Thus Spoke Zarathustra will forever retain its mystery and is a monument to Nietzsche's eccentricity. Many fascinating discussions have explored what could have influenced Nietzsche: the social milieu of late 19th century Europe, the contradictions of Enlightenment thought, etc. So many things are explored, celebrated or indicted with ambitious and sharp leaps of metaphors: Moral relativism, comparative theology and eternal recurrence, nothing short of the love of life, the will to life. Full of surreal visions, Zarathustra is a challenge to interpret but at the same time, lacks the semantics of conventional philosophy that makes the field inaccessible for many young students.
The events in the book are more like Biblical parables than a plot unfolding, except that the lesson is not, "Thou Shalt" but "Why should I?" I wish I could read German well enough to understand the nuances of Nietzsche's original narrative. It was my first encounter with existential thought, a stinging critique of the very nature of values and belief. I was warned that Nietzsche was dangerous for young readers (like Machiavelli) because he went insane. Reading through Zarathustra as a teenager was a singularly powerful experience the work defies categorization or genre, time or place. Horror movies never frightened me in the same way certain works of literature and film did.
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