Each reader comes away with a highly subjective interpretation of what the book means, making a summary difficult. Like the Analects of Confucius and other ancient texts, Also sprach Zarathustra is meant to be worked through and puzzled over.
Unusually for a work of philosophy, Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra is just as much a prose poem as a philosophical text indeed Nietzsche, who was an amateur composer himself, said the book was in fact a “symphony.” Written in a pseudo-biblical style, it contains many cryptic aphorisms whose meanings are intentionally vague and poetic. It is as if he wanted to create his own sacred (or rather, anti-sacred) text that would express his beliefs. Subtitled “A Book for Everyone and No One,” Also sprach Zarathustra was Nietzsche’s own very personal response to this crisis. Nietzsche’s Zarathustra is essentially a raisonneur for his own philosophy, which addresses the crisis of values that faced European society as the advance of science led people to doubt traditional religions and cultural norms. It was originally inspired by Nietzsche’s far less familiar book of the same name, which is perhaps most famous for including the infamous (and widely misunderstood) declaration that “God is dead.” Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra is a philosophical novel about a fictionalized Zarathustra (the historical Zarathustra founded the religion of Zoroastrianism). Strauss’ piece, however, goes on for another half-hour. Thus Spake Nietzsche Friedrich Nietzsche and his impressive mustache, photographed in 1882, the year before he began work on Also sprach Zarathustra. Ever since Stanley Kubrick used it to score a cosmic sunrise and the evolution of technology and war in his 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, its iconic opening has become a symbol of bombastic affirmation, used by Elvis Presley as well as countless advertisers and satirists. People won’t understand you.” Strauss’ characteristically humorous remark seems particularly applicable to Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra), one of his best known yet most misunderstood works.
According to his novelist friend Romain Rolland, Richard Strauss once quipped that “In music one can say everything.
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