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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—As mysteriously, as frightfully, and as cordially as that midnight clock-bell speaketh it to me, which hath experienced more than one man:
—Which hath already counted the smarting throbbings of your fathers’ hearts—ah! ah! how it sigheth! how it laugheth in its dream! the old, deep, deep midnight!
Hush! Hush! Then is there many a thing heard which may not be heard by day; now however, in the cool air, when even all the tumult of your hearts hath become still—
—Now doth it speak, now is it heard, now doth it steal into overwakeful, nocturnal souls: ah! ah! how the midnight sigheth! how it laugheth in its dream!
—Hearest thou not how it mysteriously, frightfully, and cordially speaketh unto thee, the old deep, deep midnight?
O man, take heed!
IVWoe to me! Whither hath time gone? Have I not sunk into deep wells? The world sleepeth—
Ah! Ah! The dog howleth, the moon shineth. Rather will I die, rather will I die, than say unto you what my midnight-heart now thinketh.
Already have I died. It is all over. Spider, why spinnest thou around me? Wilt thou have blood? Ah! Ah! The dew falleth, the hour cometh—
—The hour in which I frost and freeze, which asketh and asketh and asketh: “Who hath sufficient courage for it?
“—Who is to be master of the world? Who is going to say: Thus shall ye flow, ye great and small streams!”
—The hour approacheth: O man, thou higher man, take heed! this talk is for fine ears, for thine ears—what saith deep midnight’s voice indeed?
VIt carrieth me away, my soul danceth. Day’s-work! Day’s-work! Who is to be master of the world?
The moon is cool, the wind is still. Ah! Ah! Have ye already flown high enough? Ye have danced: a leg, nevertheless, is not a wing.
Ye good dancers, now is all delight over: wine hath become lees, every cup hath become brittle, the sepulchres mutter.
Ye have not flown high enough: now do the sepulchres mutter: “Free the dead! Why is it so long night? Doth not the moon make us drunken?”
Ye higher men, free the sepulchres, awaken the corpses! Ah, why doth the worm still burrow? There approacheth, there approacheth, the hour—
—There boometh the clock-bell, there thrilleth still the heart, there burroweth still the woodworm, the heart-worm. Ah! Ah! The world is deep!
VISweet lyre! Sweet lyre! I love thy tone, thy drunken, ranunculine tone!—how long, how far hath come unto me thy tone, from the distance, from the ponds of love!
Thou old clock-bell, thou sweet lyre! Every pain hath torn thy heart, father-pain, fathers’-pain, forefathers’-pain; thy speech hath become ripe—
—Ripe like the golden autumn and the afternoon, like mine anchorite heart—now sayest thou: The world itself hath become ripe, the grape turneth brown,
—Now doth it wish to die, to die of happiness. Ye higher men, do ye not feel it? There welleth up mysteriously an odour,
—A perfume and odour of eternity, a rosy-blessed, brown, gold-wine-odour of old happiness,
—Of drunken midnight-death happiness, which singeth: the world is deep, and deeper than the day could read!
VIILeave me alone! Leave me alone! I am too pure for thee. Touch me not! Hath not my world just now become perfect?
My skin is too pure for thy hands. Leave me alone, thou dull, doltish, stupid day! Is not the midnight brighter?
The purest are to be masters of the world, the least known, the strongest, the midnight-souls, who are brighter and deeper than any day.
O day, thou gropest for me? Thou feelest for my happiness? For thee am I rich, lonesome, a treasure-pit, a gold chamber?
O world, thou wantest me? Am I worldly for thee? Am I spiritual for thee? Am I divine for thee? But day and world, ye are too coarse—
—Have cleverer hands, grasp after deeper happiness, after deeper unhappiness, grasp after some God; grasp not after me:
—Mine unhappiness, my happiness is deep, thou strange day, but yet am I no God, no God’s-hell: deep is its woe.
VIIIGod’s woe is deeper, thou strange world! Grasp at God’s woe, not at me! What am I! A drunken sweet lyre—
—A midnight-lyre, a bell-frog, which no one understandeth, but which must speak before deaf ones, ye higher men! For ye do not understand me!
Gone! Gone! O youth! O noontide! O afternoon! Now have come evening and night and midnight—the dog howleth, the wind:
—Is the wind not a dog? It whineth, it barketh, it howleth. Ah! Ah! how she sigheth! how she laugheth, how she wheezeth and panteth, the midnight!
How she just now speaketh soberly, this drunken poetess! hath she perhaps overdrunk her drunkenness? hath she become overawake? doth she ruminate?
—Her woe doth she ruminate over, in a dream, the old, deep midnight—and still more her joy. For joy, although woe be deep, joy is deeper still than grief can be.
IXThou grapevine! Why dost thou praise me? Have I not cut thee! I am cruel, thou bleedest—: what meaneth thy praise of my drunken cruelty?
“Whatever hath become perfect, everything mature—wanteth to die!” so sayest thou. Blessed, blessed be the vintner’s knife! But everything immature wanteth to live: alas!
Woe saith: “Hence! Go! Away, thou woe!” But everything that suffereth wanteth to live, that it may become mature and lively and longing,
—Longing for the further, the higher, the brighter. “I want heirs,” so saith everything that suffereth, “I want children, I do not want myself,”—
Joy, however, doth not want heirs, it doth not want children—joy wanteth itself, it wanteth eternity, it wanteth recurrence, it wanteth everything eternally-like-itself.
Woe saith: “Break, bleed, thou heart! Wander, thou leg! Thou wing, fly! Onward! upward! thou pain!” Well! Cheer up! O mine old heart: Woe saith: “Hence! Go!”
XYe higher men, what think ye? Am I a soothsayer? Or a dreamer? Or a drunkard? Or a dream-reader? Or a midnight-bell?
Or a drop of dew?
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