At the last eight verses many readers may be tempted to laugh. In England we almost always laugh when a man takes himself seriously at anything save sport. And there is of course no reason why the reader should not be hilarious.—A certain greatness is requisite, both in order to be sublime and to have reverence for the sublime. Nietzsche earnestly believed that the Zarathustra-kingdom—his dynasty of a thousand years—would one day come; if he had not believed it so earnestly, if every artist in fact had not believed so earnestly in his Hazar, whether of ten, fifteen, a hundred, or a thousand years, we should have lost all our higher men; they would have become pessimists, suicides, or merchants. If the minor poet and philosopher has made us shy of the prophetic seriousness which characterized an Isaiah or a Jeremiah, it is surely our loss and the minor poet’s gain.
criticism · Notes: Part IV
The Hazar taken seriously
Ludovici defends the prophetic seriousness of Zarathustra's thousand-year kingdom against English readers inclined to laugh, arguing that without such earnest belief in their Hazar higher men would have become pessimists, suicides or merchants.
On Zarathustra
- The great noontideNietzsche earnestly believed his thousand-year kingdom would come.