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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Have ye understood this word, O my brethren? Ye are frightened: do your hearts turn giddy? Doth the abyss here yawn for you? Doth the hellhound here yelp at you?
Well! Take heart! ye higher men! Now only travaileth the mountain of the human future. God hath died: now do we desire—the Superman to live.
IIIThe most careful ask today: “How is man to be maintained?” Zarathustra however asketh, as the first and only one: “How is man to be surpassed?”
The Superman, I have at heart; that is the first and only thing to me—and not man: not the neighbour, not the poorest, not the sorriest, not the best.—
O my brethren, what I can love in man is that he is an over-going and a down-going. And also in you there is much that maketh me love and hope.
In that ye have despised, ye higher men, that maketh me hope. For the great despisers are the great reverers.
In that ye have despaired, there is much to honour. For ye have not learned to submit yourselves, ye have not learned petty policy.
For today have the petty people become master: they all preach submission and humility and policy and diligence and consideration and the long et cetera of petty virtues.
Whatever is of the effeminate type, whatever originateth from the servile type, and especially the populace-mishmash:—that wisheth now to be master of all human destiny—O disgust! Disgust! Disgust!
That asketh and asketh and never tireth: “How is man to maintain himself best, longest, most pleasantly?” Thereby—are they the masters of today.
These masters of today—surpass them, O my brethren—these petty people: they are the Superman’s greatest danger!
Surpass, ye higher men, the petty virtues, the petty policy, the sand-grain considerateness, the anthill trumpery, the pitiable comfortableness, the “happiness of the greatest number”—!
And rather despair than submit yourselves. And verily, I love you, because ye know not today how to live, ye higher men! For thus do ye live—best!
IVHave ye courage, O my brethren? Are ye stouthearted? Not the courage before witnesses, but anchorite and eagle courage, which not even a God any longer beholdeth?
Cold souls, mules, the blind and the drunken, I do not call stouthearted. He hath heart who knoweth fear, but vanquisheth it; who seeth the abyss, but with pride.
He who seeth the abyss, but with eagle’s eyes—he who with eagle’s talons graspeth the abyss: he hath courage.⸺
V“Man is evil”—so said to me for consolation, all the wisest ones. Ah, if only it be still true today! For the evil is man’s best force.
“Man must become better and eviler”—so do I teach. The evilest is necessary for the Superman’s best.
It may have been well for the preacher of the petty people to suffer and be burdened by men’s sin. I, however, rejoice in great sin as my great consolation.—
Such things, however, are not said for long ears. Every word, also, is not suited for every mouth. These are fine faraway things: at them sheep’s claws shall not grasp!
VIYe higher men, think ye that I am here to put right what ye have put wrong?
Or that I wished henceforth to make snugger couches for you sufferers? Or show you restless, miswandering, misclimbing ones, new and easier footpaths?
Nay! Nay! Three times Nay! Always more, always better ones of your type shall succumb—for ye shall always have it worse and harder. Thus only—
—Thus only groweth man aloft to the height where the lightning striketh and shattereth him: high enough for the lightning!
Towards the few, the long, the remote go forth my soul and my seeking: of what account to me are your many little, short miseries!
Ye do not yet suffer enough for me! For ye suffer from yourselves, ye have not yet suffered from man. Ye would lie if ye spake otherwise! None of you suffereth from what I have suffered.⸺
VIIIt is not enough for me that the lightning no longer doeth harm. I do not wish to conduct it away: it shall learn—to work for me.—
My wisdom hath accumulated long like a cloud, it becometh stiller and darker. So doeth all wisdom which shall one day bear lightnings.—
Unto these men of today will I not be light, nor be called light. Them—will I blind: lightning of my wisdom! put out their eyes!
VIIIDo not will anything beyond your power: there is a bad falseness in those who will beyond their power.
Especially when they will great things! For they awaken distrust in great things, these subtle false-coiners and stage-players:—
—Until at last they are false towards themselves, squint-eyed, whited cankers, glossed over with strong words, parade virtues and brilliant false deeds.
Take good care there, ye higher men! For nothing is more precious to me, and rarer, than honesty.
Is this today not that of the populace? The populace however knoweth not what is great and what is small, what is straight and what is honest: it is innocently crooked, it ever lieth.
IXHave a good distrust today ye, higher men, ye enheartened ones! Ye openhearted ones! And keep your reasons secret! For this today is that of the populace.
What the populace once learned to believe without reasons, who could—refute it to them by means of reasons?
And on the marketplace one convinceth with gestures. But reasons make the populace distrustful.
And when truth hath once triumphed there, then ask yourselves with good distrust: “What strong error hath fought for it?”
Be on your guard also against the learned! They hate you, because they are unproductive! They have cold, withered eyes before which every bird is unplumed.
Such persons vaunt about not lying: but inability to lie is still far from being love to truth. Be on your guard!
Freedom from fever is still far from being knowledge! Refrigerated spirits I do not believe in. He who cannot lie, doth not know what truth is.
XIf ye would go up high, then use your
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