stopping for him.
They passed the same sugar beet farm, the same barn and the same cattle,
his new companions.
“What was that?” Friedrich shouted. “Where has God gone, you say?”
Meta turned around and knew what she would find before she even saw it:
Friedrich, walking stick waving in the air, shouting maniacally at a small
group of cows chewing in front of him.
“I shall tell you,” he said, breathing heavily. He raised his stick and
gestured to the mountains around. “We have killed him—you and I! We are
his murderers. But how have we done this?”
The cows chewed placidly. One swatted a fly with its tail.
“How were we able to drink up the seas? Who gave us the sponge to wipe
away the horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun?
Are we not perpetually falling in all directions? Are we not straying as though
through some Infinite nothing?”^22
“Friedrich, this is silly,” Meta said, trying to grab his sleeve and pull him
along. But he yanked his arm away; there was madness in his eyes.^23
“Where is God? God is Dead. God remains dead. And we have killed
him,” he declared.
“Please, stop this nonsense, Friedrich. Come on, let’s go to the house.”
“How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What
was holiest and mightiest of all has bled to death under our knives: who will
wipe this blood off us?”
Meta shook her head. It was no use. This was it. This was how it would
end. She began to walk away.
“What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of
atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of
this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to
appear worthy of it?”
Silence. A moo rang out in the distance.
“Man is a rope, tied between beast and Superman—a rope over an abyss.
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what can be loved in
man is that he is an overture [to something greater.]”^24
The words struck her. She turned and locked her gaze on his. It was this
idea of man being an overture to something greater that had drawn her to