ABSTRACT
The soothsayer initially appears in the second part of Zarathustra and then becomes the first invited guest to Zarathustra's festival in part IV. The soothsayer is the proclaimer of "ill tidings" and of the "great weariness"; a melancholy man who resembles "a raincloud in the morning" and a "bag of sadness". As Zarathustra returns home late in the afternoon he again hears the great cry of distress coming from his cave where all the guests are present awaiting him. Zarathustra says he has "lured" the higher men to himself and realizes that the cries he had heard earlier with the soothsayer came from them. The first encounter results in Zarathustra's three-day silence and his nightmare concerning tombs and his enemies; the second concerns the cries of distress from the higher men enveloping Zarathustra's mountain. Commentators typically regard the soothsayer as a prototype of Schopenhauerian pessimism.
