doctrine The soothsayer's doctrine that all is empty, all alike, all hath been; weariness of will that Zarathustra must overcome.
When Zarathustra heard the wise man thus speak, he laughed in his heart: for thereby had a light dawned upon him. And thus spake he to his heart: A fool seemeth this wise man with his forty thoughts: but I believe he…
Wisdom as sleep without dreams, with no higher meaning of life, is the 'desirablest nonsense'.
Read in the book →There are the spiritually consumptive ones: hardly are they born when they begin to die, and long for doctrines of lassitude and renunciation. They would fain be dead, and we should approve of their wish! Let us beware…
These weary types, who long for lassitude and renunciation, answer the sight of any suffering with 'Life is refuted!'
Read in the book →“Life is only suffering”: so say others, and lie not.
Zarathustra turns the doctrine of life-as-suffering back on its preachers and tells them to end themselves.
Read in the book →And ye also, to whom life is rough labour and disquiet, are ye not very tired of life? Are ye not very ripe for the sermon of death? All ye to whom rough labour is dear, and the rapid, new, and strange—ye put up with…
Even those who love hard work and novelty are called ripe for the sermon of death, because their diligence is flight from themselves.
Read in the book →With fifty patches painted on faces and limbs—so sat ye there to mine astonishment, ye present-day men! And with fifty mirrors around you, which flattered your play of colours, and repeated it! Verily, ye could wear no…
Stripped of paint, they are only scarecrow and skeleton, with nothing inside.
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…
Their 'reality' is the creed 'Everything deserveth to perish'.
Read in the book →Perambulating refutations are ye, of belief itself, and a dislocation of all thought.
Present-day men, being copies of every past belief, dissolve belief and thought alike.
Read in the book →“—And I saw a great sadness come over mankind. The best turned weary of their works. A doctrine appeared, a faith ran beside it: ‘All is empty, all is alike, all hath been!’ And from all hills there re-echoed: ‘All is…
The soothsayer's prophecy 'All is empty, all is alike, all hath been!' is the book's statement of nihilism, a weariness so deep that even dying is too much effort.
Read in the book →A doctrine appeared, a faith ran beside it: ‘All is empty, all is alike, all hath been!’
The formula of the great weariness that Zarathustra must overcome.
Read in the book →Hear, I pray you, the dream that I dreamed, my friends, and help me to divine its meaning! A riddle is it still unto me, this dream; the meaning is hidden in it and encaged, and doth not yet fly above it on free…
In the dream Zarathustra has renounced all life and guards the coffins of vanquished life in the fortress of Death, an image of the soothsayer's world.
Read in the book →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 preaches that everything perishes and therefore deserves to perish.
Read in the book →And verily, what I saw, the like had I never seen. A young shepherd did I see, writhing, choking, quivering, with distorted countenance, and with a heavy black serpent hanging out of his mouth. Had I ever seen so much…
The black serpent in the throat is the heaviest, blackest thing choking the man, with loathing and horror.
Read in the book →Thus spake Zarathustra. Then did he look on the great city and sighed, and was long silent. At last he spake thus: I loathe also this great city, and not only this fool. Here and there— there is nothing to better,…
He judges the city beyond help: there is nothing to better and nothing to worsen.
Read in the book →And verily, thou choosest the hour well: for just now do the nocturnal birds again fly abroad. The hour hath come for all light-dreading people, the vesper hour and leisure hour, when they do not—“take leisure.” I hear…
The pious revival is portrayed as a retreat into obscurity by the weary and light-dreading.
Read in the book →There is an old illusion—it is called good and evil. Around soothsayers and astrologers hath hitherto revolved the orbit of this illusion. Once did one BELIEVE in soothsayers and astrologers; and THEREFORE did one…
A sermon of death is seen behind what is called holy.
Read in the book →“Why should one live? All is vain! To live—that is to thrash straw; to live—that is to burn oneself and yet not get warm.”— Such ancient babbling still passeth for “wisdom”; because it is old, however, and smelleth…
The old 'all is vain' wisdom is childish railing by those who bring no hunger to the table.
Read in the book →“He who learneth much unlearneth all violent cravings”—that do people now whisper to one another in all the dark lanes. “Wisdom wearieth, nothing is worth while; thou shalt not crave!”—this new table found I hanging…
The new table 'nothing is worth while, ye shall not will' is a sermon for slavery from the ruined stomach.
Read in the book →Ye flee from me? Ye are frightened? Ye tremble at this word? O my brethren, when I enjoined you to break up the good, and the tables of the good, then only did I embark man on his high seas. And now only cometh unto him…
The great sickness and sea-sickness come once the false shores fall away.
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…
The soothsayer's 'all is alike, nothing is worth while' is what Zarathustra now feels.
Read in the book →The next day sat Zarathustra again on the stone in front of his cave, whilst his animals roved about in the world outside to bring home new food,—also new honey: for Zarathustra had spent and wasted the old honey to the…
The soothsayer is again introduced as the proclaimer of the great weariness, with a face now full of evil announcement.
Read in the book →“O Zarathustra,” he began, with sorrowful voice, “thou dost not stand there like one whose happiness maketh him giddy: thou wilt have to dance lest thou tumble down! But although thou shouldst dance before me, and leap…
The soothsayer sighs that all is alike, no seeking avails, and there are no longer any Happy Isles.
Read in the book →‘Nothing is true, all is permitted’: so said I to myself.
The formula of the unmoored free spirit, who plunges into freedom without a goal.
Read in the book →Too much hath become clear unto me: now it doth not concern me any more. Nothing liveth any longer that I love,—how should I still love myself? ‘To live as I incline, or not to live at all’: so do I wish; so wisheth…
Weariness of will, no love left and no goal, ending in 'eternal in-vain'.
Read in the book →O eternal everywhere, O eternal nowhere, O eternal—in-vain!”
A compressed cry of aimless wandering and emptiness.
Read in the book →For at this point the soothsayer interrupted the greeting of Zarathustra and his guests: he pressed forward as one who had no time to lose, seized Zarathustra’s hand and exclaimed: “But Zarathustra! One thing is more…
The soothsayer, prophet of weariness, now fears only bodily perishing and craves wine for 'immediate vigour', a comic turn on his gloom.
Read in the book →In evening’s limpid air, What time the moon’s sickle, Green, ‘twixt the purple-glowings, And jealous, steal’th forth: —Of day the foe, With every step in secret, The rosy garland-hammocks Downsickling, till they’ve…
The singer sinks into evening weary of day and sunshine, banished from all truth.
Read in the book →For fear—that is man’s original and fundamental feeling; through fear everything is explained, original sin and original virtue.
His view of man grounded in fear stands against Zarathustra's courage.
Read in the book →THE DESERTS GROW: WOE HIM WHO DOTH THEM HIDE!
This refrain frames the song and names the spreading emptiness as the condition of the modern spirit.
Read in the book →THE DESERTS GROW: WOE HIM WHO DOTH THEM HIDE! —Ha! Solemnly! In effect solemnly! A worthy beginning! Afric manner, solemnly! Of a lion worthy, Or perhaps of a virtuous howl-monkey— —But it’s naught to you, Ye friendly…
The refrain 'The deserts grow: woe him who doth them hide' echoes the growing desert of emptiness, here sung in parody.
Read in the book →Brandes says that no doctrine revolts Zarathustra more than the vanity of life, that he prefers pain to annihilation, and that the same love of life fills Lou von Salomé's Hymn to Life, set by Nietzsche, which thirsts even for the cup of pain and outdoes Achilles' choice of life on earth.
The doctrine of life's vanity is 'old wives' babbling' to Zarathustra.
Ludovici says that 'The Thousand and One Goals' opens Zarathustra's doctrine of moral relativity, declaring all morality a means to power, with verses on the Greeks, Persians, Jews and Germans, and that its close diagnoses the root of modern nihilism: man has no goal.
Locates the root of modern nihilism in mankind's lack of a single goal.
Ludovici identifies the soothsayer with Schopenhauer, whom Nietzsche once followed, and says Nietzsche overcame pessimism by finding an object in existence, the raising of society to a higher level.
Reads the soothsayer's doctrine of weariness as Schopenhauerian pessimism.
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.
The snake represents stultifying values that threaten to shatter humanity.
Ludovici identifies the soothsayer of 'The Cry of Distress' with Schopenhauer, whose pessimistic ethics place pity highest, and reads the scene as Schopenhauer tempting Nietzsche to his last sin through his deepest sentiment, sympathy for higher men.
The soothsayer stands for Schopenhauerian pessimism.
Ludovici reads the shadow as the bold, wayward free spirit who follows every daring movement of his age until he loses all goal and home, cries 'Nothing is true; all is permitted', and becomes wreckage, prone to being captured by a narrow faith.
The free spirit's loss of every goal ends in 'Nothing is true; all is permitted'.
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, through a madman in the market-place, that we have killed God, unchaining the earth from its sun and leaving us straying through infinite nothingness; the deed is so great that it has not yet reached men's ears, and the churches are now only God's tombs.
Without God there is no above or below; empty space breathes upon us and night comes on.
Nietzsche says that the death of God, the Christian God becoming unworthy of belief, will bring the collapse of everything built on that belief, including all European morality, though most have not yet heard of it; yet for free spirits the news feels not like gloom but like a new dawn, opening the sea again to every hazard of the discerner.
Foresees a coming period of crumbling and eclipse once the ground of morality is gone.
Nietzsche says that the decay of belief in the Christian God is a European event, that what defeated God was Christian morality itself, its veracity sublimated into the scientific conscience, and that rejecting the Christian interpretation confronts us with Schopenhauer's question whether existence has any significance at all, to which Schopenhauer gave only a premature, Christian-ascetic answer.
After God, the question 'Has existence then a significance at all?' opens and pessimism answers it too soon.