- Nietzsche on Tragedy by M.S. Silk and J.P. Stern Cambridge,
441 pp, £27.50, March 1981, ISBN 0 521 23262 7 - Nietzsche: A
Critical Life by Ronald Hayman Weidenfeld, 424 pp, £18.50, March
1980, ISBN 0 297 77636 3 - Nietzsche. Vol. 1: The Will to Power
as Art by Martin Heidegger, translated by David Farrell Krell
Routledge, 263 pp, £11.50, March 1981, ISBN 0 7100 0744 2
Nietzsche’s first book, The Birth of Tragedy, was published in
1872, when he was 27, and while he was a Professor of Classics
at Basel. It had the unusual effect, for him, of attracting some
attention at the time of its appearance: after that, Nietzsche’s
writings virtually ceased to be noticed until the 1890s, by
which time he was, for the last 11 years of his life, insane,
virtually without speech, and out of touch with the world.
Nietzsche said to his sister that this book was a ‘centaur’, a
description which emphasises its oddness, underestimates its
beauty, and misleads about the number of its components, since
it is a blend not only of s