Of all writings, I love only that which is written with blood. Write with blood: and you will discover that blood is spirit.
Written over a few short years, the Muses were with Nietzsche in this. Grand work.
Some of these pages seem like impenetrable walls of poetry at first, but given enough time, meditation, and some familiarity with Nietzsche’s other work, it becomes deeply meaningful once you get under the surface. At times it is best parsed by not parsing, and simply letting the meaning wash over you. Either way, be prepared to suddenly spend a lot of time understanding a single paragraph or sentence.
I red Hollingdale’s English translation. Took me a good year to finish it. Probably could’ve been red over two or three months, but no faster. Do not rush through this. Read it to read it, not to have red it.
Thus spoke the Devil to me once: Even God has his Hell: it is his love for man.
Here are some of the notes I took as I red through it. Some are under titles by topic, some are under titles by chapter. Many are left on paper, not transcribed to this document.
They do not understand me: I am not the mouth for these ears.
Nietzsche beautifully illustrates the feeling of having gained a lot, thought a lot, having developed a lot, and then coming down from the mountains to talk to the people. It is an alienating and frustrating experience. I relate to this telling extremely.
Must one first shatter their ears to teach them to hear with their eyes? Must one rumble like drums and Lenten preachers?
Do you have to be loud as a Tate to convince? -
Or do they only believe those who stammer?
- Or do you need to fake humility? Do you need to pretend to not be sure you’re right?
Perhaps I lived too long in the mountains, listened too much to the trees and the streams: now I speak to them as to goatherds.
Man will at some point lose its balance and fall into the abyss. It is imperative to move forth while we still can walk this tightrope we are on. Human existence is fickle. What is good in man is his virtue and the things which move him forth toward the Übermench. The people of sick will and spirit are already gifting themselves to the abyss, leaving behind the men closer to the ubermench. Zarathustra loves the people of slave morality, for they give themselves up, they die, that the great may walk on. Natural selection occurs with morality.
The man who walks the tightrope is practicing capability. He made danger his calling, and is therefore improving the human animal. Even if he dies in the process of being surpassed by a greater walker of the tightrope, this is admirable.
I love those who do not know how to live except their lives be a down-going [untergang], for they are those who are going across [übergang].
Those taking on risk in their life, developing their power, and thereby power of man, will by the nature of their quest likely perish in the process. This is better than remaining on the side of the ape, not walking the tightrope at all, not developing. No untergang, no übergang, no Übermench, no future for man. Therefore, go forth!
This idea of development, and übergang is very different from the building of the Tower of Babel. That is when technology is developed from man’s greed and impatience with gaining powers, and ends up becoming too much for our feeble type. This here, rather, is improvement on the type of man itself.
Note also, however, the building of the Tower is not sin! For although it leads to downfall (from the tightrope, untergang), it is also a risk taken in developing the power of man. Building the Tower of Babel is self-sacrifice. It is part of walking the tightrope.
The creator seeks companions and fellow-harvesters: For with him everything is ripe for harvesting. But he lacks his hundred sickles: so he tears off the ears of corn and is vexed.
Don’t throw pearls before swine. Speak to those who will listen. Gather great companions to go forth with. Focus your effort on the people who want to be great with you. The masses and the people who will hate you for being great are not salvageable.
Zarathustra paints the progression of spirit through three stages. Camel, lion, and then child. The camel is one of strong weight-bearing. It asks to be well laden. Much like how Peterson talks about picking up the heaviest cross you can bear. However, the heaviest things you can bear are things that don’t assist in crossing the tightrope.
Next step is the lion, the spirit capable of and willing to break free of “thou shalt”, and regaining “I will”.
At last, the child, an innocent and fresh youthful spirit capable of developing and creating new values. Something the lion could not do.
Classic phoenix progression. Bird, flames, a child from the ashes.
The drowsy men, that seek comfort in opium virtues in order to sleep soundly and feel at ease, will soon fall off the tightrope.
I feel like I don’t understand this one yet beyond the surface level. He’s clearly arguing that afterworlds are the machinations of minds stuck in sickly bodies that they wish to escape. However, I have a hard time believing that it doesn’t go deeper than that.
There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom. And who knows for what purpose your body requires precisely your best wisdom?
You do not intend to kill your judges and sacrifices before the beast has bowed its neck? Behold, the pale criminal has bowed his neck: from his eye speaks the great contempt.
The pale criminal is man who has offered his neck to the judges. He committed an act out of passion, but then compounded his act with further evil to conceal his passion and madness as reason.
Z here rails against the judges. For their denial of the body and The Self’s natural conflicting passions and for their hypocrisy in concealing their own evil deeds.
Much about your good people moves me to disgust, and it is not their evil, I mean. How I wish they possessed a madness through which they could perish, like this pale criminal. Truly, I wish their madness were called truth or loyalty or justice: But they possess their virtue in order to live long and in a miserable ease.
My favorite of the discourses. It is not hard to explain, however I will make no attempt to do so. You ought learn it yourself.
Flea from their hidden vengeance! towards you they are nothing but vengeance! No longer lift your arms against them. They are innumerable and it is not your fate to be a fly-swat.
They fought to live as corpses. They dressed their corpses in black; even in their speech I still smell the evil aroma of burial vaults. And he who lives in their neighborhood lives in the neighborhood of black pools, from out of which the toad, that prophet of evil, sings its song with sweet melancholy. They would have to sing better songs to make me believe in their redeemer: His disciples would have to look more redeemed.
And with others, their vices grow lazy and they call that virtue; and once their hatred and jealousy stretch themselves to rest, their ‘justice’ becomes lively and rubs its sleepy eyes.
The song and dance segments read very awkward. I suspect it would have been way better in the original German.
The common evening depression even hits Zarathustra, as it oft does after song and dance with forest girls and cupid:
Thus sang Zarathustra. But when the dance had ended and the girls had gone away, he grew sad.
The sun has long since set (he said at last); the meadow is damp, coolness is coming from the forests. Something strange and unknown is about me, looking thoughtfully at me. What! Are you still living, Zarathustra? Why? Wherefore? Whereby? Whither? Where? How? Is it not folly to go on living? Ah, my friends, it is the evening that questions thus within me. Forgive me my sadness! Evening has come: forgive me that it has become evening!
Thus spoke Zarathustra
This song is bloody wonderful. A tale on the pain of growing old, death of youth, friends, memories and resurrection. Short, but incredibly potent.
he who cannot obey himself will be commanded.
The devotion of the greatest is to encounter risk and danger and play dice for death.
Your previous creations become your enemies as you journey to overcome and outdo your past self.
And let everything that can break upon our truths – break!
Great commentary on those that think themselves noble and high for not engaging with life. Those that see beauty and pretend not to yearn for its kiss, to love and perish with it. The monks, the common priest, the male feminist “allies”. All those feigning contentedness with immaculate perception.
Every honest man’s step speaks out: but the cat steals along over the ground. Behold, the moon comes along catlike and without honesty. This parable I speak to you sentimental hypocrites, to you of ‘pure knowledge’! I call you – lustful! You too love the earth and the earthly: I have divined you well! – but shame and bad conscience is in your love – you are like the moon!
There is far deeper honesty, vulnerability and strength, all together, when walking in congruence with the will to love and perish, openly under sunlight.
It’s interesting to note here how his symbolic use of the moon is great, but in aspects, insular. As with many of his metaphors and symbols, they only live in the one parable. They often don’t fully match that of the ultimate symbolic tradition. Luckily he builds the symbolism clearly for each parable, and with grace and poetic elegance, so it’s genuinely a joy to follow.
‘And I say this to the overthrowers of statues: To throw salt into the sea and statues into the mud are perhaps the greatest of follies.
No idea what this one is about. Going to need to re-read and study deeper.
In this section, we meet a very different Zarathustra, a sickly Zarathustra, who is no longer a source, but is now affected by the tailings of some unknown prophet, he becomes a reflection of another mere man. A prophet that comes serving black pills, which Zarathustra swallows.
At one point I started wondering “wth is Nietzsche doing??”, but just let him cook, and it’ll all make sense.
‘Punishment’ is what revenge calls itself: it feigns a good conscience for itself with a lie.
After quite some trials and a grand journey at sea, Zarathustra comes back to firm ground to see that the people have become small.
What do these houses mean? Truly, no great soul put them up as its image! Did a silly child perhaps take them out of its toy-box? If only another child would put them back into its box!
This quickly turns into a very powerful allegory.
At length he said sadly: ´Everything has become smaller! ´Everywhere I see lower doors: anyone like me can still pass through them, but – he has to stoop! ´Oh when shall I return to my home, where I shall no longer have to stoop – shall no longer have to stoop before the small men´!
This whole section is really quite incredible. I fear to over-quote it, as you should simply read it all.
There is little manliness here: therefore their women make themselves manly. For only he who is sufficiently a man will – redeem the woman in woman. And I have found this hypocrisy the worst among them: that even those who command affect the virtues of those who obey. ‘I serve, you serve, we serve’ – so here even the hypocrisy of the rulers intones – and alas, if the first ruler is only the first servant!
These seem to me the common hobbits of Europe. They call Zarathustra Godless, a moniker he proudly sports after receiving it, however I think Zarathustra is far closer to the Gods than the mediocre spouters of this charge.
He predicts here the death of Europeans, as we have become small men. The meek shall lose the earth.
You will become smaller and smaller, you small people! You will crumble away, you comfortable people! You will yet perish – through your many small virtues, through your many small omissions, through your many small submission! […] ‘Es gibt sich’ – that is also a doctrine of submission. But I tell you, you comfortable people: es nimmit sich, and will be taken more and more from you!
As a Norwegian, I concur.
Why did you live so long in the swamp that you had to become a frog and toad yourself? Does not foul, foaming swamp-blood now flow through your own veins, so that you have learned to quack and rail like this? Why did you not go into the forest? Or plough the earth? Is the sea not full of green islands? I despise your contempt; and since you warned me, why did you not warn yourself?
We’re so back. Wonderful reflections on the companionship of solitude.
This is a dance over dale and hill: I am the hunter – will you be my hound or will you be my kill?
A sensitive young man’s lovesong to life. Beautiful. I would have loved to experience this in a good Norwegian translation or the original German.
The dark prophet is back, but this time facing a ripe Zarathustra that stands up to him with overflowing joy.
And unwillingness to help may be nobler than that virtue which comes running with help.
Everything from the last supper and out is rushing by. Gripping.
He possesses heart that knows fear but masters fear; who sees the abyss, but sees it with pride.
If you want to rise high, use your own legs! Do not let yourselves be carried up, do not sit on the backs and heads of strangers! But did you mount horse? Do you now ride pell-mell up to your goal? Very well, my friend! But your lame foot also sits with you on your horse! When you reach your goal, when you jump from your horse: precisely upon your height, you Higher Man, will you stumble!
Follow in the footsteps of your fathers’ virtue! How would you climb high if the will of your fathers did not climb with you?
It is what one takes into solitude that grows there, the beast within included.
And the bow is finally tied. I don’t understand why he tried to keep the fourth and final part private. This was an excellent end.
Grand work. Funny to have finished this book, of all books, on Easter’s Bright Monday.
Funny how, after reading it, in complete contradiction of the book’s lessons, I wish I had infinite resource and time to dramatize every moment of this book to film, as that’s the only way my friends, the mob, could enjoy it. Zarathustra might say ‘pity them not, for what is rare is for the rare’.
I don’t have much to say. You should just read the book.
I might get a Norwegian translation for a closer to the original reading of these. Perhaps that’ll grant some more clarity.