The Portable Nietzsche

by Friedrich Nietzsche

Long silence too is a good prankish thing—and to look out of a bright round-eyed face, like the winter sky, and tacitly to hide one’s sun and one’s indomitable solar will: verily, this art and this winter prank I have learned well. It is my favorite malice and art that my silence has learned not to betray itself through silence. Rattling with discourse and dice, I outwit those who wait solemnly: my will and purpose shall elude all these severe inspectors. That no one may discern my ground and ultimate will, for that I have invented my long bright silence. Many I found who were clever: they veiled their faces and muddied their waters that nobody might see through them, deep down. But precisely to them came the cleverer mistrusters and nutcrackers: precisely their most hidden fish were fished out. It is the bright, the bold, the transparent who are cleverest among those who are silent: their ground is down so deep that even the brightest water does not betray it. You snow-bearded silent winter sky, you round-eyed white-head above me! O you heavenly parable of my soul and its pranks! And must I not conceal myself like one who has swallowed gold, lest they slit open my soul? Must I not walk on stilts that they overlook my long legs—all these grudge-joys and drudge-boys who surround me? These smoky, room-temperature, used-up, wilted, fretful souls —how could their grudge endure my happiness? Hence I show them only the ice and the winter of my peaks—and not that my mountain stil...