Thus Spoke Zarathustra

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Book: Read Thus Spoke Zarathustra for Free Online
Authors: Friedrich Nietzsche, R. J. Hollingdale
have by ‘eternity’ is – himself.
    PART FOUR. When, in January 1884, he closed his book with Seven Seals, Nietzsche thought Zarathustra was finished.But in the following winter he took up the theme again, and planned a further three parts. In the first of them, Zarathustra is visited by sundry ‘higher men’ who, as a consequence of Zarathustra’s instruction, become conscious of their inadequacy. At the conclusion of this part Zarathustra receives the call to go out into the world again, and in the following part he accumulates a large following, to whom he preaches his now triumphant message. In the final part he dies, although Nietzsche could not decide in what manner. Of these three new parts only the first was written, slowly and with interruptions, in the winter of 1884–85. Nietzsche had it privately printed but withheld it from publication, and it first appeared, as ‘the Fourth and Last Part’ of Zarathustra in 1892, as part of the first collected edition of Nietzsche.
    Stylistically, Part Four is quite different from the earlier parts and on a lower level of inspiration. The ‘higher men’ are at once types and individuals. The gloomy prophet is Schopenhauer. The two kings are any kings. The conscientious man of the spirit is probably Darwin, although any scientific specialist would do. The sorcerer is Wagner (the sorcerer’s poems are parodies of Wagner’s later poetic manner). The last pope is of course (as yet) imaginary. The ugliest man and the shadow are representations of the atheist and the freethinker respectively. The voluntary beggar is either the Buddha or Tolstoy.
    The eternal recurrence remains in the background, but emerges at the conclusion, where it receives its most sonorous and ecstatic affirmation.
June 1969
R.J.H.

FURTHER READING
    David B. Allison, Reading the New Nietzsche (2001)
    MaudeMarie Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Morality (1990)
    R. J. Hollingdale, Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy (196 5; 1999)
    Brian Leiter, Nietzsche on Morality (2002)
    Bernd Magnus and Kathleen Higgins (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche (1996)
    Alexander Nehemas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature (1985)
    F. Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, introduction by M. Tanner (1982)
    ——— , Dithyrambs of Dionysus, trans, with introduction and notes R. J. Hollingdale (1984; 2001)
    ——— , Untimely Meditations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, introduction by J. P. Stern (1983)
    John Richardson and Brian Leiter (eds.), Nietzsche (2001)
    Rudiger Safranski, Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography, trans. Shelley Frisch (2002)
    Henry Staten, Nietzsche's Voice (1990)
    Tracy Strong, Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration (1988)

PART ONE
    ZARATHUSTRA’S PROLOGUE
    1
    W HEN Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home and went into the mountains. Here he had the enjoyment of his spirit and his solitude and he did not weary of it for ten years. But at last his heart turned – and one morning he rose with the dawn, stepped before the sun, and spoke to it thus:
    Great star! What would your happiness be, if you had not those for whom you shine!
    You have come up here to my cave for ten years: you would have grown weary of your light and of this journey, without me, my eagle and my serpent.
    But we waited for you every morning, took from you your superfluity and blessed you for it.
    Behold! I am weary of my wisdom, like a bee that has gathered too much honey; I need hands outstretched to take it.
    I should like to give it away and distribute it, until the wise among men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their wealth.
    To that end, I must descend into the depths: as you do at evening, when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too, superabundant star!
    Like you, I must go down 1 – as men, to whom I want to descend, call it.
    So bless me then, tranquil eye, that can

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