Text: Friedrich Nietsche "The gay science"
Music: M.K. Èiurlionis cantate "De profundis"
Have you not heard of that madman
who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours,
ran to the market place, and cried incessantly:
"I seek God! I seek God!"
As many of those who did not believe in God were
standing around just then, he provoked much laughter.
Has he got lost? asked one.
Did he lose his way like a child? asked another.
Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us?
Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?
Thus they yelled and laughed
The madman jumped into their midst
and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried;
"I will tell you. We have killed him. You and I.
You and I. All of us are his murderers.
But how did we do this?
 How could we drink up the sea?
Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?
What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun?
Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving?
Away from all suns?
Are we not plunging continually?
Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions?
Is there still any up or down?
Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing?
Do we not feel the breath of empty space?
Has it not become colder?
Is not night continually closing in on us?
Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning?
Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise
of the gravediggers who are burying God?
Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition?
Gods, too, decompose.
God is dead.
God remains dead. And we have killed him.
"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?
What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world
has yet owned has bled to death under our knives:
who will wipe this blood off us?
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?
There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us
for the sake of this deed he will belong
to a higher history than all history hitherto."
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners;
and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment.
At last he threw his lantern on the ground,
and it broke into pieces and went out.
"I have come too early," he said then.
