Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- PART ONE Youth
- PART TWO The Reluctant Professor
- PART THREE The Nomad
- Chapter 15 The Wanderer and His Shadow
- Chapter 16 Dawn
- Chapter 17 The Gay Science
- Chapter 18 The Salomé Affair
- Chapter 19 Zarathustra
- Chapter 20 Nietzsche's Circle of Women
- Chapter 21 Beyond Good and Evil
- Chapter 22 Clearing the Decks
- Chapter 23 T he Genealogy of Morals
- Chapter 24 1888
- Chapter 25 Catastrophe
- Chapter 26 The Rise and Fall of The Will to Power
- Chapter 27 The End
- Chapter 28 Nietzsche's Madness
- Chronology
- Notes
- Bibliography of Secondary Literature
- Index
- Plate section
Chapter 15 - The Wanderer and His Shadow
from PART THREE - The Nomad
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- PART ONE Youth
- PART TWO The Reluctant Professor
- PART THREE The Nomad
- Chapter 15 The Wanderer and His Shadow
- Chapter 16 Dawn
- Chapter 17 The Gay Science
- Chapter 18 The Salomé Affair
- Chapter 19 Zarathustra
- Chapter 20 Nietzsche's Circle of Women
- Chapter 21 Beyond Good and Evil
- Chapter 22 Clearing the Decks
- Chapter 23 T he Genealogy of Morals
- Chapter 24 1888
- Chapter 25 Catastrophe
- Chapter 26 The Rise and Fall of The Will to Power
- Chapter 27 The End
- Chapter 28 Nietzsche's Madness
- Chronology
- Notes
- Bibliography of Secondary Literature
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
The appearance of Human, All-Too-Human in May, 1878, coincided with a yet further deterioration of Nietzsche's health which, the previous March, had reached such a state that he was finally released from all teaching obligations to the grammar school. His health cannot have been improved by a weird letter from the formerly admired Siegfried Lipiner (p. 237 above) virtually demanding to run the life of his ‘dearly beloved’, which Nietzsche rightly described as an ‘unbelievable impertinence’. Neither can his health have been improved by the reactions to his radically new line of thinking.
Reception of Human, All-Too-Human
Nietzsche's nervousness concerning the book's reception was entirely justified. About the only positive response came from Burckhardt, who, delighted that Nietzsche was ‘healed’ of Wagner, who had always offended his classical taste, called the work a ‘sublime book’. In Russia the book was banned outright. Much more serious, however, was the Bayreuth reaction, about which he had been most nervous.
Schmeitzner reported that Wagner claimed to have read only a few pages ‘in order not to upset the delightful impression left by [Nietzsche's] earlier works’. But this did not stop him issuing a counterblast in the September edition of the Bayreuther Blätter : though Nietzsche is not mentioned by name, his article, entitled ‘The Public and Popularity’, held up to ridicule a book supposedly called Menschliches und Unmenschliches [The Human and Inhuman].
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- Information
- Friedrich NietzscheA Philosophical Biography, pp. 273 - 295Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010