"Bite! Bite its head off! Bite!"
"Bite! Bite its head off! Bite!"
"[I saw] a young shepherd writhing, gagging, in spasms, his face distorted, and a heavy black snake hung out of his mouth. Had I ever seen so much nausea and pale dread on one face? He seemed to have been asleep when the snake crawled into his throat, and there bit itself fast. My hand tore at the snake and tore in vain; it did not tear the snake out of his throat. Then it cried out of me: 'Bite! Bite its head off! Bite!' Thus it cried out of me--my dread, my hatred , my nausea, my pity, all that is good and wicked in me cried out of me with a single cry. You bold ones who surround me! You searchers, researchers, and whoever among you has embarked with cunning sails on unexplored seas. You who are glad of riddles! Guess me this riddle that I saw then, interpret me the vision of the loneliest. For it was a vision and a foreseeing. What did I see then in a parable And who is it who must yet come one day? Who is the shepherd into whose throat the snake crawled thus? Who is the man into whose throat all that is heaviest and blackest will crawl thus? The shepherd, however, bit as my cry counseled him; he bit with a good bite. Far away he spewed the head of the snake--and he jumped up. No longer shepherd, no longer human--one changed, radiant, *laughing!* Never yet on earth has a human being laughed as he laughed! O my brothers, I heard a laughter that was no human laughter; and now a thirst gnaws at me, a longing that never grows still. My longing for this laughter gnaws at me; oh, how do I bear to go on living! And how could I bear to die now! Thus spoke Zarathustra. [From "On the Vision and the Riddle" (2)]
--from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, by Friedrich Nietzsche.