is even a reference to Deussen's
book, published a year after Nietz–
sche's death: "An incident of
my college days has been record–
ed. . . " ( 114). And would an
English translator have said "col–
lege days"? The lengthy reflections
on Marx and Marxists (nowhere
referred to in Nietzsche's works or
letters) have a particularly un–
Nietzschean ring (157-62, 182, 202,
211). In fact, the prose through–
out the book sounds neither like
the great aphorist nor like a mad–
man, but like a fourth-rate con–
temporary writer.
Now the reviewer might well be
asked: are you not an interested
party, seeing that another work
from Nietzsche's pen might date
the interpretation advanced in
your
Nietzsche
(Princeton Univer–
sity Press, 1950)? The question is
fair enough; but
My Sister and
I
is in such remarkable agree–
ment with my book and, if gen–
uine, would corroborate it so sig–
nificantly that it seems more like–
ly that the author had read my
Nietzsche.
The demonstrably true
biographical data are largely con–
fined to those I discussed. Even the
(to my mind, utterly implausible)
account of Nietzsche's alleged in–
cestuous relationship with
his
sis–
ter could have been suggested by
my observation (p. 37): "It is
conceivable that his passionate
love of her as a boy had something
to do with his later remark: 'To
Byron's Manfred I must be pro–
foundly related: I found all these
abysses in myself-at thirteen, I
was ripe for this work.'" In
My
Sister and I
we find: "Elisabeth
played the same role in my life's
drama as Augusta played in By–
ron's" ( 170). Such parallels, too
numerous for cataloguing here, ex–
tend to the philosophic side, too;
e.g., "These Rousseauan savages,
these
blond beasts
of mine, were
at the polar extreme to my Super–
man" (230). This is indeed my
interpretation; but having read
the medical records of Nietzsche's
pathetic behavior in the asylum–
how he would save his own ex–
crements in a table drawer, or even
eat them, not to speak of his
bodily symptoms-I cannot readily
accept such corroboration.
I took the sister to task for with–
holding
EcceHomo
until 1908, and
merely recorded in my Bibliogra–
phy that two of Nietzsche's other
works were not published until
1895. This last fact is entirely
overlooked in
My Sister and I,
while Nietzsche's mental collapse
(in January, 1889) is emphatically
blamed on his sister's suppression
of
Ecce Homo
(9f.) -which she
had, as Dr. Levy must have known,
never even seen at that time. Nor
is it credible that Nietzsche himself,
in the asylum, should have com–
plained of his family's suppression
of the book (32). The characteri–
zation of
The Will to Power
in the
Introduction also seems an echo
of my book. Finally, my book,
published in 1950, begins: "Nietz–
sche became a myth even before
