Szplug's Reviews > Thus Spoke Zarathustra

How you liking them apples, Jede-fucking-diah?!

Thus spoke Barnaby Jones.

I read this book back around 2001 or 2002. I wasn't much concerned with writing reviews back then—and how weird is that?—but, deeming Nietzsche a pretty smart guy, I scribbled down a bunch of notes and quotes. Since I've not a single review by Friedrich N. at this place, I thought, in lieu of anything more insightful or intelligent, to copy those notes out below, verbatim. And after having done so, I'm not quite sure what I had hoped to accomplish with such a meager collection of peanut shells. [Shrug]. But what are you going to do? Perhaps someone, somewhere, somehow, will find something in 'em that makes Zarathustra more appealing than it might otherwise have been, and that would be just bully for me.

*Notes written on shit-brown paper and awfully damn hard to transcribe, 'cause I'm a southpaw and I write like I was being severely and cruelly electrocuted whilst running about and shaking.

The Overman: That which man must become in order to overcome himself and/or nature.

The Creator is also an annihilator—he must be cruel to break old values and create new ones.

The Last Man is promised happiness—but who will lead and who will obey? Everyone is the same, and those who are different are mad. The Last Man invented happiness.

Man created God in order to look away from everything. God suffers too, and is thus imperfect like his creators. Man hated the body, and so created spirit. Man hated the Earth, and so created Heaven. Doubt was sin. Knowledge shunned. The Ego will reclaim man for the Earth.

You say to me "Life is hard to bear." But why would you have pride in the morning and your resignation in the evening? Life is hard to bear; but do not act so tenderly! We are all of us fair beasts of burden, male and female asses. What do we have in common with the rosebud, which trembles because a drop of dew lies on it?

True, we love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving. There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

Warriors of the Mind: Those with the courage to fight for their beliefs have helped mankind far more than priests who meekly accept the ideas of others.

You invite a witness when you want to speak well of yourselves; and when you have seduced him to think well of you, then you think well of yourselves.

Thus speaks the fool: "Association with other people corrupts one's character—especially if one has none."

One man goes to his neighbor because he seeks himself; another because he would lose himself. Your bad love of yourselves turns your solitude into a prison. It is those farther away who must pay for your love of your neighbor; and even if five of you are together, there is always a sixth who must die.

Using other people as a prop to make them feel virtuous. Groups of virtuous people feeling very good can do great evil to strangers whom they should love too.

Those who truly love are creators—and thus annihilators and givers and esteemers.

Do not let virtues, good and evil, limit your fulfillment as a creator. Remain of the Earth and do not get lost in the heavens seeking away from yourself and the body.

Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.

Nietzsche says God is dead but he constantly refers to angels and magic creatures: is he creating a new religion of the Overman? Of becoming?

Nietzsche's Zarathustra has doubts about the future—he is worried about learning for learning's sake; education imparting a love of collecting other people's creations.

At bottom, these simpletons want a single thing most of all: that nobody should hurt them. Thus they try to please and gratify everybody. This, however, is cowardice, even if it be called virtue...Virtue to them is that which makes modest and tame: with that they have turned the wolf into a dog and man himself into man's domestic animal.

"We have placed our chair in the middle," your smirking says to me; "and exactly as far from dying fighters as from amused sows." That, however, is mediocrity, though it be called moderation.

Nietzsche also frequently mentions his nausea, which chokes him like a snake. It's always the ejection of that which sustains life brought about by life's own unsettling essence and energies.

Small virtues: Do not be more concerned with morals than with being men. Perfect safety and happiness makes for small minds and petty pursuits.

The old gods laughed themselves to death when the Grimbeard God proclaimed one god only. Laughter and prankishness are very important to Nietzsche—it keeps him from acting out of revenge.

The creator is not bound by the limits imposed by others. Their evil is so small: from small men with small virtues.

The great enemy of man is the Spirit of Gravity, which from birth holds men down with Good and Evil and Virtues. Man must soar his own way, making his own values. There is no correct one way or path for all men: that this is so is one of Gravity's lies.

The Spirit of Gravity is the old devil, and Zarathustra's enemy, for he brings constraint–statute–necessity–consequence, purpose and will, good and evil.

Good men never speak the truth. They give in—those who heed commands do not heed themselves.

The warring of despots and of democracy. The despot will distort the past to make it lead to him. The rabble with drown the past in shallow waters: forget the past after a pair of generations.

The Good and the Just must be pharisees. The good are always the beginning of the end. They want to crucify all creators; to the breakers of tablets, the Good sacrifice the future for themselves.

Zarathustra continues to be assailed by episodes of choking on the snake of nausea. All men, even the creator, must fight their nausea of the world.

For man is the cruelest animal. At tragedies, bullfights and crucifixions he has so far felt best on earth; and when he invented hell for himself, behold, that was his heaven on earth. Man is the cruelest animal against himself; and whenever he calls himself 'sinner' and 'cross-bearer' and 'penitent', do not fail to hear the voluptuous delight that is in all such lamentation and accusation.

Zarathustra, through love of nature, has accepted his love of eternity and the eternal re-occurrence. Now in Part IV, as he has overcome his nausea of the eternal re-occurrence, he faces his final trial: pity.

All great lovers are great despisers. All creators are hard, all great love is over and beyond pity. All great success has gone to the well-persecuted. All those who persecute well learn readily how to follow.

The small men ask only: How is man to be preserved best, longest and most agreeably? They are concerned solely with small virtues. The Overman wants not to preserve man, but to overcome man.

Nietzsche constantly stresses the need for laughter and to laugh at one self: to dance on light feet. The archenemy is always the Spirit of Gravity.

The greater the creator, the greater the evil. But wash off the stain after you have created. Birth is never pleasant.

Whosoever would kill most thoroughly, laughs—not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter.