The Twilight of the Idols · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
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Goethe is the last German whom I respect: he had understood three things as I understand them. We also agree as to the “cross.”[9] People often ask me why on earth I write in _German:_ nowhere am I less read than in the Fatherland. But who knows whether I even _desire_ to be read at present?—To create things on which time may try its teeth in vain; to be concerned both in the form and the substance of my writing, about a certain degree of immortality—never have I been modest enough to demand less of myself. The aphorism, the sentence, in both of which I, as the first among Germans, am a master, are the forms of “eternity”; it is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a whole book,—what everyone else does _not_ say in a whole book. I have given mankind the deepest book it possesses, my _Zarathustra;_ before long I shall give it the most independent one. [1] The German word _Rausch_ as used by Nietzsche here, suggests a blend of our two English words “intoxication” and “elation.”—TR. [2] An allusion to a verse in Luther’s hymn: “_Lass fahren dahin_ ... _das Reich muss uns doch bleiben,_” which Nietzsche applies to the German Empire.—TR. [3] A disciple of Schopenhauer who blunted the sharpness of his master’s Pessimism and who watered it down for modern requirements.—TR.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.