The New Lifetime Reading Plan

As with most of James^ work, The Ambassadors must be read slowly. Every line tells. Ali is measured for its possible effect. There is no trace in it of what the author called "the baseness of the arbitrary stroke." It may take you ten times as long to read The Ambassadors as to read Tom Jones [55]—but for some readers there will be ten times as much in it.

One of the most voluminous of great writers, James cannot be known through any single book. He worked brilliantly in the fields of the novel, the long and short story, the memoir, the biography, the criticai essay, and the travei sketch, as well as, unsuccessfully, in the theater. In addition to The Ambassadors, I should like to nominate for your attention two other works of Jamesian fiction: The Portrait of A Lady and The Turn of the Screw.

C.F.

97

FRIEDRICH WILHELM NIETZSCHE

1844-1900

Thus Spake Zarathustra, The Genealogy of Morais, Beyond Good and Evil, and other works

The rhapsodic singer of the strong, triumphant, joyful super- man led a life of failure, loneliness, obscurity, and physical pain. Son of a Lutheran pastor in Saxony, he was brought up by pious female relatives. A brilliant student, he specialized in classical philosophy. At twenty-five he was professor of Greek at Basel University. He resigned ten years later, in 1879, because of poor health. One of the major influences in his life at this time was Wagner, whom he at first adored. (Bertrand Russell remarks: "Nietzsche^ superman is very like Siegfried, except that he knows Greek.^,>) Gradually, however, as Wagner succumbed to philistinism, anti-Semitism, German racism, and the sick religiosity of Parsifal, Nietzsche drew away from the great composer, and at last broke with him. From 1879 to 1888 he wandered about Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, living a lonely life in seedy boardinghouses. Yet during these nine years, working under the most depressing conditions, he pro- duced most of his famous books. In December of 1888 he was found in a Turin street, weeping and embracing a horse. His mind had given way. For the remaining eleven years of his life he was insane, possibly—there is no proof—as a result of gen­eral syphilitic paresis.

Nietzsche is still a controversial figure. At times he writes

like a genius. At times he writes like a fool, as if he had never been in touch with ordinary realities. (His views on women, for example, are those of a man who simply didn't know any very well.) And so, though he has been dead for almost a century and has been the subject of countless commentaries and inter- pretations, there is still no generally agreed-upon judgment of this extraordinary man. Those naturally inclined to moderation, decent intellectual manners, rationality, or plain common sense, find him ridiculous or even hateful. Others see in him a prophetic figure, a constructive destroyer of false moral values, an intuitive psychologist who anticipates Freud [98]. And posi- tions in between these extremes have been set up ali along the line.

One general misconception is worth mentioning. The Nazis and Fascists in general did exploit, often by falsifying, Nietzsche's celebration of the virtues of war, ruthlessness, blood-thinking, and an elite class—or his presumed celebra­tion, for his admirers translate his words rather differently. But Nietzsche would have despised Hitler and ali the little Hitlers. He was not anti-Semitic and he condemned German national- ism. "Every great crime against culture for the last four hun­dred years lies on their conscience" is his summing up of the Germans. Nietzsche in one of his aspects was a good European, a defender of the culture the Nazis hated. It cannot be denied that his political influence has been deplorable. But this is not the same as saying that he was a proto-Fascist.