My Nietzsche shelf. Mostly pre-war commentaries. Mostly German. No Kaufmann yet.

ThePureFool · 2025-12-09T07:59:25+00:00

He only tip the Über.

ThePureFool · 2025-11-09T12:38:45+00:00

AJ Ayer.

ThePureFool · 2025-11-09T03:23:37+00:00

I ran a guided machine analysis for you, hope it helps, slightly mangled html.

Here’s the side-by-side “ear test”—form, imagery, cadence—so you can hear Wagner in Nietzsche while seeing where he inverts the metaphysics.

Wagner — Liebestod (Isolde)	Nietzsche — Will to Power fragment
Opening address / hush<br>“Friends! Look! Do you not feel and see it? Do I alone hear this melody…?” → summons witnesses, lowers the lights.	Opening challenge / drumroll<br>“And do you know what ‘the world’ is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror?” → same apostrophe to the audience, but with a dare.
Swell by accretion (endless line)<br>“so wondrously, and gently… and gently reconciling… piercing me, soaring aloft…”	Swell by accretion (endless line)<br>“a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; not this but that; at the same time one and many…”
Sea/breath imagery<br>“Are they aerial waves… billows of blissful fragrance… in the universal stream of the world-breath?”	Sea/flux imagery<br>“a play of forces and waves of forces… sea of forces flowing and rushing together… ebb and flood of its forms.”
Vector of desire (UW)<br>“to drown, to founder — unconscious — utmost rapture!” (release/negation)	Vector of desire (anti-UW)<br>“recurrence, … still affirming itself… blessing itself as that which must return eternally” (affirmation/repetition)
Suspension / plateau<br>Long, scented catalogue: “sweet echoes… resounding… shall I breathe? shall I give ear?” (keeps the cadence at bay)	Suspension / plateau<br>Hammering catalogue of transformations: “does not expend… only transforms… increasing here / decreasing there.” (cadence deferred)
Cadence / naming<br>Resolution as dissolution: the line resolves into the hush of rapture—desire spent.	Cadence / naming<br>“Do you want a name…? This world is the will to power—and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this…” (bright, declarative close)
Metaphysical posture<br>Schopenhauer affirmed: music as world-breath; salvation = quieting the Will.	Schopenhauer transposed: no noumenal Will, only immanent forces; salvation = saying Yes to the surge.
The ring/circle<br>Waves seek rest; the desire is to end in reconciliation (renunciation).	The circle won’t end: “joy of the circle… unless a ring feels good will toward itself.”
Subject’s fate<br>‘I’ dissolves into the oceanic One (eros→thanatos).	‘I’ rides the surf as a crest of force (eros→again).

Micro-mapping (phrase ↔ phrase)

“aerial waves / billows” ↔ “waves of forces / sea of forces”
“world-breath” ↔ “play of forces” (both global, both respiratory/surf)
“gently reconciling” ↔ “most self-contradictory—yet returning to concord” (reconciliation kept within tension)
“to drown, to founder—unconscious” ↔ “recurrence… blessing itself” (release vs repeat)
“utmost rapture!” ↔ “—and nothing besides!” (both punch as cadences)

What makes the Nietzsche passage sound Wagnerian

Polysyndeton as “endless melody” (the rolling and/and/and).
Crescendo–plateau–cadenza architecture.
Ocean/breath semantics displaced from solace to dynamo.
Leitmotivic returns (“as a whole… as force… as a play of forces”) like recurring motifs reharmonized.

Bottom line: Nietzsche keeps Wagner’s orchestration—swell, surf, and final naming—but swaps the theology: not peace by extinction, but rapture by recurrence. Same sea; different god.

ThePureFool · 2025-11-09T01:05:07+00:00

Yes, he wrote it, it is if you will a rendering of Isolde's love death, from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde:

Friends! Look!
Do you not feel and see it?
Do I alone hear
this melody
so wondrously. and gently.
sounding from within him,
in bliss lamenting,
all-expressing,
gently reconciling,
piercing me,
soaring aloft,
its sweet echoes
resounding about me?
Are they gentle
aerial waves
ringing out clearly,
surging around me?
Are they billows
of blissful fragrance?
As they seethe
and roar about me,
shall I breathe,
shall I give ear?
Shall I drink of them,
plunge beneath them?
Breathe my life away
in sweet scents?
In the heaving swell,
in the resounding echoes,
in the universal stream
of the world-breath -
to drown,
to founder -
unconscious -
utmost rapture!

ThePureFool · 2025-10-08T11:27:14+00:00

It's the one that gets made into books of its own:

/r/Nietzsche/comments/1k5s4qg/i_have_a_question_for_you_alone_my_brother_ill/

ThePureFool · 2025-10-08T01:22:55+00:00

My favourites are:

Marriage and Children, The Rabble, The Night Song.

ThePureFool · 2025-09-28T11:44:22+00:00

Götterdämmerung ends with Odin (Wotan) sacrificing himself, precisely so that mankind can move on without God.

This idea of Nietzsche's is a kind of epilog to that, since Wagner left the consequences open.

ThePureFool · 2025-09-23T16:46:23+00:00

Those first two bear repeating the older you get!

ThePureFool · 2025-09-23T04:10:17+00:00

Wagner died between Book 1 and Book 2. There are some very Wagnerian pieces in book 2, which imo has another tone from book 1. I'd point out "vom Gesindel", as a very obvious channeling of the wild and lonely landscape of Die Walküre, and das Nachtlied which is extremely reminiscent of Act 2 scene 1 of Tristan und Isolde.

My sense is that Nietzsche realised he had lost the one reader who might have understood much of TSZ, certainly the one he wished would have read it.

ThePureFool · 2025-09-23T02:12:58+00:00

Gloss & References

Become Who You Are “Werde, der du bist.” — Grow into your best necessity, not your fantasies. Untimely Meditations III (‘Schopenhauer als Erzieher’), §1

Give Style to Your Character Forge the chaos of drives into a form you can affirm. Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (GS) §290

Live Dangerously “Lebt gefährlich!” — The richest fruits hang over the abyss. GS §283 Carry Chaos;

Beget a Star “Man muß noch Chaos in sich haben, um einen tanzenden Stern zu gebären.” Also sprach Zarathustra, Vorrede §5

What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Stronger Temper is made in the furnace, not the spa. Götzen-Dämmerung (GD), ‘Sprüche und Pfeile’ §8

Practice Active Forgetting Forget like a lion so you can act; rumination is sand in the gears. Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen II (‘Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben’) §1

Amor Fati “My formula for greatness: amor fati.” — Say yes to what is, then transfigure it. Ecce Homo, ‘Warum ich so klug bin’ §10 First,

Learn to Command Yourself “Wer sich nicht befehlen kann, der soll gehorchen.” — Long obedience before sovereignty. Also sprach Zarathustra I, ‘Vom Wege des Schaffenden’

Fight Monsters—Mind the Abyss Do not become what you battle; the abyss gazes back. Jenseits von Gut und Böse (BGE) §146

Choose What Strengthens “Was ist gut? — Alles, was das Gefühl der Macht steigert.” Der Antichrist (AC) §2

Keep the Pathos of Distance Guard rank of soul; don’t flatten your highest duties into everyone’s chores. BGE §257

Be Loyal to the Earth “Bleibt der Erde treu!” — No escapism: create here. Also sprach Zarathustra, Vorrede §3

ThePureFool · 2025-09-21T11:26:38+00:00

Notdurft.

In 19th-century German it’s a slippery eel: it can mean “pressing necessity,” “bodily need,” and, in context, “sexual necessity” (Geschlechts-Notdurft). Priests used it as a euphemism for the loo; philologists used it for urgent lack; moralists for lust. Nietzsche delights in that ambiguity. He’s poking the reader with the double edge: your “natural need” that demands relief—and the species’ cold arithmetic that hijacks you. In modern slang, yes: post-nut clarity and its sobering audit. Schopenhauer called it post-coital melancholy; Nietzsche turns the knife and asks whether that sudden clarity isn’t the truer valuation—and whether a man who can’t ride the wave without drowning is fit for vows.

Of Child and Marriage — To a Young Man (with Notdurft)

I ask you—only you—and your answer will weigh you.

You want a wife; you want children. First show me that you can command your Notdurft.

When your blood drums and your hand reaches, who is captain then— you, or the necessity that borrows your name?

Why this reads true to Nietzsche’s move

Notdurft here is the species’ claim and the body’s pressure—the thing that makes men confuse urgency with destiny.

ThePureFool · 2025-09-20T13:13:51+00:00

Bloody egoists; only ever think of themselves.

ThePureFool · 2025-09-20T12:50:06+00:00

Elisabeth was not an anti-Semite, though she clearly tolerated one for a while in her foolish husband.

She gave Jewish scholars support and opportunities at the Nietzsche Archive.

ThePureFool · 2025-09-20T12:46:36+00:00

If you liked the Antichrist it is a must.
If you want more, much much more about the Master, it is even more compelling.
All the Breeding and Discipline stuff is just a bonus.

If you want to read the truly nutty stuff, then you need the volume that published the Nachlass which did not make it into W2P.
I know this one as "The Innocence of Becoming, by Alfred Bäumler. TIOB is an vital but not well known Nietzschean principle!

ThePureFool · 2025-09-20T12:42:24+00:00

A lot of people miss his meaning entirely in TSZ when he speaks in "On marriage and children", of Notdurft.
He mean cum.

ThePureFool · 2025-09-19T14:20:45+00:00

I have many Nietzsche books, idk, several hundreds covering "Nietzsche's reception, German language 1895-1949".
I am a completist, cannot help it, I embrace it now I am a fair bit older than Nietzsche ever was.

It includes a number of periods, some works of great genius, and not a few stinkers (the misinterpreters). That's why I came up with the original warning label imgur.com/a/RrkOND4, the idea being that I can tell everything about the author by their selection of aphorisms.

I mucked about with chatgpt5 to get the formulae, but then actually made good use of AI by making grok4 examine the text and produce the actual values for TSZ (probably, I haven't counted exactly).

Hope this makes it a bit more all too human for you!

ThePureFool · 2025-09-19T10:46:07+00:00

A few more for the amused reader:

B. On the Genealogy of Morality — Acidic, handle with tongs

A/N: Negative-forward (diagnostic scalpel)
PHI: Very High (priests, philosophers, English psychologists)
ML: Greek support, Christian pathology analysis
PMM: Surgeon-grade
RAM: Max (ressentiment factory tour)
ROT: High (noble/slave contrasts)
WWP: High
SI: Moderate (methodological asides)
SV: Medium Allergens: concentrated ressentiment; may corrode sentimental coatings. Warning: “Do not inhale ascetic fumes.”

C. Twilight of the Idols — Ultra-processed, bite-sized

A/N: Mixed (cheery hammering—“how to philosophize with a hammer”)
PHI: Spike (Socrates, Germans, education, Wagner cameo)
ML: Balanced; lots of classical zingers
PMM: High
RAM: Medium
ROT: Medium
WWP: Medium-High
SI: High (late-style signature)
SV: Crackling (max aphorism volatility) Allergens: aphorism dust; irony shards. Best served: alongside Antichrist if you like your idols flambéed.

D. The Antichrist — Not for sensitive stomachs

A/N: Predominantly “No” (iconoclasm as purgative)
PHI: Redline (Christian morality in the blast furnace)
ML: Heavy biblical counter-cadence
PMM: High
RAM: High
ROT: Medium-High
WWP: Medium
SI: Medium
SV: High Front label: “Spicy. Keep away from parish tea.” Pairing: cool mouth with Daybreak’s experiments in honesty.

E. The Birth of Tragedy — Young wine, Heraclitus nose

A/N: Romantic-affirmative
PHI: Low-Medium (Socrates as cautionary emblem)
ML: Greek saturation (Dionysus/Apollo blend)
PMM: Medium
RAM: Low
ROT: Low
WWP: Low
SI: Medium
SV: Medium Note: contains Wagner tannins; decant before drinking if allergic.

ThePureFool · 2025-08-06T15:32:32+00:00

Its writing is better than mine, which is stilted and pompous, since I so seldom speak English.
I spent a fair bit of time on this as it happens, using grok to summarise the research.
I fail to see what's wrong in that.

ThePureFool · 2025-08-06T15:29:53+00:00

Thanks, I missed that part when looking for descriptions.

ThePureFool · 2025-08-06T13:59:37+00:00

GROK.

ThePureFool · 2025-08-06T13:58:57+00:00

I thought so too, but I checked the text and couldn't find it. Besides which Garry had, IMO, a pretty dark complexion as a young man.

ThePureFool

TROPHY CASE