Читать книгу Thus Spoke Zarathustra - FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Friedrich Nietzsche - Страница 25

There has been much scholarly speculation as to why Nietzsche appended a “fourth and final part” to Zarathustra.

He originally planned to conclude the text with Part Three, but decided to have Part Four published privately. He had difficulty finding a publisher for it, but might also have considered the material too raucous, almost blasphemous, and therefore decided to limit its audience to friends.

Commentators have also expressed ambivalence about its literary qualities. Whereas the first three parts are composed in an elevated, lofty style, the tone of Part Four is farcical, even slapstick. A likely model for it may have been the comic satyr play that followed the performance of a trilogy of Greek tragedies.

At the start of Part Four, a now aged Zarathustra encounters an assortment of “higher men” on his wanderings, including two kings, an old magician, and the pope, among others. Nietzsche even introduces an ass, which the figures end up worshipping. They take its braying to be a form of affirmation of the eternal return. Here Nietzsche parodies his greatest thought. He seems to want to warn against those who would turn his thought into a set doctrine or the basis for a substitute religion.