doctrine Everything returns; the thought first glimpsed at the gateway 'This Moment', which Zarathustra must learn to will and affirm.
THE SPIRIT OF REVENGE: my friends, that hath hitherto been man’s best contemplation; and where there was suffering, it was claimed there was always penalty. “Penalty,” so calleth itself revenge. With a lying word it…
The madness also speaks of existence as eternally recurring deed and guilt, a distorted version of recurrence.
Read in the book →“Halt, dwarf!” said I. “Either I—or thou! I, however, am the stronger of the two:—thou knowest not mine abysmal thought! IT—couldst thou not endure!” Then happened that which made me lighter: for the dwarf sprang from…
Zarathustra argues that whatever can happen has already happened in the eternity behind, so all things, even this moment, must return.
Read in the book →The name of the gateway is inscribed above: ‘This Moment.’
The moment is the meeting point of past and future eternities.
Read in the book →Thus did I speak, and always more softly: for I was afraid of mine own thoughts, and arrear-thoughts. Then, suddenly did I hear a dog HOWL near me. Had I ever heard a dog howl thus? My thoughts ran back. Yes! When I was…
Fear of his own abysmal thought breaks the vision off; the dog's howl recalls a childhood midnight.
Read in the book →Ah, abysmal thought, which art MY thought! When shall I find strength to hear thee burrowing, and no longer tremble? To my very throat throbbeth my heart when I hear thee burrowing! Thy muteness even is like to strangle…
The unnamed abysmal thought that he carries but has not yet dared to call up is the thought of recurrence.
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.…
Zarathustra calls up his most abysmal thought, the advocate of 'the circuit', and it answers from his depth.
Read in the book →—“O Zarathustra,” said then his animals, “to those who think like us, things all dance themselves: they come and hold out the hand and laugh and flee—and return. Everything goeth, everything returneth; eternally rolleth…
The animals recite the ring of existence: everything goes, returns, breaks and is built anew.
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…
Recurrence is the horror because the small man comes back too.
Read in the book →For thine animals know it well, O Zarathustra, who thou art and must become: behold, THOU ART THE TEACHER OF THE ETERNAL RETURN,—that is now THY fate!
The animals name Zarathustra the teacher of recurrence and set out the doctrine of the great year.
Read in the book →And if thou wouldst now die, O Zarathustra, behold, we know also how thou wouldst then speak to thyself:—but thine animals beseech thee not to die yet! Thou wouldst speak, and without trembling, buoyant rather with…
He would return to this identical life, not a new or better one, to teach recurrence again.
Read in the book →O my soul, I have taught thee to say “to-day” as “once on a time” and “formerly,” and to dance thy measure over every Here and There and Yonder. O my soul, I delivered thee from all by-places, I brushed down from thee…
The new names 'Fate', 'the Circuit of circuits' and 'the Navel-string of time' point to the circling of time and the nearness of past and future.
Read in the book →Thereupon did Life look thoughtfully behind and around, and said softly: “O Zarathustra, thou art not faithful enough to me! Thou lovest me not nearly so much as thou sayest; I know thou thinkest of soon leaving me.…
Zarathustra whispers a secret into Life's ear as the booming midnight clock is mentioned; the hidden content leads into the twelve strokes of the next section.
Read in the book →_One!_ O man! Take heed! _Two!_ What saith deep midnight’s voice indeed? _Three!_ “I slept my sleep— _Four!_ “From deepest dream I’ve woke and plead:— _Five!_ “The world is deep, _Six!_ “And deeper than the day could…
The midnight verse ends with joy wanting deep, profound eternity.
Read in the book →“But joys all want eternity—
The line gives joy's demand for eternity, which is the root of the wish for recurrence.
Read in the book →If I be a diviner and full of the divining spirit which wandereth on high mountain-ridges, ‘twixt two seas,— Wandereth ‘twixt the past and the future as a heavy cloud—hostile to sultry plains, and to all that is weary…
First statement of the refrain: Eternity and the 'ring of the return' as the marriage-ring of rings.
Read in the book →Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity and for the marriage-ring of rings—the ring of the return?
Recurrence is named as a ring of marriage, something to be loved and willed.
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…
This creative necessity is another reason given for his ardour for the ring of the return.
Read in the book →—What hath befallen me: Hark! Hath time flown away? Do I not fall? Have I not fallen—hark! into the well of eternity? —What happeneth to me? Hush! It stingeth me—alas—to the heart? To the heart! Oh, break up, break up,…
The golden round ring and ball that fly away suggest the ring of eternity, though recurrence is not named.
Read in the book →‘Was THAT—life?’ will I say unto death.
The 'Once more' is the wish for recurrence, still in the ugliest man's own words.
Read in the book →When, however, this took place with the ugliest man, Zarathustra stood there like one drunken: his glance dulled, his tongue faltered and his feet staggered. And who could divine what thoughts then passed through…
The midnight bell, tolling between past and future, prepares the song of recurrence.
Read in the book →Ye higher men, it is getting on to midnight: then will I say something into your ears, as that old clock-bell saith it into mine ear,— —As mysteriously, as frightfully, and as cordially as that midnight clock-bell…
The midnight speech approaches the hidden doctrine; the question 'Who is to be master of the world?' hangs over it.
Read in the book →Joy, however, doth not want heirs, it doth not want children,—joy wanteth itself, it wanteth eternity, it wanteth recurrence, it wanteth everything eternally-like-itself.
Joy, unlike woe, wills its own return and everything eternally like itself.
Read in the book →Said ye ever Yea to one joy? O my friends, then said ye Yea also unto ALL woe.
To want one moment twice is to want all things to come back.
Read in the book →All joy wanteth the eternity of all things, it wanteth honey, it wanteth lees, it wanteth drunken midnight, it wanteth graves, it wanteth grave-tears’ consolation, it wanteth gilded evening-red— —WHAT doth not joy want!…
The 'ring's will' in joy wants the eternity of all things, including hell and shame.
Read in the book →Have ye now learned my song? Have ye divined what it would say? Well! Cheer up! Ye higher men, sing now my roundelay! Sing now yourselves the song, the name of which is “Once more,” the signification of which is “Unto…
The song 'Once more', signifying 'Unto all eternity', condenses the doctrine into a roundelay.
Read in the book →Brandes calls Zarathustra's eternal recurrence a somewhat shallow mysticism derived from the Pythagorean cycle and Ecclesiastes, the direct antithesis of Hartmann's world process ending in destruction, and notes that Blanqui and Le Bon advanced the same idea about the same time.
Judged shallow and placed among its sources and contemporary parallels.
Brandes says that the midnight clock's song closing the Second Dance Song, interpreted line by line in Part IV, concentrates Nietzsche's esoteric doctrine in its shortest formula: joy and woe are inseparable, saying Yea to one joy is saying Yea to all woe, and all joy wants deep eternity.
The midnight song is the shortest formula of the doctrine: all begins again, all is eternal.
Förster-Nietzsche says that the book came into being in August 1881 at Sils Maria, when the idea of eternal recurrence, which Nietzsche in Ecce Homo calls the fundamental idea of the work and the highest formula of Yea-saying, struck him beside a rock near Surlei, and that he then resolved to reveal it through Zarathustra; the first plan was headed 'Midday and Eternity'.
Dates and places the conception of recurrence and makes it the occasion for the whole book.
Förster-Nietzsche quotes Nietzsche saying that eternal recurrence, the highest formula of a Yea-saying philosophy, is the fundamental idea of Zarathustra and first occurred to him in August 1881.
Nietzsche's own statement that recurrence is the book's fundamental idea.
Mencken argues that Nietzsche offered eternal recurrence to answer what follows the superman: the universe moves in cosmic cycles in which man rises to superman and beyond, then dissolves into the elements, and the whole process begins again.
Reads recurrence as a cosmological cycle of rise and decline.
Mencken says the idea came from the Pythagoreans, that its horror gripped Nietzsche, who according to Lou Andreas-Salomé spoke of it only in a low voice, and that he hoped to confirm it through atomic science until he concluded science gave no ground for it, after which his horror left him.
Traces the doctrine's Pythagorean source and Nietzsche's emotional and scientific engagement with it.
Mencken judges that eternal recurrence was not original with Nietzsche and that his philosophy and reputation would have been better had he never tried to elucidate it.
A blunt negative verdict on the doctrine's value.
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.
Identifies the convalescent's 'I come again' speech as the book's statement of the doctrine.
Mencken argues that Nietzsche turned recurrence into a device for exalting the superman, who knows his struggles will repeat endlessly yet, immune to pleasure and pain, faces and affirms it as part of life ('let us love it!'); Mencken accepts Vernon Lee's comparison with stoicism but rejects her likening it to Christian Science's denial of pain.
Makes recurrence the test that the superman meets without fear.
Mencken judges that, although Nietzsche found no factual support for it, eternal recurrence is not unthinkable, since astronomy's hypothesis of cosmic cycles from gas to solid and back makes it easily conceivable.
Weighs the doctrine's plausibility against modern astronomical hypotheses.
Ludovici argues that the spirit of gravity, the dwarf Zarathustra carries and defies, stands for the sense of guilt and sin that Christian and Judaic values have bred into men's instincts, and that Nietzsche can affirm the recurrence of life only once he has cast this dwarf off, announcing the doctrine in defiance of him.
Recurrence can be thought cheerfully only after the weight of guilt is thrown off.
Ludovici grants that much can be said for the hypothesis of eternal recurrence but judges it a very daring conjecture, and doubts whether Nietzsche ever properly estimated its effect as a dogma on men's minds.
Weighs the doctrine as a hypothesis and questions its worth as a dogma.
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 doctrine requires wishing every incident of one's life repeated eternally.
Ludovici describes 'The Seven Seals' as Zarathustra's final paean to Eternity and to the marriage-ring of rings, the ring of the Eternal Recurrence.
The chapter is a hymn to the ring of recurrence.
Ludovici declines to fix an interpretation of the drunken song but notes that recurrence appears here for the last time: all delight longs for repetition, and the man who sees a joyful meaning in existence must cry 'Again!' to all his life, as a child does.
Recurrence as the joyful cry 'Again!' to all one's life.
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 if a demon told you that you must live your life again innumerably, every pain and joy in the same sequence, you would either curse him or, in a tremendous moment, call it divine; the question 'Dost thou want this once more?' would lie as the heaviest burden on every action, and one would have to become well disposed to oneself and life to long for nothing more than this eternal sealing.
First published statement of the thought, posed as a hypothetical test rather than a cosmology.
Nietzsche says that the book's fundamental idea, eternal recurrence, came to him in August 1881 by a rock near Surlei at Lake Silvaplana, heralded by a rebirth of his ear for music; that the Joyful Wisdom filled the eighteen-month gestation; and that the first part was written in the winter of 1882-83 on walks around Rapallo, where Zarathustra himself as a type 'waylaid' him.
Dates and places the thought's conception and names it the fundamental idea of the whole work.
Nietzsche says that eternal recurrence is the fundamental idea of Zarathustra and the highest formula of affirmation of life ever attainable, first conceived in August 1881.
Authoritative statement that recurrence is the book's central conception.
Nietzsche says that the psychological problem of the type is how one who says and does No to everything hitherto affirmed, bears the heaviest destiny and thinks the most abysmal thoughts, can still be a dancer who finds no objection even to the eternal recurrence of existence but becomes himself 'the tremendous and unlimited saying of Yea and Amen'; this is precisely the idea of Dionysus.
The abysmal thought is not taken as an objection to the recurrence of existence.