' This is my
experience
of inspiration.
Nietzsche - v11 - Thus Spake Zarathustra
PAGE
183
187
-
193
·
198
202
209
ZARATHUSTRA'S DISCOURSES—Continued.
XLV. -The Wanderer - -
XLVI. —The Vision and the Enigma
XLVII. -Involuntary Bliss
XLVIII. -Before Sunrise - -
XLIX. —The Bedwarfing Virtue -
L. -On the Olive-Mount
LI. -On Passing-by . .
LII. -The Apostates -
LIII. --The Return Home -
LIV. - The Three Evil Things
LV. -The Spirit of Gravity-
LVI. -Old and New Tables -
LVII. -The Convalescent -
LVIII. - The Great Longing .
LIX. --The Second Dance-Song
LX. —The Seven Seals -
-
213
217
223
227
234
239
263 ·
271 ·
-
-
275
280
FOURTH AND LAST PART.
LXI. ---The Honey Sacrifice
LXII. -The Cry of Distress
LXIII. -Talk with the Kings
LXIV. -The Leech
LXV. -The Magician -
LXVI. --Out of Service -
LXVII. —The Ugliest Man
LXVIII. -The Voluntary Beggar
LXIX. -The Shadow
LXX. -Noon-Tide
LXXI. -The Greeting
287
291
296
301
306
314
320
326
332
336
340
•
## p. xxxi (#38) ############################################
viii
CONTENTS.
PAC
ZARATHUSTRA'S DISCOURSES—Continued.
LXXII. —The Supper - . .
LXXIII. -The Higher Man . .
LXXIV. —The Song of Melancholy
- LXXV. -Science
LXXVI. -Among Daughters of the Desert
LXXVII. - The Awakening
LXXVIII. —The Ass-Festival . .
LXXIX. -The Drunken Song -
LXXX. –The Sign
APPENDIX
Notes on “Thus Spake Zarathustra" by
Anthony M. Ludovici -
-
40
## p. xxxi (#39) ############################################
INTRODUCTION.
By Mrs Forster-Nietzsche.
HOW ZARATHUSTRA CAME INTO
BEING.
"ZARATHUSTRA" is my brother's most personal
work; it is the history of his most individual
experiences, of his friendships, ideals, raptures,
bitterest disappointments and sorrows. Above it
all, however, there soars, transfiguring it, the image
of his greatest hopes and remotest aims. My
brother had the figure of Zarathustra in his mind
from his very earliest youth: he once told me
that even as a child he had dreamt of him. At
different periods in his life, he would call this
haunter of his dreams by different names; "but
in the end," he declares in a note on the subject,
"I had to do a Persian the honour of identifying
him with this creature of my fancy. Persians were
the first to take a broad and comprehensive view
tf history. Every series of evolutions, according
to them, was presided over by a prophet; and
every prophet had his 'Hazar,'—his dynasty of a
thousand years. "
All Zarathustra's views, as also his personality,
## p. xxxi (#40) ############################################
x INTRODUCTION.
were early conceptions of my brother's mind
Whoever reads his posthumously published writ-
ings for the years 1869-82 with care, will con-
stantly meet with passages suggestive ol
Zarathustra's thoughts and doctrines. Foi
instance, the ideal of the Superman is put forth
quite clearly in all his writings during the years
1873-75; and in "We Philologists," the following
remarkable observations occur:—
"How can one praise and glorify a nation as
a whole? —Even among the Greeks, it was the
individuals that counted. "
"The Greeks are interesting and extremely
important because they reared such a vast number
of great individuals. How was this possible?
The question is one which ought to be studied.
"I am interested only in the relations of a people
to the rearing of the individual man, and among
the Greeks the conditions were unusually favour-
able for the development of the individual; not
by any means owing to the goodness of the people,
but because of the struggles of their evil instincts.
"With the help of favourable measures great
individuals might be reared who would be both
. J 1 different from and higher than those who heretofore
1 have owed their existence to mere chance. Here we
may still be hopeful: in the rearing of exceptional
men. "
The notion of rearing the Superman is only a
new form of an ideal Nietzsche already had in
his youth, that "the object of mankind should
lie in its highest Tndividuals" (or, as he writes
in "Schopenhauer as Educator": "Mankind
## p. xxxi (#41) ############################################
INTRODUCTION. XI
ought constantlyto be striving to produce great
men—this and nothing else is its duty. ") But the
ideals he most revered in those days are no longer
held to be the highest types of men. No, around
this future ideal of a coming humanity—the Super-
man—the poet spread the veil of becoming. Who
can tell to what glorious heights man can still
ascend? That is why, after having tested the
worth of our noblest ideal—that of the Saviour,
in the light of the new valuations, the poet cries
with passionate emphasis in "Zarathustra ":
"Never yet hath there been a Superman.
Naked have I seen both of them, the greatest and
the smallest man :—
All-too-similar are they still to each other.
Verily even the greatest found I — all-too-
human ! "—
The phrase "the rearing of the Superman," has
very often been misunderstood. By the word
"rearing," in this case, is meant the act of modify-
ing~by. means of new and higher values—values
which, as laws and guides of conduct and opinion,
are now to rule over mankind. In general the
doctrine of the Superman can only be understood
correctly in conjunction with other ideas of the
author's, such as :—the Order of Rank, the Will to
Power, and the Transvaluation of all Values. He
assumes that Christianity, as a product of the
resentment of the botched and the weak, has put
in ban all that is beautiful, strong, proud, and
powerful, in fact all the qualities resulting from
strength, and that, in consequence, all forces which
tend to promote or elevate life have been seriously
i ^
## p. xxxi (#42) ############################################
Xii INTRODUCTION.
undermined. Now, however, a new table of
valuations must be placed over mankind—namely,
I that of the strong, mighty, and magnificent man,
overflowing with life and elevated to his zenith—
the Superman, who is now put before us with over-
powering passion as the aim of our life, hope, and
will. And just as the old system of valuing, which
only extolled the qualities favourable to the weak,
the suffering, and the oppressed, has succeeded in
producing a weak, suffering, and "modern" race,
so this new and reversed system of valuing ought
to rear a healthy, strong, lively, and courageous
type, which would be a glory to life itself. Stated
briefly, the leading principle of this new system of
valuing would be: "All that proceeds from power
is good, all that springs from weakness is bad. "
This type must not be regarded as a fanciful
figure: it is not a nebulous hope which is to be
realised at some indefinitely remote period,
thousands of years hence; nor is it a new species
(in the Darwinian sense) of which we can know
nothing, and which it would therefore be somewhat
absurd to strive after. But it is meant to be
a possibility which men of the present could
realise with all their spiritual and physical energies,
provided they adopted the new values.
The author of " Zarathustra" never lost sight of
that egregious example of a transvaluation of all
values through Christianity, whereby the whole of
the deified mode of life and thought of the Greeks,
as well as strong Romedom, was almost annihilated
or transvalued in a comparatively short time.
Could not a rejuvenated Grasco-Roman system of
I
A
## p. xxxi (#43) ############################################
INTRODUCTION. xm
valuing (once it had been refined and made more
profound by the schooling which two thousand
years of Christianity had provided) effect another
such revolution within a calculable period of time,
until that glorious type of manhood shall finally
appear which is to be our new faith and hope, and
in the creation of which Zarathustra exhorts us to
participate?
In his private notes on the subject the author
uses the expression "Superman" (always in the
singular, by-the-bye), as signifying "the most
thoroughly well-constituted type," as opposed to
'' modern man "; above all, however, he designates
Zarathustra himself as an example of the Superman.
In "Ecce Homo" he is careful to enlighten us
concerning the precursors and prerequisites to the
advent of this highest type, in referring to a certain
passage in the " Gay Science " :—
"In order to understand this type, we must first
be quite clear in regard to the leading physiological
condition on which it depends: this condition is
what I call great healthiness. I know not how
to express my meaning more plainly or more
personally than I have done already in one of the
last chapters (Aphorism 382) of the fifth book of
the ' Gaya Scienza. '"
"We, the new, the nameless, the hard-to-understand,"—
it says there,—" we firstlings of a yet untried future—we
require for a new end also a new means, namely, a new
healthiness, stronger, sharper, tougher, bolder and merrier
than all healthiness hitherto. He whose soul longeth to
experience the whole range of hitherto recognised values and
desirabilities, and to circumnavigate all the coasts of this
ideal' Mediterranean Sea,' who, from the adventures of his
## p. xxxi (#44) ############################################
xiv INTRODUCTION.
most personal experience, wants to know how it feels to be
a conqueror, and discoverer of the ideal—as likewise how it
is with the artist, the saint, the legislator, the sage, the
scholar, the devotee, the prophet, and the godly non-con-
formist of the old style :—requires one thing above all for
that purpose, great healthiness—such healthiness as one not
only possesses, but also constantly acquires and must acquire,
because one unceasingly sacrifices it again, and must sacrifice
it! —And now, after having been long on the way in this
fashion, we Argonauts of the ideal, more courageous perhaps
than prudent, and often enough shipwrecked and brought to
grief, nevertheless dangerously healthy, always healthy
again,—it would seem as if, in recompense for it all, that we
have a still undiscovered country before us, the boundaries
of which no one has yet seen, a beyond to all countries and
corners of the ideal known hitherto, a world so over-rich in
the beautiful, the strange, the questionable, the frightful, and
the divine, that our curiosity as well as our thirst for
possession thereof, have got out of hand—alas! that nothing
will now any longer satisfy us ! —
"How could we still be content with the man of the present
day after such outlooks, and with such a craving in our
conscience and consciousness? Sad enough; but it is un-
avoidable that we should look on the worthiest aims and
hopes of the man of the present day with ill-concealed
amusement, and perhaps should no longer look at them.
Another ideal runs on before us, a strange, tempting ideal
full of danger, to which we should not like to persuade any
one, because we do not so readily acknowledge any one's
right thereto: the ideal of a spirit who plays naively (that
is to say involuntarily and from overflowing abundance and
power) with everything that has hitherto been called holy,
good, intangible, or divine; to whom the loftiest conception
which the people have reasonably made their measure of
value, would already practically imply danger, ruin, abase-
ment, or at least relaxation, blindness, or temporary self-
forgetfulness; the ideal of a humanly superhuman welfare
and benevolence, which will often enough appear inhuman,
for example, when put alongside of all past seriousness on
'''N
## p. xxxi (#45) ############################################
INTRODUCTION. XV
earth, and alongside of all past solemnities in bearing, word,
tone, look, morality, and pursuit, as their truest involuntary
parody—and with which, nevertheless, perhaps the great
seriousness only commences, when the proper interrogative
mark is set up, the fate of the soul changes, the hour-hand
moves, and tragedy begins. . . . "
Although the figure of Zarathustra and a large
number of the leading thoughts in this work had
appeared much earlier in the dreams and writings
of the author, " Thus Spake Zarathustra" did not
actually come into being until the month of August
1881 in Sils Maria; and it was the idea of the
Eternal Recurrence of all things which finally in-
duced my brother to set forth his new views in
poetic language. In regard to his first conception
of this idea, his autobiographical sketch, "Ecce
Homo," written in the autumn of 1888, contains
the following passage :—
"The fundamental idea of my work—namely, the
Eternal Recurrence of all things—this highest of all
possible formulae of a Yea-saying philosophy, first
occurred to me in August 1881. I made a note
of the thought on a sheet of paper, with the post-
script: 6,000 feet beyond men and time! That
day I happened to be wandering through the woods
alongside of the lake of Silvaplana, and I halted
beside a huge, pyramidal and towering rock not
far from Surlei. It was then that the thought
struck me. Looking back now, I find that exactly
two months previous to this inspiration, I had had
an omen of its coming in the form of a sudden and
decisive alteration in my tastes—more particularly
in music. It would even be possible to consider all
## p. xxxi (#46) ############################################
XVI INTRODUCTION.
'Zarathustra' as a musical composition. At all
events, a very necessary condition in its production
was a renaissance in myself of the art of hearing.
In a small mountain resort (Recoaro) near Vicenza,
where I spent the spring of 1881, I and my friend
and Maestro, Peter Gast—also one who had been
born again—discovered that the phcenix music
that hovered over us, wore lighter and brighter
plumes than it had done theretofore. "
During the month of August 1881 my brother
resolved to reveal the teaching of the Eternal
Recurrence, in dithyrambic and psalmodic form,
through the mouth of Zarathustra. Among the
notes of this period, we found a page on which is
written the first definite plan of "Thus Spake
Zarathustra ":—
"Midday and Eternity. "
"Guide-Posts to a New Way of Living. "
Beneath this is written :—
"Zarathustra born on lake Unni: left his home in his
thirtieth year; went into the province of Aria, and, during
ten years of solitude in the mountains, composed the Zend-
Avesta. "
"The sun of knowledge stands once more at midday;
and the serpent of eternity lies coiled in its light——: It is
your time, ye midday brethren. "
In that summer of 1881, my brother, after many
years of steadily declining health, began at last to
rally, and it is to this first gush of the recovery of his
once splendid bodily condition that we owe not
only "The Gay Science," which in its mood may
be regarded as a prelude to " Zarathustra," but also
## p. xxxi (#47) ############################################
INTRODUCTION. XV11
"Zarathustra" itself. Just as he was beginning to
recuperate his health, however, an unkind destiny
brought him a number of most painful personal
experiences. His friends caused him many dis-
appointments, which were the more bitter to him,
inasmuch as he regarded friendship as such a
sacred institution; and for the first time in his life
he realised the whole horror of that loneliness to
which, perhaps, all greatness is condemned. But
to be forsaken is something very different from
deliberately choosing blessed loneliness. How he
longed, in those days, for the ideal friend who would
thoroughly understand him, to whom he would
be able to say all, and whom he imagined he had
found at various periods in his life from his earliest
youth onwards. Now, however, that the way he
had chosen grew ever more perilous and steep, he
found nobody who could follow him: he therefore
created a perfect friend for himself in the ideal form
of a majestic philosopher, and made this creation
the preacher of his gospel to the world.
Whether my brother would ever have written
"Thus Spake Zarathustra" according to the first
plan sketched in the summer of 1881, if he had
not had the disappointments already referred to,
is now an idle question; but perhaps where " Zara-
thustra" is concerned, we may also say with Master
Eckhardt: "The fleetest beast to bear you to
perfection is suffering. "
My brother writes as follows about the origin
of the first part of " Zarathustra " :—" In the winter
of 1882-83, I was living on the charming little Gulf
of Rapallo, not far from Genoa, and between
b
## p. xxxi (#48) ############################################
xviii INTRODUCTION.
Chiavari and Cape Porto Fino. My health was
not very good; the winter was cold and exception-
ally rainy; and the small inn in which I lived was
so close to the water that at night my sleep would
be disturbed if the sea were high. These circum-
stances were surely the very reverse of favourable;
and yet in spite of it all, and as if in demonstration
of my belief that everything decisive comes to life
in spite of every obstacle, it was precisely during
this winter and in the midst of these unfavourable
circumstances that my 'Zarathustra' originated.
In the morning I used to start out in a southerly
direction up the glorious road to Zoagli, which rises
aloft through a forest of pines and gives one a view
far out into the sea. In the afternoon, as often as
my health permitted, I walked round the whole
bay from Santa Margherita to beyond Porto Fino.
This spot was all the more interesting to me,
inasmuch as it was so dearly loved by the Emperor
Frederick III. In the autumn of 1886 I chanced
to be there again when he was revisiting this small,
forgotten world of happiness for the last time. It
was on these two roads that all ' Zarathustra' came
to me, above all Zarathustra himself as a type ;—
I ought rather to say that it was on these walks
that these ideas waylaid me. "
The first part of "Zarathustra" was written in
about ten days—that is to say, from the beginning
to about the middle of February 1883. "The last
lines were written precisely in the hallowed hour
when Richard Wagner gave up the ghost in
Venice. "
With the exception of the ten days occupied in
## p. xxxi (#49) ############################################
INTRODUCTION. xix
composing the first part of this book, my brother
often referred to this winter as the hardest and
sickliest he had ever experienced. He did not,
however, mean thereby that his former disorders
were troubling him, but that he was suffering from
a severe attack of influenza which he had caught
in Santa Margherita, and which tormented him for
several weeks after his arrival in Genoa. As a
matter of fact, however, what he complained of
most was his spiritual condition—that indescribable
forsakenness—to which he. gives such heartrending
expression in "Zarathustra. " Even the reception
which the first part met with at the hands of
friends and acquaintances was extremely dis-
heartening: for almost all those to whom he pre-
sented copies of the work misunderstood it. "I
found no one ripe for many of my thoughts; the
case of ' Zarathustra' proves that one can speak with
the utmost clearness, and yet not be heard by any
one. " My brother was very much discouraged by
the feebleness of the response he was given, and
as he was striving just then to give up the practice
of taking hydrate of chloral—a drug he had begun
to take while ill with influenza,—the following
spring, spent in Rome, was a somewhat gloomy
one for him. He writes about it as follows:—" I
spent a melancholy spring in Rome, where I only
just managed to live,—and this was no easy matter.
This city, which is absolutely unsuited to the poet-
author of' Zarathustra,' and for the choice of which
I was not responsible, made me inordinately miser-
able. I tried to leave it. I wanted to go to
Aquila—the opposite of Rome in every respect,
## p. xxxi (#50) ############################################
XX INTRODUCTION.
and actually founded in a spirit of enmity towards
that city (just as I also shall found a city some
day), as a memento of an atheist and genuine
enemy of the Church—a person very closely re-
lated to me,—the great Hohenstaufen, the Emperor
Frederick II. But Fate lay behind it all: I
had to return again to Rome. In the end I was
obliged to be satisfied with the Piazza Barberini,
after I had exerted myself in vain to find an anti-
Christian quarter. I fear that on one occasion, to
avoid bad smells as much as possible, I actually
inquired at the Palazzo del Quirinale whether they
could not provide a quiet room for a philosopher.
In a chamber high above the Piazza just men-
tioned, from which one obtained a general view of
Rome' and could hear the fountains plashing far
below, the loneliest of all songs was composed—
'The Night-Song. ' About this time I was obsessed
by an unspeakably sad melody, the refrain of
which I recognised in the words, 'dead through
immortality. '"
We remained somewhat too long in Rome that
spring, and what with the effect of the increasing
heat and the discouraging circumstances already
described, my brother resolved not to write any
more, or in any case, not to proceed with "Zara-
thustra," although I offered to relieve him of all
trouble in connection with the proofs and the
publisher. When, however, we returned to Switzer-
land towards the end of June, and he found himself
once more in the familiar and exhilarating air of
the mountains, all his joyous creative powers re-
vived, and in a note to me announcing the dispatch
## p. xxxi (#51) ############################################
INTRODUCTION. xxi
of some manuscript, he wrote as follows: "I have
engaged a place here for three months: forsooth,
I am the greatest fool to allow my courage to be
sapped from me by the climate of Italy. Now and
again I am troubled by the thought: what next?
My ' future' is the darkest thing in the world to
me, but as there still remains a great deal for me
to do, I suppose I ought rather to think of doing
this than of my future, and leave the rest to thee
and the gods. "
The second part of "Zarathustra" was written
between the 26th of June and the 6th July. "This
summer, finding myself once more in the sacred
place where the first thought of' Zarathustra' flashed
across my mind, I conceived the second part. Ten
days sufficed. Neither for the second, the first, nor
the third part, have I required a day longer. "
He often used to speak of the ecstatic mood in
which he wrote " Zarathustra "; how in his walks over
hill and dale the ideas would crowd into his mind,
and how he would note them down hastily in a
note-book from which he would transcribe them on
his return, sometimes working till midnight. He
says in a letter to me: "You can have no idea
of the vehemence of such composition," and in
"Ecce Homo "(autumn 1888) he describes as follows
with passionate enthusiasm the incomparable mood
in which he created Zarathustra:—
"—Has any one at the end of the nineteenth
century any distinct notion of what poets of a
stronger age understood by the word inspiration?
If not, I will describe it. If one had the smallest
vestige of superstition in one, it would hardly be
## p. xxii (#52) ############################################
xxu INTRODUCTION.
possible to set aside completely the idea that one
is the mere incarnation, mouthpiece or medium of
an almighty power. The idea of revelation in the
sense that something becomes suddenly visible and
audible with indescribable certainty and accuracy,
which profoundly convulses and upsets one—
describes simply the matter of fact. One hears—
one does not seek; one takes—one does not ask
who gives: a thought suddenly flashes up like
lightning, it comes with necessity, unhesitatingly
—I have never had any choice in the matter.
There is an ecstasy such that the immense strain
of it is sometimes relaxed by a flood of tears, along
with which one's steps either rush or involuntarily
lag, alternately. There is the feeling that one is
completely out of hand, with the very distinct con-
sciousness of an endless number of fine thrills and
quiverings to the very toes ;—there is a depth of
happiness in which the painfullest and gloomiest
do not operate as antitheses, but as conditioned, as
demanded in the sense of necessary shades of
colour in such an overflow of light. There is an
instinct for rhythmic relations which embraces
wide areas of forms (length, the need of a wide-
embracing rhythm, is almost the measure of the
force of an inspiration, a sort of counterpart to its
pressure and tension). Everything happens quite
involuntarily, as if in a tempestuous outburst of
freedom, of absoluteness, of power and divinity.
The involuntariness of the figures and similes is
the most remarkable thing; one loses all percep-
tion of what constitutes the figure and what con-
stitutes the simile; everything seems to present
## p. xxiii (#53) ###########################################
INTRODUCTION. XX111
itself as the readiest, the correctest and the simplest
means of expression. It actually seems, to use
one of Zarathustra's own phrases, as if all things
came unto one, and would fain "be similes: 'Here
do all things come caressingly to thy talk and
flatter thee, for they want to ride upon thy back.
On every simile dost thou here ride to every truth.
Here fly open unto thee all being's words and
word-cabinets; here all being wanteth to become
words, here all becoming wanteth to learn of thee
how to talk.
' This is my experience of inspiration.
I do not doubt but that one would have to go
back thousands of years in order to find some one
who could say to me: It is mine also! —"
In the autumn of 1883 my brother left the
Engadine for Germany and stayed there a few
weeks. In the following winter, after wandering
somewhat erratically through Stresa, Genoa, and
Spezia, he landed in Nice, where the climate so
happily promoted his creative powers that he wrote
the third part of "Zarathustra. " "In the winter,
beneath the halcyon sky of Nice, which then looked
down upon me for the first time in my life, I found
the third 'Zarathustra'—and came to the end of my
task; the whole having occupied me scarcely a
year. Many hidden corners and heights in the
landscapes round about Nice are hallowed to me
by unforgettable moments. That decisive chapter
entitled 'Old and New Tables' was composed
in the very difficult ascent from the station to Eza
—that wonderful Moorish village in the rocks. My
most creative moments were always accompanied
by unusual muscular activity. The body. is inspired:
## p. xxiv (#54) ############################################
xxiv INTRODUCTION.
let us waive the question of the 'soul. ' I might
often have been seen dancing in those days.
Without a suggestion of fatigue I could then walk
for seven or eight hours on end among the hills.
I slept well and laughed well—I was perfectly
robust and patient. "
As we have seen, each of the three parts of
"Zarathustra " was written, after a more or less short
period of preparation, in about ten days. The
composition of the fourth part alone was broken
by occasional interruptions. The first notes re-
lating to this part were written while he and I were
staying together in Zurich in September 1884. In
the following November, while staying at Mentone,
he began to elaborate these notes, and after a long
pause, finished the manuscript at Nice between the
end of January and the middle of February 1885.
My brother then called this part the fourth and
last; but even before, and shortly after it had been
privately printed, he wrote to me saying that he
still intended writing a fifth and sixth part, and
notes relating to these parts are now in my
possession. This fourth part (the original MS. of
which contains this note: "Only for my friends,
not for the public") is written in a particularly
personal spirit, and those few to whom he presented
a copy of it, he pledged to the strictest secrecy
concerning its contents. He often thought of
making this fourth part public also, but doubted
whether he would ever be able to do so without
considerably altering certain portions of it. At all
events he resolved to distribute this manuscript
production, of which only forty copies were printed,
)
## p. xxv (#55) #############################################
INTRODUCTION. XXV
only among those who had proved themselves
worthy of it, and it speaks eloquently of his utter
loneliness and need of sympathy in those days,
that he had occasion to present only seven copies
of his book according to this resolution.
Already at the beginning of this history I hinted
at the reasons which led my brother to select a
Persian as the incarnation of his ideal of the majestic
philosopher. His reasons, however, for choosing
Zarathustra of all others to be his mouthpiece, he
gives us in the following words:—" People have
never asked me, as they should have done, what the
name Zarathustra precisely means in my mouth,
in the mouth of the first Immoralist; for what
distinguishes that philosopher from all others in
the past is the very fact that he was exactly the
reverse of an immoralist. Zarathustra was the first
to see in the struggle between good and evil the •
essential wheel in the working of things. The
translation of morality into the metaphysical, as
force, cause, end in itself, was his work. But the
very question suggests its own answer. Zarathustra
created the most portentous error, morality, con-
sequently he should also be the first to perceive that
error, not only because he has had longer and
greater experience of the subject than any other
thinker—all history is the experimental refutation
of the theory of the so-called moral order of things:
—the more important point is that Zarathustra was
more truthful than any other thinker. In his teach-
ing alone do we meet with truthfulness upheld as
the highest virtue—i. e. : the reverse of the cowardice
of the 'idealist' who flees from reality. Zarathustra
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xxvi
INTRODUCTION.
had more courage in his body than any other
thinker before or after him. To tell the truth and
to aim straight: that is the first Persian virtue. Am
I understood ? . . . The overcoming of morality
through itself—through truthfulness, the overcoming
of the moralist through his opposite-through me—:
that is what the name Zarathustra means in my
mouth. "
ELIZABETH FÖRSTER-NIETZSCHE.
NIETZSCHE ARCHIVES,
WEIMAR, December 1905.
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S"
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THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
FIRST PART
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,
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. There he enjoyed his spirit and his
solitude, and for ten years did not weary of it.
But at last his heart changed,—and rising one
morning with the rosy dawn, he went before the
sun, and spake thus unto it:
Thou great star! What would be thy happiness
if thou hadst not those for whom thou shinest!
For ten years hast thou climbed hither unto my
cave: thou wouldst have wearied of thy light and
of the journey, had it not been for me, my eagle,
and my serpent.
But we awaited thee every morning, took from
thee thine overflow, and blessed thee for it.
Lo! I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that
hath gathered too much honey; I need hands out-
stretched to take it
I would fain bestow and distribute, until the wise
have once more become joyous in their folly, and
the poor happy in their riches.
Therefore must I descend into the deep: as thou
doest in the evening, when thou goest behind the
sea, and givest light also to the nether-world, thou
exuberant star!
■
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THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA, I.
Like thee must I go down, as men say, to whom
I shall descend.
Bless me, then, thou tranquil eye, that canst
behold even the greatest happiness without envy!
Bless the cup that is about to overflow, that the
water may flow golden out of it, and carry every-
where the reflection of thy bliss !
Lo! This cup is again going to empty itself,
and Zarathustra is again going to be a man. "
Thus began Zarathustra's down-going.
1. 2.
Zarathustra went down the mountain alone, no
one meeting him. When he entered the forest,
however, there suddenly stood before him an old
man, who had left his holy cot to seek roots. And
thus spake the old man to Zarathustra:
"No stranger to me is this wanderer: many
years ago passed he by. Zarathustra he was called ;
but he hath altered.
Then thou carriedst thine ashes into the moun-
tains : wilt thou now carry thy fire into the valleys ?
Fearest thou not the incendiary's doom?
Yea, I recognise Zarathustra. Pure is his eye,
and no loathing lurketh about his mouth. Goeth
he not along like a dancer ?
Altered is Zarathustra ; a child hath Zarathustra
become; an awakened one is Zarathustra : what
wilt thou do in the land of the sleepers ?
As in the sea hast thou lived in solitude, and it
hath borne thee up. Alas, wilt thou now go ashore?
Alas, wilt thou again drag thy body thyself ? "
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ZARATHUSTRAS PROLOGUE. 5
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 a
thing too imperfect for me. Love to man would be
fatal to me. "
Zarathustra answered: "What spake I of love!
I am bringing gifts unto men. "
"Give them nothing," said the saint. "Take
rather part of their load, and carry it along with
them—that will be most agreeable unto them: if
only it be agreeable unto thee!
If, however, thou wilt give unto them, give them
no more than an alms, and let them also beg
for it! "
"No," replied Zarathustra, " I give no alms. I
am not poor enough for that. "
The saint laughed at Zarathustra, and spake
thus: "Then see to it that they accept thy
treasures! They are distrustful of anchorites, and
do not believe that we come with gifts.
The fall of our footsteps ringeth too hollow
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 goeth the thief?
Go not to men, but stay in the forest! Go rather
to the animals! Why not be like me—a bear
amongst bears, a bird amongst birds? "
"And what doeth the saint in the forest? " asked
Zarathustra.
The saint answered: "I make hymns and sing
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THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA, I.
them; and in making hymns I laugh and weep
and mumble: thus do I praise God.
With singing, weeping, laughing, and mumbling
do I praise the God who is my God. But what
dost thou bring us as a gift ? "
When Zarathustra had heard these words, he
bowed to the saint and said: “What should I have
to give thee! Let me rather hurry hence lest I
take aught away from thee ! ”—And thus they
parted from one another, the old man and Zara-
thustra, laughing like schoolboys.
When Zarathustra was alone, however, he said
to his heart: “Could it be possible! This old
saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that
God is dead! "
When Zarathustra arrived at the nearest town
which adjoineth the forest, he found many people
assembled in the market-place; for it had been
announced that a rope-dancer would give a per-
formance. And Zarathustra spake thus unto the
people:
I teach you the Superman. Man is something
that is to be surpassed. What have ye done to
surpass man?
All beings hitherto have created something
beyond themselves : and ye want to be the ebb
of that great tide, and would rather go back to
the beast than surpass man?
What is the ape to man ? A laughing-stock, a
thing of shame. And just the same shall man be to
the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame.
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zarathustra's prologue. 7
Ye have made your way from the worm to man,
and much within you is still worm. Once were ye
apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than
any of the apes.
Even the wisest among you is only a disharmony
and hybrid of plant and phantom. But do I bid
you become phantoms or plants?
Lo, I teach you the Superman!
The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let
your will say: The Superman shall be the meaning
of the earth!
I conjure you, my brethren, remain true to the
earth, and believe not those who speak unto you of
superearthly hopes! Poisoners are they, whether
they know it or not.
Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and
poisoned ones themselves, of whom the earth is
weary: so away with them!
Once blasphemy against God was the greatest
blasphemy; but God died, and therewith also
those blasphemers. To blaspheme the earth is
now the dreadfulest sin, and to rate the heart
of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the
earth!
Once the soul looked contemptuously on the
body, and then that contempt was the supreme
thing:—the soul wished the body meagre, ghastly,
and famished. Thus it thought to escape from the
body and the earth.
Oh, that soul was itself meagre, ghastly, and
famished; and cruelty was the delight of that soul!
But ye, also, my brethren, tell me: What doth
your body say about your soul? Is your soul
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8 THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA, I.
not poverty and pollution and wretched seif-
complacency?
Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must be
a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming
impure.
Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that sea;
in him can your great contempt be submerged.
What is the greatest thing ye can experience?
It is the hour of great contempt. The hour in which
even your happiness becometh loathsome unto you,
and so also your reason and virtue.
The hour when ye say: "What good is my
happiness! It is poverty and pollution and
wretched self-complacency. But my happiness
should justify existence itself! "
The hour when ye say: "What good is my
reason! Doth it long for knowledge as the lion
for his food? It is poverty and pollution and
wretched self-complacency! "
The hour when ye say: "What good is my
virtue! As yet it hath not made me passionate.
How weary I am of my good and my bad! It is
all poverty and pollution and wretched self-
complacency! "
The hour when ye say: "What good is my
justice! I do not see that I am fervour and fuel.
The just, however, are fervour and fuel! "
The hour when we say: "What good is my
pity! Is not pity the cross on which he is
nailed who loveth man? But my pity is not a
crucifixion. "
Have ye ever spoken thus? Have ye ever cried
thus? Ah! would that I had heard you crying thus!
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ZARATHUSTRAS PROLOGUE. 9
It is not your sin—it is your self-satisfaction that
crieth unto heaven; your very sparingness in sin
crieth unto heaven!
Where is the lightning to lick you with its
tongue? Where is the frenzy with which ye
should be inoculated?
Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that light-
ning, he is that frenzy ! —
When Zarathustra had thus spoken, one of the
people called out: "We have now heard enough
of the rope-dancer; it is time now for us to see
him! " And all the people laughed at Zarathustra.
But the rope-dancer, who thought the words applied
to him, began his performance.
4-
Zarathustra, however, looked at the people and
wondered. Then he spake thus:
Man is a rope stretched between the animal and
the Superman—a rope over an abyss.
A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a
dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling
and halting.
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and
not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an
over-going and a down-going.
I love those that know not how to live except as
down-goers, for they are the over-goers.
I love the great despisers, because they are the
great adorers, and arrows of longirg for the other
shore.
I love those who do not first seek a reason beyond
the stars for going down and being sacrifices, but
S
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IO THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA, I.
sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth of
the Superman may hereafter arrive.
I love him who liveth in order to know, and
seeketh to know in order that the Superman may
hereafter live. Thus seeketh he his own down-
going.
I love him who laboureth and inventeth, that he
may build the house for the Superman, and prepare
for him earth, animal, and plant: for thus seeketh J
he his own down-going.
I love him who loveth his virtue: for virtue is
the will to down-going, and an arrow of longing.
I love him who reserveth no share of spirit for
himself, but wanteth to be wholly the spirit of his
virtue: thus walketh he as spirit over the bridge.
I love him who maketh his virtue his inclination
and destiny: thus, for the sake of his virtue, he is
willing to live on, or live no more.
I love him who desireth not too many virtues.
One virtue is more of a virtue than two, because it
is more of a knot for one's destiny to cling to.
I love him whose soul is lavish, who wanteth
no thanks and doth not give back: for he always
bestoweth, and desireth not to keep for himself.
