A Note on the Translation

This is a complete translation of Also sprach Zarathustra, made directly from Nietzsche’s German. No earlier English version was used as its basis; Thomas Common’s public-domain translation of 1909 was looked at only where the German is in doubt. The source is a public-domain transcription of the first editions, in their period spelling. A few evident misprints in that transcription were read as the word Nietzsche wrote, and two section numbers printed twice were corrected.

Nietzsche wrote the book as a parody of Luther’s Bible, grand and mocking by turns. The English carries that voice through its words and its rhythm (“Truly,” “Behold,” “Woe,” the long chains of and) rather than through thee and thou, which would turn the parody into a costume. Every speech ends on the same refrain, “Thus spoke Zarathustra,” and the lines that return across the four parts, such as the midnight song, return here in the same words.

Three decisions shape the whole. Übermensch is kept as the German word, which English already uses, instead of “Superman” or “Overman.” Mensch is “human being,” never “man,” because Nietzsche’s word names the species, not a sex: so “the last human being” and “the higher humans.” Untergang is “going under,” which is also what the sun does at evening, and the book plays on both senses from its first page.

The four parts, their eighty sections, and Nietzsche’s numbered subsections are kept as he arranged them, and each of the 3,471 paragraphs of the German appears here as one paragraph. Verse keeps its line breaks. The six notes are the translator’s; they explain a word or name a source, and offer no commentary.