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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In the best there is still something to loathe; and the best is still something that must be surpassed!—
O my brethren, there is much wisdom in the fact that much filth is in the world!—
XVSuch sayings did I hear pious backworldsmen speak to their consciences, and verily without wickedness or guile—although there is nothing more guileful in the world, or more wicked.
“Let the world be as it is! Raise not a finger against it!”
“Let whoever will choke and stab and skin and scrape the people: raise not a finger against it! Thereby will they learn to renounce the world.”
“And thine own reason—this shalt thou thyself stifle and choke; for it is a reason of this world—thereby wilt thou learn thyself to renounce the world.”—
—Shatter, shatter, O my brethren, those old tables of the pious! Tatter the maxims of the world-maligners!—
XVI“He who learneth much unlearneth all violent cravings”—that do people now whisper to one another in all the dark lanes.
“Wisdom wearieth, nothing is worth while; thou shalt not crave!”—this new table found I hanging even in the public markets.
Break up for me, O my brethren, break up also that new table! The weary-o’-the-world put it up, and the preachers of death and the jailer: for lo, it is also a sermon for slavery:—
Because they learned badly and not the best, and everything too early and everything too fast; because they ate badly: from thence hath resulted their ruined stomach;—
—For a ruined stomach, is their spirit: it persuadeth to death! For verily, my brethren, the spirit is a stomach!
Life is a well of delight, but to him in whom the ruined stomach speaketh, the father of affliction, all fountains are poisoned.
To discern: that is delight to the lion-willed! But he who hath become weary, is himself merely “willed”; with him play all the waves.
And such is always the nature of weak men: they lose themselves on their way. And at last asketh their weariness: “Why did we ever go on the way? All is indifferent!”
To them soundeth it pleasant to have preached in their ears: “Nothing is worth while! Ye shall not will!” That, however, is a sermon for slavery.
O my brethren, a fresh blustering wind cometh Zarathustra unto all way-weary ones; many noses will he yet make sneeze!
Even through walls bloweth my free breath, and in into prisons and imprisoned spirits!
Willing emancipateth: for willing is creating: so do I teach. And only for creating shall ye learn!
And also the learning shall ye learn only from me, the learning well!—He who hath ears let him hear!
XVIIThere standeth the boat—thither goeth it over, perhaps into vast nothingness—but who willeth to enter into this “Perhaps”?
None of you want to enter into the death-boat! How should ye then be world-weary ones!
World-weary ones! And have not even withdrawn from the earth! Eager did I ever find you for the earth, amorous still of your own earth-weariness!
Not in vain doth your lip hang down:—a small worldly wish still sitteth thereon! And in your eye—floateth there not a cloudlet of unforgotten earthly bliss?
There are on the earth many good inventions, some useful, some pleasant: for their sake is the earth to be loved.
And many such good inventions are there, that they are like woman’s breasts: useful at the same time, and pleasant.
Ye world-weary ones, however! Ye earth-idlers! You, shall one beat with stripes! With stripes shall one again make you sprightly limbs.
For if ye be not invalids, or decrepit creatures, of whom the earth is weary, then are ye sly sloths, or dainty, sneaking pleasure-cats. And if ye will not again run gaily, then shall ye—pass away!
To the incurable shall one not seek to be a physician: thus teacheth Zarathustra:—so shall ye pass away!
But more courage is needed to make an end than to make a new verse: that do all physicians and poets know well.—
XVIIIO my brethren, there are tables which weariness framed, and tables which slothfulness framed, corrupt slothfulness: although they speak similarly, they want to be heard differently.—
See this languishing one! Only a span-breadth is he from his goal; but from weariness hath he lain down obstinately in the dust, this brave one!
From weariness yawneth he at the path, at the earth, at the goal, and at himself: not a step further will he go—this brave one!
Now gloweth the sun upon him, and the dogs lick at his sweat: but he lieth there in his obstinacy and preferreth to languish:—
—A span-breadth from his goal, to languish! Verily, ye will have to drag him into his heaven by the hair of his head—this hero!
Better still that ye let him lie where he hath lain down, that sleep may come unto him, the comforter, with cooling patter-rain.
Let him lie, until of his own accord he awakeneth—until of his own accord he repudiateth all weariness, and what weariness hath taught through him!
Only, my brethren, see that ye scare the dogs away from him, the idle skulkers, and all the swarming vermin:—
—All the swarming vermin of the “cultured,” that—feast on the sweat of every hero!—
XIXI form circles around me and holy boundaries; ever fewer ascend with me ever higher mountains: I build a mountain-range out of ever holier mountains.—
But wherever ye would ascend with me, O my brethren, take care lest a parasite ascend with you!
A parasite: that is a reptile, a creeping, cringing reptile, that trieth to fatten on your infirm and sore places.
And this is its art: it divineth where ascending souls are weary, in your trouble and dejection, in your sensitive modesty, doth it build its loathsome nest.
Where the strong are weak, where the noble are all-too-gentle—there buildeth it its loathsome nest; the parasite liveth where the great have small sore-places.
What is the highest of all species of being, and what is the lowest? The parasite is the lowest species; he, however, who is of the highest species feedeth most parasites.
For the soul which hath
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