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NOTES ON “THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA” BY ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.
Chapter I. The Three Metamorphoses.
Chapter II. The Academic Chairs of Virtue.
Chapter IV. The Despisers of the Body.
Chapter IX. The Preachers of Death.
Chapter XV. The Thousand and One Goals.
Chapter XVIII. Old and Young Women.
Chapter XXII. The Bestowing Virtue.
Chapter XXIII. The Child with the Mirror.
Chapter XXIV. In the Happy Isles.
Chapter XXX. The Famous Wise Ones.
Chapter XXXIII. The Grave-Song.
Chapter XXXIV. Self-Surpassing.
Chapter XXXV. The Sublime Ones.
Chapter XXXVI. The Land of Culture.
Chapter XXXVII. Immaculate Perception.
Chapter XLIII. Manly Prudence.
Chapter XLIV. The Stillest Hour.
Chapter XLVI. The Vision and the Enigma.
Chapter XLVII. Involuntary Bliss.
Chapter XLVIII. Before Sunrise.
Chapter XLIX. The Bedwarfing Virtue.
Chapter LIII. The Return Home.
Chapter LIV. The Three Evil Things.
Chapter LV. The Spirit of Gravity.
Chapter LVI. Old and New Tables. Par. 2.
Chapter LVII. The Convalescent.
Chapter LXI. The Honey Sacrifice.
Chapter LXII. The Cry of Distress.
Chapter LXIII. Talk with the Kings.
Chapter LXVII. The Ugliest Man.
Chapter LXVIII. The Voluntary Beggar.
Chapter LXXIII. The Higher Man. Par. 1.
Chapter LXXIV. The Song of Melancholy.
Chapter LXXVI. Among the Daughters of the Desert.
Chapter LXXVII. The Awakening.
Chapter LXXVIII. The Ass-Festival.
Chapter LXXIX. The Drunken Song.
“Zarathustra” is my brother’s most personal work; it is the history of his most 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. My brother had the figure of Zarathustra in his mind from his very earliest youth: he once told me that even as a child he had dreamt of him. At different periods in his life, he would call this haunter of his dreams by different names; “but in the end,” he declares in a note on the subject, “I had to do a PERSIAN the honour of identifying him with this creature of my fancy. Persians were the first to take a broad and comprehensive view of history. Every series of evolutions, according to them, was presided over by a prophet; and every prophet had his ‘Hazar,’—his dynasty of a thousand years.”
All Zarathustra’s views, as also his personality, were early conceptions of my brother’s mind. Whoever reads his posthumously published writings for the years 1869-82 with care, will constantly meet with passages suggestive of Zarathustra’s thoughts and doctrines. For instance, the ideal of the Superman is put forth quite clearly in all his writings during the years 1873-75; and in “We Philologists”, the following remarkable observations occur:—
