Nietzsche Reads Emerson: A Philological Approach

Abstract

From 1879 to 1888, after resigning from his position as professor at the University of Basel, Friedrich Nietzsche traveled independently through Europe and wrote many of the works for which we still rightly admire him today; during this period, he turned time and time again to Ralph Waldo Emerson. In Nietzsche’s personal, often portable library were heavily annotated translations of Emerson’s Essays (1844), Emerson’s Letters and Social Aims (1875), his Historic Notes of Life and Letters in Massachusetts (1883), two copies of The Conduct of Life (1860), and a copy of Über Goethe und Shakespeare, from “Representative Men” (1850). These last two volumes, Benedetta Zavatta relates in her worthy, thought-provoking, but flawed study, were lost during the war. The others are at the Nietzsche archives and library in Weimar, Germany.