场和自白，把上帝之死这个命题从宣告推进到一种近乎事后追述的阶段。老教皇一开口就交代了自己的身份：他是那位死去的旧上帝最后的仆人，如今“失去效忠对象”，既无主人又不自由，唯一还能让他快乐片刻的东西只有回忆。整段对话的情境因此带有一种双重残骸的气味——上帝死了，而服侍上帝的人也成了一具活的废墟。 查拉图斯特拉的反应藏着一个意味深长的…