A Play for Everyone and Nobody
Requiem Aeternam Deo
by Fulya Peker
Page III
IV. TEACHING
[Zarathustra begins his teaching.
The Disciples sit with their backs to the audience.
During the teaching, the Disciple’s arms are stretched out like tree branches, and they rise gradually.]
ZARATHUSTRA
One day you will cry: everything is false! There are feelings that want to kill the solitary. If they do not succeed, well, then they themselves must die! But are you capable of being a murderer?
DISCIPLE 1
Speak to us Zarathustra! Speak to us more.
ZARATHUSTRA
At one time I too cast my delusion beyond the human, like all believers in a world behind. The work of a suffering and tortured God the world seemed to me then.
DISCIPLE 2
The work of a suffering and tortured God!
ZARATHUSTRA
Good and evil and pleasure and pain and I and Thou—colored smoke they seemed to me before creative eyes. To look away from himself was what the creator wanted—so he created the world. This world, eternally imperfect, image of an eternal contradiction—a drunken pleasure for its imperfect creator:—thus the world once seemed to me.
DISCIPLE 1
A drunken pleasure for its imperfect creator.
ZARATHUSTRA
Thus I too once cast my delusion beyond human, like all believers in a world behind. Beyond the human in truth? Ah, brothers, this God that I created was humans’ work and—madness, just like all Gods! Human he was, and just a meager piece of human and ‘I.’
DISCIPLE 2
Not from beyond did he come to us!
ZARATHUSTRA
Suffering it was and incapacity—that is what created all worlds behind; and that brief madness of happiness which only the greatest sufferer experiences.
DISCIPLE 1
Suffering it was and incapacity; that is what created all Gods and worlds behind!
ZARATHUSTRA
Dead are all Gods now, we want the Overhuman to live.
DISCIPLE 2
To live.
ZARATHUSTRA
Not around the inventors of new noise but around the inventors of new values does the world revolve; inaudibly it revolves.
DISCIPLE 1
New values!
ZARATHUSTRA
Once one said “God” when one looked upon distant seas; but now I have taught you to say: “Overhuman.”
DISCIPLE 2
Overhuman!
ZARATHUSTRA
God is a supposition. Could you create God? Then do not speak to me of any Gods! But you could surely create the Overhuman.
DISCIPLE 1
God is a supposition!
ZARATHUSTRA
But I would that your supposing might be limited by what is thinkable. Could you then think of God? What you have called world that shall be created only by you, your reason, your image, your will, your love it shall itself become! If there were Gods, how could I stand not to be a God! Therefore there are no Gods.
DISCIPLE 2
God is a supposition!
ZARATHUSTRA
But who could drink down the anguish of this supposition without dying? God is a thought that makes all that is straight crooked and all that stands twist and turn. Creating—that is the great redemption from suffering, and life’s becoming lighter. But that the creator may be, that itself requires suffering and much transformation. Away from God and Gods my will has lured me: what would there be to create if Gods existed! The beauty of the Overhuman came to me as a shadow. What are the Gods to me now!
DISCIPLE 2
Away from Gods!
ZARATHUSTRA
We should consider any day lost, on which we have not danced once! And we should call any truth false that has not been accompanied by one burst of laughter! Human society is an experiment and not a contract!
Now I am light, now I am flying, now I see myself beneath myself, now a God dances through me. I should only believe in a God who knew how to dance.
DISCIPLE 2
Let us fly like you Zarathustra!
ZARATHUSTRA
Whoever wants to learn how to fly must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance…one cannot fly into flying!
DISCIPLE 1
We believe in you Zarathustra! We believe!
ZARATHUSTRA
You say you believe in Zarathustra? But what does Zarathustra matter? You are my believers; but what do any believers matter? I am a railing by the torrent: grasp me, whosoever can! Your crutch, however, I am not! Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves. With my tears go into your isolation! I love him who wants to create beyond himself and thereby perishes.
DISCIPLE 2
Show us the way Zarathustra!
ZARATHUSTRA
Willing is creating. And only for the sake of creating you shall learn.
This is just my way: where is yours? You ask me the way…the way does not exist…
[Disciples collapse.
Black out.
Scream of a bird.]
V. DISTORTION OF TEACHING
[In front of the stage a Child appears.
The Child and Zarathustra mirror each other throughout the Child’s dialogue.]
CHILD
O, Zarathustra! Look at yourself in the mirror!
It is not yourself that you saw there. . . But a Devil’s grimace and mocking laughter. Your teaching is in danger. Your enemies have grown powerful and have distorted the image of your teaching. They want to know whether Zarathustra is still alive.
[The Child climbs under the fabric.
Zarathustra looks far away.
He sits still during the entire scene as if in a trance.
The Madman rises from his seat and approaches Zarathustra.]
MADMAN
We have become too weary to die; now are we still awake and live on—in burial chambers! We have indeed harvested: but why all our fruits turn rotten and brown? Our wine has turned to poison, and evil eye has scorched our fields and hearths yellow. Dry have we all become; and should fire fall on us, we are scattered like ashes: and even fire itself we have made weary. All our wells have dried up, and even the sea has retreated. All ground wants to tear open, but the depths do not want to devour!
I saw a great mournfulness come over humankind. The best became weary of their works. A teaching went forth and a belief along with it: “All is empty, all is the same, all has been!” And from all hills it echoed again...
[Echo is heard from afar: “All is empty, all is the same, all has been!”
The Madman exits.
The Jester enters and tries to provoke Zarathustra.]
JESTER
Here is Hell for solitaries’ thoughts: here great thoughts are boiled alive and then cooked down small. Here all great feelings decay: here only tiny skin and bone feelings are allowed to rattle! Do you not already smell the slaughterhouses and soup kitchen of the spirit? Do you not see souls hanging there like limp and filthy rags? Spit upon the city of flattened souls and narrow beasts, of sharpened eyes and sticky fingers upon the city of importunate, those who are shameless, the scrawlers and bawlers, overheatedly ambitious: where everything putrid and of ill repute, lusting and dusking, overrated and ulcerated and conspiratorial festers together: spit upon this city and turn back! Here, there is nothing to be made better, nothing to be made worse.
[The Disciples rise as a Crowd and talk directly to the audience.]
CROWD
Who is Zarathustra to us?
What shall we call him?
Is he a promiser? Or a fulfiller?
An inheritor? An autumn?
Or a ploughshare?
A physician?
Or one who has convalesced?
Is he a poet?
Or a truthful man?
A liberator? Or a subduer? A good man?
Or an evil one?
JESTER
[Imitating a hunchback.]
Even the people are learning from him and coming to believe in his teaching: but in order for them to believe him completely, one thing more is needed. He must first persuade us cripples too! The blind he must cure and the lame make to walk again; and from the one who has too much on his shoulders, he must well take a little away—that I think, would be the right way to make the cripples believe in Zarathustra!
ZARATHUSTRA
Shatter; shatter
CROWD
Ah where is there yet a sea in which we can drown!
Pious! Let us become Pious again!!
Let us become as little children again and say “Dear God!”
But, for a father God does not take good enough care of his children: human fathers do far better.
He is too old! He does not take care of his children at all any more.
But does he have any children!
No one can prove it if he does not prove it himself!
For a long time I have wanted him to prove it thoroughly for once!
Prove it? As if he had ever proved anything! Proof is hard for him…he thinks it is so important that we should believe him!
Yes! Yes! Belief makes him saved, belief in him! That’s so much the way with old people. It is that way for us too!
JESTER
[Imitating a pious man.]
Just let the world be the world! Do not lift even a finger against it! Let him who wants to strangle people and stab them and strip them and flay them; do not lift even a finger against it! From this will they yet learn to renounce world. And your own reason—that shall you yourself throttle and strangle; for it is reason of this world—therefore will you yourself learn to renounce the world. Whoever learns much will unlearn all violent desiring… nothing thou shalt not desire!
[The Jester exits.
Zarathustra remains perfectly still. Pain is visible on his face.
Only the audience can hear him.]
ZARATHUSTRA
Shatter; shatter…
CROWD
Why did we take any ways! It is all the same!
Nothing is worth while! Ye shall not will!
Wherefore to live? All is vanity! Living—that is threshing straw; living—that is consuming oneself in free and yet not becoming warm. All is vanity!
The world itself is a filthy monster…
[Finally, Zarathustra breaks the chains of stillness and shouts.
The others suddenly stop talking and look at him.]
ZARATHUSTRA
SHATTER!
You have called God whatever contradicted and hurt you. O humankind! You wondrous thing! You noise in dark lanes! I am stung all over by poisonous flies, especially those who call themselves “the good.” The gravediggers dig up illness for themselves. Under old ruins lurk evil vapors…
[Black out.
Scream of a bird.]
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