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Now with over 700 titles—from the 4,000-year-old myths of Mesopotamia to the twentieth century’s greatest novels—the series makes available lesser-known as well as celebrated writing. The pocket-sized hardbacks of the early years contained introductions by Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, and other literary figures which enriched the experience of reading. Today the series is recognized for its fine scholarship and reliability in texts that span world literature, drama and poetry, religion, philosophy, and politics. Each edition includes perceptive commentary and essential background information to meet the changing needs of readers. Refer to the Table of Contents to navigate through the material in this Oxford World’s Classics ebook. Use the asterisks (*) throughout the text to access the hyperlinked Explanatory Notes. ’ OXFORD WORLD S CLASSICS FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and Nobody Translated with an Introduction and Notes by GRAHAM PARKES ’ OXFORD WORLD S CLASSICS THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (1844–1900) was born in Röcken, Saxony, and educated at the universities of Bonn and Leipzig. At the age of only 24 he was appointed Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Basle, but prolonged bouts of ill health forced him to resign from his post in 1879. Over the next decade he shuttled between the Swiss Alps and the Mediterranean coast, devoting himself entirely to thinking and writing. His early books and pamphlets (The Birth of Tragedy, Untimely Meditations) were heavily influenced by Wagner and Schopenhauer, but from Human, All Too Human (1878) on, his thought began to develop more independently, and he published a series of ground-breaking philosophical works (The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals) which culminated in a frenzy of production in the closing months of 1888. In January 1889 Nietzsche suffered a mental breakdown from which he was never to recover, and he died in Weimar eleven years later. GRAHAM PARKES is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hawaii. He is the editor of Nietzsche and Asian Thought (1991), author of Composing the Soul: Reaches of Nietzsche’s Psychology (1994), and co-translator of Georges Liébert’s Nietzsche and Music (2004). CONTENTS Abbreviations Introduction Note on the Text and Translation Select Bibliography A Chronology of Friedrich Nietzsche THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA Explanatory Notes Index For Helen ABBREVIATIONS The following abbreviations are used in the references to Nietzsche’s works (references to individual books are to part and/or paragraph numbers): B Friedrich Nietzsche: Sämtliche Briefe, Kritische Studienausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 8 vols. (Munich, 1986); references are to dates BGE Beyond Good and Evil EH Ecce Homo HA Human, All Too Human JS The Joyful Science SE Schopenhauer as Educator W Friedrich Nietzsche: Sämtliche Werke, Kritische Studienausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 15 vols. (Munich, 1980); references are to volume and section numbers WS The Wanderer and His Shadow (in HA)