Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- PART ONE Youth
- PART TWO The Reluctant Professor
- Chapter 6 Basel
- Chapter 7 Richard Wagner and the Birth of The Birth of Tragedy
- Chapter 8 War and Aftermath
- Chapter 9 Anal Philology
- Chapter 10 Untimely Meditations
- Chapter 11 Aimez-vous Brahms?
- Chapter 12 Auf Wiedersehen Bayreuth
- Chapter 13 Sorrento
- Chapter 14 Human, All-Too-Human
- PART THREE The Nomad
- Chronology
- Notes
- Bibliography of Secondary Literature
- Index
- Plate section
Chapter 8 - War and Aftermath
from PART TWO - The Reluctant Professor
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
- Chapter 6 Basel
- Chapter 7 Richard Wagner and the Birth of The Birth of Tragedy
- Chapter 8 War and Aftermath
- Chapter 9 Anal Philology
- Chapter 10 Untimely Meditations
- Chapter 11 Aimez-vous Brahms?
- Chapter 12 Auf Wiedersehen Bayreuth
- Chapter 13 Sorrento
- Chapter 14 Human, All-Too-Human
- PART THREE The Nomad
- Chronology
- Notes
- Bibliography of Secondary Literature
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
The preparations for The Birth of Tragedy were interrupted by an event on the world-stage which produced profound and permanent effects on Nietzsche's thinking. Halfway through writing a letter begun on July 16, 1870, telling Rohde what a good impression he had made on the Wagners during his May visit to Tribschen, he heard the news:
Here is a fearful thunder-clap: the Franco-German war has been declared and our whole threadbare culture is toppling over with the terrible demon at its throat…We may already be at the beginning of the end. What a wasteland! We will need monasteries once again. And we will be the first brothers. – Your true Swiss.
This reveals something of Nietzsche's initially confused and ambiguous response to the July 19 declaration of war. On the one hand he is horrified that European culture has failed to prevent the outbreak of war, that it is lapsing into barbarism. But one the other, already perceiving Europe to be a culture in need of regeneration, he sees the possibility of cells of regeneration – ‘monasteries’ – growing up on the ‘wasteland’ left by the perhaps cleansing fire of war. (The ‘monastery’ – or sometimes ‘colony’ – ‘for free spirits’ will soon become a major theme.) That he signs the letter ‘Your true Swiss’ suggests that, taking advantage of Swiss neutrality, he plans to sit the whole thing out.
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- Information
- Friedrich NietzscheA Philosophical Biography, pp. 135 - 147Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010