Thus Spoke Zarathustra · Chapter
LIX: The Second Dance-Song explained
Zarathustra engages in a poetic and playful dance with Life, who accuses him of planning to leave her.
What happens
Zarathustra engages in a poetic and playful dance with Life, who accuses him of planning to leave her. Their dialogue reveals a deep, ambivalent bond beyond good and evil, culminating in a shared moment of weeping and the midnight clock's profound song about eternity.
Themes in this chapter
Eternal Recurrence
The midnight clock's twelve strokes and the final stanza 'joys all want eternity' directly invoke the eternal recurrence, framing joy as desiring infinite repetition.
The Body and the Earth
The dance, physical movement, and sensory imagery (golden bark, snaky tresses, red blotches) emphasize bodily experience and earthly life as central to Zarathustra's philosophy.
Pity and Contempt
Zarathustra's ambivalent feelings toward Life—fear and love, suffering and gladness—reflect a complex interplay of pity and contempt, transcending simple moral categories.
Characters to notice
- Zarathustra
Dances with Life, confesses his impending departure, and weeps with her.
- Life
Engages Zarathustra in a dance, expresses envy of his Wisdom, and sorrowfully predicts his leaving.
Key passages
“Beyond good and evil found we our island and our green meadow—we two alone!”
Life and Zarathustra have discovered a realm that transcends conventional morality, a private sanctuary where they exist together.
Highlights the Nietzschean theme of moving beyond traditional moral dichotomies.
“If thy Wisdom should one day run away from thee, ah! then would also my love run away from thee quickly.”
Life warns Zarathustra that his love for her is contingent on his Wisdom; if he loses his wisdom, her love will vanish.
Reveals the conditional and intertwined nature of Zarathustra's relationship with Life and Wisdom.
“The world is deep, And deeper than the day could read. Deep is its woe—Joy—deeper still than grief can be: Woe saith: Hence! Go! But joys all want eternity—Want deep profound eternity!”
The midnight voice declares that the world's depth surpasses daytime understanding; sorrow is fleeting, but joy craves endless repetition.
Central to the eternal recurrence, asserting that joy's ultimate desire is to recur infinitely.