Key Arguments

• Where solitude ceases, there begins the market-place; the market-place is characterized by noise, play-acting, and poisonous flies that harm the creator’s work.
• Forest and rock keep a dignified silence that sustains broad-branched listening; greatness happens far from the market-place and fame.
• The people misunderstand what is great (the creative) and attend to showmen; thus the market-place corrupts reception and pressures creators with crude demands.
• The petty enact invisible revenge, innumerably stinging and wounding the deep, who suffer too deeply even from small wounds; staying among them hollows and breaks the noble.
• It is not the creator’s lot to swat flies; the many drops of petty malice can collapse proud structures—prudence counsels withdrawal rather than reactive combat.

Source Quotes

Flee, my friend, into your solitude! I see you deafened by the noise of great men and stung all over by the barbs of small ones.

Be again like the tree that you love, broad-branched: quietly listening it leans out over the sea. Where solitude ceases, there begins the market-place; and where the market-place begins, there also begins the noise of the great play-actors and the buzzing of poisonous flies. In this world even the finest things amount to nothing without someone to make a show of them: great men the people call these showmen.

I see you deafened by the noise of great men and stung all over by the barbs of small ones. Forest and rock know how to keep with you a dignified silence. Be again like the tree that you love, broad-branched: quietly listening it leans out over the sea.

Slow is experience for all deep wells: long must they wait before they know just has fallen into their depths. Far from the market-place and fame happens all that is great: far from the market-place and fame have the inventors of new values always lived. Flee, my friend, into your solitude: I see you stung all over by poisonous flies.

Toward you they are nothing but revenge. No longer raise your arm against them! Innumerable are they, and it is not your lot to be a swatter of flies. Innumerable are these petty and wretched creatures; and for the collapse of many a proud structure raindrops and weeds have been sufficient.

Key Concepts

• Flee, my friend, into your solitude!
• Where solitude ceases, there begins the market-place; and where the market-place begins, there also begins the noise of the great play-actors and the buzzing of poisonous flies.
• Forest and rock know how to keep with you a dignified silence.
• Far from the market-place and fame happens all that is great: far from the market-place and fame have the inventors of new values always lived.
• No longer raise your arm against them! Innumerable are they, and it is not your lot to be a swatter of flies.

Context

Opening and recurring imperative of ‘On the Flies of the Market-Place’; counsel to a friend/creator to withdraw from the market’s deforming environment to preserve creative strength.

Perspectives

Nietzsche

Endorses as a cultural-psychological strategy: higher types require protective distance (distance of rank) from the herd’s marketplace—press, fame, theatrical politics—to nurture value-creation.

Zarathustra

Commands separation as pastoral care for creators: seek dignified silence, raw air, and height; do not waste spirit swatting flies.