Nietzsche’s concept of the superman, expounded in his Thus Spake Zarathustra of 1883–1885, was more poetic, more complex, and more subtle than most of his readers were able to see; carried away by his metaphorical, strangely exalted prose, they constructed a variety of vulgarized ideas of the Übermensch, mostly concentrating not on his surprisingly Buddhist or Epicurean idea of self-transcendence but on fantasies of hulking, half-naked heroes bestriding a fearful imaginary landscape.
