The nature of the text is musical and operatic.[9] While working on it Nietzsche wrote "of his aim 'to become Wagner's heir'".[9] Nietzsche thought of it as akin to a symphony or opera.[9] "No lesser a symphonist than Gustav Mahler corroborates: 'His Zarathustra was born completely from the spirit of music, and is even "symphonically constructed"'".[9] 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".[9]
The length of paragraphs and the punctuation and the repetitions all enhance the musicality.[9] 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.[22]
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.[23] While writing Zarathustra, Nietzsche was particularly influenced by "the language of Luther and the poetic form of the Bible".[9] 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 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').
