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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“Zarathustra! Zarathustra! Read my riddle! Say, say! What is the revenge on the witness?
“I entice thee back; here is smooth ice! See to it, see to it, that thy pride doth not here break its legs!
“Thou thinkest thyself wise, thou proud Zarathustra! Read then the riddle, thou hard nutcracker—the riddle that I am! Say then: who am I!”
—When however Zarathustra had heard these words—what think ye then took place in his soul? Pity overcame him; and he sank down all at once, like an oak that hath long withstood many tree-fellers—heavily, suddenly, to the terror even of those who meant to fell it. But immediately he got up again from the ground, and his countenance became stern.
“I know thee well,” said he, with a brazen voice, “thou art the murderer of God! Let me go.
“Thou couldst not endure him who beheld thee—who ever beheld thee through and through, thou ugliest man. Thou tookest revenge on this witness!”
Thus spake Zarathustra and was about to go; but the nondescript grasped at a corner of his garment and began anew to gurgle and seek for words. “Stay,” said he at last—
—“Stay! Do not pass by! I have divined what axe it was that struck thee to the ground: hail to thee, O Zarathustra, that thou art again upon thy feet!
“Thou hast divined, I know it well, how the man feeleth who killed him—the murderer of God. Stay! Sit down here beside me; it is not to no purpose.
“To whom would I go but unto thee? Stay, sit down! Do not however look at me! Honour thus—mine ugliness!
“They persecute me: now art thou my last refuge. Not with their hatred, not with their bailiffs;—Oh, such persecution would I mock at, and be proud and cheerful!
“Hath not all success hitherto been with the well-persecuted ones? And he who persecuteth well learneth readily to be obsequent—when once he is—put behind! But it is their pity—
“—Their pity is it from which I flee away and flee to thee. O Zarathustra, protect me, thou, my last refuge, thou sole one who divinedst me:
“—Thou hast divined how the man feeleth who killed him. Stay! And if thou wilt go, thou impatient one, go not the way that I came. That way is bad.
“Art thou angry with me because I have already racked language too long? Because I have already counselled thee? But know that it is I, the ugliest man,
“—Who have also the largest, heaviest feet. Where I have gone, the way is bad. I tread all paths to death and destruction.
“But that thou passedst me by in silence, that thou blushedst—I saw it well: thereby did I know thee as Zarathustra.
“Everyone else would have thrown to me his alms, his pity, in look and speech. But for that—I am not beggar enough: that didst thou divine.
“For that I am too rich, rich in what is great, frightful, ugliest, most unutterable! Thy shame, O Zarathustra, honoured me!
“With difficulty did I get out of the crowd of the pitiful—that I might find the only one who at present teacheth that ‘pity is obtrusive’—thyself, O Zarathustra!
“—Whether it be the pity of a God, or whether it be human pity, it is offensive to modesty. And unwillingness to help may be nobler than the virtue that rusheth to do so.
“That however—namely, pity—is called virtue itself at present by all petty people:—they have no reverence for great misfortune, great ugliness, great failure.
“Beyond all these do I look, as a dog looketh over the backs of thronging flocks of sheep. They are petty, good-wooled, good-willed, grey people.
“As the heron looketh contemptuously at shallow pools, with backward-bent head, so do I look at the throng of grey little waves and wills and souls.
“Too long have we acknowledged them to be right, those petty people: so we have at last given them power as well;—and now do they teach that ‘good is only what petty people call good.’
“And ‘truth’ is at present what the preacher spake who himself sprang from them, that singular saint and advocate of the petty people, who testified of himself: ‘I—am the truth.’
“That immodest one hath long made the petty people greatly puffed up—he who taught no small error when he taught: ‘I—am the truth.’
“Hath an immodest one ever been answered more courteously?—Thou, however, O Zarathustra, passedst him by, and saidst: ‘Nay! Nay! Three times Nay!’
“Thou warnedst against his error; thou warnedst—the first to do so—against pity:—not everyone, not none, but thyself and thy type.
“Thou art ashamed of the shame of the great sufferer; and verily when thou sayest: ‘From pity there cometh a heavy cloud; take heed, ye men!’
“—When thou teachest: ‘All creators are hard, all great love is beyond their pity:’ O Zarathustra, how well versed dost thou seem to me in weather-signs!
“Thou thyself, however—warn thyself also against thy pity! For many are on their way to thee, many suffering, doubting, despairing, drowning, freezing ones—
“I warn thee also against myself. Thou hast read my best, my worst riddle, myself, and what I have done. I know the axe that felleth thee.
“But he—had to die: he looked with eyes which beheld everything—he beheld men’s depths and dregs, all his hidden ignominy and ugliness.
“His pity knew no modesty: he crept into my dirtiest corners. This most prying, over-intrusive, over-pitiful one had to die.
“He ever beheld me: on such a witness I would have revenge—or not live myself.
“The God who beheld everything, and also man: that God had to die! Man cannot endure it that such a witness should live.”
Thus spake the ugliest man. Zarathustra however got up, and prepared to go on: for he felt frozen to the very bowels.
“Thou nondescript,” said he, “thou warnedst me against thy path. As thanks for it I praise mine to thee. Behold, up thither is the cave of Zarathustra.
“My
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