No doctrine revolts Zarathustra more than that of the vanity and senselessness of life. This is in his eyes ancient babbling, old wives' babbling. And the pessimists who sum up life with a balance of aversion, and assert the badness of existence, are the objects of his positive loathing. He prefers pain to annihilation.
The same extravagant love of life is expressed in the Hymn to Life, written by his friend, Lou von Salomé, which Nietzsche set for chorus and orchestra. We read here--
"So truly loves a friend his friend As I love thee, O Life in myst'ry hidden! If joy or grief to me thou send; If loud I laugh or else to weep am bidden, Yet love I thee with all thy changeful faces; And should'st thou doom me to depart, So would I tear myself from thy embraces, As comrade from a comrade's heart."
And the poem concludes--
"And if thou hast now left no bliss to crown me. Lead on I thou hast thy sorrow still!"[8]
When Achilles chose to be a day-labourer on earth rather than a king in the realm of the shades, the expression was a weak one in comparison with this passionate outburst, which paradoxically thirsts even for the cup of pain.