Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None

by Friedrich Nietzsche, Michael Hulse (Translator), Joanna Kavenna (Introduction)

Overview

A new translation of Nietzsche’s seminal work by a prize-winning translator of W. G. Sebald, Goethe, Rilke, Herta Müller, and Elfriede Jelinek.

In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche’s infamous protagonist sets off on a grand and noble quest to find meaning in a secular world and to live joyfully alongside the knowledge of death.

In this new translation by Michael Hulse—the first in English by a poet—Zarathustra is revealed in all his bold and ironic splendor as a man who prizes self-worth above all else as a moral code to live by.

Radical, uncategorizable, contradictory, and often humorous, Thus Spake Zarathustra is a grand celebration of human existence by one of the most influential thinkers of the past two centuries.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781910749265
Publisher:	New York Review Books
Publication date:	09/06/2022
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	500
File size:	349 KB

About the Author

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a German philosopher, essayist, and critic whose writings about morality, truth, language, aesthetics, and nihilism are considered cornerstones of Western philosophy.

Michael Hulse is a poet, translator and critic. He has won numerous awards for his poetry and his 2013 collection, Half Life, was chosen as a Book of the Year in the Australian Book Review. He has translated many works from the German, including titles by Goethe, Rilke, and W. G. Sebald. His translations have been shortlisted for numerous major translation awards, including the PEN Translation Prize, the Aristeion Translation Prize, and the Schlegel-Tieck Prize. He teaches poetry and comparative literature at Warwick University.
 
Joanna Kavenna is the author of several works of fiction and non-fiction
including The Ice Museum, Inglorious, The Birth of Love and A Field Guide to Reality. Her short stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, the London Review of Books, the New Scientist, The Guardian and The New York Times, among other publications. In 2008 she won the Orange Prize for New Writing, and in 2013 she was named as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists.

Table of Contents

	Zarathustra's Prologue	1
Part 1
I	The Three Metamorphoses	13
II	The Academic Chairs of Virtue	14
III	Backworldsmen	16
IV	The Despisers of the Body	19
V	Joys and Passions	20
VI	The Pale Criminal	22
VII	Reading and Writing	23
VIII	The Tree on the Hill	25
IX	The Preachers of Death	27
X	War and Warriors	28
XI	The New Idol	29
XII	The Flies in the Market-place	31
XIII	Chastity	34
XIV	The Friend	35
XV	The Thousand and One Goals	36
XVI	Neighbour-Love	38
XVII	The Way of the Creating One	39
XVIII	Old and Young Women	41
XIX	The Bite of the Adder	43
XX	Child and Marriage	44
XXI	Voluntary Death	46
XXII	The Bestowing Virtue	48
Part 2
XXIII	The Child with the Mirror	53
XXIV	In the Happy Isles	55
XXV	The Pitiful	57
XXVI	The Priests	59
XXVII	The Virtuous	61
XXVIII	The Rabble	63
XXIX	The Tarantulas	65
XXX	The Famous Wise Ones	68
XXXI	The Night-Song	70
XXXII	The Dance-Song	71
XXXIII	The Grave-Song	73
XXXIV	Self-Surpassing	76
XXXV	The Sublime Ones	78
XXXVI	The Land of Culture	80
XXXVII	Immaculate Perception	82
XXXVIII	Scholars	84
XXXIX	Poets	86
XL	Great Events	88
XLI	The Soothsayer	91
XLII	Redemption	93
XLIII	Manly Prudence	97
XLIV	The Stillest Hour	99
Part 3
XLV	The Wanderer	103
XLVI	The Vision and the Enigma	106
XLVII	Involuntary Bliss	110
XLVIII	Before Sunrise	112
XLIX	The Bedwarfing Virtue	115
L	On the Olive-Mount	119
LI	On Passing-by	121
LII	The Apostates	124
LIII	The Return Home	127
LIV	The Three Evil Things	130
LV	The Spirit of Gravity	133
LVI	Old and New Tables	136
LVII	The Convalescent	152
LVIII	The Great Longing	156
LIX	The Second Dance Song	159
LX	The Seven Seals	162
Part 4 and Last
LXI	The Honey Sacrifice	166
LXII	The Cry of Distress	169
LXIII	Talk with the Kings	172
LXIV	The Leech	175
LXV	The Magician	177
LXVI	Out of Service	183
LXVII	The Ugliest Man	186
LXVIII	The Voluntary Beggar	190
LXIX	The Shadow	193
LXX	Noontide	195
LXXI	The Greeting	198
LXXII	The Supper	202
LXXIII	The Higher Man	203
LXXIV	The Song of Melancholy	212
LXXV	Science	215
LXXVI	Among Daughters of the Desert	218
LXXVII	The Awakening	222
LXXVIII	The Ass-Festival	225
LXXIX	The Drunken Song	228
LXXX	The Sign	234
Appendix	Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra	237

What People are Saying About This

Thomas Mann

Nietzche wrote stylistically dazzling books - works sparkling with audacious insults to his age, venturing into more and more radical psychology, radiating a more and more glaring white light... [He was] a thinker, psychologist, and master of language who revolutionized the whole atmosphere of his era.

Editorial Reviews

Michael Hulse’s translation of this extraordinary work feels absolutely fresh and true. As in his poetry, all the words feel new-minted and authentic, full of energy and understanding. As Zarathustra says, ‘The self is always listening and seeking’: reading this version of his story is like seeing the colours of an Old Master for the first time.” —Ruth Padel, Professor of Poetry, King’s College London

“It is often said that poetry is what is lost in translation. Given that Michael Hulse is both a major poet and one of the great translators of German literature, it is not surprising that he has done full justice to Thus Spake Zarathustra. English-speaking readers are indebted to him for a sparkling, transparent rendering of Nietzsche’s poetic philosophical masterpiece.” —Raymond Tallis

“A crystalline translation of a work that many regard as Nietzsche’s greatest, yet whose elusively extravagant style has often baffled, indeed repelled, Anglophones. The poet Michael Hulse renders the complexity of Nietzsche’s prose-poem—its dramatic claims, its mystical power, and its philosophical richness—in spellbinding language.” —Simon May

From the Publisher