Female Characters in “Thus spoke Zarathustra”

Abstract

The article analyses relation between the central character of “Thus spoke Zarathustra” and associated female characters, which could be nominally indicated as “Zarathustra’s beloved ones”. The author examines several sets of characters, inside which intrinsic solitude of Zarathustra becomes disclosed through the relation to female characters. Such a disclosure is thematized in Nietzsche’s text as love. Pursued the comparison of these characters to other female characters from Nietzsche’s unpublished writings and his poems, chronologically preceding the edition of “Thus spoke Zarathustra”. On the basis of these texts formulated the difference between two value positions, defined as “masculine” and “feminine”. Despite of the fact, that in the majority of sets these positions are divided between distinct characters, Zarathustra displays simultaneously elements of both positions, which makes it possible to indicate him as a complicated, male-female character.