Nietzsche

by Lou Andreas-Salomé

Book Overview

This English translation of Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken offers a rare, intimate view of the philosopher by Lou Salom , a free-thinking, Russian-born intellectual to whom Nietzsche proposed marriage at only their second meeting.

Published in 1894 as its subject languished in madness, Salom 's book rode the crest of a surge of interest in Nietzsche's iconoclastic philosophy. She discusses his writings and such biographical events...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0252070356
• ISBN13: 9780252070358
• Release Date: October 2001
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.0" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

why would you read this book?

you would not read this book to understand nietzche's philosophy. it is not even clear to me why anyone needs to understand neitzche's philosophy. but lou salome is this crazy incredible lady. while married she become lovers with rilke and remained his intimate correspondent for all his life. she became intimate with nietsche. and later conquered freud, so to speak. so to me this book is an interesting artifact of this incredible woman's mind -- you don't read this book except as a way of knowing salome's mindfullness after rilke and nietzsche. that is, you read this book to learn something that you have to extrapolate from and fit into your life. it is not a passive reading. it is not school learning or becoming educated. it is trying to understand what sort of mind a woman would have that has done such gloriously free and courageous acts such as standing and lying toe2toe with three of the most visionary humanitarian thinkers -- it's an artifact. you read this to be your own archeologist into the human psyche. the content itself literally is of little interest if you want to become an expert in philosophical thinking in order to be a professional. this book isn't that at all. nobody would publish something like this today -- that is, without the hindsight of knowing who nietzsche and salome are now -- at the time this was published, that wasn't apparent, and without that apparentness, this book is no longer a kind of book our educated culture tolerates -- it is too subjective and does not follow any accepted rules of discourse that are recognized by our cultural canon. that is, you don't read this book for any of the reasons it was written or published. you read it because of who nietsche and salome turned out to be in terms of our intellectual flowering. of course, he was destroyed by his sister, who allowed the fascists to make shameful use of him the same way they made ill-use of evolution to justify genocide. you take nietzsche and darwin and if you are powerful enough you get 70-100 million dead without anyone believing they were not morally justified in their actions. nowadays, people seem to once again need religion to justify such pain and suffering for personal advantage. so i think everyone should buy this book and try to make sense of its author -- this is after rilke and N, but i think before freud. a snapshot of a brillian mindful woman articulating her extraordinary experiences ...

A personal psychological expert on Nietzsche

The German version of this book, published in 1894, about 108 years ago, was among the first books written about the books of Nietzsche. The photograph on the cover was taken in May, 1882 and a portion of it (as shown on p. 132) appeared in her book with the caption, "Friedrich Nietzsche, formerly professor and now a wandering fugitive" (p. ix), as Nietzsche had described himself in a letter to the third person in the picture in 1879, "referring to the severance from his ten-year position at the University of Basel." (p. ix). These people are all dead now. When she was 20, Lou wrote a poem "To Sorrow" (pp. xlviii-xlix) which praises it as "the pedestal for our soul's greatness." (p. xlix).Lou reported a conversation about the changes in his life in which Nietzsche raised the question, "When everything has taken its course--where does one run to then?" and told her, "In any case, the circle could be more plausible than a standing still." (p. 32). She described his books as the product of "his last period of creativity, Nietzsche arrived at his mystical teaching of the eternal recurrence: the picture of a circle--eternal change in an eternal recurrence--stands like a wondrous symbol and mysterious cypher over the entrance to his work." (p. 33).This book does not have an index, and the notes on pages 160-8 merely clarify a few things, such as the date of the letter from Nietzsche to Lou at the beginning of Part III Nietzsche's "System" on page 91 which Lou used without the final comment, "be what you must be." The possibilities might not be considered so great. "In that regard, if the sickliness of man is, so to speak, his normal condition or his specific human nature itself, and if the concepts of falling ill and of development are seen as almost identical, then we will naturally encounter again the already mentioned decadence at the culmination of a long cultural development." (p. 102). The ascetic ideal "is also a third kind of decadence which threatens to make the described illness incurable and threatens the possibility of recovery. And that form of decadence is embodied in a false interpretation of the world, an incorrect perception of life encouraged by that suffering and illness. . . . every kind of intellectualism extols thinking at the expense of life and supports the ideal of `truth' at the expense of a heightened sensation of living." (p. 103). "In respect to Nietzsche's own psychic problem, it is of less interest to determine correctly the historicity of master morality and slave morality than it is to ascertain the fact that in man's evolution he has carried these contrasts, these antitheses, within himself and that he is the consequent sufferer of this conflict of instincts, embodying double valuations." (p. 113). Ultimately, "Nietzsche's thought of the Dionysian orgy as the means for release of the emotions" (p. 127) are considered "the necessary conditions for the creative act out of which one shapes the luminous a

An Important Addition to Nietzsche Studies

To scholars and admirers of Nietzsche, Lou Andreas-Salome has always been seen as his Irene Adler, the intellectual equal who got way or was driven away, depending on one's point of view. Although their affair lasted for only a few months, it left an indelible mark on both, for it came at a turning point in Nietzsche's life where he would leave the realtively safe nests of academia and the Wagners for a peripatetic life in the Eupopean Alps.Over the years we have heard from almost everyone who was anyone in Nietzsche's life, except Lou Salome. This makes the published reprint of her 1894 even more important for those involved in Nietzsche studies. To say that Salome brings a unique perspective to her work is a bit of an understatement, but those who simply expect this to be memoir of the man she knew will be, I think, somewhat joyfully disappointed. Instead she has written what well may be the first attempt to view the persona behind the works. After giving us an excellent analysis of Nietzsche's philosophy, she comes to the conclusion that perhaps Nietzsche's madness was the inevitable result of his philosophy. Was this, as Nietzsche's sister said, merely a fantasy of female revenge? Then simply compare the last page of her book with the events of Nietzche's last days in Turin, events which she cannot have known. Hers is a provactive and illuminating look at Nietzsche, made more powerful by the fact that she was first to the gate and that the strength of her book is the analysis, not the memories.As with any book on Nietzsche that comes to us in a foreign language, translation is most important if we are to have not only a working understanding, but also a deeper understanding than we would ordinarily expect. That the translator should be the late Siegfried Mandel is only to the reader's advantage. His translation is crisp and clear. His excellent introduction makes it all the more clear to me that this man is, or should be at least considered, one of the formost Nietzschean scholars of his time. (For further reference, see his excellent "Nietzsche and the Jews.")This is a book every serious student of Nietzsche should have in his or her library and a book that may contribute to a new vision of the tortured harbinger of the overman.