Nietzsche considered Thus Spoke Zarathustra his magnum opus, writing:
With [Thus Spoke Zarathustra] I have given mankind 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.
— Ecce Homo, "Preface" §4, translated by W. Kaufmann
In a letter of February 1884, he wrote:
With Zarathustra I believe I have brought the German language to its culmination. After Luther and Goethe there was still a third step to be made.[9]
To this, Parkes has said: "Many scholars believe that Nietzsche managed to make that step".[9] But critical opinion varies extremely. The book is "a masterpiece of literature as well as philosophy"[9] and "in large part a failure".[22]
The style of the book, along with its ambiguity and paradoxical nature, has helped its eventual enthusiastic reception by the reading public, but has frustrated academic attempts at analysis (as Nietzsche may have intended). Thus Spoke Zarathustra remained unpopular as a topic for scholars (especially those in the Anglo-American analytic tradition) until the latter half of the 20th century brought widespread interest in Nietzsche and his unconventional style.[24]
The critic Harold Bloom criticized Thus Spoke Zarathustra in The Western Canon (1994), calling the book "a gorgeous disaster" and "unreadable".[25] Other commentators have suggested that Nietzsche's style is intentionally ironic for much of the book.
