查拉图斯特拉如是说 英文版 Thus Spake Zarathustra
尼采 Friedrich Nietzsche
Introduction by Mrs Forster-Nietzsche. Page 1
HOW ZARATHUSTRA CAME INTO BEING.
"Zarathustra" is my brother's most personal work; it is the history of hismost individual experiences, of his friendships, ideals, raptures,bitterest disappointments and sorrows. Above it all, however, there soars,transfiguring it, the image of his greatest hopes and remotest aims. Mybrother had the figure of Zarathustra in his mind from his very earliestyouth: he once told me that even as a child he had dreamt of him. Atdifferent periods in his life, he would call this haunter of his dreams bydifferent names; "but in the end," he declares in a note on the subject, "Ihad to do a PERSIAN the honour of identifying him with this creature of myfancy. Persians were the first to take a broad and comprehensive view ofhistory. Every series of evolutions, according to them, was presided overby a prophet; and every prophet had his 'Hazar,'--his dynasty of a thousandyears."
All Zarathustra's views, as also his personality, were early conceptions ofmy brother's mind. Whoever reads his posthumously published writings forthe years 1869-82 with care, will constantly meet with passages suggestiveof Zarathustra's thoughts and doctrines. For instance, the ideal of theSuperman is put forth quite clearly in all his writings during the years1873-75; and in "We Philologists", the following remarkable observationsoccur:--
"How can one praise and glorify a nation as a whole?--Even among theGreeks, it was the INDIVIDUALS that counted."
"The Greeks are interesting and extremely important because they rearedsuch a vast number of great individuals. How was this possible? Thequestion is one which ought to be studied.
"I am interested only in the relations of a people to the rearing of theindividual man, and among the Greeks the conditions were unusuallyfavourable for the development of the individual; not by any means owing tothe goodness of the people, but because of the struggles of their evilinstincts.
"WITH THE HELP OF FAVOURABLE MEASURES GREAT INDIVIDUALS MIGHT BE REARED WHOWOULD BE BOTH DIFFERENT FROM AND HIGHER THAN THOSE WHO HERETOFORE HAVE OWEDTHEIR EXISTENCE TO MERE CHANCE. Here we may still be hopeful: in therearing of exceptional men."
The notion of rearing the Superman is only a new form of an ideal Nietzschealready had in his youth, that "THE OBJECT OF MANKIND SHOULD LIE IN ITSHIGHEST INDIVIDUALS" (or, as he writes in "Schopenhauer as Educator":"Mankind ought constantly to be striving to produce great men--this andnothing else is its duty.") But the ideals he most revered in those daysare no longer held to be the highest types of men. No, around this futureideal of a coming humanity--the Superman--the poet spread the veil ofbecoming. Who can tell to what glorious heights man can still ascend?That is why, after having tested the worth of our noblest ideal--that ofthe Saviour, in the light of the new valuations, the poet cries withpassionate emphasis in "Zarathustra":
"Never yet hath there been a Superman. Naked have I seen both of them, thegreatest and the smallest man:--
written:--nor is it a new species (in the Darwinian sense) of whichwe can know nothing, and which it would therefore be somewhat absurd tostrive after. .
All-too-similar are they still to each other. Verily even the greatestfound I--all-too-human!"--
The phrase "the rearing of the Superman," has very often beenmisunderstood. By the word "rearing," in this case, is meant the act ofmodifying by means of new and higher values--values which, as laws andguides of conduct and opinion, are now to rule over mankind. In generalthe doctrine of the Superman can only be understood correctly inconjunction with other ideas of the author's, such as:--the Order of Rank,the Will to Power, and the Transvaluation of all Values. He assumes thatChristianity, as a product of the resentment of the botched and the weak,has put in ban all that is beautiful, strong, proud, and powerful, in factall the qualities resulting from strength, and that, in consequence, allforces which tend to promote or elevate life have been seriouslyundermined. Now, however, a new table of valuations must be placed overmankind--namely, that of the strong, mighty, and magnificent man,overflowing with life and elevated to his zenith--the Superman, who is nowput before us with overpowering passion as the aim of our life, hope, andwill. And just as the old system of valuing, which only extolled thequalities favourable to the weak, the suffering, and the oppressed, hassucceeded in producing a weak, suffering, and "modern" race, so this newand reversed system of valuing ought to rear a healthy, strong, lively, andcourageous type, which would be a glory to life itself. Stated briefly,the leading principle of this new system of valuing would be: "All thatproceeds from power is good, all that springs from weakness is bad."
Zarathustra" is concerned, we may also say with MasterEckhardt: "The fleetest beast .
This type must not be regarded as a fanciful figure: it is not a nebuloushope which is to be realised at some indefinitely remote period, thousandsof years hence; nor is it a new species (in the Darwinian sense) of whichwe can know nothing, and which it would therefore be somewhat absurd tostrive after. But it is meant to be a possibility which men of the presentcould realise with all their spiritual and physical energies, provided theyadopted the new values.
The author of "Zarathustra" never lost sight of that egregious example of atransvaluation of all values through Christianity, whereby the whole of thedeified mode of life and thought of the Greeks, as well as strong Romedom,was almost annihilated or transvalued in a comparatively short time. Couldnot a rejuvenated Graeco-Roman system of valuing (once it had been refinedand made more profound by the schooling which two thousand years ofChristianity had provided) effect another such revolution within acalculable period of time, until that glorious type of manhood shallfinally appear which is to be our new faith and hope, and in the creationof which Zarathustra exhorts us to participate?
In his private notes on the subject the author uses the expression"Superman" (always in the singular, by-the-bye), as signifying "the mostthoroughly well-constituted type," as opposed to "modern man"; above all,however, he designates Zarathustra himself as an example of the Superman.In "Ecco Homo" he is careful to enlighten us concerning the precursors andprerequisites to the advent of this highest type, in referring to a certainpassage in the "Gay Science":--
"In order to understand this type, we must first be quite clear in regardto the leading physiological condition on which it depends: this conditionis what I call GREAT HEALTHINESS. I know not how to express my meaningmore plainly or more personally than I have done already in one of the lastchapters (Aphorism 382) of the fifth book of the 'Gaya Scienza'."
"We, the new, the nameless, the hard-to-understand,"--it says there,--"wefirstlings of a yet untried future--we require for a new end also a newmeans, namely, a new healthiness, stronger, sharper, tougher, bolder andmerrier than all healthiness hitherto. He whose soul longeth to experiencethe whole range of hitherto recognised values and desirabilities, and tocircumnavigate all the coasts of this ideal 'Mediterranean Sea', who, fromthe adventures of his most personal experience, wants to know how it feelsto be a conqueror, and discoverer of the ideal--as likewise how it is withthe artist, the saint, the legislator, the sage, the scholar, the devotee,the prophet, and the godly non-conformist of the old style:--requires onething above all for that purpose, GREAT HEALTHINESS--such healthiness asone not only possesses, but also constantly acquires and must acquire,because one unceasingly sacrifices it again, and must sacrifice it!--Andnow, after having been long on the way in this fashion, we Argonauts of theideal, more courageous perhaps than prudent, and often enough shipwreckedand brought to grief, nevertheless dangerously healthy, always healthyagain,--it would seem as if, in recompense for it all, that we have a stillundiscovered country before us, the boundaries of which no one has yetseen, a beyond to all countries and corners of the ideal known hitherto, aworld so over-rich in the beautiful, the strange, the questionable, thefrightful, and the divine, that our curiosity as well as our thirst forpossession thereof, have got out of hand--alas! that nothing will now anylonger satisfy us!--
"How could we still be content with THE MAN OF THE PRESENT DAY after suchoutlooks, and with such a craving in our conscience and consciousness? Sadenough; but it is unavoidable that we should look on the worthiest aims andhopes of the man of the present day with ill-concealed amusement, andperhaps should no longer look at them. Another ideal runs on before us, astrange, tempting ideal full of danger, to which we should not like topersuade any one, because we do not so readily acknowledge any one's RIGHTTHERETO: the ideal of a spirit who plays naively (that is to sayinvoluntarily and from overflowing abundance and power) with everythingthat has hitherto been called holy, good, intangible, or divine; to whomthe loftiest conception which the people have reasonably made their measureof value, would already practically imply danger, ruin, abasement, or atleast relaxation, blindness, or temporary self-forgetfulness; the ideal ofa humanly superhuman welfare and benevolence, which will often enoughappear INHUMAN, for example, when put alongside of all past seriousness onearth, and alongside of all past solemnities in bearing, word, tone, look,morality, and pursuit, as their truest involuntary parody--and WITH which,nevertheless, perhaps THE GREAT SERIOUSNESS only commences, when the properinterrogative mark is set up, the fate of the soul changes, the hour-handmoves, and tragedy begins..."
Although the figure of Zarathustra and a large number of the leadingthoughts in this work had appeared much earlier in the dreams and writingsof the author, "Thus Spake Zarathustra" did not actually come into beinguntil the month of August 1881 in Sils Maria; and it was the idea of theEternal Recurrence of all things which finally induced my brother to setforth his new views in poetic language. In regard to his first conceptionof this idea, his autobiographical sketch, "Ecce Homo", written in theautumn of 1888, contains the following passage:--
"The fundamental idea of my work--namely, the Eternal Recurrence of allthings--this highest of all possible formulae of a Yea-saying philosophy,first occurred to me in August 1881. I made a note of the thought on asheet of paper, with the postscript: 6,000 feet beyond men and time! Thatday I happened to be wandering through the woods alongside of the lake ofSilvaplana, and I halted beside a huge, pyramidal and towering rock not farfrom Surlei. It was then that the thought struck me. Looking back now, Ifind that exactly two months previous to this inspiration, I had had anomen of its coming in the form of a sudden and decisive alteration in mytastes--more particularly in music. It would even be possible to considerall 'Zarathustra' as a musical composition. At all events, a verynecessary condition in its production was a renaissance in myself of theart of hearing. In a small mountain resort (Recoaro) near Vicenza, where Ispent the spring of 1881, I and my friend and Maestro, Peter Gast--also onewho had been born again--discovered that the phoenix music that hoveredover us, wore lighter and brighter plumes than it had done theretofore."
During the month of August 1881 my brother resolved to reveal the teachingof the Eternal Recurrence, in dithyrambic and psalmodic form, through themouth of Zarathustra. Among the notes of this period, we found a page onwhich is written the first definite plan of "Thus Spake Zarathustra":--
"MIDDAY AND ETERNITY."
"GUIDE-POSTS TO A NEW WAY OF LIVING."
Beneath this is written:--
"Zarathustra born on lake Urmi; left his home in his thirtieth year,went into the province of Aria, and, during ten years of solitude inthe mountains, composed the Zend-Avesta."
"The sun of knowledge stands once more at midday; and the serpent ofeternity lies coiled in its light--: It is YOUR time, ye midday brethren."
In that summer of 1881, my brother, after many years of steadily declininghealth, began at last to rally, and it is to this first gush of therecovery of his once splendid bodily condition that we owe not only "TheGay Science", which in its mood may be regarded as a prelude to"Zarathustra", but also "Zarathustra" itself. Just as he was beginning torecuperate his health, however, an unkind destiny brought him a number ofmost painful personal experiences. His friends caused him manydisappointments, which were the more bitter to him, inasmuch as he regardedfriendship as such a sacred institution; and for the first time in his lifehe realised the whole horror of that loneliness to which, perhaps, allgreatness is condemned. But to be forsaken is something very differentfrom deliberately choosing blessed loneliness. How he longed, in thosedays, for the ideal friend who would thoroughly understand him, to whom hewould be able to say all, and whom he imagined he had found at variousperiods in his life from his earliest youth onwards. Now, however, thatthe way he had chosen grew ever more perilous and steep, he found nobodywho could follow him: he therefore created a perfect friend for himself inthe ideal form of a majestic philosopher, and made this creation thepreacher of his gospel to the world.
Whether my brother would ever have written "Thus Spake Zarathustra"according to the first plan sketched in the summer of 1881, if he had nothad the disappointments already referred to, is now an idle question; butperhaps where "Zarathustra" is concerned, we may also say with MasterEckhardt: "The fleetest beast to bear you to perfection is suffering."
My brother writes as follows about the origin of the first part of"Zarathustra":--"In the winter of 1882-83, I was living on the charminglittle Gulf of Rapallo, not far from Genoa, and between Chiavari and CapePorto Fino. My health was not very good; the winter was cold andexceptionally rainy; and the small inn in which I lived was so close to thewater that at night my sleep would be disturbed if the sea were high.These circumstances were surely the very reverse of favourable; and yet inspite of it all, and as if in demonstration of my belief that everythingdecisive comes to life in spite of every obstacle, it was precisely duringthis winter and in the midst of these unfavourable circumstances that my'Zarathustra' originated. In the morning I used to start out in asoutherly direction up the glorious road to Zoagli, which rises aloftthrough a forest of pines and gives one a view far out into the sea. Inthe afternoon, as often as my health permitted, I walked round the wholebay from Santa Margherita to beyond Porto Fino. This spot was all the moreinteresting to me, inasmuch as it was so dearly loved by the EmperorFrederick III. In the autumn of 1886 I chanced to be there again when hewas revisiting this small, forgotten world of happiness for the last time.It was on these two roads that all 'Zarathustra' came to me, above allZarathustra himself as a type;--I ought rather to say that it was on thesewalks that these ideas waylaid me."
The first part of "Zarathustra" was written in about ten days--that is tosay, from the beginning to about the middle of February 1883. "The lastlines were written precisely in the hallowed hour when Richard Wagner gaveup the ghost in Venice."
With the exception of the ten days occupied in composing the first part ofthis book, my brother often referred to this winter as the hardest andsickliest he had ever experienced. He did not, however, mean thereby thathis former disorders were troubling him, but that he was suffering from asevere attack of influenza which he had caught in Santa Margherita, andwhich tormented him for several weeks after his arrival in Genoa. As amatter of fact, however, what he complained of most was his spiritualcondition--that indescribable forsakenness--to which he gives suchheartrending expression in "Zarathustra". Even the reception which thefirst part met with at the hands of friends and acquaintances was extremelydisheartening: for almost all those to whom he presented copies of thework misunderstood it. "I found no one ripe for many of my thoughts; thecase of 'Zarathustra' proves that one can speak with the utmost clearness,and yet not be heard by any one." My brother was very much discouraged bythe feebleness of the response he was given, and as he was striving justthen to give up the practice of taking hydrate of chloral--a drug he hadbegun to take while ill with influenza,--the following spring, spent inRome, was a somewhat gloomy one for him. He writes about it as follows:--"I spent a melancholy spring in Rome, where I only just managed to live,--and this was no easy matter. This city, which is absolutely unsuited tothe poet-author of 'Zarathustra', and for the choice of which I was notresponsible, made me inordinately miserable. I tried to leave it. Iwanted to go to Aquila--the opposite of Rome in every respect, and actuallyfounded in a spirit of enmity towards that city (just as I also shall founda city some day), as a memento of an atheist and genuine enemy of theChurch--a person very closely related to me,--the great Hohenstaufen, theEmperor Frederick II. But Fate lay behind it all: I had to return againto Rome. In the end I was obliged to be satisfied with the PiazzaBarberini, after I had exerted myself in vain to find an anti-Christianquarter. I fear that on one occasion, to avoid bad smells as much aspossible, I actually inquired at the Palazzo del Quirinale whether theycould not provide a quiet room for a philosopher. In a chamber high abovethe Piazza just mentioned, from which one obtained a general view of Romeand could hear the fountains plashing far below, the loneliest of all songswas composed--'The Night-Song'. About this time I was obsessed by anunspeakably sad melody, the refrain of which I recognised in the words,'dead through immortality.'"
We remained somewhat too long in Rome that spring, and what with the effectof the increasing heat and the discouraging circumstances alreadydescribed, my brother resolved not to write any more, or in any case, notto proceed with "Zarathustra", although I offered to relieve him of alltrouble in connection with the proofs and the publisher. When, however, wereturned to Switzerland towards the end of June, and he found himself oncemore in the familiar and exhilarating air of the mountains, all his joyouscreative powers revived, and in a note to me announcing the dispatch ofsome manuscript, he wrote as follows: "I have engaged a place here forthree months: forsooth, I am the greatest fool to allow my courage to besapped from me by the climate of Italy. Now and again I am troubled by thethought: WHAT NEXT? My 'future' is the darkest thing in the world to me,but as there still remains a great deal for me to do, I suppose I oughtrather to think of doing this than of my future, and leave the rest to THEEand the gods."