Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche (ebook reader color screen .TXT) 📕
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Thus Spake Zarathustra was Friedrich Nietzsche’s favorite of the books he wrote, and has been his most popular amongst general readers. Yet some scholars dislike it because of its unphilosophical nature: it eschews jargon and the scaffolding of arguments, which engage only the intellect, in favor of an artistic approach that engages the whole mind.
After ten years of solitude in a cave high in the mountains, Zarathustra wishes to share with humanity the wisdom he has accumulated during this time. He reaches the nearest town and addresses the crowd on the marketplace. He tells them of the Overman: the next step in human evolution, a being who creates their own values, freed from the weight of tradition and morality, and who takes responsibility for their own successes and failures. But the crowd doesn’t understand him; his discourse is met only with rude ignorance. Zarathustra then decides to gather a small group of disciples and share his wisdom with them.
The bulk of the book is Zarathustra’s speeches on topics such as morality, society, individualism, religion, and how suffering and its overcoming are what give meaning to our existence. While already wiser than most, Zarathustra still learns from those he talks to, re-evaluating his thoughts as he deals with disappointment (such as when his disciples prove to be mere followers), and confronting his own doubts. His greatest challenge, though, comes when he faces the existential test of the eternal recurrence of the same: the thought that our lives could repeat indefinitely without the minutest of change.
The inspiration for Zarathustra came to Nietzsche during one of the long hikes he often indulged in despite his failing health. It was a decade of solitude: his physical condition had worsened to the point of forcing him to retire from his position at the University of Basel, and each change of season prompted him to relocate to kinder climes in Switzerland, France, or Italy. The book took two years to write. Each of its four parts was written in a ten-day period of creative effervescence followed by months of gloom, plagued by terrible, debilitating migraines.
Zarathustra was initially received with indifference at best and frustration at worst. It’s a work of philosophy as much as aesthetics: the language is modeled after the Luther Bible and contains numerous references to Homer, Heraclitus, Plato, Goethe, Emerson, and Wagner, to name a few. Later Nietzsche attempted to address the book’s lack of popularity by framing the same concepts in a more traditional, approachable manner in his following book, Beyond Good and Evil, but that book also struggled to find an audience.
With his health steadily deteriorating, Nietzsche’s mind broke down in 1889 and never recovered. His body would live on for 11 more years, and he ended up in the care of his sister, Elisabeth. A stalwart nationalist and anti-Semite, she saw in her brother’s illness the opportunity to turn him into a German hero. Despite her brother’s firm opposition to nationalism, anti-Semitism, and power politics, she perverted his work by promoting it for her own ends. Scores of commentators partook in her lie and enthusiastically used Nietzsche’s work to buttress their own contrary views. Doing so requires one to selectively ignore half the content of the book: Zarathustra’s discourses regularly touch on a priori dark and violent themes, but they also clearly state that these are to be directed towards oneself. Reaching the Overman requires us to know ourselves, and such introspection, given the darker side of human nature, leads to contempt. This contempt for ourselves, says Nietzsche, should be embraced as the first step towards awareness of what we could be. Cruelty, likewise, stems from that knowledge as a necessity to hammer ourselves into the proper shape. Such commentators also conveniently ignored Zarathustra’s many remarks about love: love for ourselves, he says, is what can prevent us from spreading resentment around us during this difficult process of change.
The first English translation of Zarathustra was by Alexander Tille, a German scholar who had emigrated to Scotland. English wasn’t his first language and his work suffered from it. Thomas Common, a Scottish scholar, used Tille’s work as the base for his own translation. Bringing Zarathustra to the English-speaking world was no easy task given Nietzsche’s stylistic idiosyncrasies. Just like Nietzsche, Common took risks: because the book is written in the style of the Luther Bible, Common decided to emulate the style of the King James Bible; he also tried to reproduce the musicality of the language and the new words coined by Nietzsche, some of which have been updated over time—e.g. Common’s “Superman” is nowadays known as “Overman.” While his choices have been controversial, he produced a landmark translation that faithfully tried to convert the unique flavor of Zarathustra into English. Published in 1909, it would take four decades until the next translation by Walter Kaufman in 1954.
But Zarathustra didn’t find its scholarly fame limited to Europe: soon after its publication, it reached Asia, where it was received with enthusiasm, particularly in China and Japan where it influenced the famous Kyoto School. Zarathustra has also received special attention from the music world. Nietzsche loved music and poetry, and it was his wish that this book be taken as music. No fewer than 87 pieces have been inspired by the book, in part or as a whole. The best known are Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra, the fourth movement of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, and Frederick Delius’ A Mass of Life.
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- Author: Friedrich Nietzsche
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Verily, it shall not on that account become heavier to me! And not from you, ye present-day men, shall my great weariness arise.—
Ah, whither shall I now ascend with my longing! From all mountains do I look out for fatherlands and motherlands.
But a home have I found nowhere: unsettled am I in all cities, and decamping at all gates.
Alien to me, and a mockery, are the present-day men, to whom of late my heart impelled me; and exiled am I from fatherlands and motherlands.
Thus do I love only my children’s land, the undiscovered in the remotest sea: for it do I bid my sails search and search.
Unto my children will I make amends for being the child of my fathers: and unto all the future—for this present-day!—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
XXXVII Immaculate PerceptionWhen yester-eve the moon arose, then did I fancy it about to bear a sun: so broad and teeming did it lie on the horizon.
But it was a liar with its pregnancy; and sooner will I believe in the man in the moon than in the woman.
To be sure, little of a man is he also, that timid night-reveller. Verily, with a bad conscience doth he stalk over the roofs.
For he is covetous and jealous, the monk in the moon; covetous of the earth, and all the joys of lovers.
Nay, I like him not, that tomcat on the roofs! Hateful unto me are all that slink around half-closed windows!
Piously and silently doth he stalk along on the star-carpets:—but I like no light-treading human feet, on which not even a spur jingleth.
Every honest one’s step speaketh; the cat however, stealeth along over the ground. Lo! cat-like doth the moon come along, and dishonestly.—
This parable speak I unto you sentimental dissemblers, unto you, the “pure discerners!” You do I call—covetous ones!
Also ye love the earth, and the earthly: I have divined you well!—but shame is in your love, and a bad conscience—ye are like the moon!
To despise the earthly hath your spirit been persuaded, but not your bowels: these, however, are the strongest in you!
And now is your spirit ashamed to be at the service of your bowels, and goeth byways and lying ways to escape its own shame.
“That would be the highest thing for me”—so saith your lying spirit unto itself—“to gaze upon life without desire, and not like the dog, with hanging-out tongue:
“To be happy in gazing: with dead will, free from the grip and greed of selfishness—cold and ashy-grey all over, but with intoxicated moon-eyes!
“That would be the dearest thing to me”—thus doth the seduced one seduce himself—“to love the earth as the moon loveth it, and with the eye only to feel its beauty.
“And this do I call immaculate perception of all things: to want nothing else from them, but to be allowed to lie before them as a mirror with a hundred facets.”—
Oh, ye sentimental dissemblers, ye covetous ones! Ye lack innocence in your desire: and now do ye defame desiring on that account!
Verily, not as creators, as procreators, or as jubilators do ye love the earth!
Where is innocence? Where there is will to procreation. And he who seeketh to create beyond himself, hath for me the purest will.
Where is beauty? Where I must will with my whole Will; where I will love and perish, that an image may not remain merely an image.
Loving and perishing: these have rhymed from eternity. Will to love: that is to be ready also for death. Thus do I speak unto you cowards!
But now doth your emasculated ogling profess to be “contemplation!” And that which can be examined with cowardly eyes is to be christened “beautiful!” Oh, ye violators of noble names!
But it shall be your curse, ye immaculate ones, ye pure discerners, that ye shall never bring forth, even though ye lie broad and teeming on the horizon!
Verily, ye fill your mouth with noble words: and we are to believe that your heart overfloweth, ye cozeners?
But my words are poor, contemptible, stammering words: gladly do I pick up what falleth from the table at your repasts.
Yet still can I say therewith the truth—to dissemblers! Yea, my fish-bones, shells, and prickly leaves shall—tickle the noses of dissemblers!
Bad air is always about you and your repasts: your lascivious thoughts, your lies, and secrets are indeed in the air!
Dare only to believe in yourselves—in yourselves and in your inward parts! He who doth not believe in himself always lieth.
A God’s mask have ye hung in front of you, ye “pure ones”: into a God’s mask hath your execrable coiling snake crawled.
Verily ye deceive, ye “contemplative ones!” Even Zarathustra was once the dupe of your godlike exterior; he did not divine the serpent’s coil with which it was stuffed.
A God’s soul, I once thought I saw playing in your games, ye pure discerners! No better arts did I once dream of than your arts!
Serpents’ filth and evil odour, the distance concealed from me: and that a lizard’s craft prowled thereabouts lasciviously.
But I came nigh unto you: then came to me the day—and now cometh it to you—at an end is the moon’s love affair!
See there! Surprised and pale doth it stand—before the rosy dawn!
For already she cometh, the glowing one—her love to the earth cometh! Innocence and creative desire, is all solar love!
See there, how she cometh impatiently over the sea! Do ye not feel the thirst and the hot breath of her love?
At the sea would she suck, and drink its depths to her height: now riseth the desire of the sea with its thousand breasts.
Kissed and sucked would it be by the thirst of the sun; vapour would it become, and height, and path of light, and light itself!
Verily, like the sun do I love life, and all deep seas.
And this meaneth to me knowledge: all that is deep shall ascend—to my height!—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
XXXVIII ScholarsWhen I lay asleep, then did
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