Creating—that is the great salvation from suffering, and life’s alleviation. But for the creator to appear, suffering itself is needed, and much transformation.
Zarathustra says the creator needs suffering and much dying, and must bear the pangs of birth. He recalls his own many farewells and says his fate is what his Will wills.
- Creation and the creatorCreating redeems suffering, but the creator must undergo much transformation, bitter dying and the pangs of the child-bearer.
- Self-overcomingThe creator must be willing to die and be reborn many times, as Zarathustra has gone through a hundred souls and cradles.
Commentary on this chapter
What the critics said
Zarathustra is not the place to beginAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909interpretation
Ludovici argues that Zarathustra, though Nietzsche's opus magnum, should not be read first: many chapters are nearly meaningless without knowledge of Nietzsche's life and friendships, and its philosophical views are best clarified by his other works, which he himself regarded as preparation for it.
Creating as salvation from godless pessimismAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909interpretation
Ludovici says that in 'In the Happy Isles' Nietzsche overcomes the pessimism that godlessness brings by pointing to creating as salvation from suffering, the Superman supplying the cheerfulness to face a world without God.
Nietzsche elsewhere
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'.