Key Arguments

• The best grow weary of their works as the doctrine circulates, signaling value-exhaustion at the highest ranks.
• The refrain echoes from all hills, showing its epidemic, culture-wide diffusion and performative reinforcement.
• Fruits of labor rot, wine becomes poison, and fields/hearts are scorched—metaphors of spiritual and cultural decay.
• Dryness and ash-scattering imagery indicate desiccation of creative energies; even fire (passion, transformation) is made weary.
• Wells and even the sea dry up; the ground wants to open but depths do not devour—suggesting blocked sublimity and arrested transcendence.
• A desire to drown in a true sea is voiced, but only shallow swamps remain—nihilism without tragic grandeur.
• They are ‘too weary to die’ and persist in ‘burial chambers,’ living death as the form of life.

Source Quotes

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: “All is empty, all is the same, all has been!”

‘And from all hills it echoed again: “All is empty, all is the same, all has been!” ‘We have indeed harvested: but why did all our fruits turn rotten and brown? What fell down to us here last night from the evil moon?

What fell down to us here last night from the evil moon? ‘In vain was all our work; our wine has turned to poison; an evil eye has scorched our fields and hearts 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.

‘In vain was all our work; our wine has turned to poison; an evil eye has scorched our fields and hearts 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.

‘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! ‘ “Ah, where is there yet a sea in which we can drown”: thus resounds our lament–echoing over shallow swamps.

‘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! ‘ “Ah, where is there yet a sea in which we can drown”: thus resounds our lament–echoing over shallow swamps. ‘Verily, we have even become too weary to die; now are we still awake and live on–in burial chambers!’– Thus Zarathustra heard a soothsayer speak; and the prophecy touched his heart and transformed him.

All ground wants to tear open, but the depths do not want to devour! ‘ “Ah, where is there yet a sea in which we can drown”: thus resounds our lament–echoing over shallow swamps. ‘Verily, we have even become too weary to die; now are we still awake and live on–in burial chambers!’– Thus Zarathustra heard a soothsayer speak; and the prophecy touched his heart and transformed him. Sadly he wandered around and wearily; and he became like those of whom the soothsayer had spoken.

Key Concepts

• “All is empty, all is the same, all has been!”
• ‘We have indeed harvested: but why did all our fruits turn rotten and brown?
• ‘In vain was all our work; our wine has turned to poison; an evil eye has scorched our fields and hearts 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.
• ‘ “Ah, where is there yet a sea in which we can drown”
• ‘Verily, we have even become too weary to die; now are we still awake and live on–in burial chambers!’–

Context

Zarathustra hears a soothsayer prophesy a coming ‘long twilight’: a cultural-spiritual crisis characterized by nihilistic sameness and exhaustion.

Perspectives

Nietzsche

Treats this as a prefiguration of European nihilism and the exhaustion of value-creating forces; the slogan ‘all has been’ names the spirit of the ‘last men’ and eternal recurrence misread as fatalistic sameness.

Zarathustra

Is struck and temporarily infected by the mournfulness, acknowledging its nearness; he frames the challenge as preserving his light for the ‘farthest nights’ beyond the coming twilight.