I Am Dynamite!

I AM DYNAMITE!
By Sue Prideaux

I like it when I learn something from a book, and I learned quite a bit from I Am Dynamite!, Sue Prideaux’s biography of Friedrich Nietzsche. That said, I’m sure this was mostly because I’d never read a biography of Nietzsche before but had gotten by on the sketches that came with introductions to his work or discussions of his philosophy. Add to this the layers of myth that have always surrounded the man, constantly in need of being cut away, and Prideaux’s book made a real difference in my understanding of the man.

For example: I’d always known that Nietzsche was “sickly,” but this really doesn’t cover the half of it. His eyesight was very poor (in fact he was nearly blind) and a sensitivity to light gave him debilitating headaches while requiring the wearing of sunglasses most of the time. He also suffered from hemorrhoids, migraines, and digestive disorders (his bowels further wrecked by the medicine of the day). I also knew he’d had an accident involving a horse that restricted his army service but wasn’t aware of its severity. What happened is that he speared himself on the pommel of his saddle, resulting in a chest wound so deep he could see bone. In later life he would claim “200 days of torment a year” from various afflictions. Is it any wonder his philosophy would be so concerned with the health of the individual?

Another eye-opener had to do with influences. I knew, from Will Durant, that Nietzsche was “the child of Darwin and the brother of Bismarck.” And his borrowings from Schopenhauer are obvious and have been much analysed. What I was surprised by was just how much Wagner’s romantic musings on the Dionysian had contributed to The Birth of Tragedy, and how much Paul Rée contributed to Nietzsche’s aphoristic style and the idea of there being a genealogy of morals. How much of Nietzsche’s impact was the result of his originality, and how much due to his simply pursuing current ideas into the red zone of shock and discomfort?

On a more mundane level, I had thought typewriters were a slightly older invention. But it was only in 1882 that Nietzsche took possession of an early prototype (a Hansen’s Writing Ball). Apparently it was damaged in transit and never worked as it should, though with Nietzsche’s eyesight it might not have been of much use anyway. Which was, perhaps, for the best. “Our writing instruments contribute to our thoughts,” he was led to observe. Truly a thought ahead of its time.

Was Nietzsche’s a life of disappointments, or did he not know what he wanted? Somehow — it really was a lucky break — he became close friends with his idol Wagner. Then they fell out. He got a job as a tenured professor at the age of 24, without even having completed his doctorate, but hated the job and committed professional suicide by writing entirely un-academic books. He pursued Lou Salomé, perhaps romantically, but I think we feel relief that things never went any further.

Was he learning something from all of this? Surely something not only about the vanity of human wishes but their perversity.

Notes:
Review first published online May 2, 2020.