It is probably one of the most magical and at the same time most mysterious and strange books of the slowly fading 19th century: Friedrich Nietzsche's 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'. Published between 1883 and 1886, this work stood quite isolated in a time that was rapidly turning towards imperialist and statist ideas and social patterns, thinking of the years of Bismarck in particular. Zarathustra can be seen as a wild cry for individualism and sovereignty, as a departure towards what Friedrich Nietzsche metaphorically called the 'super human'.

Immediately uninterpreted by the German and other nationalists, of course, as the culmination of the genetic necessity of Germanic claims to leadership, the 'Übermensch' was Nietzsche's dialectical attempt to call for individual evolution out of a cultural instinct seething within anyone of us. He is the symbol of an ethical imperative for the Dionysian and Apollonian improvement of one's own destiny, for the utilization of gears, for the utilization of the will to aesthetics, to add the torch of beauty to life. He is the tightrope walker who climbs over the taut rope of the plain to a gently rising hill, aware that he is taking on the risks of life.

Zarathustrat's march from solitude back into civilization is a highly voluntaristic act, an outpouring, as he says, of the fullness of being. He does not pursue a mission as we know it from religions, he offers free individuals the opportunity to discuss his ideas and ultimately reject them. Zarathustra sounds like the creed of crystalline individualism, an evolution in itself that must unroll itself, that wants to pour itself out, that must fulfill itself in itself. Nietzsche speaks here in the tone of the preacher who knows that he is doomed to perish despite all his efforts. And so Zarathustra finally meets the figure of the last man, who as a nihilist represents the European of our time. Nietzsche has achieved a more than prophetic stroke of the tongue here, as the two antagonists engage in a veritable duel in the interpretation of existence.

This is a true literary and philosophical highlight of modernity, which gives account of itself in the duel between these two most powerful forces of our time. The question that Zarathustra raises is addressed to us: are we taking the path of the last man, the path that leads to nihilistic quicksand? Or do we, as individuals, as ultimately responsible beings, living on our own credit, embark on the evolution of ascent with the dangerous dance on a swaying rope above an unclear ground?

Only a few philosophers of our time have succeeded in presenting the human condition in an immediately powerful and metaphorical way, as Friedrich Nietzsche did with Zarathustra. It is one of the high points of German language aesthetics, the attempt to give its time a cultural drift, a decisive turn towards a culture of individualism and self-responsibility.

The tense moment in which the long-matured values of an individual are set against the superiority of the masses is fascinating and depressing at the same time, as this clash seems to correspond to the reality of many people's lives today. The dull, stupidly laughing masses, who are unable to understand Zarathustra's opening monologue and probably do not even want to understand it, are emblematic of what we know as the emblematic phenomenon: the entry of the masses as a subjectivized entity into the cultural sphere. Its decisive influence at all levels of our society, in politics, the aesthetics of art and architecture is what Nietzsche was trying to address in his Zarathustra. 'Where the state ends, man begins' - let us end this little excursion into the world of Zarathustra with one of the most striking quotations, which proves that Nietzsche was very aware of the monster called the state that was growing up before his and our eyes.

Here You'll find an audiobook by Asscandinawi: