Walking the Tightrope

Note:  I find certain books in my Nietzsche collection of distinguished merit.  I have already mentioned Beyond Selflessness as an outstanding example of Nietzsche scholarship.  Another is Nietzsche in Turin by Lesley Chamberland.  I plan to review this work (and several others) when the philosophic-biography portion of this blog is completed.  In this post I quote extensively and exclusively from Chapter 6 of Chamberland's excellent work .  It is the best overall intimate summary of Nietzsche I have found regarding his life and work in 1888.  It fits perfectly between The Case of Wagner and Twilight of the Idols . “ The Wagner Case , 'funny but at base almost too serious', had pressed upon him, but by the end of May Nietzsche was ready to resume his main task: to draw a line under the past, sum up his achievements, and consummate their message with a new work or works 'transvaluing all values'. To Resa von Schirnhofer he asked without further el...

We have already covered Nietzsche's close association with Richard Wagner and his wife Cosima here and here , among other places earlier in Nietzsche's life. In the final months of his sanity, Nietzsche veered off course from his Revaluation of All Values project. Cultural “strength” and the threat of “decadence” were two overarching themes which he revisited (as he would in more detail in his next work, Twilight of the Idols ). It was from this perspective that he became obsessed with Wagner again or, perhaps more accurately, he chose to write about an old but constant intimacy. He had never fully dealt with his indisputable adoration (as a young professor) of the composer, nor with the falling out between the two that culminated around 1878. He devoted two short works to the subject of Wagner and his music in 1888.  The first published piece was The Wagner Case or The Case of Wagner , in May 1888. It is a tedious attempt to demonstrate the limitations and inadequa...