Zarathustra and the Prophet of the Great Weariness

Zarathustra’s relation with the Prophet of the Great Weariness brings two opposed responses to suffering into direct contact. The Prophet announces that affliction is rising and urges Zarathustra toward pity; Zarathustra hears the cry, refuses the Prophet’s despairing account of the world, and goes to seek the person in distress. Their connection is neither simple agreement nor outright separation: the Prophet warns and tempts him, Zarathustra challenges the warning with his own cheerfulness, and hospitality keeps the exchange open until they meet again in the cave.

Identity and Earlier Connection

The Prophet of the Great Weariness is introduced as an old acquaintance who had previously eaten and drunk at Zarathustra’s table. His teaching had been that everything is indifferent, nothing is worthwhile, the world lacks meaning, and knowledge chokes. When he reappears, he is recognizable as the same prophet, but his face has changed; Zarathustra reads it as marked by further evil prophecies. The changed appearance signals that the earlier encounter has not ended the Prophet’s despondency or exhausted his role in Zarathustra’s life.

The Prophet also belongs to the group of figures identified in the book’s account of Part Four as both types and individuals. He is described there as the gloomy prophet, with Schopenhauer as the figure behind the characterization. That association situates the relationship within the part’s wider assembly of distinct representatives of intellectual and spiritual positions, without reducing the Prophet’s scene with Zarathustra to an abstract debate. Here he acts: he arrives, interprets a cry, presses a warning, and remains attached to Zarathustra’s household as a guest.

The Warning and the Temptation of Pity

The next day, Zarathustra sits on the stone before his cave with a stick in his hand, tracing the shadow of his figure on the ground. His animals are away fetching fresh food and honey; Zarathustra has used up the old honey. The Prophet suddenly appears beside him as a second shadow. The gesture of wiping their faces and then shaking hands gives their meeting a moment of mutual recognition: after silently composing themselves, they acknowledge one another before speaking.

The Prophet warns that Zarathustra has little time left in the mountains. He describes waves of distress and affliction rising around the mountain and predicts that they will soon lift Zarathustra’s boat and carry it away. Zarathustra first answers with laughter, asking whether he is stranded, but then falls silent and listens. A long cry passes from abyss to abyss. Zarathustra identifies it as a human cry of distress, yet asks what human distress means to him and refers to an ultimate sin reserved for him. The Prophet answers with pity and declares that he has come to seduce Zarathustra into it. In this exchange, pity is not merely compassion in general: it is the danger the Prophet says the cry will place before Zarathustra.

The cry sounds again, nearer and more urgent. The Prophet insists that it calls specifically for Zarathustra and that it is time to answer. When Zarathustra asks who is calling, the Prophet identifies the caller as the Higher Man. Zarathustra is horrified and asks what the Higher Man wants there; he trembles, while the Prophet listens toward the depths. The difference between them is sharply staged: the Prophet speaks with certainty about the call and its urgency, whereas Zarathustra is shaken by the identity and implications of the caller.

Zarathustra’s Answer and Their Parting

After the Prophet sighs that happiness cannot be found among buried men and hermits and that even the Blissful Islands are gone, Zarathustra becomes cheerful and rejects this conclusion. He insists that the Blissful Islands still exist and characterizes the Prophet’s despair as an affliction that has soaked him. Rather than remain in that mood, Zarathustra says he will shake himself free and go into the forests to find the Higher Man, whose cry came from there. He adds that the Higher Man is in his domain and will not come to harm, even though dangerous beasts are about.

The Prophet recognizes that Zarathustra’s departure also lets him escape their conversation. He predicts that Zarathustra will find him again that evening, sitting in the cave and waiting. Zarathustra accepts this prospect rather than ending their association: he tells the Prophet that whatever in the cave belongs to him is also available to his guest, including the honey, and expects them both to be in good spirits that evening. His response preserves hospitality while refusing to stay with the Prophet’s interpretation of events. The Prophet can remain a guest; his weariness does not dictate Zarathustra’s next action.

Reunion and Narrative Significance

Zarathustra searches for the Higher Man through the day and returns to the cave late in the afternoon. Before reaching it, he hears the cry again, now coming from inside. The Prophet’s prediction has been fulfilled: the Prophet is among those assembled there, alongside the two kings, the Sorcerer, the Abdicated Pope, the Voluntary Beggar, the Shadow, the Conscientious Man of the Spirit, the Ass, and the Ugliest Man. Zarathustra’s Eagle and Serpent are also present. The Prophet is thus not only a solitary herald of distress; he becomes part of the company whose presence explains where Zarathustra must look for the person he has been seeking.

The relation’s movement from warning to shared gathering changes the function of the first meeting. The Prophet had called Zarathustra toward the cry and framed the response as a temptation to pity; Zarathustra had answered by seeking the Higher Man while promising that the Prophet could return to the cave. At the cave, the cry proves to be many voices together, and the Prophet is one of the gathered guests. The scene holds their difference in place without resolving it into conversion: the Prophet’s bleak teaching remains part of his identity, while Zarathustra’s refusal to surrender his confidence has brought him into action and into contact with the Higher Men. Their relationship therefore links the challenge of human distress to the gathering that drives Part Four’s action.