Thus Spoke Zarathustra

by Friedrich Nietzsche

  “0 you higher men, it was your distress that the old soothsayer foretold to me yesterday morning,—

  —“He wanted to seduce and tempt me to your distress: ‘O Zarathustra,’ he said to me, ‘I come to seduce you to your last sin.’

  “To my last sin?” cried Zarathustra, and laughed angrily at his own words: “what has been reserved for me as my last sin?”

  -And once more Zarathustra became absorbed in himself, and sat down again on the big stone and meditated. Suddenly he sprang up, “Pity! Pity for the higher men!” he cried out, and his face changed to brass. “Well! That—has had its time!

  “My suffering and my pity—what do they matter! Should I strive for my happiness? I strive for my work!

  “Well! The lion has come, my children are near, Zarathustra has grown ripe, my hour has come:—

  “This is my morning, my day begins: arise now, arise, you great noon!”——

  Thus spoke Zarathustra and left his cave, glowing and strong, like a morning sun that comes out of dark mountains.

  ENDNOTES

  Prologue

  1 (p. 7) When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home and went into the mountains: Zarathustra’s emergence from the cave, as we suggest in the Introduction, parallels the emergence of the philosopher in the Myth of the Cave in Republic 7, by Plato (c.427-347 B.C.). A key difference is that while the cave in Plato’s account is a realm of illusion, Zarathustra’s cave is a realm of insight that can supplement the illumination provided by the sun’s light. Zarathustra’s retreat into solitude at the age of thirty, before his mission begins, is accurate with respect to the historical Zarathustra. It also alludes to the experience of Jesus, who was thirty when he went into the wilderness for forty days before beginning his mission.

  2 (p. 7) go under: “Go under”—or, frequently, “going under”—is the literal translation of untergehen, a term also used for “perishing” or “dying,” and for the sun setting; the latter meaning suggests both “perishing” and “regeneration.” The conjunction of destruction and reappearance is also found in the German Aufbebung (literally, “picking up,” but also with connotations of “keeping” and of “abolishing”), a significant term in the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). Aujhebung implies the end of one stage but also the “lifting up” of the contents from that stage to a new, more encompassing configuration. Hegel used this term in reference to different historical stages. Nietzsche suggests the desirability of such a process, but stresses the necessity of the destruction of the current situation if such a transformation is to occur.

  3 (p. 8) “Then you carried your ashes into the mountains; would you now carry your fire into the valleys?”: The phoenix is consumed by fire but rises again from its ashes.

  4 (p. 9) “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?”: The saint in the forest recalls a story applauded by Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), in which a saintly hermit in the forest renounces his will to such an extent that he stops eating and subsequently dies. This story sums up what Nietzsche rejects in Schopenhauer’s philosophy, its “anti-life” tendency. The characterization of the saint as one who loves animals but no longer loves men is also reminiscent of Schopenhauer, who perpetually found fault with other people but loved animals.

  5 (p. 9) “God is dead!”: Nietzsche also makes this statement in Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (1882; The Gay Science, sections 108 and 125), but the line is not original with him. It appears in a Lutheran hymn for Holy Saturday, “Ein trauriger Grabgesang” (“A Sorrowful Dirge”), by Johann Rist (1607-1667), which commemorates the period after Christ’s crucifixion but before his resurrection. The cantata “Christ lag in Todesbanden” (“Christ Lay in Death’s Bonds”), by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), focuses on the same period and uses similar imagery. The line also appears in Hegel’s Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807; Phenomenology of Spirit) as a characterization of the stage of consciousness called “unhappy consciousness,” which resembles the condition of modern nihilism that Nietzsche diagnoses. Nietzsche considers this condition to have ambivalent significance, however. He follows Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872), who claimed that human beings have always projected their own traits onto God, with the consequence that they do not recognize their own powers; the turn toward atheism in the modern West, while unsettling, has the potential to awaken Western humanity to its own powers. The expression “God is dead” represents for Nietzsche both the current spiritual crisis and what Nietzsche envisions as it optimal resolution.

  6 (p. 9) I teach you the Übermensch: Übermensch means “superman”; it has sometimes been translated—literally, if inaccurately—as “overman.” Because the term has become so widely recognized, we have chosen to leave it in the original German. It is perhaps best understood as a technical term that Zarathustra introduces and characterizes in his opening speech. The prefix über (which translates as “over” or “super”) contributes to the ongoing play of “over” and “under” words that recurs throughout the book: undergoing, overcoming, going over, etc. The term is not original to Nietzsche. It occurs in certain eighteenth-century German religious texts, in German Romanticism, and in the work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). The word is also discussed in some detail in the Introduction.

  7 (p. 9) overcome: This is the translation of überwunden. The central metaphorical theme of the book is developed through the contrast of elevation and descent. Thus Nietzsche constantly uses word combinations employing “over” and “under,” “above” and “beneath,” “high” and “low,” etc.

  8 (p. 9) man is more of an ape than any ape: The reference to apes and men alludes to the theory of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin (1809-1882). Nietzsche assumes that the theory of evolution is basically correct, but in some contexts he criticizes Darwin’s contention that the fittest survive. Nietzsche thinks that in the human species, at least, the “higher” specimens are most vulnerable, and that survival is most assured for the mediocre. Nietzsche certainly does not think that the Übermensch will assuredly evolve, as he makes clear in Zarathustra’s portrait of “the last man” (the man who has no evolutionary descendents) in Prologue 5 (p. 13).

  9 (p. 13) “We have invented happiness”—say the last men, and blink: As we mention in the Introduction, Nietzsche challenges utilitarianism in this portrait. By defining the moral goal as “the greatest good for the greatest number” and defining the good as pleasure and the absence of pain, the utilitarians, according to Nietzsche, seek mere contentment. Although we seem to be the highest product of evolution thus far, as Nietzsche sees it, the utilitarian ideal renders this evolutionary achievement pathetic.

  10 (p. 14) “Prologue”: This is a translation of Vorrede, which translates literally as “before speech”; a Rede is a speech. Zarathustra is about to begin his speeches. The play on words does not translate into English.

  11 (p. 16) “Zarathustra has made a fine catch of fish today!”: Some of Jesus’ most important disciples, including Saint Peter, were fishermen. He tells them, “Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (see the Bible, Matthew 4:18-19; Mark 1:16-17; compare Luke 5:9 [New International Version; henceforth, NIV]).

  12 (p. 17) “whoever knocks at my door must take what I offer him. Eat, and be off!:” This hermit’s insistence that everyone, even the dead, eat the bread and wine he has to offer, is a lampoon of Jesus’ words at the Last Supper: “Take and eat; this is my body.... Drink from it [the cup] ... This is my blood” (see the Bible, Matthew 26:26-29 [NIV]; compare Mark 14:22-25; Luke 22:14-20, and 1 Corinthians 11:23-25). Nietzsche thinks that the Christian Church, by insisting that everyone must join it or be damned, is as indiscriminate and unreasonable as the hermit in this section.

  13 (p. 18) “Zarathustra shall not be the shepherd and dog of a herd!”: Zarathustra rejects the role that Jesus assumes when he claims, “I am the
good shepherd” (see the Bible, John 10:11 [NIV]).

  First Part

  1 (p. 26) he lived in the town that is called: The Motley Cow: The name of the town suggests that its inhabitants are members of the human “herd,” a term Nietzsche frequently uses to refer to the tendency of human beings to conform to the behavior of their fellows. The name is also a possible translation of Kalmasadalmya (Pali: Kammasuddamam), the name of a town the Buddha visited while wandering.

  2 (p. 26) On the Teachers of Virtue: Lehrstühlen, literally “teach-chairs,” has here been translated as simply “teachers.” It might also be translated as “chairs” (as in an academic chair). Throughout the book Zarathustra pokes fun at academics, and this section initiates his attack. The suggestion in this section that one’s virtues are like fair little women quarreling with each other makes reference to the fact that “virtue” (Tugend) is a feminine noun in German.

  3 (p. 29) On the Afterworldly: Hinterwelter, translated here as “afterworldly,” can also be translated as “afterworlder.” It refers to those who believe in another world or a world after this one. In German it is easy to create words that refer to a class of persons, and Nietzsche does this throughout the book. For example, where we would say “afterworldly people,” he simply says “afterworlders.” This is a problem over and over again for the translator, as the reader will see.

  4 (p. 29) a poor fragment of a man and “I”: The German here is Ich, or simply “I.” Previous translators have rendered the “Ich” here and elsewhere as “Ego” because it emphasizes the fact that Zarathustra is using “Ich” not to refer to himself but to the concept of the self, the “I.” We prefer “I,” because it is faithful to the text and does not carry the Freudian baggage of “Ego.” We have placed the “I” in quotation marks to minimize confusion. There are no such quotation marks in the original text.

  5 (p. 32) “soul is only the name of something about the body”: This model of the human being contrasts straightforwardly with the account by René Descartes (1596-1650), in which the soul and the body are distinct substances, the soul being the more important. It also opposes Plato’s model, in which the body and the soul are separate, and in which the body and its appetites and desires must be subordinate to reason, the highest part of the soul. In Zarathustra’s model, the body is reason and the soul is a subordinate component.

  6 (p. 42) My brothers in war!: Nietzsche uses many martial metaphors throughout the text. They should not be understood literally. The same advice applies to his many metaphorical uses of the concepts of “man” and “woman”.

  7 (p. 42) I love you thoroughly: The German expression von Grund aus—literally, “from the ground up”—is a favorite of Zarathustra’s. Here translated as “thoroughly,” it is also sometimes rendered as “from the very heart,” “through and through,” or “from bottom,” depending on the context.

  8 (p. 46) where the marketplace begins ... poisonous flies: The “marketplace” recalls the location in which Socrates conducted his philosophical conversations, the marketplace (agora) of Athens. He described himself as a “gadfly” of the people he encountered. The reference to the marketplace also alludes to the warnings of Francis Bacon (1561-1626) against the “idols of the marketplace,” which refers to the ways in which everyday lingusitic usage misleads and inhibits the progress of science. Zarathustra similarly objects to the messages of the popular “jesters” of the marketplace, who impede the progress of the creative individuals who might create new values.

  9 (p. 48) Whatever is thought about a great deal is at last thought suspicious: There is a nice play on words here between Denken (“to think”) and bedenklich (“suspicious”). This is just one example of many such plays upon words and puns that have been lost in translation.

  10 (p. 54) But I tell you: your love of the neighbor is your bad love of yourselves: Jesus says in the Bible, Luke 10:25-28, that the whole law and the prophets can be summed up in two commandments, “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ” See also Mark 12:29-31.

  11 (p. 58) On Little Old and Young Women: The German here is Weiblein or “little women.” So, literally translated, the title of this speech is “On Old and Young Little Women.” We have followed Walter Kaufmann in translating it as “Little Old and Young Women” so as to catch the familiar English expression “Little Old Women.” We discuss this strange, infamous, and highly metaphorical section in our Introduction. It is helpful when reading this section to remember that Nietzsche’s next book after this one, Jenseits von Gut und Böse (1886; Beyond Good and Evil), which he saw as a kind of commentary on Also sprach Zarathustra (1883-1885; Thus Spoke Zarathustra), begins with a question: “Suppose truth is a woman: what then?” (The question plays on the fact that the German word for “truth” [Wahrheit] is a feminine noun.) If, as some scholars have done, one takes Nietzsche’s question in Beyond Good and Evil seriously, and replaces every occurrence of the words “woman” and “women” in this speech with the word “truth,” startling new meanings of the speech emerge (it is an experiment worth trying). Later in the book, Zarathustra insists that “happiness is a woman.” The point, of course, is to resist the easy and silly literal reading of the speech.

  12 (p. 58) I met a little old woman who spoke thus to my soul: Zarathustra’s relationship to the little old woman, who teaches him about love, recalls Socrates’ claim in Plato’s Symposium that a woman, Diotima, taught him what he knows about love. In the Symposium Diotima interprets love in terms of a response to the timeless, immaterial form of Beauty; in this passage, the little old woman interprets it in terms of the power dynamics inherent in any sexual relationship. Although Zarathustra has imagined that a woman will just go along with his vision of her as “the most dangerous plaything,” the old woman’s comment reminds him that real women have minds of their own and that in approaching women he’d better be able to defend himself.

  13 (p. 66) All names of good and evil are parables: Gleichnisse, or “parables,” also means “likenesses,” “similes,” or “images.” This is another of Zarathustra’s favorite terms.

  14 (p. 66) spirit: Geist, or “spirit,” is a very complicated German word with a long religious and philosophical history. Nietzsche does not intend anything “otherworldly” when he uses it. By the “spirit” of a person he means something much more like what we mean when we speak of the “spirit of the times.”

  15 (p. 69) therefore all belief comes to so little: The German Glaube, or “belief,” is also the word for “faith.”

  Second Part

  1 (p. 75) On the Happy Islands: “The Happy Islands” (also translated as “The Blessed Islands”) refers to the ancient Greek abode of heroes in the afterlife.

  2 (p. 77) “The knower walks among men as among animals”: Der Erkennende, or “the knower,” could also be translated as “the wise one” or “the one who knows” or even “the enlightened man.”

  3 (p. 77) I do not like them, the merciful who feel blessed in their pity: they are much too lacking in shame: Mitleid, or “pity,” may also be translated as “compassion.” Literally, it means “suffering with.” In rejecting pity or compassion, Zarathustra rejects Schopenhauer’s ethics, which are based on compassion for all that live. Zarathustra’s attacks on pity have made many readers suspicious of his ethical position. But one should note that the force of Zarathustra’s attack is not directed against feeling pity or sympathy for others as such, but against feeling pity or sympathy for others for the wrong sorts of reasons (such as in order to feel better about oneself ). The section concludes with Zarathustra’s provocative reformulation of Christ’s great ethical precept “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

  4 (p. 83) “I am just—revenged!”: As R. J. Hollingdale noted in his translation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in German gerecht (“just”) is pronounced exactly like gerächt (“revenged”).

  5 (p. 85)
Life is a well of delight: Lust, or “delight,” may also be translated as “pleasure” or “joy”; in some contexts its translation is its obvious English cognate, “lust.” In the still sexually restrained time of nineteenth-century Germany, Thus Spoke Zarathustra is intended as a paean to the human body and its pleasures (including sexual pleasure), and the many different uses of Lust is one expression of that. Nietzsche himself, it should perhaps be added, lived a relatively ascetic life.

  6 (p. 87) this is the tarantula’s hole!: We have taken a small poetic liberty in translating the German Höhle as its English cognate, “hole.” Elsewhere we have generally translated it as “cave”; indeed, Zarathustra lives in a “Höhle.”

  7 (p. 89) “Men are not equal”: Die Menschen is here translated as “men,” when the word in fact means “mankind.” For reasons of natural English usage, terms that are gender-neutral in German have often been rendered as “man” (or some other gendered formulation) in English, which simply does not have the ease with gender-neutral terms that many other languages enjoy. This unfortunately often creates the impression that Nietzsche is referring only to men, when he is referring to human beings generally, and at times it can make him sound misogynistic. The reader should be reassured that this is a fault of the translation and not a fault of Nietzsche’s. In fact (and especially for his time), Nietzsche was unusually conscientious about avoiding gendered terms, often preferring to reserve their use for particular poetic, metaphorical, and philosophical purposes.

  8 (p. 90) On the Famous Wise Men: Here is an example of the point made in the preceding endnote. We have rendered the German Weisen as “wise men” but could also have translated it as “wise ones.” In the German it is simply Weisen (“the wise,” as a noun rather than an adjective).