Key Arguments

• He wishes to be night-like to suckle at the breasts of light, reversing roles to experience receiving rather than giving.
• He longs for the 'dark ones' who drink milk and comfort from light, expressing desire for a receptive counterpart.
• He confesses ice and thirst around and within him, yearning for the thirst of others as a form of communion.

Source Quotes

But this is my solitude, that I am girded round with light. Ah, would that I were dark and night-like! How I would suckle at the breasts of light! And you yourselves would I yet bless, you little twinkling stars and fireflies up above!–and be blissful from your light-bestowals.

Their inexorable will they follow, that is their coldness. Oh, it is only you, dark ones, and night-like, who create warmth from that which shines! Oh, it is only you who drink milk and comfort from the udders of light!

Oh, it is only you who drink milk and comfort from the udders of light! Ah, ice is around me, my hand is burned on what is icy! Ah, thirst is within me, and it languishes after your thirst! Night it is: ah, that I must be light!

Ah, thirst is within me, and it languishes after your thirst! Night it is: ah, that I must be light! And thirst for the night-like! And solitude! Night it is: now like a spring my desire flows forth from me–I am desirous of speech.

Key Concepts

• Ah, would that I were dark and night-like! How I would suckle at the breasts of light!
• Oh, it is only you, dark ones, and night-like, who create warmth from that which shines!
• Ah, ice is around me, my hand is burned on what is icy! Ah, thirst is within me, and it languishes after your thirst!
• Night it is: ah, that I must be light! And thirst for the night-like! And solitude!

Context

Development of the light/dark motif into an erotic-metaphysical longing: the luminous desires darkness as the condition for warmth and reception.

Perspectives

Nietzsche

Reads this as the creator’s need for worthy recipients who can transmute light into warmth; an inverted eros where high spirits desire those capable of gratitude and transformation.

Zarathustra

Openly desires the night-like and their thirst, seeking a reciprocity that could temper his solitude and freeze.