Ecce Homo

Nietzsche says that the book's fundamental idea, eternal recurrence, came to him in August 1881 by a rock near Surlei at Lake Silvaplana, heralded by a rebirth of his ear for music; that the Joyful Wisdom filled the eighteen-month gestation; and that the first part was written in the winter of 1882-83 on walks around Rapallo, where Zarathustra himself as a type 'waylaid' him.

Nietzsche says that eternal recurrence is the fundamental idea of Zarathustra and the highest formula of affirmation of life ever attainable, first conceived in August 1881.

Nietzsche says that the type Zarathustra rests on 'great healthiness', a health constantly sacrificed and regained, and quotes Joyful Wisdom 382 on the ideal of a spirit who out of superabundant power plays with everything hitherto called holy and good, a humanly superhuman well-being that parodies all past solemnity and with which great earnestness and tragedy begin.

Nietzsche says that Zarathustra was written under an inspiration of revelatory force: thoughts flashed like lightning without choice, in an ecstasy where painful parts were required shades of light, and images offered themselves involuntarily, as Zarathustra says, 'all things came to one, and offered themselves as similes'.

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 outside the brief creative bursts the Zarathustra years were years of unparalleled distress: the completed great work turns against its author, an uncanny silence and impenetrable solitude surround him, and those near him revolt at the distance he makes felt.

Nietzsche says that Zarathustra stands alone, born of superabundant strength, his concept 'Dionysian' become the highest deed; in it man is constantly overcome, the Superman becomes the greatest reality, all contradictions are bound into a new unity in this most yea-saying spirit, and Zarathustra defines the highest of all living things as the soul with the longest ladder.

Nietzsche says that the psychological problem of the type is how one who says and does No to everything hitherto affirmed, bears the heaviest destiny and thinks the most abysmal thoughts, can still be a dancer who finds no objection even to the eternal recurrence of existence but becomes himself 'the tremendous and unlimited saying of Yea and Amen'; this is precisely the idea of Dionysus.

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.

Nietzsche says that only Dionysus suffers as in the Night-Song, whose answer would be Ariadne, and that Zarathustra's life-task, which is also his own, is a yea-saying that justifies and redeems all that is past, quoting the passage on recasting fragments and turning every 'it was' into 'thus would I have it'.

Nietzsche says that Zarathustra's life-task is a yea-saying that goes as far as justifying and redeeming all that is past.

Nietzsche says that for Zarathustra man is neither an object of love nor of pity but raw material, an ugly stone for the sculptor's chisel, quoting the passage where the creative will drives the hammer against the stone to free the Superman's image; a Dionysian task needs the hardness of the hammer and the joy even of destruction, 'all creators are hard'.

Nietzsche says that the command 'Harden yourselves!' and the conviction that all creators are hard are the distinctive sign of a Dionysian nature.

Nietzsche says that his name will recall an unprecedented crisis of conscience and a sentence passed on all that was hallowed; he is no founder of religion and wants no believers, would rather be a clown than a saint, and names the transvaluation of all values as mankind's greatest step toward coming to its senses, a contradiction that is nonetheless the reverse of a negative spirit.

Nietzsche says that he is not a man but dynamite.

Nietzsche says that the formula for his destiny is found in Zarathustra's words that whoever would create in good and evil must first be a destroyer and break values, and that his Dionysian nature cannot separate the negative deed from saying Yea; as the first immoralist he is essentially the annihilator.

Nietzsche says that he chose the Persian Zarathustra because he was the first to see the struggle of good and evil as the wheel of things and so created the error of morality; being the most truthful of thinkers, who upheld truthfulness as the highest virtue, he must also be the first to expose it, so that the name means morality's self-overcoming through truthfulness.

Nietzsche says that the name Zarathustra means the self-overcoming of morality through truthfulness, the moralist overcoming himself in his opposite.

Nietzsche says that as immoralist he denies both the 'good' man and Christian morality; the good exist through falsehood, refusing to see reality and treating distress as an objection, and Zarathustra therefore calls them the last men and the beginning of the end, who crucify the writer of new values and are the most detrimental of men.

Nietzsche says that Zarathustra, as the first psychologist of the good, is the friend of the evil man, since where the herd animal is virtuous the exceptional man is branded evil; the good and just would call his Superman the devil, and the Superman is the man strong enough to see reality as it is and to be that reality himself.

Nietzsche says that what sets him apart is having unmasked Christian morality, the Circe of all thinkers, as anti-nature: it teaches contempt for the instincts, invents a soul to defy the body, makes sex impure and self-love evil, and expresses the will to nonentity of decadent priests; morality is the idiosyncrasy of decadents seeking revenge on life.

Nietzsche says that morality is the idiosyncrasy of decadents moved by a desire to avenge themselves successfully on life.

Nietzsche says that he has said nothing not already said through Zarathustra; unmasking morality breaks history in two, revealing that 'God', the 'beyond' and 'true world', 'soul', 'sin' and 'free will' were invented to depreciate the only world, despise the body and make the yea-sayer 'evil': Dionysus versus Christ.

Nietzsche sums up his position as Dionysus versus Christ.