Walking the Tightrope

The Austro-Prussian War of 1866 was part of Otto Bismarck’s efforts to unify Germany, with Prussia as its center of power. Being a Prussian, Nietzsche had been reared in a culture where the military was valued and Fritz seemed to value it as well. “He became an ardent admirer of Bismarck and even a ‘rabid Prussian’ (as he wrote to his mother)…” ( Cate , page 71) Nietzsche wanted to volunteer but was not eligible because of his poor eyesight. As the war continued, however, some restrictions on service were loosened to accommodate badly needed replacements. On October 9, 1867, Fritz’s studies were interrupted by conscription into the mounted section of a field artillery regiment stationed at Naumberg. “You will know that a mounted artilleryman is supposed to learn an amazing number of things. I like the riding lessons best. I have a very good-looking horse, and people say that I have a talent for riding. When I whirl around the exercise area on my Balduin, I am very satisfied with my

Bonn turned out to be a dead end for Nietzsche. Intellectually, the primary influence he from there was his appreciation for Friedrich Holderlin . In 1861, Fritz wrote an apologia for this, the most spurned of German Romantic poets. ( Cate , page 27) Holderlin had written a poem on Empedocles . It profoundly affected Nietzsche who wrote: “Empedocle’s death is a death from godly price, scorn for men, world-satiety, and pantheism. The entire work has always shaken me most deeply each time I read it; there is a godly majesty in this Empedocles.” (Cate, page 28) Fritz decided to pursue philology in Leipzig where, at age 21, after his break with the Church, Fritz discovered Arthur Schopenhauer . A letter Nietzsche wrote in 1865 explains: “At home I nestled into a corner of my sofa with the treasure I had found and began to let that vigorous, gloomy genius work his effects on me. Here every line screamed renunciation, denial, resignation; here I saw a mirror in which the world, life, and my

Fritz adored his father’s music-making. So, naturally it must have been an existential shock to the child when his father died. He records his remorse in very early letters and writings. But, he definitely inherited his father’s inclination toward music in general and the piano in particular. His mother took keyboard lessons after the death of his father, apparently because music was so important to her son. She wanted to offer it to him as his father did. Soon, Fritz was taking lessons of his own. He played after only a few lessons (which were then halted possibly for financial reasons) and was perhaps able to improvise even before that, quite naturally imitating what his young eyes might have seen his father’s fingers doing on the keyboard. His powers of observation were always very strong. In his late teens, a friend of Nietzsche’s tried to introduce him to Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde but Fritz didn’t like it. He was more interested in Beethoven , Schumann and Liszt at the time.

Who was this professor that entered the world of philosophy with The Birth of Tragedy? Nietzsche was born the son of a Lutheran clergyman in October 1844. He lived his early childhood in a slow, quiet, pastoral setting. His father died when Nietzsche was five. Nevertheless, his father gave Fritz a fundamental influence. Music. The pastor was gifted with a piano and played many classical compositions in addition to religious hymns and longer works of the Church. Curtis Cate writes of Fritz’s boyhood. “His most remarkable characteristic was an acute sensitivity to music. Whenever his father began to play the piano, little Fritz would drop whatever he was playing with and listen with rapt attention. That his father was the only person in the community able to extract such lovely sounds from this wondrous instrument raised him above ordinary mortals and enveloped him in a celestial aura of infant adoration.” (page 6) Early on, Nietzsche developed the habit of writing about his experiences.

Nietzsche's first major published work was The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music . It is different from most of his other books in that it has more of a dry "semi-academic" style. The work was not considered academic enough, however, by others in the philology profession and actually damaged Nietzsche's career which had begun so brilliantly at the mere age of 24. One reason for the largely negative reaction to the work by Nietzsche's colleagues was that it is more philosophical, more a critique of art, than philological, reflecting the fact that Fritz was already disenchanted with his profession and would have preferred another career or at least a broader scope. The Birth of Tragedy was published in 1872, as he completed his third year at Basel University as a Professor of Classical Philology. Briefly, it states that the art of Greek tragedy reached the highest form of expression when it contained a balance of Apollonian and Dionysian influences. This b

"Whoever battles with monsters had better see that it does not turn him into a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. " "The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Nietzsche If you are my priest then this is my confession. I'm unsure if I "believe" as Nietzsche did. I am re-reading. I am considering. I'm unsure. I only know that I "think" I am Nietzschean, if there is such a thing. But, I will try to confirm this.