Books : Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (Modern Library)

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Rating:

- This Book Will Change Your Life!
This book is transfinitly excellent! Even if you don't agree with Nietzsche's conclusions or points of view this is still an interesting and worthwhile read. This book should be required reading for all inhabitants of planet earth!

Rating:

- outdated translation
This translation is quite old (now public domain) and riddled with substantial errors. Have a look at the Kaufmann translation instead and spend a few extra bucks -- the book will make far more sense if you do! More enjoyable, too...

Rating:

- Great!!!
To fully appreciate the book, one must first accept that "man is the bridge between ape and Overman". Nietzsche's core views revolve around the concept that we (the human race) are a mere rung on the ladder of evolution. From ape, to man, to Overman. Thus Spoke Zarathustra is poetic, logical, insightful, and full of focussed creative effort. I highly recommend it to anyone. Other good philosophical works I reccomend are Heiddeger's Being and Time and Paul Omeziri's Descent into Illusion.

Rating:

- 80% gibberish and riddles, 20% interesting
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (R.J. Hollingdale's translation) is quite simply one of the least enjoyable classics I've ever read. It was a chore to get through the 330+ pages and what I was constantly hoping would get better, never did. TSZ attempts to espouse many aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy through, for the most part, meaningless riddles and analogies. You won't understand even half of what Nietzsche's trying to tell you. When I read a book I expect to be able to at least understand the plot or message. TSZ was overall a waste of time.

There are a couple of redeeming points to consider. Nietzsche's "Superman" philosophy is interesting and he goes into some detail on the inadequacies of man today and what the future Superman will be like. According to Nietzsche, God created everything but then died sometime in the past out of pity for humanity's imperfections. The Superman race will one day come out of man and be perfection in mind and body. Also, Nietsche has unique viewpoints on many aspects of life: work, family, friendships, etc. The fraction of a time that Zarathustra speaks coherently, he's interesting.

The problem is, Zarathustra spends the vast majority of his time preaching in gibberish and poor poetry. 80% of the dozens of topics in TSZ are practically unreadable. I understand that the original work is German and many of Nietzsche's plays on words cannot be translated properly. However, I can't imagine even the original German prose making much sense to a fluent German speaker.

Here's an excerpt typical of the prose found throughout the novel, from the section "On the Blissful Islands": "Truly, I have gone my way through a hundred souls and through a hundred cradles and birth-pangs. I have taken many departures, I know the heart-breaking last hours. But my creative will, my destiny, wants it so. Or, to speak more honestly: my will wants precisely such a destiny. All feeling suffers in me and is in prison: but my willing always comes to me as my liberator and bringer of joy. Willing liberates: that is the true doctrine of will and freedom - thus Zarathustra teaches you. No more to will and no more to evaluate and no more to create! ah, that this great lassitude may ever stay far from me!"

Hmm, so he wants to will and create, but doesn't want to feel? What's his point? He's not making sense here. Now imagine 80% of the book written in mediocre prose like that and you have an idea of what you're getting into. It would have been far better if Nietzsche had simply written a clear one-paragraph summary of Zarathustra's point at the end of each section. Then you could go back and interpret better what Z was talking about. I've read a whole bunch of classics and have a large library of them. I consider my reading comprehension skills to be above-average. Yet this book ranks at or very near the bottom of my list. NOT recommended!

Rating:

- Thus Spoke Zarathustra
And god gave us Nietzsche! Or did he? One of the first discoveries of Nietzsche's main character, Zarathustra, in this fictional work is the revelation(or lack thereof) that God does not exist. An excellent description of Nietzsche's life is provided at the beginning of this translation, along with the traditional editor's notes. If you skip parts of this work, do NOT skip the notes about his life. To connect with Zarathustra, you must know the author. The ever-present references to Nausea hint at Nietzsche's numerous illnesses. The constant references to sleep parallel his insomnia etc etc.

Philosophically, Nietzsche is labelled a nihilist by some. Zarathustra is Nietzsche's giving up or "going under" as the book describes it, so in a sense, this may be correct. Zarathustra renounces how the world has lived, and as a hermit, he finds himself and what the world means to him. Without God, who is destroyed by his pity for man, the world means everything to Zarathustra. This life is all he has to live, and he spreads his teachings for hope that one day man will "go over" or rise above, man as it existed 100 years ago, or for that matter, even today. His journey reminds me of a drawn out Fight Club a few centuries old. As Zarathustra drags his theoretical feet through an almost biblical writing style(used in mockery), the reasoning behind Nietzsche's Godlessness take form aside from God's pity for man. He takes a look at preachers of the spirit and how much they're missing in life. Proclaiming that the spirit and body are one and connected as an earthly concept he mocks the preachers of the body and their constant babblings of the "after-life" and a higher spirit while the earthly life is full of suffering. Sometimes going a bit far and portraying the apparent antagonists as a bit over the top, Nietzsche's main character can distance himself from the reader if taken verbatim. Zarathustra does not believe in current society or power and for good reason; what earthly ground do they stand upon? One apparent enigma I remember quite well was Zarathustra's distaste for the wise man. One tends to assume that Zarathustra is poking fun at the reader, you have a choice to drop the book now if you're following it as an instruction book and you've just become his "higher man". Carry on, and you'll find later that this is not an end(consequently neither is Nietzsche, see postmodernism). The term "going under" is really what the entire philosophy is about. I got quite a bit out of the puzzling writing style. It denies convention, as seen in the philosophy and religion of the time, its foothold on society, and without any sort of convention nothing holds up too well to Nietzsche's barrage of destruction within Zarathustra's mind. Simplified, my thoughts are that this constant questioning of ideals and beliefs are what brought on later ideas like Deconstruction in works of Derrida and other authors of similar beliefs. Reading this, it's strange to see where the hell Freud is coming from as far as Nietzsche's works go. Sex is downplayed in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It's viewed almost as casual as going to the bathroom and reading a newspaper. The ideas presented by Zarathustra are often intriguing and help to solidify the reader's opinion on a topic one way or another.

As far as writing style, this story is written like the bible. Obviously, it mocks the bible in almost every way, from the dated vocabulary to the stories of animals and silly symbolism. The ridiculous songs and poems poke fun at related portions of the bible. The setting is even pseudo-biblical. I found it somewhat hard at times to get Nietzsche's point out of some of the more muddled passages, and I had to continue on to find later that he'd repeat something a different way and I'd eventually grasp it. While, a progression(or regression depending upon your viewpoint), I feel Zarathustra's journey forward looks backward often, and some of the necessary introductory pieces didn't appeal to me much, as I felt I've already "gone under" these traditions of good and evil.

This is a necessary read for anyone even somewhat interested in philosophy. Depending upon how familiar you are with works by later authors it might be a bit boring and repetative. As much praise as I give for it, the work doesn't go without flaw. Obvious in Zarathustra is a certain contempt for everything currently around him and an outwardly destructive nature to an extent that isn't directly militant, but it reflects someone shunned by a society and falls to subjectivity at certain points. One or two sections struck me as very sexist and I dismissed them as a result of the time period and Nietzsche's lonliness in life. Shining through where unwanted at times is Nietzsche's praise of solitude and on a much lower level his illness. It leaves the reader unconvinced in specific passages and opens questions of bias(not to say this isn't a biased work).

Overall, 4/5 stars. A necessary, excellent read. It's a tough read and you'll have to go over a few passages more than once to grab the meaning, but you'll come out with a clear idea of where you stand on some of the issues and maybe a new view on society's conventions.

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