568

Poet and bird.  The phoenix155 showed the poet a scroll which was burning to ashes. 'Do not be dismayed!' it said, 'it is your work! It does not have the spirit of the age and even less the spirit of those who are against the age: consequently it must be burned. But this is a good sign. There are many kinds of daybreaks.'

155. Phoenix: a legendary bird in ancient Egyptian mythology whose existence is marked by five or six centuries of life in the Arabian desert, then consumption in its own fire, after which it arises anew in an act of freshness and transformation  the phoenix being thereby an immortal bird.
Friedrich Nietzsche - Daybreak
Book V - Aphorism # 568

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