doctrine Creating as the great deliverance from suffering; the creator needs companions, not corpses or herds; must become a child born anew.
Long slept Zarathustra; and not only the rosy dawn passed over his head, but also the morning. At last, however, his eyes opened, and amazedly he gazed into the forest and the stillness, amazedly he gazed into himself.…
The creator seeks fellow-creators and reapers who write new values on new tables, not corpses or believers.
Read in the book →Companions, the creator seeketh, not corpses—and not herds or believers either.
Compact statement of what the creator wants from others.
Read in the book →But tell me, my brethren, what the child can do, which even the lion could not do? Why hath the preying lion still to become a child? Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling…
The game of creating requires innocence and a new beginning.
Read in the book →Once on a time, Zarathustra also cast his fancy beyond man, like all backworldsmen. The work of a suffering and tortured God, did the world then seem to me. The dream—and diction—of a God, did the world then seem to me;…
The God he created was human work, born of his own ashes, and it withdrew when he surpassed himself.
Read in the book →A new pride taught me mine ego, and that teach I unto men: no longer to thrust one’s head into the sand of celestial things, but to carry it freely, a terrestrial head, which giveth meaning to the earth!
The valuing ego is what gives things measure and value.
Read in the book →To the despisers of the body will I speak a word. That they despise is caused by their esteem. What is it that created esteeming and despising and worth and will? The creating Self created for itself esteeming and…
The creating Self creates esteeming and despising, joy and woe, and makes spirit as a hand to its will.
Read in the book →Even in your folly and despising ye each serve your Self, ye despisers of the body. I tell you, your very Self wanteth to die, and turneth away from life. No longer can your Self do that which it desireth most:—create…
The Self's deepest desire is to create beyond itself; despisers who can no longer do so wish to succumb.
Read in the book →And thou, red judge, if thou would say audibly all thou hast done in thought, then would every one cry: “Away with the nastiness and the virulent reptile!” But one thing is the thought, another thing is the deed, and…
The criminal is shown as a man unable to bear the idea of his own deed, a weak reason crushed by what the soul wanted.
Read in the book →Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood.
Opening statement of the chapter: real creation costs the creator his own life-blood.
Read in the book →Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit. It is no easy task to understand unfamiliar blood; I hate the reading idlers. He…
Writing worth loving is written with one's own blood, as lived experience that is spirit, not as something produced for an audience.
Read in the book →Many a soul one will never discover, unless one first invent it.
Even understanding another soul is presented as a creative act.
Read in the book →In the world even the best things are worthless without those who represent them: those representers, the people call great men. Little do the people understand what is great—that is to say, the creating agency. But…
The people cannot grasp the creating agency; the world revolves invisibly around the devisers of new values.
Read in the book →Away from the market-place and from fame taketh place all that is great: away from the market-place and from fame have ever dwelt the devisers of new values.
Creators of new values live apart from fame, like deep fountains that are slow to know what has fallen into them.
Read in the book →Verily, men have given unto themselves all their good and bad. Verily, they took it not, they found it not, it came not unto them as a voice from heaven. Values did man only assign to things in order to maintain…
Value exists only through the act of valuation, so the valuator is the creator of the world's significance.
Read in the book →Valuing is creating: hear it, ye creating ones!
Compact statement that valuation is itself the creative act.
Read in the book →Creating ones were first of all peoples, and only in late times individuals; verily, the individual himself is still the latest creation. Peoples once hung over them tables of the good. Love which would rule and love…
Good and bad were created by loving ones, with a fire of love and of wrath in every virtue's name.
Read in the book →Many lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples: no greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than the creations of the loving ones—“good” and “bad” are they called. Verily, a prodigy is this power of praising and…
Humanity has not yet created a common goal, so it is itself still to be created.
Read in the book →Not the neighbour do I teach you, but the friend. Let the friend be the festival of the earth to you, and a foretaste of the Superman. I teach you the friend and his overflowing heart. But one must know how to be a…
The friend carries a complete world to give, growing good out of evil and purpose out of chance.
Read in the book →Art thou a new strength and a new authority? A first motion? A self-rolling wheel? Canst thou also compel stars to revolve around thee? Alas! there is so much lusting for loftiness! There are so many convulsions of the…
Only a new strength, a first motion, can set up its own good and bad.
Read in the book →Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way to thyself! And past thyself and thy seven devils leadeth thy way! A heretic wilt thou be to thyself, and a wizard and a soothsayer, and a fool, and a doubter, and a reprobate, and…
He creates a God out of his own devils, and the loving one creates because he despises what he loves.
Read in the book →With thy love, go into thine isolation, my brother, and with thy creating; and late only will justice limp after thee. With my tears, go into thine isolation, my brother. I love him who seeketh to create beyond himself,…
Zarathustra loves the one who creates beyond himself and perishes by it.
Read in the book →I have a question for thee alone, my brother: like a sounding-lead, cast I this question into thy soul, that I may know its depth. Thou art young, and desirest child and marriage. But I ask thee: Art thou a man ENTITLED…
The child is to be a living monument to the man's own victory and freedom, a higher body and a creating one.
Read in the book →Marriage: so call I the will of the twain to create the one that is more than those who created it.
Marriage is tied to creating something higher than its creators.
Read in the book →Your love to woman, and woman’s love to man—ah, would that it were sympathy for suffering and veiled deities! But generally two animals alight on one another. But even your best love is only an enraptured simile and a…
The creator's thirst and longing are an arrow toward what lies beyond him.
Read in the book →Here paused Zarathustra awhile, and looked lovingly on his disciples. Then he continued to speak thus—and his voice had changed: Remain true to the earth, my brethren, with the power of your virtue! Let your bestowing…
Disciples are to be fighters and creators who determine the value of everything anew.
Read in the book →My impatient love overfloweth in streams,—down towards sunrise and sunset. Out of silent mountains and storms of affliction, rusheth my soul into the valleys. Too long have I longed and looked into the distance. Too…
Like all creators, he tires of the old speech and treads new paths with a new tongue.
Read in the book →God is a conjecture: but I do not wish your conjecturing to reach beyond your creating will. Could ye CREATE a God?—Then, I pray you, be silent about all Gods! But ye could well create the Superman. Not perhaps ye…
Knowing means making everything humanly conceivable, so that the world is created by the knowers in their own image.
Read in the book →Creating—that is the great salvation from suffering, and life’s alleviation.
Creating redeems suffering, but the creator must undergo much transformation, bitter dying and the pangs of the child-bearer.
Read in the book →Willing emancipateth: that is the true doctrine of will and emancipation—so teacheth you Zarathustra.
Even knowing is described as the will's procreating delight.
Read in the book →Away from God and Gods did this will allure me; what would there be to create if there were—Gods! But to man doth it ever impel me anew, my fervent creative will; thus impelleth it the hammer to the stone. Ah, ye men,…
The creative will drives him to man as a hammer to stone, to free the image sleeping in it.
Read in the book →better to have done evilly than to have thought pettily!
Even the possessed man is told he has a path to greatness.
Read in the book →All great love is above all its pity: for it seeketh—to create what is loved!
Love that creates what it loves rises above pity, so creators are hard.
Read in the book →Eagerly and with shouts drove they their flock over their foot-bridge; as if there were but one foot-bridge to the future! Verily, those shepherds also were still of the flock! Small spirits and spacious souls had those…
A teaching that comes out of one's own burning counts for more than going through fire for a teaching.
Read in the book →And the spirit’s happiness is this: to be anointed and consecrated with tears as a sacrificial victim,—did ye know that before? And the blindness of the blind one, and his seeking and groping, shall yet testify to the…
The discerning one learns to build with mountains, and spirit is an anvil with a cruel hammer, not just sparks.
Read in the book →Verily, I say unto you: good and evil which would be everlasting—it doth not exist! Of its own accord must it ever surpass itself anew. With your values and formulae of good and evil, ye exercise power, ye valuing ones:…
The greatest evil belongs to the greatest good, which is the creating good.
Read in the book →all suppressed truths become poisonous.
Truths that break old things clear the ground, since many a house is still to be built.
Read in the book →To be sure, I love in him the shoulders of the ox: but now do I want to see also the eye of the angel. Also his hero-will hath he still to unlearn: an exalted one shall he be, and not only a sublime one:—the ether…
The hero must transform his conquered monsters and enigmas into heavenly children rather than merely subdue them.
Read in the book →This, yea this, is bitterness to my bowels, that I can neither endure you naked nor clothed, ye present-day men! All that is unhomelike in the future, and whatever maketh strayed birds shiver, is verily more homelike…
The creator believed in his presaging dreams, while these unfruitful men cannot create and so cannot believe.
Read in the book →Oh, ye sentimental dissemblers, ye covetous ones! Ye lack innocence in your desire: and now do ye defame desiring on that account! Verily, not as creators, as procreators, or as jubilators do ye love the earth! Where is…
Innocence and beauty belong to the one who wills to create beyond himself, not to mere onlookers.
Read in the book →Where is innocence? Where there is will to procreation.
Innocence is located in procreative, creating will.
Read in the book →But I came NIGH unto you: then came to me the day,—and now cometh it to you,—at an end is the moon’s love affair! See there! Surprised and pale doth it stand—before the rosy dawn! For already she cometh, the glowing…
The sun's love for the sea is innocent, creative desire, the opposite of the moon's cold gaze.
Read in the book →Innocence and creative desire, is all solar love!
Sets creative desire against the moon's guilty, contemplative love.
Read in the book →Too long did my soul sit hungry at their table: not like them have I got the knack of investigating, as the knack of nut-cracking. Freedom do I love, and the air over fresh soil; rather would I sleep on ox-skins than on…
Zarathustra is scorched by his own thought and needs the open air, unlike those who only investigate.
Read in the book →And this is the account of Zarathustra’s interview with the fire-dog: The earth, said he, hath a skin; and this skin hath diseases. One of these diseases, for example, is called “man.” And another of these diseases is…
Lasting change is made quietly, by creators of values, not by loud overthrowers.
Read in the book →The greatest events—are not our noisiest, but our stillest hours.
Creation happens inaudibly.
Read in the book →When Zarathustra had spoken thus unto the hunchback, and unto those of whom the hunchback was the mouthpiece and advocate, then did he turn to his disciples in profound dejection, and said: Verily, my friends, I walk…
Zarathustra's task is to compose the fragments, riddles and fearful chances into a unity.
Read in the book →Away from those fabulous songs did I lead you when I taught you: “The Will is a creator.” All “It was” is a fragment, a riddle, a fearful chance—until the creating Will saith thereto: “But thus would I have it.”— Until…
The creating will answers every 'It was' with 'Thus would I have it; thus shall I will it'.
Read in the book →Do ye know the terror of him who falleth asleep?— To the very toes he is terrified, because the ground giveth way under him, and the dream beginneth. This do I speak unto you in parable. Yesterday at the stillest hour…
The still voice answers each excuse: 'Speak thy word, and succumb', and he who would remove mountains must remove valleys too.
Read in the book →It is the stillest words which bring the storm.
A famous line: the greatest changes come from quiet thoughts, not loud speech.
Read in the book →Companions did the creating one once seek, and children of HIS hope: and lo, it turned out that he could not find them, except he himself should first create them. Thus am I in the midst of my work, to my children…
The creator can find companions only by first creating them, and so must perfect himself for their sake.
Read in the book →Meanwhile do I sail along on uncertain seas; chance flattereth me, smooth-tongued chance; forward and backward do I gaze—, still see I no end. As yet hath the hour of my final struggle not come to me—or doth it come to…
He sends his happiness to bless his children instead of keeping it.
Read in the book →For all things are baptized at the font of eternity, and beyond good and evil; good and evil themselves, however, are but fugitive shadows and damp afflictions and passing clouds. Verily, it is a blessing and not a…
He frees things from bondage under purpose by teaching that no eternal Will wills over them.
Read in the book →With rope-ladders learned I to reach many a window, with nimble legs did I climb high masts: to sit on high masts of perception seemed to me no small bliss;— —To flicker like small flames on high masts: a small light,…
Each must find a path of his own through testing and questioning, with no universal road.
Read in the book →“This—is now MY way,—where is yours?” Thus did I answer those who asked me “the way.” For THE way—it doth not exist!
The closing formula rejects a single path and sends each to find his own.
Read in the book →It is he, however, who createth man’s goal, and giveth to the earth its meaning and its future: he only EFFECTETH it THAT aught is good or bad.
The creator sets man's goal and gives the earth its meaning.
Read in the book →It is my sympathy with all the past that I see it is abandoned,— —Abandoned to the favour, the spirit and the madness of every generation that cometh, and reinterpreteth all that hath been as its bridge! A great…
The new nobility are procreators, cultivators and sowers of the future.
Read in the book →He who hath grown wise concerning old origins, lo, he will at last seek after the fountains of the future and new origins.— O my brethren, not long will it be until NEW PEOPLES shall arise and new fountains shall rush…
New peoples will arise like new fountains in the earthquake of the old.
Read in the book →O my brethren! With whom lieth the greatest danger to the whole human future? Is it not with the good and just?— —As those who say and feel in their hearts: “We already know what is good and just, we possess it also;…
The good cannot create, and hate the one who devises his own virtue.
Read in the book →This new table, O my brethren, put I up over you: BECOME HARD!—
Creators are hard and press their hands on millenniums as on wax.
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…
Man's baddest is necessary for his best, and the baddest is the hardest stone for the highest creator.
Read in the book →O my soul, to thy domain gave I all wisdom to drink, all new wines, and also all immemorially old strong wines of wisdom. O my soul, every sun shed I upon thee, and every night and every silence and every longing:—then…
The soul, fed with every sun, night and wine of wisdom, has grown into a heavy vine of golden grapes.
Read in the book →But wilt thou not weep, wilt thou not weep forth thy purple melancholy, then wilt thou have to SING, O my soul!—Behold, I smile myself, who foretell thee this: —Thou wilt have to sing with passionate song, until all…
Song is the outlet for what cannot be wept; it calls forth the nameless deliverer, the vintager, to whom future songs will give names.
Read in the book →If ever a breath hath come to me of the creative breath, and of the heavenly necessity which compelleth even chances to dance star-dances: If ever I have laughed with the laughter of the creative lightning, to which the…
The creative breath and the lightning of the deed make the earth a table of new creative dice-casts.
Read in the book →LAUGHING LIONS must come!
He has made himself poor for the children he calls his living plantation and life-trees of his will.
Read in the book →Ye creating ones, ye higher men! One is only pregnant with one’s own child. Do not let yourselves be imposed upon or put upon! Who then is YOUR neighbour? Even if ye act “for your neighbour”—ye still do not create for…
The creator is pregnant only with his own child, and his work is his true neighbour.
Read in the book →Brandes paraphrases maxims of Zarathustra's new tables: spare not thy neighbour, there is no requital, beware of the good who never speak the truth, a new nobility that loves its children's land and so redeems the past, trial marriages, push what is falling, reserve oneself for worthier foes, and the creators are hard.
The creators are hard, pressing their hand on future centuries as on wax.
Mencken argues that because morality is relative it is the antithesis of truth, and that Nietzsche therefore rejected all fixed moral codes and all gods, priests and rulers, holding that a man should replace 'good and evil' with his own valuations of good and bad, judging every act by its effect on his own welfare and that of his children.
Frames the creating of one's own morality as the task left after the old codes are rejected.
Ludovici reads the three metamorphoses as the development of every creator of new values, ending in a second childhood, and argues that it disowns anarchy: only by first bearing the existing law like the camel does the free spirit gain the strength to master the dragon 'Thou shalt' and promulgate new law.
To create one must become as a little child.
Ludovici reads 'The Child with the Mirror' as Nietzsche's grief at the misinterpretation of his writings, and says it hints that a creator of new values is most obstructed by language itself, whose words are stamped with the race's long-ruling values, hence the obscurity of original thinkers.
The creator of values must struggle against language that carries the old values.
Ludovici says that in 'In the Happy Isles' Nietzsche overcomes the pessimism that godlessness brings by pointing to creating as salvation from suffering, the Superman supplying the cheerfulness to face a world without God.
Creating is the surest salvation from the suffering of higher life.
Ludovici argues that Zarathustra's interview with the fire-dog, easily dismissed as fantasy, is important because it confronts the spirit of revolution that Nietzsche most loathed, and shows that for him the world turns inaudibly around inventors of new values, not of new noise.
The world revolves around the inventors of new values.
Ludovici argues that the fool of 'On Passing-by' is Nietzsche's extreme opposite and his imitator, the iconoclast who destroys out of resentment and revenge, with whom the public confuses Nietzsche, who destroys out of love; Zarathustra's rebuke of him should warn readers against associating Nietzsche with noisy revolutionists.
Those who destroy out of love are creators.
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 Zarathustra was written under an inspiration of revelatory force: thoughts flashed like lightning without choice, in an ecstasy where painful parts were required shades of light, and images offered themselves involuntarily, as Zarathustra says, 'all things came to one, and offered themselves as similes'.
Creation experienced as involuntary reception rather than seeking: 'one hears, one does not seek'.
Nietzsche says that outside the brief creative bursts the Zarathustra years were years of unparalleled distress: the completed great work turns against its author, an uncanny silence and impenetrable solitude surround him, and those near him revolt at the distance he makes felt.
Every creative act exhausts the defensive forces and leaves the author helpless before small things.
Nietzsche says that only Dionysus suffers as in the Night-Song, whose answer would be Ariadne, and that Zarathustra's life-task, which is also his own, is a yea-saying that justifies and redeems all that is past, quoting the passage on recasting fragments and turning every 'it was' into 'thus would I have it'.
Creativity as recasting fragments, riddles and dismal accidents into one piece.
Nietzsche says that for Zarathustra man is neither an object of love nor of pity but raw material, an ugly stone for the sculptor's chisel, quoting the passage where the creative will drives the hammer against the stone to free the Superman's image; a Dionysian task needs the hardness of the hammer and the joy even of destruction, 'all creators are hard'.
The creator's will drives away from gods toward man, to be shaped like stone.
Nietzsche says that the command 'Harden yourselves!' and the conviction that all creators are hard are the distinctive sign of a Dionysian nature.
Hardness as the mark of the creator.
Nietzsche says that the formula for his destiny is found in Zarathustra's words that whoever would create in good and evil must first be a destroyer and break values, and that his Dionysian nature cannot separate the negative deed from saying Yea; as the first immoralist he is essentially the annihilator.
The greatest evil belongs to the greatest good, the creative good.