Another Nietzsche
April 23rd, 2008
I am a Nietzsche fan. In fact, one of the things that drew me to him was the fact that he became insane. Mwahahaha! (SFX: Stinger from “Psycho”)A curious fact: When Nietzsche finally had a breakdown in 1888(?) in Turin, Italy, it was occasioned by his seeing a coach-driver cruelly beating up a horse. He ran up weeping to embrace the horse.
I know that Nietzsche has read Dostoyevski (his contemporary), but am not sure whether he has read “Crime and Punishment.” In the novel, Raskolnikov dreams of someone beating up a horse and him trying to stop the beating.
Is this a case of (an unconscious) life imitating art, or a simple weird coincidence? (Raskolnikov murdered an old woman. Nietzsche proclaimed the “death of God.”)
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I also encountered a book by Joan Stambaugh, “The Other Nietzsche” where she discusses a slightly different, a mystic Nietzsche. She also sees an affinity between Nietzsche and Spinoza, who was a pantheist. (Nietzsche, a pantheist?) I know this might seem quite far-fetched but there are several scholars who are inclined to this interpretation.
I consider myself a pantheist now, so I guess I have to confess I am inclined to see Nietzsche in that light. (With apologies to hard-core atheists.)
best regards,
nietzsche-ian