Such return is the inexhaustible abundance of a life that is both joyous and agonizing. Such a life is the destination toward which "the great longing" leads the teacher of eternal return of the same. Thus in the same episode "the great longing" is also called "the longing of superabundance."
The "great longing" thrives for the most part on that from which it draws its only consolation, that is to say, its confidence in the future. In place of the older word "consolation," Trost (related to trauen, "to trust," "to betroth," and to zutrauen, "to believe oneself capable"), the word "hope" has entered our language. "The great longing" attunes and defines Zarathustra, who in his "greatest hope" is inspired by such longing.
Yet what induces Zarathustra to such hope, and what entitles him to it?
What bridge must he take in order to go over to the overman? What bridge enables him to depart from humanity hitherto, so that he can be released from it?
It derives from the peculiar structure of the work Thus Spoke Zarathustra, a work that is to make manifest the transition of the one who goes over, that the answer to the question we have just posed appears in the second part of the work, the preparatory part. Here, in the episode "On the Tarantulas," Nietzsche has Zarathustra say: "For that man be redeemed from revenge—that is for me the bridge to the highest hope and a rainbow after long storms."
How strange, how alien these words must seem to the customary view of Nietzsche's philosophy that we have furnished for ourselves. Is not Nietzsche supposed to be the one who goads our will to power, incites us to a politics of violence and war, and sets the "blond beast" on his rampage?
The words "that man be redeemed from revenge" are even italicized in the text. Nietzsche's thought thinks in the direction of redemption from the spirit of revenge. His thinking would minister to a spirit which, as freedom from vengefulness, goes before all mere fraternizing—but also before all vestiges of the sheer will to punish. It would minister to a spirit that abides before all efforts to secure peace and before all conduct of war, a spirit quite apart from that which wills to establish and secure pax, peace, by pacts.