Death of God and Christianity Theme Analysis

“With singing, weeping, laughing, and muttering I praise the God who is my God. But what do you bring us as a gift?”

When Zarathustra heard these words, he saluted the saint and said: “What should I have to give you! But let me go quickly, that I may take nothing from you!” And thus they parted from one another, the old man and Zarathustra, laughing as two boys laugh.

But when Zarathustra was alone, he spoke thus to his heart: “Could it be possible! This old saint has not yet heard in his forest that God is dead!”

I teach you the Superman. Man is something that should be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?

All creatures hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and do you want to be the ebb of this great tide, and return to the animals rather than overcome man? […]

The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Superman shall be the meaning of the earth!

I entreat you, my brothers, remain true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of superterrestrial hopes! They are poisoners, whether they know it or not.

It was the sick and dying who despised the body and the earth and invented the things of heaven and the redeeming drops of blood: but even these sweet and dismal poisons they took from the body and the earth!

They wanted to escape from their misery and the stars were too far for them. Then they sighed: 'Oh if only there were heavenly paths by which to creep into another existence and into happiness!'—then they contrived for themselves their secret ways and their draughts of blood!

I should believe only in a God who understood how to dance.

And when I beheld my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: it was the Spirit of Gravity—through him all things are ruined.

One does not kill by anger but by laughter. Come, let us kill the Spirit of Gravity!

I have learned to walk: since then I have run. I have learned to fly: since then I do not have to be pushed in order to move.

Zarathustra has seen many lands and many peoples: thus he has discovered the good and evil of many peoples. Zarathustra has found no greater power on earth than good and evil. […]

Much that seemed good to one people seemed shame and disgrace to another: thus I found. I found much that was called evil in one place was in another decked with purple honours. […]

Truly, men have given themselves all their good and evil. Truly, they did not take it, they did not find it, it did not descend to them as a voice from heaven.

Do I exhort you to love of your neighbour? I exhort you rather to flight from your neighbour and to love of the most distant!

Higher than love of one's neighbour stands love of the most distant man and of the man of the future […]

You cannot endure to be alone with yourselves and do not love yourselves enough: now you want to mislead your neighbour into love and gild yourselves with his mistake.

Truly, too early died that Hebrew whom the preachers of slow death honour: and that he died too early has since been a fatality for many.

As yet he knew only tears and the melancholy of the Hebrews, together with the hatred of the good and just—the Hebrew Jesus: then he was seized by the longing for death.

Had he only remained in the desert and far from the good and just! Perhaps he would have learned to live and learned to love the earth—and laughter as well!

This will lured me away from God and gods; for what would there be to create if gods – existed!

But again and again it drives me to mankind, my ardent, creative will; thus it drives the hammer to the stone.

Ah, you men, I see an image sleeping in the stone, the image of my visions! […]

The beauty of the Superman came to me as a shadow. Ah, my brothers! What are the gods to me now!

Man is the cruellest animal towards himself; and […] all who call themselves "sinners" and “bearers of the Cross" and "penitents" […]

Ah, my animals, this alone have I learned, that the wickedest in man is necessary for the best in him,

that all that is most wicked in him is his best strength and the hardest stone for the highest creator; and that man must grow better and wickeder: […]

[I cried] ‘Alas, that his wickedest is so very small! Alas, that his best is so very small!’

If ever my anger broke graves open, moved boundary-stones, and rolled old shattered law-tables into deep chasms:

[…]

for I love even churches and the graves of gods, if only heaven is looking, pure-eyed, through their shattered roofs; I like to sit like grass and red poppies on shattered churches:

Oh how should I not lust for eternity and for the wedding ring of rings—the Ring of Recurrence!

When he was young, this god from the orient, he was hard and revengeful and built himself a Hell for the delight of his favourites.

But at length he grew old and soft and mellow and compassionate, more like a grandfather than a father, most like a tottery old grandmother.

Then he sat, shrivelled, in his chimney corner, fretting over his weak legs, world-weary, weary of willing, and one day suffocated through his excessive pity.'

And Zarathustra began to speak once more. 'O my new friends,' he said, 'you strange men, you Higher Men, how well you please me now […]

Truly, you have all blossomed forth: for such flowers as you, I think, new festivals are needed.

a little brave nonsense, some divine service and ass festival, some joyful old Zarathustra-fool, a blustering wind to blow your souls bright.

Do not forget this night and this ass festival, you Higher Men! You devised that at my home, I take that as a good omen—only convalescents devise such things!