Likewise, for Laibach, whose emergence in post-Tito Yugoslavia in the 1980s came complete with sardonic uniforms and symbolism, their presumed association with the extremes of political ideology does not survive close examination. Nietzsche's use of the term superman (Гјbermensch) has hardly done his popular image any favours in the wake of the Nazis' enthusiastic adoption of the term and its corollary Гјntermensch, both of which came from Also Sprach Zarathustra. Laibach share Nietzsche's aptitude for provocation (declaring again that god is dead in Also Sprach Zarathustra and being the first western rock band to play in North Korea elicited similar levels of media outrage and mockery in different eras) as well as putting weighty thought into their efforts, with much confusion resulting as to the whys and wherefores. The same could be said of Laibach's artistic output in its many and varied forms over their three and a half decades of confounding and befuddling critics and delighting their fans. The novel, whose title translates as Thus Spoke Zarathustra (named after the Persian prophet who founded Zoroastrianism, a religion concerned with the binary conflict between truth and falsehood), rails against conventional 19th-century morality and was seemingly constructed to avoid easy interpretation. Nietzsche might have had sardonic intent here, of course but perhaps not.

it is also the deepest, born out of the innermost wealth of truth, an inexhaustible well to which no pail descends without coming up again filled with gold and goodness.вЂќ

This book, with a voice bridging centuries, is not only the highest book there is. It is spectacular and sublime, says Richard FontenoyДЇriedrich Nietzsche's infamously dense philosophical novel Also Sprach Zarathustra was modestly described by its author as (in Walter Kaufmann's 1966 translation): вЂњthe greatest present that has ever been made to so far. Laibach plunge into their well of truth, and come up with (possibly) their magnum opus.

Partizanske pesme