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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—The most comprehensive soul, which can run and stray and rove furthest in itself; the most necessary soul, which out of joy flingeth itself into chance:—
—The soul in Being, which plungeth into Becoming; the possessing soul, which seeketh to attain desire and longing:—
—The soul fleeing from itself, which overtaketh itself in the widest circuit; the wisest soul, unto which folly speaketh most sweetly:—
—The soul most self-loving, in which all things have their current and countercurrent, their ebb and their flow:—oh, how could the loftiest soul fail to have the worst parasites?
XXO my brethren, am I then cruel? But I say: What falleth, that shall one also push!
Everything of today—it falleth, it decayeth; who would preserve it! But I—I wish also to push it!
Know ye the delight which rolleth stones into precipitous depths?—Those men of today, see just how they roll into my depths!
A prelude am I to better players, O my brethren! An example! Do according to mine example!
And him whom ye do not teach to fly, teach I pray you—to fall faster!—
XXII love the brave: but it is not enough to be a swordsman—one must also know whereon to use swordsmanship!
And often is it greater bravery to keep quiet and pass by, that thereby one may reserve oneself for a worthier foe!
Ye shall only have foes to be hated; but not foes to be despised: ye must be proud of your foes. Thus have I already taught.
For the worthier foe, O my brethren, shall ye reserve yourselves: therefore must ye pass by many a one—
—Especially many of the rabble, who din your ears with noise about people and peoples.
Keep your eye clear of their For and Against! There is there much right, much wrong: he who looketh on becometh wroth.
Therein viewing, therein hewing—they are the same thing: therefore depart into the forests and lay your sword to sleep!
Go your ways! and let the people and peoples go theirs!—gloomy ways, verily, on which not a single hope glinteth any more!
Let there the trader rule, where all that still glittereth is—traders’ gold. It is the time of kings no longer: that which now calleth itself the people is unworthy of kings.
See how these peoples themselves now do just like the traders: they pick up the smallest advantage out of all kinds of rubbish!
They lay lures for one another, they lure things out of one another—that they call “good neighbourliness.” O blessed remote period when a people said to itself: “I will be—master over peoples!”
For, my brethren, the best shall rule, the best also willeth to rule! And where the teaching is different, there—the best is lacking.
XXIIIf they had—bread for nothing, alas! for what would they cry! Their maintainment—that is their true entertainment; and they shall have it hard!
Beasts of prey, are they: in their “working”—there is even plundering, in their “earning”—there is even overreaching! Therefore shall they have it hard!
Better beasts of prey shall they thus become, subtler, cleverer, more manlike: for man is the best beast of prey.
All the animals hath man already robbed of their virtues: that is why of all animals it hath been hardest for man.
Only the birds are still beyond him. And if man should yet learn to fly, alas! to what height—would his rapacity fly!
XXIIIThus would I have man and woman: fit for war, the one; fit for maternity, the other; both, however, fit for dancing with head and legs.
And lost be the day to us in which a measure hath not been danced. And false be every truth which hath not had laughter along with it!
XXIVYour marriage-arranging: see that it be not a bad arranging! Ye have arranged too hastily: so there followeth therefrom—marriage-breaking!
And better marriage-breaking than marriage-bending, marriage-lying!—Thus spake a woman unto me: “Indeed, I broke the marriage, but first did the marriage break—me!”
The badly paired found I ever the most revengeful: they make everyone suffer for it that they no longer run singly.
On that account want I the honest ones to say to one another: “We love each other: let us see to it that we maintain our love! Or shall our pledging be blundering?”
—“Give us a set term and a small marriage, that we may see if we are fit for the great marriage! It is a great matter always to be twain.”
Thus do I counsel all honest ones; and what would be my love to the Superman, and to all that is to come, if I should counsel and speak otherwise!
Not only to propagate yourselves onwards but upwards—thereto, O my brethren, may the garden of marriage help you!
XXVHe who hath grown wise concerning old origins, lo, he will at last seek after the fountains of the future and new origins.—
O my brethren, not long will it be until new peoples shall arise and new fountains shall rush down into new depths.
For the earthquake—it choketh up many wells, it causeth much languishing: but it bringeth also to light inner powers and secrets.
The earthquake discloseth new fountains. In the earthquake of old peoples new fountains burst forth.
And whoever calleth out: “Lo, here is a well for many thirsty ones, one heart for many longing ones, one will for many instruments”:—around him collecteth a people, that is to say, many attempting ones.
Who can command, who must obey—that is there attempted! Ah, with what long seeking and solving and failing and learning and re-attempting!
Human society: it is an attempt—so I teach—a long seeking: it seeketh however the ruler!—
—An attempt, my brethren! And no “contract”! Destroy, I pray you, destroy that word of the softhearted and half-and-half!
XXVIO my brethren! With whom lieth the greatest danger to the whole human future? Is it not with the good and just?—
—As those who say and feel in their hearts: “We already know what
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