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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Aye, for the game of creating, my brethren, there is needed a holy Yea unto life: its own will, willeth now the spirit; his own world winneth the world’s outcast.
Three metamorphoses of the spirit have I designated to you: how the spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.—
Thus spake Zarathustra. And at that time he abode in the town which is called The Pied Cow.
II The Academic Chairs of VirtuePeople commended unto Zarathustra a wise man, as one who could discourse well about sleep and virtue: greatly was he honoured and rewarded for it, and all the youths sat before his chair. To him went Zarathustra, and sat among the youths before his chair. And thus spake the wise man:
Respect and modesty in presence of sleep! That is the first thing! And to go out of the way of all who sleep badly and keep awake at night!
Modest is even the thief in presence of sleep: he always stealeth softly through the night. Immodest, however, is the night-watchman; immodestly he carrieth his horn.
No small art is it to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose to keep awake all day.
Ten times a day must thou overcome thyself: that causeth wholesome weariness, and is poppy to the soul.
Ten times must thou reconcile again with thyself; for overcoming is bitterness, and badly sleep the unreconciled.
Ten truths must thou find during the day; otherwise wilt thou seek truth during the night, and thy soul will have been hungry.
Ten times must thou laugh during the day, and be cheerful; otherwise thy stomach, the father of affliction, will disturb thee in the night.
Few people know it, but one must have all the virtues in order to sleep well. Shall I bear false witness? Shall I commit adultery?
Shall I covet my neighbour’s maidservant? All that would ill accord with good sleep.
And even if one have all the virtues, there is still one thing needful: to send the virtues themselves to sleep at the right time.
That they may not quarrel with one another, the good females! And about thee, thou unhappy one!
Peace with God and thy neighbour: so desireth good sleep. And peace also with thy neighbour’s devil! Otherwise it will haunt thee in the night.
Honour to the government, and obedience, and also to the crooked government! So desireth good sleep. How can I help it, if power like to walk on crooked legs?
He who leadeth his sheep to the greenest pasture, shall always be for me the best shepherd: so doth it accord with good sleep.
Many honours I want not, nor great treasures: they excite the spleen. But it is bad sleeping without a good name and a little treasure.
A small company is more welcome to me than a bad one: but they must come and go at the right time. So doth it accord with good sleep.
Well, also, do the poor in spirit please me: they promote sleep. Blessed are they, especially if one always give in to them.
Thus passeth the day unto the virtuous. When night cometh, then take I good care not to summon sleep. It disliketh to be summoned—sleep, the lord of the virtues!
But I think of what I have done and thought during the day. Thus ruminating, patient as a cow, I ask myself: What were thy ten overcomings?
And what were the ten reconciliations, and the ten truths, and the ten laughters with which my heart enjoyed itself?
Thus pondering, and cradled by forty thoughts, it overtaketh me all at once—sleep, the unsummoned, the lord of the virtues.
Sleep tappeth on mine eye, and it turneth heavy. Sleep toucheth my mouth, and it remaineth open.
Verily, on soft soles doth it come to me, the dearest of thieves, and stealeth from me my thoughts: stupid do I then stand, like this academic chair.
But not much longer do I then stand: I already lie.—
When Zarathustra heard the wise man thus speak, he laughed in his heart: for thereby had a light dawned upon him. And thus spake he to his heart:
A fool seemeth this wise man with his forty thoughts: but I believe he knoweth well how to sleep.
Happy even is he who liveth near this wise man! Such sleep is contagious—even through a thick wall it is contagious.
A magic resideth even in his academic chair. And not in vain did the youths sit before the preacher of virtue.
His wisdom is to keep awake in order to sleep well. And verily, if life had no sense, and had I to choose nonsense, this would be the desirablest nonsense for me also.
Now know I well what people sought formerly above all else when they sought teachers of virtue. Good sleep they sought for themselves, and poppy-head virtues to promote it!
To all those belauded sages of the academic chairs, wisdom was sleep without dreams: they knew no higher significance of life.
Even at present, to be sure, there are some like this preacher of virtue, and not always so honourable: but their time is past. And not much longer do they stand: there they already lie.
Blessed are those drowsy ones: for they shall soon nod to sleep.—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
III BackworldsmenOnce on a time, Zarathustra also cast his fancy beyond man, like all backworldsmen. The work of a suffering and tortured God, did the world then seem to me.
The dream—and diction—of a God, did the world then seem to me; coloured vapours before the eyes of a divinely dissatisfied one.
Good and evil, and joy and woe, and I and thou—coloured vapours did they seem to me before creative eyes. The creator wished to look away from himself—thereupon he created the world.
Intoxicating joy is it for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and forget himself. Intoxicating joy and self-forgetting, did the world once seem to me.
This world, the eternally imperfect, an eternal contradiction’s image and imperfect image—an intoxicating joy to its imperfect creator:—thus did the world once seem to me.
Thus, once on
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