# XXIX explained — Thus Spoke Zarathustra

> Chapter companion for Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche.

## What happens

Zarathustra exhorts his brethren to become hard, like diamond, in order to create and conquer with him. He contrasts softness and submission with the hardness required for creators, urging them to press their will upon millennia as upon wax or brass.

## Themes in this chapter

### Will to Power and Creation

Zarathustra emphasizes hardness as essential for creators, linking it to the will to power and the ability to shape the future.

### The Übermensch and Self-Overcoming

The call to become hard and inexorable reflects the self-overcoming necessary for the Übermensch to conquer and create.

## Character check-ins

### Zarathustra

Speaker of the chapter, addressing his brethren with a call to hardness.

## Key lines

> Why so soft, so submissive and yielding? Why is there so much negation and abnegation in your hearts?

Why are you so weak, compliant, and self-denying?

_Zarathustra criticizes his followers for lacking the hardness needed for creation._

> For the creators are hard. And blessedness must it seem to you to press your hand upon millenniums as upon wax

Creators must be unyielding; they should find joy in shaping entire eras as easily as pressing wax.

_Zarathustra defines the creator's essential quality as hardness and the power to mold history._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/thus_spoke_zarathustra_se/chapters/part-iii-xxix
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/thus_spoke_zarathustra_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/thus_spoke_zarathustra_se/chapters