Thus Spoke Zarathustra

by Friedrich Nietzsche

  9 (p. 99) That is your entire will, you wisest men, as a Will to Power: Schopenhauer claims that the fundamental reality behind all phenomena (sentient beings and well as insentient forces of nature) is the “will to live,” and he emphasizes the efforts every creature makes to keep existing. Zarathustra opposes this interpretation with the notion that life is, instead, the expansive and overabundant “will to power.”

  10 (p. 104) The Land of Culture: The German word Bildung, or “culture,” is sometimes also translated as “education” or even as “edification” or “maturity,” and is almost as complicated a word as the aforementioned Geist (see endnote 14 to the first part). A Bildungsroman is a “novel of education” or a “novel of up-building,” in which the hero, usually a young man, travels about in order to experience life and usually goes through a process of disillusionment to come to a more mature appreciation of life. The Bildungsroman was a very popular form of literature in the nineteenth century, especially in Germany; Goethe wrote a particularly famous Bildungsroman: Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjabre (1795-1796; Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship). All of Thus Spoke Zarathustra may be read as a kind of Bildungsroman, in which the youth being educated about life is, of course, Zarathustra himself.

  11 (p. 107) “To be happy in gazing: with a dead will... but with intoxicated moon-eyes!”: Zarathustra opposes here the aesthetic theories of Kant and Schopenhauer, both of whom claim that aesthetic experience depends on a disinterested, dispassionate approach to what is observed. Zarathustra encourages an eroticized, interested appreciation of the world instead.

  12 (p. 110) On Poets: This section incorporates a number of witty allusions to the poetic tradition.

  13 (p. 110) “Why did you say that the poets lie too much?”: Zarathustra made this comment previously in “On the Happy Islands.” Zarathustra’s claim that the poets lie too much repeats Socrates’ contention in Plato’s Republic that the poets deceive people, putting words into their heroes’ mouths and stating untruths about the gods. According to Plato, Socrates would ban poetry on this account unless poetry could demonstrate that it actually did serve reason and good government. Zarathustra, by contrast, contends that fictionalizing is necessary, even though he has his own complaints against poets. “Belief does not make me blessed ... least of all belief in myself.” This alludes to Martin Luther’s “Faith makes blessed,” a statement defending his view that faith alone justified the soul in relation to God, and that good works do not ensure salvation. Zarathustra states, “And we desire even those things which old women tell one another in the evening. This we call the eternal-feminine in us.” Goethe refers to the Eternal-Feminine in Faust (1808-1832), where it is the idea that there is a pure form of the feminine that inspires men to perfect themselves. In Faust Helen of Troy is a personification of the Eternal-Feminine (See Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: Part One and Sections from Part Two, translated by Walter Kaufmann, Garden City and New York: Doubleday, 1961, p. 503.) Nietzsche is skeptical of this idea.

  14 (p. 112) “Ah, there are so many things between heaven and earth of which only the poets have dreamed!”: This is a reference to Hamlet’s statement to his friend Horatio, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy” (Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 1, scene 5). Relevant to this context is also the remark by Plato’s Socrates: “Of that place beyond the heavens none of our earthly poets has yet sung, and none shall sing worthily” (Plato, Phaedrus 247c, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters, edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, Bollingen Series LXXI, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961.)

  15 (p. 112) for all gods are poet’s parables, poet’s prevarications! Truly, it always lifts us upward—that is to the land of the clouds: on these we set our motley bastards and call them gods and Übermenschen”: The land of the clouds may allude to Cloud Cuckooland in Aristophanes’ play The Birds?; it is the farcical realm of birds. Cloud Cuckooland is literally run by birdbrains, and one of its inhabitants is Socrates, whom Aristophanes lampoons. The idea that gods and Übermenschen are human beings’ ”motley bastards” is in keeping with Ludwig Feuerbach’s notion that human beings project human traits onto all gods without realizing it. As our unacknowledged progeny, the gods are therefore bastards.

  16 (p. 116) ‘All is empty, all is alike, all has been!’: The soothsayer’s message that ”all has been” is a depressing version of the idea of eternal recurrence, for it suggests that the recurrence of time amounts to a script from the past from which one cannot deviate.

  17 (p. 123) his glances pierced their thoughts and afterthoughts: Hintergedanken is here translated as ”afterthoughts”; it also means ”reservations.” We have translated it as ”afterthoughts,” to catch the play on words with Gedanken (”thoughts”).

  Third Part

  1 (p. 133) with anger and longing Zarathustra wept bitterly: When Zarathustra ”wept bitterly,” he did the same as Saint Peter after denying his association with Jesus. See the Bible, Matthew 26:75 and Luke 22:62.

  2 (p. 134) ”0 Zarathustra ... you philosopher’s stone“!”: The philosopher’s stone is mercury, the catalyzing agent in alchemy that is supposed to transform lead into gold. The dwarf pouring lead into Zarathustra’s ear is reminiscent of the murder of Hamlet’s father, whose brother killed him by pouring lead into his ear.

  3 (p. 134) Then the dwarf was silent; and it lasted long: As a friend of Indologist Peter Deussen, Nietzsche may have been aware that a dwarf, representing ignorance, appears beneath the feet of Shiva Nataraja, the dancing Shiva. This initial scene in the third part of Zarathustra reverses that picture, for the dwarf stands on Zarathustra.

  4 (p. 136) Lamefoot: The most famous lamefoot in the Western tradition is Oedipus, who unwittingly kills his father at a crossroads and marries his mother. The ominous nature of Zarathustra’s position in this section is evident in that he approaches a gateway at which roads converge, suggesting that he is facing his own crossroads. Perhaps the suggestion that Zarathustra is a lamefoot alludes to Achilles, too, suggesting that despite Zarathustra’s heroism, he is clearly vulnerable to destruction. He is more at risk than Achilles, however, who is vulnerable only at the ankle.

  5 (p. 137) a young shepherd, writhing, choking ... and a heavy black snake bung out of his mouth: The serpent that bites its own tail, the uroboros (or ouroboros), originally a Greek symbol for the cosmic sea that surrounds the world, and also an alchemical symbol for the recurring cycle of time. In effect, the shepherd becomes the front of the serpentine circle of time by biting the head off the snake that assails him.

  6 (p. 142) “the heaven of chance ... the heaven of mischievousness”: Himmel, or “heaven,” also means simply “sky.”

  7 (p. 142) “By Chance”: Nietzsche adds the German honorific von here to the name of “Chance,” suggesting that chance is of noble origin. (The translation of Ohngefähr could also be “Accident.”) We left von untranslated.

  8 (p. 148) On the Mount of Olives: This recalls the garden of olives, Gesthemane, where Jesus confronted his fears in solitude on the night before his crucifixion. Zarathustra is similarly alone in this scene, but he seems to prefer solitude as well as the lack of human warmth he is experiencing.

  9 (p. 156) “Belief makes him blessed, belief in him”: Here again the word Glaube (“belief”) might also have been rendered as “faith.”

  10 (p. 156) They did not die in “twilight”—as some lie!: This is a reference to the opera Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods), by Richard Wagner (1813-1883). Nietzsche will use a similar title later for his masterpiece Die Götzen-Dämmerung (1889; Twilight of the Idols).

  11 (p. 172) “Everything is in flux”: The Greek philosopher Heraclitus (c.535-c.475 B.C.) famously claimed that one cannot step into the same river twice. Nietzsche admired him and considered his own emphasis on becoming and on transformation to be akin to Heraclitus’ views.

  12 (p. 174) children’s land ... the undiscovered coun
try in the remotest seas! The reference to the “children’s land” reverses the image of the Fatherland. With this reversal Zarathustra suggests that one’s loyalty should not be to the past and tradition, but to the future that one is helping to create.

  13 (p. 176) “And your own reason—you shall yourself stifle and choke it;for it is a reason of this world,—thus you shall yourself learn to renounce the world”: Martin Luther objected to pride in human reason, and he urged Christians to discipline and reject the pretensions of reason.

  14 (p. 178) Now the sun glows on him and dogs lick his sweat; but he lies there in his obstinacy and prefers to languish: The Bible’s Psalm 22 compares menacing, evil men to dogs closing in, and also refers to the speaker’s extreme thirst and his being left for dead. According to John 19:28, Jesus says “I am thirsty” (NIV) while on the cross. In John 19:23-24 the Evangelist explicitly quotes Psalm 22, saying that incidents surrounding Jesus’ crucifixion fulfill the words of the Psalm.

  15 (p. 180) If they-had bread for nothing, ah!: The suggestion of “free bread” is reminiscent of the Roman imperial policy of giving the people “bread and circuses” to keep them content.

  16 (p. 181 ) Your wedlock: see that it is not a bad lock! You lock too quickly: so there follows from it—wedlock-breaking!: The play here on “wedlock,” “lock,” and “breaking” is much more natural in German. The breaking of wedlock in the German expression used by Nietzsche here is generally associated with adultery.

  17 (p. 182) the good must crucify him who invents his own virtue!: This whole passage refers to Jesus. Despite Nietzsche’s many attacks on the Christian Church, his comments on Jesus are usually favorable.

  18 (p. 188) “Man recurs eternally! ... The small man recurs eternally!”: “Recurrence” and “return” are both used in the context of Nietzsche’s idea of the “eternal recurrence” or the “eternal return.” What Nietzsche means by “the eternal return,” a notion that is discussed in various places in his corpus, is a matter of great scholarly controversy. (See the Introduction and endnote 16 to the second part.)

  19 (p. 188) Nausea!: Ekel (“nausea”) is a frequent alimentary complaint of Zarathustra. Like “going under” and many other repeated terms in the work, however, it does not seem to be used strictly in a literal sense. It can also be translated as “disgust.”

  20 (p. 193) Into your eyes I gazed lately, 0 life: I saw gold glint in your night eyes,my heart stood still with delight: In the German the verses in part 1 rhyme. As elsewhere in the text, we have not tried to reproduce Nietzsche’s rhymes, choosing rather to follow the meaning of the text as closely as possible.

  21 (p. 194) “noise murders thought”: This is a line from Schopenhauer’s essay “On Noise,” in which he complains, among other things, about the practice of merchants cracking whips to attract attention to their wares.

  22 (p. 196) should I not lust for eternity and for the wedding ring of rings: This is a reference to Wagner’s Ring cycle (a set of four operas), which features a ring that bestows power but destroys the person who wears it. Zarathustra’s lust for the ring of rings—that is, time itself—similarly empowers by rendering mortal, as it does to whomever “weds” eternity, the entire ring of time. Zarathustra speaks of eternity as the only woman he would want to wed.

  Fourth and Last Part

  1 (p. 207) “Zarathustra, I have come to seduce you to your last sin!”: Zarathustra’s “last sin” contrasts with “original sin,” the stain of sin with which every human being is born, according to Christian doctrine, as a consequence of the sin of the biblical forefather, Adam. The notion of Zarathustra’s final sin suggests a return to innocence in the future, in contrast to the Christian doctrine, which restricts innocence to the distant past.

  2 (p. 211) the ass too found speech: The ass’s effort to speak here is reminiscent of the situation of the ass in The Golden Ass, a text by Apuleius (c.124-c.170) that despite its comic character traces the protagonist’s spiritual development. In that work, a man who uses a stolen magic potion expects to be transformed into a bird but is actually transformed into an ass. The book recounts his adventures attempting to acquire the antidote: roses. At several times, in the possession of a series of owners, he attempts to speak but can only bray.

  3 (p. 218) You liar from the ground up!: The accusation that the magician is only an actor suggests that he is modeled on Richard Wagner, whom Nietzsche criticized for being an actor more than a musician. Wagner suggested early in his career that he composed opera as a means of making drama more powerful than it would be without music. Nietzsche suggests that Wagner never revised his priorities—that is, he always saw music as subordinate to theater.

  4 (p. 221) “You seek for great men, you strange fool? ... Oh, you evil seeker, why do you-seek to test me?”: There is a complicated word play here between suchen (“to seek” or “to search”) and versuchen (“to experiment” but also “to test” or “to try” and “to tempt”). Plays between versuchen and suchen occur frequently in the text, and help emphasize Nietzsche’s questioning, tentative, and experimental (rather than dogmatic or systematic) approach to knowledge.

  5 (p. 226) “Honor thus—my ugliness!”: Socrates was notoriously ugly, and Nietzsche considered his ugliness to be an underlying motivation for his attempt to seduce young men with words. Socrates was convicted on the grounds that he had corrupted the youth and denied the gods of the city.

  6 (p. 230) a peaceable man and preacher on the mount, out of whose eyes goodness itself preached: This figure shares similarities with both the Buddha and Jesus. The Buddha renounced his position as a prince and urged compassion for all sentient beings, cows included. Jesus is the historical “preacher on the mount.” (See the Bible, Matthew 5:1-12; Luke 6:17-23.)

  7 (p. 243) The Last Supper: This is the final dinner Jesus had with his disciples, a Seder meal for the observance of Passover. He was crucified the following day. The dinner party of this section also resembles that of Plato’s Symposium.

  8 (p. 244) the higher man: After the dinner party in Plato’s Symposium, each participant makes a speech about the nature of love. By contrast, after this party, Zarathustra alone makes a speech, and his topic is “the higher man.”

  9 (p. 252) this rose garlanded crown: When rose wreaths are carried by in a procession in honor of the goddess Isis, the ass in Apuleius’ tale (see note 2 in this section) is finally able to get roses, the antidote he needs to turn himself back into a man.

  10 (p. 253) “which gives wings to asses”: In The Golden Ass, by Apuleius (see note 2 in this section), the ass is promised a statue in his honor (called “Escape on Ass-back”) if he helps a kidnapped heroine escape. Later the ass is amused by a pathetic portrayal of Pegasus in a procession, in which wings have been attached to the back of an ass.

  11 (p. 266) And here I stand now, / As a European, / I cannot do otherwise, God help me!: This is a reference to what is reported as Martin Luther’s concluding statement at the Diet of Worms in April 1521: “Here I stand. I can do no other.” He had been summoned to defend himself before the imperial Diet, having been formally excommunicated by the Pope. The Diet responded by issuing an edict that declared Luther to be an outlaw and by banning his writings.

  12 (p. 266) The Awakening: This refers to a Lutheran movement in which both of Nietzsche’s parents were involved. It emphasized public confession, and its adherents frequently used the image of “little children” in reference to themselves. (See the Bible: Matthew 19:13-15; Mark 10:13-16; and Luke 18:15-17.) The song sung here is very similar to “The Song of the Ass,” which was sung in connection with the Ass Festival, a festival celebrated in a number of churches in medieval Europe in which the deacons, the lowest echelon of the clergy, behaved in carnivalesque fashion. Among other debaucheries, the festival sometimes included a procession of an ass up to or into the church, as well as participants who brayed at Mass.

  13 (p. 269) The Ass Festival: This is the festival described in the preceding note. Zar
athustra’s return resembles Moses’ return from Mount Sinai with the tablets of the Law only to discover that his followers were worshiping a golden calf.

  14 (p. 272) And in memory of me!: “Do this in remembrance of me” is what Jesus says, according to the Bible, Luke 22:19 and 1 Corinthians 11:25 (NIV), after telling his disciples to eat the bread and drink the wine, which he offers to them as his body and his blood. The Mass, which includes this line, is celebrated in accordance with this command.

  15 (p. 272) The Drunken Song: The title of the song suggests a relationship to Dionysus, the god of wine and revelry. The dancing recalls the behavior of Apuleius’ ass (see note 2 in this section), whose dancing amuses his owners and leads to his ultimately being in a position to eat the antidote that will return him to human form.

  16 (p. 278) if ever you said: “you please me, happiness! Instant! Moment!”: In Goethe’s Faust, Faust makes a bargain with the devil Mephistopheles. In return for giving Faust supernatural powers, Mephistopheles can take Faust’s soul if he ever reaches a point of complete contentment in which he says “Moment, abide.”

  17 (p. 279) Zarathustra jumped up from his bed ... glowing and strong, like a morning sun coming out of dark mountains: Like Socrates the morning after the Symposium, Zarathustra awakens early and rises while his dinner companions continue to sleep.

  18 (p. 280) the lion shook its head and wondered and laughed: The laughing lion seems to represent a point between the lion stage and the child stage of the spirit, described in On the Three Metamorphoses, the section that begins the first part of the book. The suggestion is that the lion stage is giving way to that of the child.

  INSPIRED BY THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA

  German composer Richard Strauss, best known for his operas Salomé (1905), Elektra (1909), and Der Rosenkavalier (1911), began his musical career composing impressionistic tone poems. The best-known, Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra), was, according to Strauss, “freely based on Friedrich Nietzsche.” When it premiered in Frankfurt in November 1896, Thus Spoke Zarathustra stunned audiences with its now-famous opening depicting the sunrise. Bold trumpets announce an open chord in C major, ascend to the fifth, and then climb to C an octave higher before resting in C minor. This simple musical gesture is followed by a foreboding series of tympani booms. Painting an epic panorama of the cosmos, the trumpet blasts ascend repeatedly and finally resolve to C major-two octaves above the opening note. Throughout the piece, Strauss makes use of C major to symbolize nature and the cosmos, while the neighboring and dissonant key of B stands for humanity. The clash between humans and the rest of the universe forms the music s core.