Key Arguments

• He denies that a ‘great soul’ could have built them ‘in its own likeness,’ implying that built form mirrors spiritual rank.
• He likens them to items from a child’s toy-box, suggesting triviality and play without seriousness.
• He says the rooms seem made ‘for silken dolls’ or ‘compulsive nibblers who perhaps also let themselves be nibbled,’ indicting delicacy, daintiness, and mutual enervation rather than strength.

Source Quotes

For he wanted to experience what had happened to in the meantime: whether it had become greater or smaller. And one time he saw a row of new houses, and he was amazed and said: ‘What is the meaning of these houses? Verily, no great soul has put them up in its own likeness! ‘Could some silly child have taken them out of his toy-box?

Verily, no great soul has put them up in its own likeness! ‘Could some silly child have taken them out of his toy-box? If only another child would put them back into his box now! ‘And these rooms and chambers: can go in and out of them?

If only another child would put them back into his box now! ‘And these rooms and chambers: can go in and out of them? They look to me to be made for silken dolls, or for compulsive nibblers who perhaps also let themselves be nibbled.’ And Zarathustra stood still and thought awhile.

Key Concepts

• ‘What is the meaning of these houses? Verily, no great soul has put them up in its own likeness!
• ‘Could some silly child have taken them out of his toy-box? If only another child would put them back into his box now!
• ‘And these rooms and chambers: can go in and out of them? They look to me to be made for silken dolls, or for compulsive nibblers who perhaps also let themselves be nibbled.’

Context

Zarathustra encounters ‘a row of new houses’ during his diagnostic wandering and uses architecture as a symptom of cultural decline.

Perspectives

Nietzsche

Architecture is a physiological document: effeminate delicacy and toy-like proportions betray a herdish, comfort-idolizing type lacking pathos of distance or creators’ measure.

Zarathustra

These houses reflect not greatness but playroom triviality and enfeebled appetites; no strong soul could recognize itself in them.