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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“Fundamentally standeth everything still”—: but contrary thereto, preacheth the thawing wind!
The thawing wind, a bullock, which is no ploughing bullock—a furious bullock, a destroyer, which with angry horns breaketh the ice! The ice however⸺breaketh gangways!
O my brethren, is not everything at present in flux? Have not all railings and gangways fallen into the water? Who would still hold on to “good” and “evil”?
“Woe to us! Hail to us! The thawing wind bloweth!”—Thus preach, my brethren, through all the streets!
IXThere is an old illusion—it is called good and evil. Around soothsayers and astrologers hath hitherto revolved the orbit of this illusion.
Once did one believe in soothsayers and astrologers; and therefore did one believe, “Everything is fate: thou shalt, for thou must!”
Then again did one distrust all soothsayers and astrologers; and therefore did one believe, “Everything is freedom: thou canst, for thou willest!”
O my brethren, concerning the stars and the future there hath hitherto been only illusion, and not knowledge; and therefore concerning good and evil there hath hitherto been only illusion and not knowledge!
X“Thou shalt not rob! Thou shalt not slay!”—such precepts were once called holy; before them did one bow the knee and the head, and take off one’s shoes.
But I ask you: Where have there ever been better robbers and slayers in the world than such holy precepts?
Is there not even in all life—robbing and slaying? And for such precepts to be called holy, was not truth itself thereby—slain?
—Or was it a sermon of death that called holy what contradicted and dissuaded from life?—O my brethren, break up, break up for me the old tables!
XIIt is my sympathy with all the past that I see it is abandoned—
—Abandoned to the favour, the spirit and the madness of every generation that cometh, and reinterpreteth all that hath been as its bridge!
A great potentate might arise, an artful prodigy, who with approval and disapproval could strain and constrain all the past, until it became for him a bridge, a harbinger, a herald, and a cock-crowing.
This however is the other danger, and mine other sympathy:—he who is of the populace, his thoughts go back to his grandfather—with his grandfather, however, doth time cease.
Thus is all the past abandoned: for it might some day happen for the populace to become master, and drown all time in shallow waters.
Therefore, O my brethren, a new nobility is needed, which shall be the adversary of all populace and potentate rule, and shall inscribe anew the word “noble” on new tables.
For many noble ones are needed, and many kinds of noble ones, for a new nobility! Or, as I once said in parable: “That is just divinity, that there are Gods, but no God!”
XIIO my brethren, I consecrate you and point you to a new nobility: ye shall become procreators and cultivators and sowers of the future;—
—Verily, not to a nobility which ye could purchase like traders with traders’ gold; for little worth is all that hath its price.
Let it not be your honour henceforth whence ye come, but whither ye go! Your Will and your feet which seek to surpass you—let these be your new honour!
Verily, not that ye have served a prince—of what account are princes now!—nor that ye have become a bulwark to that which standeth, that it may stand more firmly.
Not that your family have become courtly at courts, and that ye have learned—gay-coloured, like the flamingo—to stand long hours in shallow pools:
(For ability-to-stand is a merit in courtiers; and all courtiers believe that unto blessedness after death pertaineth—permission-to-sit!)
Nor even that a Spirit called Holy, led your forefathers into promised lands, which I do not praise: for where the worst of all trees grew—the cross—in that land there is nothing to praise!—
—And verily, wherever this “Holy Spirit” led its knights, always in such campaigns did—goats and geese, and wryheads and guyheads run foremost!—
O my brethren, not backward shall your nobility gaze, but outward! Exiles shall ye be from all fatherlands and forefather-lands!
Your children’s land shall ye love: let this love be your new nobility—the undiscovered in the remotest seas! For it do I bid your sails search and search!
Unto your children shall ye make amends for being the children of your fathers: all the past shall ye thus redeem! This new table do I place over you!
XIII“Why should one live? All is vain! To live—that is to thrash straw; to live—that is to burn oneself and yet not get warm.”—
Such ancient babbling still passeth for “wisdom”; because it is old, however, and smelleth mustily, therefore is it the more honoured. Even mould ennobleth.—
Children might thus speak: they shun the fire because it hath burnt them! There is much childishness in the old books of wisdom.
And he who ever “thrasheth straw,” why should he be allowed to rail at thrashing! Such a fool one would have to muzzle!
Such persons sit down to the table and bring nothing with them, not even good hunger:—and then do they rail: “All is vain!”
But to eat and drink well, my brethren, is verily no vain art! Break up, break up for me the tables of the never-joyous ones!
XIV“To the clean are all things clean”—thus say the people. I, however, say unto you: To the swine all things become swinish!
Therefore preach the visionaries and bowed-heads (whose hearts are also bowed down): “The world itself is a filthy monster.”
For these are all unclean spirits; especially those, however, who have no peace or rest, unless they see the world from the backside—the backworldsmen!
To those do I say it to the face, although it sound unpleasantly: the world resembleth man, in that it hath a backside—so much is true!
There is in the world much filth: so much is true! But the world itself is not therefore a filthy monster!
There is wisdom in the fact that much in the world smelleth badly: loathing itself createth wings, and
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