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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—As an eternal self-fleeing and re-seeking of one another of many Gods, as the blessed self-contradicting, recommuning, and refraternising with one another of many Gods:—
Where all time seemed to me a blessed mockery of moments, where necessity was freedom itself, which played happily with the goad of freedom:—
Where I also found again mine old devil and arch-enemy, the spirit of gravity, and all that it created: constraint, law, necessity and consequence and purpose and will and good and evil:—
For must there not be that which is danced over, danced beyond? Must there not, for the sake of the nimble, the nimblest—be moles and clumsy dwarfs?—
IIIThere was it also where I picked up from the path the word “Superman,” and that man is something that must be surpassed.
—That man is a bridge and not a goal—rejoicing over his noontides and evenings, as advances to new rosy dawns:
—The Zarathustra word of the great noontide, and whatever else I have hung up over men like purple evening-afterglows.
Verily, also new stars did I make them see, along with new nights; and over cloud and day and night, did I spread out laughter like a gay-coloured canopy.
I taught them all my poetisation and aspiration: to compose and collect into unity what is fragment in man, and riddle and fearful chance;—
—As composer, riddle-reader, and redeemer of chance, did I teach them to create the future, and all that hath been—to redeem by creating.
The past of man to redeem, and every “It was” to transform, until the Will saith: “But so did I will it! So shall I will it—”
—This did I call redemption; this alone taught I them to call redemption.⸺
Now do I await my redemption—that I may go unto them for the last time.
For once more will I go unto men: amongst them will my sun set; in dying will I give them my choicest gift!
From the sun did I learn this, when it goeth down, the exuberant one: gold doth it then pour into the sea, out of inexhaustible riches—
—So that the poorest fisherman roweth even with golden oars! For this did I once see, and did not tire of weeping in beholding it.⸺
Like the sun will also Zarathustra go down: now sitteth he here and waiteth, old broken tables around him, and also new tables—half-written.
IVBehold, here is a new table; but where are my brethren who will carry it with me to the valley and into hearts of flesh?—
Thus demandeth my great love to the remotest ones: be not considerate of thy neighbour! Man is something that must be surpassed.
There are many diverse ways and modes of surpassing: see thou thereto! But only a buffoon thinketh: “man can also be overleapt.”
Surpass thyself even in thy neighbour: and a right which thou canst seize upon, shalt thou not allow to be given thee!
What thou doest can no one do to thee again. Lo, there is no requital.
He who cannot command himself shall obey. And many a one can command himself, but still sorely lacketh self-obedience!
VThus wisheth the type of noble souls: they desire to have nothing gratuitously, least of all, life.
He who is of the populace wisheth to live gratuitously; we others, however, to whom life hath given itself—we are ever considering what we can best give in return!
And verily, it is a noble dictum which saith: “What life promiseth us, that promise will we keep—to life!”
One should not wish to enjoy where one doth not contribute to the enjoyment. And one should not wish to enjoy!
For enjoyment and innocence are the most bashful things. Neither like to be sought for. One should have them—but one should rather seek for guilt and pain!—
VIO my brethren, he who is a firstling is ever sacrificed. Now, however, are we firstlings!
We all bleed on secret sacrificial altars, we all burn and broil in honour of ancient idols.
Our best is still young: this exciteth old palates. Our flesh is tender, our skin is only lambs’ skin:—how could we not excite old idol-priests!
In ourselves dwelleth he still, the old idol-priest, who broileth our best for his banquet. Ah, my brethren, how could firstlings fail to be sacrifices!
But so wisheth our type; and I love those who do not wish to preserve themselves, the down-going ones do I love with mine entire love: for they go beyond.—
VIITo be true—that can few be! And he who can, will not! Least of all, however, can the good be true.
Oh, those good ones! Good men never speak the truth. For the spirit, thus to be good, is a malady.
They yield, those good ones, they submit themselves; their heart repeateth, their soul obeyeth: he, however, who obeyeth, doth not listen to himself!
All that is called evil by the good, must come together in order that one truth may be born. O my brethren, are ye also evil enough for this truth?
The daring venture, the prolonged distrust, the cruel Nay, the tedium, the cutting-into-the-quick—how seldom do these come together! Out of such seed, however—is truth produced!
Beside the bad conscience hath hitherto grown all knowledge! Break up, break up, ye discerning ones, the old tables!
VIIIWhen the water hath planks, when gangways and railings o’erspan the stream, verily, he is not believed who then saith: “All is in flux.”
But even the simpletons contradict him. “What?” say the simpletons, “all in flux? Planks and railings are still over the stream!
“Over the stream all is stable, all the values of things, the bridges and bearings, all ‘good’ and ‘evil’: these are all stable!”—
Cometh, however, the hard winter, the stream-tamer, then learn even the wittiest distrust, and verily, not only the simpletons then say: “Should not everything—stand still?”
“Fundamentally standeth everything still”—that is an appropriate winter doctrine, good cheer for an unproductive period, a great comfort for
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