Product Description

During 1888 in Turin, Italy, Nietzsche wrote three of his most important works--Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and The Antichrist. In this accessible, moving biography, Lesley Chamberlain examines with passion and insight the mind of a genius at its creative pinnacle. In her account, Freidrich Nietzsche emerges as a gentle, tortured man, dominated by his rigorous mind and his love of music, and soothed by the strangely otherworldly city of Turin

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #790627 in Books
• Published on: 1998-12-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Amazon.com Review
British journalist Lesley Chamberlain chronicles the extraordinary year, 1888, during which the expatriate German philosopher wrote three of his greatest works: Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, and Ecce Homo. More fundamentally, Chamberlain reclaims Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) from cliché, replacing the misogynist, protofascist madman of myth with a vulnerable human being--proud, lonely, an avid walker and eater--who questioned all received wisdom in his effort to give men and women their freedom. Chamberlain's elegant text is passionately personal, buttressed by careful scholarship. She succeeds admirably in her goal "to befriend Nietzsche."

From Booklist
Chamberlain is the author of a book titled The Food and Cooking of Eastern Europe (1990), and now she is the author of a beautifully written and powerfully analyzed biography of Nietzsche. She centers the work on Nietzsche's final years, which he spent in Turin, tired and alone. But he was a solitary traveler, except that his body was finally giving up to the relentless encroachment of syphilis. Two years after arriving in Turin in 1888, after his great mind slipped into dementia, he would be dead. Chamberlain's Nietzsche is not the fanatical bigot who received his just deserts in his final insanity but rather a brilliant person who struggled with his frailties and found inspiration in them. Her discussion of the relationship between Nietzsche and the Wagners and the break in their friendship is extremely enlightening in many ways, and the examinations of Nietzsche's works, particularly of The Antichristian (also The Antichrist) and Ecce Homo, will correct many popular views. A gem of a book to start off the new year. Bonnie Smothers

From Kirkus Reviews
A vivid, shrewd, and above all engrossing exploration of Friedrich Nietzsche's last works and days in Switzerland and Italy. Nietzsche's life as a writer began in the early 1870s and lasted only until 1888. In that final year the long-term effects of syphilis and perhaps an inherited neurological condition robbed him of his faculties, leaving him demented, then physically incapacitated and completely dependent on his unscrupulous sister until his death in 1900. Much of this last productive year was spent in the Piedmontese city of Turin, where Nietzsche lived frugally as a lodger in the home of an Italian family. Eventually, he collapsed in the street. Chamberlain--a British journalist, contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, and author of several books, of which this is the first to appear in the US--takes for her theme this painful last year. Her book is part biography, for it looks at the philosopher's intimate personal life--his preoccupation with the Wagners, his sexual failures and frustrations, his money worries and loneliness, even his close attention to diet--and part cool intellectual inquiry. She offers thoughtful and often original commentary on the four books that Nietzsche wrote during 1888 (among them Ecce Homo and Twilight of the Idols) and deftly interweaves his philosophical with his personal concerns. But above all, Chamberlain offers a tightly focused and elegantly written book whose prose style itself reflects and embodies Nietzsche's own views about the interpenetration of language and thinking. It is a significant accomplishment. Just when you thought Nietzsche had been swallowed whole by academe, along comes a writer who returns him to the public life of the mind. It is an event to be savored. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

A sensitive re-appraisal of a great thinker...
Nietzsche's writings have been interpreted, misinterpreted, translated, mistranslated and mutated to serve many individual interests - from the evils of the Third Reich to the man's only sister, 'editing' his work to suit her personal, social and political gains. Like Freud, Nietzsche has been used and abused as a platform in the creation of 'new' philosophies, some citing his work as inspiration, while others, in a fit of intellectual dishonesty, claim his ideas as their own. It has been said many times that he is the most misunderstood philosopher of the modern age. From my readings and experience, this claim is not far from the truth. This brilliant book, however, in a single brush of elegance and heart, re-examines Fredric Nietzsche and his work in a gentle, unpretentious though concise way, and attempts to introduce or re-introduce readers to this intriguing, inspiring and highly complex mind.

Chamberlain writes with passion and intuitive insight about the last sane year of Nietzsche's life while he lived and worked in the beautiful city of Turin. This was more than any other a happy and productive time in the professor's life. This is much more than a biographical narrative, but a brave exploration by Chamberlain into the sights, sounds, thoughts and relationships of this fragile though contradictory philosopher. This book is not so much a cerebral approach to the man and his thought, but an emotional, visceral appraisal of a unique thinker striving to understand the human condition.

Of the many biographical narratives about Nietzsche's descent into madness, Chamberlain is the most sensitive without the sentimentalism or coldness similar to the many other descriptions I've encountered. It strikes at the heart with precision and leaves a lasting impression.

If you are a philosopher or merely interested in a unique approach to telling the story of a thinker who has shaped modern philosophy in the twentieth and twenty-first century, read this text. It will be well worth the time, money and effort.

A unique and exceptional addition to Nietzsche literature.
To the comment that this book suffers because it's not a sufficient introduction to Nietzsche's philosophy I must put in here that the book was just as obviously not intended to do so. I loved it as a beautiful exception to the normally stultifying, over-researched and over-analyzed books that are supposed to be about N., but wind up being more about their authors. This one takes you on a journey to the settings of N's last productive year, extrapolates both from his writing/letters and the memoirs of those who knew him into reasonable possibilities for how his work grew out of the way he lived. The author clearly loves her subject and just as clearly makes no lofty claims for her interpretations. In the end I was quite moved by the whole thing. A wonderful book.

Who's in Turin?
Chamberlain does a good job of painting a picture of Nietzsche's harrowed yet sublime life. However, the work makes obvious the fact that she is NOT an expert in his philosophy. It is a decent, playful exploration of Nietzsche, but surely not a serious introduction to his thought or its internal evolution.