Creation redeems suffering by lightening life, but the creator’s existence requires suffering, transformation, and ‘bitter dying’; creators thereby justify impermanence.

By Friedrich Nietzsche, from Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Key Arguments

  • Creating is named ‘the great redemption from suffering’ and makes life lighter.
  • Yet the condition of the creator is suffering and much transformation, including many bitter deaths in life.
  • Because they undergo these deaths, creators become advocates and justifiers of impermanence.
  • The creator must will to be both child and birth-giver, accepting the labor pains of creation.

Source Quotes

And the poets lie too much.– But of time and becoming shall the finest allegories tell: a praising shall they be and a justification of all impermanence! Creating–that is the great redemption from suffering, and life’s becoming lighter. But that the creator may be, that itself requires suffering and much transformation. Yes, much bitter dying must there be in your lives, you creators!
But that the creator may be, that itself requires suffering and much transformation. Yes, much bitter dying must there be in your lives, you creators! Thus are you advocates and justifiers of all impermanence. For the creator to be himself the child that is newly born, he must also want to be the birth-giver and the pain of the birth-giver.
Thus are you advocates and justifiers of all impermanence. For the creator to be himself the child that is newly born, he must also want to be the birth-giver and the pain of the birth-giver. Verily, through a hundred souls I have gone my way and through a hundred cradles and pangs of birth.

Key Concepts

  • Creating–that is the great redemption from suffering, and life’s becoming lighter. But that the creator may be, that itself requires suffering and much transformation.
  • Yes, much bitter dying must there be in your lives, you creators! Thus are you advocates and justifiers of all impermanence.
  • For the creator to be himself the child that is newly born, he must also want to be the birth-giver and the pain of the birth-giver.

Context

Central ethical-aesthetic thesis linking creation, suffering, and affirmation of becoming.

Perspectives

Nietzsche
Aligns with Dionysian insight: creation transfigures suffering and affirms becoming; higher types consent to necessary pain.
Zarathustra
Exhorts creators to accept repeated deaths and transformations as the path to redeem and justify impermanence.