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130-625: Much of the book consists of discourses by Zarathustra on a wide variety of subjects, most of which end with the refrain "thus spoke Zarathustra". The character of Zarathustra first appeared in Nietzsche's earlier book The Gay Science (at §342, which closely resembles §1 of "Zarathustra's Prologue" in Thus Spoke Zarathustra ). The style of Nietzsche's Zarathustra has facilitated varied and often incompatible ideas about what Nietzsche's Zarathustra says. The "[e]xplanations and claims" given by

260-626: A "Germanic" colony. Through correspondence, Nietzsche's relationship with Elisabeth continued through cycles of conflict and reconciliation, but they met again only after his collapse. He continued to have frequent and painful attacks of illness, which made prolonged work impossible. In 1887, Nietzsche wrote the polemic On the Genealogy of Morality . During the same year, he encountered the work of Fyodor Dostoyevsky , to whom he felt an immediate kinship. He also exchanged letters with Hippolyte Taine and Georg Brandes . Brandes, who had started to teach

390-474: A "pyramidal block of stone" while walking through the woods along the shores of Lake Silvaplana in the Upper Engadine , and he made a small note that read "6,000 feet beyond man and time". A few weeks after meeting this idea, he paraphrased in a notebook something written by Friedrich von Hellwald about Zarathustra . This paraphrase was developed into the beginning of Thus Spoke Zarathustra . A year and

520-651: A 2a in Greek and Latin; a 2b in French, History, and Physics; and a "lackluster" 3   in Hebrew and Mathematics. Nietzsche was an amateur composer. He composed several works for voice, piano, and violin beginning in 1858 at the Schulpforta in Naumburg when he started to work on musical compositions. Richard Wagner was dismissive of Nietzsche's music, allegedly mocking a birthday gift of

650-596: A book each year until 1888, his last year of writing; that year, he completed five. In 1882, Nietzsche published the first part of The Gay Science . That year he also met Lou Andreas-Salomé , through Malwida von Meysenbug and Paul Rée . Salomé's mother took her to Rome when Salomé was 21. At a literary salon in the city, Salomé became acquainted with Paul Rée . Rée proposed marriage to her, but she, instead, proposed that they should live and study together as "brother and sister", along with another man for company, where they would establish an academic commune. Rée accepted

780-522: A boys' school and then a private school, where he became friends with Gustav Krug and Wilhelm Pinder, all three of whom came from highly respected families. Academic records from one of the schools attended by Nietzsche noted that he excelled in Christian theology . In 1854, he began to attend the Domgymnasium in Naumburg. Because his father had worked for the state (as a pastor) the now-fatherless Nietzsche

910-450: A brain disease in 1849, after a year of excruciating agony, when the boy was only four years old; Ludwig Joseph died six months later at age two. The family then moved to Naumburg , where they lived with Nietzsche's maternal grandmother and his father's two unmarried sisters. After the death of Nietzsche's grandmother in 1856, the family moved into their own house, now Nietzsche-Haus , a museum and Nietzsche study centre. Nietzsche attended

1040-505: A chaperone. Salomé reports that he asked her to marry him on three separate occasions and that she refused, though the reliability of her reports of events is questionable. Arriving in Leipzig (Germany) in October, Salomé and Rée separated from Nietzsche after a falling-out between Nietzsche and Salomé, in which Salomé believed that Nietzsche was desperately in love with her. While the three spent

1170-446: A characterisation of the human subject as the expression of competing wills , collectively understood as the will to power . He also developed influential concepts such as the Übermensch and his doctrine of eternal return . In his later work, he became increasingly preoccupied with the creative powers of the individual to overcome cultural and moral mores in pursuit of new values and aesthetic health. His body of work touched

1300-443: A collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties, with paralysis and probably vascular dementia . He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897, and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche . Nietzsche died in 1900, after experiencing pneumonia and multiple strokes . Nietzsche's work spans philosophical polemics , poetry, cultural criticism , and fiction while displaying

1430-488: A collected edition under the title Untimely Meditations . The essays shared the orientation of a cultural critique, challenging the developing German culture suggested by Schopenhauer and Wagner. During this time in the circle of the Wagners, he met Malwida von Meysenbug and Hans von Bülow . He also began a friendship with Paul Rée who, in 1876, influenced him into dismissing the pessimism in his early writings. However, he

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1560-505: A concept at least tangential to many in Zarathustra , and he worked extremely hard. He became an outstanding philologist almost accidentally, and he renounced his ideas about being an artist. As a philologist he became particularly sensitive to the transmissions and modifications of ideas, which also bears relevance into Zarathustra . Nietzsche's growing distaste toward philology, however, was yoked with his growing taste toward philosophy. As

1690-440: A cosmological principle, it has been supposed to mean that time is circular, that all things recur eternally. A weak attempt at proof has been noted in Nietzsche's notebooks, and it is not clear to what extent, if at all, Nietzsche believed in the truth of it. Critics have mostly dealt with the cosmological principle as a puzzle of why Nietzsche might have touted the idea. As an attitudinal principle it has often been dealt with as

1820-421: A day's search, however, he is unable to find the higher man. Returning home, he hears the cry of distress once more, now coming from inside his own cave. He realises that all the people he has spoken to that day are collectively the higher man. Welcoming them to his home, he nevertheless tells them that they are not the men he has been waiting for; they are only the precursors of the Übermensch . Zarathustra hosts

1950-468: A demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' The book mentions an occurrence of

2080-517: A devotee of truth, then inquire.... Nietzsche subsequently concentrated on studying philology under Professor Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl , whom he followed to the University of Leipzig in 1865. There he became close friends with his fellow student Erwin Rohde . Nietzsche's first philological publications appeared soon after. In 1865, Nietzsche thoroughly studied the works of Arthur Schopenhauer . He owed

2210-449: A diagnosis of " manic-depressive illness with periodic psychosis followed by vascular dementia " was put forward by Cybulska prior to Schain's study. Leonard Sax suggested the slow growth of a right-sided retro-orbital meningioma as an explanation of Nietzsche's dementia; Orth and Trimble postulated frontotemporal dementia while other researchers have proposed a hereditary stroke disorder called CADASIL . Poisoning by mercury ,

2340-430: A fondness for aphorism and irony . Prominent elements of his philosophy include his radical critique of truth in favour of perspectivism ; a genealogical critique of religion and Christian morality and a related theory of master–slave morality ; the aesthetic affirmation of life in response to both the " death of God " and the profound crisis of nihilism ; the notion of Apollonian and Dionysian forces; and

2470-558: A half after making that paraphrase, Nietzsche was living in Rapallo . Nietzsche claimed that the entire first part was conceived, and that Zarathustra himself "came over him", while walking. He was regularly walking "the magnificent road to Zoagli " and "the whole Bay of Santa Margherita ". He said in a letter that the entire first part "was conceived in the course of strenuous hiking: absolute certainty, as if every sentence were being called out to me". Nietzsche returned to "the sacred place" in

2600-510: A healthy culture". Thus Spoke Zarathustra can be understood as a "polemic" against these influences. Though Nietzsche "probably learned Sanskrit while at Leipzig from 1865 to 1868", and "was probably one of the best read and most solidly grounded in Buddhism for his time among Europeans", Nietzsche was writing when Eastern thought was only beginning to be acknowledged in the West, and Eastern thought

2730-518: A higher estimation of his own status and "fate". He overestimated the increasing response to his writings, however, especially to the recent polemic, The Case of Wagner . On his 44th birthday, after completing Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist , he decided to write the autobiography Ecce Homo . In its preface—which suggests Nietzsche was well aware of the interpretive difficulties his work would generate—he declares, "Hear me! For I am such and such

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2860-405: A lecturing post at the University of Leipzig . According to a letter he wrote to Peter Gast, this was due to his "attitude towards Christianity and the concept of God". In 1886, Nietzsche broke with his publisher Ernst Schmeitzner, disgusted by his antisemitic opinions. Nietzsche saw his own writings as "completely buried and in this anti-Semitic dump" of Schmeitzner—associating the publisher with

2990-412: A letter of February 1884, he wrote: The Gay Science The Gay Science ( German : Die fröhliche Wissenschaft ; sometimes translated as The Joyful Wisdom or The Joyous Science ) is a book by Friedrich Nietzsche published in 1882, and followed by a second edition in 1887 after the completion of Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil . This substantial expansion includes

3120-417: A mirror and sees the face of a devil instead of his own; he takes this as a sign that his doctrines are being distorted by his enemies, and joyfully descends the mountain to recover his lost disciples. More discourses follow, which continue to develop the themes of the death of God and the rise of the Übermensch , and also introduce the concept of the will to power . There are hints, however, that Zarathustra

3250-459: A more coherent perspective. Thereafter, he saw his work as completed for a time and hoped that soon a readership would develop. In fact, interest in Nietzsche's thought did increase at this time, if rather slowly and imperceptibly to him. During these years Nietzsche met Meta von Salis , Carl Spitteler , and Gottfried Keller . In 1886, his sister Elisabeth married the antisemite Bernhard Förster and travelled to Paraguay to found Nueva Germania ,

3380-401: A movement that should be "utterly rejected with cold contempt by every sensible mind". He then printed Beyond Good and Evil at his own expense. He also acquired the publication rights for his earlier works and over the next year issued second editions of The Birth of Tragedy , Human, All Too Human , Daybreak , and of The Gay Science with new prefaces placing the body of his work in

3510-515: A music and literature club, during his summers in Naumburg. At Schulpforta, Nietzsche received an important grounding in languages— Greek , Latin , Hebrew , and French—so as to be able to read important primary sources ; he also experienced for the first time being away from his family life in a small-town conservative environment. His end-of-semester exams in March 1864 showed a 1 in Religion and German;

3640-463: A new vision – a shepherd choking on a black serpent which has crept into his throat. At Zarathustra's urging, the shepherd bites the serpent's head off and spits it out. In that moment, the shepherd is transformed into a laughing, radiant being, something greater than human. Zarathustra continues his journey, delivering more discourses inspired by his observations. Arriving at his mountain cave, he remains there for some time, reflecting on his mission. He

3770-510: A number of weeks together in Leipzig in October 1882, the following month Rée and Salomé left Nietzsche, leaving for Stibbe (today Zdbowo in Poland) without any plans to meet again. Nietzsche soon fell into a period of mental anguish, although he continued to write to Rée, stating "We shall see one another from time to time, won't we?" In later recriminations, Nietzsche would blame on separate occasions

3900-401: A person. Above all, do not mistake me for someone else." In December, Nietzsche began a correspondence with August Strindberg and thought that, short of an international breakthrough, he would attempt to buy back his older writings from the publisher and have them translated into other European languages. Moreover, he planned the publication of the compilation Nietzsche contra Wagner and of

4030-522: A piano composition sent by Nietzsche in 1871 to Wagner's wife Cosima . German conductor and pianist Hans von Bülow also described another of Nietzsche's pieces as "the most undelightful and the most anti-musical draft on musical paper that I have faced in a long time". While at Schulpforta, Nietzsche pursued subjects that were considered unbecoming. He became acquainted with the work of the then almost-unknown poet Friedrich Hölderlin , calling him "my favorite poet" and writing an essay in which he said that

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4160-718: A position in philosophy at Basel. In 1873, Nietzsche began to accumulate notes that would be posthumously published as Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks . Between 1873 and 1876, he published four separate long essays: " David Strauss : the Confessor and the Writer", " On the Use and Abuse of History for Life ", "Schopenhauer as Educator", and "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth". These four later appeared in

4290-502: A profound effect on the young man. In addition, Ludwig Feuerbach 's The Essence of Christianity influenced young Nietzsche with its argument that people created God, and not the other way around. In June 1865, at the age of 20, Nietzsche wrote to his sister Elisabeth, who was deeply religious, a letter regarding his loss of faith. This letter contains the following statement: Hence the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be

4420-403: A prologue that sets up many of the themes that will be explored throughout the work. Zarathustra is introduced as a hermit who has lived ten years on a mountain with his two companions, an eagle and a serpent. One morning – inspired by the sun, which is happy only when it shines upon others – Zarathustra decides to return to the world and share his wisdom. Upon descending the mountain, he encounters

4550-455: A saint living in a forest, who spends his days praising God. Zarathustra marvels that the saint has not yet heard that " God is dead ". Arriving at the nearest town, Zarathustra addresses a crowd which has gathered to watch a tightrope walker . He tells them that mankind's goal must be to create something superior to itself – a new type of human, the Übermensch . All men, he says, must be prepared to will their own destruction in order to bring

4680-484: A single volume in 1887. The fourth part was written in 1885. While Nietzsche retained mental capacity and was involved in the publication of his works, forty copies of the fourth part were printed at his own expense and distributed to his closest friends, to whom he expressed "a vehement desire never to have the Fourth Part made public". In 1889, however, Nietzsche became significantly incapacitated . In March 1892 part four

4810-453: A student, this yoke was his work with Diogenes Laertius . Even with that work he strongly opposed received opinion. With subsequent and properly philosophical work he continued to oppose received opinion. His books leading up to Zarathustra have been described as nihilistic destruction. Such nihilistic destruction combined with his increasing isolation and the rejection of his marriage proposals (to Lou Andreas-Salomé ) devastated him. While he

4940-403: A supper for his guests, which is enlivened by songs and arguments, and ends in the facetious worship of a donkey. The higher men thank Zarathustra for relieving them of their distress and teaching them to be content with life. The following morning, outside his cave, Zarathustra encounters a lion and a flock of doves, which he interprets as a sign that those whom he calls his children are near. As

5070-413: A thought experiment, to see how one would react, or as a sort of ultimate expression of life-affirmation, as if one should desire eternal recurrence. As a normative principle, it has been thought of as a measure or standard, akin to a "moral rule". Nietzsche studied extensively and was very familiar with Schopenhauer and Christianity and Buddhism, each of which he considered nihilistic and "enemies to

5200-609: A time when he was considering giving up philology for science, he accepted. To this day, Nietzsche is still among the youngest of the tenured Classics professors on record. Nietzsche's 1870 projected doctoral thesis , "Contribution toward the Study and the Critique of the Sources of Diogenes Laertius" (" Beiträge zur Quellenkunde und Kritik des Laertius Diogenes "), examined the origins of the ideas of Diogenes Laërtius . Though never submitted, it

5330-498: A treatment for syphilis at the time of Nietzsche's death, has also been suggested. In 1898 and 1899, Nietzsche suffered at least two strokes. They partially paralysed him, leaving him unable to speak or walk. He likely suffered from clinical hemiparesis /hemiplegia on the left side of his body by 1899. After contracting pneumonia in mid-August 1900, he had another stroke during the night of 24–25 August and died at about noon on 25 August. Elisabeth had him buried beside his father at

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5460-547: A tutor to help her to understand her brother's philosophy. Steiner abandoned the attempt after only a few months, declaring that it was impossible to teach her anything about philosophy. Nietzsche's insanity was originally diagnosed as tertiary syphilis , in accordance with a prevailing medical paradigm of the time. Although most commentators regard his breakdown as unrelated to his philosophy, Georges Bataille wrote poetically of his condition ("'Man incarnate' must also go mad") and René Girard 's postmortem psychoanalysis posits

5590-987: A wide range of topics, including art , philology , history , music , religion , tragedy , culture , and science , and drew inspiration from Greek tragedy as well as figures such as Zoroaster , Arthur Schopenhauer , Ralph Waldo Emerson , Richard Wagner , Fyodor Dostoevsky , and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe . After his death, Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth became the curator and editor of his manuscripts. She edited his unpublished writings to fit her German ultranationalist ideology, often contradicting or obfuscating Nietzsche's stated opinions, which were explicitly opposed to antisemitism and nationalism . Through her published editions, Nietzsche's work became associated with fascism and Nazism . 20th-century scholars such as Walter Kaufmann , R. J. Hollingdale , and Georges Bataille defended Nietzsche against this interpretation, and corrected editions of his writings were soon made available. Nietzsche's thought enjoyed renewed popularity in

5720-659: A worshipful rivalry with Richard Wagner . Girard suggests that Nietzsche signed his final letters as both Dionysus and the Crucified One because he was demonstrating that by being a god (Dionysus), one is also a victim (Crucified One) since a god still suffers by overcoming the law. Nietzsche had previously written, "All superior men who were irresistibly drawn to throw off the yoke of any kind of morality and to frame new laws had, if they were not actually mad, no alternative but to make themselves or pretend to be mad." (Daybreak, 14) The diagnosis of syphilis has since been challenged and

5850-482: Is allegedly "well-known that as a term, Nietzsche’s Übermensch derives from Lucian of Samosata 's hyperanthropos". This hyperanthropos, or "overman," appears in Lucian's Menippean satire Κατάπλους ἢ Τύραννος , usually translated Downward Journey or The Tyrant . This hyperanthropos is "imagined to be superior to others of 'lesser' station in this-worldly life and the same tyrant after his (comically unwilling) transport into

5980-493: Is as a teacher of doctrines". Nonetheless Thus Spoke Zarathustra "has contributed most to the public perception of Nietzsche as philosopher – namely, as the teacher of the 'doctrines' of the will to power , the overman and the eternal return ". Nietzsche's thinking was significantly influenced by the thinking of Arthur Schopenhauer . Schopenhauer emphasised will, and particularly will to live . Nietzsche emphasised Wille zur Macht , or will to power. Nietzsche

6110-476: Is clear is that Nietzsche was at least interested in nihilism. As far as nihilism touched other people, at least, metaphysical understandings of the world were progressively undermined until people could contend that "God is dead". Without God, humanity was greatly devalued. Without metaphysical or supernatural lenses, humans could be seen as animals with primitive drives which were or could be sublimated. According to Hollingdale, this led to Nietzsche's ideas about

6240-503: Is disgusted at humanity's pettiness, and despairs at the thought of the eternal recurrence of such an insignificant race. Eventually, however, he discovers his own longing for eternity, and sings a song in celebration of eternal return . Zarathustra begins to grow old as he remains secluded in his cave. One day, he is visited by a soothsayer, who says that he has come to tempt Zarathustra to his final sin – compassion ( mitleiden , which can also be translated as "pity"). A loud cry of distress

6370-431: Is heard, and the soothsayer tells Zarathustra that "the higher man" is calling to him. Zarathustra is alarmed, and rushes to the aid of the higher man. Searching through his domain for the person who uttered the cry for help, Zarathustra encounters a series of characters representative of various aspects of humanity. He engages each of them in conversation, and ends by inviting each one to await his return in his cave. After

6500-444: Is holding something back. A series of dreams and visions prompt him to reveal this secret teaching, but he cannot bring himself to do so. He withdraws from his disciples once more, in order to perfect himself. While journeying home, Zarathustra is waylaid by the spirit of gravity, a dwarf-like creature which clings to his back and whispers taunts into his ear. Zarathustra at first becomes despondent, but then takes courage; he challenges

6630-543: Is in Rabelais 's Gargantua and Pantagruel ("gai sçavoir"). It was derived from a Provençal expression ( gai saber ) for the technical skill required for poetry-writing. Johann Gottfried Herder elaborated on this in letters 85, 90, and 102 (1796) of his Letters for the Advancement of Humanity . The expression proved durable and was used as late as 19th-century American English by Ralph Waldo Emerson and E. S. Dallas . It

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6760-463: Is misleading if it suggests natural sciences—clearly inappropriate in this case, where "scholarship" is preferable, implying humanities. The book is usually placed within Nietzsche's middle period, during which his work extolled the merits of science, skepticism , and intellectual discipline as routes to mental freedom. In The Gay Science , Nietzsche experiments with the notion of power but does not advance any systematic theory. The affirmation of

6890-455: Is the ultimate liberator of the spirit... I doubt that such pain makes us 'better'; but I know that it makes us more profound. This is representative of amor fati , the general outlook on life that he articulates in section 276: I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who makes things beautiful. Amor fati : let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what

7020-437: Is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer. The book contains Nietzsche's first consideration of the idea of the eternal recurrence , a concept which would become critical in his next work Thus Spoke Zarathustra and underpins much of the later works. What if some day or night

7150-474: Is what the name Zarathustra means in my mouth. Thus, "[a]s Nietzsche admits himself, by choosing the name of Zarathustra as the prophet of his philosophy in a poetical idiom, he wanted to pay homage to the original Aryan prophet as a prominent founding figure of the spiritual-moral phase in human history, and reverse his teachings at the same time, according to his fundamental critical views on morality . The original Zoroastrian world-view interpreted being on

7280-416: Is when Zarathustra says that "the soul is only a word for something about the body". It has been often repeated in some way that Nietzsche takes with one hand what he gives with the other. Accordingly, interpreting what he wrote has been notoriously slippery. One of the most vexed points in discussions of Nietzsche has been whether or not he was a nihilist. Though arguments have been made for either side, what

7410-537: The Bildungsbürgertum , a sort of highly cultivated middle class. By the time he was a teenager, he had been writing music and poetry. His aunt Rosalie gave him a biography of Alexander von Humboldt for his 15th birthday, and reading this inspired a love of learning "for its own sake". The schools he attended, the books he read, and his general milieu fostered and inculcated his interests in Bildung , or self-development,

7540-536: The University of Bonn in the hope of becoming a minister . For a short time, he and Deussen became members of the Burschenschaft Frankonia . After one semester (and to the anger of his mother), he stopped his theological studies and lost his faith. As early as his 1862 essay "Fate and History", Nietzsche had argued that historical research had discredited the central teachings of Christianity, but David Strauss 's Life of Jesus also seems to have had

7670-517: The gai saber or gaia scienza . In a similar vein, in Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche observed that, ... love as passion —which is our European speciality—[was invented by] the Provençal knight-poets, those magnificent and inventive human beings of the "gai saber" to whom Europe owes so many things and almost owes itself. The original English translation as Joyful Wisdom is more comprehensible to

7800-411: The Übermensch into being. The crowd greets this speech with scorn and mockery, and meanwhile the tightrope show begins. When the rope-dancer is halfway across, a clown comes up behind him, urging him to get out of the way. The clown then leaps over the rope-dancer, causing the latter to fall to his death. The crowd scatters; Zarathustra takes the corpse of the rope-dancer on his shoulders, carries it into

7930-421: The 1960s and his ideas have since had a profound impact on 20th- and early 21st-century thinkers across philosophy—especially in schools of continental philosophy such as existentialism , postmodernism , and post-structuralism —as well as art, literature, music, poetry, politics, and popular culture. Born on 15 October 1844, Nietzsche grew up in the town of Röcken (now part of Lützen ), near Leipzig , in

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8060-561: The Buddhist doctrine of emptiness was an initiatory stage leading to a reawakening". Nietzsche dismissed Schopenhauer and Christianity and Buddhism as pessimistic and nihilistic, but, according to Benjamin A. Elman, "[w]hen understood on its own terms, Buddhism cannot be dismissed as pessimistic or nihilistic". Moreover, answers which Nietzsche assembled to the questions he was asking, not only generally but also in Zarathustra , put him "very close to some basic doctrines found in Buddhism". An example

8190-602: The Italian cities of Genoa , Rapallo , and Turin and the French city of Nice . In 1881, when France occupied Tunisia , he planned to travel to Tunis to view Europe from the outside but later abandoned that idea, probably for health reasons. Nietzsche occasionally returned to Naumburg to visit his family, and, especially during this time, he and his sister Elisabeth had repeated periods of conflict and reconciliation. While in Genoa , Nietzsche's failing eyesight prompted him to explore

8320-458: The Madman who is searching for God. He accuses us all of being the murderers of God. "'Where is God?' he cried; 'I will tell you. We have killed him —you and I. All of us are his murderers..." Nietzsche#Insanity and death (1889–1900) Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German classical scholar , philosopher , and critic of culture , who became one of

8450-604: The Mistral", an exuberant dancing song in which, if I may say so, one dances right over morality, is a perfect Provençalism. This alludes to the birth of modern European poetry that occurred in Provence around the 11th century, whereupon, after the culture of the troubadours fell into almost complete desolation and destruction due to the Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229), other poets in the 14th century ameliorated and thus cultivated

8580-407: The Provençal tradition (invoked through the book's title) is also one of a joyful "yea-saying" to life . Nietzsche's love of fate naturally leads him to confront the reality of suffering in a radical way. For to love that which is necessary demands not only that we love the bad along with the good, but that we view the two as inextricably linked. In section 3 of the preface, he writes: Only great pain

8710-479: The Prussian Province of Saxony . He was named after King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia , who turned 49 on the day of Nietzsche's birth (Nietzsche later dropped his middle name Wilhelm). Nietzsche's great-grandfather, Gotthelf Engelbert Nietzsche  [ ja ] (1714–1804), was an inspector and a philosopher. Nietzsche's grandfather, Friedrich August Ludwig Nietzsche  [ de ] (1756–1826),

8840-430: The addition of a fifth book to the existing four books of The Gay Science , as well as an appendix of songs. It was described by Nietzsche as "the most personal of all my books", and contains more poems than any of his other works. The book's title, in the original German and in translation, uses a phrase that was well known at the time in many European cultures and had specific meaning. One of its earliest literary uses

8970-579: The art of poetry." In Ecce Homo , Nietzsche refers to the poems in the Appendix of The Gay Science , saying they were ... written for the most part in Sicily, are quite emphatically reminiscent of the Provençal concept of gaia scienza —that unity of singer , knight , and free spirit which distinguishes the wonderful early culture of the Provençals from all equivocal cultures. The very last poem above all, "To

9100-534: The art of running after women!" Nietzsche enjoyed the attention he gave to the beginning of the Bayreuth Festival . In 1870, he gave Cosima Wagner the manuscript of "The Genesis of the Tragic Idea" as a birthday gift. In 1872, Nietzsche published his first book, The Birth of Tragedy . However, his colleagues within his field, including Ritschl, expressed little enthusiasm for the work in which Nietzsche eschewed

9230-483: The awakening of his philosophical interest to reading Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation and later admitted that Schopenhauer was one of the few thinkers whom he respected, dedicating the essay " Schopenhauer as Educator " in the Untimely Meditations to him. In 1866, he read Friedrich Albert Lange 's History of Materialism . Lange's descriptions of Kant 's anti-materialistic philosophy,

9360-494: The basis of the universality of the moral values and saw the whole world as an arena of the struggle between two fundamental moral elements, Good and Evil, depicted in two antagonistic divine figures [ Ahura Mazda and Ahriman ]. Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, in contrast, puts forward his ontological immoralism and tries to prove and reestablish the primordial innocence of beings by destroying philosophically all moralistic interpretations and evaluations of being". The book begins with

9490-409: The character of Zarathustra in this work "are almost always analogical and figurative". Though there is no consensus about what Zarathustra means when he speaks, there is some consensus about that which he speaks. Thus Spoke Zarathustra deals with ideas about the Übermensch , the death of God , the will to power , and eternal recurrence . Nietzsche was born into, and largely remained within,

9620-473: The church in Röcken near Lützen . His friend and secretary Gast gave his funeral oration, proclaiming: "Holy be your name to all future generations!" Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche compiled The Will to Power from Nietzsche's unpublished notebooks and published it posthumously in 1901. Because his sister arranged the book based on her own conflation of several of Nietzsche's early outlines and took liberties with

9750-526: The classical philologic method in favour of a more speculative approach. In his polemic Philology of the Future , Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff damped the book's reception and increased its notoriety. In response, Rohde (then a professor in Kiel ) and Wagner came to Nietzsche's defence. Nietzsche remarked freely about the isolation he felt within the philological community and attempted unsuccessfully to transfer to

9880-695: The clinic and, in May 1890, brought him to her home in Naumburg. During this process Overbeck and Gast contemplated what to do with Nietzsche's unpublished works. In February, they ordered a fifty-copy private edition of Nietzsche contra Wagner , but the publisher C. G. Naumann secretly printed one hundred. Overbeck and Gast decided to withhold publishing The Antichrist and Ecce Homo because of their more radical content. Nietzsche's reception and recognition enjoyed their first surge. In 1893, Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth returned from Nueva Germania in Paraguay following

10010-597: The contrast, which is not always possible to bring out in translation, except by coinages. An example is untergang ( lit. 'down-going'), which is used in German to mean 'setting' (as in, of the sun), but also 'sinking', 'demise', 'downfall', or 'doom'. Nietzsche pairs this word with its opposite übergang ('over-going'), used to mean 'transition'. Another example is übermensch ('overman' or 'superman'). Nietzsche considered Thus Spoke Zarathustra his magnum opus , writing: With [ Thus Spoke Zarathustra ] I have given mankind

10140-516: The direction of Otto Binswanger . In January 1889, they proceeded with the planned release of Twilight of the Idols , by that time already printed and bound. From November 1889 to February 1890, the art historian Julius Langbehn attempted to cure Nietzsche, claiming that the methods of the medical doctors were ineffective in treating Nietzsche's condition. Langbehn assumed progressively greater control of Nietzsche until his secretiveness discredited him. In March 1890, Franziska removed Nietzsche from

10270-414: The end of On the Genealogy of Morality a new work with the title The Will to Power : Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values , he seems to have abandoned this idea and, instead, used some of the draft passages to compose Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist in 1888. His health improved and he spent the summer in high spirits. In the autumn of 1888, his writings and letters began to reveal

10400-446: The failure in his attempts to woo Salomé on Salomé, Rée, and on the intrigues of his sister (who had written letters to the families of Salomé and Rée to disrupt the plans for the commune). Nietzsche wrote of the affair in 1883, that he now felt "genuine hatred for my sister". Amidst renewed bouts of illness, living in near-isolation after a falling out with his mother and sister regarding Salomé, Nietzsche fled to Rapallo, where he wrote

10530-455: The famous formulation " God is dead "; this can be found in later works such as Thus Spoke Zarathustra . After Buddha was dead, people showed his shadow for centuries afterwards in a cave,—an immense frightful shadow. God is dead: but as the human race is constituted, there will perhaps be caves for millenniums yet, in which people will show his shadow.—And we—we have still to overcome his shadow! Section 125 depicts The Parable of

10660-495: The first part of Also Sprach Zarathustra in only ten days. By 1882, Nietzsche was taking huge doses of opium and continued to have trouble sleeping. In 1883, while staying in Nice, he was writing out his own prescriptions for the sedative chloral hydrate , signing them "Dr. Nietzsche". He turned away from the influence of Schopenhauer , and after he severed his social ties with Wagner, Nietzsche had few remaining friends. Now, with

10790-507: The first time later that year. In 1869, with Ritschl's support, Nietzsche received an offer to become a professor of classical philology at the University of Basel in Switzerland. He was only 24 years old and had neither completed his doctorate nor received a teaching certificate (" habilitation "). He was awarded an honorary doctorate by Leipzig University in March 1869, again with Ritschl's support. Despite his offer coming at

10920-403: The first to expose it. Not only because he has had longer and greater experience of the subject than any other thinker,—all history is indeed the experimental refutation of the theory of the so-called moral order of things,—but because of the more important fact that Zarathustra was the most truthful of thinkers. In his teaching alone is truthfulness upheld as the highest virtue —that is to say, as

11050-512: The forest, and lays it in a hollow tree. He decides that from this point on, he will no longer attempt to speak to the masses, but only to a few chosen disciples. There follows a series of discourses in which Zarathustra overturns many of the precepts of Christian morality. He gathers a group of disciples, but ultimately abandons them, saying that he will not return until they have disowned him. Zarathustra retires to his mountain cave, and several years pass by. One night, he dreams that he looks into

11180-478: The galleys for almost all of Nietzsche's work. On at least one occasion, on 23 February 1880, the usually poor Gast received 200 marks from their mutual friend, Paul Rée. Gast was one of the very few friends Nietzsche allowed to criticise him. In responding most enthusiastically to Also Sprach Zarathustra ("Thus Spoke Zarathustra"), Gast did feel it necessary to point out that what were described as "superfluous" people were in fact quite necessary. He went on to list

11310-445: The greatest present that has ever been made to it so far. This book, with a voice bridging centuries, is not only the highest book there is, the book that is truly characterized by the air of the heights—the whole fact of man lies beneath it at a tremendous distance—it is also the deepest , born out of the innermost wealth of truth, an inexhaustible well to which no pail descends without coming up again filled with gold and goodness. In

11440-404: The higher men emerge from the cave, the lion roars at them, causing them to cry out and flee. Their cry reminds Zarathustra of the soothsayer's prediction that he would be tempted into feeling compassion for the higher man. He declares that this is over, and that from this time forward he will think of nothing but his work. Scholars have argued that "the worst possible way to understand Zarathustra

11570-582: The horse, threw his arms around its neck to protect it, then collapsed to the ground. In the following few days, Nietzsche sent short writings—known as the Wahnzettel or Wahnbriefe (literally "Delusion notes" or "letters")—to a number of friends including Cosima Wagner and Jacob Burckhardt . Most of them were signed " Dionysus ", though some were also signed "der Gekreuzigte" meaning "the crucified one". To his former colleague Burckhardt, Nietzsche wrote: I have had Caiaphas put in fetters . Also, last year I

11700-786: The idea and suggested that they be joined by his friend Nietzsche. The two met Nietzsche in Rome in April 1882, and Nietzsche is believed to have instantly fallen in love with Salomé, as Rée had done. Nietzsche asked Rée to propose marriage to Salomé, which she rejected. She had been interested in Nietzsche as a friend, but not as a husband. Nietzsche nonetheless was content to join with Rée and Salomé touring through Switzerland and Italy together, planning their commune. The three travelled with Salomé's mother through Italy and considered where they would set up their "Winterplan" commune. They intended to set up their commune in an abandoned monastery, but no suitable location

11830-512: The letter he had received from Nietzsche to Overbeck. The following day, Overbeck received a similar letter and decided that Nietzsche's friends had to bring him back to Basel. Overbeck travelled to Turin and brought Nietzsche to a psychiatric clinic in Basel. By that time Nietzsche appeared fully in the grip of a serious mental illness, and his mother Franziska decided to transfer him to a clinic in Jena under

11960-465: The material, the scholarly consensus has been that it does not reflect Nietzsche's intent. (For example, Elisabeth removed aphorism 35 of The Antichrist , where Nietzsche rewrote a passage of the Bible.) Indeed, Mazzino Montinari , the editor of Nietzsche's Nachlass , called it a forgery. Yet, the endeavour to rescue Nietzsche's reputation by discrediting The Will to Power often leads to scepticism about

12090-485: The modern reader given the contrasting modern English meanings of "gay" and "science". The German fröhlich can be translated "happy" or "joyful", cognate to the original meanings of "gay" in English and other languages. However Wissenschaft is not "wisdom" (wisdom = Weisheit ), but a propensity toward any rigorous practice of a poised, controlled, and disciplined quest for knowledge. The common English translation "science"

12220-488: The most influential of all modern thinkers. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in Switzerland in 1869, at the age of 24, but resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered

12350-460: The new style of Zarathustra , his work became even more alienating, and the market received it only to the degree required by politeness. Nietzsche recognised this and maintained his solitude, though he often complained. His books remained largely unsold. In 1885, he printed only 40 copies of the fourth part of Zarathustra and distributed a fraction of them among close friends, including Helene von Druskowitz . In 1883, he tried and failed to obtain

12480-548: The number of people Epicurus , for example, had to rely on to supply his simple diet of goat cheese. To the end of his life, Gast and Overbeck remained consistently faithful friends. Malwida von Meysenbug remained like a motherly patron even outside the Wagner circle. Soon Nietzsche made contact with the music-critic Carl Fuchs. Nietzsche stood at the beginning of his most productive period. Beginning with Human, All Too Human in 1878, Nietzsche published one book or major section of

12610-434: The past is the very fact that he was the exact 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 realm of metaphysics , as force, cause, end-in-itself, is his work. But the very question suggests its own answer. Zarathustra created this most portentous of all errors,— morality ; therefore he must be

12740-491: The philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard in the 1870s, wrote to Nietzsche asking him to read Kierkegaard , to which Nietzsche replied that he would come to Copenhagen and read Kierkegaard with him. However, before fulfilling this promise, Nietzsche slipped too far into illness. At the beginning of 1888, Brandes delivered in Copenhagen one of the first lectures on Nietzsche's philosophy. Although Nietzsche had previously announced at

12870-481: The poems that made up his collection Dionysian-Dithyrambs . On 3 January 1889, Nietzsche suffered a mental breakdown . Two policemen approached him after he caused a public disturbance in the streets of Turin . What happened remains unknown, but an often-repeated tale from shortly after his death states that Nietzsche witnessed the flogging of a horse at the other end of the Piazza Carlo Alberto, ran to

13000-400: The poet raised consciousness to "the most sublime ideality". The teacher who corrected the essay gave it a good mark but commented that Nietzsche should concern himself in the future with healthier, more lucid, and more "German" writers. Additionally, he became acquainted with Ernst Ortlepp , an eccentric, blasphemous , and often drunken poet who was found dead in a ditch weeks after meeting

13130-468: The publication in 1878 of Human, All Too Human (a book of aphorisms ranging from metaphysics to morality to religion), a new style of Nietzsche's work became clear, highly influenced by Afrikan Spir 's Thought and Reality and reacting against the pessimistic philosophy of Wagner and Schopenhauer. Nietzsche's friendship with Deussen and Rohde cooled as well. In 1879, after a significant decline in health, Nietzsche had to resign his position at Basel and

13260-686: The punctuation and the repetitions all enhance the musicality. The title is Thus Spoke Zarathustra . Much of the book is what Zarathustra said. What Zarathustra says is throughout so highly parabolic, metaphorical, and aphoristic. Rather than state various claims about virtues and the present age and religion and aspirations, Zarathustra speaks about stars, animals, trees, tarantulas, dreams, and so forth. Explanations and claims are almost always analogical and figurative. Nietzsche would often appropriate masks and models to develop himself and his thoughts and ideas, and to find voices and names through which to communicate. While writing Zarathustra , Nietzsche

13390-400: The reverse of the cowardice of the " idealist " who takes to his heels at the sight of reality. Zarathustra has more pluck in his body than all other thinkers put together. To tell the truth and to aim straight: that is the first Persian virtue. Have I made myself clear? ... The overcoming of morality by itself, through truthfulness, the moralist's overcoming of himself in his opposite—in me—that

13520-490: The rise of European Materialism , Europe's increased concern with science, Charles Darwin 's theory of evolution , and the general rebellion against tradition and authority intrigued Nietzsche greatly. Nietzsche would ultimately argue the impossibility of an evolutionary explanation of the human aesthetic sense. In 1867, Nietzsche signed up for one year of voluntary service with the Prussian artillery division in Naumburg. He

13650-428: The spirit to hear the "abysmal thought" which he has so far refrained from speaking. This is the doctrine of eternal recurrence . Time, says Zarathustra, is infinite, stretching both forward and backward into eternity. This means that everything that happens now must have happened before, and that every moment must continue to repeat itself eternally. As he speaks, Zarathustra hears a dog howl in terror, and then he sees

13780-548: The suicide of her husband. She studied Nietzsche's works and, piece by piece, took control of their publication. Overbeck was dismissed and Gast finally co-operated. After the death of Franziska in 1897, Nietzsche lived in Weimar , where Elisabeth cared for him and allowed visitors, including Rudolf Steiner (who in 1895 had written Friedrich Nietzsche: A Fighter Against His Time , one of the first books praising Nietzsche), to meet her uncommunicative brother. Elisabeth employed Steiner as

13910-517: The summer of 1883 and he "found" the second part. Nietzsche was in Nice the following winter and he "found" the third part. According to Nietzsche in Ecce Homo it was "scarcely one year for the entire work", and ten days each part. More broadly, however, he said in a letter: "The whole of Zarathustra is an explosion of forces that have been accumulating for decades". In January 1884, Nietzsche finished

14040-487: The third part and thought the book finished. But by November he expected a fourth part to be finished by January. He also mentioned a fifth and sixth part leading to Zarathustra's death, "or else he will give me no peace". But after the fourth part was finished he called it "a fourth (and last) part of Zarathustra , a kind of sublime finale, which is not at all meant for the public". The first three parts were initially published individually and were first published together in

14170-500: The traumatic effects of battle. He also contracted diphtheria and dysentery . Walter Kaufmann speculates that he also contracted syphilis at a brothel along with his other infections at this time. On returning to Basel in 1870, Nietzsche observed the establishment of the German Empire and Otto von Bismarck 's subsequent policies as an outsider and with a degree of scepticism regarding their genuineness. His inaugural lecture at

14300-474: The underworld". Nietzsche celebrated Goethe as an actualisation of the Übermensch. Nietzsche includes some brief writings on eternal recurrence in his earlier book The Gay Science . Zarathustra also appears in that book. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra , the eternal recurrence is, according to Nietzsche, the "fundamental idea of the work". Interpretations of the eternal recurrence have mostly revolved around cosmological and attitudinal and normative principles. As

14430-875: The university was " Homer and Classical Philology ". Nietzsche also met Franz Overbeck , a professor of theology who remained his friend throughout his life. Afrikan Spir , a little-known Russian philosopher responsible for the 1873 Thought and Reality and Nietzsche's colleague, the historian Jacob Burckhardt , whose lectures Nietzsche frequently attended, began to exercise significant influence on him. Nietzsche had already met Richard Wagner in Leipzig in 1868 and later Wagner's wife, Cosima. Nietzsche admired both greatly and during his time at Basel frequently visited Wagner's house in Tribschen in Lucerne . The Wagners brought Nietzsche into their most intimate circle—which included Franz Liszt , of whom Nietzsche colloquially described: "Liszt or

14560-473: The use of typewriters as a means of continuing to write. He is known to have tried using the Hansen Writing Ball , a contemporary typewriter device. In the end, a past student of his, Peter Gast , became a private secretary to Nietzsche. In 1876, Gast transcribed the crabbed, nearly illegible handwriting of Nietzsche's first time with Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. He subsequently transcribed and proofread

14690-420: The value of his late notes, even of his whole Nachlass . However, his Nachlass and The Will to Power are distinct. General commentators and Nietzsche scholars, whether emphasising his cultural background or his language, overwhelmingly label Nietzsche as a "German philosopher." Others do not assign him a national category. While Germany had not yet been unified into a single sovereign state, Nietzsche

14820-447: The will to power. Likewise, " Sublimated will to power was now the Ariadne 's thread tracing the way out of the labyrinth of nihilism". The nature of the text is musical and operatic. While working on it Nietzsche wrote "of his aim 'to become Wagner's heir'". Nietzsche thought of it as akin to a symphony or opera. "No lesser a symphonist than Gustav Mahler corroborates: 'His Zarathustra

14950-475: The young Nietzsche but who may have introduced Nietzsche to the music and writing of Richard Wagner . Perhaps under Ortlepp's influence, he and a student named Richter returned to school drunk and encountered a teacher, resulting in Nietzsche's demotion from first in his class and the end of his status as a prefect . After graduation in September 1864, Nietzsche began studying theology and classical philology at

15080-408: Was a theologian. Nietzsche's parents, Carl Ludwig Nietzsche (1813–1849), a Lutheran pastor and former teacher; and Franziska Nietzsche  [ de ] ( née Oehler) (1826–1897), married in 1843, the year before their son's birth. They had two other children: a daughter, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche , born in 1846; and a second son, Ludwig Joseph, born in 1848. Nietzsche's father died from

15210-466: Was also used in deliberately inverted form, by Thomas Carlyle in " the dismal science ", to criticize the emerging discipline of economics by comparison with poetry. The book's title was first translated into English as The Joyful Wisdom , but The Gay Science has become the common translation since Walter Kaufmann 's version in the 1960s. Kaufmann cites The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1955) that lists "The gay science (Provençal gai saber ):

15340-475: Was born completely from the spirit of music, and is even "symphonically constructed"'". Nietzsche later draws special attention to "the tempo of Zarathustra's speeches" and their "delicate slowness"  – "from an infinite fullness of light and depth of happiness drop falls after drop, word after word" – as well as the necessity of " hearing properly the tone that issues from his mouth, this halcyon tone". The length of paragraphs and

15470-508: Was crucified by the German doctors in a very drawn-out manner. Wilhelm , Bismarck , and all anti-Semites abolished. Additionally, he commanded the German emperor to go to Rome to be shot and summoned the European powers to take military action against Germany, writing also that the pope should be put in jail and that he, Nietzsche, created the world and was in the process of having all anti-Semites shot dead. On 6 January 1889, Burckhardt showed

15600-406: Was deeply disappointed by the Bayreuth Festival of 1876, where the banality of the shows and baseness of the public repelled him. He was also alienated by Wagner's championing of "German culture", which Nietzsche felt a contradiction in terms, as well as by Wagner's celebration of his fame among the German public. All this contributed to his subsequent decision to distance himself from Wagner. With

15730-421: Was easily misconstrued. Nietzsche's interpretations of Buddhism were coloured by his study of Schopenhauer, and it is "clear that Nietzsche, as well as Schopenhauer, entertained inaccurate views of Buddhism". An egregious example has been the idea of śūnyatā as "nothingness" rather than "emptiness". "Perhaps the most serious misreading we find in Nietzsche's account of Buddhism was his inability to recognize that

15860-620: Was found. On 13 May, in Lucerne, when Nietzsche was alone with Salomé, he earnestly proposed marriage to her again, which she rejected. He nonetheless was happy to continue with the plans for an academic commune. After discovering the relationship, Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth became determined to get Nietzsche away from the "immoral woman". Nietzsche and Salomé spent the summer together in Tautenburg in Thuringia, often with Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth as

15990-582: Was later published as a Gratulationsschrift ('congratulatory publication') in Basel . Before moving to Basel, Nietzsche renounced his Prussian citizenship: for the rest of his life he remained officially stateless . Nevertheless, Nietzsche served in the Prussian forces during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) as a medical orderly . In his short time in the military, he experienced much and witnessed

16120-462: Was not a systematic philosopher and left much of what he wrote open to interpretation. Receptive fascists are said to have misinterpreted the will to power, having overlooked Nietzsche's distinction between Kraft ("force" or "strength") and Macht ("power" or "might"). Scholars have often had recourse to Nietzsche's notebooks, where will to power is described in ways such as "willing-to-become-stronger [ Stärker-werden-wollen ], willing growth". It

16250-455: Was offered a scholarship to study at the internationally recognised Schulpforta . The claim that Nietzsche was admitted on the strength of his academic competence has been debunked: his grades were not near the top of the class. He studied there from 1858 to 1864, becoming friends with Paul Deussen and Carl von Gersdorff (1844–1904), who later became a jurist. He also found time to work on poems and musical compositions. Nietzsche led "Germania",

16380-544: Was particularly influenced by "the language of Luther and the poetic form of the Bible". But Zarathustra also frequently alludes to or appropriates from Hölderlin 's Hyperion and Goethe 's Faust and Emerson 's Essays , among other things. It is generally agreed that the sorcerer is based on Wagner and the soothsayer is based on Schopenhauer. The original text contains a great deal of word-play . For instance, words beginning with über ('over, above') and unter ('down, below') are often paired to emphasise

16510-796: Was pensioned. Since his childhood, various disruptive illnesses had plagued him, including moments of shortsightedness that left him nearly blind, migraine headaches, and violent indigestion. The 1868 riding accident and diseases in 1870 may have aggravated these persistent conditions, which continued to affect him through his years at Basel, forcing him to take longer and longer holidays until regular work became impractical. Living on his pension from Basel along with aid from friends, Nietzsche travelled frequently to find climates more conducive to his health. He lived until 1889 as an independent author in different cities. He spent many summers in Sils Maria near St. Moritz in Switzerland, and many of his winters in

16640-498: Was published separately, and the following July the four parts were published in a single volume. In the 1888 Ecce Homo , Nietzsche explains what he meant by making the Persian figure of Zoroaster the protagonist of his book: People have never asked me as they should have done, what the name of Zarathustra precisely meant in my mouth, in the mouth of the first immoralist ; for that which distinguishes this Persian from all others in

16770-483: Was regarded as one of the finest riders among his fellow recruits, and his officers predicted that he would soon reach the rank of captain . However, in March 1868, while jumping into the saddle of his horse, Nietzsche struck his chest against the pommel and tore two muscles in his left side, leaving him exhausted and unable to walk for months. Consequently, he turned his attention to his studies again, completing them in 1868. Nietzsche also met Richard Wagner for

16900-451: Was working on Zarathustra he was walking very much. The imagery of his walks mingled with his physical and emotional and intellectual pains and his prior decades of hard work. What "erupted" was Thus Spoke Zarathustra . Nietzsche has said that the central idea of Zarathustra is the eternal recurrence . He has also said that this central idea first occurred to him in August 1881: he was near

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