Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche

Published 1885 · 111,226 words · about 12 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction, Philosophy

How hard is Thus Spoke Zarathustra to read?

Thus Spoke Zarathustra scores 70 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 70 out of 100
German philosophical vocabulary; Nietzsche's neologisms and biblical parody.
Sentence structure: 65 out of 100
Aphoristic style with varied sentence length; prophetic periods.
Abstraction: 85 out of 100
Sustained philosophical abstraction dressed in parable and poetry.
Information density: 75 out of 100
Dense with ideas that require unpacking; repetition develops themes.
Narrative indirection: 70 out of 100
Parable and allegory pervade; Zarathustra's teaching is indirect.
Symbolic density: 80 out of 100
The eagle and serpent, the mountain, the eternal return—rich symbolic architecture.
Ironic distance: 60 out of 100
Zarathustra mocks his own followers; Nietzsche's irony toward earnestness.
Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
Zarathustra's teaching is never complete; the work ends with his going forth again.
Structural complexity: 60 out of 100
Four parts written over several years; speeches, songs, and narrative episodes.

How Thus Spoke Zarathustra is regarded

Thus Spoke Zarathustra holds a literary regard score of 81 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Where Thus Spoke Zarathustra sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (252 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, Thus Spoke Zarathustra scores 30 out of 100. A second mythos, irony, pulls at it with a weight of 0.25. About the map of stories.

Mode: Romance
Thus began Zarathustra’s down-going.
Symbol: Anagogic
FOR JOYS ALL WANT—ETERNITY!
Mythos: Romance Phase 3 (The Quest) (romance iii)
ARISE NOW, ARISE, THOU GREAT NOONTIDE!
Genre: Anatomy + Romance
And others are there who are like eight-day clocks when wound up; they tick, and want people to call ticking—virtue.

Where the story of Thus Spoke Zarathustra takes place

  • Zarathustra's mountains, cave, the town of The Pied Cow and the Happy Isles (a timeless Persian-prophet landscape), the main setting

5 things that are true of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, with the passage for each

  1. The story opens with Zarathustra leaving home at age thirty for ten years of mountain solitude.

    When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home, and went into the mountains.

  2. Only forty copies of the fourth part were privately printed, and Nietzsche gave away just seven.

    of which only forty copies were printed

  3. A rope-dancer falls to his death in the market-place after a buffoon leaps over him, and Zarathustra then carries the corpse away.

    he uttered a yell like a devil, and jumped over the other who was in his way.

  4. In Part Four the assembled higher men kneel and worship an ass.

    they all lay on their knees like children and credulous old women, and worshipped the ass.

  5. The book ends with a lion licking Zarathustra's tears while doves perch on his shoulder.

    The strong lion, however, licked always the tears that fell on Zarathustra’s hands, and roared and growled shyly.

Scenes in Thus Spoke Zarathustra that Frye would name

54 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Epos, untitled
I TEACH YOU THE SUPERMAN. Man is something that is to be surpassed. The sermon to the crowd in the market-place is delivered as oral address.
Lyric, untitled
‘Tis night: now do all gushing fountains speak louder. And my soul also is a gushing fountain. The Night-Song is an overheard lyric meditation embedded in the prose.
Agon, untitled
“Halt, dwarf!” said I. “Either I—or thou! I, however, am the stronger of the two: The direct contest with the spirit of gravity on the mountain path.
Alazon, untitled
who dareth to speak thus unto ME, the greatest man now living? The old magician plays at greatness and is exposed by Zarathustra.
Pathos, untitled
Now thou perishest by thy calling: therefore will I bury thee with mine own hands. The rope-dancer's death scene, with Zarathustra as mourner, is an early sacrificial pathos.
Anagnorisis, untitled
A light hath dawned upon me: I need companions—living ones; not dead companions and corpses The turning discovery of the prologue: he must seek companions, not address the crowd.

Books that share these scenes with Thus Spoke Zarathustra

About the author

Friedrich Nietzsche