Description
Book SynopsisThe only English translation of a crucial interpretation of Nietzsche
First published in 1918, Ernst Bertram''s
Nietzsche: Attempt at a Mythology substantially shaped the image of Nietzsche for the generation between the wars. It won the Nietzsche Society''s first prize and was admired by luminous contemporaries including André Gide, Hermann Hesse, Gottfried Benn, and Thomas Mann. Although translated into French in 1932, the book was never translated into English following the decline of Nietzsche''s and Bertram''s reputations after 1945. Now, with Nietzsche''s importance for twentieth-century thought undisputed, the work by one of his most influential interpreters can at last be read in English.
Employing a perspectival technique inspired by Nietzsche himself, Bertram constructs a densely layered portrait of the thinker that shows him riven by deep and ultimately irresolvable cultural, historical, and psychological conflicts. At once lyrical and intense
Trade Review
Winner of the American Translators Association's Ungar German Translation Award, 2011.
“Ernst Bertram’s seminal work ... not only highlighted Nietzsche’s own revival of the mythical dimension as essential to creative human activity but also sought, in the heroizing of spirit of the Stephan George circle (with which Bertram was associated) to render Nietzsche himself into a latter-day prophet—a dynamic, living national myth.”--Times Literary Supplement
"A major contribution to Nietzsche-research and scholarship."--
Journal of Nietzsche Studies "An important book and a masterful translation."--German Quarterly
“An imaginative and robust reading of Nietzsche; the great value of this English translation is the book’s historical role in consequential cultural developments provoked by figurations of Nietzsche. A significant contribution to Anglophone readers who are interested in Nietzsche’s philosophy generally, and particularly in the historical reception of his writings.”--Lawrence J. Hatab, author of
Nietzsche’s Life Sentence: Coming to Terms with Eternal Recurrence“Robert E. Norton has done an admirable job in preparing this English translation of a provocative critical study of Nietzsche. An important link between Nietzsche’s reception in the Weimar Period and the philosopher’s cooptation by the Nazis in the 1930s. This translation is simply splendid--flowing, precise, and sensitive to nuance.”--Marion Faber, translator of
Human, All Too Human and
Beyond Good and EvilTable of ContentsTranslator's Introduction: Attempt at a Demythologization xi
A Comment on the Notes xxxvii
Acknowledgments xxxix
Introduction: Legend 1
1. Ancestry 11
2. Knight, Death, and Devil 37
3. The German Becoming 56
4. Justice 79
5. Arion 88
6. Illness 107
7. Judas 121
8. Mask 134
9. Weimar 154
10. Napoleon 171
11. Jest, Cunning, and Vengeance 183
12. Anecdote 194
13. Indian Summer 203
14. Claude Lorrain 213
15. Venice 223
16. Portofino 231
17. Prophecy 231
18. Socrates 262
19. Eleusis 289
Notes 309
Chronology 365
Index 369
