Last year I read a new biography on the life of Friedrich Nietzsche by Sue Prideaux entitled I Am Dynamite! Only now have I found time to return to it and give it a comprehensive review. The title, obviously, is taken from one of Nietzsche’s self-proclamations in Ecce Homo. I have read many biographies on Nietzsche since long before I started (and during) this blog back in 2008. This book contains new material that will help flesh-out portions of previous blog posts.
I Am Dynamite! is not a great biography in terms of revelations about Nietzsche’s thought. Its strength lies elsewhere. Namely, Prideaux concentrates on details from Nietzsche’s early life and his later years after he went insane, offering a lot of information I have not found elsewhere. There are also wonderful little tidbit particulars throughout the biography that will I want to go back and include as updates to past blog posts. Here are some quotes I plan to incorporate in the future:
Nietzsche’s childhood was highly influenced by Christianity (of all things) and traditional classical music. His father, a Lutheran pastor, was a talented pianist who would frequently entertain visitors to Nietzsche’s childhood home with his musical skills. In this manner he influenced his son in fundamental ways until the father’s untimely death. “…he became acquainted with the Romantic music of the time, the music Wagner was rebelling against. [Beethoven became] Nietzsche’s first musical hero but it was Handel who inspired him to his first musical composition. When he was nine years old, he composed an oratoria inspired by hearing Handel’s ‘Hallelujah Chorus.’ ‘I thought it was like an angelic song of jubilation, and that it was to this sound that Jesus ascended. I immediately resolved to compose something similar.’” (page 21)
It is well-known that he was always a sickly child, with an assortment of maladies that became even more pronounced in adulthood. “Harrowing episodes of headaches with vomiting and extreme eyeache might last as long as a whole week during which he had to lie in a darkened room with the curtains drawn. The slightest light hurt his eyes. Reading, writing and even sustained coherent thought were out of the question. Between Easter 1854 and Easter 1855, for example, he was absent from school for six weeks and five days.” (page 23)
The musical skills he inherited from his father, with additional tutoring from his mother following the pastor’s death, was one area that distinguished him among his classmates. “He joined the school choir, which gave endless opportunities for group joy and military marching, but it is within this discipline of music that we can trace more easily that in his other school subjects – all based on the idea of self-realization through submission to the group ethic – that he was succeeding in hanging on to the freedom of thought he had been so concerned he might lose when he was about to join Pforta. His teachers and fellow pupils admired his straightforward conventional skills on the piano and his proficiency at sight-reading, which was outstanding, but it was his dazzling keyboard improvisations that astounded them. While his father had been alive, people had journeyed far to hear him play. Now Nietzsche’s schoolmates admired the same gift in him.” (pp. 30-31)
In 1863, Neitzsche fell in love for the first time, a small detail that shows what a “typical” boy he was in many respects: “The following year he became interested in a girl. Anna Redtel was the sister of a schoolmate. She had joined her brother on an outing to the mountains where she caught Nietzsche’s eye by dancing prettily in a clearing. They danced together. She was a small, ethereal girl from Berlin, by all accounts charming, good-natured, cultured and musical. By her side, Nietzsche appeared big, broad-shouldered, vigorous, rather solemn and stiff. She played the piano well and their intimacy advanced on the piano stool as they played duets together. He sent her poems and he dedicated a musical rhapsody to her. When the time came for Anna to return to Berlin, he gave her a portfolio containing a number of his own compositions for piano. She thanked him in a graceful note and with that this first, gentle, introduction to love was over.” (page 37)
After his unprecedented elevation to Professor of Philology at Basel, his connection with nature became more pronounced, as did his tendency toward dandyism: “His spirit was greatly stirred by the energy of the River Rhine. When pupils entered his classroom they often found him at an open window, mesmerized by its continuous roar. The grinding echo of the river against the tall walls of the medieval streets accompanied his walks through town where he cut a stylish figure, a little under middle height (the same height as Goethe, he always claimed), stockily built, carefully and elegantly dressed, distinguished-looking with his large mustache and deep-set, rather pensive eyes. His gray top hat must have been part of his aging strategy as it was the only one to be seen in Basel apart from one worn by a very old state counselor from Baden. On bad days when his health was plaguing him, Nietzsche swapped the top hat for a thick green eyeshade to shield his sensitive eyes from light.” (page 48)
The Professor’s opinions of classical music were altered dramatically by Richard Wagner, the brilliant composer who saw something special in Nietzsche and befriended him. Wagner’s interest in Nietzsche is not something commonly considered in other biographies. “While Nietzsche’s enthusiasm for Wagner is not terribly surprising, Wagner’s enthusiasm for Nietzsche is. Wagner’s genius had an annihilating force to it. People of interest were given a chance to be drawn into the charmed circle of left in outer darkness; there was no middle ground.” (page 61)
Nietzsche was the only guest in the house when Wagner’s son was born, indicative of how close their intimacy was. “He emerged at lunchtime to tell Nietzsche, the only guest in the house, the glorious news of Siegfried’s birth….Wagner now considered Nietzsche a fortunate presence sent by the gods. There being no such thing as coincidence, it was fate that had chosen the intelligent young professor to be Siegfried’s guardian spirit.” (page 63)
At Basel, Nietzsche intellectually became most closely associated with Jacob Burckhardt, both sharing the belief that ancient Greek society was superior to the modern world. For a long time, especially around the writing of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche felt that methods should be explored for infusing the elements they felt made Greek society superior into contemporary Europe. “For Burckhardt and Nietzsche, the Hellenizing of the world had been the most important event. The object of the modern age was not to cut the Gordian knot of Greek culture after the manner of adoption by Alexander, and then leave its frayed ends fluttering in all directions. It was, rather, to bind it up: to weave the pale outline of Hellenism into the culture of modern times.” (page 67)
Between Burckhardt and Wagner, Nietzsche was, for the first time in his life, experiencing a rich and rewarding life. “Nietzsche passed an intoxicating summer between his intense debates with Burckhardt and the rain of invitations to come from Tribschen, where he and Wagner and Cosima composed a well-balanced triangle of cleverness, high seriousness and mutual admiration.” (page 68)
The intimacy with Wagner frequently led to long, often exclusive, stays at Wagner’s country estate. “Nietzsche stayed eight days, again as the only guest. One evening he read out his essay on the Dionysian attitude, which they then discussed. Another, Wagner read out the libretto for Die Meistersinger. Cosima records that she and Nietzsche enjoyed the sublime experience of Hans Richter playing music from Tristan for the two of them alone.” (page 84)
Though greatly admired by Wagner, The Birth of Tragedy, became a source of criticism within his academic circle. Moreover, personal attempts at musical composition at this time was also met with mostly negative critiques by those with whom he shared his creativity. His ever-admiring mother and sister became his only place of refuge. “In the autumn of 1872, Wagner invited Nietzsche to Bayreuth to celebrate Christmas and Cosima’s birthday, as they had at Tribschen. Nietzsche refused; no philology students had signed up for his next semester and he could not face the shame. Instead, he went home for the holiday to Naumburg where Franziska and Elisabeth would no more see The Birth of Tragedy as a failure than they would mention his inability to compose a decent piece of music, to finish the lecture series on education, or to attract more than two students to his New Year’s course at the university.” (page 113)
“The Tribschen years had unquestionably been the most satisfying period of Nietzsche’s life. The steady rhythm of those early years of his promising professorship shuttling between the Basel classroom and the Master’s inner sanctum had conferred upon him a sunlit interval of good health such as he had never before enjoyed, nor ever would again. But the plodding Easter vacation that he and Rohde passed together at Bayreuth had not recaptured a scintilla of the glory days. It had been a hollow mockery, a pitiful simulacrum. On his return to Basel his health broke down.” (page 116)
Elisabeth often looked after the sickly Professor for extended periods of time during his years at Basel: “…for four months in 1870, for six months in 1871, for several months apiece in 1872 and 1873 and for the summer of 1874. Finally, in August 1875, brother and sister set up house together in an apartment in Spalentorweg 48, just down the road from Poison Cottage, where Romundt and Overbeck remained close to hand.” (pp. 127-128)
This had some advantages. Elisabeth made sure her brother was surrounded by tranquility and beauty. “Nietzsche’s apartment billowed with deliciously soft armchairs, genteelly protected by lace antimacassars. Ornaments and flower vases teetered on terrifyingly fragile table. Rosy light entered windows muffled by colored gauze. Indistinct watercolors drifted pale walls. It gave von Scheffler the feeling of being a guest in the house of a delightful girlfriend rather than that of a professor.” (page 132)
The nature of Nietzsche’s sexuality is a subject of some debate. But it is undeniable that he enjoyed to company of women and was frequently looking for marriage, though his efforts were perpetually clumsy, brash, and always led to a refusal. “During the carriage ride along the shore of the lake, Nietzsche enlarged on the Byronic theme of freedom from oppression. Mathilde [Trampedach] unexpectedly interrupted him with the comment that she found it odd that men should expend so much time and energy on the question of lifting purely external constraints when it was the internal constraints that really hampered them. It was an argument that fired Nietzsche’s soul. On their return to Geneva he took to the piano to treat her to one of his tumultuous and dramatic improvisations. The recital finished, he bowed low over her hand and shot an intensely penetrating look into her eyes. Then he went upstairs to write a proposal of marriage.” (page 141)
His self-pleasuring was known by Wagner, who highly disapproved and thought it was harmful to his younger friend. One of the truly “fresh” ideas presented by Prideaux in her biography is that the falling out between Nietzsche and Wagner fundamentally stemmed from Wagner’s meddling in this matter. “Masturbation was then widely believed to cause severe eye problems such as Nietzsche suffered from, and Wagner sent a woefully indiscreet letter to Dr. Eiser, voicing his suspicions….Wagner saw further evidence for his theory in the advice that the doctor in Naples had given: that Nietzsche should marry, i.e. regularize his sex life….Dr. Eiser gave Wagner the same advice that Nietzsche had been given by Dr. Schron: there was hope that Nietzsche’s general condition – eyesight apart – might improve a little if he could contract a happy marriage. It was not, as Elisabeth said, their differences over the religiosity of Wagner’s Parsifal liberatto that caused the final breach between the two men who loved and valued each other so very much. It was Nietzsche’s eventual discovery of this well-intentioned, but crushing, correspondence.” (pp.168,169,170)
When not bedridden, Nietzsche lived an active lifestyle that was particularly slanted toward hiking. “And yet also, high in the thin mountain air, he found himself at times overwhelmed by sudden gushes of extreme happiness of an exquisite intensity that he had never before experienced. He felt himself so thinned, so deliciously etiolated, that he had the sensation of moving through the landscape like a zigzag doodle drawn on paper by a superior power wanting to try out a new pen. He began to rate the mountains by the capacity of their forests to hide him from the all-seeing sky.” (page 184)
His interest in music never diminished and was strengthened further when he encountered Bizet after his falling out with Wagner. “In Genoa, Nietzsche saw the opera Carmen for the first time. As soon as he could, he saw it again. Before he died he would see it twenty times. Carmen replaced his obsession with Tristan and Isolde.” (page 195)
His relationship with Lou Salome was notorious and I have covered it rather thoroughly. This little detail from the Bayreuth festival (where Nietzsche had hoped Lou and his sister would develop a friendship) demonstrates Lou’s progressive and self-centered behavior which Elisabeth, perhaps sensing a rivalry for her brother’s well-being, found repulsive. “The final straw came when Lou commanded von Joukowsky to kneel at her feet to alter the hem of her dress while she was still wearing it. Outraged, Elisabeth sent Nietzsche a telegram, and left for Tautenburg. Nietzsche hurried to meet her at the station. Hoping for wonderful reports of Lou, he heard only a litany of complaints.” (page 219)
As I said, Prideaux does not delve too deeply into the philosophy, but she does make a few excellent observations. “It is one of Nietzsche’s most frustrating, teasing traits that, true to his aversion to interfering with our freedom of thought, he refuses to show us the path leading to becoming the Ubermensch; nor, indeed, does he tell is what the Ubermensch is. We know that Nietzsche envisions the Ubermensch as the strong man of the future, the antidote to the moral and cultural pygmyhood spawned by centuries of European decadence and Church domination. He is the figure who, despite the death of God, does not succumb to skepticism and nihilism; his freedom from belief enhances his life. His freedom from religious belief is equal to his resistance to transferring that belief to science. The Ubermensch does not need beliefs for a feeling of a stable world.” (page 259)
She rightly points out that Nietzsche’s fame emerged outside of Germany in part of northern Europe, via some extraordinary artists and scholars. “Scandinavians set the Nietzschean fire: the Danish literary critic Georg Brandes had lit the spark with his lectures alerting the world, and connecting the Swedish playwright August Strindberg with Nietzsche in 1888….The Norwegian artist Edvard Munch was part of the circle and Strindberg introduced him to Nietzsche’s writings with such profound effect that Munch painted The Scream….[Lou Salome’s] articles widened interest in Nietzsche and in 1894 she published one of the first major studies on his life and work…” (pp. 354 – 355)
One of the strongest aspects of the biography are the insights Prideaux provides of the philosopher’s life after insanity took him. “Nietzsche, who had loved to roam the high mountains, was now confined to two rooms on the second floor of the house and a small, enclosed veranda. Often he had to led the few steps from his room to the veranda; he could not always find it on his own. His daily exercise was that of a caged animal. He paced backward and forward the length of the veranda, which was deliberately overgrown with plants so that he would be invisible to the outside world. Franziska dreaded that her beloved, insane son would be discovered by authorities and snatched away from her.
“He slept most of the morning. When he had been washed and dressed he would spend the rest of the day in the other room, sitting for hours brooding dully. Sometimes he would play with dolls and other toys. His mother read aloud to him for as long as her voice held out. He did not understand the words but he liked to hear the sound. He did not like visitors. When the barber came to trim his strongly growing beard and mustache, and the masseur to rub some circulation through his atrophying muscles, he objected violently. Even though they were regular visitors, he was convinced that they had come to do him harm. In order to get the job done, Franziska would caress him soothingly and put sweet-tasting morsels into his mouth. Sometimes she would recite nursery rhymes. Occasionally he would remember odd scrapes of them and join in. Franziska and her faithful housekeeper Alwine became afraid of him when he was loud and violent but the fear that he would be taken away from them outweighed the distress caused by their physical struggle to subdue him.” (pp. 357 – 358)
After his mother’s death and as his fame began to grow across Europe, Elisabeth stepped in and turned her unfortunate brother into a tourist attraction. “Elisabeth liked to display him after dinner. Often she arranged for him to be half-glimpsed through a misty curtain, like a spirit at a séance. Few were as clear-eyed as Harry Kessler, who probably saw him most often as he used to spend the night in the Villa Silberblick when he had business to discuss with Elisabeth. He would find himself starting up in bed when Nietzsche gave voice to the ‘long, raw moaning sounds, which he screamed into the night with all his might; then all was well again.’” (page 366)
I Am Dynamite! is not essential reading. It does not offer a robust introduction to Nietzsche’s philosophy. But, it does afford insights into aspects of Nietzsche’s life that other biographies tend to minimize or ignore which could benefit anyone being introduced to Nietzsche or a veteran of Nietzsche’s life like me who wants to broaden their understanding of this complex man. It is a well-written, highly accessible read that fully compliments the other, more detailed biographies in my collection.
I Am Dynamite! is not a great biography in terms of revelations about Nietzsche’s thought. Its strength lies elsewhere. Namely, Prideaux concentrates on details from Nietzsche’s early life and his later years after he went insane, offering a lot of information I have not found elsewhere. There are also wonderful little tidbit particulars throughout the biography that will I want to go back and include as updates to past blog posts. Here are some quotes I plan to incorporate in the future:
Nietzsche’s childhood was highly influenced by Christianity (of all things) and traditional classical music. His father, a Lutheran pastor, was a talented pianist who would frequently entertain visitors to Nietzsche’s childhood home with his musical skills. In this manner he influenced his son in fundamental ways until the father’s untimely death. “…he became acquainted with the Romantic music of the time, the music Wagner was rebelling against. [Beethoven became] Nietzsche’s first musical hero but it was Handel who inspired him to his first musical composition. When he was nine years old, he composed an oratoria inspired by hearing Handel’s ‘Hallelujah Chorus.’ ‘I thought it was like an angelic song of jubilation, and that it was to this sound that Jesus ascended. I immediately resolved to compose something similar.’” (page 21)
It is well-known that he was always a sickly child, with an assortment of maladies that became even more pronounced in adulthood. “Harrowing episodes of headaches with vomiting and extreme eyeache might last as long as a whole week during which he had to lie in a darkened room with the curtains drawn. The slightest light hurt his eyes. Reading, writing and even sustained coherent thought were out of the question. Between Easter 1854 and Easter 1855, for example, he was absent from school for six weeks and five days.” (page 23)
The musical skills he inherited from his father, with additional tutoring from his mother following the pastor’s death, was one area that distinguished him among his classmates. “He joined the school choir, which gave endless opportunities for group joy and military marching, but it is within this discipline of music that we can trace more easily that in his other school subjects – all based on the idea of self-realization through submission to the group ethic – that he was succeeding in hanging on to the freedom of thought he had been so concerned he might lose when he was about to join Pforta. His teachers and fellow pupils admired his straightforward conventional skills on the piano and his proficiency at sight-reading, which was outstanding, but it was his dazzling keyboard improvisations that astounded them. While his father had been alive, people had journeyed far to hear him play. Now Nietzsche’s schoolmates admired the same gift in him.” (pp. 30-31)
In 1863, Neitzsche fell in love for the first time, a small detail that shows what a “typical” boy he was in many respects: “The following year he became interested in a girl. Anna Redtel was the sister of a schoolmate. She had joined her brother on an outing to the mountains where she caught Nietzsche’s eye by dancing prettily in a clearing. They danced together. She was a small, ethereal girl from Berlin, by all accounts charming, good-natured, cultured and musical. By her side, Nietzsche appeared big, broad-shouldered, vigorous, rather solemn and stiff. She played the piano well and their intimacy advanced on the piano stool as they played duets together. He sent her poems and he dedicated a musical rhapsody to her. When the time came for Anna to return to Berlin, he gave her a portfolio containing a number of his own compositions for piano. She thanked him in a graceful note and with that this first, gentle, introduction to love was over.” (page 37)
After his unprecedented elevation to Professor of Philology at Basel, his connection with nature became more pronounced, as did his tendency toward dandyism: “His spirit was greatly stirred by the energy of the River Rhine. When pupils entered his classroom they often found him at an open window, mesmerized by its continuous roar. The grinding echo of the river against the tall walls of the medieval streets accompanied his walks through town where he cut a stylish figure, a little under middle height (the same height as Goethe, he always claimed), stockily built, carefully and elegantly dressed, distinguished-looking with his large mustache and deep-set, rather pensive eyes. His gray top hat must have been part of his aging strategy as it was the only one to be seen in Basel apart from one worn by a very old state counselor from Baden. On bad days when his health was plaguing him, Nietzsche swapped the top hat for a thick green eyeshade to shield his sensitive eyes from light.” (page 48)
The Professor’s opinions of classical music were altered dramatically by Richard Wagner, the brilliant composer who saw something special in Nietzsche and befriended him. Wagner’s interest in Nietzsche is not something commonly considered in other biographies. “While Nietzsche’s enthusiasm for Wagner is not terribly surprising, Wagner’s enthusiasm for Nietzsche is. Wagner’s genius had an annihilating force to it. People of interest were given a chance to be drawn into the charmed circle of left in outer darkness; there was no middle ground.” (page 61)
Nietzsche was the only guest in the house when Wagner’s son was born, indicative of how close their intimacy was. “He emerged at lunchtime to tell Nietzsche, the only guest in the house, the glorious news of Siegfried’s birth….Wagner now considered Nietzsche a fortunate presence sent by the gods. There being no such thing as coincidence, it was fate that had chosen the intelligent young professor to be Siegfried’s guardian spirit.” (page 63)
At Basel, Nietzsche intellectually became most closely associated with Jacob Burckhardt, both sharing the belief that ancient Greek society was superior to the modern world. For a long time, especially around the writing of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche felt that methods should be explored for infusing the elements they felt made Greek society superior into contemporary Europe. “For Burckhardt and Nietzsche, the Hellenizing of the world had been the most important event. The object of the modern age was not to cut the Gordian knot of Greek culture after the manner of adoption by Alexander, and then leave its frayed ends fluttering in all directions. It was, rather, to bind it up: to weave the pale outline of Hellenism into the culture of modern times.” (page 67)
Between Burckhardt and Wagner, Nietzsche was, for the first time in his life, experiencing a rich and rewarding life. “Nietzsche passed an intoxicating summer between his intense debates with Burckhardt and the rain of invitations to come from Tribschen, where he and Wagner and Cosima composed a well-balanced triangle of cleverness, high seriousness and mutual admiration.” (page 68)
The intimacy with Wagner frequently led to long, often exclusive, stays at Wagner’s country estate. “Nietzsche stayed eight days, again as the only guest. One evening he read out his essay on the Dionysian attitude, which they then discussed. Another, Wagner read out the libretto for Die Meistersinger. Cosima records that she and Nietzsche enjoyed the sublime experience of Hans Richter playing music from Tristan for the two of them alone.” (page 84)
Though greatly admired by Wagner, The Birth of Tragedy, became a source of criticism within his academic circle. Moreover, personal attempts at musical composition at this time was also met with mostly negative critiques by those with whom he shared his creativity. His ever-admiring mother and sister became his only place of refuge. “In the autumn of 1872, Wagner invited Nietzsche to Bayreuth to celebrate Christmas and Cosima’s birthday, as they had at Tribschen. Nietzsche refused; no philology students had signed up for his next semester and he could not face the shame. Instead, he went home for the holiday to Naumburg where Franziska and Elisabeth would no more see The Birth of Tragedy as a failure than they would mention his inability to compose a decent piece of music, to finish the lecture series on education, or to attract more than two students to his New Year’s course at the university.” (page 113)
“The Tribschen years had unquestionably been the most satisfying period of Nietzsche’s life. The steady rhythm of those early years of his promising professorship shuttling between the Basel classroom and the Master’s inner sanctum had conferred upon him a sunlit interval of good health such as he had never before enjoyed, nor ever would again. But the plodding Easter vacation that he and Rohde passed together at Bayreuth had not recaptured a scintilla of the glory days. It had been a hollow mockery, a pitiful simulacrum. On his return to Basel his health broke down.” (page 116)
Elisabeth often looked after the sickly Professor for extended periods of time during his years at Basel: “…for four months in 1870, for six months in 1871, for several months apiece in 1872 and 1873 and for the summer of 1874. Finally, in August 1875, brother and sister set up house together in an apartment in Spalentorweg 48, just down the road from Poison Cottage, where Romundt and Overbeck remained close to hand.” (pp. 127-128)
This had some advantages. Elisabeth made sure her brother was surrounded by tranquility and beauty. “Nietzsche’s apartment billowed with deliciously soft armchairs, genteelly protected by lace antimacassars. Ornaments and flower vases teetered on terrifyingly fragile table. Rosy light entered windows muffled by colored gauze. Indistinct watercolors drifted pale walls. It gave von Scheffler the feeling of being a guest in the house of a delightful girlfriend rather than that of a professor.” (page 132)
The nature of Nietzsche’s sexuality is a subject of some debate. But it is undeniable that he enjoyed to company of women and was frequently looking for marriage, though his efforts were perpetually clumsy, brash, and always led to a refusal. “During the carriage ride along the shore of the lake, Nietzsche enlarged on the Byronic theme of freedom from oppression. Mathilde [Trampedach] unexpectedly interrupted him with the comment that she found it odd that men should expend so much time and energy on the question of lifting purely external constraints when it was the internal constraints that really hampered them. It was an argument that fired Nietzsche’s soul. On their return to Geneva he took to the piano to treat her to one of his tumultuous and dramatic improvisations. The recital finished, he bowed low over her hand and shot an intensely penetrating look into her eyes. Then he went upstairs to write a proposal of marriage.” (page 141)
His self-pleasuring was known by Wagner, who highly disapproved and thought it was harmful to his younger friend. One of the truly “fresh” ideas presented by Prideaux in her biography is that the falling out between Nietzsche and Wagner fundamentally stemmed from Wagner’s meddling in this matter. “Masturbation was then widely believed to cause severe eye problems such as Nietzsche suffered from, and Wagner sent a woefully indiscreet letter to Dr. Eiser, voicing his suspicions….Wagner saw further evidence for his theory in the advice that the doctor in Naples had given: that Nietzsche should marry, i.e. regularize his sex life….Dr. Eiser gave Wagner the same advice that Nietzsche had been given by Dr. Schron: there was hope that Nietzsche’s general condition – eyesight apart – might improve a little if he could contract a happy marriage. It was not, as Elisabeth said, their differences over the religiosity of Wagner’s Parsifal liberatto that caused the final breach between the two men who loved and valued each other so very much. It was Nietzsche’s eventual discovery of this well-intentioned, but crushing, correspondence.” (pp.168,169,170)
When not bedridden, Nietzsche lived an active lifestyle that was particularly slanted toward hiking. “And yet also, high in the thin mountain air, he found himself at times overwhelmed by sudden gushes of extreme happiness of an exquisite intensity that he had never before experienced. He felt himself so thinned, so deliciously etiolated, that he had the sensation of moving through the landscape like a zigzag doodle drawn on paper by a superior power wanting to try out a new pen. He began to rate the mountains by the capacity of their forests to hide him from the all-seeing sky.” (page 184)
His interest in music never diminished and was strengthened further when he encountered Bizet after his falling out with Wagner. “In Genoa, Nietzsche saw the opera Carmen for the first time. As soon as he could, he saw it again. Before he died he would see it twenty times. Carmen replaced his obsession with Tristan and Isolde.” (page 195)
His relationship with Lou Salome was notorious and I have covered it rather thoroughly. This little detail from the Bayreuth festival (where Nietzsche had hoped Lou and his sister would develop a friendship) demonstrates Lou’s progressive and self-centered behavior which Elisabeth, perhaps sensing a rivalry for her brother’s well-being, found repulsive. “The final straw came when Lou commanded von Joukowsky to kneel at her feet to alter the hem of her dress while she was still wearing it. Outraged, Elisabeth sent Nietzsche a telegram, and left for Tautenburg. Nietzsche hurried to meet her at the station. Hoping for wonderful reports of Lou, he heard only a litany of complaints.” (page 219)
As I said, Prideaux does not delve too deeply into the philosophy, but she does make a few excellent observations. “It is one of Nietzsche’s most frustrating, teasing traits that, true to his aversion to interfering with our freedom of thought, he refuses to show us the path leading to becoming the Ubermensch; nor, indeed, does he tell is what the Ubermensch is. We know that Nietzsche envisions the Ubermensch as the strong man of the future, the antidote to the moral and cultural pygmyhood spawned by centuries of European decadence and Church domination. He is the figure who, despite the death of God, does not succumb to skepticism and nihilism; his freedom from belief enhances his life. His freedom from religious belief is equal to his resistance to transferring that belief to science. The Ubermensch does not need beliefs for a feeling of a stable world.” (page 259)
She rightly points out that Nietzsche’s fame emerged outside of Germany in part of northern Europe, via some extraordinary artists and scholars. “Scandinavians set the Nietzschean fire: the Danish literary critic Georg Brandes had lit the spark with his lectures alerting the world, and connecting the Swedish playwright August Strindberg with Nietzsche in 1888….The Norwegian artist Edvard Munch was part of the circle and Strindberg introduced him to Nietzsche’s writings with such profound effect that Munch painted The Scream….[Lou Salome’s] articles widened interest in Nietzsche and in 1894 she published one of the first major studies on his life and work…” (pp. 354 – 355)
One of the strongest aspects of the biography are the insights Prideaux provides of the philosopher’s life after insanity took him. “Nietzsche, who had loved to roam the high mountains, was now confined to two rooms on the second floor of the house and a small, enclosed veranda. Often he had to led the few steps from his room to the veranda; he could not always find it on his own. His daily exercise was that of a caged animal. He paced backward and forward the length of the veranda, which was deliberately overgrown with plants so that he would be invisible to the outside world. Franziska dreaded that her beloved, insane son would be discovered by authorities and snatched away from her.
“He slept most of the morning. When he had been washed and dressed he would spend the rest of the day in the other room, sitting for hours brooding dully. Sometimes he would play with dolls and other toys. His mother read aloud to him for as long as her voice held out. He did not understand the words but he liked to hear the sound. He did not like visitors. When the barber came to trim his strongly growing beard and mustache, and the masseur to rub some circulation through his atrophying muscles, he objected violently. Even though they were regular visitors, he was convinced that they had come to do him harm. In order to get the job done, Franziska would caress him soothingly and put sweet-tasting morsels into his mouth. Sometimes she would recite nursery rhymes. Occasionally he would remember odd scrapes of them and join in. Franziska and her faithful housekeeper Alwine became afraid of him when he was loud and violent but the fear that he would be taken away from them outweighed the distress caused by their physical struggle to subdue him.” (pp. 357 – 358)
After his mother’s death and as his fame began to grow across Europe, Elisabeth stepped in and turned her unfortunate brother into a tourist attraction. “Elisabeth liked to display him after dinner. Often she arranged for him to be half-glimpsed through a misty curtain, like a spirit at a séance. Few were as clear-eyed as Harry Kessler, who probably saw him most often as he used to spend the night in the Villa Silberblick when he had business to discuss with Elisabeth. He would find himself starting up in bed when Nietzsche gave voice to the ‘long, raw moaning sounds, which he screamed into the night with all his might; then all was well again.’” (page 366)
I Am Dynamite! is not essential reading. It does not offer a robust introduction to Nietzsche’s philosophy. But, it does afford insights into aspects of Nietzsche’s life that other biographies tend to minimize or ignore which could benefit anyone being introduced to Nietzsche or a veteran of Nietzsche’s life like me who wants to broaden their understanding of this complex man. It is a well-written, highly accessible read that fully compliments the other, more detailed biographies in my collection.
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