The Portable Nietzsche

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friedrich Nietzsche was born near Leipzig in 1844, the son of a Lutheran clergyman. He attended the famous Pforta School, then went to university at Bonn and at Leipzig, where he studied philology and read Schopenhauer. When he was only 24 he was appointed to the chair of classical philology at Basle University; he stayed there until his health forced him into retirement in 1897. While at Basle he made and broke his friendship with Wagner, participated as an ambulance orderly in the Franco-Prussian War, and published
The Birth of Tragedy
(1872),
Untimely Meditations
(1873–6), and the first two parts of
Human, All Too Human
(1878–9). From 1880 until his final collapse in 1889, except for brief interludes, he divorced himself from everyday life and, supported by his university pension, he lived mainly in France, Italy, and Switzerland. The third part of
Human, All Too Human
appeared in 1880, followed by
The Dawn
in 1881.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
was written between 1883 and 1885, and his last completed books were
Ecce Homo
, an autobiography, and
Nietzsche contra Wagner
. He became insane in 1889 and remained in a condition of mental and physical paralysis until his death in 1900.

 

Walter Kaufmann was Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University, where he taught after receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1947 until his death in 1980. He held visiting appointments at many American and foreign universities, including Columbia, Cornell, Heidelberg, Jerusalem, and the Australian National University; and his books have been translated into Dutch, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish.

 

Each volume in The Viking Portable Library either presents a representative selection from the works of a single outstanding writer or offers a comprehensive anthology on a special subject. Averaging 700 pages in length and designed for compactness and readability, these books fill a need not met by other compilations. All are edited by distinguished authorities, who have written introductory essays and included much other helpful material.

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First published in the United States of America
by Viking Penguin Inc. 1954
Paperbound edition published 1959
Reprinted 1959 (twice), 1960 (twice), 1961 (three times),
1962 (twice), 1963 (twice), 1964 (twice), 1965 (twice),
1966 (twice), 1967 (twice), 1968 (three times), 1969 (three times),
1970 (three times), 1971 (three times), 1972 (three times),
1973, 1974 (twice), 1975, 1976
Published in Penguin Books 1976

 

Copyright 1954 by Viking Penguin Inc. Copyright © Viking Penguin Inc., 1968 Copyright © renewed 1982 by Viking Penguin Inc. All rights reserved.

 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900.
The portable Nietzsche.
Reprint of the 1954 ed. published by The Viking Press, New York,
which was issued as no. 62 of Viking portable library.
Bibliography. p. 688.
1. Philosophy—Collected works. I. Title.
[B3312.E52K3 1976] 193 76-47577

eISBN : 978-1-440-67419-8

 

 

 

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—
GEIBEL

All the translations in this volume are new, except for some passages that have previously appeared in my
Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist
. Princeton University Press has generously given permission for their use here. But even these passages have been revised, and, wherever feasible, I have made available other aphorisms and letters instead of reproducing material already available in that book.

In the Introduction and editorial matter too, Princeton University Press has kindly permitted reliance on my
Nietzsche
. But whereas that book sought to explode the legends woven around Nietzsche and to analyze the break with Wagner, the relation to Lou Salomé and to his sister, the final madness, and, above all, his philosophy, psychology, and critique of Christianity, the editorial matter in the present volume has been wholly subordinated to the translations. Nietzsche himself is to speak, and no lengthy editorial reflections seemed worth a corresponding cut in the space allotted to him.

I am greatly indebted to Princeton University for a year's leave of absence, which enabled me, among other things, to complete this volume; to Jean Yolton, for generous help with proofs; and to Hazel and Felix Kaufmann, my wife and my brother, for many helpful criticisms, particularly of my translation of
Zarathustra.

W. K.

There are philosophers who can write and philosophers who cannot. Most of the great philosophers belong to the first group. There are also, much more rarely, philosophers who can write too well for their own good—as philosophers. Plato wrote so dramatically that we shall never know for sure what precisely he himself thought about any number of questions. And Nietzsche furnishes a more recent and no less striking example. His philosophy
can
be determined, but his brilliant epigrams and metaphors, his sparkling polemics and ceaseless stylistic experiments, make it rather difficult to do so; and to read him solely to reconstruct the world of his ideas would be obtuse pedantry. At least two things should come first: sheer enjoyment of his writing, and then the more harrowing experience of exposing oneself to his many passionate perspectives. We should not rashly take a well-phrased point for Nietzsche's ultimate position, but we often stand to gain if we ask ourselves
why
it should not be
ours.
Add to this that few writers in any age were so full of ideas—fruit—ful, if not acceptable—and it is clear why he has steadily exerted a unique fascination on the most diverse minds and why he is still so eminently worth reading.

An anthologist can easily re-create Nietzsche in his own image, even as writers of lives of Jesus present us, perhaps as often as not, with wishful self-portraits. Doubtless Nietzsche has attracted crackpots and villains, but perhaps the percentage is no higher than in the case of Jesus. As Maritain has said: “If books were judged by the bad uses man can put them to, what book has been more misused than the Bible?”

The present volume is not an anthology. It contains the complete and unabridged texts of four of Nietzsche's works; and the additional selections from his other books, notes, and letters aim to round out the picture of his development, his versatility, his inexhaustibility. There is much here that is surely admirable: formulations, epigrams, insights, suggestions. And there is much that is shocking: bathos, sentences that invite quotation out of context in support of hideous causes, silly arguments—and many will recoil from his abundant blasphemies. For this is no “reader's digest” of Nietzsche, no “essential Nietzsche,” no distillation and no whitewash, but an attempt to present as much as possible of him in one small volume. The book can of course be read like Bartlett's
Familiar Quotations
, but what one gets out of Nietzsche may be vaguely proportionate to the sustained attention one accords him.

The arrangement is chronological, and an effort has been made to give some idea of the development of Nietzsche's thought and style, from his artless early notes to his occasionally brilliant aphorisms; then to the gross unevenness of
Zarathustra;
the incisive prose of his last works; and the alternation of diabolical polemic and furious rhetoric in
The Antichrist.
In
Nietzsche contra Wagner
, calm returns as Nietzsche takes time for once to edit some of his earlier prose and in places achieves perfection. His last letters, written right after his breakdown, reflect the disintegration of his mind, but they are still meaningful. The rest is silence.

The new translations were made because the older ones are unacceptable. As a single, and admittedly extreme, example, the hitherto standard version of
Zarathustra
is discussed briefly in the editor's preface to that work. Great writers are far more difficult to transpose into another language than is usually supposed, and Nietzsche poses many additional difficulties. While any detailed discussion of principles of translation would lead too far, a few remarks may prove helpful.

Rather than flatten out Nietzsche's highly unusual German into stereotyped idioms, an effort has been made to preserve as much as possible of his cadences, even where they are awkwardly groping or overstrained. What is thus lost in smoothness is gained for the understanding of the development of his style and personality.

A few of his terms create special difficulties; for example,
Geist.
To be perfectly idiomatic, one would have to render it now as spirit, now as mind, now as intellect, now as wit. But generally the connotation of
Geist
is much more inclusive than that of any one of these words, and Nietzsche's meaning depends on this. If we select “spirit” in one sentence and “wit” in another, something essential is lost: we get smooth propositions, not Nietzsche. Hence it seemed important to stick to one English word; and “spirit” was chosen. The religious overtones are entirely in order and altogether indispensable for an understanding of many paradoxical passages, particularly in
The Antichrist;
but it is well to keep in mind that the meaning is sometimes closer to
esprit.