Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche (ebook reader color screen .TXT) 📕
Description
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.
Read free book «Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche (ebook reader color screen .TXT) 📕» - read online or download for free at americanlibrarybooks.com
- Author: Friedrich Nietzsche
Read book online «Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche (ebook reader color screen .TXT) 📕». Author - Friedrich Nietzsche
Thus sang Zarathustra.
LI On Passing-ByThus slowly wandering through many peoples and diverse cities, did Zarathustra return by roundabout roads to his mountains and his cave. And behold, thereby came he unawares also to the gate of the great city. Here, however, a foaming fool, with extended hands, sprang forward to him and stood in his way. It was the same fool whom the people called “the ape of Zarathustra:” for he had learned from him something of the expression and modulation of language, and perhaps liked also to borrow from the store of his wisdom. And the fool talked thus to Zarathustra:
O Zarathustra, here is the great city: here hast thou nothing to seek and everything to lose.
Why wouldst thou wade through this mire? Have pity upon thy foot! Spit rather on the gate of the city, and—turn back!
Here is the hell for anchorites’ thoughts: here are great thoughts seethed alive and boiled small.
Here do all great sentiments decay: here may only rattle-boned sensations rattle!
Smellest thou not already the shambles and cookshops of the spirit? Steameth not this city with the fumes of slaughtered spirit?
Seest thou not the souls hanging like limp dirty rags?—And they make newspapers also out of these rags!
Hearest thou not how spirit hath here become a verbal game? Loathsome verbal swill doth it vomit forth!—And they make newspapers also out of this verbal swill.
They hound one another, and know not whither! They inflame one another, and know not why! They tinkle with their pinchbeck, they jingle with their gold.
They are cold, and seek warmth from distilled waters: they are inflamed, and seek coolness from frozen spirits; they are all sick and sore through public opinion.
All lusts and vices are here at home; but here there are also the virtuous; there is much appointable appointed virtue:—
Much appointable virtue with scribe-fingers, and hardy sitting-flesh and waiting-flesh, blessed with small breast-stars, and padded, haunchless daughters.
There is here also much piety, and much faithful spittle-licking and spittle-backing, before the God of Hosts.
“From on high,” drippeth the star, and the gracious spittle; for the high, longeth every starless bosom.
The moon hath its court, and the court hath its moon-calves: unto all, however, that cometh from the court do the mendicant people pray, and all appointable mendicant virtues.
“I serve, thou servest, we serve”—so prayeth all appointable virtue to the prince: that the merited star may at last stick on the slender breast!
But the moon still revolveth around all that is earthly: so revolveth also the prince around what is earthliest of all—that, however, is the gold of the shopman.
The God of the Hosts of war is not the God of the golden bar; the prince proposeth, but the shopman—disposeth!
By all that is luminous and strong and good in thee, O Zarathustra! Spit on this city of shopmen and return back!
Here floweth all blood putridly and tepidly and frothily through all veins: spit on the great city, which is the great slum where all the scum frotheth together!
Spit on the city of compressed souls and slender breasts, of pointed eyes and sticky fingers—
—On the city of the obtrusive, the brazen-faced, the pen-demagogues and tongue-demagogues, the overheated ambitious:—
Where everything maimed, ill-famed, lustful, untrustful, over-mellow, sickly-yellow and seditious, festereth pernicious:—
—Spit on the great city and turn back!—
Here, however, did Zarathustra interrupt the foaming fool, and shut his mouth.—
Stop this at once! called out Zarathustra, long have thy speech and thy species disgusted me!
Why didst thou live so long by the swamp, that thou thyself hadst to become a frog and a toad?
Floweth there not a tainted, frothy, swamp-blood in thine own veins, when thou hast thus learned to croak and revile?
Why wentest thou not into the forest? Or why didst thou not till the ground? Is the sea not full of green islands?
I despise thy contempt; and when thou warnedst me—why didst thou not warn thyself?
Out of love alone shall my contempt and my warning bird take wing; but not out of the swamp!—
They call thee mine ape, thou foaming fool: but I call thee my grunting-pig—by thy grunting, thou spoilest even my praise of folly.
What was it that first made thee grunt? Because no one sufficiently flattered thee:—therefore didst thou seat thyself beside this filth, that thou mightest have cause for much grunting—
—That thou mightest have cause for much vengeance! For vengeance, thou vain fool, is all thy foaming; I have divined thee well!
But thy fools’-word injureth me, even when thou art right! And even if Zarathustra’s word were a hundred times justified, thou wouldst ever—do wrong with my word!
Thus spake Zarathustra. Then did he look on the great city and sighed, and was long silent. At last he spake thus:
I loathe also this great city, and not only this fool. Here and there—there is nothing to better, nothing to worsen.
Woe to this great city!—And I would that I already saw the pillar of fire in which it will be consumed!
For such pillars of fire must precede the great noontide. But this hath its time and its own fate.—
This precept, however, give I unto thee, in parting, thou fool: Where one can no longer love, there should one—pass by!—
Thus spake Zarathustra, and passed by the fool and the great city.
LII The Apostates IAh, lieth everything already withered and grey which but lately stood green and many-hued on this meadow! And how much honey of hope did I carry hence into my beehives!
Those young hearts have already all become old—and not old even! only weary, ordinary, comfortable:—they declare it: “We have again become pious.”
Of late did I see them run forth at early morn with valorous steps: but the feet of their knowledge became weary, and now do they malign even their morning valour!
Verily, many of them once lifted their legs like the dancer; to them winked the laughter of my wisdom:—then
Comments (0)