Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra is his most famous, influential and worst book. In it, in a mixture of parody and prophecy, Nietzsche (above) aims to replace the Bible with his own teachings, on the Overman (often mistranslated as ‘Superman’), the eternal recurrence of all things and the glory of Earth; as opposed to what he regards as Christianity’s cowardice and life-hatred. His Zarathustra bears no relation to the historical figure, but is a prophet who encounters archetypical figures and mocks them. There is, for example, the Last Man, ‘who says “We have discovered Happiness”, and blinks’. What appealed to philosophers, artists, poets and composers was the book’s symbolism. Strauss, Mahler and Delius are the most famous creators to set his texts to music or, in Strauss’s case, what he conceived…
