If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens,
then our lives can stand out against it
in all their splendid lightness.
But is heaviness truly deplorable and
lightness splendid? The heaviest burden crushes us-
we sink beneath it as it pins us to the ground.
but in the love poetry of every age,
the woman longs to be weighed down
by the mans body.
The heaviest of burdens is therefore
simultaneously an image of
life’s most intense fulfillment.
the heavier the burden the closer our lives come to the earth,
the more real and truthful they become.
conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be
lighter than air, to soar into the heights,
take leave of the earth and his earthly being,
and become only half-real, his movements as free as they are
insignificant.
What then shall we choose, weight, or lightness?