Everything about Thus Spoke Zarathustra totally explained
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (German: Also sprach Zarathustra, sometimes translated Thus Spake Zarathustra), subtitled A Book for All and None (Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen), is a work by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, composed in four parts between 1883 and 1885. It famously declares that "God is dead", elaborates Nietzsche's conception of the will to power, and serves as an introduction to his doctrine of eternal return.
Described by Nietzsche himself as "the deepest ever written", the book is a dense and esoteric treatise on philosophy and morality, featuring as protagonist a fictionalized Zarathustra. The text encompasses passages of poetry and song, often mocking Judaeo-Christian morality and tradition.
Genesis
Thus Spoke Zarathustra was conceived while Nietzsche was writing The Gay Science; he made a small note, reading "6,000 feet beyond man and time", as evidence of this. More specifically, this note related to the concept of the Eternal Recurrence, which is, by Nietzsche's admission, the central idea of Zarathustra; this idea occurred to him by a "pyramidal block of stone" on the shores of Lake Silvaplana in the Upper Engadine, a high alpine region whose valley floor is at 6,000 ft. Nietzsche planned to write the book in three parts over several years. He wrote that the ideas for Zarathustra first came to him while walking on two roads surrounding Rapallo, according to Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche in the introduction of Thomas Common's early translation of the book.
While developing the general outlook of the book, he subsequently decided to write an additional three parts; ultimately, however, he composed only the fourth part, which is viewed to constitute an intermezzo.
Nietzsche commented in Ecce Homo that for the completion of each part: "Ten days sufficed; in no case, neither for the first nor for the third and last, did I require more" (trans. Kaufmann). The first three parts were first published separately, and were subsequently published in a single volume in 1887. The fourth part remained private after Nietzsche wrote it in 1885; a scant forty copies were all that were printed, apart from seven others that were distributed to Nietzsche's close friends. In March 1892, the four parts were finally reprinted as a single volume. Since then, the version most commonly produced has included all four parts.
The original text contains a great deal of word-play. An example of this exists in the use of the words "over" or "super" and the words "down" or "abyss/abysmal"; some examples include "superman" or "overman", "overgoing", "downgoing", and "self-overcoming".
Synopsis
The book chronicles the fictitious travels and pedagogy of Zarathustra (Avestan: Zaraθuštra), usually known in English as Zoroaster, the Persian prophet and founder of Zoroastrianism. Nietzsche is clearly portraying a "new" or "different" Zarathustra, one who turns traditional morality on its head. He goes on to characterize "what the name of Zarathustra means in my mouth, the mouth of the first immoralist:"
[F]or what constitutes the tremendous historical uniqueness of that [[Persianpeople |
Zarathustra has a simple characterisation and plot, narrated sporadically throughout the text. It possesses a unique experimental style, one that is, for instance, evident in newly invented "
dithyrambs" narrated or sung by Zarathustra. Likewise, the separate
Dithyrambs of Dionysus was written in autumn 1888, and printed with the full volume in 1892, as the corollaries of Zarathustra's "abundance".
Some speculate that Nietzsche intended to write about final acts of creation and destruction brought about by Zarathustra. However, the book lacks a
finale to match that description; its actual ending focuses more on Zarathustra recognizing his legacy is beginning to perpetuate, and consequently choosing to leave the higher men to their own devices in carrying his legacy forth.
Zarathustra also contains the famous dictum "
God is dead", which had appeared earlier in
The Gay Science. In his autobiographical work
Ecce Homo,
Nietzsche states that the book's underlying concept is discussed within "the penultimate section of the fourth book" of The Gay Science (
Ecce Homo, Kaufmann). It is the
Eternal recurrence of the same events.
This concept first occurred to Nietzsche while he was walking in
Switzerland through the woods along the lake of
Silvaplana (close to
Surlei); he was inspired by the sight of a gigantic, towering, pyramidal rock. Before
Zarathustra, Nietzsche had mentioned the concept in the fourth book of
The Gay Science (for example, sect. 341); this was the first public proclamation of the notion by him. Apart from its salient presence in
Zarathustra, it's also echoed throughout Nietzsche's work. At any rate, it's by Zarathustra's transfiguration that he embraces eternity, that he at last ascertains "the supreme will to power". This inspiration finds its expression with
Zarathustra's Roundelay, featured twice in the book, once near the story's close:
Another singular feature of
Zarathustra, first presented in the prologue, is the designation of human beings as a transition between apes and the "
Übermensch" (in English, either the "overman" or "superman"; or,
superhuman or
overhuman. English translators Thomas Common and R. J. Hollingdale use
superman, while Kaufmann uses
overman, and Parkes uses
overhuman). The
Übermensch is one of the many interconnecting, interdependent themes of the story, and is represented through several different metaphors. Examples include: the lightning that's portended by the silence and raindrops of a travelling storm cloud; or the sun's rise and culmination at its midday zenith; or a man traversing a rope stationed above an abyss, moving away from his uncultivated animality and towards the
Übermensch.
The symbol of the
Übermensch also alludes to Nietzsche's notions of "self-mastery", "self-cultivation", "self-direction", and "self-overcoming". Expostulating these concepts, Zarathustra declares:
"I teach you the overman. Man is something that'll be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?"All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape. "Whoever is the wisest among you is also a mere conflict and cross between plant and ghost. But do I bid you become ghosts or plants? "Behold, I teach you the overman! The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and don't believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go!" |
The book embodies a number of innovative poetical and rhetorical methods of expression. It serves as a parallel and supplement to the various philosophical ideas present in Nietzsche's body of work. He has, however, said that "among my writings my
Zarathustra stands to my mind by itself" (
Ecce Homo, Preface, sec. 4, Kaufmann). Emphasizing its centrality and its status as his
magnum opus, it's stated by Nietzsche that:
With [Thus Spoke Zarathustra] I've given mankind the greatest present that has ever been made to it so far. This book, with a voice bridging centuries, isn't only the highest book there is, the book that's truly characterized by the air of the heights—the whole fact of man lies beneath it at a tremendous distance—it is also the deepest, born out of the innermost wealth of truth, an inexhaustible well to which no pail descends without coming up again filled with gold and goodness. |
Since, as stated, many of the book's ideas are also present in his other works,
Zarathustra is seen to have served as a precursor to his later philosophical thought. With the book, Nietzsche embraced a distinct
aesthetic assiduity. He later reformulated many of his ideas, in his book
Beyond Good and Evil and various other writings that he composed thereafter. He continued to emphasize his philosophical concerns; generally, his intention was to show an alternative to repressive moral codes and to avert "
nihilism" in all of its varied forms.
Other aspects of
Thus Spake Zarathustra pertain to Nietzsche's proposed "Transvaluation of All Values". This incomplete project began with
The Antichrist.
Themes
Nietzsche injects myriad ideas into the book, but there are a few recurring themes. The overman (Übermensch), a self-mastered individual who has achieved his full power, is an almost omnipresent idea in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Man as a race is merely a bridge between animals and the overman. Nietzsche also makes a point that the overman isn't an end result for a person, but more the journey toward self-mastery.
The
eternal recurrence, found elsewhere in Nietzsche's writing, is also mentioned. The eternal recurrence is the idea that all events that have happened will happen again, infinitely many times. Such a reality can serve as the litmus test for an overman. Faced with the knowledge that he'd repeat every action that he's taken, an overman would be elated as he's no regrets and loves life.
The will to power is the fundamental component of human nature. Everything we do is an expression of the will to power. The will to power is a psychological analysis of all human action and is accentuated by self-overcoming and self-enhancement. Contrasted with living for procreation, pleasure, or happiness, the will to power is the summary of all man's struggle against his surrounding environment as well as his reason for living in it.
Copious criticisms of
Christianity can be found in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in particular Christian values of good and evil and its purported lie of an afterlife. Nietzsche sees the complacency of Christian values as fetters to the achievement of overman as well as on the human spirit. Contrasting sharply with Christianity, Nietzsche praises lust, selfishness, while reproaching the rewarded concepts of pity and love for neighbors.
Style
Nietzsche is considered unique among philosophers by some scholars for what is widely regarded as the power and effectiveness of his
rhetorical style — particularly as manifested in
Zarathustra. The indigestible "heaviness" long associated with German-language philosophy is eschewed, with
puns and
paradoxes abounding, and aphoristic brevity characteristic of
parable and even
poetry. The end result is a manner of writing which, being "pitched half-way between metaphor and literal statement", is "something quite extraordinary".
A vulnerability of Nietzsche's style is that his nuances and shades of meaning are very easily lost — and all too easily gained — in translation. The
Übermensch is particularly problematic: the equivalent "Superman" found in dictionaries and in the translations by Thomas Common and R.J. Hollingdale may create an unfortunate association with the heroic comic-character "
Superman", while simultaneously detracting from Nietzsche's repeated play on "über".
The "
Übermensch" is the being that overcomes the "great nausea" associated with
nihilism; that overcomes that most "abysmal" realization of the eternal return. He is the being that "sails over morality", and that dances over gravity (the "spirit of gravity" is Zarathustra's devil and archenemy). He is a "harvester" and a "celebrant" who endlessly affirms his existence, thereby becoming the transfigurer of his consciousness and life, aesthetically. He is initially a destructive force, excising and annihilating the insidious "truths" of the herd, and consequently reclaiming the chaos from which pure creativity is born. It is this creative force exemplified by the
Übermensch that justifies suffering without displacing it in some "afterworld".
Translations
The English translations of
Zarathustra differ according to the sentiments of the translators. The
Thomas Common translation favors a classic English approach, in the style of Shakespeare or the
King James bible. Common's poetic interpretation of the text, which renders the title
Thus Spake Zarathustra, received wide acclaim for its lambent portrayal.
The Common translation, which improved on Alexander Tille's earlier attempt, remained widely accepted until the more critical translations, titled
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, separately by
R.J. Hollingdale and
Walter Kaufmann, which are considered to convey more accurately the German text than the Common version. Kaufmann's introduction to his own translation included a blistering critique of Common's version; he notes that in one instance, Common has taken the German "most evil" and rendered it "baddest", a particularly unfortunate error not merely for his having coined the term "baddest", but also because Nietzsche dedicated a third of
The Genealogy of Morals to the difference between "bad" and "evil". Kaufmann's version, which has become the most widely available, features a translator's note suggesting that Nietzsche's text would have benefited from an editor; Martin suggests that Kaufmann "took it upon himself to become his editor".
Zarathustra's Roundelay is set as part of
Gustav Mahler's
Third Symphony originally under the title
What Man Tells Me.
Editions of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
- Also sprach Zarathustra, edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag (study edition of the standard German Nietzsche edition)
- Thus Spoke Zarathustra, translated by Walter Kaufmann, New York: Random House; reprinted in The Portable Nietzsche, New York: The Viking Press, 1954 and Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976
- Thus Spoke Zarathustra, translated by R. J. Hollingdale, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1961
- Thus Spoke Zarathustra, translated by Graham Parkes, Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, 2005
- Thus Spoke Zarathustra, translated by Adrian del Caro and edited by Robert Pippin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006
Essay Collections on Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Essays on Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Before Sunrise, edited by James Luchte, London: Continuum International Publishing, 2008. ISBN 1847062210Further Information
Get more info on 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'.
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