# Human, monologue, Second Scene

*Image not included in the drama*

HUMAN:  
That's how they sound to me  
For three years now  
The serious, meaningful words.  
They sound to me from the solid ground of the earth  
And from the air and water.  
Just as the life forces of plants  
Are mysteriously enclosed in their seeds,  
So the lofty ideas  
That I have allowed to work  
In my soul for ten years  
Have coalesced into this one sentence:  
Human, know thyself.  
The everyday call thoughts  
foggy formations, produced in the human brain,  
They contrast them  
with the powerful world of passions  
and the full, sensual experience;  
They believe that these determine  
people's true interests  
and changing fortunes,  
And any structure of ideas appears gray to them.  
I have experienced it differently.  
I could easily find myself  
In everything that everyday life  
Shakes the heart in its deepest core.  
My soul is little touched  
By the consequences of love and hate,  
Which in everyday life  
Seem powerful  
And forge destinies.  
But the gigantic power of thought  
Has carried me into spheres of destiny,  
Higher than everyday loves and strivings;  
It has shown me delights  
That no heart can ever feel  
Seen only through the eyes.  
It has also shown me terror,  
Against which is child's play,  
What otherwise smashes people  
To the ground.  
I know that it is only appearance,  
When one speaks of ideas,  
Which embodies for me in primeval worlds  
The becoming of the earth and of man.  
I first heard words from  
Long-gone incarnations of the earth.  
The words became messengers to me  
From hidden spheres of the world.  
Their powers ran through my veins  
And lived in my pulse,  
As otherwise only blood substance lives,  
And in my own thoughts  
I felt the weaving of secret worlds.  
I believed I had only learned,  
But little by little I felt  
That I had become a different being.  
Like the shell of this being  
The human being appeared to me,  
Who I once was.  
I could observe him,  
As I once observed beings,  
That presented themselves to my eye.  
But I was transported into vast spaces.  
The fire of distant earthly times  
I could feel  
And see how it  
Boiled the blood of my daytime self.  
The air filled with light  
I could see —  
And the origin of my thoughts  
Came before my soul.  
And what was once only water to me,  
Was revealed to me by the spirits,  
Who gave me my consciousness.  
And all this was not a gray doctrine,  
Was personal fate.  
Was close to me,  
As close to man  
Is the warm heart of a friend.  
I had left my old being behind.  
A new one seemed to be born from me,  
And everything that had changed me,  
It changed itself into the echo,  
Which now resounds to me from my new world:  
Man, know thyself.  
I once feared  
The worlds of gods and spirits;  
This fear is long gone.  
It went into the abyss  
With everything I once desired,  
With everything I once hated.  
But from the abyss  
A being now looks at me  
More terrible than all the demons' host,  
More terrifying than all descriptions  
Of human horror.  
What I myself once was,  
What I believed I had left behind,  
It stares at me gruesomely  
With terrifying glances  
From the depths of the abyss.  
That is me.  
I have heard of the chains  
That once bound Prometheus  
To the rocky ground of the Caucasus.  
These chains seem insignificant to me,  
I feel myself forged  
To my own abysmal self.  
Yes, there you float,  
Terrible monster.  
You kill me like destructive poison  
The last trace of my will.  
Icy forces penetrate my limbs  
Mocking  
Consume all my feelings,  
I want to escape the earth  
To spiritually pure heights.  
And when I clearly  
Believed I could see  
The noble worlds of ideas,  
You spread with your vapors  
A black mist,  
And my soul becomes blind.