Morality and Irony

In Gay Science #1, Nietzsche portrays the Moralist as both an Apollonian artist and a Tragic hero--both the purveyor of comforting individualist fictions covertly designed to promote the interests of the species, and unwittingly functioning as such.  The passage is significant, since the original edition of the work ends with the introduction of Zarathustra, by "the tragedy begins".  Accordingly, Zarathustra's main concepts--Overman, Eternal Recurrence, and Will to Power--are subject to the classification as fictions, and Zarathustra to that as their unwitting author.  However, insofar as Zarathustra is a surrogate for Nietzsche himself, and Nietzsche is not unwitting, Zarathustra can be interpreted as a new kind of Moralist--one who is also an Ironist, not in the sense usually connoted by 'Socratic', but one aware that his truths may be fictions.  Thus, Zarathustra's affirmation of Eternal Recurrence is also an affirmation of the irony involved in the act, and in his assumption of functioning as a Moralist.  Accordingly, Thus Spoke Zarathustra fulfills the challenge that Nietzsche poses at the outset of The Gay Science--the transformation of the traditional vanity of Morality into the dawning awareness of it as a species strategy.