cover cover next page > title : Nietzsche : A Novel SUNY Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy author : Krell, David Farrell. publisher : State University of New York Press isbn10 | asin : 0791429997 print isbn13 : 9780791429990 ebook isbn13 : 9780585043111 language : English subject Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm,--1844-1900--Fiction, Philosophers--Germany--Fiction, Biographical fiction. publication date : 1996 lcc : PS3561.R423N54 1996eb ddc : 813/.54 subject : Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm,--1844-1900--Fiction, Philosophers--Germany--Fiction, Biographical fiction. cover next page > If you like this book, buy it! file:///D|/gigapedia/Nietzsche%20A%20Novel/files/cover.html4/28/2009 4:44:26 PM page_i < previous page page_i next page > Page ii SUNY Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy Dennis J. Schmidt, editor < previous page page_i next page > If you like this book, buy it! file:///D|/gigapedia/Nietzsche%20A%20Novel/files/page_i.html4/28/2009 4:44:27 PM page_iii < previous page page_iii next page > Page iii Nietzsche A Novel David Farrell Krell State University of New York Press < previous page page_iii next page > If you like this book, buy it! file:///D|/gigapedia/Nietzsche%20A%20Novel/files/page_iii.html4/28/2009 4:44:27 PM page_iv < previous page page_iv next page > Page iv Published by State University of New York Press, Albany ©1996 David Farrell Krell All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the pub- lisher. For information, address State University of New York Press, State University Plaza, Albany, NY 12246 Production by Dana Foote Marketing by Dana E. Yanulavich Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Krell, David Farrell. Nietzsche: a novel/David Farrell Krell. p. cm. (SUNY series in contemporary continental philosophy) ISBN 0791429997 (hc: alk. paper). ISBN 0791430006 (pbk.) 1. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 18441900Fiction. 2. PhilosophersGermanyFiction. I. Title. II. Series. PS3561.423N54 1996 813'.54dc20 96-12165 CIP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 < previous page page_iv next page > If you like this book, buy it! file:///D|/gigapedia/Nietzsche%20A%20Novel/files/page_iv.html4/28/2009 4:44:27 PM page_ix < previous page page_ix next page > Page ix Preface Nietzschethe name could stand for the things he thought about, for a certain literary and philosophical corpus, or for a human being once living but now dead. We would never remember the man if it were not for the uvre, though we are usually not up to the energies of his thought. To dither about the human being may seem a declaration of bankruptcy on our part, a concession to our mania for biography and our lust for gossip. However, there are things about the man that elude us as much as the writing and the thinking do. This novelif that is what it ischases after the elusions of the dead man. In a dialogue called Statesman, Plato has the Stranger tell of the two great eras that make up human history. We now live under the reign of Zeus, a reign that spins out like a top on a string, except that the top is really a yo-yo: when the world spins out to the end of its tether it does not fly off into space but whirls back again to its point of origin, and the second era, the era of regress, is called the reign of Kronos. On the backspin to the originsto the archaic time of Chaos and the body that precedes both the divine and the titanic reignseverything seems to be topsy-turvy. People are born as cadavers out of the earth, they grow younger instead of older, their hoary heads take on color, their skin gets softer every day, and like truly rational creatures they learn to talk with the animals. The two reigns or eras enact a kind of eternal recurrence of the same, albeit with reversals of direction. Perhaps that is what madness is like: the backspin gives us all of life once again, all the way back beyond our beginnings in infancy, everything the same, only upside- down and inside-out, as fusions and confusions of a primeval body. What follows is a story about Nietzsche's ten years of madness, years that allow us to catch crazy glimpses of the forty- five productive years that preceded them. Only one who is as mad as Nietzsche was would believe that the work of those productive < previous page page_ix next page > If you like this book, buy it! file:///D|/gigapedia/Nietzsche%20A%20Novel/files/page_ix.html4/28/2009 4:44:27 PM page_v < previous page page_v next page > Page v para Marta Salomé Cosenza < previous page page_v next page > If you like this book, buy it! file:///D|/gigapedia/Nietzsche%20A%20Novel/files/page_v.html4/28/2009 4:44:27 PM page_vii < previous page page_vii next page > Page vii Contents Preface ix General Chronology xi Part One Transfiguration 1 Part Two Restorations 53 Part Three The Ways of the Mother 147 Interlude 247 Part Four The Ways of the Father 267 < previous page page_vii next page > If you like this book, buy it! file:///D|/gigapedia/Nietzsche%20A%20Novel/files/page_vii.html4/28/2009 4:44:27 PM page_x < previous page page_x next page > Page x years could be reproduced by the backspin, that a book such as this one could recapitulate or clarify in any way Nietzsche's own books. It cannot. It can only allude to the elusions of the dead manand to our delusions touching him. A general chronology of Nietzsche's life precedes Part One. Each of the four remaining parts has its specific chronology. I have translated Nietzsche's letters as accurately as I was able, but have felt free to take excerpts from them, so that for the most part only bits and snatches of any given letter appear. (By contrast, my translations of the medical reports from the Basel and Jena asylums appear complete, though scattered throughout the text.) Many of Nietzsche's letters, whether they were actually mailed or held back, have survived only as drafts, and they are marked as such in my text. Where oddities of syntax, misspellings, or misinformation appear in these documents, I have let them stand. For the letters and drafts I have used the Sämtliche Briefe: Kritische Studienausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 8 vols. (Berlin and Munich: Walter de Gruyter and Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1986). For the chronologies I have used Karl Schlechta, ed., Nietzsche Chronik: Daten zu Leben und Werk (Munich: Carl Hanser, 1975). My largest debt is to Curt Paul Janz, Friedrich Nietzsche Biographie, 3 vols. (Munich: Carl Hanser, 1978; Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1981). The photographs on the cover and at the end of the "Interlude" are prints made by Neil McGreevy of an original taken by Hans Olde in 1899. The original appeared in a Swiss magazine, Du, in the 1950s, which is where I first saw it and rephotographed it. Permission to use the photograph was generously extended by the Goethe-Schiller Archivwarm thanks to Dr. Roswitha Wollkopf. The bulk of this book, which began and ended in Greece in 1988 and 1992, was written in Cuernavaca in 1988-1989. My thanks to Helmbrecht Breinig, Jacques Derrida, Teresa y Abel Mejía, Michael Naas, Graham Parkes, Gabriel Pearson, Carola Sautter, Charles Scott, Sophia, Evangelia, and Antonio Tsiboulis, and Anna Vaughn. HORETO, PELION D.F.K. < previous page page_x next page > If you like this book, buy it! file:///D|/gigapedia/Nietzsche%20A%20Novel/files/page_x.html4/28/2009 4:44:28 PM page_xi < previous page page_xi next page > Page xi General Chronology 1844 October 15: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche is born to Franziska Oehler and Carl Ludwig Nietzsche, Lutheran pastor in the village of Röcken, Saxony. Born on the King's birthday, Friedrich Wilhelm inherits the royal name. 1845 Baby Fritz sits on his father's lap, helping him to improvise on the pianoforte. He also assists his father with his Sunday sermons, which are somewhat less improvised. 1846 Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth is born. 1848 Revolution throughout the great urban centers of Europe. Nietzsche's royalist father is dismayed. In March a baby brother is born. Ludwig Joseph will die soon after the father's death, which is imminent. Nietzsche will dream repeatedly of these conjoined deaths. 1849 July 30: Pastor Nietzsche dies after a year of illness, apparently of tuberculosis of the brain. Nietzsche is not yet five years old. 1850 Soon after his second birthday, Ludwig Joseph dies as a result of cramps induced by teething. Widow Nietzsche moves to nearby Naumburg with young Fritz and Elisabeth, along with her husband's mother, Erdmuthe, his sister, Rosalie, and his stepsister Auguste. At Easter time, Fritz starts school; his playmates are Gustav Krug and Wilhelm Pinder; his constant companion is music. 1856 Nietzsche makes excellent progress at school, studies assiduously, practices his piano, composes music and poems. In May, his mother moves with the two children to a new apartmentwithout Aunt Rosalie. By this time Aunt Auguste and Grossmama Erdmuthe have gone to their < previous page page_xi next page > If you like this book, buy it! file:///D|/gigapedia/Nietzsche%20A%20Novel/files/page_xi.html4/28/2009 4:44:28 PM page_xii < previous page page_xii next page > Page xii rewards. Franziska now goes to hersa household without Erdmuthe, Auguste, and Rosalie. 1858 During the summer Franziska moves with her children to Haus 18 am Weingarten in Naumburg; here she will remain until her death thirty-nine years later.