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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And oft have I longed to pin them fast with the jagged gold-wires of lightning, that I might, like the thunder, beat the drum upon their kettle-bellies:—
—An angry drummer, because they rob me of thy Yea and Amen!—thou heaven above me, thou pure, thou luminous heaven! Thou abyss of light!—because they rob thee of my Yea and Amen.
For rather will I have noise and thunders and tempest-blasts, than this discreet, doubting cat-repose; and also amongst men do I hate most of all the soft-treaders, and half-and-half ones, and the doubting, hesitating, passing clouds.
And “he who cannot bless shall learn to curse!”—this clear teaching dropt unto me from the clear heaven; this star standeth in my heaven even in dark nights.
I, however, am a blesser and a Yea-sayer, if thou be but around me, thou pure, thou luminous heaven! Thou abyss of light!—into all abysses do I then carry my beneficent Yea-saying.
A blesser have I become and a Yea-sayer: and therefore strove I long and was a striver, that I might one day get my hands free for blessing.
This, however, is my blessing: to stand above everything as its own heaven, its round roof, its azure bell and eternal security: and blessed is he who thus blesseth!
For all things are baptized at the font of eternity, and beyond good and evil; good and evil themselves, however, are but fugitive shadows and damp afflictions and passing clouds.
Verily, it is a blessing and not a blasphemy when I teach that “above all things there standeth the heaven of chance, the heaven of innocence, the heaven of hazard, the heaven of wantonness.”
“Of Hazard”—that is the oldest nobility in the world; that gave I back to all things; I emancipated them from bondage under purpose.
This freedom and celestial serenity did I put like an azure bell above all things, when I taught that over them and through them, no “eternal Will”—willeth.
This wantonness and folly did I put in place of that Will, when I taught that “In everything there is one thing impossible—rationality!”
A little reason, to be sure, a germ of wisdom scattered from star to star—this leaven is mixed in all things: for the sake of folly, wisdom is mixed in all things!
A little wisdom is indeed possible; but this blessed security have I found in all things, that they prefer—to dance on the feet of chance.
O heaven above me! thou pure, thou lofty heaven! This is now thy purity unto me, that there is no eternal reason-spider and reason-cobweb:—
—That thou art to me a dancing-floor for divine chances, that thou art to me a table of the Gods, for divine dice and dice-players!—
But thou blushest? Have I spoken unspeakable things? Have I abused, when I meant to bless thee?
Or is it the shame of being two of us that maketh thee blush!—Dost thou bid me go and be silent, because now—day cometh?
The world is deep:—and deeper than e’er the day could read. Not everything may be uttered in presence of day. But day cometh: so let us part!
O heaven above me, thou modest one! thou glowing one! O thou, my happiness before sunrise! The day cometh: so let us part!—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
XLIX The Bedwarfing Virtue IWhen Zarathustra was again on the continent, he did not go straightway to his mountains and his cave, but made many wanderings and questionings, and ascertained this and that; so that he said of himself jestingly: “Lo, a river that floweth back unto its source in many windings!” For he wanted to learn what had taken place among men during the interval: whether they had become greater or smaller. And once, when he saw a row of new houses, he marvelled, and said:
“What do these houses mean? Verily, no great soul put them up as its simile!
“Did perhaps a silly child take them out of its toy-box? Would that another child put them again into the box!
“And these rooms and chambers—can men go out and in there? They seem to be made for silk dolls; or for dainty-eaters, who perhaps let others eat with them.”
And Zarathustra stood still and meditated. At last he said sorrowfully: “There hath everything become smaller!
“Everywhere do I see lower doorways: he who is of my type can still go therethrough, but—he must stoop!
“Oh, when shall I arrive again at my home, where I shall no longer have to stoop—shall no longer have to stoop before the small ones!”—And Zarathustra sighed, and gazed into the distance.—
The same day, however, he gave his discourse on the bedwarfing virtue.
III pass through this people and keep mine eyes open: they do not forgive me for not envying their virtues.
They bite at me, because I say unto them that for small people, small virtues are necessary—and because it is hard for me to understand that small people are necessary!
Here am I still like a cock in a strange farmyard, at which even the hens peck: but on that account I am not unfriendly to the hens.
I am courteous towards them, as towards all small annoyances; to be prickly towards what is small, seemeth to me wisdom for hedgehogs.
They all speak of me when they sit around their fire in the evening—they speak of me, but no one thinketh—of me!
This is the new stillness which I have experienced: their noise around me spreadeth a mantle over my thoughts.
They shout to one another: “What is this gloomy cloud about to do to us? Let us see that it doth not bring a plague upon us!”
And recently did a woman seize upon her child that was coming unto me: “Take the children away,” cried she, “such eyes scorch children’s souls.”
They cough when I speak: they think coughing an objection to strong winds—they divine nothing of the boisterousness of my happiness!
“We have not yet time for Zarathustra”—so they object; but what matter about a time that “hath no time” for Zarathustra?
And if they should altogether praise me, how could I go
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