5.
Among Nietzsche's works there is a strange book which bears the title, Thus Spake Zarathustra. It consists of four parts, written during the years 1883-85, each part in about ten days, and conceived chapter by chapter on long walks—"with a feeling of inspiration, as though each sentence had been shouted in my ear," as Nietzsche wrote in a private letter.
The central figure and something of the form are borrowed from the Persian Avesta. Zarathustra is the mystical founder of a religion whom we usually call Zoroaster. His religion is the religion of purity; his wisdom is cheerful and dauntless, as that of one who laughed at his birth; his nature is light and flame. The eagle and the serpent, who share his mountain cave, the proudest and the wisest of beasts, are ancient Persian symbols.
This work contains Nietzsche's doctrine in the form, so to speak, of religion. It is the Koran, or rather the Avesta, which he was impelled to leave—obscure and profound, high-soaring and remote from reality, prophetic and intoxicated with the future, filled to the brim with the personality of its author, who again is entirely filled with himself.
Among modern books that have adopted this tone and employed this symbolic and allegorical style may be mentioned Mickiewicz's Book of the Polish Pilgrims, Slowacki's Anheli, and The Words of a Believer, by Lamennais, who was influenced by Mickiewicz. A newer work, known to Nietzsche, is Carl Spitteler's Prometheus and Epimetheus (1881). But all these books, with the exception of Spitteler's, are biblical in their language. Zarathustra, on the other hand, is a book of edification for free spirits.
Nietzsche himself gave this book the highest place among his writings. I do not share this view. The imaginative power which sustains it is not sufficiently inventive, and a certain monotony is inseparable from an archaistic presentment by means of types.
But it is a good book for those to have recourse to who are unable to master Nietzsche's purely speculative works; it contains all his fundamental ideas in the form of poetic recital. Its merit is a style that from the first word to the last is full-toned, sonorous and powerful; now and then rather unctuous in its combative judgments and condemnations; always expressive of self-joy, nay, self-intoxication, but rich in subtleties as in audacities, sure, and at times great. Behind this style lies a mood as of calm mountain air, so light, so ethereally pure, that no infection, no bacteria can live in it—no noise, no stench, no dust assails it, nor does any path lead up.
Clear sky above, open sea at the mountain's foot, and over all a heaven of light, an abyss of light, an azure bell, a vaulted silence above roaring waters and mighty mountain-chains. On the heights Zarathustra is alone with himself, drawing in the pure air in full, deep breaths, alone with the rising sun, alone with the heat of noon, which does not impair the freshness, alone with the voices of the gleaming stars at night.
A good, deep book it is. A book that is bright in its joy of life, dark in its riddles, a book for spiritual mountain-climbers and dare-devils and for the few who are practised in the great contempt of man that loathes the crowd, and in the great love of man that only loathes so deeply because it has a vision of a higher, braver humanity, which it seeks to rear and train.
Zarathustra has sought the refuge of his cave out of disgust with petty happiness and petty virtues. He has seen that men's doctrine of virtue and contentment makes them ever smaller: their goodness is in the main a wish that no one may do them any harm; therefore they forestall the others by doing them a little good. This is cowardice and is called virtue. True, they are at the same time quite ready to attack and injure, but only those who are once for all at their mercy and with whom it is safe to take liberties. This is called bravery and is a still baser cowardice. But when Zarathustra tries to drive out the cowardly devils in men, the cry is raised against him, "Zarathustra is godless."