Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Origins

Nietzsche wrote in Ecce Homo that the central idea of Zarathustra occurred to him by a "pyramidal block of stone" on the shores of Lake Silvaplana.Nietzsche's first note on the "eternal recurrence", written "at the beginning of August 1881 in Sils-Maria, 6000 ft above sea level and much higher above all human regards! -" Nachlass, notebook M III 1, p. 53.

Nietzsche was born into, and largely remained within, the Bildungsbürgertum, a sort of highly cultivated middle class.[2] By the time he was a teenager, he had been writing music and poetry.[3][4] 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".[5] The schools he attended, the books he read, and his general milieu fostered and inculcated his interests in Bildung, or self-development, 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,[6] which also bears relevance into Zarathustra. Nietzsche's growing distaste toward philology, however, was yoked with his growing taste toward philosophy. As 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.[7] His books leading up to Zarathustra have been described as nihilistic destruction.[7] Such nihilistic destruction combined with his increasing isolation and the rejection of his marriage proposals (to Lou Andreas-Salomé) devastated him.[7] While he was working on Zarathustra he was walking very much.[7] 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.[7]

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 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".[8]

A few weeks after meeting this idea, he paraphrased in a notebook something written by Friedrich von Hellwald about Zarathustra.[9] This paraphrase was developed into the beginning of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.[9]

A year and a half after making that paraphrase, Nietzsche was living in Rapallo.[9] 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".[10] 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".[10]

Nietzsche returned to "the sacred place" in the summer of 1883 and he "found" the second part".[9]

Nietzsche was in Nice the following winter and he "found" the third part.[9]

According to Nietzsche in Ecce Homo it was "scarcely one year for the entire work", and ten days each part.[9] More broadly, however, he said in a letter: "The whole of Zarathustra is an explosion of forces that have been accumulating for decades".[10]

In January 1884 Nietzsche had finished the third part and thought the book finished.[9] But by November he expected a fourth part to be finished by January.[9] He also mentioned a fifth and sixth part leading to Zarathustra's death, "or else he will give me no peace".[10] 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".[10]

The first three parts were initially published individually and were first published together in a single volume in 1887. The fourth part was written in 1885.[9] 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".[9] In 1889, however, Nietzsche became significantly incapacitated. In March 1892 part four was published separately, and the following July the four parts were published in a single volume.[9]


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