No longer shepherd, no longer man—a transfigured being, a light-surrounded being, that LAUGHED! Never on earth laughed a man as HE laughed!
O my brethren, I heard a laughter which was no human laughter,—and now gnaweth a thirst at me, a longing that is never allayed.
My longing for that laughter gnaweth at me: oh, how can I still endure to live! And how could I endure to die at present!—
The shepherd springs up, light-surrounded, laughing as no man has ever laughed. Zarathustra is left with an unquenchable longing for that laughter.
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?
What the critics said
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.
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.
Ludovici defines Nietzsche's 'spirit of gravity' as the oppressive, paralysing sense of guilt and sin.
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.
Ludovici reads the shepherd as the man of today, the choking snake as the paralysing social values that threaten humanity, and 'Bite!' as Nietzsche's cry to mankind to change its values before it is too late.