After the song of the wanderer and shadow, the cave became all at once full of noise and laughter: and since the assembled guests all spake simultaneously, and even the ass, encouraged thereby, no longer remained…
Zarathustra slips out of the noisy cave and speaks to his animals. He is mildly scornful of the guests but pleased, and takes their growing thankfulness as the best sign.
Read in the book →This day is a victory: he already yieldeth, he fleeth, THE SPIRIT OF GRAVITY, mine old arch-enemy! How well this day is about to end, which began so badly and gloomily!
Zarathustra rejoices that the day's heaviness is lifting.
Read in the book →All on a sudden however, Zarathustra’s ear was frightened: for the cave which had hitherto been full of noise and laughter, became all at once still as death;—his nose, however, smelt a sweet-scented vapour and…
The cave falls silent and fills with incense. Zarathustra looks in and finds all the higher men kneeling and praying to the ass, and the ugliest man begins a litany.
Read in the book →Amen! And glory and honour and wisdom and thanks and praise and strength be to our God, from everlasting to everlasting! —The ass, however, here brayed YE-A. He carrieth our burdens, he hath taken upon him the form of a…
The ugliest man chants a litany praising the ass as a patient, silent, burden-bearing God beyond good and evil. After each verse the ass brays 'YE-A'.
Read in the book →This is an experiment in interactive reading, and in using AI to help you grow. Thus Spake Zarathustra is notoriously difficult for a modern reader; yet taken as a set of mental exercises, it is guaranteed to transform your thinking by the time you reach the end. Along the way you will have help from the companion, who is always beside the book.
Do you accept the challenge?
What the critics said
Mencken describes Zarathustra as a remote sage attended by a snake and an eagle whose discourses recall the biblical rhapsodists, and argues that toward the end Nietzsche indulges in blasphemy, with a parody of the last supper, the disciples' worship of a jackass, and Wagner and other enemies appearing thinly veiled as buffoons.
Ludovici reads the higher men's worship of the ass as a warning that thinkers who regain confidence in believing as such fall victim to the narrowest superstitions, alluding to pagan charges that Christians were ass-worshippers and to medieval asinaria festa.