First Part · XXI. Voluntary Death

Dying so the friends love the earth

That your dying may not be a reproach to man and the earth, my friends: that do I solicit from the honey of your soul.

In your dying shall your spirit and your virtue still shine like an evening after-glow around the earth: otherwise your dying hath been unsatisfactory.

Thus will I die myself, that ye friends may love the earth more for my sake; and earth will I again become, to have rest in her that bore me.

Verily, a goal had Zarathustra; he threw his ball. Now be ye friends the heirs of my goal; to you throw I the golden ball.

Best of all, do I see you, my friends, throw the golden ball! And so tarry I still a little while on the earth—pardon me for it!

Zarathustra asks that his friends' dying be no reproach to man and the earth, but shine like an evening after-glow. He will become earth again, and throws the golden ball of his goal to his friends.

The bestowing virtueZarathustra will die so that the friends become the heirs of his goal, and throws them the golden ball.
Fidelity to the earth and the bodyHe wants his dying to make friends love the earth more, and to return to earth himself.
Teacher and disciplesHe asks the friends to inherit his goal and tarries a little longer for them.

Commentary on this chapter

What the critics said

Anthony M. Ludovici, Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra (1909)

Voluntary death, not suicideAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909interpretation

Ludovici says that Nietzsche disliked the word 'suicide' for its suggestion of evil and renamed the act Voluntary Death to raise it to the dignity it held in classical antiquity.