"Whatever is profound loves masks; what is most profound even hates image and parable. Might not nothing less than the opposite
, be the proper disguise for the shame of a god? A questionable
question: it would be odd if some mystic had not risked something to
that effect in his mind. There are occurrences of such a delicate
nature that one does well to cover them up with some rudeness to
conceal them; there are actions of love and extravagant generosity
after which nothing is more advisable than to take a stick and give any
eyewitness a sound thrashing: that would muddle his memory Some know
how to muddle and abuse their own memory in order to have their revenge
at least against this only witness: shame is inventive.
It is
not the worst things that cause the worst shame: there is not only
guile behind a mask - there is so much graciousness in cunning. I could
imagine that a human being who had to guard something precious and
vulnerable might roll through life, rude and round as an old green wine
cask with heavy hoops: the refinement of his shame would want it that
way.
A man whose sense of shame has some profundity encounters his destinies
and delicate decisions, too, on paths which few ever reach and of whose
mere existence his closest intimates must not know: his mortal danger
is concealed from their eyes, and so is his regained sureness of life.
Such a concealed man who instinctively needs speech for silence and for
burial in silence and who is inexhaustible in his evasion of
communication, wants
and sees to it that a mask of him roams in his place through the hearts
and heads of his friends. And supposing he did not want it, he would
still realize some day that in spite of that a mask of him is there -
and that this is well. Every profound spirit needs a mask: even more,
around every profound spirit a mask is growing continually, owing to
the constantly false, namely shallow , interpretation of every word, every step, every sign of life he gives."
- Nietzsche (aka The Antichrist)
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