Thus Spoke Zarathustra - 必应 Nietzsche was one of the most revolutionary and subversive thinkers in Western philosophy, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra remains his most famous and influential work. From a general summary to chapter summaries to explanations of famous quotes, the SparkNotes Thus Spoke Zarathustra Study Guide has everything you need to ace … Thus Spake Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzsche: Nietzsche Friedrich: 9781604244342: Amazon.com: Books Thus Spake Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzsche Add all three to Cart Add all three to List One of these items ships sooner than the other. Show details Buy the selected items together This item:Thus Spake Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzsche by Nietzsche Friedrich Paperback $9.31 Only 1 left in stock (more on the way). Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche Paperback $6.99 In Stock. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. FREE Shipping on orders over $25.

Details Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1 This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading. Paperback $13.59 Prime Editorial Reviews Review , also translated as Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Treatise by Friedrich Nietzsche, written in four parts and published in German between 1883 and 1885 as Also sprach Zarathustra. The work is incomplete, but it is the first thorough statement of Nietzsche's mature philosophy and the masterpiece of his career. It received little attention during his lifetime but its influence since his death has been considerable, in the arts as well as philosophy. Written in the form of a prose narrative, Thus Spake Zarathustra offers the philosophy of its author through the voice of Zarathustra (based on the Persian prophet Zoroaster) who, after years of meditation, has come down from a mountain to offer his wisdom to the world.

It is this work in which Nietzsche made his famous (and much misconstrued) statement that "God is dead" and in which he presented some of the most influential and well-known (and likewise misunderstood) ideas of his philosophy, including those of the Ubermensch ("overman" or "superman") and the "will to power." Though this is essentially a work of philosophy, it is also a masterpiece of literature. The book is a combination of prose and poetry, including epigrams, dithyrambs, and parodies as well as sections of pure poetry. --The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature The most famous Nietzsche book which formed part of his 'campaign against morality' […] the German philosopher explores the ethical consequences of the 'death of God'. Some say the book was a catalyst in Hitler's thinking and the rise of the far-right, others that Zarathustra was the most important text on human potential ever written. Hear it for yourself. The Naxos AudioBook also includes helpful introductions to every chapter, --Bukowski on Bukowski zine --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition. Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here , or download a FREE Kindle Reading App .

Ignite your imagination with these editor's picks from Kindle books. See more Product Details Publisher: Book Jungle (November 8, 2007) Language: English Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds ( View shipping rates and policies ) Average Customer Review: By SLAPPYWAG1 on November 25, 2016 Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase I cannot think of one book that has more influence on me than Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It is a book that I once read at least once a year and it never failed to fill my mind with hope and ideas. I totally disagree with those who consider Nietzsche to be hard, stern, and without hope. I find nothing but hope in the works of Nietzsche. He deepest desire was to see humans remove the yoke of any oppressive ideologies which hindered thoughts and imagination. My initial reading of Zarathustra was very disappointing. I was not ready for the very stylized language he used but subsequent reading made me look beyond the style and see the thoughts behind them and then yielded the wisdom beneath. I make no claims to entirely understand Nietzsche but someone who dropped out before reaching high school I believe I have a fairly good grasp of his overall principles.

His ideas are not so abstract that only scholars can understand them. I have now read most of his major works and consider him the single greatest influence on my own life and the perceptions of various institutions. As an atheist I was naturally drawn to his hostility towards most forms of organized religions---the exception for Nietzsche being Buddhism--but he was not grim or dour about this and always championed the "yay-saying" and discouraged the "nay-saing". His words can come across as a bit hard and cold but he felt he was in a desperate battle with a force that was robbing humanity of it's humanity and there was no sense mincing words about the consequences. He would have hated the Nazis. They were everything he despised about the regressive nature of humanity. The were devoid of all hope and their perverse use of the philosophy would have sickened him. This is a book that is still very valid and vital to the health of humanity. It should be read and reread. By M. DeKalb on September 6, 2013 Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase It's a tough read, don't think it isn't, but it is lovely in both its hope and its hopelessness.

For all mankind: unattainable. There is often the positive notion, in its most hopeful moment contrasted by the basest derogation by man in which there surely appears no hope for him. It appears that most people, the generally unread, have done much quoting of Nietzsche out of context and ultimately, Nietzsche must have known he'd be oft misquoted for he states: `I suspect ye would call my Superman - a devil!' (2021). In the appendix it is also a note to casual readers - this is not where to being reading any Nietzsche, so if you're starting here - stop!. This is `the opus' which is the child of many works of previous thought, for the future love of all that is Nietzsche, don't start here! This is the allegorical surmising of much of Nietzsche's work. Quite fantastic. This work has the ability to present in a very new-age fashion, per philosophically its primary goal is transcendental, to go beyond man's current state, to shed the chains of our egos, to experience the world sensually without intense derisive judgment and to laugh at our situations of gravity.

It is fantastic in that because it's a book `for all and none', anyone spiritually inclined can sense the weightiness as Nietzsche points out all the flaws of humanity and casts his wish for the recognition of the Superman, for something better than what we are, even if we shall never achieve his ends. As a social commentary of the people of the times, what he sees and experiences around himself. Astute observations of the workings of mankind, essentially stating that we've turned away from the true meaning of `God', and that far too many people place value erroneously in inane and mistakenly virtuous things. When what is lacking, both secular and non, is the true essence of `love'. This is the closest to `God' man can get; the Superman is meant to surpass humanity. However, having such an appetite for war, self-destruction / deception, clinging to idols, self-loathing, and `shame, shame, shame - that is the history of man' (1267) motif, the success rate is unlikely at best. In fact, the Superman has never been seen by Zarathustra. There is both Aeschylus-ian warning of man's poorer qualities and his wisdom in this work.

Nietzsche was a big fan of the Greek play-writes. Zoroaster, as a historical being is relevant in the espoused philosophy as the goal is to sustain the truth through constructive thought, words and deeds. This ties to Nietzsche's `Superman' - a man of higher values than today's common man, and as a most basic principle - all that stems from power is good (master-morality); all from weakness is bad, but there is no lasting good nor bad, and good and bad are based relatively. The pinnacle though is the `Will to Power', which encompassing the `Will to Truth', is essentially man commanding himself and the desire to command others, recognizing that everything is done for power, that even those commanded want to command - part of the human condition. Doing this in egoless fashion opens the world of experience, truth, and sets man out only to experience his sensory world with what little rationality is found in anything.

The `Will to Power' is also where redemption is best found but never to be - `to transform every "it was" into "thus would I have it!" (1952), for no amount of Willing can change the past, our wills greatest weakness - desiring a disposition more toward the import of the now. Zarathustra finds no greater power on earth than `good' and `bad'. And to this he adds that nothing is universally good or bad between differing people, but posits that this valuation of things was meant only to give a human meaning to the world, and the herd has always existed before the ego, thusly do people somewhat unwittingly follow their cultural bonds. In the first book we encounter Zarathustra who wishes to leave man and sink to his abyss, for he realizes that he is nothing like them, and they scorn him as we see him enter a town and attempt to explain his philosophy of the `Superman' - `I want to teach men the sense of their existence, which is the Superman' (446).

In this section it appears despite being a pariah, Zarathustra is both cynical and hopeful in man's ascension - `It is time for man to fix his goal. It is time for man to plant the germ of his highest hope.' (400) Zarathustra then decides he needs companions and begins delivery of his discourses upon a variety of topics, the primary focus is the creation of the Superman: `Let your love to life be love to your highest hope; and let your highest hope be the highest thought of life! Your highest thought... and it is this: man is something that is to be surpassed.' (797) This is related to the `Will to Truth' in that it is `the thinkableness of all being' (1599) and this is a direct step in surpassing man. Man can't create God, or Nietzsche's Will to Truth, a being who has experienced all human sensory experiences. Creating is the great salvation from suffering, however suffering is necessary for the creative facet to appear, as is a great transformation. Zarathustra speaks of finding his soul through loneliness and metamorphosis of the soul (camel, lion, child).

Once a man's soul resembles that of a child he may will his own world sans the artifice of socialized structure. He advocates the `Backworlds' where men create in their loneliness. However, there are also many superfluous men, `marred is life by the many-too-many.' (754) and his hope is they're quickly suckered out of this life by those that preach the eternal afterlife. Zarathustra recognizes the struggle against the ego, generally in vain as it guides us through our feeling states in this life. He also states his disposition of those whom despise the body as those who would make each man marginal, and these sorts are often of the non-secular variety, the preachers of death and those that wish away with the corporeal life. As a reaction against the typical herd mentality Zarathustra also attacks the organization known as `the state', or that establishment which perpetuates values and virtues unto it's all too superfluous populous. Smaller than the state is the city, which essentially serves the same purpose. To Zarathustra virtues create a battle ground where the conflict is often too much for man to persevere against. `...

one thing is the thought, another thing is the deed, and another thing is the idea of the deed. The wheel of causality doth not roll between them.' (670) The essence is to do good work. The end of the work surmises with a litany of characters dining with Zarathustra in his cave. Here Zarathustra suffers the philosophical attacks these men were prone to deliver. He defends himself, the philosophy of his Superman, Will to Power and his estimation of the social conditions he sees himself living in. Ultimately all joy is deeper than grief and all joys want eternity, the noontide arrives, man must be surpassed! Quotes: Meister Eckhardt: `The fleetest beast to bear you to perfection is suffering.' (214) `Life is hard to bear: but do not affect to be so delicate! We are all of us fine sumpter asses and assesses.' (705) `It is true we love life; not because we are wont to live, but because we are wont to love. There is always some madness in love.

But there is always, also, some method in madness.' (706) `when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn:... Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay.' (710) `... the worst enemy thou canst meet, wilt thou thyself always be... Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way to thyself!... thou goest the way of the creating one: a God wilt thou create for thyself out of thy seven devils!' (1009) `But let this be your honour: always to love more than ye are loved, and never be the second.' (1030) `Devise me, then, the love which not only beareth all punishment, but also all guilt!

Devise me, then, the justice which acquitteth every one except the judge!' (1058) `Bitterness is in the cup even of the best love: thus doth it cause longing for the Superman' (1089) `Thus spake the devil unto me, once on a time: `Even God hath his hell: it is his love for man." (1296) `That YOUR very Self be in your action, as the mother is in the child: let that be YOUR formula of virtue!' (1374) `do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!' (1433) `Where one can no longer love, there should one - pass by!' (2422) `This-is now MY way, - where is yours? ... For THE way - it doth not exist!' (2643) `What dot it matter that ye have failed! How many things are still possible! So LEARN to laugh beyond yourselves!' (3878) By CW on January 23, 2015 Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase This book was amazing.

I was dumbfounded when i realized the format of the book which is more of a story telling. Zarathustra is a prophet of godlessness. He brings word of god's death and promotes living the life fully and happily. It is a great way of criticizing religions' negative impacts on people's lives. how people live their lives in misery merely for living for the idea of afterlife. Obliviously, Nietzsche was inspired by the story of Jesus and in a way this book is sort of satirical you cannot help but smile and at times laugh at the idiotic ways the people live their lives and insist upon living their lives. Zarathustra's search for the higher men and the superman is amazing. You become a superman or higher men if you realize the life is worth of living and you enjoy the life without expectation of a life after and give up childish beliefs of a higher power. Zarathustra manifests how hard it is to find the superman or higher men. People are just not able to accept the fact the god is dead even worse when they try to find a new god to replace the dead god. all of his so called higher men end up worshiping an ass.

In the end they see the light and become higher men. This book is work of a genius. The literature is poetic, beautiful and meaningful. I think it is a must read book for intellectuals. Nietzsche's philosophy is admirable, his dislike for religious clergy could not have been told any more eloquently than this way. A magnificent piece of work. By TJL on September 10, 2014 Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase This is not the Kaufmann translation, rather it appears to be the Common translation. I much prefer Kaufmann and was explicitly looking for that version as an ebook. When I searched on Amazon and selected the Kaufmann translation and then purchased the Kindle version, it seems to have rerouted me to a different translation of the text. Bad form Amazon. Customers should know what they are getting. The Common translation is widely available as a free PDF and is also a very different reading experience. Get the Kaufmann if you're able.

Thus Spake Zarathustra: Friedrich Nietzsche: 9780486406633: Books - Amazon.ca Product Description About the Author Nietzsche has been proclaimed the seminal figure of modern philosophy as well as one of the most creative and critically influential geniuses in the history of secular thought. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. From Kathleen M. Higgins and Robert C. Solomon’s Introduction to Thus Spoke Zarathustra Friedrich Nietzsche published the first part of his Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) in 1883, and it became his best-known book. He considered it his most important work, and toward the end of his life he immodestly described it in Ecce Homo (1908) as “the greatest present” that had been made to humanity so far. In the same book, he no less outrageously proclaims that it is “not only the highest book there is . . .

but it is also the deepest, born out of the innermost wealth of truth.” So we should not be surprised to find that Zarathustra is an extremely enigmatic and often pretentious work and by no means easy to understand or to classify. It is not clearly philosophy, or poetry, or prophecy, or satire. Sometimes it seems to be all of the above. It is also difficult because it is filled with learned allegories and allusions—to the Bible, Plato, Shakespeare, Goethe’s Faust, Ludwig Feuerbach, Arthur Schopenhauer, Nietzsche’s former friend Richard Wagner, and others—references that might not be readily recognizable by most contemporary readers. Zarathustra’s subtitle, “A Book for All and None,” also sounds like a challenge, if not a direct affront, suggesting that while anyone might pick it up and read it, no one can really understand it. In the then anxious world of modern Europe, already preparing for the calamities and traumas of the twentieth century, Zarathustra would find itself curiously at home. The basic format of Zarathustra is familiar. It tells a story in biblical style.

Zarathustra is an epic that resembles no other book so much as the New Testament, a work that Nietzsche, who had originally intended to enter the ministry (and whose father and grandfathers had all been ministers), knew very well. Like Jesus in the New Testament, the titular character of Nietzsche’s book goes into solitude at the age of thirty and returns to humanity with a mission—to share his wisdom with others, to challenge them to reform their lives. But like Jesus, Zarathustra is seriously misunderstood. The book thus chronicles the protagonist’s efforts and wanderings, his coming to understand who he is and what he stands for, by way of his interactions with the various and often odd characters he meets along the way. Nevertheless, there are obvious and dramatic differences between Zarathustra and the Gospels. To begin with, unlike Jesus, who returns from solitude after forty days, Zarathustra enjoys solitude for ten years before beginning his mission. And while the story of Jesus is completed with his death and resurrection, Zarathustra’s story is never finished. Indeed, the book starts exactly as it begins, with Zarathustra’s leaving his mountain cave and descending once again to humanity.

While Jesus is presented as enlightened throughout his teaching mission, Zarathustra matures only gradually. His whole story can be understood as an instance of the popular German genre of Bildungsroman—that is, a novel chronicling the education of its protagonist. Most important, the “gospel” that Zarathustra brings contrasts sharply with the teachings of Jesus. In Nietzsche’s version, Zarathustra utterly rejects the distinction between good and evil, and with it the basic premise of Judeo-Christian morality. He also denounces the “otherworldly” outlook of Christianity, its emphasis on a “better” life beyond this one. Zarathustra’s philosophy, summarized in a single phrase, is a celebration of what is “this-worldly.” It is a “yes-saying” to life, this life; for Zarathustra (like Nietzsche) thinks that there is no other. The combined allusions to and discrepancies from the New Testament in Zarathustra make it appropriate to think of it as a parody, although it should not be thought of just as satire, which ridicules its target. On the blasphemous side, however, Zarathustra is treated as a figure whose seriousness and importance are comparable to those of Jesus.

Many readers may not know that Nietzsche’s titular character is a very important historical religious figure. Zarathustra, also known as Zoroaster, probably lived in the seventh century b.c.e. (possibly from 628 to 551). He was a Persian who founded his own religion. Zoroastrianism, in turn, had a profound influence on both Judaism and Christianity. Zarathustra remained a fantasy figure in the West for many centuries, long before his writings were translated in the eighteenth century. Central to the teachings of the historical Zarathustra was the idea that the world is a stage on which cosmic moral forces, the power of good and the powers of evil, fight it out for dominance over humanity. This conflict between good and evil is central to both Judaism and Christianity, and given Nietzsche’s rejection of this dichotomy, it is highly significant as well as ironic that Nietzsche chose the supposed originator of that distinction as his central character and ostensibly as his spokesman.

Nietzsche tells us in Ecce Homo that as the first to invent the opposition of good and evil, Zarathustra should be the first to recognize that it is a “calamitous error,” for he has more experience and is more truthful than any other thinker. Nietzsche’s Zarathustra is the historical religious leader updated, offering insight into the modern world, as the original Zarathustra addressed the circumstances of his era. One could argue that Nietzsche used his fictional Zarathustra much as Plato used his teacher, Socrates (who never wrote down his teachings), to express his own views. And given that Nietzsche had a doctorate in classical philology and taught the classics for many years, we should not be surprised to find that Nietzsche’s book makes extensive references to Plato’s dialogues and their hero. Socrates, along with Jesus, remained one of the focal points of Nietzsche’s philosophy from his first book to his last. Socrates is a figure of profound importance to the Western tradition. In Nietzsche’s first book, Die Geburt der Tragödie (1872; The Birth of Tragedy), he called Socrates “the one vortex and turning-point” of Western culture.

In one of his last books, Die Götzen-Dämmerung (1889; Twilight of the Idols), he devotes an entire chapter to “The Problem of Socrates,” which is nothing less than the problem of Western civilization as such. In his life, Socrates was a self-styled gadfly to his contemporaries, provoking them to question their basic beliefs, which for the most part they held just because others held them too. His unrelenting challenge to common morals and public authority ultimately led to his being convicted on trumped-up charges and executed. Nietzsche’s Zarathustra is similarly devoted to challenging both “common sense” and the authority of tradition, and he similarly arouses hatred in those committed to them. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Thus spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None eBook by Friedrich Nietzsche - 9788892590243 | Kobo Show more Show less Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (German: Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen, also translated as Thus Spake Zarathustra) is a philosophical novel by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, composed in four parts between 1883 and 1885 and published between 1883 and 1891. Much of the work deals with ideas such as the "eternal recurrence of the same", the parable on the "death of God", and the "prophecy" of the Übermensch, which were first introduced in The Gay Science. Thus Spoke Zarathustra was conceived while Nietzsche was writing The Gay Science; he made a small note, reading "6,000 feet beyond man and time," as evidence of this.

More specifically, this note related to the concept of the eternal recurrence, which is, by Nietzsche's admission, the central idea of Zarathustra; this idea occurred to him by a "pyramidal block of stone" on the shores of Lake Silvaplana in the Upper Engadine, a high alpine region whose valley floor is at 6,000 feet (1,800 m). Nietzsche planned to write the book in three parts over several years. He wrote that the ideas for Zarathustra first came to him while walking on two roads surrounding Rapallo, according to Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche in the introduction of Thomas Common's early translation of the book. Buy the eBook Zarathustra: The universe according to Strauss Zarathustra: The universe according to Strauss by Melissa Lesnie on January 24, 2014 (January 24, 2014) filed under Classical Music | Film | Comment Now Thus Spake Zarathustra is Richard Strauss’ most recognisable work. But what ideas lurk behind the fanfare?

The greatest melodies, the kind that transcend centuries and transport us to the greatest heights, are often the simplest: Ode to Joy springs instantly to mind. That immortal tune bursts forth in the final movement of Beethoven’s last symphony; Richard Strauss’ orchestral tone poem Also Sprach Zarathustra, seven decades later in 1896, shocked listeners with the force and stark immediacy of its first five notes. One hundred and fifty years after its composer’s birth, that five-note ‘Sunrise’ fanfare remains one of the most powerful and recognisable moments in classical music — and not just because of its striking use in Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey as the sun peers over Earth. Strauss’ blazing sunrise, musically and philosophically, ushered in the dawn of a new era. The composer himself was all too aware of his place at the crossroads, originally intending to subtitle the work: ‘Symphonic Optimism in fin-de-siècle form, dedicated to the 20th century.’ Of course, there is more to Zarathustra than those first triumphant two minutes.

Strauss based this controversial yet popular work on Friedrich Nietzsche’s similarly controversial 1885 treatise of the same name, which famously declares that “Gott ist tot” — God is dead. How did Strauss express in musical terms the themes of this rambling philosophical tract, subtitled ‘A Book for Everyone and No One’, dismissed by the literary critic Harold Bloom as an “unreadable” and “gorgeous disaster”? How well did Strauss really understand his enigmatic source, and was he able to capture its essence? Gustavo Dudamel’s new recording of Also Sprach Zarathustra, released by Deutsche Grammophon late last year, marks the Venezuelan maestro’s first disc with the Berlin Philharmonic, the orchestra Strauss himself conducted regularly from 1888. He insists that coming to grips with the connection between the philosopher and composer is crucial to mastering the orchestral score: “Conducting Zarathustra is always an overwhelming experience. The music is very clearly written, with specific instructions… So if you want to perform it, you need to understand the meaning of the work. Above all you need to know what it meant in its day, how controversial it was, what an impact it made.

Strauss’ interpretation and conception of Nietzsche, that clear idea of the power possessed by human beings, the individual divinity within all of us — it’s all implicit in his music, in the notes he set down... It’s a very well-conceived work.” Nietzsche began Also Sprach Zarathustra in 1883, by then a recluse in Rapallo, northern Italy, addicted to opium and the sedative chloral hydrate (for which he wrote his own prescriptions, signed ‘Dr. Nietzsche’), estranged from his remaining friends and family after the breakdown of a relationship. The first of four parts was completed in just ten days. Couched in pseudo-biblical rhetoric, it relates the life of the 6th-century BC Persian prophet Zoroaster (who also crops up in operas by Rameau and Mozart), as he descends from ten years of mountaintop isolation to share his wisdom with mankind: that the universe and humanity is engaged in a constant struggle between two gods of darkness and light.

Nietzsche uses Zarathustra as a mouthpiece for his concepts of ‘eternal recurrence’ – whereby everything in the universe has happened before, and will repeat itself ad infinitum across time and space – and the Übermensch or Superman, a superior being. “What is the ape to man? A jest or a thing of shame. So shall man be to the Superman.” The celebrated German music theorist Theodor Adorno, who idolised Nietzsche but wrote damning critiques of Strauss, grudgingly acknowledged that the philosopher served as a “mentor” to the composer through his writings. Strauss certainly took advantage of the musical and poetic properties of a work the author once told his friend Peter Gast in a letter, somewhat prophetically, “really belongs among the symphonies”. Nietzsche, who initially counted himself among Wagner’s close friends but later broke faith to become one of his most publicly outspoken and vicious critics, was heavily involved in the musical culture of his time.

He was still alive when Strauss conducted the Frankfurt premiere in November 1896, but we will never know what he would have thought of the results; four years after the publication of the book he suffered a mental collapse – variously attributed to syphilis and manic depression – and was confined to an institution for the rest of his life. He died in 1900, at the dawn of the new century Strauss had sought to glorify. Just as Nietzsche’s health had started to decline, the young Strauss’ star was rising. The latter penned his Zarathustra in the second half of a decade spent devoted to the ‘tone poem’, an orchestral work based on a plot or program, an allusive title or a pre-existing literary text.

(Strauss used the term to allow his music to step out from the shadow of Liszt’s cycle of 12 single-movement ‘symphonic poems’, a formative influence he had described as the “music of the future”.) It began in 1888 with Macbeth; Don Juan followed eight months later, creating a scandal with its provocative musical ‘sex scene’, then Tod Und Verklärung, Till Eulenspiegel, Thus Spake Zarathustra and Don Quixote. These culminated in 1898 with the autobiographical, vaingloriously titled Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life) in which Strauss, not yet 35, recounts his own achievements by quoting from the earlier tone poems and other works. By then he had been crowned undisputed master of the form, the conductor Hans von Bülow quipping, “Wagner is Richard I, there is no Richard II, so Strauss is Richard III.” All this activity as conductor and composer left Richard III gravely ill by the end of the 1891–2 season.

Cancelling his appearances at the podium in Bayreuth that summer, he spent some months convalescing in Greece and Egypt, reading voraciously in the tradition of the Bildungsreise, the German cultural journey of self-enrichment through immersion with literature, history and philosophy. It was here, engrossed in the works of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, that he succumbed to the sheer power of Zarathustra’s message. That power leaps from the printed page into the concert hall, as a 23-year-old Béla Bartòk attested in his visceral, inspired response to a 1904 performance in Budapest: he recalls being “aroused as by a flash of lightning... This work, received with shudders by musicians here, stimulated the greatest enthusiasm in me; at last I saw the way that lay before me. Straightaway I threw myself into a study of Strauss’ scores, and began to compose…” As the visionary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick would prove more than half a century later, the work’s initial impact has remained largely undiminished, timeless.

For Strauss, who is said to have bragged that he could render a teaspoon clearly in music, articulating lofty philosophical ideals in music was another challenge altogether. Rather than following the prophet’s journey in minute detail, he created a ‘Tondichtung frei nach Friedr. Nietzsche’ (tone poem freely based on Nietzsche). He warned listeners that those expecting “philosophy translated directly into tones” would be disappointed. In the note for the Berlin premiere, Strauss clarified his thinking: “I did not intend to write philosophical music or to portray in music Nietzsche’s great work. I wished to convey by means of music an idea of the development of the human race from its origin, through the various phases of its development, religious and scientific, up to Nietzsche’s idea of the Superman.

The whole symphonic poem is intended as a homage to Nietzsche’s genius, which found its greatest expression in his book Also Sprach Zarathustra.” If he considered this to be Nietzsche’s magnum opus, Strauss conferred the same status on his own transformation of the work, writing to his wife just before the premiere, in typically modest tones, that it was “by far the most important of all my pieces, the most perfect in form, the richest in content and the most individual in character... I’m a fine fellow after all, and feel just a little pleased with myself.” How did he achieve this “perfect” form? The central argument is put forward in absolute clarity in the legendary opening. Strauss’ ‘Nature’ theme gives voice to Zarathustra’s mountain sunrise in the purest possible terms as four trumpets sustain a C over deep, rumbling organ, followed by an ascending fifth and octave above. These are the intervals that occur naturally through the harmonic series — the mystical music of the spheres meets the irrefutable science of sound, punctuated and outlined by commanding blows of the timpani. Then, the clashing contrast between major and minor third, the latter halting and subverting the progression of the harmonic series.

In itially, we are not denied the longed-for resolution, the Big Bang of a radiant C Major chord concludes the introduction. But Strauss has set the scene for Nietzsche’s great dichotomy: while C Major evokes nature, the composer introduces an opposing B-minor triad to represent humanity. The ensuing tussle between two tonal centres that dominates the work is known as the ‘World Riddle’ motif. (This, Strauss’ greatest success, stemmed from a compositional technique he was told not to pursue by no less a role model than Brahms, who had advised the budding composer to avoid the “trivial pursuit” of contrapuntal combinations of triadic figures.) Dudamel never tires of Strauss’ eternal sunrise. “That opening section of the music, the portrait of dawn, is always captivating... and lays the foundations for the rest of the Zarathustra is about internal control, and the power of emotion, the power of thought. And the infinite possibilities that the power can give you as you lead your life.” work,” explains the Venezuelan maestro.

After those two mind-blowing minutes, the remaining half-hour of music is structured in eight sections performed without pause, each with a title and musical reflections drawn from a chapter of Nietzsche. In Of the Backworldsman, muted horns intoning a plainchant for the Credo hints at Strauss’ ambivalence, even disdain, towards religion — that Christianity is one of the forces keeping a naïve mankind in the dark. Its antithesis is Of Science, a dense, cerebral fugue expanding on the ‘Sunrise’ motif to incorporate all twelve notes of the chromatic scale (well before Schoenberg had codified his dodecaphonic method of composition). According to the program at this point, man “turns toward science, and tries in vain to solve life’s problem in a fugue”. Strauss himself admitted he found it “spine-chilling” in its emotionless precision: if this is the pinnacle of mankind’s progress up until this point, has science simply become the new religion? Strauss remains optimistic in the face of nihilism: If a solemn fugue fails, try some “agreeable dance tunes”.

Cue the opulently orchestrated Viennese waltz of Das Tanzlied with its sweeping violin solo by turns elegant and pompous – a parody of the composer’s (unrelated) namesake Johann Strauss – portraying Zarathustra as he observes Cupid dancing with wood nymphs. The final movement, Night Wanderer’s Song, opens with the ominous clang of the Midnight Bell; in Nietzsche’s version, the twelve chimes are interspersed between lines beginning with the exhortation, “O Mensch! Gib acht!” (O Man! Take heed!), which Mahler set in his Third Symphony. Strauss concludes softly and sublimely, though not without the metaphysical tug-of-war between the tonal centre of B in the higher instruments and the key of C in cellos and double basses, bringing man and nature close together but never truly bridging the gap.

The works of Strauss and Nietzsche (inset) were both grafted onto the Nazis’ own ideology when they seized on the idea of a race of Übermenschen, but the introduction to Strauss’ masterpiece took on completely different resonances in the latter half of the twentieth century when it became the immortal title music of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Its use, along with other classical excerpts including the ‘other’ Strauss’ Blue Danube waltz and works by Ligeti and Khachaturian, created an upset in the film industry when Kubrick unceremoniously scrapped the original score he had commissioned in favour of these ‘temp tracks’, without so much as a word of warning to the composer Alex North. (Apparently Kubrick had originally approached Strauss’ Bavarian countryman Carl Orff, composer of Carmina Burana, to write the music, but the German declined, claiming he was too old.) “Somehow I had the hunch that whatever I wrote to supplant Strauss’ Zarathustra would not satisfy Kubrick, even though I used the same structure but brought it up to date in idiom and dramatic punch,” maintains North.

After such a breathtaking cinematic introduction, it’s easy to forget that Strauss’ music continues to crop up throughout, always deftly integrated into the visual and structural context. The film ends with the third fanfare of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, bringing musical and cinematic cyclical structures into the same orbit. Released in 1968, notably before the moon landing, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a portrayal of mankind that Nietzsche would have approved of: futuristic yet timeless, from bone-wielding ape to evolved beings who have created undreamed of technology to facilitate impossible journeys. “However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light,” the great director once said. It’s as if the visions of Nietzsche, Strauss and Kubrick are as perfectly aligned as the sun, earth and moon in that iconic image from the film. Gustavo Dudamel and the Berlin Philharmonic’s recording of Also Sprach Zarathustra is available on Deutsche Grammophon.

Keywords Thus spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None, Friedrich Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche | Ebook Bookrepublic Trovi questo ebook solo nel formato epub Quarta di copertina Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (German: Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen, also translated as Thus Spake Zarathustra) is a philosophical novel by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, composed in four parts between 1883 and 1885 and published between 1883 and 1891. Much of the work deals with ideas such as the "eternal recurrence of the same", the parable on the "death of God", and the "prophecy" of the Übermensch, which were first introduced in The Gay Science. Thus Spoke Zarathustra was conceived while Nietzsche was writing The Gay Science; he made a small note, reading "6,000 feet beyond man and time," as evidence of this.

More specifically, this note related to the concept of the eternal recurrence, which is, by Nietzsche's admission, the central idea of Zarathustra; this idea occurred to him by a "pyramidal block of stone" on the shores of Lake Silvaplana in the Upper Engadine, a high alpine region whose valley floor is at 6,000 feet (1,800 m). Nietzsche planned to write the book in three parts over several years. He wrote that the ideas for Zarathustra first came to him while walking on two roads surrounding Rapallo, according to Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche in the introduction of Thomas Common's early translation of the book. 0 commenti a "Thus spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None" Solo gli utenti registrati a Bookrepublic possono scrivere recensioni agli ebook.

Question: Who wrote the 1891 book Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra)?
Answer: Friedrich Nietzsche