motif Zarathustra's sickness at the thought of the small man's return, and his convalescence into the teacher of recurrence.
But I asked once, and suffocated almost with my question: What? is the rabble also NECESSARY for life?
The loathing that nearly suffocates him is a sickness of disgust at the small and common, which he must overcome.
Read in the book →What hath happened unto me? How have I freed myself from loathing? Who hath rejuvenated mine eye? How have I flown to the height where no rabble any longer sit at the wells? Did my loathing itself create for me wings…
His loathing itself gives him wings and recovers his eyes, and he is now a summer-noontide.
Read in the book →Verily, said he unto his disciples, a little while, and there cometh the long twilight. Alas, how shall I preserve my light through it! That it may not smother in this sorrowfulness! To remoter worlds shall it be a…
Zarathustra is sickened by the prophecy; he fasts, loses his speech and falls into a deep sleep, a first sickness before the later ones.
Read in the book →Thus spake the disciple; and all the others then thronged around Zarathustra, grasped him by the hands, and tried to persuade him to leave his bed and his sadness, and return unto them. Zarathustra, however, sat upright…
Zarathustra's eye changes, he knows his disciples again and recovers by ordering a meal.
Read in the book →The grave-diggers dig for themselves diseases. Under old rubbish rest bad vapours. One should not stir up the marsh. One should live on mountains. With blessed nostrils do I again breathe mountain-freedom. Freed at last…
His soul sneezes 'Health to thee!' as it recovers from the human stench.
Read in the book →One morning, not long after his return to his cave, Zarathustra sprang up from his couch like a madman, crying with a frightful voice, and acting as if some one still lay on the couch who did not wish to rise.…
The summons ends in a cry of disgust that begins the sickness.
Read in the book →Hardly, however, had Zarathustra spoken these words, when he fell down as one dead, and remained long as one dead. When however he again came to himself, then was he pale and trembling, and remained lying; and for long…
After the collapse Zarathustra lies for seven days and slowly begins to recover.
Read in the book →—O ye wags and barrel-organs! answered Zarathustra, and smiled once more, how well do ye know what had to be fulfilled in seven days:— —And how that monster crept into my throat and choked me! But I bit off its head and…
Zarathustra is still sick from the struggle with the monster in his throat.
Read in the book →The great disgust at man—IT strangled me and had crept into my throat: and what the soothsayer had presaged: “All is alike, nothing is worth while, knowledge strangleth.” A long twilight limped on before me, a fatally…
The thought that even the smallest man returns eternally is the sickness and great disgust.
Read in the book →“Do not speak further, thou convalescent!”—so answered his animals, “but go out where the world waiteth for thee like a garden. Go out unto the roses, the bees, and the flocks of doves! Especially, however, unto the…
Singing is the consolation Zarathustra devised for himself and is for the convalescent.
Read in the book →“Good manners?” replied angrily and bitterly the other king: “what then do we run out of the way of? Is it not ‘good manners’? Our ‘good society’? Better, verily, to live among anchorites and goatherds, than with our…
His repeated 'loathing' echoes the disgust that Zarathustra himself must overcome.
Read in the book →“What do I here seek?” answered he: “the same that thou seekest, thou mischief-maker; that is to say, happiness upon earth. To that end, however, I would fain learn of these kine. For I tell thee that I have already…
The beggar names disgust as the great present affliction and prescribes the cows' rumination against it.
Read in the book →Thus spake the peaceful one, and puffed himself and perspired with his words: so that the kine wondered anew. Zarathustra, however, kept looking into his face with a smile, all the time the man talked so severely—and…
The beggar's severity is shown to be forced; his gentle nature seeks sweet food and rest after disgust.
Read in the book →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 reads the guests' noise and laughter as a sign of recovery and calls them 'convalescents'.
Read in the book →And once more began Zarathustra to speak. “O my new friends,” said he,— “ye strange ones, ye higher men, how well do ye now please me,— —Since ye have again become joyful! Ye have, verily, all blossomed forth: it…
Zarathustra reads the guests' festival as a sign that they are convalescents, since only convalescents devise such things.
Read in the book →Brandes says that war service hardened Nietzsche against softness and turned him from Schopenhauer's pity and Wagner's romanticism, and that his long illness freed him from piety and pessimism ('a sufferer has no right to pessimism'), made him a philosopher who questioned every value, and issued in a convalescent's passionate joy in life and creation.
Biographical root of the motif: sickness ends in the convalescent's exuberant desire for health and creative power.
Förster-Nietzsche reports that Nietzsche's notes use 'Superman' for the most thoroughly well-constituted type as opposed to modern man, that he treated Zarathustra himself as an example of it, and that in Ecce Homo he named 'great healthiness', described in Gay Science 382, as the physiological condition of this type.
Great health is health constantly sacrificed and regained, 'always healthy again'.
Mencken says that in Zarathustra Nietzsche treats recurrence as a philosophical speculation that well-nigh drives the prophet mad, quoting the passage in which Zarathustra will return with this sun, earth, eagle and serpent to the same life, to teach again the eternal recurrence of all things.
Notes that the thought well-nigh drives Zarathustra mad.
Ludovici argues that Zarathustra's cry of 'Disgust!' at his abysmal thought shows how far Nietzsche fell short of his own ideal of the man who cries da capo to all existence: his life of illness, disappointment and snubs made it impossible for him to think of eternal recurrence without loathing.
The disgust is traced to Nietzsche's own suffering life.
Ludovici explains that Zarathustra, after rebuking the higher men, sees the ass-festival as foolish but necessary, a recreation for wise men devised by convalescents, and bids them celebrate it again out of love for themselves and him.
Only the convalescent devise such festivals.
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?
Nietzsche elsewhere
Nietzsche says that the type Zarathustra rests on 'great healthiness', a health constantly sacrificed and regained, and quotes Joyful Wisdom 382 on the ideal of a spirit who out of superabundant power plays with everything hitherto called holy and good, a humanly superhuman well-being that parodies all past solemnity and with which great earnestness and tragedy begin.
Health as perpetual recovery: dangerously healthy, forever regaining what is sacrificed.