“Thus spoke the Devil to me once: ‘Even God has his Hell: it is his love for men.’And I lately heard him say these words: God is dead; God has died of his pity for man.”
Zarathustra is changing, he considers himself as an enlightened now. He criticises contemporary culture. He speaks of organised religion and priesthood, priests are to him hypocrites, “they called God that which contradicted and harmed them: and truly, there was much that was heroic in their worship! And they knew no other way of loving their God than by nailing men to the Cross” (Jesus Christ Crucifixion).
Wisdom is crucial and Zarathustra is fond of it because “she” reminds him of life. The author is quite likely to be describing the woman he loved, the love of his life. She must have been very wise and precious to him as he speaks of feeling alive when being with her.
He says, “I am fond of Wisdom, and often too fond, is because she very much reminds me of life! She has her eyes, her laughter (…): how can I help it that they both look so alike?”He says that poets are liars, and their answer for Zarathustra’s accusation is, “we know too little and are bad learners: so we have to lie.”
Further on, Zarathustra says that life should overcome virtues like “Good and evil, and rich and poor, and noble men and all the names of the virtues (…) “.
Free will is essential in his beliefs and takes him beyond the death, “yes, you are still my destroyer of all graves: Hail, my Will: And only where there are graves are there resurrections.” (Elements of Buddhism)
Self overcoming is self-mastering, putting a self discipline and believing that it is good to challenge human’s logic. The will to existence is “not true”; “there is only will to power”. Having will to power, starts a change, change brings progress and progress leads to evolution. Zarathustra speaks of enlightened men whose “will to power” walks the feet of their “will to truth”. Will to existence is not enough. For it to be life there has to be will to power, man has to want to have power over himself and that is what keeps his existence.Good and evil are not definite; they change as they too have to “overcome themselves”. And “he who has to be a creator in good and evil, truly, has first to be a destroyer (…)”, revolutionary human, brave enough to stop believing in what is set to be believed in.
The University of Winchester Journalism Course
History and Context of Journalism, Part IV,
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part 2
