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of a self-relation that will in the present circumstances make possible a yearning for a self-overcoming and escape from mere contentment - will also rule out various contents .Itisclear that he, and in this case Nietzsche as well, thinks that one cannot whole-heartedly and 'self-overcomingly' be a 'last human being' or any of its many manifestations (a petty tyrant, a pale atheist, a 'reactive' type, a modern ascetic). Such types embody forms of a 'negative' self-relation that are 'reactive' and self-denying in a way that makes true self-overcoming and self-affirmation impossible and so will not allow that form of identification with one's deeds that Zarathustra suggests should be like the way a 'mother' sees herself in her 'child.' ('I wish your self were in the deed like the mother is in the child; let that be your word on virtue' (p. ).) Yet it is also clear that one cannot simply will 'to have contempt for oneself as Zarathustra recommends.' The right relation between shame and yearning is as delicate and elusive as are Zarathustra's strange speeches and dreams and visions. And, as we have been seeing, he also clearly thinks (or he experiences in his own adventures) that only some kinds of relations to others are consistent with the possibility of such genuine self-direction. Merely commanding others, discipleship, indifference, or isolation are all ruled out. Since we also do not ever get from Nietzsche a discursive account of what distinguishes a genuine form of self-direction and self-overcoming from an illusory or self-deceived one (whatever such a distinction amounts to, it is not of the kind that could be helped, would be better realized, by such a theory), elements of how he understands that distinction emerge only indirectly and, together with a clearer understanding of self-overcoming and the social relations it requires, would all have to be reconstructed from a wide variety of contexts and passages. Moreover, to make everything even more complicated, Nietzsche also clearly believes that such a whole-hearted aspiration to self-overcoming is also consistent with a certain level of irony , some distance from one's ideals, the adoption of personae and masks, and even a kind of esotericism when addressing different audiences.
But while Zarathustra does not treat these issues as discursive problems, as if they were problems about skepticism or justification, he does suffer from them, suffer from the burden that the thought of such contingency imposes on any possibly worthy life. He becomes ill, apparently ill with xxix
the human condition as such, even disgusted by it, and a great deal of the latter four speeches of Part and the majority of Part involve his possible recovery from such an illness, his 'convalescing.' There is in effect a kind of mini-narrative from the speech called 'The Soothsayer' in Part until the speech 'On Unwilling Bliss' in Part that is at the center of the work's drama, and the re-orientation effected there is played out throughout the rest of Part , especially in 'The Convalescent.' Dramatically, at the end of Part Zarathustra again resolves to return home, and in Part he is underway back there, and finally reaches his cave and his animals.
'The Soothsayer' begins with remarks about the famous doctrine mostly attributed to Nietzsche, but here expressed by a soothsayer and quoted by Zarathustra. (In Ecce Homo , the idea is called the 'basic idea' and 'fundamental thought' of the work.) This notion, that 'Everything is empty, everything is the same, everything was!' is promptly interpreted in a melancholic way, such that 'We have become too weary to die; now we continue to wake and we live on - in burial chambers' (p. ). It is this prophecy that 'went straight to his [Zarathustra's] heart and transformed him.' He does not eat or drink for three days, does not speak, and doesnotsleep. In typically figurative language he explains the source of his despair in a way that suggests a kind of self-critique. He had clearly earlier placed his hopes for mankind in a dramatic historical, epochal moment, the bridge from man to the overman, and he now realizes that it was a mistake to consider this a historical goal or broad civilizational ideal, that such a teleology is a fantasy, that rather 'all recurs eternally,' that the last human being cannot be overcome in some revolutionary moment. In the language of his strange dream he finds that he does not, after all, have the 'keys' to open the relevant historical gate (he thought he did, thought he need not only keep watch over, but could open up, what had gone dead), that it is a matter of chance or a sudden wind whether or not a historical change will occur within individuals, and if it does, it might be nothing but the release of what had been dead. His disciples promptly interpret the dream in exactly the opposite way, as if Zarathustra himself were 'the [liberating] wind.' Zarathustra merely shakes his head in disappointment and continues his wandering home. EH, , pp. and . xxx
The details of Zarathustra's re-evaluation of what is required now of himandhisaddresseesinorder,ineffect, to 'take up the reins' of a life and live it better, to embody a commitment to constant self-transcendence, instead of merely suffering existence, involve scores of images and parables. Zarathustra will not now see himself as removing the deformity from 'cripples.' That is useless, he implies; they must do that for themselves. Or Zarathustra must learn to be silent often, to teach by not teaching, and this occasions the clearest expressions, even at this late date, of the ambiguities in Zarathustra's role and self-understanding: Is he a promiser? Or a fulfiller? A conqueror? Or an inheritor? An autumn? Or a plow? A physician? Or a convalescent? Is he a poet? Or a truthful man? A liberator? Or a tamer? A good man? Or an evil man? I walk among human beings as among fragments of the future; the future that I see. (p. ) Yetagain, the question of who Zarathustra is, what he stands for, what his purpose is, remains a puzzling question for Zarathustra himself . Zarathustra, in other words, cannot understand what it means to be a 'spokesman' for Zarathustra. We are obviously very far from being able to see him as a spokesman for Nietzsche. This is all also said to effect a kind of 'reconciliation' with circular, repetitive time. He will encourage a liberation in which what we took to be what merely happened to us in the past can be assumed as the burden of one's own doing, that one will heroically take on what merely 'was' as one's own and so transform it into 'thus I willed it.' (This might be likened to a Greek tragic hero who takes on more of a burden of what was done than can be strictly attributed to his deed, someone like Oedipus or Ajax. )Hedoes not need the 'lion's voice' of commanding: 'The stillest words are those that bring the storm. Thoughts that come on the feet of doves steer the world' (p. ).
Throughout Part , Zarathustra speaks mostly to himself; he learns that his greatest danger is 'love,' 'the danger of the loneliest one, love of everything if only it lives !' (p. ). He must struggle with a 'spirit of gravity,' his own reflective doubt that he will be 'dragged down' See Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity (Berkeley: University of California Press, ). xxxi by the 'abysmal thought' of the Eternal Return. It is in this struggle that he realizes that the way in which the meaning of the absence of historical revolution or redemption is lived out or embodied in a life is not something that can be easily read off from the mere doctrine itself. There is no clear, unavoidable inference either to despair, indifference, or affirmation. The dwarf, the spirit of gravity, does that (reads despair as the implication) and 'makes it too easy on himself' (p. ). And Zarathustra again tries to 'dream' his way out of his sadness by dreaming himself as a young shepherd 'choking' on his own 'circular' doctrine, the Eternal Return, but one who succeeds in 'biting off the head of the snake' that had crawled into his throat, and so emerged 'a transformed, illuminated, laughing' being (p. ). Just how exactly the despair-inducing features of there being no temporal redemption and a ceaseless return of even the last men are transformed into an affirmative vision, and just how this is captured by 'biting the head off the snake' is not clear. When that very question comes up much more explicitly in 'The Convalescent' (Zarathustra fasts again for seven days and when he resumes speaking he mentions again the 'nausea' that the thought of the Eternal Return occasioned), the attempt by his animals to attribute the Eternal Return to Zarathustra as a 'teaching' is met first by his complaint that they are turning him and his struggle into a 'hurdy-gurdy song' and when they go on and interpret the doctrine as a kind of immortality teaching (that Zarathustra will return), Zarathustra ignores them, communes only with his soul. Also, given that aspects of Zarathustra's own despair return after this, the image of recovery might be as much wishful thinking, or at least the expression of a mere faint hope as it is a settled event.
This dialogue with his disciples also shows that one of the things that recurs repeatedly for Zarathustra are his own words; that he cannot prevent the 'literalization' of his parabolic speech. His disciples are not dense or merely mistaken; they are simply trying to understand what Zarathustra means. When repeated as a teaching or a doctrine, Zarathustra's parabolic speech becomes parodic, comic. But he has no option other than saying nothing (and he has found that he cannot live in such isolation) or preaching more directly, in which case his disciples would be xxxii Introduction (even more than they already are) following him, not themselves. The parodic return of his own words is thus the heart of his tragedy. After this expression of his putative, perhaps short-lived new selfunderstanding, he believes he can say such things as 'I gave it [chance] back to all things, I redeemed them from their servitude under purpose' (p. ). Having done so, a 'homecoming' back with his animals is now possible, he thinks, and he expresses the relation to others, here his animals, that he would have wanted 'down there,' but failed to achieve: 'We do not implore one another, we do not deplore one another, we walk openly with one another through open doors' (p. ). Thus, as we drift towards the end of the Part , which Nietzsche at one time clearly conceived as the end of the book, Zarathustra's despair at any change in the collective or individual lives of human beings seems at its darkest. However, as is so typical of the wandering eros of Zarathustra, within a few speeches he announces yet again 'I want to return to mankind once more' (p. ).
He does not, however, and at the beginning of the Part , Zarathustra is still alone, and he is old now. He re-encounters the soothsayer but one cannot see in their confrontation that anything decisive is settled. And, although Zarathustra begins to talk with and assemble a wide variety of what are called 'higher human beings' (kings, an old magician, the pope, the voluntary beggar, the shadow, the conscientious of spirit, the sad soothsayer, and the ass), his own 'teaching' about overcoming and the higher seems here yet again parodied rather than celebrated. As noted, Part reads more like a comic, concluding satyr play to a tragic trilogy than a real conclusion. It is especially self-parodic when all these so-called higher types end up worshipping a jackass, presumably because the ass can at least make a sound that articulates what all have been seeking, a mode of affirmation and commitment. The ass can say Hee-yaw, that is, ja, or Yes! So we end with the same problem. Zarathustra must report, 'But I still lack the proper human beings.' However, when a 'cloud of love' descends around him, and he hears a lion's roar (a 'sign' that takes us back to On this point I am grateful to conversations with David Wellbery. Compare, ' it is only in love , only when shaded by the illusions produced by love, that is to say in the unconditional faith in right and perfection, that man is creative.' Friedrich Nietzsche, 'On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,' in Untimely Meditations ,trans. R. J. Hollingdale, ed. Daniel Breazeale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), , p. . xxxiii Introduction
the three metamorphoses of the first speech), he also believes that 'My children are near, my children,' and yet again he leaves his cave, 'glowing and strong, like a morning sun that emerges from dark mountains' (p. ). But by this point we are experiencing as readers our own eternal return, the cycle of hope and despair, descent and return, sociality and isolation, love and contempt, parable and parody, lower and higher, earth and heaven, snake and eagle, that we have been reading about throughout. The 'ending' in other words is meant to suggest a cyclical temporality, as if to pose for us the question Zarathustra continually has to ask himself. The question is oriented from the now familiar assumptions: no redemptive or revolutionary moment in human time, no re-assurance about or reliance on the naturally right or good; no revelations from God; and the eventual return of everything we have tried to overcome. Given such assumptions, the question is whether the self-overcoming Zarathustra encourages, the desire for some greater or better form of self-direction, assuming the full burden of leading a life, is practically possible, from the lived viewpoint of the agent.
In keeping with the unsystematic form of the clear models for TSZ biblical wisdom literature, the French moral psychologists of the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries (Montaigne, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld), Emerson, Goethe - it is of course appropriate that we be 'taught' nothing about this by Zarathustra, 'taught' if at all only by his ultimate silence about this new possibility and so its challenge to us, to make it 'our own.' No lessons can be drawn from it, no summary credo articulated, no justification for a position formulated, any more than any 'gift of love' like this, any image of a life worth living under these conditions, can be interrogated in this way. The work seems to function as the same kind of 'test' for the reader as the soothsayer's doctrine for Zarathustra. Either the temper and credibility of Zarathustra's constant return to the ultimately unredeemable human world will strike the chord Nietzsche hoped still existed, or it will not; either there are such 'children' as Zarathustra sees in his final vision, or they will seem like the illusions that so many of Zarathustra's hopes have proven to be from the beginning. Or to adopt the language of Zarathustra, and in this case at least, Nietzsche himself, perhaps such children do have the status of mere dreams, but they thereby also might satisfy what Nietzsche once described as the conditions of xxxiv
contemporary self-overcoming: the ability to 'dream' without first having to 'sleep.' Robert B. Pippin GS, . A re-orientation of some sort that would permit the entertaining of some aspiration or ideal, some inspiring picture that would not (given our intellectual conscience) have to be treated as a distortion or fantasy or merely utopian (that we would not have to 'sleep,' shut off our conscience) in order to dream in this way, is at the heart of the Kafka fable cited in n. above. From what has become the ordinary viewpoint, parables are a waste of time (What is Nietzsche's proposal? His plan? How does he want us to live?), and the right understanding would be to live out the parable; but, paradoxically, not ' as a parable,' as if a self-conscious idealization. That would be 'correct,' from the viewpoint of reality, but a destruction of the parable's function; one would have 'lost.' xxxv
, 1 = Born in Rocken, a small village in the Prussian province of Saxony, on October.. , 1 = Birth of his sister Elisabeth.. , 1 = Birth of his brother Joseph.. , 1 = His father, a Lutheran minister, dies at age thirty-six of 'softening of the brain.'. , 1 = Brother dies; family moves to Naumburg to live with father's mother and her sisters.. , 1 = Begins studies at Pforta, Germany's most famous school for education in the classics.. , 1 = Graduates from Pforta with a thesis in Latin on the Greek poet Theognis; enters the university of Bonn as a theology student. Transfers from Bonn, following the classical philologist Friedrich Ritschl to Leipzig where he registers as a philology student;. , 1 = reads Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation. Reads Friedrich Lange's History of Materialism. Meets Richard Wagner.. , 1 = . , 1 = On Ritschl's recommendation is appointed professor of classical. , 1 = doctorate (which is then conferred without a dissertation); begins frequent visits to the Wagner residence at Tribschen.. , 1 = Serves as a medical orderly in the Franco-Prussian war; contracts a serious illness and so serves only two months. Writes 'The Dionysiac World View.' The Birth of Tragedy ; its dedicatory. , 1 = Publishes his first book, preface to Richard Wagner claims for art the role of 'the highest xxxvi
, 1 = task and truly metaphysical activity of his life'; devastating reviews follow. Publishes 'David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer,' the first of his Untimely Meditations ; begins taking books on natural science out of the Basle library, whereas he had previously confined himself largely to books on philological matters. Writes 'On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense.'. , 1 = Publishes two more Meditations , 'The Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life' and 'Schopenhauer as Educator.'. , 1 = Publishes the fourth Meditation , 'Richard Wagner in Bayreuth,' which already bears subtle signs of his movement away from Wagner.. , 1 = Publishes Human, All Too Human (dedicated to the memory of Voltaire); it praises science over art as the high culture and thus marks a decisive turn away from Wagner.. , 1 = Terrible health problems force him to resign his chair at Basle (with a small pension); publishes 'Assorted Opinions and Maxims,' the first part of vol. of Human, All Too Human ; begins living alone in Swiss and Italian boarding-houses.. , 1 = Publishes 'The Wanderer and His Shadow,' which becomes the second part of vol. of Human, All Too Human. Publishes Daybreak .. , 1 = Publishes Idylls of Messina (eight poems) in a monthly magazine; publishes The Gay Science (first edition); friendship with Paul R'ee and Lou Andreas-Salom'e ends badly, leaving Nietzsche devastated.. , 1 = Publishes the first two parts of Thus Spoke Zarathustra; learns of Wagner's death just after mailing Part to the publisher. of Thus Spoke Zarathustra .. , 1 = Publishes Part. , 1 = Publishes Part of Zarathustra for private circulation only.. , 1 = Publishes Beyond Good and Evil ; writes prefaces for new releases of: The Birth of Tragedy, Human, All Too Human , vols. and , and Daybreak.. , 1 = Publishes expanded edition of The Gay Science with a new preface, a fifth book, and an appendix of poems; publishes Hymn to Life ,amusical work for chorus and orchestra; publishes On the Genealogy of Morality. xxxvii
, Chronology = Publishes The Case of Wagner , composes a collection of poems, Dionysian Dithyrambs , and four short books: Twilight of Idols , The Antichrist , Ecce Homo , and Nietzsche contra Wagner . Collapses physically and mentally in Turin on . , Chronology = January; writes a few lucid notes but never recovers sanity; is briefly institutionalized; spends remainder of his life as an invalid, living with his mother and then his sister, who also gains control of his literary estate.. , Chronology = Dies in Weimar on August. xxxviii
Thus Spoke Zarathustra has attracted the most attention of all of Nietzsche's works, it is therefore his most popular in terms of printings and sales, and his most critically acclaimed. Attempts to do justice to the richness and strangeness of this work by providing detailed commentary on each chapter began early, in the nineteenth century, with Gustav Naumann's Zarathustra-Commentar ( vols., Leipzig: H. Haessel, - ). Naumann's commentary addresses each chapter of Zarathustra in a reliable and nuanced manner, making it useful even today (at least to readers of German). Naumann was also highly critical of the machinations of Nietzsche's sister, Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche, as she enlisted sympathetic editors to manufacture her own image of Nietzsche and her own edition of his works. Historically Naumann's commentary is valuable because it is part of the phenomenal reception of Nietzsche's ideas at the turn of the century, and because it is early enough to be untainted by the negative fall-out of the two world wars and their lingering damage to Nietzsche's reputation. The next comprehensive attempt to explain Zarathustra began in the s and took the form of a six-year seminar given by C. G. Jung at the university of Zurich. For decades the unpublished notes of this seminar circulated in photocopy among the Nietzsche underground at various universities until finally they were edited and published by James L. Jarrett as Nietzsche's 'Zarathustra': Notes of the Seminar Given in - by C. G. Jung ( vols., Princeton University Press, ). This commentary by chapter is unparalleled in revealing the complex creative process behind Zarathustra , and though preachy at times, it subjects both Nietzsche and his creation to an anthropological approach that only Jung could present. Jarrett's editing is quite skillful, xxxix while the seminar format of the 'notes' makes this commentary uniquely discursive.
Morerecent commentaries devoted exclusively to Zarathustra and limited to a single volume are extremely useful as well. Laurence Lampert's Nietzsche's Teaching: An Interpretation of 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' (Yale University Press, ), establishes the need for a new teaching, the nature of the teaching, and the foundational role it plays in the history of philosophy. Lampert's Nietzsche and Modern Times: A Study of Bacon, Descartes, and Nietzsche (Yale University Press, ), much broader in scope, goes further in the direction of specifying the ecological, earth-affirming properties of Nietzsche's teaching via Zarathustra. Kathleen Higgin's Nietzsche's 'Zarathustra' (Temple University Press, ), which she prefers to designate not as commentary but 'analysis' instead, treats Zarathustra in the context of the teachers Socrates and Christ. She strives to rehabilitate the reputation of Zarathustra as a whole, and particularly Part . Stanley Rosen, in The Mask of Enlightenment: Nietzsche's 'Zarathustra' (Cambridge University Press, ), comments on most of the chapters while bringing all of Nietzsche's writings to bear on this difficult and, for him, sometimes disturbing book. Rosen is mindful of the contradiction inherent in Nietzsche's attempt to speak simultaneously to the few (esoterically) and to everyone (exoterically). Robert Gooding-Williams, in Zarathustra's Dionysian Modernism (Stanford University Press, ), has delivered the latest of the Zarathustra -commentaries, and perhaps the most powerful in terms of maintaining hermeneutic continuity. The concept of a 'Dionysian modernism' is effective in unifying the study and highlighting Zarathustra's mission as a revival of the earth's passions. Joachim Kohler's Zarathustra's Secret: The Interior Life of Friedrich Nietzsche (Yale University Press, ,translation of Zarathustras Geheimnis , ), purports to be a biography exposing the gamut of Nietzsche's philosophizing as secret code for the glorification of homosexuality. Kohler reduces all of Nietzsche's motivations and teachings to his alleged homoeroticism, sometimes with breathtaking obtuseness, and he uses it to undermine Nietzsche's philosophical validity.
Articles that address significant aspects of Zarathustra include Gary Shapiro, 'The Rhetoric of Nietzsche's Zarathustra ,' in Philosophical Style: An Anthology about the Writing and Reading of Philosophy , ed. Berel Lang (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, ), pp. - ;Robert B. Pippin, 'Irony and Affirmation in Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra ,' in xl Further reading Nietzsche's New Seas: Explorations in Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Politics , ed. Michael Allen Gillespie and Tracy B. Strong (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, ), pp. - ; Daniel W. Conway, 'Solving the Problem of Socrates: Nietzsche's Zarathustra as Political Irony,' Political Theory : ( ), pp. - ; Keith Ansell-Pearson, 'Who is the Ubermensch ? Time, Truth, and Woman in Nietzsche,' Journal of the History of Ideas : ( ), pp. - ;Graham Parkes, 'Staying Loyal to the Earth: Nietzsche as an Ecological Thinker' in Nietzsche's Futures , ed. John Lippit (St. Martin's Press, ), pp. - .
There are also several books that deal substantially with Zarathustra while not attempting to provide running commentary on chapter and verse. The first of these is Karl Lowith's Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same (University of California Press, ; translation of Nietzsches Philosophie der ewigen Wiederkehr des Gleichen , ), still the most thorough and compelling philosophical treatment to date of the unifying doctrine of Zarathustra . Philip Grundlehner's The Poetry of Friedrich Nietzsche (Oxford University Press, ), sheds light not only on the dithyrambs interspersed throughout Part , but on Nietzsche's entire lyrical poetic output, of which Zarathustra is in many ways symptomatic. The debate concerning poetry vs. philosophy is given careful treatment in Grundlehner's study. Rudolf Kreis's Nietzsche, Wagner and die Juden (Konigshausen und Neumann, ) is underutilized in the English-speaking world. Kreis's great service lies not in his thesis that Nietzsche opposed Wagner by writing Zarathustra as an 'antiParsifal ,' but in his more broadly juxtaposing the earth-affirming ethos of the ancient Jews with the earth-denying ethos of modern Christian anti-Semitism. Kreis's book traces the fortunes of the earth as ecosystem, casting the encounter between Nietzsche and Wagner as a defining moment. John Richardson's Nietzsche's System (Oxford University Press, )represents a highly readable and refined analysis of both the superhuman and the will to power. Richardson makes strides toward an ecumenical Nietzsche when he consistently renders German Mensch as 'human being,' but he fails to follow through by rendering Ubermensch as superhuman. For the purpose of providing an elegant and readable translation 'overman' may well be the preferred expression, but for purposes of scholarship, the English-speaking world should have advanced far enough beyond Shaw's and Marvel's comic book 'superman' to speak in terms of the superhuman. Gregory Moore's Nietzsche, Biology and xli
Metaphor (Cambridge University Press, ), though disappointing in its failure to recognize the Dionysian as a source of Nietzsche's biologically inclined rhetoric, is nonetheless the best study to date on how Nietzsche responded to the scientific literature of his day in constructing his own views on evolution and degeneration. Adrian Del Caro's Grounding the Nietzsche Rhetoric of Earth (Walter de Gruyter, ) unpacks Zarathustra's proclamation that 'the superhuman is the meaning of the earth,' and delivers a multifaceted treatment of the ecological Nietzsche. xlii
The text used for this translation is printed in the now standard edition of Nietzsche's works edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin: de Gruyter, - ). Their edition and their Kritische Studienausgabe in fifteen volumes (Berlin: de Gruyter, )have been used in the preparation of the footnotes to this edition. The spacing and versification of the original are preserved in this edition. xliii Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for All and None First Part
When Zarathustra was thirty years old he left his home and the lake of his home and went into the mountains. Here he enjoyed his spirit and his solitude and for ten years he did not tire of it. But at last his heart transformed, - one morning he arose with the dawn, stepped before the sun and spoke thus to it: 'You great star! What would your happiness be if you had not those for whom you shine? For ten years you have come up here to my cave: you would have tired of your light and of this route without me, my eagle and my snake. But we awaited you every morning, took your overflow from you and blessed you for it. Behold! I am weary of my wisdom, like a bee that has gathered too much honey. I need hands that reach out. I want to bestow and distribute until the wise among human beings have once again enjoyed their folly, and the poor once again their wealth. For this I must descend into the depths, as you do evenings when you go behind the sea and bring light even to the underworld, you super-rich star! Like you, I must go down as the human beings say, to whom I want to descend. So bless me now, you quiet eye that can look upon even an all too great happiness without envy! Bless the cup that wants to flow over, such that water flows golden from it and everywhere carries the reflection of your bliss! Behold! This cup wants to become empty again, and Zarathustra wants to become human again.'
German uses untergehen , literally 'to go under' for the expression the sun 'goes down.' Nietzsche throughout Zarathustra uses wordplay to signify that Zarathustra's 'going under' is a 'going over' or transition, ubergehen , from human to superhuman, from man to overman. After Zarathustra draws his first analogy between himself and the sun, I use 'going under' for untergehen and its noun form Untergang .Insetting or going down the sun marks a transition. Zarathustra meanwhile has been higher than human in both figurative and literal terms, and so his 'going under' has the effect of him transitioning to human again. However, on the ecumenical level, when human beings transition or go under, and when they 'overcome' the human, they should achieve the superhuman (overman). Thus Spoke Zarathustra Zarathustra climbed down alone from the mountains and encountered no one. But when he came to the woods suddenly an old man stood before him, who had left his saintly hut in search of roots in the woods. And thus spoke the old man to Zarathustra: 'This wanderer is no stranger to me: many years ago he passed by here. Zarathustra he was called; but he is transformed. Back then you carried your ashes to the mountain: would you now carry your fire into the valley? Do you not fear the arsonist's punishment? Yes, I recognize Zarathustra. His eyes are pure, and no disgust is visible around his mouth. Does he not stride like a dancer? Zarathustra is transformed, Zarathustra has become a child, an awakened one is Zarathustra. What do you want now among the sleepers? Youlived in your solitude as if in the sea, and the sea carried you. Alas, you want to climb ashore? Alas, you want to drag your own body again?' Zarathustra answered: 'I love mankind.' 'Why,' asked the saint, 'did I go into the woods and the wilderness in the first place? Was it not because I loved mankind all too much? Now I love God: human beings I do not love. Human beings are too imperfect a thing for me. Love for human beings would kill me.'
Zarathustra replied. 'Why did I speak of love? I bring mankind a gift.' 'Give them nothing,' said the saint. 'Rather take something off them and help them to carry it - that will do them the most good, if only it does you good! And if you want to give to them, then give nothing more than alms, and make them beg for that too!' 'No,' answered Zarathustra. 'I do not give alms. For that I am not poor enough.' The saint laughed at Zarathustra and spoke thus: 'Then see to it that they accept your treasures! They are mistrustful of hermits and do not believe that we come to give gifts. 'Ich liebe die Menschen' means literally 'I love human beings.' Earlier translators ignored the ecological framework in which Nietzsche wrote Zarathustra by using expressions like 'man.' The prologue establishes a prevailing semantic field, a framework in which human beings, animals, nature and earth interact or should interact as never before.
To them our footsteps sound too lonely in the lanes. And if at night lying in their beds they hear a man walking outside, long before the sun rises, they probably ask themselves: where is the thief going? Do not go to mankind and stay in the woods! Go even to the animals instead! Why do you not want to be like me - a bear among bears, a bird among birds?' 'And what does the saint do in the woods?' asked Zarathustra. The saint answered: 'I make songs and sing them, and when I make songs I laugh, weep and growl: thus I praise God. With singing, weeping, laughing and growling I praise the god who is my god. But tell me, what do you bring us as a gift?' When Zarathustra had heard these words he took his leave of the saint andspoke: 'What would I have to give you! But let me leave quickly before I take something from you!' - And so they parted, the oldster and the man, laughing like two boys laugh. But when Zarathustra was alone he spoke thus to his heart: 'Could it be possible! This old saint in his woods has not yet heard the news that God is dead !' - When Zarathustra came into the nearest town lying on the edge of the forest, he found many people gathered in the market place, for it had been promised that a tightrope walker would perform. And Zarathustra spoke thus to the people: ' I teach you the overman . Human being is something that must be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All creatures so far created something beyond themselves; and you want to be the ebb of this great flood and would even rather go back to animals than overcome humans?
'Ich lehre euch den Ubermenschen.' Just as Mensch means human, human being, Ubermensch means superhuman, which I render throughout as overman, though I use human being, mankind, people, and humanity to avoid the gendered and outmoded use of 'man.' Two things are achieved by using this combination. First, using 'human being' and other species-indicating expressions makes it clear that Nietzsche is concerned ecumenically with humans as a species, not merely with males. Secondly, expanding beyond the use of 'man' puts humans in an ecological context; for Zarathustra to claim that 'the overman shall be the meaning of the earth' is to argue for a new relationship between humans and nature, between humans and the earth. Overman is preferred to superhuman for two basic reasons; first, it preserves the word play Nietzsche intends with his constant references to going under and going over, and secondly, the comic book associations called to mind by 'superman' and super-heroes generally tend to reflect negatively, and frivolously, on the term superhuman. Thus Spoke Zarathustra What is the ape to a human? A laughing stock or a painful embarrassment. And that is precisely what the human shall be to the overman: a laughing stock or a painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to human, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now a human is still more ape than any ape. But whoever is wisest among you is also just a conflict and a cross between plant and ghost. But do I implore you to become ghosts or plants? Theovermanisthemeaningoftheearth.Letyourwillsay:theoverman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth and do not believe those who speak to you of extraterrestrial hopes! They are mixers of poisons whether they know it or not. They are despisers of life, dying off and self-poisoned, of whom the earth is weary: so let them fade away! Once the sacrilege against God was the greatest sacrilege, but God died, and then all these desecrators died. Now to desecrate the earth is the most terrible thing, and to esteem the bowels of the unfathomable higher than the meaning of the earth!
Once the soul gazed contemptuously at the body, and then such contempt was the highest thing: it wanted the body gaunt, ghastly, starved. Thus it intended to escape the body and the earth. Oh this soul was gaunt, ghastly and starved, and cruelty was the lust of this soul! But you, too, my brothers, tell me: what does your body proclaim about your soul? Is your soul not poverty and filth and a pitiful contentment? Truly, mankind is a polluted stream. One has to be a sea to take in a polluted stream without becoming unclean. Behold, I teach you the overman: he is this sea, in him your great contempt can go under. What is the greatest thing that you can experience? It is the hour of your great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness turns to nausea and likewise your reason and your virtue. The hour in which you say: 'What matters my happiness? It is poverty and filth, and a pitiful contentment. But my happiness ought to justify existence itself!' NowZarathustra looked at the people and he was amazed. Then he spoke thus: 'Mankind is a rope fastened between animal and overman - a rope over an abyss. A dangerous crossing, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking back, a dangerous shuddering and standing still. What is great about human beings is that they are a bridge and not a purpose: what is lovable about human beings is that they are a crossing over and a going under . I love those who do not know how to live unless by going under, for they are the ones who cross over. I love the great despisers, because they are the great venerators and arrows of longing for the other shore.
I love those who do not first seek behind the stars for a reason to go under and be a sacrifice, who instead sacrifice themselves for the earth, so that the earth may one day become the overman's. I love the one who lives in order to know, and who wants to know so that one day the overman may live. And so he wants his going under. I love the one who works and invents in order to build a house for the overman and to prepare earth, animals and plants for him: for thus he wants his going under. Ilove the one who loves his virtue: for virtue is the will to going under and an arrow of longing. Ilove the one who does not hold back a single drop of spirit for himself, but wants instead to be entirely the spirit of his virtue: thus he strides as spirit over the bridge. I love the one who makes of his virtue his desire and his doom: thus for the sake of his virtue he wants to live on and to live no more. Ilove the one who does not want to have too many virtues. One virtue is more virtue than two, because it is more of a hook on which his doom may hang. I love the one whose soul squanders itself, who wants no thanks and gives none back: for he always gives and does not want to preserve himself. Ilovethe one who is ashamed when the dice fall to his fortune and who then asks: am I a cheater? - For he wants to perish. Ilove the one who casts golden words before his deeds and always does even more than he promises: for he wants his going under. I love the one who justifies people of the future and redeems those of the past: for he wants to perish of those in the present. I love the one who chastises his god, because he loves his god: for he must perish of the wrath of his god. I love the one whose soul is deep even when wounded, and who can perish of a small experience: thus he goes gladly over the bridge. Ilove the one whose soul is overfull, so that he forgets himself, and all things are in him: thus all things become his going under.
SeeLuke : . This is the first of approximately directallusionstotheBible,inwhichNietzsche typically applies Christ's words to Zarathustra's task, or inverts Christ's words in order to achieve a life- and earth-affirming effect. Whenever possible, these passages will be translated using the phrasing of the Bible. For drafts and alternative versions of the various chapters, biblical references, and other references see vol. of the Kritische Studienausgabe , which provides commentary to vols. - and treats TSZ on pp. - .
I love the one who is free of spirit and heart: thus his head is only the entrails of his heart, but his heart drives him to his going under. I love all those who are like heavy drops falling individually from the dark cloud that hangs over humanity: they herald the coming of the lightning, and as heralds they perish. Behold, I am a herald of the lightning and a heavy drop from the cloud: but this lightning is called overman. -' When Zarathustra had spoken these words he looked again at the people and fell silent. 'There they stand,' he said to his heart, 'they laugh, they do not understand me, I am not the mouth for these ears. Must one first smash their ears so that they learn to hear with their eyes? Must one rattle like kettle drums and penitence preachers? Or do they believe only a stutterer? They have something of which they are proud. And what do they call that which makes them proud? Education they call it, it distinguishes them from goatherds. For that reason they hate to hear the word 'contempt' applied to them. So I shall address their pride instead. Thus I shall speak to them of the most contemptible person: but he is the last human being .' And thus spoke Zarathustra to the people: 'It is time that mankind set themselves a goal. It is time that mankind plant the seed of their highest hope. Their soil is still rich enough for this. But one day this soil will be poor and tame, and no tall tree will be able to grow from it anymore. Beware! The time approaches when human beings no longer launch the arrow of their longing beyond the human, and the string of their bow will have forgotten how to whir! I say to you: one must still have chaos in oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star. I say to you: you still have chaos in you. Beware! The time approaches when human beings will no longer give birth to a dancing star. Beware! The time of the most contemptible human is coming, the one who can no longer have contempt for himself. Behold! I show you the last human being .
'What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?' thus asks the last human being, blinking. Then the earth has become small, and on it hops the last human being, who makes everything small. His kind is ineradicable, like the flea beetle; the last human being lives longest. 'We invented happiness' - say the last human beings, blinking. They abandoned the regions where it was hard to live: for one needs warmth. One still loves one's neighbor and rubs up against him: for one needs warmth. Becoming ill and being mistrustful are considered sinful by them: one proceeds with caution. A fool who still stumbles over stones or humans! A bit of poison once in a while; that makes for pleasant dreams. And much poison at the end, for a pleasant death. One still works, for work is a form of entertainment. But one sees to it that the entertainment is not a strain. One no longer becomes poor and rich: both are too burdensome. Who wants to rule anymore? Who wants to obey anymore? Both are too burdensome. Noshepherd and one herd! Each wants the same, each is the same, and whoever feels differently goes voluntarily into the insane asylum. 'Formerly the whole world was insane' - the finest ones say, blinking. One is clever and knows everything that has happened, and so there is no end to their mockery. People still quarrel but they reconcile quickly otherwise it is bad for the stomach. One has one's little pleasure for the day and one's little pleasure for the night: but one honors health. 'We invented happiness' say the last human beings, and they blink.' And here ended the first speech of Zarathustra, which is also called 'The Prologue,' for at this point he was interrupted by the yelling and merrimentofthecrowd.'Giveusthislasthumanbeing,ohZarathustra'thus they cried - 'make us into these last human beings! Then we will make you a gift of the overman!' And all the people jubilated and clicked their tongues. But Zarathustra grew sad and said to his heart: 'They do not understand me. I am not the mouth for these ears.
Too long apparently I lived in the mountains, too much I listened to brooks and trees: now I speak to them as to goatherds.
Mysoul is calm and bright as the morning mountains. But they believe I am cold, that I jeer, that I deal in terrible jests. And now they look at me and laugh, and in laughing they hate me too. There is ice in their laughter.' Then, however, something happened that struck every mouth silent and forced all eyes to stare. For in the meantime the tightrope walker had begun his work; he had emerged from a little door and was walking across the rope stretched between two towers, such that it hung suspended over the market place and the people. Just as he was at the midpoint of his way, the little door opened once again and a colorful fellow resembling a jester leaped forth and hurried after the first man with quick steps. 'Forward, sloth, smuggler, pale face! Or I'll tickle you with my heel! What business have you here between the towers? You belong in the tower, you should be locked away in the tower, for you block the way for one who is better than you!' And with each word he came closer and closer to him. But when he was only one step behind him, the terrifying thing occurred that struck every mouth silent and forced all eyes to stare: - he let out a yell like a devil and leaped over the man who was in his way. This man, seeing his rival triumph in this manner, lost his head and the rope. He threw away his pole and plunged into the depths even faster than his pole, like a whirlwind of arms and legs. The market place and the people resembled the sea when a storm charges in: everyone fled apart and into one another, and especially in the spot where the body had to impact. But Zarathustra stood still and the body landed right beside him, badly beaten and broken, but not yet dead. After a while the shattered man regained consciousness and saw Zarathustra kneeling beside him. 'What are you doing here?' he said finally. 'I've known for a long time that the devil would trip me up. Now he is going to drag me off to hell: are you going to stop him?' 'By my honor, friend!' answered Zarathustra. 'All that you are talking about does not exist. There is no devil and no hell. Your soul will be dead even sooner than your body - fear no more!'
The man looked up mistrustfully. 'If you speak the truth,' he said, 'then I lose nothing when I lose my life. I am not much more than an animal that has been taught to dance by blows and little treats.'
'Not at all,' said Zarathustra. 'You made your vocation out of danger, and there is nothing contemptible about that. Now you perish of your vocation, and for that I will bury you with my own hands.' When Zarathustra said this the dying man answered no more, but he moved his hand as if seeking Zarathustra's hand in gratitude. - Meanwhileeveningcameandthemarketplacehidindarkness.Thepeople scattered, for even curiosity and terror grow weary. But Zarathustra sat beside the dead man on the ground and was lost in thought, such that he lost track of time. Night came at last and a cold wind blew over the lonely one. Then Zarathustra stood up and said to his heart: 'Indeed, a nice catch of fish Zarathustra has today! No human being did he catch, but a corpse instead. Uncanny is human existence and still without meaning: a jester can spell its doom. I want to teach humans the meaning of their being, which is the overman, the lightning from the dark cloud 'human being.' But I am still far away from them, and I do not make sense to their senses. For mankind I am still a midpoint between a fool and a corpse. The night is dark, the ways of Zarathustra are dark. Come, my cold and stiff companion! I shall carry you where I will bury you with my own hands.' When Zarathustra had said this to his heart, he hoisted the corpse onto his back and started on his way. And he had not yet gone a hundred paces when someone sneaked up on him and whispered in his ear - and behold! The one who spoke was the jester from the tower. 'Go away from this town, oh Zarathustra,' he said. 'Too many here hate you. The good and the just hate you and they call you their enemy and despiser; the believers of the true faith hate you and they call you the danger of the multitude. It was your good fortune that they laughed at you: and really, you spoke like a jester. It was your good fortune that you took up with the dead dog; when you lowered yourself like that, you rescued yourself for today. But go away from this town - or tomorrow I shall leap over you, a living man
over a dead one.' And when he had said this, the man disappeared, but Zarathustra continued his walk through dark lanes. At the town gate he met the gravediggers. They shone their torches in his face, recognized Zarathustra and sorely ridiculed him. 'Zarathustra is lugging away the dead dog: how nice that he's become a gravedigger! For our hands are too pure for this roast. Would Zarathustra steal this morsel from the devil? So be it then! And good luck with your meal! If only the devil were not a better thief than Zarathustra! - he'll steal them both, he'll devour them both!' And they laughed and huddled together. Zarathustra did not say a word and went on his way. By the time he had walked for two hours past woods and swamps, he had heard too much of the hungry howling of wolves and he grew hungry himself. And so he stopped at a lonely house in which a light was burning. 'Hunger falls upon me like a robber,' said Zarathustra. 'In woods and swamps my hunger falls upon me and in the deep night. Myhunger has odd moods. Often it comes to me only after a meal, and today it did not come the whole day: just where was it?' And so Zarathustra pounded on the door to the house. An old man appeared, bearing a light, and he asked: 'Who comes to me and to my bad sleep?' 'A living man and a dead one,' replied Zarathustra. 'Give me food and drink, I forgot it during the day. Whoever feeds the hungry quickens his own soul - thus speaks wisdom.' The old man went away but returned promptly and offered Zarathustra bread and wine. 'This is a bad region for those who hunger,' he said. 'That is why I live here. Beast and human being come to me, the hermit. But bid your companion eat and drink, he is wearier than you.' Zarathustra replied: 'My companion is dead, I would have a hard time persuading him.' 'That does not concern me,' snapped the old man. 'Whoever knocks at my house must also take what I offer him. Eat and take care!' -
Thereupon Zarathustra walked again for two hours, trusting the path and the light of the stars, for he was a practiced night-walker and loved to look in the face of all sleepers. But as dawn greyed Zarathustra found himself in a deep wood and no more path was visible to him. Then he laid the dead man into a hollow tree - for he wanted to protect him from the wolves - and he laid himself down head first at the tree, upon the earth Thus Spoke Zarathustra and the moss. And soon he fell asleep, weary in body but with a calm soul. Long Zarathustra slept, and not only the dawn passed over his face but the morning as well. At last, however, he opened his eyes: amazed Zarathustra looked into the woods and the silence, amazed he looked into himself. Then he stood up quickly, like a seafarer who all at once sees land, and he rejoiced, for he saw a new truth. And thus he spoke to his heart: 'It dawned on me: I need companions, and living ones - not dead companions and corpses that I carry with me wherever I want. Instead I need living companions who follow me because they want to follow themselves - wherever I want. It dawned on me: let Zarathustra speak not to the people, but instead to companions! Zarathustra should not become the shepherd and dog of a herd! To lure many away from the herd - for that I came. The people and herd shall be angry with me: Zarathustra wants to be called a robber by shepherds. Shepherds I say, but they call themselves the good and the just. Shepherds I say: but they call themselves the faithful of the true faith. Look at the good and the just! Whom do they hate most? The one who breaks their tablets of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker - but he is the creative one. Look at the faithful of all faiths! Whom do they hate most? The one who breaks their tablets of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker - but he is the creative one. Companions the creative one seeks and not corpses, nor herds and believers. Fellow creators the creative one seeks, who will write new values on new tablets.
Companions the creative one seeks, and fellow harvesters; for to him everything stands ready for harvest. But he lacks the hundred scythes, and so he plucks out spikes and is angry. Companions the creative one seeks, and those who know how to whet their scythes. They shall be called annihilators and despisers of good and evil. But they are the harvesters and the celebrators.
And if some day my wisdom abandons me - oh it loves to fly away! may my pride then fly away with my folly!' - Thus began Zarathustra's going under.
Threemetamorphosesofthe spirit I name for you: how the spirit becomes a camel, and the camel a lion, and finally the lion a child. To the spirit there is much that is heavy; to the strong, carrying spirit imbued with reverence. Its strength demands what is heavy and heaviest. What is heavy? thus asks the carrying spirit. It kneels down like a camel and wants to be well loaded. What is heaviest, you heroes? thus asks the carrying spirit, so that I might take it upon myself and rejoice in my strength. Is it not this: lowering oneself in order to hurt one's pride? Letting one's foolishness glow in order to mock one's wisdom? Oris it this: abandoning our cause when it celebrates victory? Climbing high mountains in order to tempt the tempter? Or is it this: feeding on the acorns and grass of knowledge and for the sake of truth suffering hunger in one's soul? Or is it this: being ill and sending the comforters home and making friends with the deaf who never hear what you want? Or is it this: wading into dirty water when it is the water of truth, and not shrinking away from cold frogs and hot toads? Or is it this: loving those who despise us, and extending a hand to the ghost when it wants to frighten us? All of these heaviest things the carrying spirit takes upon itself, like a loaded camel that hurries into the desert, thus it hurries into its desert. But in the loneliest desert the second metamorphosis occurs. Here the spirit becomes lion, it wants to hunt down its freedom and be master in its own desert. Here it seeks its last master, and wants to fight him and its last god. For victory it wants to battle the great dragon. Thus spoke Zarathustra. And then he sojourned in the town which is called The Motley Cow.
Awise man was praised to Zarathustra who could speak well of sleep and of virtue. For this he was much honored and rewarded, and all the youths Thus Spoke Zarathustra sat at his feet. Zarathustra went to him and sat at his feet with all the youths. And thus spoke the wise man: 'Have honor and bashfulness for sleep! That is the first thing! And avoid all who sleep badly and remain awake nights! Even the thief is bashful toward sleep; he constantly steals through the night, silently. But the watchman of the night is shameless, and shamelessly he carries his horn. Sleeping is no mean art, it is necessary to remain awake the entire day for it. Ten times a day you must overcome yourself, that makes for a good weariness and is poppy for the soul. Ten times you must reconcile yourself again with yourself, for overcoming causes bitterness and the unreconciled sleep badly. Ten truths you must find by day, or else you will still be seeking truth by night and your soul will have remained hungry. Ten times you must laugh by day and be cheerful, or else your stomach will bother you at night, this father of gloom. Few 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 neighbor's maid? All that would be incompatible with good sleep. And even when one has all the virtues, one must understand one more thing: how to send the virtues to sleep at the right time. So that they do not quarrel with each other, the good little women! And quarrel over you, wretch! At peace with God and neighbor, thus good sleep demands. And at peace too with the neighbor's devil! Otherwise he will be at your house at night. Honor the authorities and practice obedience, even toward the crooked authorities! Thus good sleep demands. What can I do about it that the powers like to walk on crooked legs? He shall always be the best shepherd in my view who leads his sheep to the greenest pasture; this is compatible with good sleep. I do not want many honors, nor great treasures - that inflames the spleen. But sleep is bad without a good name and a little treasure. A little company is more welcome to me than evil company, but they must go and come at the right time, for this is compatible with good sleep.
Once Zarathustra too cast his delusion beyond humans, like all hinterworldly. At that time the world seemed to me the work of a suffering and tortured god. Then the world seemed a dream to me and the fiction of a god; colorful smoke before the eyes of a divine dissatisfied being. Good and evil and joy and suffering and I and you - colorful smoke it seemed to me before creative eyes. The creator wanted to look away from himself and so he created the world. It is drunken joy to the suffering one to look away from one's suffering andtoloseoneself. Drunken joy and losing-oneself the world once seemed to me. This world, the eternally imperfect, the mirror image and imperfect image of an eternal contradiction-adrunken joy to its imperfect creator: thus the world once seemed to me. So I too once cast my delusion beyond humans, like all hinterworldly. Beyond humans in truth? Oh my brothers, this god that I created was of human make and madness, like all gods! Human he was, and only a poor flake of human and ego. From my own ash and ember it came to me, this ghost, and truly! It did not come to me from beyond! What happened, my brothers? I overcame myself, my suffering self, I carried my own ashes to the mountain, I invented a brighter flame for myself and behold! The ghost shrank from me! Nowitwouldbesufferingandtorturefortheconvalescedonetobelieve in such ghosts. Now it would be suffering and humiliation. Thus I speak to the hinterworldly. It was suffering and incapacity that created all hinterworlds, and that brief madness of happiness that only the most suffering person experiences. 'Von den Hinterweltlern,' literally: on those who are of, or believe in, a world beyond, a hidden or a back-world, a secret world, bears similar connotations to English hinterland, i.e. regions that are remote, far away from the cities. Hintermann is a man behind the scenes, a secret advisor; Hintergedanken are secret thoughts or ulterior motives. Hintern as a noun is the same as English 'behind,' with behind meaning a person's backside.
Weariness that wants its ultimate with one great leap, with a death leap; a poor unknowing weariness that no longer even wants to will: that created all gods and hinterworlds. Believe me, my brothers! It was the body that despaired of the body it probed with the fingers of a befooled spirit on the walls of the ultimate. Believe me, my brothers! It was the body that despaired of the earth then it heard the belly of being speaking to it. And then it wanted to break head first through the ultimate walls, and not only with its head, beyond to 'the other world.' But 'the other world' is well hidden from humans, that dehumaned, inhuman world that is a heavenly nothing. And the belly of being does not speak at all to humans, unless as a human. Indeed, all being is hard to prove and hard to coax to speech. Tell me, my brothers, is not the strangest of all things still proven best? Yes, this ego and the ego's contradiction and confusion still speak most honestly about its being; this creating, willing, valuing ego which is the measure and value of things. Andthis most honest being, this ego - it speaks of love and it still wants the body, even when it poetizes and fantasizes and flutters with broken wings. It learns to speak ever more honestly, this ego. And the more it learns, the more it finds words and honors for the body and the earth. My ego taught me a new pride, I teach it to mankind: no longer bury your head in the sand of heavenly things, but bear it freely instead, an earthly head that creates a meaning for the earth! I teach mankind a new will: to want the path that human beings have traveled blindly, to pronounce it good and no longer sneak to the side of it like the sick and the dying-out. It was the sick and the dying-out who despised the body and the earth and invented the heavenly and its redeeming drops of blood. But even these sweet and shadowy poisons they took from the body and the earth! They wanted to escape their misery and the stars were too distant for them. So they sighed 'Oh if only there were heavenly paths on which to sneak into another being and happiness!' - Then they invented their schemes and bloody little drinks!
Now they fancied themselves detached from this earth, these ingrates. But what did they have to thank for the fits and bliss of their detachment? Their body and this earth. Zarathustra is gentle to the sick. Indeed, he is not angered by their ways of comfort and ingratitude. May they become convalescents and overcomers and create for themselves a higher body! Nor is he angered by the convalescent when he tenderly gazes upon his delusion and sneaks around the grave of his God at midnight. But to me even his tears remain sickness and sick body. Therewerealwaysmanysicklypeopleamongthosewhopoetizeandare addicted to God; with rage they hate the knowing ones and that youngest of virtues which is called honesty. Backwardtheylookalwaystowarddarkertimes,forthen,truly,delusion and faith were another matter. Raving of reason was next to godliness, and doubting was sin. All too well I know these next-to-godliness types: they want people to believe in them, and that doubting is sin. All too well I know also what they themselves believe in most. Indeed, not in hinterworlds and redeeming blood drops, but instead they too believe most in the body, and their own body is to them their thing in itself. But to them it is a sickly thing, and gladly would they jump out of their skin. Hence they listen to the preachers of death and they preach of hinterworlds themselves. Hear my brothers, hear the voice of the healthy body: a more honest and purer voice is this. More honestly and more purely speaks the healthy body, the perfect and perpendicular body, and it speaks of the meaning of the earth. Thus spoke Zarathustra.
To the despisers of the body I want to say my words. I do not think they should relearn and teach differently, instead they should bid their own bodies farewell - and thus fall silent. 'Body am I and soul' - so speaks a child. And why should one not speak like children?
, First Part = But the awakened, the knowing one says: body am I through and. , First Part = through, and nothing besides; and soul is just a word for something on. the body., First Part = The body is a great reason, a multiplicity with one sense, a war and a. , First Part = peace, one herd and one shepherd. Your small reason, what you call 'spirit' is also a tool of your body, my. , First Part = 'I' you say and are proud of this word. But what is greater is that in. not say I, but, First Part = . , First Part = which you do not want to believe - your body and its great reason. It does does I. Whatthe sense feels, what the spirit knows, in itself that will never have. , First Part = an end. But sense and spirit would like to persuade you that they are the. , First Part = end of all things: so vain are they.. , First Part = Work- and plaything are sense and spirit, behind them still lies the self.. , First Part = supposed to think. The self says to the ego: 'Feel pleasure here!' Then it is pleased and. , First Part = it. is supposed to think!, First Part = reflects on how it might feel pleased more often - and for that purpose. , First Part = To the despisers of the body I want to say a word. That they disrespect. destroys. It rules and is also the ruler of the ego., First Part = is based on their respect. What is it that created respect and disrespect. , First Part = Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, stands a powerful com- mander, an unknown wise man - he is called self. He lives in your body,. he is your body., First Part = There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom. And. wisdom?, First Part = who knows then to what end your body requires precisely your best. , First Part = Your self laughs at your ego and its proud leaps. 'What are these. leaps and flights of thought to me?' it says to itself. 'A detour to my, First Part = . , First Part = purpose. I am the leading strings of the ego and the prompter of its. concepts.', First Part =
reflects on how it might suffer no more - and just for that purpose it is. The self says to the ego: 'Feel pain here!' And then it suffers and, First Part = . , First Part = and value and will?
The creative self created respect and disrespect for itself, it created pleasure and pain for itself. The creative body created spirit for itself as the hand of its will. Even in your folly and your contempt, you despisers of the body, you serve your self. I say to you: your self itself wants to die and turns away from life. No longer is it capable of that which it wants most: to create beyond itself. This it wants most of all, this is its entire fervor. But now it is too late for that, and so your self wants to go under, you despisers of the body. Your self wants to go under, and for this reason you became despisers of the body! For you no longer are capable of creating beyond yourselves. And that is why you are angry now at life and earth. There is an unknown envy in the looking askance of your contempt. I will not go your way, you despisers of the body! You are not my bridges to the overman! - Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Mybrother, if you have one virtue, and it is your virtue, then you have it in common with no one. To be sure, you want to call her by name and caress her; you want to tug at her ear and have fun with her. And behold! Now you have her name in common with the people and have become the people and the herd with your virtue! You would do better to say: 'Unspeakable and nameless is that which causes my soul agony and sweetness and is even the hunger of my entrails.' Let your virtue be too high for the familiarity of names, and if you must speak of it, then do not be ashamed to stammer about it. Then speak and stammer: 'This is my good, I love this, thus I like it entirely, thus alone do I want the good. I do not want it as a divine law, I do not want is as a human statute and requirement. It shall be no signpost for me to overearths and paradises.
Youdowanttokill,youjudgesandsacrificers,untiltheanimalhasnodded? Behold, the pale criminal has nodded: from his eyes speaks the great contempt. 'Myegois something that shall be overcome: my ego is to me the great contempt for mankind,' so speak these eyes. That he condemned himself was his highest moment: do not allow the sublime one to return to his baseness! There is no redemption for one who suffers so from himself, unless it were the quick death. Your killing, you judges, should be pity and not revenge. And insofar as you kill, see to it that you yourselves justify life! It is not enough that you reconcile yourself with the one you kill. Let your sadness be love for the overman - thus you justify that you still live! 'Enemy' you should say, but not 'villain'; 'sick man' you should say, but not 'scoundrel'; 'fool' you should say, but not 'sinner.' And you, red judge, if you were to speak aloud all the things you have already done in your thoughts, then everyone would cry: 'Away with this filth and poisonous worm!' But thought is one thing, and deed another, and the image of a deed yet another. The wheel of motive does not roll between them. An image made this pale human pale. He was equal to his deed when he committed it, but he could not bear its image once he had done it. From then on he always saw himself as the doer of one deed. I call this madness: the exception reversed itself to the essence. A streak in the dirt stops a hen cold; the stroke he executed stopped his poor reason cold - madness after the deed I call this. Listen, you judges! There is still another madness, and it is before the deed. Oh, you did not crawl deeply enough into this soul! Thus speaks the red judge: 'Why did this criminal kill? He wanted to rob.' But I say to you: his soul wanted blood, not robbery. He thirsted for the bliss of the knife! But his poor reason did not comprehend this madness and it persuaded him.'Whatdoesbloodmatter?'itsaid.'Don'tyouatleastwanttocommit robbery in the process? Take revenge?'
Of all that is written I love only that which one writes with his blood. Write with blood, and you will experience that blood is spirit. It is not easily possible to understand the blood of another: I hate the reading idlers.
Whoever knows the reader will do nothing more for the reader. One more century of readers - and the spirit itself will stink. That everyone is allowed to learn to read ruins not only writing in the long run, but thinking too. Once the spirit was God, then it became human and now it is even becoming rabble. Whoever writes in blood and proverbs does not want to be read, but to be learned by heart. In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak, but for that one must have long legs. Proverbs should be peaks, and those who are addressed should be great and tall. The air thin and pure, danger near and the spirit full of cheerful spite: these fit together well. I want to have goblins around me, for I am courageous. Courage that scares off ghosts creates its own goblins - courage wants to laugh. Inolonger sympathize with you; this cloud beneath me, this black and heavy thing at which I laugh - precisely this is your thundercloud. You look upward when you long for elevation. And I look down because I am elevated. Who among you can laugh and be elevated at the same time? Whoever climbs the highest mountain laughs at all tragic plays and tragic realities. Courageous, unconcerned, sarcastic, violent - thus wisdom wants us: she is a woman and always loves only a warrior. You say to me: 'Life is hard to bear.' But why would you have your pride in the morning and your resignation in the evening? Life is hard to bear: but then do not carry on so tenderly! We are all of us handsome, load bearing jack- and jillasses. What have we in common with the rosebud that trembles because a drop of dew lies on its body? It is true: we love life not because we are accustomed to life but because we are accustomed to love. There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness. Andeventome,onewholikes life, it seems butterflies and soap bubbles and whatever is of their kind among human beings know most about happiness. Thus Spoke Zarathustra I'm changing too fast. My today contradicts my yesterday. I often skip steps when I climb - no step forgives me that.
If I am at the top then I always find myself alone. No one speaks with me, the frost of loneliness makes me shiver. What do I want in the heights? How ashamed I am of my climbing and stumbling! How I mock my violent panting! HowIhatetheflyingone!HowwearyIamintheheights!' Here the young man fell silent. And Zarathustra regarded the tree at which they stood and spoke thus: 'This tree stands here lonely on the mountain; it grew high beyond humans and animals. And if it wanted to speak, it would have no one who understood it: so high it grew. Now it waits and waits - but for what does it wait? It lives too near the clouds' abode: it waits for the first lightning bolt?' When Zarathustra had said this the young man cried out, gesturing agitatedly: 'Yes, Zarathustra, you speak the truth. I longed for my destruction when I aspired to the heights, and you are the lightning for which I waited! Look, what am I anymore, now that you have appeared among us! It is my envy of you that has destroyed me!' - Thus spoke the young man and he wept bitterly. But Zarathustra put his arm around him and led him away. And after they had walked together for a while Zarathustra started speaking thus: 'It tears my heart apart. Better than your words can say, your eyes tell me all your danger. You are still not free, you seek freedom. Your seeking made you sleepdeprived and over-awake. You aspire to the free heights, your soul thirsts for the stars. But your wicked instincts also thirst for freedom. Your wild dogs want to get free; they bark with joy in their cellar when your spirit contrives to liberate all prisons. To me you are still a prisoner who plots his freedom. Alas, the soul of such prisoners grows clever, but also deceptive and rotten. The one who is free of spirit must still purify himself. Much prison and mold is left in him: his eyes must still become pure. Yes, I know your danger. But by my love and hope I beseech you: do not throw away your love and hope!
, First Part = You still feel noble, and the others who grudge you and give you the. , First Part = evil eye, they still feel your nobility too. Know that a noble person stands. in everyone's way., First Part = Anoble person also stands in the way of the good: and even when they. , First Part = call him a good man, they do so in order to get rid of him.. , First Part = The noble person wants to create new things and a new virtue. The. , First Part = good person wants old things, and for old things to be preserved.. , First Part = But it is not the danger of the noble one that he will become a good. , First Part = person, but a churl, a mocker, an annihilator.. , First Part = Oh, I knew noble people who lost their highest hope. And then they. , First Part = Then they lived churlishly in brief pleasures, scarcely casting their. , First Part = goals beyond the day.. , First Part = Once they thought of becoming heroes: now they are libertines. To. , First Part = they preach departure from life and pass away themselves! There are the consumptive of the soul: scarcely are they born when. , First Part = they begin to die and long for the teachings of weariness and resignation. They would like to be dead and we shall honor their will! Let us beware. On the Preachers of Death, First Part = There are preachers of death, and the earth is full of people to whom departure from life must be preached.. The earth is full of the superfluous, life is spoiled by the all too many. May they be lured from this life with the 'eternal life!', First Part = . , First Part = 'Yellow ones,' so the preachers of death are called, or 'black ones.'. , First Part = There are the terrible ones, who carry the predator about in themselves and have no choice but lust or self-laceration. And even their lusting is. But I want to show them to you in still different colors., First Part = . of waking these dead and disturbing these living coffins!, First Part = They encounter a sick or a very old person or a corpse, and right away they say 'life is refuted!'
But only they are refuted and their eyes, which see only the one face of existence. Cloaked in thick melancholy and greedy for the small accidents that bring death, thus they wait and clench their teeth. Or again: they reach for candy while mocking their childishness; they cling to their straw of life and mock the fact that they cling to a straw. Their wisdom says: 'A fool who goes on living, but we are such fools! And precisely that is the most foolish thing about life!' 'Life is only suffering,' so speak others, and do not lie; then see to it that you cease. Then see to it that the life that is only suffering ceases! And let the doctrine of your virtue speak thus: 'Thou shalt kill thyself! Thou shalt steal thyself away!' 'Sex is sin,' say the ones who preach death - 'let us step aside and not beget children!' 'Giving birth is strenuous,' - say the others - 'why continue to give birth? One bears only the unhappy!' And they too are preachers of death. 'Pity is needed,' - so say the third kind. 'Take what I have! Take what I am! All the less does life bind me!' If they were the pitying kind through and through, they would ruin the lives of their neighbors. Being evil - that would be their proper goodness. But they want to get free of life; what do they care that they bind others still tighter with their chains and gifts! And you too, for whom life is hectic work and unrest: are you not very weary of life? Are you not very ripe for the sermon of death? All of you who are in love with hectic work and whatever is fast, new, strange - you find it hard to bear yourselves, your diligence is escape and the will to forget yourself. If you believed more in life, you would hurl yourself less into the moment. But you do not have enough content in yourselves for waiting not even for laziness! Everywhere sounds the voice of those who preach death: and the earth is full of people to whom departure from life must be preached. Or 'the eternal life.' It's all the same to me - if only they pass away quickly! Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Watch them scramble, these swift monkeys! They scramble all over each other and thus drag one another down into the mud and depths. They all want to get to the throne, it is their madness - as if happiness sat on the throne! Often mud sits on the throne - and often too the throne on mud. Mad all of them seem to me, and scrambling monkeys and overly aroused. Their idol smells foul to me, the cold monster: together they all smell foul to me, these idol worshipers. My brothers, do you want to choke in the reek of their snouts and cravings? Smash the windows instead and leap into the open! Get out of the way of the bad smell! Go away from the idol worship of the superfluous! Get out of the way of the bad smell! Get away from the steam of these human sacrifices! Even now the earth stands open for great souls. Many seats are still empty for the lonesome and twosome, fanned by the fragrance of silent seas. Anopenlife still stands open for great souls. Indeed, whoever possesses little is possessed all the less: praised be a small poverty! There, where the state ends, only there begins the human being who is not superfluous; there begins the song of necessity, the unique and irreplaceable melody. There, where the state ends - look there, my brothers! Do you not see it, the rainbow and the bridges of the overman? - Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Flee, my friend, into your solitude! I see you dazed by the noise of the great men and stung by the stings of the little. Woodandcliffknowworthilyhowtokeepsilentwithyou.Beoncemore like the tree that you love, the broad-branching one: silent and listening it hangs over the sea. Where solitude ends, there begins the market place; and where the market place begins, there begins too the noise of the great actors and the buzzing of poisonous flies.
In the world even the best things are still worthless without the one per-, First Part = . son who first performs them: the people call these great men performers. Thepeople little understand what is great, that is: the creator. But they, First Part = . have a sense for all performers and actors of great things. The world revolves around the inventors of new values: - it revolves, First Part = . invisibly. But the people and fame revolve around actors: thus is the course, First Part = . A truth that slips into only the finer ears he calls a lie and nothing., First Part = . of the world., First Part = . Spirit the actor has, but little conscience of spirit. He always believes, First Part = . in whatever makes people believe most strongly - believe in him ! Tomorrow he will have a new belief and the day after tomorrow an, First Part = . even newer one. He has hasty senses, like the people, and a fickle ability, First Part = . Return to your safety on account of these precipitous types: only in the, First Part = . him that means: to convince. And blood to him is the best of all possible, First Part = . grounds., First Part = . Indeed, he only believes in gods that make great noise in the world!, First Part = . The market place is full of pompous jesters - and the people are proud, First Part = . revenge., First Part = . they want a Yes or a No. Alas, do you want to set your chair between pro and contra? Be without envy on account of these unconditional and pressing types,, First Part = they want a Yes or a No. Alas, do you want to set your chair between pro and contra? Be without envy on account of these unconditional and pressing types,. you lover of truth! Never before has truth hung on the arm of an, First Part = you lover of truth! Never before has truth hung on the arm of an. absolutist., First Part = . market place is one assaulted with Yes? or No?, First Part = market place is one assaulted with Yes? or No?. For all deep wells experience is slow; they must wait long before they, First Part = . know what fell into their depth. Away from the market place and fame all greatness takes place; away,
First Part = . from the market place and fame the inventors of new values have lived all, First Part = from the market place and fame the inventors of new values have lived all. along., First Part = . Flee, my friend, into your solitude: I see you stung by poisonous flies. Flee where raw, strong air blows!, First Part = . Flee into your solitude! You have lived too long near the small and, First Part = . the pitiful. Flee their invisible revenge! Against you they are nothing but, First Part = the pitiful. Flee their invisible revenge! Against you they are nothing but
Do not raise your arm against them anymore! They are innumerable, and it is not your lot to be a shoo-fly. Innumerable are these small and pitiful ones; and rain drops and weeds have sufficed to bring down many a proud structure. You are no stone, but already you have become hollow from many drops. You will shatter and burst still from many drops. I see you weary from poisonous flies, torn bloody in a hundred places, and yet your pride does not even become angered. They want blood from you in all innocence, their bloodless souls demand blood - and so they sting away in all innocence. But you, deep one, you suffer too deeply even from small wounds; and before you could even heal yourself, the same poisonous worm crawled across your hand. You are too proud to slay these sweet-toothed creatures. But beware, or it will become your doom to bear all their poisonous injustice! They also buzz around you with their praise; importunity is their praising! They want the closeness of your skin and your blood. They flatter you like a god or devil; they snivel before you as before a god or devil. What's the use! They are sycophants and snivelers and nothing more. Often too they give themselves charming airs. But that has always been the cleverness of cowards; yes, cowards are clever! They think about you much with their narrow souls - you always give them pause! Everything that is thought about much gives pause. Theypunishyoufor all your virtues. What they forgive you thoroughly are only - your mistakes. Because you are mild and of just temperament, you say: 'They are not guilty of their petty existence.' But their narrow souls think: 'All great existence is guilty.' Even when you are mild toward them they still feel despised by you; and they repay your benefaction with hidden malefactions. Your wordless pride always contradicts their taste; they jubilate if only you are modest enough to be vain. That which we recognize in a person we also inflame in him - therefore beware of the petty! They feel small before you, and their baseness glimmers and glows at you in invisible revenge.
Haven'tyounoticedhowoftentheyfallsilentwhenyouapproachthem,, = . and how their strength abandoned them like the smoke of a dying fire?, = . Yes my friend, you are the bad conscience of your neighbors, for they are unworthy of you. Therefore they hate you and would like much to, = . suck your blood., = . Your neighbors will always be poisonous flies; that which is great in, = . you-that itself must make them more poisonous and ever more fly-like., = . Flee, my friend, into your solitude and where raw, strong air blows! It, = . is not your lot to be a shoo-fly. -, = . Thus spoke Zarathustra., = . On Chastity, = . I love the forest. It is bad to live in the cities; there too many are in heat. Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer than into the dreams, = . of a woman in heat?, = . on earth than to lie with a woman., = . your senses., = your senses.. Do I advise you to chastity? In some people chastity is a virtue, but in, = . many it is almost a vice., = . They abstain, to be sure: but the bitch, sensuality, leers with envy out, = . of everything they do., = . spirit this beast follows them with its unrest., = . And how sweetly the bitch, sensuality, knows how to beg for a piece of, = . spirit when she is denied a piece of meat!, = . mistrustful of your bitch., = . sufferers. Has your lust not simply disguised itself, and now calls itself, = . pity?, = And this parable too I give to you: not a few who wanted to drive out their devil went into swine themselves. Those for whom chastity is difficult should be advised against it, or else it could become their road to hell - that is, the mud and the heat of the soul. Do I speak of dirty things? That is not the worst of it to me. Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow the seeker of knowledge steps reluctantly into its water.
Indeed, there are chaste people through and through; they are milder of heart, they laugh more gladly and more richly than you. They laugh at chastity too and ask: 'what is chastity? Is chastity not folly? But this folly came to us, and not we to it. We offered this guest hostel and heart: now it dwells with us - may it stay as long as it wants!' Thus spoke Zarathustra.
'One is always too many around me' - thus thinks the hermit. 'Always one times one - in the long run that makes two!' I and me are always too eager in conversation: how could I stand it if there were no friend? For the hermit the friend is always a third: the third is the cork that prevents the conversation of the two from sinking into the depths. Oh, there are too many depths for all hermits. That is why they long so for a friend and his height. Our faith in others betrays the areas in which we would like to have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer. Andoften one uses love merely to leap over envy. And often one attacks and makes an enemy in order to conceal that one is open to attack. 'At least be my enemy!' - Thus speaks true respect that does not dare to ask for friendship. If one wants a friend, then one must also want to wage war for him: and in order to wage war, one must be able to be an enemy. One should honor the enemy even in one's friend. Can you step up to your friend without stepping over to him? In one's friend one should have one's best enemy. You should be closest to him in heart when you resist him. Nietzsche's bitterness toward women, and especially his view that women are incapable of friendship, were no doubt influenced by his traumatic experience with Lou Salom e, with whom he had
Womanisnot yet capable of friendship. But tell me, you men, who then among you is capable of friendship? Oh how repulsive is your poverty, you men, and the stinginess of your souls! As much as you give your friend I will give even to my enemy, and would not be poorer for it. There is comradeship: may there be friendship! Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Many lands Zarathustra saw and many peoples; thus he discovered many peoples' good and evil. No greater market place on earth did Zarathustra find than good and evil. No people could live that did not first esteem; but if they want to preserve themselves, then they must not esteem as their neighbor esteems. Muchthat was called good by this people was called scorn and disgrace byanother:thusIfound.MuchIfoundthatwascalledevilhereanddecked in purple honors there. Never did one neighbor understand the other: always his soul was amazed at his neighbor's delusion and malice. A tablet of the good hangs over every people. Observe, it is the tablet of their overcomings; observe, it is the voice of their will to power. Praiseworthy to them is whatever they consider difficult; what is indispensable and difficult, is called good, and whatever stems from the highest need and still liberates, the rarest, the most difficult - that is praised as holy. Whatever lets them rule and triumph and shine, to the dread and envy of their neighbor, that they consider as the high, the first, the measuring, the meaning of all things. Truly, my brother, once you discover a people's need and land and sky and neighbor, you guess as well the law of their overcomings, and why they climb on this ladder to their hope. been in love. The writing of the first two parts of TSZ coincides with and chronicles Nietzsche's coming to terms with the profound betrayal he felt at the hands of both Salom'e and his friend Paul R'ee. See Adrian Del Caro, 'Andreas-Salom'e and Nietzsche: New Perspectives,' Seminar : ( ), pp. - .
'Alwaysyou shall be the first and tower above others: no one shall your jealous soul love, unless it is the friend' - this is what made the soul of a Greek tremble: with this he walked the path of greatness. 'Speak the truth and be skilled with the bow and arrow' - this seemed both dear and difficult to the people from whom my name derives - the name that is both dear and difficult to me. 'Honorfather and mother and comply with their will down to the roots of one's soul' - this tablet of overcoming a different people hung over themselves and became powerful and eternal thereby. 'Practice loyalty and for loyalty's sake risk honor and blood even on evil and dangerous things' - teaching themselves thus another people conquered themselves, and thus conquering themselves they became pregnant and heavy with great hopes. Indeed, humans gave themselves all of their good and evil. Indeed, they did not take it, they did not find it, it did not fall to them as a voice from heaven. Humans first placed values into things, in order to preserve themselves -they first created meaning for things, a human meaning! That is why they call themselves 'human,' that is: the esteemer. Esteeming is creating: hear me, you creators! Esteeming itself is the treasure and jewel of all esteemed things. Only through esteeming is there value, and without esteeming the nut of existence would be hollow. Hear me, you creators! Change of values - that is the change of creators. Whoever must be a creator always annihilates. First peoples were creators and only later individuals; indeed, the individual himself is still the youngest creation. Peoples once hung a tablet of the good over themselves. Love that wants to rule and love that wants to obey such tablets created together.
This is a direct allusion to Zoroaster, Zarathustra's namesake. The ancient religion of Zoroastrianism is still practiced by some in Iran, formerly called Persia. Nietzsche explains the significance of using the German name of Zoroaster for his modern-day prophet in Ecce Homo ,ch. , section , where he writes: 'Zarathustra is more truthful than any other thinker. His teaching and it alone has truthfulness as the supreme virtue - that is, the opposite of the cowardice of the 'idealist' who flees from reality; Zarathustra has more courage in his body than all thinkers put together. Speak the truth and be skilled with the bow and arrow , that is Persian virtue.' In this passage Nietzsche's three peoples are the Persians, the Jews, and the Germans. Thus Spoke Zarathustra Delight in the herd is older than delight in the ego, and as long as good conscience is synonymous with herd, only bad conscience says: ego. Truly, the sly ego, loveless, wanting its benefit in the benefit of the many: that is not the origin of the herd, but instead its going under. It was always lovers and creators who created good and evil. The fire of love glows in the names of all virtues and the fire of wrath. Zarathustra saw many lands and many peoples: no greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than the works of the lovers: 'good' and 'evil' are their names. Truly, a behemoth is the power of this praising and blaming. Tell me, who will conquer it for me, you brothers? Tell me, who will throw the fetters over the thousand necks of this beast? A thousand goals there have been until now, for there have been a thousand peoples. Only the fetters for the thousand necks are still missing, the one goal is missing. Humanity still has no goal. But tell me, my brothers: if humanity still lacks a goal, does it not also still lack - humanity itself? - Thus spoke Zarathustra.
You crowd around your neighbor and you have pretty words for it. But I say to you: your love of the neighbor is your bad love of yourselves. You flee to your neighbor to escape yourself and you want to make a virtue of it: but I see through your 'selflessness.' The You is older than the I; the You is pronounced sacred, but not yet the I: and so humans crowd around their neighbors. Do I recommend love of the neighbor to you? I prefer instead to recommend flight from the neighbor and love of the farthest! Higher than love of the neighbor is love of the farthest and the future; higher still than love of human beings is love of things and ghosts. This ghost that runs before you, my brother, is more beautiful than you; why do you not give it your flesh and your bones? But you are afraid and run to your neighbor.
You cannot stand yourselves and do not love yourselves enough: now you want to seduce your neighbor to love and gild yourselves with his error. I wish you were unable to stand all these neighbors and their neighbors; then you would have to create your friend and his overflowing heart out of yourself. Youinvite a witness when you want someone to speak well of you; and when you have seduced him into thinking well of you, you then think well of yourselves. Not only he lies who speaks though he knows better, but the real liar is the one who speaks though he knows nothing. And so you visit each other and speak of yourselves and deceive your neighbor with yourselves. Thus speaks the fool: 'The company of people ruins one's character, especially when one has none.' Onepersongoestohis neighbor because he seeks himself, and the other because he would like to lose himself. Your bad love of yourselves makes your loneliness into a prison. Those farther away pay for your love of the neighbor; and even when you are together five at a time, always a sixth one must die. Nor do I love your festivals: too many actors I found there, and even the spectators behaved often like actors. I do not teach you the neighbor, but the friend. The friend shall be your festival of the earth and an anticipation of the overman. I teach you the friend and his overflowing heart. But one must understand how to be a sponge, if one wants to be loved by overflowing hearts. I teach you the friend in whom the world stands complete, a bowl of goodness - the creating friend who always has a complete world to bestow. And just as the world rolled apart for him, so it rolled together again in rings, as the becoming of good through evil, as the becoming of purpose out of accident. Let the future and the farthest be the cause of your today: in your friend you shall love the overman as your cause. My brothers, I do not recommend love of the neighbor to you: I recommend love of the farthest to you. Thus spoke Zarathustra. Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Do you want to go into isolation, my brother? Do you want to seek the way to yourself? Linger a bit longer and listen to me. 'Whoever seeks easily gets lost himself. All isolation is guilt,' thus speaks the herd. And long have you belonged to the herd. The voice of the herd will still resonate in you too. And when you will say 'I no longer am of one conscience with you,' then it will be a lament and a pain. Behold, this pain itself bore the one conscience, and the last shimmer of this conscience still glows on your misery. But you want to go the way of your misery, which is the way to yourself? Then show me your right and your strength to it! Are you a new strength and a new right? A first movement? A wheel rolling out of itself? Can you compel even the stars to revolve around you? Oh, there is so much lust for the heights! There are so many spasms of the ambitious! Show me that you are not one of the lustful and the ambitious! Oh, there are so many great thoughts that do nothing more than a bellows: they puff up and make emptier. You call yourself free? Your dominating thought I want to hear, and not that you escaped from a yoke. Are you the kind of person who had the right to escape from a yoke? There are some who threw away their last value when they threw away their servitude. Free from what? What does Zarathustra care! But brightly your eyes should signal to me: free for what ? Can you give yourself your own evil and good and hang your will above yourself like a law? Can you be your own judge and the avenger of your law? It is terrible to be alone with the judge and avenger of one's own law. Thusdoes a star get thrown out into desolate space and into the icy breath of solitary being. Today you suffer still from the many, you lonely one: for today you still have your courage and your hopes intact.
Joche , yoke, is the same word in German and English. Here Nietzsche specifically has a yoke in mind because he is addressing the possibility of freedom among those who are yoked. In 'On a Thousand and One Goals,' Nietzsche uses the word Fesseln (fetters) in connection with the beast with a thousand necks, not yoke as indicated in the Kaufmann translation.
But one day solitude will make you weary, one day your pride will cringe and your courage will gnash its teeth. One day you will cry 'I am alone!' One day will you will no longer see your high, and your low will be all too near; your sublimity itself will frighten you like a ghost. One day you will cry: 'Everything is false!' There are feelings that want to kill the lonely one; if they do not succeed, well, then they must die themselves! But are you capable of being a murderer? Do you know the word 'contempt' yet, my brother? And the agony of your justice, namely to be just to those who despise you? You compel many to relearn about you; they weigh that heavily against you. You came near to them and yet passed by: they will never forgive you that. You pass over and beyond them, but the higher you climb the smaller you are to the eyes of envy. But the ones who fly they hate most. 'How would you be just toward me?' - you must say - 'I choose your injustice as my fair share.' Injustice and filth they throw at the lonely one. But my brother, if you want to be a star then you must shine through for them all the more! And beware of the good and the just! They like to crucify those who invent their own virtue - they hate the lonely one. Beware too of holy simplicity! Everything is unholy to it that is not simple; it also likes to play with fire - the stake. And beware of the attacks of your love! Too quickly the lonely one extends his hand to those he encounters. To some people you should not give your hand, but instead only your paw: and I want that your paw also has claws. But the worst enemy whom you can encounter will always be yourself; you ambush yourself in caves and woods. Lonely one, you go the way to yourself! And past you yourself leads your way and past your seven devils! To your own self you will be heretic and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy man and villain. You must want to burn yourself up in your own flame: how could you become new if you did not first become ashes! Lonely one, you go the way of the creator: you will create yourself a god out of your seven devils! Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Lonely one, you go the way of the lover: you love yourself and that is why you despise yourself as only lovers despise. The lover wants to create because he despises! What does he know of love who did not have to despise precisely what he loved! With your love go into your isolation and with your creativity, my brother; and only later will justice limp after you. With my tears go into your isolation, my brother. I love him who wants to create over and beyond himself and thus perishes. - Thus spoke Zarathustra.
'Why do you creep about so timidly in the twilight, Zarathustra? And what do you conceal so cautiously beneath your coat? Is it a treasure that was given to you? Or a child that was born to you? Or do you yourself now walk the paths of thieves, you friend of the evil?' - 'Indeed, my brother!' spoke Zarathustra. 'It is a treasure that was given to me: it is a little truth, which I carry. But it is unruly like a young child, and if I do not hold its mouth shut, then it cries out too loudly. As I went my way alone today, at the hour when the sun sets, I met a little old woman and she spoke thus to my soul: 'Much has Zarathustra spoken also to us women, and yet he has never spoken to us about woman.' And I replied to her: 'About woman one should speak only to men.' 'Speak to me too about woman,' she said. 'I am old enough to forget it right away.' And I humored the little old woman and spoke thus to her: Everything about woman is a riddle, and everything about woman has one solution: it is called pregnancy. A man is for woman a means: the end is always the child. But what is woman for a man? Two things the real man wants: danger and play. That is why he wants woman as the most dangerous plaything. A man should be raised for war and woman for the recreation of the warrior: everything else is folly.
Bundle it up and hold its mouth shut, or else it will cry out too loudly, this little truth.' 'Give me your little truth, woman!' I said. And thus spoke the little old woman: 'You go to women? Do not forget the whip!' - Thus spoke Zarathustra.
One day Zarathustra had fallen asleep beneath a fig tree, since it was hot, and he had laid his arm over his face. Then an adder came along and bit him in the neck, so that Zarathustra cried out in pain. When he had taken his arm from his face he looked at the snake; it recognized the eyes of Zarathustra, turned around awkwardly and tried to get away. 'Not so fast,' spoke Zarathustra. 'You have not yet accepted my thanks! You waked me in time, my way is still long.' 'Your way is still short,' said the adder sadly: 'My poison kills.' Zarathustra smiled. 'Since when did a dragon ever die of snake poison?' he said. 'But take back your poison! You are not rich enough to give it to me.' Then the snake fell upon his neck once again and licked his wound. When Zarathustra once told this to his disciples they asked: 'And what, oh Zarathustra, is the moral of your story?' To which Zarathustra responded thus: 'The annihilator of morals the good and just call me: my story is immoral. If you should have an enemy, then do not requite him evil with good, for that would shame him. Instead prove that he has does you some good. And be angry rather than shaming someone! And if you are cursed at, I do not like it that you want to bless. Better to curse along a bit! And if a great wrong befell you, then quickly add five small ones to it! Ghastly to behold is a person who suffers a wrong all by himself. Did you know this already? A wrong shared is half a right. And the one who should take a wrong upon himself is the one who can bear it! Recent scholarship on Nietzsche's view of women reveals a deeper appreciation of women than the one suggested here, which is seductively misleading. In the photo of Nietzsche, Paul R ee, and Lou Salom e, the two men are 'in harness' in front of a tiny cart, while Lou Salom e holds a toy whip. See Adrian Del Caro, 'Nietzsche, Sacher-Masoch, and the Whip,' German Studies Review : ( ), pp. - .
, First Part = A small revenge is more humane than no revenge at all. And if the. , First Part = punishment is not also a right and an honor for the transgressor, then I. , First Part = It is more noble to pronounce oneself wrong than to remain right,. , First Part = especially if one is right. Only one has to be rich enough for that.. , First Part = I do not like your cold justice; and from the eyes of your judges gazes. , First Part = Tell me, where is the justice found that is love with seeing eyes?. , First Part = Then invent me the kind of love that not only bears all punishment but. also all guilt!, First Part = . , First Part = Then invent me the kind of justice that pardons everyone, except the. , First Part = And do you want to hear this too? In the person who would be thor-. But how could I want to be thoroughly just! How can I give to each his, First Part = oughly just, even lies become philanthropy.. , First Part = own! Let this be enough for me: I give to each my own. Finally, my brothers, beware of doing wrong to any hermits! How could. , First Part = a hermit forget? How could he requite?. A hermit is like a deep well. It is easy to throw in a stone; but once it, First Part = I want your victory and your freedom to long for a child. You should. Beware of offending the hermit! But if you've already done so, well you: are you a person who has a right to wish for a child? Are you the victor, the self conqueror, the master of your senses, the Or do the animal and neediness speak out of your wish? Or loneliness? Or discord with yourself?, First Part = Your should build over and beyond yourself. But first I want you built. , First Part = has sunk to the bottom, tell me: who would fetch it up again?. then, kill him too!', First Part = Thus spoke Zarathustra.. On Child and Marriage, First Part = . I have a question for you alone, my brother: like a plumb bob I cast this question into your soul, in order to know how deep it is., First Part = . You are young and wish
for a child and marriage for yourself. But I ask, First Part = . ruler of your virtues? Thus I ask you., First Part = . build living monuments to your victory and your liberation., First Part = . yourselves, square in body and soul., First Part =
You should not only reproduce, but surproduce! May the garden of marriage help you to that! Youshould create a higher body, a first movement, a wheel rolling out of itself - a creator you should create. Marriage: that is what I call the will by two for creating the one who is more than those who created it. Respect for one another I call marriage, and respect for the one who wills such a willing. Let this be the meaning and the truth of your marriage. But that which the far-too-many call marriage, these superfluous ones - oh, what do I call that? Oh, this poverty of the soul by two! Oh, this filth of the soul by two! Oh, this pitiful contentment by two! Marriage they call all this; and they say their marriages are made in heaven. Well, I do not like it, this heaven of the superfluous! No, I do not like them, these animals tangled in the heavenly net! And may the God stay away from me who limps up to bless what he has not joined together! Donot laugh at such marriages! Which child would not have reason to weep about its parents? Worthy this man seemed to me, and ripe for the meaning of the earth; butwhenIsawhiswoman,theearthseemedtomeahouseforthesenseless. Indeed, I wish the earth would quake in convulsions whenever a saint and a goose mate. This one went forth like a hero seeking truths, and finally he bagged himself a little dressed up lie. He calls it his marriage. That one was socially reserved and a choosy chooser. But all at once he ruined his company once and for all: he calls it his marriage. That one sought a maid with the virtues of an angel. But all at once he became the maid of a woman and now he even has to turn himself into an angel. Cautious I found all buyers now, and all have cunning eyes. But even the cunning man still buys his wife in a poke. Manybrief follies - that is what you call love. And your marriage makes an end of many brief follies, as one long stupidity. Your love of woman and woman's love of man, oh! If only it were compassion for suffering and for disguised gods! But mostly it is two animals discovering each other.
'Vom freien Tode' - on free death - suggests der Freitod , suicide (death entered into freely). As usual Nietzsche's emphasis is on the quality of one's life, here juxtaposed with the symbolism of one's death. My death I praise to you, the free death that comes to me because I want. And when will I want it? - Whoever has a goal and an heir wants death at the right time for his goal and heir. And out of reverence for his goal and heir he will no longer hang withered wreaths in the sanctuary of life. Indeed, I do not want to be like the rope makers: they stretch out their threads and in doing so always walk backwards. Some become too old even for their truths and victories; a toothless mouth no longer has the right to every truth. And everyone who wants to have fame must take leave of honor from time to time and practice the difficult art of leaving - at the right time. One must stop letting oneself be eaten when one tastes best; this is known by those who want to be loved for a long time. There are sour apples, to be sure, whose lot demands that they wait for the last day of autumn; and immediately they become ripe, yellow and wrinkled. With some the heart ages first and with others the mind. A few are hoary in their youth, but the late young stay long young. For some life fails: a poisonous worm eats its way to their heart. Let them see to it that their dying succeeds all the more. Some never become sweet, they rot already in summer. It is cowardice that keeps them clinging to the branch. Far too many live and far too long they hang on their branches. Would that a storm came to shake all this rot and worm-food from the tree! Would that preachers of the quick death came! They would be the right storms and shakers of the trees of life for me! But I hear only preaching of the slow death and patience with all things 'earthly.' Indeed, you preach patience with earthly things? It is the earthly things that have too much patience with you, you slanderers! Truly, too early did that Hebrew die, the one who is honored by the preachers of slow death; and for many it has since become their doom that he died too early.
He still knew only tears and the melancholy of the Hebrews, together with the hatred of the good and just - the Hebrew Jesus; then longing for death overcame him. Thus spoke Zarathustra.
When Zarathustra had taken leave of the city, which was dear to his heart and whose name was The Motley Cow, many who called themselves his disciples followed him, and they provided him escort. Thus they came to a crossroads; then Zarathustra told them he wanted to walk alone now, for he was a friend of walking alone. In parting, however, his disciples 'Von der schenkenden Tugend,' with schenken meaning 'to bestow' rather than merely 'to give.' German uses schenken to connote the special kind of giving as a gift, a present, a grant, or a donation. 'Giving' captures some of this, but German uses geben (to give) just as English does.
presented him with a staff upon whose golden knob a snake encircled the sun. Zarathustra was delighted with the staff and leaned on it; then he spoke thus to his disciples. Tell me now: how did gold come to have the highest value? Because it is uncommon and useless and gleaming and mild in its luster; it bestows itself always. Only as the image of the highest virtue did gold come to have the highest value. Goldlike gleams the gaze of the bestower. Golden luster makes peace between moon and sun. Uncommon is the highest virtue and useless, it is gleaming and mild in its luster: a bestowing virtue is the highest virtue. Truly,Iguessyouwell,mydisciples:likemeyoustriveforthebestowing virtue. What would you have in common with cats or wolves? This is your thirst: to become sacrifices and gifts yourselves, and therefore you thirst to amass all riches in your soul. Insatiably your soul strives for treasures and gems, because your virtue is insatiable in wanting to bestow. You compel all things to and into yourselves, so that they may gush back from your well as the gifts of your love. Indeed, such a bestowing love must become a robber of all values, but hale and holy I call this selfishness. There is another selfishness, one all too poor, a hungering one that always wants to steal; that selfishness of the sick, the sick selfishness. With the eye of the thief it looks at all that gleams; with the greed of hunger it eyes those with ample food; and always it creeps around the table of the bestowers. Sickness speaks out of such craving and invisible degeneration; the thieving greed of this selfishness speaks of a diseased body. Tell me, my brothers: what do we regard as bad and worst? Is it not degeneration ?-Andwealwaysdiagnosedegenerationwherethebestowing soul is absent. Upward goes our way, over from genus to super-genus. But a horror to us is the degenerating sense which speaks: 'Everything for me.'
Degeneration ( Entartung ) is based on genus, just as Entartung is based on Art , meaning genus, species, type, or kind. Nietzsche's concern is with the human species, which he sees threatened by degeneration. Those humans who possess a superabundance of the bestowing virtue are transitioning from human (the species or Art ) to superhuman ( Uber-Art ). In Part Zarathustra will again refer specifically to a new 'beautiful species.'
Upward flies our sense; thus it is a parable of our body, a parable of elevation. Such elevation parables are the names of the virtues. Thus the body goes through history, becoming and fighting. And the spirit - what is it to the body? The herald of its fights and victories, companion and echo. Parables are all names of good and evil: they do not express, they only hint. A fool who wants to know of them! Pay attention, my brothers, to every hour where your spirit wants to speak in parables: there is the origin of your virtue. There your body is elevated and resurrected; with its bliss it delights the spirit, which becomes creator and esteemer and lover and benefactor of all things. Whenyourheartflowsbroadandfulllikeariver,ablessing and a danger to adjacent dwellers: there is the origin of your virtue. When you are sublimely above praise and blame, and your will wants to command all things, as the will of a lover: there is the origin of your virtue. When you despise pleasantness and the soft bed, and cannot bed down far enough away from the softies: there is the origin of your virtue. When you are the ones who will with a single will, and this turning point of all need points to your necessity: there is the origin of your virtue. Indeed, it is a new good and evil! Indeed, a new, deep rushing and the voice of a new spring! It is power, this new virtue; it is a ruling thought and around it a wise soul: a golden sun and around it the snake of knowledge. Here Zarathustra was silent for a while and looked with love at his disciples. Then he continued to speak thus - and his voice had transformed. Remainfaithfultotheearth,mybrothers,withthepowerofyourvirtue! Let your bestowing love and your knowledge serve the meaning of the earth! Thus I beg and beseech you. Donot let it fly away from earthly things and beat against eternal walls with its wings! Oh, there has always been so much virtue that flew away! Like me, guide the virtue that has flown away back to the earth - yes, back to the body and life: so that it may give the earth its meaning, a human meaning! Thus Spoke Zarathustra
In a hundred ways thus far the spirit as well as virtue has flown away and failed. Oh, in our body now all this delusion and failure dwells: there they have become body and will. In a hundred ways thus far spirit as well as virtue has essayed and erred. Indeed, human beings were an experiment. Alas, much ignorance and error have become embodied in us! Not only the reason of millennia - their madness too breaks out in us. It is dangerous to be an heir. Still we struggle step by step with the giant called accident, and over all humanity thus far nonsense has ruled, the sense-less. Let your spirit and your virtue serve the meaning of the earth, my brothers:andthevalueofallthingswillbepositednewlybyyou!Therefore you shall be fighters! Therefore you shall be creators! Knowingly the body purifies itself; experimenting with knowledge it elevates itself; all instincts become sacred in the seeker of knowledge; the soul of the elevated one becomes gay. Physician, help yourself: thus also you help your sick. Let that be his best help, that he sees with his own eyes the one who heals himself. There are a thousand paths that have never yet been walked; a thousand healths and hidden islands of life. Human being and human earth are still unexhausted and undiscovered. Wake and listen, you lonely ones! From the future come winds with secretive wingbeats; good tidings are issued to delicate ears. You lonely of today, you withdrawing ones, one day you shall be a people: from you who have chosen yourselves a chosen people shall grow and from them the overman. Indeed, the earth shall yet become a site of recovery! And already a new fragrance lies about it, salubrious - and a new hope! When Zarathustra had said these words, he grew silent like one who has notspokenhislastword.Longheweighedthestaffinhishand,doubtfully. Finally he spoke thus, and his voice had transformed. 'Alone I go now, my disciples! You also should go now, and alone! Thus I want it. Thus spoke Zarathustra.
. . . and only when you have all denied me will I return to you. Indeed, with different eyes, my brothers, will I then seek my lost ones; with a different love will I love you then. Zarathustra , 'On the Bestowing Virtue' ( , p. ).
The Child with the Mirror, 1 = . At this time Zarathustra returned again to the mountains and to the solitude of his cave and withdrew from mankind, waiting like a sower who has cast his seeds. But his soul grew full of impatience and desire for, 1 = . those whom he loved, because he still had much to give them. For this is, 1 = . the hardest thing: to close the open hand out of love, and to preserve a, 1 = . sense of shame as a bestower., 1 = . Thus moons and years passed for the lonely one; but his wisdom grew, 1 = . and its fullness caused him pain., 1 = . But one morning he woke already before dawn, reflected for a long time, 1 = . on his bed and at last spoke to his heart:, 1 = . What frightened me so in my dream that it waked me? Did not a child, 1 = . approach me carrying a mirror? 'Oh Zarathustra' - spoke the child to me - 'look at yourself in the, 1 = . mirror!', 1 = . But when I looked into the mirror I cried out, and my heart was shaken;, 1 = . forIdid not see myself there, but a devil's grimace and scornful laughter. Indeed, all too well I understand the dream's sign and warning: my, 1 = . teaching is in danger, weeds want to be wheat!, 1 = . Myenemies have become powerful and have distorted the image of my teaching, so that those dearest to me must be ashamed of the gifts I gave, 1 = . them., 1 = . My friends are lost to me; the hour has arrived to seek my lost ones! -, 1 = . ened person fighting for air, but instead more like a seer and a singer on, 1 = . whom the spirit has descended. In amazement his eagle and his snake, 1 = . looked at him, for like the dawn an impending happiness lay upon his face., 1 = . What just happened to me, my animals? - said Zarathustra. Am I not, 1 = . transformed? Did bliss not come to me like a storm wind?, 1 = . Foolish is my happiness and it will speak foolish things: it is still too, 1 = . young - so have patience with it!, 1 = . Iamwounded by my happiness:
all sufferers shall be physicians to me!, 1 = . Once again I may descend to my friends and also to my enemies!, 1 = . Zarathustra may speak again and bestow and do what he loves best for, 1 = . , 1 = loved ones! Thus Spoke Zarathustra My impatient love floods over in torrents, downward, toward sunrise and sunset. From silent mountains and thunderheads of pain my soul roars into the valleys. ToolonghaveIlongedandgazedintothedistance.ToolongIbelonged to solitude - thus I forgot how to be silent. I have become mouth through and through, and a brook's bounding from high boulders: I want to plunge my speech down into the valleys. And may my torrent of love plunge into impasses! How could a torrent not finally make its way to the sea! Truly, there is a lake in me, a hermit-like and self-sufficient lake; but my torrent of love tears it along - down to the sea! New ways I go, a new speech comes to me; I became weary, like all creators, of old tongues. My spirit no longer wants to wander on worn soles. All speech runs too slowly for me: - I leap into your chariot, storm! And I shall whip even you with the whip of my malice! Like a shout and a jubilation I want to journey over broad seas until I find the blessed isles where my friends dwell - And my enemies among them! How I love everyone now, with whom I may simply speak! Even my enemies belong to my bliss. And when I want to mount my wildest horse, then my spear always helps me up best: it is the ever-ready servant of my foot - The spear I hurl against my enemies! How I thank my enemies that at last I may hurl it! Too great was the tension of my cloud: between lightning peals of laughter I shall throw hail showers into the depths. Violently my chest will heave then, violently it will blow its storm over mountains: thus relief comes to it. Indeed, my happiness and my freedom come like a storm! But my enemies should believe the evil one is raging over their heads. Indeed, you too will be frightened, my friends, because of my wild wisdom; and perhaps you will flee from it together with my enemies.
Oh, if only I understood how to lure you back with shepherds' flutes! Oh, if only my lioness-wisdom could learn to roar tenderly! And much we have already learned with each other! My wild wisdom wound up pregnant on lonely mountains; on naked stones she bore her young, her youngest.
Nowsherunsfoolishly through harsh desert and seeks and seeks gentle, Second Part = . turf - my old wild wisdom! Upon the gentle turf of your hearts, my friends! - upon your love she would like to bed her most beloved!, Second Part = . Thus spoke Zarathustra., Second Part = . On the Blessed Isles, Second Part = . The figs fall from the trees, they are good and sweet; and as they fall, their, Second Part = . red skin ruptures. I am a north wind to ripe figs., Second Part = . Thus, like figs, these teachings fall to you, my friends: now drink their, Second Part = . juice and their sweet flesh! It is autumn all around and pure sky and, Second Part = . afternoon., Second Part = . See what fullness is around us! And from such superabundance it is beautiful to look out upon distant seas., Second Part = . Once people said God when they gazed upon distant seas; but now I, Second Part = . have taught you to say: overman. Godisaconjecture, but I want that your conjecturing not reach further, Second Part = . than your creating will., Second Part = . Could you create a god? - Then be silent about any gods! But you could, Second Part = . selves into fathers and forefathers of the overman: and this shall be your, Second Part = . well create the overman., Second Part = . Not you yourselves perhaps, my brothers! But you could recreate your-, Second Part = . best creating! -, Second Part = . God is a conjecture: but I want your conjecturing to be limited to what, Second Part = . is thinkable., Second Part = . Could you think a God? - But let this mean will to truth to you; that, Second Part = . everything be transformed into what is humanly thinkable, humanly, Second Part = . visible, humanly feelable! You should think your own senses to their, Second Part = . conclusion!, Second Part = . reason, your image, your will, your love itself it should become! And truly,, Second Part = . knowledge? Neither into the incomprehensible nor into the irrational, Second Part = . could you have been born., Second Part = . how could I stand not to be a god! Therefore
there are no gods., Second Part =
I drew this conclusion to be sure; but now it draws me. - Godisaconjecture: but who could drink all the agony of this conjecture without dying? Should the creating person's faith be taken, and from the eagle its soaring in eagle heights? God is a thought that makes crooked everything that is straight, and causes everything that stands to turn. What? Should time be gone, and all that is not everlasting be merely a lie? To think this causes whirling and dizziness to human bones and even vomiting to the stomach: indeed, the turning disease I call it, to conjecture such things. Evil I call it and misanthropic: all this teaching of the one and the plenum and the unmoved and the sated and the everlasting! All that is everlasting - that is merely a parable! And the poets lie too much. But the best parables should speak about time and becoming: they should be praise and justification of all that is not everlasting! Creating-thatisthegreatredemptionfromsuffering,andlife'sbecoming light. But in order for the creator to be, suffering is needed and much transformation. Indeed, much bitter dying must be in your life, you creators! Therefore you are advocates and justifiers of all that is not everlasting. In order for the creator himself to be the child who is newly born, he must also want to be the birth-giver and the pain of giving birth. Indeed, through a hundred souls I went my way and through a hundred cradles and pangs of birth. Many a farewell have I taken already; I know the heartbreaking final hours. Butthusmycreating will wills it, my destiny. Or, to tell it more honestly to you: just such a destiny - my will wills. Everything that feels, suffers in me and is in prison; but my will always comes to me as my liberator and bringer of joy. Willing liberates: that is the true teaching of will and liberty - thus Zarathustra teaches it. No more willing and no more esteeming and no more creating! Oh, if only this great weariness would always keep away from me!
Even in knowing I feel only my will's lust to beget and to become; and if there is innocence in my knowledge, then this happens because the will to beget is in it.
And once Zarathustra gave a sign to his disciples and spoke these words to them: 'Here are priests, and though they are my enemies, go quietly past them and with sleeping swords! Among them too there are heroes; many of them suffered too much, so they want to make others suffer.
They are evil enemies: nothing is more vengeful than their humility. And whoever attacks them is easily besmirched. But my blood is related to theirs, and I want to know that my blood is honored even in theirs.' And when they had passed by Zarathustra was seized by pain; and not long had he wrestled with his pain when he rose and began to speak thus: 'I feel for these priests. And though I also find them distasteful, that is the least of my concerns since I have been among human beings. But I suffer and suffered with them; to me they are prisoners and marked men. The one they call redeemer clapped them in irons: - In irons of false values and words of delusion! Oh that someone would yet redeem them from their redeemer! Once they believed they landed on an island as the sea tossed them around; but see, it was a sleeping monster! False values and words of delusion: these are the worst monsters for mortals - long does doom sleep and wait in them. But at last it comes and wakes and devours and gulps whatever built itself huts upon it. Oh look at these huts that the priests built themselves! Churches they call their sweet smelling caves. Oh how repulsive is this falsified light, this stale air! Here, where the soul to its height - is denied flight! Instead their faith commands: 'Up the stairs on your knees, you sinners!' Indeed, I would rather see the shameless than the rolled back eyes of their shame and devotion! Who created such caves and stairs of penitence? Were they not those who wanted to hide and were ashamed beneath the pure sky? And only when the pure sky peeks again through broken ceilings and down upon grass and red poppy and broken walls - only then will I turn my heart again to the sites of this God. They called God what contradicted and hurt them, and truly, there was much heroics in their adoration! And they knew no other way to love their God than to nail the human being to a cross! They intended to live as corpses, they decked out their corpse in black; from their speeches I still smell the rotten spice of death chambers.
Withthunderandheavenlyfireworksonemustspeaktoslackandsleeping senses. But the voice of beauty speaks softly; it creeps only into the most awakened souls. Softly today my shield trembled and laughed; it is the holy laughter and trembling of beauty. At you, virtuous ones, my beauty laughed today. And thus its voice came to me: 'They still want - to be paid!' You still want to be paid, you virtuous! Want to have reward for virtue, and heaven for earth, and eternity for your today? And now you're angry with me for teaching that there is no reward and paymaster? And truly, I do not even teach that virtue is its own reward. Oh, this is my sorrow; reward and punishment have been lied into the ground of things - and now even into the ground of your souls, you virtuous! But like the snout of a boar my words shall tear open the ground of your souls; a plowshare I shall be to you. All the secrets of your ground shall be brought to light; and when you lie uprooted and broken in the sun, your lie also will be separated from your truth. For this is your truth: you are too pure for the filth of the words revenge, punishment, reward, retribution. Youloveyour virtue as the mother her child; but when did anyone ever hear that a mother wanted to be paid for her love? Your virtue is your dearest self. The ring's thirst is in you; every ring struggles and turns to reach itself again. And each work of your virtue is like the star that dies out; always its light is still on its way and wandering - and when will it no longer be on its way? Thus the light of your virtue is still underway, even when the work is done. And even if now forgotten and dead, its ray of light still lives and wanders. Yourvirtueshouldbeyourselfandnotaforeignthing,askin,acloaking: that is the truth from the ground of your soul, you virtuous! - But surely there are those who equate virtue with spasm under a whip, and you have listened too much to their cries!
And in this manner almost all believe they have a share of virtue; and at the very least each person wants to be an expert on 'good' and 'evil.' But Zarathustra has not come to say to all these liars and fools: 'What do you know about virtue! What could you know about virtue!' - Instead, my friends, I wish you would grow weary of the old words you have learned from the fools and liars: Grow weary of the words 'reward,' 'retribution,' 'punishment,' 'revenge in justice' - Grow weary of saying: 'What makes a deed good is that it is selfless.' Oh my friends! I wish your self were in the deed like the mother is in the child: let that be your word on virtue! Indeed, I may have taken from you a hundred words and your virtue's favorite toys; and now you are angry with me as children become angry. They played by the sea - then the wave came and tore their toys into the deep: now they weep. But the same wave shall bring them new toys and lavish new colorful shells before them! Thus will they be consoled; and like them you, too, my friends shall have your consolations - and new colorful shells! - Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Life is a well of joy; but where the rabble also drinks, there all wells are poisoned. I appreciate all that is clean; but I do not like to see the grinning snouts and the thirst of the unclean. They cast their eyes down into the well; now their disgusting smile reflects back up to me from the well. They have poisoned the holy water with their lustfulness; and when they called their filthy dreams joy, they poisoned even words. Theflameshrinks when they put their dank hearts on the fire; the spirit itself seethes and smokes wherever the rabble approaches the fire. In their hands fruits becomes sickly sweet and overripe; their gaze makes fruit trees prone to windfall and withered at the crown. Andsomewhoturnedawayfromlifeonlyturnedawayfromtherabble, not wanting to share well and flame and fruit with the rabble.
My heart, upon which my summer burns, the brief, hot, melancholy, superblissful summer; how my summer heart yearns for your coolness! Gone the hesitating gloom of my spring! Gone the malice of my snowflakes in June! I have become summer and summer noon entirely! Asummer in the highest regions with cold springs and blissful silence: Oh come, my friends, and let the silence become even more blissful! For it is our height and our homeland; too high and steep we live here for all the unclean and their thirst. Cast your pure eyes into the wellspring of my joy, you friends! How could it become murky from that! It shall laugh back at you with its purity. We build our nest in the tree called future; eagles shall bring us solitary ones food in their beaks! Truly, no food in which the unclean are allowed to share! They would think they were devouring fire and burn their snouts! Truly, we keep no homesteads ready here for the unclean! To their bodies and to their minds our happiness would seem a cave of ice! And like strong winds we want to live above them, neighbors to eagles, neighbors to snow, neighbors to the sun: thus live strong winds. And some day I want to blow among them like a wind and steal their breath away with my spirit: thus my future wills it. Indeed, Zarathustra is a strong wind to all lowlands; and this counsel he gives to his enemies and to everything that spits and spews: 'Beware of spitting against the wind!' Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Lookhere,thisis the hole of the tarantula! Do you want to see the tarantula itself? Its web hangs here; touch it, make it tremble. Here it comes, willingly - welcome, tarantula! On your back your triangle and mark sits in black; and I know too what sits in your soul. Revenge sits in your soul: wherever you bite, there black scabs grow; your poison makes the soul whirl with revenge! So I speak to you in parables, you who cause the souls to whirl, you preachers of equality ! Tarantulas you are to me and hidden avengers! But I want to expose your hiding places to the light; therefore I laugh into your face my laughter of the heights.

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