"Thus Spoke Zarathustra"

Paper Summary:

In this book review of Friedrich Nietzsche's "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", the author centers on the role of the female. He tries to explain what the word woman stands for in this book that he finds perplexing, by interpreting the female metaphor as informing the concepts of truth, virtue, happiness and life. Furthermore, he tries to make an effort to show that the dynamic and ambiguous relationship of Zarathustra to the female corresponds to the development of the book and the intermittent and painful elaboration of the doctrine of the Eternal Return. The author looks at the essence of culture as identified in the book and concludes with a comparison from another book where he believes that the metaphor woman is also indicated.

From the Paper:

"The Other Dancing Song" is a praise of woman as surface, as veil, as Being developing as a plurality of appearances. "Strictly speaking, then, the philosopher-physician will return life to the innocence of becoming, without imputing any unacknowledged designs or ends to her appearance--finality always being of an erotic nature, insofar as life implies a hidden intention." Distance will always remain the underlying characteristic of woman and her charm, it is also the essential weapon of the tragic philosopher, who not only protects himself from the undefended insight into Dionysian chaos, but also manages to seduce life in return: "I leaped toward you, but you fled back from my leap, and the tongue of your fleeing, flying hair licked me in its sweep. Away from you I leaped, and from your serpents' ire and already you stood there, half turned, your eyes full of desire." What then will the new attitude of Zarathustra be, when he confronts life? He must admit that the femina vita plays and composes herself with innocent duplicity; that she naively creates the illusion of being this particular appearance, while she is a multiplicity of appearances, a plurality of forces ever becoming more ambiguous and harder to face."

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