Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra

APPENDIX 81. NOTES ON "THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA" BY ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI. (continued)

Par. 24.

This should be read in conjunction with "Child and Marriage". In the fifth verse we shall recognise our old friend "Marriage on the ten-years system," which George Meredith suggested some years ago. This, however, must not be taken too literally. I do not think Nietzsche's profoundest views on marriage were ever intended to be given over to the public at all, at least not for the present. They appear in the biography by his sister, and although their wisdom is unquestionable, the nature of the reforms he suggests render it impossible for them to become popular just now.

Pars. 26, 27.

See Note on "The Prologue".

Par. 28.

Nietzsche was not an iconoclast from predilection. No bitterness or empty hate dictated his vituperations against existing values and against the dogmas of his parents and forefathers. He knew too well what these things meant to the millions who profess them, to approach the task of uprooting them with levity or even with haste. He saw what modern anarchists and revolutionists do NOT see--namely, that man is in danger of actual destruction when his customs and values are broken. I need hardly point out, therefore, how deeply he was conscious of the responsibility he threw upon our shoulders when he invited us to reconsider our position. The lines in this paragraph are evidence enough of his earnestness.

Chapter LVII. The Convalescent.

We meet with several puzzles here. Zarathustra calls himself the advocate of the circle (the Eternal Recurrence of all things), and he calls this doctrine his abysmal thought. In the last verse of the first paragraph, however, after hailing his deepest thought, he cries: "Disgust, disgust, disgust!" We know Nietzsche's ideal man was that "world-approving, exuberant, and vivacious creature, who has not only learnt to compromise and arrange with that which was and is, but wishes to have it again, AS IT WAS AND IS, for all eternity insatiably calling out da capo, not only to himself, but to the whole piece and play" (see Note on Chapter XLII.). But if one ask oneself what the conditions to such an attitude are, one will realise immediately how utterly different Nietzsche was from his ideal. The man who insatiably cries da capo to himself and to the whole of his mise-en-scene, must be in a position to desire every incident in his life to be repeated, not once, but again and again eternally. Now, Nietzsche's life had been too full of disappointments, illness, unsuccessful struggles, and snubs, to allow of his thinking of the Eternal Recurrence without loathing--hence probably the words of the last verse.