Review Thus Spake Zarusthustra

My encounter with Neitzsche was extremely coincidental in extremely poetic sense. As I went in to do my
Somewhere during that journey in to philosophy, I kept wandering into the maze of dim;y lit corridors of knowledge; and then I came across this book, gathering dust in an Almira. A strange book it seemed with a man with dense, long mustache on the cover of it. Curious, I picked it up and read the back cover of the book to guess the story. There was no story, only a statement that hit my conscience hard like a slap on the face, as if trying to wake up a soul sunk into the deepest sense of intoxication "God is Dead".

My encounter with Neitzsche was extremely coincidental in extremely poetic sense. As I went in to do my Masters in International Business, having spent a great part of my graduation in Engineering into student politics, I stayed with some classmates of mine in a rented flats, in which the landlord had left some books. Keen to make the most out of the days of my Masters, I was keenly studying Socrates and Aristotle, a journey initiated primarily with "The Story of Philosophy" by Will Durant; although I was already charmed by the magic of Ayn Rand during my graduation, whom I considered as the last word in any writing on Determinism and Self-will.
Somewhere during that journey in to philosophy, I kept wandering into the maze of dim;y lit corridors of knowledge; and then I came across this book, gathering dust in an Almira. A strange book it seemed with a man with dense, long mustache on the cover of it. Curious, I picked it up and read the back cover of the book to guess the story. There was no story, only a statement that hit my conscience hard like a slap on the face, as if trying to wake up a soul sunk into the deepest sense of intoxication "God is Dead".I have always been a man with rebellious nature, but this was too bland and straight and on the face for me. I had to open the book, and started reading. The master was there, as if literally speaking to me, sometimes admonishing me, sometime chiding me to scale the heights of human possibilities. Here was a teacher who totally in keeping with his nihilist spirit, which honestly was a term that I had newly discovered just then, who did not believe in belief, even in his own teaching. He wanted his pupils to challenge his own teaching. It takes a lot of courage and convictions in one's own theories to lay them out in open to face public scrutiny by none other than his own students, when he speaks "One requireth a teacher badly if one remains merely a scholar.And why will ye not pluck at my wreath." In the age and time when one is so much driven by the sense to belong to the community that one finds encircled around oneself, and when all teachers teach individual to subjugate one's own self to belong to the masses, here was a teacher who stood erect on the mountain-tops, to climb which as per Nietsche one needs long legs, and asked the individual to escape from falling in the trap of becoming one too many, he teaches how one must try to free oneself from the social conditioning which pushes a man to leave any sign of individuality that he might have been borne with, to be embarrassed about any trace of individuality that still hides in his persona, when he urges,"Flee my friend into thy solitude...where the solitude endeth, there begins the marketplace.There also beginneth the noise of great actors and the buzzing of the poison-flies...Flee my friend, into thy solitude:I see thee stung all over by poisonous flies. Flee, where the rough, strong, breeze flows." Never have I come across anything which was such a game changer for me, it was such a liberating thought. I can finally be myself, and this I owe only to myself. Through this liberation Neitzsche does not advocate decadence which is usually associated with freedom, no he teaches self-overcoming when he says that one must learn to obey, if one has to command as he says "Whatever cannot obey itself, is commanded. Such is the nature of living things." It was twelve years back that I read this book, and so it shook the pillars of the knowledge on which my wisdom stood that I have never needed any other teacher since. The journey which began with "The Fountainhead" of Ayn Rand, reached a conclusion with "Thus Spoke Zarathustra". And apart from the clarity of thoughts and sagacity of idea, what exquisitely stands out through this book is the beauty of thye prose, which seems like a small rivulet, flowing through the rough mountains, unmindful of the stones around it, gazing at its exuberance with envy, admiration and at times, even anger.