Thus Spoke Zarathustra

by Friedrich Nietzsche

  What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence-even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!”

  Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him, “You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.” If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, “Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?” would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate confirmation and seal? (pp. 273-274).

  The same proposition is repeated in Zarathustra: “not ... a new life or a better life or a similar life” but “this identical and selfsame life” (p. 190). This phrase, “this identical and selfsame life,” can be interpreted in a variety of ways. It certainly seems to mean “the same in every minute detail.” Indeed, we have all observed, perhaps to our dismay, that changing even one small event in the past might have resulted in any number of dramatic alterations of the present. Indeed, if one had been born only five minutes earlier, so the argument goes, one would have been, in some significant sense, a different person. If one regrets having gone to business school instead of pursuing one’s true love of literature, or having never gotten married and had children so young, the question of who one might otherwise be is truly bewildering.

  So considered, the eternal recurrence is not an archaic theory of time but a psychological test: “How would you feel if... ?” To be sure, it is a model of time that has ancient and illustrious roots, back to the Indian Vedas and the pre-Hellenic Greeks, but there is little evidence that Nietzsche seriously intended to embrace such metaphysical systems of which this view of time is a part. The eternal recurrence, certainly as it is presented in Zarathustra, is a thought-experiment. Its significance lies not in the details but rather in the general affirmation of one’s life. Commentator Maudemarie Clark offers this nice explanation of eternal recurrence: At the end of a long marriage, would one be willing to do it again? In other words, was it worth it, all things considered? A few minor changes here or there, or perhaps even some major changes, would not affect your view. It is rather the whole of the marriage—the whole of your life for that considerable amount of time-that is in question. If you would gnash your teeth and curse the very suggestion, you would have to say that you do not really value your married life. If, on the other hand, you claim to have no regrets, all things considered, then that is what we would call a happy marriage. It is also what makes for a happy life.

  Although eternal recurrence is a dominant idea in Zarathustra, it emerges only gradually over the course of the book, which presents Zarathustra’s discovery and articulation of this idea, as well as his various reactions to it. When the idea of eternal recurrence itself first appears in Zarathustra’s mind, he does not want to admit it. It appears in various formulations in the third part of the book, and not all of these seem life-affirming. Zarathustra worries that eternal recurrence might be seen as condemning us to repeat the same traumas over and over, and that all of life’s pettiness might be made eternal if this vision were true. He has real ambivalence over this idea, suggesting that it is more easily accepted intellectually than existentially. Eventually, however, he learns to embrace the entirety of his life. But first he has to recognize that what is needed to redeem humanity is the elimination of “the spirit of revenge” against the past, the kind of chip on one’s shoulder that, because of past events, one can no longer change. Zarathustra concludes that to overcome this vindictive attitude, one needs to have a sense that the past does not coerce one to do anything. The past does not determine our will, but our will shapes our lives in the future. The third part of Zarathustra ends with a rapturous wedding song to eternity, indicating his willingness to spend his life bound to time’s cyclical recurrence.

  Only in the fourth part of the book, however, does Zarathustra tie his affirmation of life to his actual work in the world. We should note that Nietzsche wrote the parts of the book separately, each of them in a fit of inspiration, with months elapsing between one outburst and another. But the fourth part is in a distinctively different style than the first three parts, with a more prominent narrator, several ironic characters (“the higher men”), and a humorous, sometimes slapstick, tone. (Some commentators think that Zarathustra should have ended with the third part and view the fourth part as something of an afterthought, an add-on, a view with which we disagree.) In the fourth part, the parodic aspects of Zarathustra take on their most comical qualities, with satires of the Last Supper and Moses’ return from Mount Sinai, for example. These were not to everyone’s taste, and Nietzsche himself published it only privately for fear of public censure. We believe, however, that the fourth part performs a vital role in the work as a whole. In it Zarathustra objects to the higher men’s “betrayal” of his doctrines and realizes that he has been distracted from his mission by his pity for them, his “final sin,” an admission that he has lost touch with his original message. He laughs at himself and shares with the higher men a song (a “round”) celebrating eternal recurrence. The fourth book ends with Zarathustra emerging from his cave in the morning and seeing what he takes to be signs that he is approaching his spiritual goal. He concludes, “Should I strive for my happiness? I strive for my work!” (p. 281). The comparison and contrast with Jesus is again evident. Zarathustra, too, is devoted to his mission, but that mission is opposed, not furthered, by pity.

  So the book ends as it begins, with Zarathustra again descending from his mountain home to resume spreading his wisdom to others. Zarathustra has yet to find companions who are really prepared for his message. In this sense, he has not accomplished anything of his purpose over the course of the book. But the book has demonstrated his achievement of a transformation, an endogenous attitudinal transformation. He has reached the stage of embracing his life in all of its fullness. Although his beginning and end may look the same from an external point of view, his work and the entirety of his life have become transfigured. So, too, we find after reading Nietzsche and struggling with his ideas and images that we are transformed. Not that we now fancy ourselves Übermenschen, but we do find ourselves thinking with just a bit more imagination, aspiration, and inspiration than when we began this curious and sometimes infuriating book.

  Kathleen M. Higgins and Robert C. Solomon are professors of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. Together they have written What Nietzsche Really Said and A Short History of Philosophy and co-edited Reading Nietzsche. They have also made an audio-video “Superstar Teacher” tape on Nietzsche for the Teaching Company, The Will to Power: The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Higgins is also the author of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and Comic Relief: Nietzsche’s Gay Science. Solomon is also the author of Living with Nietzsche, The Joy of Philosophy, and Spirituality for the Skeptic. They are married and live in Austin, Texas.

  TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

  Why a new translation of Nietzsche’s masterpiece Also sprach Zarathustra? There are three other English translations of the book: the first by Thomas Common, made at the end of the nineteenth century, and then two others, undertaken almost simultaneously in the 1950s by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale.

  Over the decades, Walter Kaufmann’s has proved to be the most popular translation. The first time I read Thus Spoke Zarathustra, when I was a high school studen
t in Calgary, Alberta, I read Kaufmann’s translation. But for all its strengths, Kaufmann’s edition takes large and often unjustified liberties with Nietzsche’s text. While translating this book, I occasionally felt that Nietzsche needed an editor: Fifty years after Nietzsche died (and thus could no longer control any editorial decisions) Kaufmann took it upon himself to become this editor. Thus Kaufmann made paragraphs where there were none before, changed punctuation, sometimes changed words, and in places altered both the literal and the philosophical meaning of Nietzsche’s text. In many cases he had good reasons: Nietzsche is always inflammatory, and Kaufmann was damping the flame of a thinker who was at Kaufmann’s time strongly associated with Hitler’s rhetoric and with Nazism in general. But in this translation, with Nietzsche’s alleged anti-Semitism and war mongering thoroughly debunked, I have been able to be true to the metaphors Nietzsche actually used and the language he actually wrote.

  Some mistakes in Kaufmann’s translation are a consequence of the unreliable German edition of Thus Spoke Zarathustra available to him. Hollingdale worked with the same flawed edition. Happily for my purposes, a thoroughly revised and corrected edition of Also sprach Zarathustra has since become available, and the present translation has benefited from it.

  Like Kaufmann’s, this translation began as a revision of the Thomas Common edition. But, also like Kaufmann, I quickly became so frustrated with Common that I started again from scratch. (Common’s translation suffers from large and systematic problems made worse by the fact that he worked with a particularly poor German edition of the work.) That said, all three of us—Kaufmann, Hollingdale, and now Martin-have a real debt to Common. He hits a lot of bad notes, but now and then he finds a line that rings true, and we all steal it from him. The same holds, in my own case, for the best words, phrases, and even sentences of Kaufmann and Hollingdale. Accordingly this translation is a kind of collaboration among the four of us that retains, I hope, the voice of Nietzsche, although it is inevitably tuned to and by my own ear. Here I would like to thank Common, Hollingdale, and Kaufmann: Without their work this translation would have many more weaknesses than it presently has, and many fewer handsome lines.

  My coeditors and I decided that we would not translate the notorious word Übermensch, which was translated accurately by Hollingdale as “superman” and inaccurately by Kaufmann as “overman.” (Kaufmann avoided “superman” because he was worried that the concept would be trivialized in the minds of Nietzsche’s American readers by the popular comic book hero.) How the Übermensch fits into Nietzsche’s larger philosophical project has been a matter of scholarly debate for years, and the debate shows no signs of ending. Probably the best way to sort out what Nietzsche means by Übermensch is to read the book. The concept is introduced early in Zarathustra but is developed throughout the book, and the good reader will resist coming to hasty conclusions about its meaning.

  Nietzsche loves puns: I have captured only a few of them. When I have missed a pun entirely, I have tried to indicate that fact in the footnotes. English cannot easily accommodate Nietzsche’s gender-neutral formulations, which he usually prefers, reserving the male- or female-gendered words for emphasis or for a particular point about the sexes. For example, in English we can use the gender-neutral construction of “one” (as in “one says”), but it is clumsy and often sounds forced. Therefore I have followed the practice of previous translators and generally used “man” in place of “one.” As a result, this translation makes Nietzsche appear much more gender-focused than he is in the original German. Contrary to popular myth, Nietzsche was not a sexist. Even Übermensch should be “superhuman,” not “super man.”

  This translation has benefited greatly from the many improvements suggested by Kathleen M. Higgins and Robert C. Solomon. My deepest thanks to both of them.

  I dedicate this translation to my daughters, Zelly and Margaret.

  —Clancy Martin

  ZARATHUSTRA’S PROLOGUE

  1

  When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home and went into the mountains.1 There he enjoyed his spirit and solitude and for ten years did not weary of it. But at last his heart changed-and rising one morning with the dawn, he stood before the sun and spoke to it thus:

  “You great star! What would your happiness be if you had not those for whom you shine!

  “For ten years you have climbed here to my cave: you would have wearied of your light and of this journey, without me, my eagle and my serpent.

  “But we awaited you every morning, took from you your overflow and blessed you for it.

  “Behold, I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that has gathered too much honey. I need hands outstretched to take it.

  “I want to give away and distribute, until the wise have once more become happy in their folly, and the poor happy in their riches.

  “Therefore I must descend into the depths: as you do in the evening, when you go behind the sea and bring light also to the underworld, you exuberant star!

  “Like you must I go under2—as men say, to whom I shall descend.

  “Bless me then, you tranquil eye, that can behold even an all-too-great happiness without envy!

  “Bless the cup that wants to overflow, that the waters may flow golden from him and carry everywhere the reflection of your joy!

  “Behold, this cup wants to be empty again, and Zarathustra wants to be man again.”

  Thus Zarathustra began to go under.

  2

  Zarathustra went down the mountain alone and met no one. But when he entered the forest, there suddenly stood before him an old man, who had left his holy hut to look for roots. And the old man spoke thus to Zarathustra:

  “This wanderer is no stranger to me: he passed by here many years ago. He was called Zarathustra; but he has changed.

  “Then you carried your ashes into the mountains: would you now carry your fire into the valleys?3 Do you not fear the punishment for arsonists?

  “Yes, I recognize Zarathustra. His eye is pure, and no loathing lurks about his mouth. Does he not walk like a dancer?

  “Zarathustra is changed, Zarathustra has become a child, Zarathustra is an awakened one: what do you want now in the land of the sleepers?

  “You lived in your solitude as in the sea, and it has borne you up. Alas, would you now climb ashore? Alas, would you again drag your own body?”

  Zarathustra answered: “I love mankind.”

  “Why,” said the saint, “did I go into the forest and the desert? Was it not because I loved men far too well? Now I love God: men, I do not love. Man is for me too imperfect a thing. Love of man would kill me.”

  Zarathustra answered: “Did I speak of love! I bring men a gift.”

  “Give them nothing,” said the saint. “Take rather part of their load, and carry it along with them-that will be most agreeable to them: if only it agrees with you!

  “And if you want to give to them, give them no more than alms, and let them beg for that!”

  “No,” replied Zarathustra, “I give no alms. I am not poor enough for that.”

  The saint laughed at Zarathustra and spoke thus: “Then see to it that they accept your treasures! They are distrustful of hermits, and do not believe that we come with gifts.

  “Our footsteps ring too lonely through their streets. And just as at night, when they are in bed and hear a man abroad long before sunrise, so they ask themselves concerning us: where is the thief going?

  “Do not go to men, but stay in the forest! Go rather even to the animals! Why not be like me—a bear among bears, a bird among birds?”4

  “And what is the saint doing in the forest?” asked Zarathustra.

  The saint answered: “I make songs and sing them; and in making hymns I laugh and weep and hum: thus I praise God.

  “With singing, weeping, laughing, and humming I praise the god who is my god. But what do you bring us as a gift?”

  When Zarathustra had heard these words, he
bowed to the saint and said: “What could I have to give you! Let me rather hurry away lest I take something from you!”—And thus they parted from one another, the old one and the man, laughing, just like two schoolboys laugh.

  But when Zarathustra was alone, he spoke thus to his heart: “Could it then be possible! This old saint in his forest has not yet heard of it, that God is dead!”5

  3

  When Zarathustra arrived at the nearest town at the edge of the forest, he found many people assembled in the marketplace: for it had been announced that a tightrope walker would give a performance. And Zarathustra spoke thus to the people:

  I teach you the Übermensch.6 Man is something that shall be overcome. 7 What have you done to overcome him?

  All beings so far have created something beyond themselves: and you want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the beast than overcome man?

  What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment. And just the same shall man be to the Übermensch: a laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment.

  You have made your way from worm to man, and much within you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any ape.8

  Even the wisest among you is only a conflict and hybrid of plant and ghost. But do I bid you become ghosts or plants?

  Behold, I teach you the Übermensch!

  The Übermensch is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Übermensch shall be the meaning of the earth!

  I beseech you, my brothers, remain true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! They are poison-mixers, whether they know it or not.

  They are despisers of life, themselves the decaying and poisoned, of whom the earth is weary: so away with them!

  Once the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God died, and those sinners died with him. To sin against the earth is now the most dreadful sin, and to esteem the entrails of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth!