Friedrich Nietzsche - Thus Spoke Zarathustra

THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA

F RIEDRICH N IETZSCHE was born near Leipzig in 1844, the son of a Lutheran clergyman. He attended the famous Pforta School, then went to university at Bonn and at Leipzig, where he studied philology and read Schopenhauer. When he was only twenty-four he was appointed to the chair of classical philology at Basle University; he stayed there until his health forced him into retirement in 1879. While at Basle he made and broke his friendship with Wagner, participated as an ambulance orderly in the Franco-Prussian War, and published The Birth of Tragedy (1872), Untimely Meditations (18736) and the first part of Human, All Too Human (1878; two supplements entitled Assorted Opinions and Maxims and The Wanderer and his Shadow followed in 1879 and 1880 respectively). From 1880 until his final collapse in 1889, except for brief interludes, he divorced himself from everyday life and, supported by his university pension, he lived mainly in France, Italy and Switzerland. The Dawn appeared in 1881 followed by The Gay Science in the autumn of 1882. Thus Spoke Zarathustra was written between 1883 and 1885, and his last completed books were Ecce Homo, an autobiography, and Nietzsche contra Wagner. He became insane in 1889 and remained in a condition of mental and physical paralysis until his death in 1900.

R. J. HOLLINGDALE translated eleven of Nietzsche books and published two books about him; he also translated works by, among others, Schopenhauer, Goethe, E. T. A. Hoffman, Lichtenberg and Theodor Fontane, many of these for Penguin Classics. He was the honorary president of the British Nietzsche Society. R. J. Hollingdale died on 28 September 2001. In its obituary The Times described him as Britains foremost postwar Nietzsche specialist and the Guardian paid tribute to his inspired gift for German translation. Richard Gott wrote that he brought fresh generations through fluent and intelligent translation to read and relish Nietzsches inestimable thought.

NIETZSCHE

A BOOK FOR EVERYONE
AND NO ONE

TRANSLATED

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

R. J. Hollingdale

PENGUIN BOOKS

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This translation first published 1961
Reprinted with new Introduction 1969
Reprinted with new Chronology and Further Reading 2003
46

Copyright R. J. Hollingdale, 1961, 1969
All rights reserved

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