Incipit tragoedia.32 – When Zarathustra33 was thirty years old, he left his homeland and Lake Urmi and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and solitude, and did not tire of that for ten years. But at last his heart changed – and one morning he arose with rosy dawn, stepped before the sun, and spoke to it thus: ‘You great heavenly body! What would your happiness be if you did not have those for whom you shine! For ten years you have climbed up to my cave; without me, my eagle, and my snake, you would have become tired of your light and of this road; but we awaited you every morning, relieved you of your overabundance, and blessed you for it. Behold, I am sick of my wisdom, like a bee that has collected too much honey; I need outstretched hands; I would like to give away and distribute until the wise among humans once again enjoy their folly and the poor once again their riches. For that I must step into the depths, as you do in the evening when you go behind the sea and bring light even to the underworld, you over-rich heavenly body! Like you I must go under, as it is called by the human beings to whom I want to descend. So bless me then, you calm eye that can look without envy upon all-too-great happiness! Bless the cup that wants to overflow in order that the water may flow golden from it and everywhere carry the reflection of your bliss! Behold, this cup wants to become empty again, and Zarathustra wants to become human again.’ Thus began Zarathustra’s going under.
1 ‘I am, therefore I think: I think, therefore I am.’ In the second of his Meditations, Descartes argued that as long as he thought he could be sure he existed.
2 ‘love of (one’s) fate’
3 Epicurus thought common views about the gods were completely erroneous; they in fact lived a perfectly happy and contented life, and this meant that they had no interest in or involvement with the human world at all.
4 ‘contemplative life’
5 ‘religious life’
6 ‘higher’
7 See above, Book 11, footnote 31, p. 88.
8 German mystic (1260–1327). This dictum is to be found in his Predigten und Schriften (Frankfurt and Hamburg, 1956) p. 195.
9 See above, Book III, footnote 17, p. 125.
10 ‘contemplative power’
11 ‘creative power’
12 Some of the ancient biographies of Homer state that at the end of his life he was deeply chagrined – some even say he died of chagrin – because he was unable to solve a riddle put to him by some young fishermen. The riddle: ‘What we caught we left behind; what we didn’t catch we carry with us.’ (Answer: lice. Not having any luck with their fishing, they sat down to delouse each other. The lice they caught, they discarded; those they missed were still on their persons.) See Vita Herodotea, 492–516, Certamen, 321–38, Plutarchi Vita, 62–71 etc.
13 ‘opinion’
14 For further information about this sect see P. J. André, Contribution d l’étude des confréries musulmanes (Algiers, 1956), pp. 216ff.
15 Epicurus (see above, Book I, footnote 34, p. 59, and Book IV, footnote 4, p. 157), when he was about thirty-five, bought a house in Athens with a garden, setting up there a school of philosophy which came to be known as ‘The Garden’.
16 In the epic poem Gerusalemme Liberata 1575) by Torquato Tasso (1544–95), the enchantress Armida has a magic garden into which she entices men.
17 Matthew 4:17
18 A lasting state of character, not a temporary state of being affected one way or another
19 ‘in mid-life’
20 ‘leisure’
21 ‘the contemplative life’
22 ‘war’
23 ‘since the desire for fame is the last thing even the wise are able to rid themselves of’; Tacitus (first century AD) Histories IV .6
24 ‘not to laugh at or lament over or despise, but to understand’; Spinoza (see above, Book I, footnote 28, p. 55) Ethica, Book III, Praefatio
25 Reversal of common German expression ‘Everyone is closest to himself’; cf. Andria IV.i.12 by the Roman comedy-writer Terence (second century Be).
26 Motto inscribed over the entrance to the oracle of Apollo at Delphi
27 In the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) Kant argued that the great concepts of traditional speculation – God, the soul, freedom – did not designate objects about which it was even in principle possible for us to know anything. This seemed to spell the end of traditional metaphysics and theology. In the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), however, Kant seemed to argue that the morality required us to accept as ‘postulates of pure practical reason’ a number of principles such as the existence of God and the continuation of some form of life after death. This was thought by many to reintroduce the possibility of a version of the theology it had been the great glory of his earlier work to terminate. ‘The categorical imperative’ is Kant’s fundamental principle of morality.
28 ‘Life – a woman’
29 Plato, Gorgias 498e and Philebus 59e-60a
30 See also above, § 36, p. 54.
31 See Plato, Phaedo i16–18, esp. I18a.5–8. Asclepius was the god of healing and a rooster would have been a usual thank-offering to him from someone whom he had cured of an illness. Nietzsche’s interpretation of what Socrates said was not standard in the ancient world, and became common only in the Renaissance. It is rejected by some modern scholars.
32 ‘The tragedy begins’. At this point, on completing Book IV, Nietzsche went on to write Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra), the most prophetic in style among his philosophical works, in 1883–5. He added Book V to The Gay Science in 1887.
33 Nietzsche takes the name from that of the Persian religious thinker of the seventh/sixth century BC who propagated a strongly dualistic doctrine, sharply distinguishing between good and evil.