Volume 45, Number 13 · August 13, 1998
The Last Days of Nietzsche
By John Banville
Nietzsche in Turin: An Intimate Biography
by Lesley Chamberlain
Picador, 256 pp., $23.00
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born in Röcken, in Prussian Saxony, in 1844. His father and grandfather were parsons, and his mother, the enigmatic Franziska, to whose bosom Friedrich was to return after his mental collapse at the age of forty-four, was the daughter of a pastor. The father, born in the same year as Nietzsche's future father figure, Richard Wagner, died when Friedrich was four, a loss from which the son never fully recovered. The young Nietzsche was brought up in a household of women—grandmother, mother, his rabidly anti-Semitic sister Elisabeth, and two maiden aunts. He was educated at Schulpforta, a re-nowned school run on military lines, where despite privations and the harsh discipline he was happy, and did well academically, though not to a remarkable degree. Later he attended the university in Bonn, studying theology and philology, the latter subject being the one in which he began a career that was to be quickly aborted.
Review, 4845 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |