‘Tis night: now do all gushing fountains speak louder. And my soul also is a gushing fountain.
‘Tis night: now only do all songs of the loving ones awake. And my soul also is the song of a loving one.
Something unappeased, unappeasable, is within me; it longeth to find expression. A craving for love is within me, which speaketh itself the language of love.
At night Zarathustra compares his soul to a gushing fountain and to the song of a lover. He feels an unappeasable craving for love that speaks in the language of love.
Förster-Nietzsche records that Part One was written in about ten days at Rapallo in February 1883, finished in the hour of Wagner's death, that it was met with incomprehension, that the 'Night-Song' was composed in a gloomy, lonely spring in Rome, and that Part Two was written in ten days at Sils Maria in summer 1883.
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 Night-Song' was composed in Rome above the Piazza Barberini, the second part in ten days at Sils, the third at Nice, with 'Old and New Tables' composed on the climb from the station to Eza, each part taking no more than ten days; his creative energy coincided with great bodily vigour, dancing, walking and laughter.
Nietzsche says that Zarathustra speaks to his soul in the dithyramb, of which he is the inventor, citing 'Before Sunrise', and presents 'The Night-Song' as the immortal plaint of one condemned by his superabundance of light and power never to love.