Daybreak and Grand inspiration 221rejecting outright the thought of being no more than a mere incarnation,
a mere mouthpiece, a mere medium of overpowering forces. The con-
cept of revelation in the sense that suddenly, with indescribable cer-
tainty and subdety, something becomes visible and audible, something
that shakes us to the core and knocks us over—all of that simply
describes the state of affairs, We hear, and we do not seek; we take, we
do not ask who is giving; a thought flashes up like lightning, with
inevitability, without hesitation as to the form—I never had a choice. A
rapture, the immense tension of which at times is released in a stream of
tears, and in the course of which your pace sometimes quickens invol-
untarily, and then slows down; being outside of yourself with the most
distinct consciousness of a host of subde shudders and shivers running
all the way down to your toes All of this is involuntary in the extreme
but as in a storm of a feeling of freedom, absoluteness, power, divinity.
... Everything presents itself as the nearest, most correct, simplest
expression. It really seems ... as though the things themselves were
approaching and offering themselves as metaphors This is my expe-
rience of inspiration; I have no doubt that we would need to go back
entire millennia to find someone who could say to me 'it is mine too"'
(6,339f.; £H"Thus Spoke Zarathustra" § 3).
The idea that it would be necessary to go back "millennia" to find a
similar inspiration came to Nietzsche well after the event, but this inci-
dent of August 6, 1881, near the Surlej boulder had an instantaneous
impact on him. It was immediately apparent that his life was now
divided into two halves: before and after the inspiration. He wrote in his
notebooks: "6,000 feet above the ocean and far higher still above all
things human!" (9,494). He was also spun upward above his own daily
concerns. How was he faring up there? Peter Gast was the first to hear
about the event from him: "On my horizon, thoughts have arisen unlike
any I have ever seen before. I will not speak of them and will retain my
unshakable tranquillity. I will presumably have to stay alive for a few
more years! Oh, my friend, sometimes the notion passes through my
head that 1 am actually living quite a dangerous life, since 1 am one of