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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—So that he may one day become my companion, a fellow-creator and fellow-enjoyer with Zarathustra:—such a one as writeth my will on my tables, for the fuller perfection of all things.
And for his sake and for those like him, must I perfect myself: therefore do I now avoid my happiness, and present myself to every misfortune—for my final testing and recognition.
And verily, it were time that I went away; and the wanderer’s shadow and the longest tedium and the stillest hour—have all said unto me: “It is the highest time!”
The word blew to me through the keyhole and said “Come!” The door sprang subtlely open unto me, and said “Go!”
But I lay enchained to my love for my children: desire spread this snare for me—the desire for love—that I should become the prey of my children, and lose myself in them.
Desiring—that is now for me to have lost myself. I possess you, my children! In this possessing shall everything be assurance and nothing desire.
But brooding lay the sun of my love upon me, in his own juice stewed Zarathustra—then did shadows and doubts fly past me.
For frost and winter I now longed: “Oh, that frost and winter would again make me crack and crunch!” sighed I:—then arose icy mist out of me.
My past burst its tomb, many pains buried alive woke up—: fully slept had they merely, concealed in corpse-clothes.
So called everything unto me in signs: “It is time!” But I—heard not, until at last mine abyss moved, and my thought bit me.
Ah, abysmal thought, which art my thought! When shall I find strength to hear thee burrowing, and no longer tremble?
To my very throat throbbeth my heart when I hear thee burrowing! Thy muteness even is like to strangle me, thou abysmal mute one!
As yet have I never ventured to call thee up; it hath been enough that I—have carried thee about with me! As yet have I not been strong enough for my final lion-wantonness and playfulness.
Sufficiently formidable unto me hath thy weight ever been: but one day shall I yet find the strength and the lion’s voice which will call thee up!
When I shall have surmounted myself therein, then will I surmount myself also in that which is greater; and a victory shall be the seal of my perfection!—
Meanwhile do I sail along on uncertain seas; chance flattereth me, smooth-tongued chance; forward and backward do I gaze—, still see I no end.
As yet hath the hour of my final struggle not come to me—or doth it come to me perhaps just now? Verily, with insidious beauty do sea and life gaze upon me round about:
O afternoon of my life! O happiness before eventide! O haven upon high seas! O peace in uncertainty! How I distrust all of you!
Verily, distrustful am I of your insidious beauty! Like the lover am I, who distrusteth too sleek smiling.
As he pusheth the best-beloved before him—tender even in severity, the jealous one—, so do I push this blissful hour before me.
Away with thee, thou blissful hour! With thee hath there come to me an involuntary bliss! Ready for my severest pain do I here stand:—at the wrong time hast thou come!
Away with thee, thou blissful hour! Rather harbour there—with my children! Hasten! and bless them before eventide with my happiness!
There, already approacheth eventide: the sun sinketh. Away—my happiness!—
Thus spake Zarathustra. And he waited for his misfortune the whole night; but he waited in vain. The night remained clear and calm, and happiness itself came nigher and nigher unto him. Towards morning, however, Zarathustra laughed to his heart, and said mockingly: “Happiness runneth after me. That is because I do not run after women. Happiness, however, is a woman.”
XLVIII Before SunriseO heaven above me, thou pure, thou deep heaven! Thou abyss of light! Gazing on thee, I tremble with divine desires.
Up to thy height to toss myself—that is my depth! In thy purity to hide myself—that is mine innocence!
The God veileth his beauty: thus hidest thou thy stars. Thou speakest not: thus proclaimest thou thy wisdom unto me.
Mute o’er the raging sea hast thou risen for me today; thy love and thy modesty make a revelation unto my raging soul.
In that thou camest unto me beautiful, veiled in thy beauty, in that thou spakest unto me mutely, obvious in thy wisdom:
Oh, how could I fail to divine all the modesty of thy soul! Before the sun didst thou come unto me—the lonesomest one.
We have been friends from the beginning: to us are grief, gruesomeness, and ground common; even the sun is common to us.
We do not speak to each other, because we know too much—: we keep silent to each other, we smile our knowledge to each other.
Art thou not the light of my fire? Hast thou not the sister-soul of mine insight?
Together did we learn everything; together did we learn to ascend beyond ourselves to ourselves, and to smile uncloudedly:—
—Uncloudedly to smile down out of luminous eyes and out of miles of distance, when under us constraint and purpose and guilt steam like rain.
And wandered I alone, for what did my soul hunger by night and in labyrinthine paths? And climbed I mountains, whom did I ever seek, if not thee, upon mountains?
And all my wandering and mountain-climbing: a necessity was it merely, and a makeshift of the unhandy one:—to fly only, wanteth mine entire will, to fly into thee!
And what have I hated more than passing clouds, and whatever tainteth thee? And mine own hatred have I even hated, because it tainted thee!
The passing clouds I detest—those stealthy cats of prey: they take from thee and me what is common to us—the vast unbounded Yea- and Amen-saying.
These mediators and mixers we detest—the passing clouds: those half-and-half ones, that have neither learned to bless nor to curse from the heart.
Rather will I sit in a tub under a closed heaven, rather will I sit in the abyss without heaven, than see thee, thou luminous heaven, tainted with passing
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