Product Description

Nietzsche has long been recognized and acclaimed as a thinker who transcends disciplinary categories. Although much has been written of him as a forerunner of existentialism, Freudian psychology, and modern linguistics, no modern study had been devoted to one of his lifelong preoccupations: his poetry. This book--the first to bring together the poems in English--restores them to their proper central position in the Nietzsche canon. Begun in early youth and composed and revised until the onset of his insanity in 1899, the poems reflect his own imperative that "the philosopher should recognize that which is necessary and the artist should create it."

In The Poetry of Friedrich Nietzsche Grundlehner examines 30 major poems and in so doing draws allusions and references to 220 juvenilia, songs, epigrams, dithyrambs, and verse fragments found throughout Nietzsche's writing. Arranged chronologically according to the various stages of Nietzsche's life and philosophical development, these not only bear testimony to the many changes in his environment and thinking, but from a rich background to his prose writings.

Excerpt:

"Toward New Seas" (1882)

Toward that place--is my will. And I trust

Henceforth myself and my grip.

Open lies the sea, my

Genose ship heads into the blue.

Everything is shining new and newer for me.

Noon sleeps upon space and time--:

Only your eye--monstrously,

Stare at me, Infinity!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1496761 in Books
• Published on: 1987-01-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 386 pages

Review
"Grundlehner has met the challenge of grounding Nietzsche's poetry within the philosophy, as an indispensable, truly organic feature of the philosopher's work....[The book] will indeed enhance our study of the man, and one cannot help but express gratitude to Philip Grundlehner for having finally rounded out the picture."--The German Quarterly

"Philip Grundlehner's book has filled a gap in the scholarship on Nietzsche. He has provided the best introduction to Nietzsche's poetry there is in any language. His work shows a deep understanding of the importance of poetry in Nietzsche's self-image, and also reveals a deep grasp of the problems inherent in grappling with lyric poetry. This volume will have a significant impact on our reading of Nietzsche."--Sander L. Gilman, Cornell University

"Frequent excellent summaries reinforce the reader's sense of being guided by a critic both learned and sensitive....Contains all the necessary documentation and provocation for readers to being their own quest for these poems....The overall presentation of Nietzsche's lifelong struggle with language, as his compromised creative vehicle, is impressively sophisticated."--Journal of English and Germanic Philology

"Philip Grundlehner's book has filled a gap in the scholarship on Nietzsche. He has provided the best introduction to Nietzsche's poetry there is in any language. His work shows a deep understanding of the importance of poetry in Nietzsche's self-image, and also reveals a deep grasp of the problems inherent in grappling with lyric poetry. This volume will have a significant impact on our reading of Nietzsche."--Sander L. Gilman, Cornell University.

"A truly brilliant and much-needed book....Grundlehner provides a clear perspective on Nietzsche's poetry as an early and influential manifestation of literary modernism. In such superb translations the poems alone will be sufficient reward for any reader."--The Christian Century

"Grundlehner's book is well documented, gives a good account of secondary material (exposing areas of contradiction and inadequacy in Nietzsche scholarship) and provides valid insights regarding the nature of Nietzsche's poetry and its relationship to his philosophy. Grundlehner's work is excellent in illuminating that interplay of enthusiasm and scepticism that permeates Nietzsche's poetry as well as his prose."--Studies in Romanticism

About the Author
Philip Grundlehner, Assistant Professor of German, The Johns Hopkins University.

Customer Reviews

First book ever on Nietzsche's poetry. A brilliant first!
His is an extradinary book, especially for an American writingabout German poetry. Mr. Grundlehner should write it (poetry andliterature)--not write about it. He writes with style and grace, and his potential is there for the reader to behold. A must read. Even Nietzsche would be proud.

Facts on poems and philosophy to match
If you would like to read a book about Nietzsche and Columbus, POX / GENIUS, MADNESS AND THE MYSTERIES OF SYPHILIS by Deborah Hayden is more exciting than this one. The first chapter of that book is about Christopher Columbus, chapter 8 on Beethoven, chapter 12 on Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln, chapter 15 on Vincent van Gogh, chapter 16 on Friedrich Nietzsche, and chapter 20 on Adolf Hitler. Anyone who reads it is sure to be astounded at how close Columbus, Nietzsche, and Hitler could be considered as possessing symptoms of the same disease.

THE POETRY OF FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE by Philip Grundlehner has a chapter on "New Lands," in which a poem about Columbus is a major topic. Nietzsche vaguely associated Columbus with sickness "In late November of 1881, for example, he wrote: `Here in Genoa I am proud and happy--quite a "Doria magnate"--Or a Columbus? . . . I need space--a great wide, unknown, unexplored world; otherwise I shall get sick of it all.' " (p. 120). Back in Germany on September 9, 1882, he wrote to Franz Overbeck, "Everything that lies before me is new, and it will not be long before I catch sight also of the terrifying face of my more distant life task." (p. 129). Two versions of the poem, "The New Columbus" from 1882 are translated on page 137, and the final three-stanza version of 1884 on page 138. Columbus sometimes had trouble walking, but it is not clear how much Nietzsche actually knew about how disabled he was when Nietzsche wrote:

Let us stand firm on our feet!
Never can we go back!
Look forward: from far away
One death, one fame, one happiness greet us! (p. 138).

One of the early versions of "The New Columbus" was sent to Lou "as part of a dedication of a copy of THE GAY SCIENCE `to my dear Lou.' " (p. 136). Each version starts with a warning. "Since the adventurer's fidelity must be to his spirit rather than to another person, a selfishness results that forbids any sharing relationship. Nietzsche identifies this characteristic as a part of the Genoese heritage when he states in THE GAY SCIENCE that the people of this area are `overgrown with magnificent, insatiable lust for possessions and spoils.' " (p. 139). Grundlehner thinks that the use of the plural "we" and "us" in the last stanza is meant to include Lou. "A probable explanation for this paradox lies in the confidence that Nietzsche gained in Lou Salome as an intimate who could accept the insecurities and dangers of the unknown and therefore participate in his vision." (p. 139). That interpretation is more gentle than the idea that Nietzsche would be bound in chains and brought back to Spain, as Columbus was in 1499, for exceeding his authority by executing Spaniards "for insurrection against Columbus's rule," as in the book, POX. The officially available information about the health of Columbus was not available "until de Ybarra compiled it in 1894, [which] allowed later syphilologists to see a pattern of syphilis in Columbus's history." (POX, p. 11). Whatever Nietzsche knew would have been by rumor, but the history of the Pox that was widely known included an epidemic in Naples, particularly among a French army which conquered it for a week in 1495, when the Pox became known as "Morbus Gallicus." (POX, p. 18).

Chapter 8 of THE POETRY OF FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE is called "Poetry as Pretension." (pp. 147-165). The last line of the first stanza of "To Goethe" in the Appendix to THE GAY SCIENCE, as translated by Walter Kaufmann in 1974, was:

poetic pretension.

So it is not surprising to find the poem "To Goethe" discussed on pages 150-157. The surprise is that the translation is so literal that it does not retain the poetic quality of Nietzsche's German or Kaufmann's English. Instead,

is a poetic trick . . .

Walter Kaufmann might be assuming that anyone who had proceeded that far in THE GAY SCIENCE was familiar with all the terms that philosophers, poets, and great minds on the order of Goethe and Nietzsche could use without being misunderstood. My confusion was greatest on Kaufmann's use of the word, "ineluctable," where THE POETRY OF FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE uses "deceitful" and, in its translation of the concluding "Chorus Mysticus" of Goethe's "Faust," "inaccessible." (p. 151). The best rhyme in the final stanza, of "the ruling force" with "the eternally fooling force" in Kaufmann, lacks "force" in THE POETRY OF FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, and the other rhyme in that stanza disappears completely with the use of a literal "being and appearance" instead of "false and true." You might learn a lot from this book, but people who are more interested in poetry than philosophy might be able to maintain the common prejudice that philosophers do not make very good poets. But if you don't like to read much German, consider how likely it is that some of the German poetry in this book is top-notch, and can be compared to Goethe, as on pages 150-151.