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Authors: Friedrich Nietzsche

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What is disagreeable and offends my modesty is .that at bottom I am every name in history. With the children I have put into the world too, I consider with some mistrust whether it is not the case that all who come
into
the kingdom of God also come
out
of God. This fall I was blinded as little as possible when I twice witnessed my funeral, first as Conte Robilant (no, that is my son, insofar as I am Carlo Alberto, unfaithful to my nature); but Antonelli I was myself. Dear Professor, this edifice you should see: since I am utterly inexperienced in the things which I create, you are entitled to any criticism; I am grateful without being able to promise that I shall profit. We artists are incorrigible.
Today I saw an operetta, Quirinal-Moorish, and on this occasion also noted with delight that Moscow as well as Rome are now grandiose affairs. You see, I am not denied considerable talent for landscapes too.
Consider, now we have beautiful, beautiful chats; Turin is not far; very serious professional obligations are lacking just now; a glass of Veltliner could be obtained.
Négligé
of dress, a condition of being decent.
With affectionate love, your
Nietzsche
[On the margins of this letter are four postscripts.]
 
You may make any use of this letter which will not degrade me in the eyes of those at Basel.
 
I have had Caiphas put in fetters. Also, last year I was crucified by the German doctors in a very drawnout manner. Wilhelm, Bismarck, and all anti-Semites abolished.
 
I go everywhere in my student's coat, and here and there slap somebody on the shoulder and say, Siamo
contenti? Son dio
ho fatto questa caricatura.
66
 
Tomorrow my son Umberto will come with the lovely Margharita, whom, however, I shall also receive here only in shirtsleeves. The rest for Frau Cosima—Ariadne —from time to time there is magic.
TO OVERBECK
January 6, 1889
To friend Overbeck and wife. Although you have so far demonstrated little faith in my ability to pay, I yet hope to demonstrate that I am somebody who pays his debts —for example, to you. I am just having all anti-Semites shot.
Dionysus
Editions of Nietzsche
For a much more comprehensive bibliography, see the 3
rd
rev. ed. of Kaufmann's
Nistzsche
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, and New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1968).
The International Nietzsche Bibliography
, described on p. 24, above, does not include writings by Nietzsche.
A. German Editions of His Works
There are a great many collected editions. For scholars, the two most important are:
1.
Werke, Grossoktavausgabe,
and ed. 20 vols. Leipzig: Kröner, 1901–1913 and 1926 (vol. XX, containing indices for vols. I—XVI). Vols. I—VIII, works; vols. IX—XVI,
Nachlass
(i.e., notes, fragments, and other manuscript material not published by Nietzsche himself and for the most part not intended for publication); vols. XVII—XIX,
Philologica
(i.e., lecture notes and related materials belonging to the period when Nietzsche was a classical philologist).
2.
Gesammelte Werke, Musarionausgabe
. 23 vols. Munich: Musarion Verlag, 1920–1929. Books,
Nachlass,
and
Philologica
are arranged in a single chronological sequence; vol. I contains previously unpublished
juvenilia
; half of vol. XXI contains an index of names, which, like the index of subjects (all of vols. XXII-XXIII ), covers the
Philologica
too. In most ways this edition is obviously preferable to the
Grossoktacausgabe;
but the earlier edition contains an appendix of interesting editorial notes on
The Will to Power
(vol. XVI ) which is not to be found anywhere else.
Four other editions deserve mention here:
3.
Werke und Briefe: Historisch-Kritische Gesamtausgabe
.
9 vols. Munich: Beck, 1933–1942. Discontinued after 5 vols. of
Werke
and 4 vols. of
Briefe
had appeared. The arrangement is chronological, and the “works” do not include any of Nietzsche's books but cover only the period from 1854, when Nietzsche was ten, to 1869. But H. J. Mette's discussion of the MSS in
Werke
, I, xxxi—cxxvi, includes the MSS of Nietzsche's later works.
4.
Werke in drei Bänden.
Ed. Karl Schlechta. 3 vols. Munich: Carl Hanser, 1954–1956. Vols. I-II contain all Nietzsche's books as well as some of his late poems; vol. III contains a selection from the
Nachlass,
278 letters, a chronology (pp. 1359—82), and a long Philological Postscript (pp. 1383–1432). In 1965 a 4
th
vol. was added:
Nietzsche-Index.
Some minor errors mar vols. I-II; vol. III is most open to objections. On the positive side, it contains a few previously unpublished letters, and the Philological Postscript details the forgeries perpetrated by Nietzsche's sister, but these forgeries concern letters only and are of no philosophical interest. On the negative side, the selections from the
Nachlass
of the 1880s are confined exclusively to the notes previously known as
The Will to Power
; these notes have been edited very badly, and all late notes that the editors of the more comprehensive editions had not included in
The Will
to
Power
have been omitted, though in entries 1 and 2 above they fill many volumes. The editorial arrangement is neither systematic nor, as claimed by the editor, faithful to the manuscripts; the text departs from the manuscripts wherever entries 1 and 2 do and disregards the interesting notes in vol. XVI of 1 which indicate departures from the manuscripts. For more detailed discussion, see the Kaufmann translations (C. II below).
5.
Kröners Taschenausgabe.
Vols. 70–77 contain Nietzsche's books as well as selections from the
Nachlass
of his Basel period; 78 contains The
Will
to
Power;
82–83 a selection from the late
Nachlass material;
170 an index for all these volumes. These handy volumes can be bought separately. The postscripts by Alfred Bäumler, who was a Nazi, are objectionable, and volumes 82–83 are inadequate; but vols. 70–78 are adequate for most purposes.
6.
Werke
:
Kritische Ausgabe sämtlicher Schriften und nachgelassenen Fragmente
. Ed. Giorgio Colli. 30 vols. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967ff. Instead of continuing edition 3, above, plans have been made for yet another monumental collected edition.
B. German Editions of His Letters
1.
Friedrich Nietzsches Cesammelte Briefe
. 5 vols. Berlin und Leipzig: Schuster & Loeffler (later, Insel-Verlag), 1900ff. Some of Nietzsche's letters to his sister in vol. V (actually two volumes with consecutive pagination) are not authentic (see A.4, above). Still, this edition has never been replaced, though it has been importantly supplemented by the following collections.
2.
Nietzsches Briefwechsel mit Franz Overbeck.
Leipzig: Insel, 1916. Overbeck was Nietzsche's colleague at Basel and remained a loyal friend to the end. These important letters are not included in B.1.
3. Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche.
Wagner und Nietzsche zur Zeit ihrer Freundschaft.
Munich: Müller, 1915; tr. by C. V. Kerr, introduction by H. L. Mencken, as The
Nietzsche-Wagner
Correspondence
. London: Duckworth, 1922.
4.
Werke und Briefe
(A.3, above) includes 4 vols. of letters (Munich: Beck, 1938—1942), which span the period from 1850 to 1877.
Briefe
, vol. I, pp. xii-lviii, offer a detailed and valuable survey of the whereabouts of all Nietzsche letters of which the Nietzsche Archive had any knowledge at that time. This survey also lists letters published in periodicals and in biographical works. Many letters are privately owned and as yet unpublished.
5. See A.4, above.
C. Nietzsche in English
I. The Oscar Levy Translations
1.
The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche.
18 vols. Ed. Oscar Levy. New York: Macmillan, 1909–1911, reissue, New York: Russell & Russell, 1964.
2.
Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche.
Ed. Oscar Levy. Tr. A. M. Ludovici. New York and Toronto: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1921.
These translations, none of them by Dr. Levy himself, represent an immense labor of love but are thoroughly unreliable. In his preface to the collected edition, Dr. Levy called Ludovici “the most gifted and conscientious of my collaborators.” But in the latest edition Ludovici still has “cosmopolitan” where Nietzsche has “cosmological”; and where Nietzsche says, “Ibsen has become very clear to me,” Ludovici still says, “Ibsen has become very German.” Similar mistakes abound.
II. The Walter Kaufmann Translations
Nietzsche's most important writings are available in three volumes. The translations of
On the Genealogy of Morals
and
The Will to Power
are by Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale jointly; all the others, as well as all the introductions and commentaries, are by Kaufmann alone.
1.
The Portable Nietzsche.
New York: The Viking Press, 1954· Contains complete new translations of
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist
, and
Nietzsche contra Wagner
, and of more than 100 pages of additional selections.
2.
Basic Writings of Nietzsche.
New York: Random House, Modern Library Ciant, 1968. Contains complete new translations, with footnote commentaries, of
The Birth of Tragedy, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals, The Case of Wagner, and Ecce Homo
, as well as 75 aphorisms from
Human, All-too-Human; Dawn
; and
The Gay Science
.
3.
The Will to Power
, with commentary and facsimiles of the original manuscript. New York: Random House, 1967.
4.
Twenty German Poets: A Bilingual Collection
. New York: Random House, 1962; reprinted in the Modern Library, 1963. Includes eleven poems by and three about Nietzsche.
Many of these translations are also available separately, in paperback editions, as follows:
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
. New York: The Viking Press, Compass Viking Edition, 1966.
Beyond Good and Evil,
1966;
The Birth of Tragedy
and
The Case of Wagner,
1967;
On the Genealogy of Morals
and
Ecce Homo,
with 75 aphorisms, 1967;
The Will to Power
, 1968: all New York: Random House, Vintage Books.
III.
Other Translations
There are other translations of single works, but no one else has translated more than two or three, and none of the major works has been rendered into English by another philosopher. In Francis Golffing's versions of
The Birth of Tragedy
and
The Genealogy of Morals
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1956), the accent is on freedom, and there are striking omissions.
The works not included in the Kaufmann translations need redoing. Of the
Untimely Meditations; Human
,
All-too-Human; The Dawn;
and
The Gay Science
, only the third
Meditation
has been done in recent years:
Schopenhauer as Educator
, tr. J. W. Hillesheim and Malcolm R. Simpson (Chicago: Henry Regnery, Gateway Editions, 1965).
Different selections from the three aphoristic books are included in II.1 and II.2, above.
Nietzsche: Unpublished Letters
. Tr. and ed. by Kurt F. Leidecker. New York: Philosophical Library, 1959. Offers a selection of 75 items from Schlechta's selection of 278 letters. The translations and the preface contain many errors; the title of the book is grossly misleading, and some of these letters were actually included in the present volume in 1954.
IV.
Forgery
My Sister and I,
published over Nietzsche's name in 1951, in English only, is an insipid forgery. See Kaufmann's exposes, listed on p. 26, above.
THE VIKING PORTABLE LIBRARY
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Edited by Horace Gregory
 
The Portable Beat Reader
Edited by Ann Charters
 
The Portable Blake
Edited by Alfred Kazin
 
The Portable Cervantes
Edited by Samuel Putnam
 
The Portable Chaucer
Edited by Theodore Morrison
 
The Portable Chekhov
Edited by Avrahm Yarmolinsky
 
The Portable Conrad
Edited by Morton Dauwen Zabel
 
The Portable Conservative Reader
Edited by Russell Kirk
 
The Portable Malcolm Cowley
Edited by Donald
W.
Faulkner
 
The Portable Stephen Crane
Edited by Joseph Katz
 
The Portable Dante
Edited by Paolo Milano
 
The Portable Emerson
Edited by Carl Bode and Malcolm Cowley
 
The Portable Faulkner
Edited by Malcolm Cowley
 
The Portable Greek Historians
Edited by M. I. Finley
 
The Portable Greek Reader
Edited by W. H. Auden
 
The Portable Graham Greene
Edited by Philip Stratford
BOOK: The Portable Nietzsche
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